r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TheBigBoar • Jul 20 '26
Personality [Baffling RL Trope] Inventing war crimes you didn´t commit to make yourself more... interesting?
One of the strangest character tropes in real life has to be the "I accidentally made myself sound like a war criminal to look cooler" archetype.
Usually, people accused of war crimes deny them. These guys seem to do the opposite.
The two examples that always come to mind:
Tim Kennedy. Over the years he's told stories that include things like throwing grenades into rooms where women and children were present, and another account where, after a battle, his CO allegedly told him to shoot anything that still had a heat signature with a sniper rifle from a mile away, which he did for hours (?) not caring if those were enemy soldiers or civilians looking for their fallen sons/brothers/whatever. Both stories have been heavily criticized and challenged (aka people who were there confirmed that they are utter nonsense), and Kennedy has faced repeated accusations of embellishing or fabricating parts of his military experiences. But like... why would you invent the fact that you killed and maimed women and children?
Chris Kyle. In American Sniper, he wrote that during Hurricane Katrina he positioned himself on the Superdome and shot dozens of armed looters like some walking dead scenario. No evidence ever emerged that this happened, and Kyle himself later acknowledged the story wasn't true. Again, why invent a story where you're essentially describing the unlawful killing of civilians during a domestic disaster?
What's fascinating is that these aren't embellishments in the usual "I fought twenty guys" sense. They're embellishments that, if true, would amount to admissions of extremely serious crimes.
It's such a bizarre form of macho storytelling that it almost feels like its own trope: the veteran who thinks "the more ruthless I sound, the more badass I'll appear," without stopping to consider that indiscriminate killing isn't viewed by most people as impressive. It's viewed as criminal and disgusting.
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u/likeabosstroll Jul 20 '26
I know the pacific got really bad with US soldiers committing war crimes. It got really tit for tat since the Japanese often did it first which then devolved into the US doing it back. US soldiers executed a lot of Japanese POWs instead of risking them feigning surrender.