Sociopathic Soldier

Trombley: Sergeant, I didn't get to shoot.
Ray: That fucking sucks, Trombley. Did your recruiting officer tell you you could just shoot anyone?

Trombley: Fuckin' A he did.

—Generation Kill

The grunt version of Colonel Kilgore (and sometimes General Ripper). Often people below the rank of Sergeant are all around assholes who plunder, rape, and massacre civilians, or brutally torture and murder the hero's comrades, making killing them less guilt-causing.

These generally come in four flavors:

1. First, the kind who are swept up in Patriotic Fervor or similar and are doing it because they're convinced their cause gives them the right to be as brutal as they please (racism, Fantastic Racism or otherwise might be involved). They might think the enemy genuinely are scum who deserve whatever is visited on them (or slightly more likely, they will not believe/not care about this but use it as an excuse anyway).
2. Then there's the second kind, the Psycho for Hire who just joined up for the plunder, rape and massacring of civilians and doesn't care whose banner they're doing it under. If he wasn't in the army he'd be a Serial Killer.
3. The third kind is your regular neighborhood boy who has been conscripted into the army, has absolutely no interest in war, hates it all and has only his own personal survival at stake. He's nothing but Cannon Fodder and he knows it—with nothing to gain from the fighting, the knowledge that he is expendable tips him over the edge into madness. This kind hates everybody, including his own officers, though it's the enemy civillians who will likely bear the brunt of his wrath. Expect lots of Rape, Pillage and Burn; Fragging incidents may occur.
4. Finally there's the fourth kind; he was a Nice Guy at one time, just trying to take care of his buddies and protect his home - but then he saw something that broke him inside, and now he just wants to get things done as efficiently as possible. This would be the Shell-Shocked Veteran, and he's a lot more dangerous than the other three - he's neither stupid, crazy, or angry, just pragmatic.

If there's a whole bunch of them, expect a Colonel Kilgore or General Ripper in charge.

Occasionally the rest of the soldiers will be relatively sympathetic but one of these will be the Token Evil Teammate.

Contrast Officer and a Gentleman and Cultured Warrior. Compare with the more mercenary Psycho for Hire. Compare and contrast Shell-Shocked Veteran.

Examples of Sociopathic Soldier include:

Anime and Manga

• They don't get any more sociopathic than Solf J. Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist. He's essentially Lack of Empathy in a uniform (and later, a Nice Hat and suit). He sees killing as part of his job...and Kimblee loves a job well done. His counterpart in the 2003 anime version exaggerates this to the point where he's less this trope, and more of a For the Evulz Psycho for Hire.
  • During the Ishval flashbacks we see that many of the Amestrian soldiers, including Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye, Maes Hughes, Basque Grand and even Armstrong acted like this during the genocide, running the full range of Types 1, 2, 3, and 4. Unlike Kimblee, they're all haunted by their actions, and deeply regret them. In the first anime, Barry the Chopper argues that people really do want to kill each other, but won't do it without permission from the government; hence why people join the army in the first place. Kimblee makes a similar speech, in which he questions the motivations of Roy and his friends, suggesting that if they were only willing to kill a few people, but not thousands, they shouldn't have joined the army in the first place.

"Look your victims in the eye. And never, forget them. They certainly won't forget you."

• • In the 2003 anime version, we also have Lt. Colonel Frank Archer, a textbook sociopath who joined the army for the prestige, and out of his belief that War Is Glorious. He manipulates the emotions of those forced to work with him, turns anime!Kimblee (a Misanthrope Supreme Psycho for Hire and Mad Bomber) loose on Liore, and willingly hunts down anyone the government tells him is a threat. He is later promoted to a command rank, where his raging paranoia ensures his evolution into a General Ripper.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood adds Isaac McDougal, a Type IV who cracked after the Ishvalan war, became a Shell-Shocked Veteran, and set out to massacre his own side for a) letting it happen, and b) being party to an Ancient Conspiracy. There's also Retired Badass Giolio Comanche, who seems to have enjoyed his time at the front a little too much going off the Slasher Smile he displays when Order #3066 is issued.
• Along similar lines to Kimblee, Sir Luciano Bradley of Code Geass is a Psycho for Hire type who actually comments that he loves the military as it allows him to kill lots of people and get rewarded for doing so.
  • And at least a good chunk of the Britannian troops. If a few simple words from your superior is enough to get you to gun down unarmed civilians without a sweat, there might be something wrong with you.
• Zaied, of Full Metal Panic! is the hero's Evil Counterpart and a grown-up Child Soldier turned mercenary. He's also a near emotionless sociopath, who thinks that winning is all that matters in war, and willingly betrays his comrades in order to be on the winning side, later trying to kill his former friend Sousuke on The Big Bad's orders. He never once looks back, bats an eye, or seems to think that he might have done anything wrong.
• The Titans of Zeta Gundam were a haven for characters like this. Then again, given that they're led by the likes of Bask Ohm and Manipulative Bastard Paptimus Scirrocco this shouldn't be surprising. Yazan Gable is probably the worst, being a Type II Psycho for Hire who joined up solely for the chance to kill AEUG supporters.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 features the A-LAWS who are more or less a collective Expy of the Titans; among their number is Yazan's expy, Ali Al-Saachez, a Psycho for Hire who freely admits that he loves warfare, and wouldn't know what to do with himself if an actual world peace was established.
  • Decil Galette of Gundam AGE takes the worst qualities of both Yazan and Ali and combines them into a single, nasty childsized package, treating war as a game and his victims as toys. The timeskip has not improved him, and the disconcerting enthusiasm he shows whenever's he's turned loose on his enemies is if anything more disturbing on a thirty-three year old.
• Two of Noin's former trainees in an episode of Gundam Wing go this route, sadistically murdering their opponents and laughing over the wreckage. If they weren't members of the army, the'd be Psychos For Hire.
• Many, many examples in Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny, from ZAFT troops executing surrendered Earth Forces personnel, to Blue Cosmos lunatics who gleefully launch nuclear weapons at ZAFT's home bases in the Plants. The Extended are particularly vicious about it, although that's not entirely their fault. The ZAFT veterans who try to Colony Drop Earth at the start of Seed Destiny are an especially good example, as is Yzak Joule before his Character Development sets in.
• Given that Millenium was made up entirely of volunteers from the Waffen-SS, it can be assumed that its soldiers were this before being made into vampires. Afterwards...
• Dilandau Albatou and his Dragon Slayers from Vision of Escaflowne combine this with Tyke Bomb, Teens Are Monsters, and—in Dilandau's case--Pryomania and a side of hypocrisy. Dilandau gets to burn and kill whoever he wants to, but god forbid anyone so much as touch Dilandau. He's pretty much a Psycho for Hire who only works for one employer.
• Kagerou Nostalgia: The vast majority of the soldiers in General Kiyotaka Kuroda's employ fit into this category. Given that they're sent into battle alongside demons, with orders to butcher and kidnap as many civillians as possible, this is more or less a part of the job description.
• One could make the case for several Naruto villains, although given the nature of the setting comparing them to regular soldiers is iffy. Pre-Heel Face Turn Gaara is a solid example though, as are all 7 Swordsmen of the Mist.
• Black Lagoon: In his backstory, the leader of the Special Forces unit Grey Fox killed a gang of these (led by a Colonel Kilgore type) to protect Vietnamese civilians.

Comic Books

• In Watchmen , the Comedian shoots a pregnant woman to death while serving in Vietnam without a hint of remorse. And it was his baby.
  • The Comedian then immediately calls out Dr. Manhattan for not doing anything to stop him despite being all-powerful. From his perspective, Dr. Manhattan is a sociopathic soldier. This has spawned MANY WMGs where Dr. Manhattan teleported the baby to X.
• Deconstructed in the Two-Fisted Tales short story "Kill!", set in the Korean War. On the American side we have have Abner, who continuously sharpens his knife and can't wait to gut some Chinese, while in the Chinese camp we meet Li, who obsessively polishes his submachine gun and compares it to a beautiful woman. In the end, they meet in the field, mortally wound each other and both die unceremoniously.
• Shooting War had one of these who was also The Fundamentalist.
• In Sin City, Marv briefly mentions fighting in a war. It's possible that this could be one of the reasons for his mental state.
  • Also oddly averted with Wallace. Given Sin City's penchant for violent heroes, Wallace is a former Navy SEAL, yet is one of the nicest characters in the series.
• Captain Atom and Green Lantern villain Major Force was already serving a life sentence in a military prison, before being used as a test subject for a Super Soldier experiment. The end result? Turning a remorseless psychotic murderer into a Person of Mass Destruction.
• Nuke from Daredevil: Born Again is a product of an attempt at making another Captain America (comics). He's a Super Soldier with heightened reflexes, drug-fuelled rage, and plastic under his skin. He's also totally off his rocker, thinks he's still fighting The Vietnam War, and will slaughter anyone he thinks is threatening "our boys"; his gun keeps a count of his kills.
• In Route 666, Berkely went to war just to sate his bloodthirst - when the war ended, he became a serial killer instead. He wanted to team up with Cassie just so he could kill with a fairly clean conscience again.

Film

• Maggot from The Dirty Dozen is perhaps one of the better pre-Vietnam examples in film.
• The military in most of George Romero's films. Just because.
• Full Metal Jacket has a scene with a particularly sociopathic door gunner on a helicopter. He's had 157 confirmed kills—all implied to be civilians—plus 50 water buffalo.

Private Joker: Any women or children?
Door Gunner: Sometimes.
Private Joker: How can you shoot women and children?
Door Gunner: Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much! [laughs] Ain't war hell?

• • The above scene is from Micheal Herr's book Dispatches which describes his experiences as a war correspondent in Vietnam. Herr was a co-screenwriter for Full Metal Jacket and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work.
• Almost the entire Japanese Army in City of Life and Death. It's a movie about the Rape of Nanking, so that goes without saying.
• Fowler from Jarhead. Just... Fowler, who is this trope distilled to its purest form with a dash of white supremacy added for spice.
• Platoon features redneck psychopath Bunny. Of note is his Karmic Death, which is so quick, yet chillingly brutal, that it's impossible to relish it as a comeuppance. Sergeant Bob Barnes (featured at the top of the page) is another example, who doubles as a Colonel Kilgore on account of his rank.
• In Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman was one of these in life. While the other Hessians were mercenaries, he went to fight in America for the love of killing, and loss of life and head hasn't abated that love.
• The soldiers in 28 Days Later. Besides the Only Sane Man, the CO wants nubile women to try and keep the rest of his soldiers under control. Think about that for a minute.
• The main characters of Inglourious Basterds are a group of American Saboteurs who enter Nazi-Occupied France to unleash hell upon Nazis from the inside. Notable however is Hugo Stiglitz, a German-born Ax Crazy Stoic who the Basterds recruited due to his reputation of killing 13 officers in their sleep (or waking them up just before he kills them).
• Sergeant Tony Meserve in Casualties of War. He kidnaps, rapes, and kills a young village girl, then tries to kill PFC Eriksson with a grenade in the latrine.
• Paul Lazzaro in Slaughterhouse Five. This is clearly defined when he recounts the story of killing a dog by putting some clock parts into a steak that he gives to the dog that bit him. Any time someone makes him angry, he threatens that person with violence, then in the end of the movie, he kills Billy Pilgrim, just as he said he would.
• Colonel Kurtz of Apocalypse Now is the Trope Codifier for the Shell-Shocked Veteran.
• The other American soldiers in Dances with Wolves come to mind.
• Andy Serkis plays a terrifying one of these in World War I horror movie Deathwatch.
• In Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Bad, Angel Eyes, does a magnificent impression of one of these, infiltrating Union lines as a sergeant. He tortures prisoners for information, and generally runs his prison camp as though it were Auschwitz (despite the protestations of his Lieutenant). His right hand man and Torture Technician Wallace is a straight example, being a Union soldier, and a total thug.
  • However, it is averted by the Union soldiers Tuco and Blondie encounter later on, who are led by a likable, humorous fellow who happens to be A Father to His Men, making his sudden death during the ensuing battle a surprisingly tear-jerking moment for a bit character, and there's also a younger lieutenant who seems to be an ordinary man caught up in a war he does not understand.
• Ewan McStarley, Vinnie Jones' character in The Condemned—an SAS operative who became a Condemned Contestant after setting fire to a Rwandan village, executing 17 men, raping 9 women, and torturing various others.
• Victor Creed in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, considering his attempted rape of a local during Vietnam, as well as the implied killing of civilians while firing from a helicopter during the same war.
• The eponymous slasher in Uncle Sam, pre-death.
• All the Private Military Contractors in Avatar, particularly Wainfleet,^[1] as well as all the pilots other than Trudy, with them all being led by a Colonel Kilgore.
• In the Doom movie, Sarge shows himself to be this, at one point killing the rookie member of his team for refusing his order to kill a room full of unarmed civilians. Small wonder, then, that he mutates into the protagonist's final adversary after becoming infected.
• Lawrence of Arabia grows closer and closer to this trope as the movie goes on, finally culminating in the massacre at Tafas.

Literature

• Mentioned in Discworld's Night Watch, where Sergeant Carcer is described as "the sort that joins up for the plundering...the kind you have to end up hanging as an example to the men".
• Troopers Cuu and Feygor in the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, though the latter tends to be held in check by Colonel-Commissar Gaunt.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, most knights and men-at-arms conform to this trope, particularly those assigned to pillage peasant villages for information and supplies. One character gives a sympathetic monologue that any man conscripted into war can become this way if he survives long enough.
  • Justified in that the series takes place in a medieval period. There are no conscripts or discipline; the only difference between a French or British invasion from a Viking raid was the scale and technology. In fact, a Viking raid would often be cleaner, as they would be operating on their own schedules and thus be better fed and less desperate than any soldier. Ahem--sorry.
• Andrea from The Zone series of WW 3 novels by James Rouch. A stunningly beautiful East German woman with a Mysterious Past and a passionate hatred of communists. She bonds with various soldiers (though never sexually) long enough to absorb their specialist skills, then callously severs the connection to move on to the next teacher. Warning: Keep away from prisoners.
• The Things They Carried has Azar, who, at one point, blows up a squad member's puppy and mocks everyone. At one point, when he's scared shitless, he claims his Jerkassery is a defense against fear, but he's probably lying again to save his ass.

"Christ, I'm just a boy."

• Hakeswill in Sharpe. Senior officers love him (except the ones with real integrity), everyone who knows what he's really like loathes him.
• Corporal Lehto in Väinö Linna's The Unknown Soldier. He is a complete sociopath, bully and ruthless to both enemy and his own squad. His end is tragic: he walks into an ambush in night fight, gets shot and wounded on his spine, gets paralyzed and shoots himself because he considers himself now as cripple and bottom of the pecking order. He doesn't give himself any more mercy or respect than to anyone else, and sees suicide as the only logical conclusion.
• In Harry Turtledove's The Great War trilogy, one of the PoV characters is Gordon McSweeny, a charming Corporal who, being staunchly Protestant, believes himself to the instrument of God's wrath upon the Confederates, and turned down a command post multiple times. This is because he enjoys personally killing them. With his FLAMETHROWER. He's only slightly nicer to the men under his command; one time not mourning one's death, because he was Greek Orthodox and therefore a heretic, even if he was a nice guy.
  • Lieutenant Boris Lavochkin, in Settling Accounts is even nuttier, burning and slaughtering his way across the Confederacy. You don't feel particularly bad for his victims (they are after all A Nazi by Any Other Name), but he's still very much this trope, as his sergeant, Chester Martin repeatedly lampshades. On the other side, there are the Freedom Party Guards who to say the least, aren't very nice. What do you expect from SS expies?
• This is how most of the civilians view soldiers, even regulars but especially the more common mercenaries, at the start of 1632. Fairly often they're right even and when they're wrong the armies still have to "scavenge" like crazy to keep from starving.
• In Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, KGB soldiers tend to be portrayed this way, as specifically distinguished from Red Army troops. This is apparent in a scene during the Iceland occupation where Lt. Edwards comes upon a farmhouse whose occupants have been raped and murdered by KGB troops. He rescues the sole surviving daughter in Big Damn Heroes fashion and then proceeds to mete out summary justice to the rapists.
• Taylor in Animorphs is sociopathic even by Yeerk standards. Torture Technician, Manipulative Bastard, and Jerkass extraordinaire, she just plain enjoys hurting people.
• Most of the once-men in Terry Brooks' The Word and The Void and The Genesis Of Shannara are like this.
• Many examples in The Malazan Book of the Fallen, but the crowning one would have to be Anaster, the First Child of the Dead Seed. He's an Empty Shell of a Death Seeker who commits atrocities in the hopes of forcing someone to kill him, and leads an army of cannibals on a rampage accross the continent, butchering everything in his path seemingly for the sake of it.
• Redmond Barry AKA Barry Lyndon became one of these while fighting in the Seven Year's War. It's implied that Barry's hellish treatment in the Prussian army contributed to him being this way and enthusiastically joining in "foraging" (read Rape, Pillage and Burn). There's a kind of disturbing scene where in a surprisingly gentle tone he describes a foppish and inexperienced opponent whose skull he bashed in with his musket and whose corpse he looted.
• Sergeant Bothari of the Vorkosigan Saga is a more complex version of this. He is a sadistic sociopath, but has enough conscience to realise that random killing is wrong. So he uses military regulations to tell him when it is OK to kill. His commanding officers learn to think very carefully before taking off his leash.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: Voyager. Maquis crewman Lon Suder kills another crewmember just for looking at him the wrong way. He is Betazoid but tellingly has no empathic or telepathic abilities like others of his race.
• The Twilight Zone: A new replacement is very eager to kill some enemies (Japanese soldiers, in this case), to the disgust of his shell shocked seniors (well, they have been fighting longer than he had). This being The Twilight Zone he gets his comeuppance when he somehow becomes a Japanese soldier and is forced to obey an Evil Counterpart who repeats his own bloodthirsty words back at him. All Just a Dream, maybe, but he gets the message.
• Soldier turned mercenary Martin Keamy on Lost appears to have always been sadistic and borderline psycho, but the Island really brings out his sociopathy, resulting in him murdering people left and right for spurious reasons and endangering the lives of his ship's entire crew.
• Rick Flag of Smallville is a sociopathic ex-soldier turned Western Terrorist. He's got a thing for Cold-Blooded Torture, bombings, and misplaced Patriotic Fervor, giving an amazing impression of a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic.
  • He's also got a Complexity Addiction - he uses a missile to try and kill one person. Think about that for a minute.
  • Lieutenant Trotter is also an example. Disciple of General Ripper Slade Wilson, she willingly engages in kidnapping, brainwashing, and human experimentation in the supposed interests of protecting the US from metahumans. A Lawful Evil Knight Templar whom even Flag believes needs stopping.
• The Sontarans of Doctor Who fame are an entire race of Super Soldiers who behave this way towards their enemies. The one exception is the Combat Medic that the Doctor encounters in "A Good Man Goes To War" who demonstrates that their sociopathy is learned, rather than ingrained. One could argue that most Daleks fall under this trope as well, committing genocide at the drop of a hat.
• Detective Carter's backstory on Person of Interest has her serving as an Army interrogator in Iraq. She managed to talk a detainee into giving up the location of an insurgent supply cache in exchange for protecting him and his family from said insurgents. Then the soldiers Carter was working with killed him offscreen after he led them to the cache.

Music

• From the third verse of John Denver's Stonehaven Sunset:

Stonehaven sunset, the city's on fire. The soldiers just smile and say, "this gun's for hire". Give into the beast, boy, give into the thrill, it's just human nature, to hunt and to kill...

• One of the numerous dysfunctional soldiers mentioned in Tom Lehrer's song It makes a fella proud to be a Soldier is Bill. He stabbed a cop in seventh grade, and joined the Army because they'd give him better weapons than he could get on the street. He's described as "real RA material". Although, given his platoon is lead by a Georgian ex-con, he probably is.
• The End of the Thirty Years War by Jacek Kaczmarski epitomizes this trope in extremely graphic way.

Tabletop Games

• Pretty much every Ork, Dark Eldar, and follower of Chaos (especially Slaanesh worshipers) in Warhammer 40,000. The rest are either Knights Templar, Scary Dogmatic Aliens, the Tyranids, or the Imperial Guard. And those who qualify among the Guard are usually borderline examples of Training from Hell (Catachan Jungle Fighters) or Shell-Shocked Veteran (Death Korps of Krieg).
  • The requirements for a Space Marine involve "a near-psychotic killing instinct". Granted, this is 40K, so it's not like it's uncommon.
  • Even worse is that to the Orks, it's not even sociopathy, it's fun, war being to them a combination of jihad, mass migration and pub crawl.
• The sample group, "Bad Company" from the New World of Darkness sourcebook, Dogs Of War, are a bunch of Shell Shocked Veterans deployed to Afghanistan, led by Colonel Kane. Having had his heart cut out by a Taliban sorcerer, Kane has thrown the rulebook away in the interest of tracking down the sorcerer... and, incidentally, killing every Afghani who gets in his way. Several other examples are given (especially that one Chechen resistance group), but Bad Company are the standouts. If you're playing a military setting and don't alter your Morality accordingly, it's very easy for any Soldier character to fall into this.

Theater

• The "Kanonen-Song" from Die Dreigroschenoper has a refrain about soldiers turning people into beefsteak tartare.
  • Specifically, people with darker or lighter skin than the British Army. They're equal opportunity racists.

Videogames

• In the Xbox/PS2 game Shellshock, there are numerous times where your squad massacres civilians even if you don't take part in it. In the second mission, you go to search a village for weapons and a single Vietcong. Or, after you round up everyone in the village, you can start shooting and the others will join in and gun down all the villagers, accomplishing the same objective. Later on, you also kill wounded amputees in a Vietcong hospital. Plus, one of your squadmates (whose name is literally "Psycho") constantly kills POW's in cutscenes, and helps the South Vietnamese commissar torture people.
• Technically not Military, but the Civil Protection in Half-Life 2. Overlaps with Police Brutality.
  • Also committed by the HECU Marines/Army in the original Half-Life. While, to be fair, they ARE under orders to silence everyone, a few seem to take an unnecessary glee in their task. Somewhat averted in Opposing Force - the game sets up events so it's extremely hard to get any surviving military member to meet a scientist (and if he does, said scientist is dead), but for the most part, they're more concerned with getting out and saving each other. Black Ops, on the other hand...
    • That's true, A few were evil, but many of them were reluctant.

Evil Soldier: I killed 12 dumb-ass scientists and not one of them fought back! This sucks!
Good Soldier: I didn't sign on for this shit... Monsters? Sure. But Civilians? Who ordered this operation anyway?

• How a lot of the opposing grunts are portrayed in SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs - but the few that you get the drop on in conversations casually talk about what their former base used to be, complaining about their Straw Feminist of a CO, or recruiting civilians onto their side with idealistic logic.
• Pale-faced shocktrooper Jane Turner from Valkyria Chronicles, who specifically joined up with Squad 7 to, as she puts it, "put holes in Imps." Yeah, she's a little creepy.
  • And what caused her need to make the empire her bitch? They blew up her flower shop.
• The eponymous player characters in Mercenaries have the option of doing this. Then again, there are massive penalties for killing civilians.
• Apparently, the various grunts in Call of Duty 4, especially the Ultranationalists, who purposefully are bombing whole villages.
  • And from World at War, Sgt. Reznov. He really likes killing Nazis. And also from WaW, the soldiers from the Nazi Zombies mode. They're quite involved in their zombie killing.
• Also subverted in Metal Gear Solid, to the point where one has a moral conflict in killing others. The game rewards you for using non-lethal kills.
  • On the other hand, Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid is heavily implied in-story to be one. That's not even getting to the FOXHOUND members.

Solid Snake: "Unfortunately, killing is something that gets easier the more you do it."

• • In the first game, the final boss calls you out on it. If you take this path in the fourth game, the same sound-bite from Metal Gear Solid plays, followed by Snake vomiting in disgust.
    • Something similar happens in Metal Gear Ghost Babel, although that one does involve the players actions (kind of, although Pyro Bison's overall message is the same, the number of enemies killed changes depending on how many the player actually killed, with two being the absolute lowest due to there being no alternative for Slasher Hawk and Marionette Owl.)
• Colonel Cobar from Killzone: Liberation. When he was still a private during the formation of the Helghast military, he shot his military instructor for stopping a training operation because another recruit was wounded. His ascension to colonel made it worse: mere days into the invasion of Vekta, he captured, tortured and dismembered three ISA council members in Sedah City.
  • Rico from the same series takes it up a step further, and apparently is a good guy. His questionable tactics include wielding a heavy machine gun during a hostage situation and not settling for stealth when Helghast can be killed. It gets bad in Killzone 2 when Templar decides in some strange fashion that he is worthy of not only heading up Alpha, but also getting the charge to capture Visari. Guess how it ends. In the manual for the first game, it's stated he was a Rhino Squad member, who were known for being unnecessarily violent.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Soldier is like this.

If God had wanted you to live, he would not have created me!

• • The majority of the team could be considered sociopathic soldiers, with some exceptions such as the Engineer (who is unfazed by most things), the Medic (who doesn't particularly enjoy killing but is rather a Mad Doctor), and the Sniper.
  • Lampshaded with the Sniper, who prides himself as a professional assassin, so he's not crazy, per se. His parents think so, however.

Sniper: Dad, I'm not a "crazed gunman", I'm an assassin! What's the difference? One's a job and the other's mental sickness!

• The Beast from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin might not seem like one, but Caulder addresses him as "Sergeant" at one point before noting that he no longer considers himself military. The implication is that the Beast was always the hateful, kill-crazy man he became After the End, and the only difference is that he no longer has the chain of command to hold him back.
• Pretty much all of the Sith Troopers in Knight Of The Old Republic, but the students at the Sith Academy on Korriban particularly stand out in that they basically spend their time showcasing their sociopathy in the hopes of being noticed by thir superiors. Mandalorians also count, including Canderous in your party.
• U.B.C.S. Sergeant Nicholai Ginovaef of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, an ex-soldier turned mercenary is this trope to a "T", plotting to murder all of his colleagues so that he can recieve their pay. He's also a Badass Normal who somehow manages to survive the game, making your life a living hell the entire time. U.S.S. team leader HUNK, alias "Mr. Death", of Resident Evil 2 is a totally cold-blooded version, who willingly leaves his teammates to die in furtherance of his mission, and doesn't care at all about the civillians his team guns down.
  • Generally speaking the Umbrella Security Service (U.S.S.) and Umbrella Bioweapon Countermeasures Service (U.B.C.S.) seem to attract a lot of these guys. Given the nature of the work and the fact that most of them are Former Regime Personnel or professional mercenaries this unsurprising. The entire business his headed up by Colonel Kilgore Sergei Vladimir.
• Vile from the Mega Man X series fits this trope to a T. Because of an irrepairable short-circuit in his brain, he absolutely LOVES destroying Mavericks, and even moreso causing as much collateral damage as he can while retiring Mavericks, which was partially the reason why he ended up being branded a Maverick himself later on (the other being his rebellious attitude towards his superiors).
• An almost uniform trait of Caesar's Legion in Fallout: New Vegas. Rape, pillaging, enslaving and burning are standard procedure. Legionares despise weakness and will kill anyone who doesn't serve the Legion - soldiers, civilians, women, children, old people. What we call war crimes, they call tactical maneuvers. Their top field commander slaughters his own troops to keep them in line. Even Caesar himself, who is regarded as a godly figure by his troops and is trying to build a better world, is sadly aware that his Legion has yet to become more than just a horde.
• Blackwatch from Prototype. The regular Marines in Manhattan view them with disgust, rightfully so; several Web of Intrigue memories show them murdering civilians for the hell of it. And laughing.
• Mass Effect: Depending on how you play the game, Commander Shepard can be one of these, especially with the Ruthless background in Mass Effect 1. Arguably deconstructed by the third game, where continuing to play this character type means you have to deliberately stab several allied characters in the back, most particularly Mordin Solus.
• Medal of Honor (2010 version): Voodoo is a very self-restrained version. He doesn't kill anyone he shouldn't, but he does give it serious consideration on more than one occasion. His teammates make sure to tease him for this.

Webcomics

• Most of the grunts in Schlock Mercenary fit this fairly well, minus the rape. When hiring new recruits, Captain Tagon even commends his senior warrant officer Thurl for "hiring those [violent sociopaths] right up." To further the trope, most of the ones who get promoted beyond Sgt. happen to be a bit more rational in their thinking - with the notable exception of now-Lieutenant Shore Pibald, who is Properly Paranoid with mild delusions (when he's on his medication) Mad Bomber.

Tagon: You said most of the new recruits went charging down the hall, right? That's great! Enthusiastic cannon fodder like that just needs cautious leadership.
Lieutenant Shodan: And where do I find that?
Tagon: Promote everyone who hung back to corporal.

• Karate Bears "distinguish themselves on the battlefield" by mangling and eating an enemy

Web Animation

• Lieutenants Charles and Bravado, from Broken Saints.
• A victim in the Dexter: Early Cuts webisodes was a sniper during the Gulf War and used his position to kill innocents and cover up his murderous proclivities.

Western Animation

• In the Transformers mythos, it's harder to list a Decepticon or Predacon who doesn't fit this trope than one who does. Though, seeing as the faction was founded by a sadistic madman and his like-minded followers, it's not hard to see why.
  • Even the occasional Autobot or Maximal fits, though they are usually only tolerated if they are especially effective. Even then, they're kept on a short leash.
• Deconstructed in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Katara goes after the soldier who killed her mother, expecting a Complete Monster Psycho for Hire. What she gets is a cowardly old man, whom she angrily describes as "just empty. There's nothing inside you." The implication is that fear got him to act like one of these in the field; outside of combat he's not much of a threat.
  • Another implication could of been that either that: the soldier was a Might Makes Right kind of guy, so he whimps out at the sight of more powerful figures (For example: his mother, and Katara). Or that he is a foil who shows that this (being a wimpy, cowardly, "Well Done, Son" Guy) is what Katara would have been like if her mother was still alive.
  • Yet another interpretation, is that he was a complete monster, but had some kind of crippling mother issues aside, and that years of retirement living under his mother had ground him down to the point that he wasn't worth killing. Or that he became that way as a result of the things he had done on the battlefield, becoming a Shell-Shocked Veteran.
• The Simpsons implies that Homer Simpson, had he actually been on a battlefield, would have been of this trope. When he has to be an army recruiter, one of the things he is asking people in a failed attempt at recruiting them is whether they want to kill people. Also, in "You Kent Always Say What You Want," Homer compares his elation to getting his 100th ice cream cone as being similar to gaining his first kill had he been in a war.

Real Life

Every war, ever, has examples of this show up on all sides. Some have more, some have less, but no one has none. The amount varies widely depending on a whole range of factors, with the most important one usually being whether such behavior is shunned, ignored, or outright encouraged by military higher-ups and politicians (with countless examples of all three options). Scientifically tested here, especially the second page. Also, relatedly, this article.

• This video seems to go more in depth about the first kind.
• The Thirty Year's War (1618-1648) produced thousands, especially in Wallenstein's mercenary armies as they pillaged their way across the length and breadth of Germany. Rape and pillage were actually the orders of the day. To say the least, Germany came out damaged (it lost a third of its population at the time).
• World War II had many of these kind of soldiers, especially on the Eastern Front, where both sides (the Wehrmacht and the Red Army) were notorious for having these. During WWII and the Second Sino-Japanese war the Imperial Japanese Army also did some horrible, horrible things to Chinese civilians and any soldiers unfortunate enough to be captured by the Japanese.
• The participants of the My Lai Massacre.
  • The Phoenix Program of the same time seemed aimed to create thousands of examples of this trope for the war effort, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of victims, alive or dead.
• This breed of soldier seems to be very common in Colombia's various military/paramilitary organizations. As the War Nerd puts it: "They kill in uniform or out, home or away, on the street or the battlefield. Equal Opportunity Slaughter: men, women, children, dogs -- if it moves, they'll kill it. For any reason. For no reason. For money, for fun, for the Revolution, for the Counter-Revolution, for practice."
• Many examples, Type 1 and 2, from Argentina's Dirty War, which took place from 1976-83. Under the junta, torture, kidnappings, and mass murder were institutionalized, and carried out by members of the Argentine armed forces. Some, such as Adolfo Scilingo have repented, and asked to be imprisoned. Others, like Julian the Turk have not, and indeed seem very proud of their achievements. At least 30,000 people were killed, by leaders who claimed to be protecting them from the Dirty Communists.

General Iberico St. Jean, governor of Buenos Aires: First we will kill all the subversives; then we will kill all their collaborators; then their sympathisers; then those who remained indifferent; and finally, we’ll kill the undecided.

• Osvaldo Romo, among other members of the Chilean DINA (secret police during the Pinochet dictatorship). But Romo stands out because he gave an interview where he goes into detail bragging about how he tortured prisoners.
• The Abu Ghraib prison guards.
  • "Over here, killing people is like squashing an ant."
  • If you read his interview with a reporter just before a nasty incident that landed him in prison, he can arguably be a Type 3 example.
• Italian,and Belgian soldiers were caught abusing Somali civilians during the peacekeeping and humanitarian operations there in late 1992/early 1993. The Italian soldiers also photographed what they did, with methods of torture and abuse comparable to Abu Ghraib a decade later.
• A group of U.S. soldiers were recently put on trial for deliberately killing Afghani civilians and planting evidence to make it look like self-defense. Not only that, but they also threatened several members of their unit that might have told in order to keep them quiet. Threats included purposefully dropping a weight on them while lifting weights.
• More recently, David Motari, subject of a memetic video where he chucks a live puppy off a cliff. The Marines were not pleased.
• Spanish "Conquistadors", there are chronicles of them (from a Spanish priest, no less) that tell how they would rip children from their mother's breast, cut them while still alive and feed them to the war dogs.

1. ↑ who was likely inspired by the character from Full Metal Jacket