History Main / AesopCollateralDamage

This is quite common in many mythologies, where the gods teach someone a lesson by cursing his entire family -- but not necessarily them -- or setting up his descendants for misery. Sometimes this is the result of severe ValuesDissonance.

* In StuffedIntoTheFridge's purest form, female supporting characters die so that male heroes can learn vague lessons about the price of heroism, after which said heroes usually find new love interests and generally move on.

* The Bible is full of these. There is king David getting one of his generals killed in battle to get into the the pants of aforementioned's wife. God inflicts an illness on the child coming out of this affair. David repents and God forgives. Him the king that is. To really teach David that justice has to be done, the child however still has to die from the illness. No mentioning of the mother of course. The story of Job is ''not'' an example, though it might seem so -- it goes one step further in that even the person who is "punished" by having his loved ones die is innocent. Job loses everything, including his family, but though his friends insist he must have done something to deserve it, he's in fact innocent and God is just (sort of) testing him. Still, the logic is much the same in terms of collateral damage -- he even gets a new wife and new children in the end, and that seems to make it all okay, so obviously not a lot of heed is paid to the first ones as individuals.

* The Bible is full of these. There is king David getting one of his generals killed in battle to get into the the pants of aforementioned's wife. God inflicts an illness on the child coming out of this affair. David repents and God forgives. Him the king that is. To really teach David that justice has to be done, the child however still has to die from the illness. No mentioning of the mother of course. The story of Job is ''not'' an example, though it might seem so -- it goes one step further in that even the person who is punished by having his loved ones die is innocent. Job loses everything, including his family, but though his friends insist he must have done something to deserve it, he's in fact innocent and God is just (sort of) testing him. Still, the logic is much the same in terms of collateral damage -- he even gets a new wife and new children in the end, and that seems to make it all okay, so obviously not a lot of heed is paid to the first ones as individuals.

* This is quite common in many mythologies, where the gods teach someone a lesson by cursing his entire family -- but not necessarily them -- or setting up his descendants for misery. Sometimes this is the result of severe ValuesDissonance.
** Possibly the most famous example is the biblical Job. He loses his health, sons, daughters, house, animals, ''everything.'' In the middle section, as Job sits on the ash heap and is "consoled" (if you could call it that) by his friends, Job begins questioning God's actions. God arrives and speaks from a whirlwind to scold Job for presuming to question His actions when he (Job) is not a deity. This whole thing is troubling in part because of the dialogue between God and the Adversary that explains that Job was tortured to [[UpToEleven grotesquely cruel levels]] and his family killed as part of an exercise to prove Job's faith. It is true that after Job repents of his questioning and prostrates himself before God, his prosperity is returned even better than before and he gets a new family, but that means his original family is STILL DEAD. What of the originals? Are people ''that'' interchangeable?
* Actually the bible is full of these. There is king David getting one of his generals killed in battle to get into the the pants of aforementioned's wife. God inflicts an illness on the child coming out of this affair. David repents and God forgives. Him the king that is. To really teach David that justice has to be done, the child however still has to die from the illness. No mentioning of the mother of course.
* A strong example to modern eyes is the story of the Minotaur. The gods sent King Minos of Crete a white bull intended as an offering to Poseidon, but he decided to keep it as the prize in his herd instead. Aphrodite retaliated by making his ''wife'', Pasiphaë, fall in lust with it and arrange to play the part of a cow. Sure, Minos was stuck with the result of that union, the [[ImAHumanitarian human-eating]] Minotaur, but that just inspired him to lock it away in a labyrinth and periodically feed innocent Greeks to the beast until Theseus finally killed it. Pasiphaë, the Minotaur, and the innocent Greeks suffered, but Minos himself, not so much -- he kept the bull, stayed king, and even became one of the three judges in the paradisical section of the Greek afterlife.

This often overlaps with RevengeByProxy. Naturally, InnocentBystander is an aspect of this trope. Generally a result of ProtagonistCenteredMorality.

* ''{{Franchise/Batman}}'': Dr Leslie Thompkins purposely let Robin die just to demonstrate to the youth of Gotham the dangers of letting kids fight crime. The subsequent {{Retcon}} held that it never happened; Dr Thompkins knew Steph hadn't died and just lied to Bruce about it.

* Actually the bible is full of these. There is king David getting one of his generals killed in battle to get into the the pants of aforementioned's wife. God inflicts an illness on the child coming out of this affair. David repents and God forgives. Him the king that is. To really teach David that justice has to be done, the child however stillhas dies from the illness. No mentioning of the mother of course.

* Since it's very loosely based on the biblical book of Job, the film ''ASeriousMan'' does this...only the Aesop is deliberately unclear, [[SubvertedTrope perhaps even absent]].

* The origin of {{Spider-Man}} is all about this: he refuses to stop a fleeing criminal, and subsequently the hero's beloved Uncle Ben is killed by that criminal, teaching our hero that valuable lesson that With Great Power ComesGreatResponsibility.
* ''{{Batman}}'': Dr Leslie Thompkins purposely let Robin die just to demonstrate to the youth of Gotham the dangers of letting kids fight crime. The subsequent {{Retcon}} held that it never happened; Dr Thompkins knew Steph hadn't died and just lied to Bruce about it.

* In John Ostrander's take on ''TheSpectre'', this was sometimes used to illustrate the dangers of the AntiHero protagonist's extreme BlackAndWhiteMorality, which bordered on BlueAndOrangeMorality at times. In one example, the Spectre threatened to slay every living person in the state of New York if an innocent man was executed, since technically the State of New York passed the sentence. The children, anti-death-penalty protestors, and the man's defense attorneys would presumably be among those killed.

* A strong example to modern eyes is the story of the Minotaur. The gods sent King Minos of Crete a white bull intended as an offering to Poseidon, but he decided to keep it as the prize in his herd instead. Aphrodite retaliated by making his ''wife'' fall in lust with it and arrange to play the part of a cow. Sure, Minos was stuck with the result of that union, the [[ImAHumanitarian human-eating]] Minotaur, but that just inspired him to lock it away in a labyrinth and occasionally feed innocent Greeks to the beast until Theseus finally killed it. Minos's wife, the Minotaur, and the innocent Greeks suffered, but Minos himself, not so much -- he kept the bull, stayed king, and even became one of the three judges in the paradisical section of the Greek afterlife.

[[quoteright:caption:350: King Midas's daughter appears to pay the ultimate price for Midas's gold.]]

* ''StarTrek:TheNextGeneration'' episode "Q Who". Irritated by Picard's arrogance, Q sends the ''Enterprise'' light years across the galaxy to an unexplored region of space and then disappears. They run into the Borg, who kill eighteen crew members. Picard learns his lesson, but eighteen innocents die for it.

* A horrific and intentional example of Aesop Collateral damage is found in Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story ''Hell Screen''. An obsessive and sadistic painter cannot paint anything he hasn't seen, so when he is commissioned to paint a picture of Hell by the tyrannical Japanese lord he serves, he tortures his apprentices to get the references he needs. Finally, he decides he needs to have a carriage set on fire and the woman inside to ''burn alive.'' The lord agrees. The victim? A pure, innocent and intelligent young woman [[spoiler...the painter's daughter, and the one thing on Earth he truly loved]]. According to the servant narrating the story, the Lord does this to teach the painter a lesson about putting art above all other duties and concerns. However, the servant is [[UnreliableNarrator unlikely to be telling the precise truth]], out of fear of or devotion to his lord, so it seems more likely that [[spoiler: this was the lord's twisted revenge on the daughter, Yukimi, for spurning his advances...advances that the narrator claimed never happened, despite ''witnessing'' his attempted rape of Yukimi.]] After the execution, the painter finishes his screen [[spoiler: and is is DrivenToSuicide - the lord is a KarmaHoudini]].

* In a ''SabrinaTheTeenageWitch'' episode Sabrina's boyfriend Harvey is turned into a beast by her ugly aunt to teach her lesson about shallowness. The ugly aunt is treated as a PuritySue, entirely justifed in teaching Sabrina her lesson while everyone ignores the fact that the blameless Harvey is the one who finds himself growing fur, claws and tusks.

** A strong example to modern eyes is the story of the Minotaur. The gods sent King Minos of Crete a white bull intended as an offering to Poseidon, but he decided to keep it as the prize in his herd instead. Aphrodite retaliated by making his ''wife'' fall in lust with it and arrange to play the part of a cow. Sure, Minos was stuck with the result of that union, the [[ImAHumanitarian human-eating]] Minotaur, but that just inspired him to lock it away in a labyrinth and occasionally feed innocent Greeks to the beast until Theseus finally killed it. Minos's wife, the Minotaur, and the innocent Greeks suffered, but Minos himself, not so much -- he kept the bull, stayed king, and even became one of the three judges in the paradisical section of the Greek afterlife.

* In Disney's ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'', the household staff are cursed, as well as the Beast himself.

!!!EXAMPLES

* ''{{Batman}}'': Dr Leslie Thompkins purposely let Robin die just to demonstrate to the youth of Gotham the dangers of letting kids fight crime. The subsequent {{Retcon}} held that this absurd CharacterDerailment never happened; Dr Thompkins knew Steph hadn't died and just lied to Bruce about it.
* This trope is part of why [[YourMileageMayVary many people]] find StuffedIntoTheFridge so objectionable. In that trope's purest form, female supporting characters die so that male heroes can learn vague lessons about the price of heroism, after which said heroes usually find new love interests and generally move on.

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Midas_3453.jpg

In mythological, religious and fantasy works, somebody does or says something that shows they're in need of an attitude adjustment. Either a being (often a deity or similarly powerful creature) or Fate itself will act overtly to [[{{Aesop}} teach this lesson]]. Unfortunately, the direct victim of this tutelage isn't the person in need of the lesson, but rather one or more person(s) close to them who haven't been shown to have done anything wrong. Typical victims are children, spouses and/or colleagues of the culprit, and the suffering often involves their deaths. In light of this, the culprit expresses remorse and either changes their ways or gives way to grief; either way, they won't be making ''that'' mistake again. It is rarely/never mentioned that the entirely innocent suffer the most.

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* Since the late 1990s, this has been played up frequently in ''Daredevil'', as his supporting cast start to notice that they're often the collateral damage that teaches [[WhatTheHellHero Matt Murdock]] a lesson about something or other.

* The children's story "Sam, Bangs and Moonshine". Sam is warned that her habit of making up false stories will get her into trouble. She tells her friend, a little boy named Thomas, that her mother is a mermaid who lives in a distant cove. Thomas believes her and goes off to the cove (followed by Bangs, Sam's cat) and both are lost at sea in a storm. Sam is very remorseful about their loss and learns AnAesop about not lying to people. Thomas and Bangs are eventually recovered alive, but Thomas is ill from his ordeal.

* Since it's very loosely based on the Biblical book of Job, the film ''ASeriousMan'' does this...only the Aesop is deliberately unclear, [[SubvertedTrope perhaps even absent]].
* Common in the LifetimeMovieOfTheWeek genre, as when an Aesop needs to be broken out, the protagonist is always a bit removed from the consequences for MAXIMUM DRAMA!

* The old-time {{Radio}} show ''Diary of Fate'' had as its constant Aesop, "Choose evil and you will be destroyed." Okay, but often three or four people other than the protagonist would die in the process of him learning that lesson, without having chosen evil at all.

* This is quite common in many mythologies, where the gods teach someone a lesson by cursing their entire families -- but not necessarily them -- or setting up their descendants for misery. Sometimes this is the result of severe ValuesDissonance.
** Possibly the most famous example is the Biblical Job. He loses his health, sons, daughters, house, animals, ''everything.'' In the middle section, as Job sits on the ash heap and is "consoled" (if you could call it that) by his friends, Job begins questioning God's actions. God arrives and speaks from a whirlwind to scold Job for presuming to question His actions when he (Job) is not a deity. This whole thing is troubling in part because of the dialogue between God and the Adversary that explains that Job was tortured to [[UpToEleven grotesquely cruel levels]] and his family killed as part of an exercise to prove Job's faith. It is true that after Job repents of his questioning and prostrates himself before God, his prosperity is returned even better than before and he gets a new family, but that means his original family is STILL DEAD. What of the originals? Are people ''that'' interchangeable?

* Disney's ''{{Pinocchio}}''. Pinocchio plays hooky from school and ends up being kidnapped and taken to Pleasure Island. His creator, the kindly woodcarver Gepetto goes looking for him and ends up getting trapped inside Monstro the whale. Pinocchio learns a lesson about being a good boy from the experience.
* In {{Disney}}'s ''BeautyAndTheBeast'', the household staff are cursed as well as the Beast himself.

** A strong example to modern eyes is the story of the Minotaur. The gods sent King Minos of Crete a white bull intended as an offering to Poseidon, but he decided to keep it as the prize in his herd instead. Aphrodite retaliated by making his ''wife'' fall in lust with it and arrange to [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean play the part of a cow]]. Sure, Minos was stuck with the result of that union, the [[ImAHumanitarian human-eating]] Minotaur, but that just inspired him to lock it away in a labyrinth and occasionally feed innocent Greeks to the beast until Theseus finally killed it. Minos's wife, the Minotaur, and the innocent Greeks suffered, but Minos himself, not so much -- he kept the bull, stayed king, and even became one of the three judges in the paradisical section of the Greek afterlife.