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Neutrality Backlash
- 134 statements
- 23 feature instances
- 56 referencing feature instances
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This trope is what happens when someone refuses to choose a side in a conflict, and it ends up biting them in the ass. Perhaps they spend the war sitting on their hands, or maybe they try to play up to both sides. Regardless, at some point one side or the other will come calling for revenge, if Laser-Guided Karma doesn't catch them first. Contrast With Us or Against Us, where one side declares everyone not on their side an enemy, and Neutral No Longer, where the neutral party is forced to pick a side during the war, either because they got conquered by that side during the conflict, or because one side's atrocities drove them into the other side's camp. Compare with Pacifism Backfire, Mediation Backfire, No Points for Neutrality (which is about gameplay effects of alignment), and Alien Non-Interference Clause. Can overlap with the Golden Mean Fallacy, Stupid Neutral, Contempt Crossfire, and Bystander Syndrome. If the neutral party is attacked by the bad side because it is vulnerable without a potential ally, then this is a case of Head-in-the-Sand Management. If the neutral party is attacked as retaliation for not aiding the good side, then it is a case of Accomplice by Inaction. However, this trope can be Subverted at times; in some situations, staying Neutral and out of the way can often be the safest (and wisest) choice for one to survive. It can even at times (such as when the conflict is Evil Versus Evil) be more ethical to choose neutrality than to pick a side. Note: Aversions of this trope go under God and Satan Are Both Jerks, Screw This, I'm Outta Here, Take a Third Option, or some combination thereof. Or in extreme cases, Omnicidal Neutral. |
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Scanners features a MegaCorp trying to weaponize telepaths known as 'scanners' finding itself at war with a murderous scanner called Revok trying to build a scanner army of his own. There is also a faction of "good" scanners who have decided to remain neutral in this conflict. Problem is, Revok is a Super Supremacist who will murder any scanner who isn't willing to join him. Consequently, most of the "good" scanners are massacred by Revok's hitmen. | |
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In The Transformers, Paradron was a pacifist colony founded by Cybertronians who fled the Fourth Great War (whatever that was) and refused to do anything when Decepticons Cyclonus and Scourge located them. As a result the Decepticons conquered their planet. The Autobots then staged a rescue mission that resulted in them blowing up the planet to keep it out of Decepticon hands. | |
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This is mainly the crux of the Mandalore storyline in Star Wars: The Clone Wars with Duchess Satine stubbornly clinging to her pacifist ideals and insisting Mandalore stay neutral during the Clone Wars. This results in her administration being toppled by the Death Watch and Maul’s syndicate and ultimately costs her her life. | |
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In The Order of the Stick, Therkla the half-orc falls in love with Elan while on an assignment from her master, Lord Kubota, to kill Hinjo (whom Elan is bodyguarding). She tries her best to protect Elan while still serving Kubota, and in the end tries to convince Elan and Kubota to simply let each other be. Unfortunately Kubota believes in With Us or Against Us and fatally poisons Therkla. Doubly painful in that Elan was never going to reciprocate Therkla's love. | |
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The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Mar-Vell tries playing mediator between the Kree and the Avengers. Unfortunately for him, his fellow Kree take this as a sign he's a spineless coward, and the Avengers take his trying to stop the Kree just blowing Earth up as an act of betrayal, throwing him in prison with the other Kree. | |
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Disney CEO Bob Chapek infamously took a neutral stance towards the "Don't Say Gay" bill that was eventually passed in Disney World's home state of Florida. Although the bill was unpopular among Disney employees, who alleged that it would harm LGBT children by banning discussions around gender identity, Chapek claimed that Disney supports diversity yet refused to publicly condemn the bill. Needless to say, everyone was angry with the pro-LGBT side accusing Disney of abandoning the queer community while the anti-LGBT side smeared Disney as a "woke" and "degenerate" corporation. Even within Disney employees like The Owl House creator Dana Terrace and DuckTales (2017) writer Benjamin Siemon called out Chapek for his indecisiveness. Eventually, Chapek officially condemned the bill but his initially neutral position made him seem indecisive and tarnished the company's inclusive image for awhile. | |
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Archer: In one episode, Mallory claims that she hates the Irish because of Ireland's neutrality during WWII, to the point that Archer grew up honestly believing that Ireland was on the Axis side. This is obviously just a flimsy excuse for her flagrant bigotry, however, as Mallory has no trouble associating with people from other neutral countries or even former Axis countries. | |
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Mobile Suit Gundam SEED has this happen to the Orb Union. Being only one of three areas on Earth that isn't backing either the Earth Alliance or ZAFT (the others being the Kingdom of Scandinavia and the Equatorial Union) and one of the few areas that has the resources and manpower to theoretically protect said resources, it becomes the target of invasion once Blue Cosmos takes over the Earth Alliance. In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, the Orb leaders are so terrified of a repeat performance that they strongarm Cagalli into siding with the Earth Alliance and yet they're still invaded late into the series, this time by ZAFT. | |
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Gundam: In Mobile Suit Gundam, we have Side 6, a group of colonies who not only gain independence from the Earth Federation, it declared neutrality from the One Year War. Despite this, Zeon wasn't too keen on letting it stay up if they ever backed the Federation, leading to a few attacks in Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket when the Gundam Alex is moved into a colony there. Eventually, Side 6 was reclaimed by the Federation after the war. Anaheim Electronics, despite being the Federation's primary defense contractor after the One Year War, rose to prominence by the Federation strongarming the defeated Zeon's own defense contractors into being subsidized by Anaheim. Because of this, the company's ranks included enough people sympathetic to Zeon that they saw no problems with selling high-tech arms to both sides in subsequent conflicts. Although initially not suffering any consequences from doing so, Anaheim's backers in the Vist Foundation were eventually unmasked as blackmailing the Federation government to be left alone; once the truth came out, it eventually cost Anaheim their monopoly in the mobile suit development and manufacturing industry due to the Federation, no longer considering Anaheim reliable, forming the Strategic Naval Research Institute as their own in-house competitor. Mobile Suit Gundam SEED has this happen to the Orb Union. Being only one of three areas on Earth that isn't backing either the Earth Alliance or ZAFT (the others being the Kingdom of Scandinavia and the Equatorial Union) and one of the few areas that has the resources and manpower to theoretically protect said resources, it becomes the target of invasion once Blue Cosmos takes over the Earth Alliance. In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, the Orb leaders are so terrified of a repeat performance that they strongarm Cagalli into siding with the Earth Alliance and yet they're still invaded late into the series, this time by ZAFT. |
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Motherland: Fort Salem: Scylla's parents were "dodgers" — witches who refused to join the US Army despite being required to by law, resulting in her spending her childhood moving around to avoid detection. The Army caught up to arrest them, but Scylla's parents died in the scuffle. | |
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Pretty much everything that goes wrong for Sam in Revolting People is because he doesn't want to upset the British, but he doesn't want to reject the rebels either. One episode opens with him having a nightmare that he's gone to Hell for refusing to pick a side. | |
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In Outsider, the Loroi do not recognize other races' claims of neutrality in their war against the Umiak. When Jardin asks Tempo, a Loroi diplomatic officer, why this is the case, she explains that it's partly because the Umiak are an imperialistic species that absorb, if not outright enslave, other races, and partly because a number of races that proclaimed themselves to be neutral ended up betraying the Loroi. | |
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In Kino's Journey, one particular story stands out; two kingdoms were stuck in a Forever War, until they realized that they simply liked murdering innocent people. Now they spend time together sacking all the neutral villages that stayed neutral in the conflict for sport. | |
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Immortals: Zeus spends most of the movie trying to keep his fellow gods from getting involved in a mortal war, going so far as to kill Ares for interfering. As a result, Hyperion succeeds in unleashing the god-killing Titans, something Zeus or any other god could have easily prevented. | |
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Dogma: Azrael was a Muse who stayed neutral in the war between Heaven and Hell. Unlike the Phantom Stranger above, he ended up in Hell. He is less than happy about this. | |
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In Beast Wars, Tigatron resigns from the Maximals and the Beast Wars after he accidentally causes the death of a friend. Dinobot pretends to invoke this trope to get Tigatron back on their side, but it doesn't work. At that point Dinobot tries to invoke the trope for real, and would have killed Tigatron if Optimus hadn't turned up in time. In the end Tigatron rejoins when the Predacons make it clear that they'll only do more damage if they aren't opposed. | |
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Survivor: A common theme on contested votes is for one or a few players to become the swing vote. While on paper, players in this position have the luxury of choosing who they want to align with, in practice, neither side trusts the swing as much, especially the side that loses out. In two famous examples, Christy in The Amazon and Big Tom in All-Stars were both in a swing vote position but misplayed it so badly that the two sides came together to take them out instead. | |
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One episode of South Park has Stan being exiled from his hometown simply because he refused to vote for one of two potential new school mascots, based on the fact that they both suck. (It's a giant douche and a turd sandwich, for the record.) After learning An Aesop that you have to learn between bad choices, because in politics all choices are bad, he comes back, casts a vote, only for the school to keep its old mascot. So yeah, his vote didn't even matter, which is Played for Laughs. | |
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In The Fire Never Dies, Governor Hiram Johnson of California tries to keep his state out of the fighting with a declaration of neutrality. What results instead is a bloody three-way struggle in the Central Valley. Between the devastation of the war and the requisition of crops by all three sides, widespread famine results, earning California the nickname of "The Golden Abattoir". | |
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In Mobile Suit Gundam, we have Side 6, a group of colonies who not only gain independence from the Earth Federation, it declared neutrality from the One Year War. Despite this, Zeon wasn't too keen on letting it stay up if they ever backed the Federation, leading to a few attacks in Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket when the Gundam Alex is moved into a colony there. Eventually, Side 6 was reclaimed by the Federation after the war. | |
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In the Amphibia episode "The Core and the King", it's revealed that when Andrias's friend Leif betrayed him and stole the Calamity Box, their friend Barrel was torn on whether or not to stop Leif, with his indecisiveness allowing her to get away with the box. As punishment, Andrias ordered him to patrol the Northern regions. | |
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Cells at Work!: The opportunistic bacteria are largely a bunch of fair-weather friends who side with whoever has the upper hand and will switch in a moment's notice. Because of this, they don't get much respect in return; the harmful bacteria consider them a bunch of suck-ups who can't be relied on, while the white blood cells would rather just kill them off even if they're friendly - they're still germs, after all. | |
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Transformers: In The Transformers, Paradron was a pacifist colony founded by Cybertronians who fled the Fourth Great War (whatever that was) and refused to do anything when Decepticons Cyclonus and Scourge located them. As a result the Decepticons conquered their planet. The Autobots then staged a rescue mission that resulted in them blowing up the planet to keep it out of Decepticon hands. In Beast Wars, Tigatron resigns from the Maximals and the Beast Wars after he accidentally causes the death of a friend. Dinobot pretends to invoke this trope to get Tigatron back on their side, but it doesn't work. At that point Dinobot tries to invoke the trope for real, and would have killed Tigatron if Optimus hadn't turned up in time. In the end Tigatron rejoins when the Predacons make it clear that they'll only do more damage if they aren't opposed. |
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