History Literature / RainbowSix

In 2017, it was announced that a ''Rainbow Six'' [[TheFilmOfTheBook film]] will be spearheaded by Paramount, with Josh Appelbaum & Andre Nemec as the writers.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Popov will organize terrorist attacks, get people who trust him killed, murder, and steal, but even he balks at The Project's plan - despite being safe from it, [[spoiler:this prompts his HeelFaceTurn, shooting the Horizon exec who told him this and running to warn Clark and Rainbow of what they are planning.]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: Clark and Ding are hardened special forces badasses who've done many questionable things. Clark in particular has carried out creatively vicious JackBauerInterrogationTechnique. Nevertheless, they find the CurbStompBattle against the ecoterrorists so one-sided it's pure murder.

** Foster Hunicutt killed a fishing and game officer who found out he had been hunting during the off season. Yes, the ''militant environmentalist'' killed a law enforcement officer who caught him breaking laws meant to ''protect the environment''.

** Rainbow itself has one. Before the IRA attack, Rainbow gets a conversation between the head spook of the UK Russian Embassy and his superior mentioning that Popov is looking up Clark and RAINBOW. They also have a picture of whom they are fairly certain is Popov (it is). They also have Popov's full name and know he's a retired KGB guy who handled terrorists. They also have an idea that someone, most likely ex-KGB, is going around activating old Terrorists and sending them on missions that are doomed to fail. After the IRA attack, the surviving terrorists mention that they were hired by a man called Serov, who's first & middle names are very close (And share initials) with Popov. None of them ever consider linking the two investigation and make the link that Serov is Popov. No, the mystery is unraveled when Popov tells Clark.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Popov.]] Despite getting people that trusted him killed, and despite organizing the death of several Team-1 members, he gets away unpunished. In fact, he becomes rich(er), thanks to taking over a ranch from one of the Horizon executives.

* MuggingTheMonster: Early in the novel, terrorists attempt to hijack a plane transporting three Rainbow operatives: Former US Navy SEAL, former British SAS, and former US Army Special Forces, respectively. They're also licensed to carry firearms on airplanes.

* OnlyInItForTheMoney: Popov is entirely motivated by getting enough money to live like a king for the rest of his life. He goes along with his new employer's requests since Popov can take both his high consultant salary ''and'' the money he was supposed to pay the terrorist teams with, once they inevitably fail.

* [[ViewersAreGoldfish Readers Are Goldfish]]: The book has a tendency to repeat certain points over and over. Such as the villain's goals, or just how gosh darn elite the members of Rainbow are.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: A subplot that goes nowhere involves NYPD detectives investigating the kidnapping of one of the girls who became a test subject of the villains, eventually dying of their engineered plague. That investigation leads them to finding a probable culprit... but with nothing but circumstantial evidence the plot just sort of ends there. All that plot ever brings up is later in the book when Popov gives out the entire scheme to Clark, one of the detectives recognizes one of the names Popov mentions as being the suspected kidnapper, which has no real effect on the plot since at that point no one knows of the human trial tests the villains did.

** This very trope is how Paul Bellow tries to negotiate with the last PIRA holdouts in the hospital assault. Bellow plays a lot on their morality, specifically that of Timothy O'Neal, trying to convince him that their actions are not that of a soldier, but of criminals and killers.[[labelnote:*]]This is actually a ''very'' sore subject among militant Irish nationalists, who typically see themselves as soldiers for the cause of Ireland instead of terrorists and prefer to be depicted as such; consider, for example, the demise of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe_Tone#Death Wolfe Tone]] after his request to be executed via firing squad as a soldier rather than hanged like a common criminal.[[/labelnote]] After surrendering, O'Neal ''vehemently'' denies Ding's accusation that they were planning to [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil rape Patricia Chavez during the hospital assault]], and insists the PIRA does not and has ''never'' done anything like that.

** This very trope is how Paul Bellow tries to negotiate with the last PIRA holdouts in the hospital assault. Bellow plays a lot on their morality, specifically that of Timothy O'Neal, trying to convince him that their actions are not that of a soldier, but of criminals and killers.[[labelnote:*]]This is actually a ''very'' sore subject among militant Irish nationalists, who typically see themselves as soldiers for the cause of Ireland instead of terrorists and prefer to be depicted as such; consider, for example, the demise of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfe_Tone#Death
Wolfe Tone]] after his request to be executed via firing squad as a soldier rather than hanged like a common criminal.[[/labelnote]] After surrendering, O'Neal ''vehemently'' denies Ding's accusation that they were planning to [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil rape Patricia Chavez during the hospital assault]], and insists the PIRA does not and has ''never'' done anything like that.

** This very trope is how Paul Bellow tries to negotiate with the last PIRA holdouts in the hospital assault. Bellow plays a lot on their morality, specifically that of Timothy O'Neal, trying to convince him that their actions are not that of a soldier, but of criminals and killers. After surrendering, O'Neal ''vehemently'' denies Ding's accusation that they were planning to [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil rape Patricia Chavez during the hospital assault]], and insists the PIRA does not and has ''never'' done anything like that.

* PapapWolf: All the men of Rainbow are fathers and become especially worked up during the Worldpark operation because the hostages are children. Once the rescue is complete, the operators fuss over the children and insist on treating the few minor scratches themselves.

* FourStarBadass: John Clark has effectively earned the military rank of a Major General.

** Rainbow itself has one. Before the IRA attack, Rainbow gets a conversation between the head spook of the UK Russian Embassy and his superior mentioning that Popov is looking up Clark and RAINBOW. They also have a picture of whom they are fairly certain is Popov (it is). They also have Popov's full name and know he's a retired KGB guy who handled terrorists. After the IRA attack, the surviving terrorists mention that they were hired by a man called Serov, who's first & middle names are very close (And share initials) with Popov. None of them ever consider linking the two investigation and make the link that Serov is Popov. No, the mystery is unraveled when Popov tells Clark.

* SerialEscalation: The threats that Rainbow deal with have a steady progression in terms of both scope and danger, with the first group of terrorists being bumbling buffoons, to the second to last being the PIRA of Ireland.

** The Communist couple fit Dr. Bellow's earlier description of "Good Terrorists"; they are the first whom, ignoring their goals which they were tricked into by Popov, don't commit obvious tactical blunders. They, for the first time, pose a challenge to Rainbow as they realize they forgot to acquire a helicopter, forcing them to improvise. While less kill crazy than Ernst, they have far more ideological dedication and thus will not even consider backing out. While Ernst killed when he lost his cool, these are ready to kill anything and anyone between them and their goal.

** Then the main villains, who seek to kill the ''entire human race'' (except themselves). They are only thwarted because their plans are so horrific Popov is willing to risk exposing himself to Rainbow and Clark (whose wife he had just arranged a mission against!) than let them complete their mission.

* StrawmanPolitical: John Brightling's circle, who are environmentalists literally engineering the death of the human race with ecological motives. No sympathetic character takes their motives even slightly seriously, and Carol Brighton in particular is subjected to condescending paternalism from the ''very administration that hired her to lead the EPA'', unintentionally making similar strawmen out of their adversaries.
* SwissBankAccount: Dmitri Popov sets up a Swiss Bank Account for the terrorists he's hired, as a secure way to transfer their payment to them. Once it becomes obvious that they're going to fail at the mission, he transfers all the money to an account he set up for himself.
* TooDumbToLive: When they realize they have been found out, the Horizon executives flee to a South American compound. What do they do when they find out that Rainbow, a team of highly trained special forces soldiers are after them? Send out groups of men armed with G3 assault rifles and with zero combat experience (who are under the impression that their years of hunting game ''in woodland and savannah that is nothing like the jungle'' puts them on the level of a special forces sniper) into the jungle to hunt them down! What can possibly go wrong?
** Extra dumb points are awarded for them because in this continuity, the last group of people who attacked the US with biowarfare -- very recently -- set off a chain of events that ended with the US government making a public threat to use ''nuclear weapons'' if their terms of unconditional surrender were not immediately met, something the US government hasn't done since ''World War II''. Brightling's group, which included a former senior supervisory special agent of the FBI and a former Presidential cabinet advisor, should not have for a nanosecond believed that refusal to surrender to law enforcement custody immediately would result in anything less than their certain deaths at the hands of a full-scale US military assault -- which almost is what happens to them.

* ColdSniper: Dieter Weber is a taciturn, utterly unflappable German who can shoot the gun out of a man's hand from across an amusement park and is described as the most physically fit of the whole team.

* JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: Ding Chavez employs this style, threatening to chop off the penis of an IRA member. In this instance, John Clark talks him down.

* TheManBehindTheMan: Invoked by Popov when recruiting terrorists from left-wing radical, formerly Soviet-backed groups to convince them that by carrying out the raids he's recruiting them for, they'd be front line soldiers of a much larger cause. Technically, Popov never lies to them - yes, they ''would'' be serving a much larger purpose by signing up with him, yes, he ''is'' only the front man for much more powerful backers, and no, he will ''not'' tell them who these backers are. He does, however, heavily imply that they are hard-liners working to restore communism in the former Soviet Union, rather than wealthy capitalists pursuing a genocidal eco-terrorist agenda.

* OmnicidalManiac: [[spoiler:John Brightling]]. He believes human civilization is doomed to collapse within a century anyway, so he plots to hasten its demise with a genetically-engineered Ebola outbreak.

* PinkMist: Clancy, for all your realistically gory headshot descriptions. This is especially prevalent in ''Rainbow Six'', because counter-terrorists are always trained to go for the head. When PIRA terrorist Roddy Sands in gets shot with a .50 caliber bullet, the text explicitly notes his entire head above his jaw is ''gone.''

* StrawmanPolitical: Taken UpToEleven with the ecoterrorists. The Ebola scientists think how adorable lab rats are but think the human race can die a horrible death, take it right into NightmareFuel.

* TheFettered: Dr. Weiler, staff physician for Worldpark. The terrorist who killed the little girl in the wheelchair, who was shot in the liver and left to die slowly and painfully, is lying in front of him. Dr. Weiler treated that little girl and was enraged to the point of TranquilFury over her death. No one present will say a word if he just leaves the guy to die, or is even a little slow in responding. The good doctor hesitates exactly zero seconds before opening his medical bag and doing his best to save his patient's life, and after determining that his wounds are too severe to allow him any hope of survival, gives him a morphine shot so that he won't die in pain. One of the watching soldiers is both simultaneously disappointed that Dr. Weiler is doing anything other than letting the terrorist bastard suffer in agony and respecting the hell out of him for his personal integrity.

* BadassGrandpa: John Clark, who is already approaching sixty, isn't quite what he used to be in ''Literature/WithoutRemorse'', but he's still on everybody's "don't-fuck-with list." His first grandson is born during the book, promoting him to full membership of this trope.
** Francisco De La Cruz, the aforementioned performer, is literally a grandfather, and is also a retired Spanish paratrooper.

* SerialEscalation: As explained in the below entry.

** The first group of terrorists in the prologue are so inept their plan had no chance of success (The person they were trying to kidnap wasn't even on the plane). They had no experience, managed to do nothing more than hijack the plane, and were quickly thwarted by equally unprepared people of superior skills.

** The couple later fit Dr. Bellow's earlier description of "Good Terrorists"; they are the first whom, ignoring their goals which they were tricked into by Popov, don't commit obvious tactical blunders and for the first time pose a challenge to Rainbow as they realize they forgot to acquire a helicopter, forcing them to improvise. While less kill crazy than Ernst, they have far more ideological dedication and thus will not even consider backing out. While Ernst killed when he lost his cool, these are ready to kill anything and anyone between them and their goal.
** The terrorists at the Amusement Park are again a step up, being the largest group encountered so far, and tied to a RealLife terrorist of known danger and skill (The Jackal). They show there are no lines they will not cross to accomplish their goals when they take sick children hostage and then ''execute one''. They also pick the most complex locale for Rainbow to assault. For the first time both teams deploy.
** The PIRA is a known terrorist group earlier used to build the Badass credentials of several Rainbow members who spent years fighting them. They also have even more members than the previous group. They target Rainbow itself, and are willing to resort to morally dubious plans to achieve this: targeting their families and hitting a hospital. They are defeated almost entirely through luck of Noonan having ''just'' acquired software to block cellphone communication, killing their ability to coordinate their forces, and their lack of knowledge that there are two Rainbow teams, not just one - so that when they ambush Team-1, they are unaware that Team-2 is just up the road. They push Team-2 to the limit, forcing them to go in without a plan at all. They are also the only group to actually wound and kill Rainbow members.

* AffablyEvil: Dmitriy Arkadeyevich Popov is very polite, even-tempered and enjoys a good conversation despite being responsible for three terrorist attacks [[PragmaticVillainy that he was paid to instigate]]. Most of the members of the Project can be considered this as well.

** The aforementioned performer is literally a grandfather, and is also a retired Spanish paratrooper.

* DashingHispanic: [[BadassBystander Francisco De]] [[RetiredBadass La Cruz]], who attempts to kill a terrorist with an UZI using only a sword, injuring him. Every single member of Rainbow makes a point of shaking his hand after they finish the mission.

** After the Bern mission, Dr. Bellow explains to Chavez the difference between "Bad Terrorists" - like the one they just faced, and "Good Terrorists". The good ones believe in their ideology in much the same way an adult at church does, and are far more careful about how they approach a task, but devoted to what they do and go all in. The very next group of terrorists Rainbow faces, of course, matches that exact definition.

* GoodIsNotSoft: A DiscussedTrope and largely played straight in the novel, subverted in the games. It's addressed every member of Rainbow is a family man, Ding's wife; a doctor, is upset that he's a soldier and killer and he tries to rationalize his job, and the team always try for a non violent solution and take it when they can. When it comes down to taking out the BigBad, Rainbow feels no joy and a little disgust that who they fight is just not good at fighting at all, refuse to surrender and are only too happy to go out in a blaze of glory despite being completely outmatched.

* AKA47: In a rare lapse, "the new version of the venerable MP-5, chambered instead for the 10-mm Smith & Wesson cartridge" is erroneously referred to after this line as the "[=MP-10=]"; it's actually the [=MP5/10=], the "MP-10" designation instead used for a clone from the Philippines-based Special Weapons. There has been [[InternetBackdraft considerable debate]] regarding this given the usual amount of attention given to these kinds of details, with [[WordOfGod Clancy himself saying at one point]] that he had personally seen and fired the [=MP-10=].

* BadassBystander: During a terrorist attack on an amusement park, one of the performers dressed as a Roman Centurion attacks one of the gun-wielding terrorists and injures him with a spatha.

* BadassGrandpa: John Clark, who is already approaching sixty, isn't quite what he used to be in ''Literature/WithoutRemorse'', but he's still on everybody's "don't-fuck-with list."

* LittlestCancerPatient: The terrorists at the theme park specifically launched the attack for this purpose, to pressure the French into releasing their worst prisoners, even killing a sick girl to stop Rainbow from launching a rescue effort and threaten to kill more if their unreasonable demands are not met, to the point of not allowing time for them to be met. Dieter and Homer plan to shoot the terrorist responsible for the girl's death in the stomach, Ding halfheartedly calls them out on it and John allows it when he's worked it out, but brings up them acting out of policy as a matter of course.

* OneSteveLimit: An aversion with Timothy Noonan, who is Rainbow's tech guy, and Timothy O'Neal, one of the PIRA terrorists.

* DoubleTap: Rainbow uses the "MP-10" (actually the MP5/10) as their primary weapon set to 3-round burst mode, and terrorists generally take multiple rounds to drop. The most classic example of this tactic is when Tim Noonan ambushes 3 PIRA terrorists; while he is able to kill two of them with headshots due to the element of surprise, the third man requires a Mozambique Drill to put down: two to the chest and one to the head.

* {{BFG}}: Franklin's [=McMillan=] Tac-50 anti-materiel rifle is used to [[YourHeadASplode decapitate]] an IRA member and disable their escape vehicle.
** Oso's M60 machine gun, which he laments he never gets to use until the final fight, where he shoots out windows with it.

** Team One sniper Fred Franklin uses a [="MacMillan"=] .50 caliber sniper rifle. The actual name of the manufacturer is spelled [[http://www.mcmillanfirearms.com/ "McMillan."]]