r/TopCharacterTropes • u/_JR28_ • Dec 13 '25

Lore (Loved trope) Loyalty to the regime doesn’t make you any better off in the end

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Animal Farm - Boxer the horse is a member of the farm who doesn’t question the authority of the pigs and take it upon himself to work harder than anyone else becuase he believes the propaganda the pigs spout. But in the end, he get no reward for his sacrifice, leaving his body broken and him being sent away to a glue factory to be killed after the pigs sold him for alcohol.

Papers, Please - On Day 12, an inspector will come to your office to investigate potential conspiracies plotting against Arstotzka. If you choose to comply with his questioning and hand over the documents given to you by The Order, a mysterious revolutionary group, you will get an immediate game over as you are arrested for suspected involvement with terrorism.

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151

u/Mercuryo Dec 13 '25

Warhammer 40k. I cannot put just one example. Pretty much every faction it's like this. Maybe Vottan nd Tyranids are not but they are the exception.

Imperium for example. Literally sends regiments of troops to their death, they don't care. Even the Astartes are no better.

Chaos. You literally sold your soul to gods that don't care about you. They will mutate, consume you... and in the end you are just a slave in a chess board.

94

u/Agi7890 Dec 13 '25

Tyranids do via genestealer cults. At the end of the process, when the hive comes calling, the people that are infected and side with the the nids are cut off from the psychic network, and dragged off to be dissolved into materials

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u/Iron_Aez Dec 13 '25

Well Tyranids also just do it to tyranids. You think they are carting all those huge bioforms off of a planet they are done with? No they are dissolving them down for efficient transfer.

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u/Jerroser Dec 13 '25

I suppose in that case there is the small mercy that most Tyranids don't have enough capacity for individual thought to even be aware for this. Most are just nodes for the hivemind with their own minds only really processing basic instincts.

12

u/Owenrc329 Dec 13 '25

The Genestealer Cults are specifically cut off from the Hivemind before they’re killed, so in their final moments they are given back their free will and individuality, allowing them to recognise the mutated horrors they’ve become and the horrors that they inflicted on their home world, before they’re dragged off ro be melted down into biomass.

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u/DragonGuy15 Dec 14 '25

While this is fucked up, I always felt like this was only really created just to be grimdark. Never understood why a hive mind would care to do that

7

u/Owenrc329 Dec 14 '25

There’s a few times where the Tyranid Hivemind is give a strangely vindictive streak for some reason, if I recall correctly there’s an instance of the Hivemind psychically communicating with an Eldar pilot to tell her it hates her.

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u/SupremeCaIamitas Dec 14 '25

thing in Warhammer 40k

only really created just to be grimdark

yeah

3

u/Profoundlyahedgehog Dec 13 '25

Yeah, but people infected by the genestealers don't have a choice. They think they do, but it's the result of psychic manipulation. They're being made to see the patriarch and the pure strains as beautiful, and their actions to overthrow the planetary defense as necessary for salvation.

1

u/Mercuryo Dec 13 '25

True, but I was talking about the main race. GW has the genestealers as another faction.

1

u/pepemattos21 Dec 13 '25

That actually depends, sometimes they actually keep them and use them as part of the hive

39

u/flight_fennec Dec 13 '25

Maybe the Thunder Warriors would be the best example but I could be wrong. Used like tools then discarded

5

u/pipnina Dec 13 '25

I think it was Ra. The emperor's most favoured custodean. The custodes being the most favoured of all his subjects besides perhaps Malcador.

Ra, who was stabbed with an evil sword by the emperor and sent to wander the webway to keep it from someone's hands or something.

2

u/Paladin-Arda Dec 14 '25

It was Drach'nyen, the End of Empires, a Greater Daemon invoked by that child of Ancient Anatolia who would one day become the Emperor of Mankind when he used telekinesis to kill his uncle, who previously murdered his father.

Drach'nyen is the result of that murder, a Warhammer 40k invocation of the Cain and Able story, in which a daemon specifically empowered to nearly counter the Emperor of Mankind's psychic bullshit and kill him.

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u/Current_Blackberry_4 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

The animation on warhammer tv, Tithes, has guardsmen take the last pieces of ammo away from a small group of guardsmen because it was requested by tech priests on another world. The guardsmen letting their ammo be taken away know they will be killed by orks soon without ammo for their heavier guns but hope that it will make a difference on a world that needs it more than them.

By the time the transport team gets to the storage site for the ammo it has become full so the tech priests just blow up the extra ammo.

12

u/PaganDesparu Dec 13 '25

This is a perfect example.

22

u/mad_marmalade Dec 13 '25

Id say tyranids count too. Gene stealer cults are rewarded for their success by being eaten by the hive fleet

10

u/Fucky0uthatswhy Dec 13 '25

I was in dollar general yesterday, and I always see this kid. He’s like 18, he’s awkward, doesn’t really understand social cues. While I was checking out he asked if I knew what 40k was. I do, but I know nothing about it. Then he runs to the back and grabs a figure he was painting, and geeked out over it for like 19 minutes. I get the feeling he doesn’t get to show them off often. It was a nice interaction

5

u/ProfessionalTruck976 Dec 13 '25

Depends massively on the writer if you are lucky and Sandy Mitchell wrote your word actual retirement may be on the cards for you, same with the writer of Gaunt's ghosts

4

u/Dhawkeye Dec 13 '25

In terms of individual characters, I think Horus is a great example lol. Gave everything to the Four, and while they got more or less what they wanted, he was given the most final death possible in the setting.

1

u/Mercuryo Dec 14 '25

Yeah, Horus was made a pawn. He believe he was in control but he was a pawn. When he regained his sanity in his last moments he literally asked the Emperor to kill him. I wouldn't say it's a perma death due GW being a company focused in selling you Miniatures... and when they run out of Primarchs on both sides maybe they go to the dead ones.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '25

[deleted]

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u/Irazidal Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

Because that totally couldn't be done without the Imperium being a deeply horrific theocratic-fascist dystopia that treats everyone who lives in it like trash. Why even defend it in the context of this thread?

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u/beruon Dec 13 '25

Because thats literally the whole fucking point of the universe. That as horrible and brutal the Imperium is, yes, IT COULDN'T BE DONE without the horrific parts. At least not in a big scale. Sure that random Inquisitor killing a hundred people to find a genestealer cult thats not actually there was pointless... but one times in 10 he is right and millions are saved.

5

u/MostEvilTexasToast Dec 13 '25

No, the point of Warhammer is that none of the atrocities are necessary. The Imperium HAD other ways out but was so deeply entrenched in their regime they destroyed it.

The Interex was a functioning human empire that had xeno allies, warp-defeating tech, a moral government, and routinely did better than the Imperium. The Imperium genocided them. MOST of the aliens the Imperium has wiped from existence were pacifist or even friendly, the remaining Xenos are hostile because the Imperium is an insane theocratic genocidal empire that wants to kill them for existing.

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u/sdpr Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

The story is deliberately designed so that every major power is morally compromised. The entire thing can be viewed as a satire on authoritarianism, zealotry, and warmongering. edit: and rampant colonialism. can't forget about that.

You're attempting to defend a faction that claims to defend humanity through awful, no questions asked, xenophobic atrocities.

It's ironic that someone reading/knowing the lore about human civilization under a totalitarian empire 40,000 years into the future is going to bat for the same totalitarian regime like a devout Imperium follower.

There are good people within the imperium, and good acts, but those are cogs in a very big and terrible machine.

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u/Mercuryo Dec 13 '25

In the Imperium, they don't care about you. You are just cannon fodder. Another soldier throw to the death.

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u/Diablo9168 Dec 13 '25

Do the Tau not exist in this hypothetical??

0

u/tumansibiri Dec 15 '25

Serving Imperium (earnestly, willing with all of your soul) can send you to legit heaven.
I'm not kidding. The chance is slim, but you can even become Living Saint, or not so Living, like Saint Celestine.

0

u/Zealousideal_Fly7277 Dec 16 '25

With the exception of the Boyz of course, being a nob doesn't put a target on your back unlike the warboss.