History Main / MobWar

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' There is an ongoing conflict between the [[TheSyndicate ruthless, murderous]] [[TheMafia native gangsters]] in the Camonna Tong and the Imperial import ThievesGuild. While all-out war is not something either side can afford, the conflict is still nasty enough that even the usually violence-averse Guild orders Tong operatives to be killed and are in the process of outfitting their [[TotallyNotACriminalFront meeting places]] with deadly traps and guards.

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind'' There is an ongoing conflict between the [[TheSyndicate ruthless, murderous]] [[TheMafia native gangsters]] in the Camonna Tong and the Imperial import ThievesGuild. While all-out war is not something either side can afford, the conflict is still nasty enough that even the usually violence-averse Guild orders Tong operatives to be killed and are in the process of outfitting their [[LegitimateBusinessmensSocialClub meeting places]] with deadly traps and guards.

* ''Manga/BlackLagoon'': This is a constant threat in Roanapur. Specifically, an all-out war against the Yakuza during the Fujiyama Gangster Paradise arc. However, it is noted that potential mob conflicts solve themselves once a third party gets involved: Roberta in the ''El Baille de la Muerte'' arc and Hansel and Grettel in the Vampire Twins arc. Hotel Moscow also engages in a mob war against the Yakuza when visiting Japan, [[RuthlessForeignGangsters using more brutal tactics than the Yakuza are used to]].

* In ''VideoGame/ShadowHeartsFromTheNewWorld'', you end up in Chicago... and the game is set in the 1920s. One of your party members is a capo in Capone's mob, while another is in love with Capone's sister. Add some dark magic and the mob war gets ''weird''. Oh, and said capo is also a MegaNeko. [[WidgetSeries Yeah]].

* Season 3 of ''Series/TheWire'' revolves around a turf war between Avon Barksdale's drug organization and the new organization of Marlo Stanfield. Both sides take heavy casualties, with the war ending when the Major Crimes Unit arrests Avon and most of his gang in a weapons stash house. Season 4 sees Marlo working to maintain his turf, using his enforcers Chris Partlow and Snoop to execute rival dealers as well as associates who have become liabilities.

* Pretty much par for the course when it comes to the Hells Angels and their relationships with almost every other major 1%er biker gang. The biggest, and oldest, include their feuds with the Outlaws, Mongols, Bandidos, Pagans and the Breed. Since many of these gangs have chapters around the globe, these wars can carry across nations. A major example was “The Great Nordic Biker War” in Scandinavia from 1994-97 between the Angels and the Bandidos that left 12 dead and nearly 100 wounded. Many of these conflicts see the clubs involved throwing everything and the kitchen sink at each other, with nothing off the table, from barroom beatings and stabbings, to drive by shootings, to bombings.
* We've mentioned the Montreal mob and the Hells Angels, [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs so naturally there was a]] UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}} [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Biker_War Biker War]] that involved both -- it lasted from 1994 to 2002 and spilled into the rest of the province. It was a particularly sordid war involving [[EnemyMine the Hells Angels and the Rizzuto family]] against a rival outlaw biker gang called the Rock Machine. The most infamous event was the death of an 11-year old boy, Daniel Desrochers, who was killed by shrapnel when a car bomb went off close to him. The response from law enforcement was inefficient, due to not only a relatively high [[DirtyCop corruption level]] in the Montreal and Quebec [[UsefulNotes/TheMounties provincial police]] and the Quebec courts, but also the fact that the Quebec Independence Movement was in its apex at the time, contributing to tensions between the Quebec government and Ottawa, which soured cooperation efforts with the [[UsefulNotes/TheMounties RCMP]]. The war ended when the leader of the Hells Angels Quebec chapter, Maurice "Mom" Boucher, was imprisoned for life in 2002. To this day, the French word for "biker" ("''motard''") [[AllBikersAreHellsAngels has sordid and negative connotations with violent organized crime]] in Quebec, [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage while]] in the rest of the French-speaking world "''motard''" is simply a neutral term for a biker.

* ''Manga/BlackLagoon'': This is a constant threat in Roanapur. Specifically, an all-out war against the Yakuza during the Fujiyama Gangster Paradise arc. However, it is noted that potential mob conflicts solve themselves once a third party gets involved: Roberta in the ''El Baille de la Muerte'' arc and Hansel and Grettel in the Vampire Twins arc.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' games, the plot often deals with preventing all-out war between the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance, with the protagonist Kazuma Kiryu caught in the middle.

* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne1'' has the Punchinello mob and Vladimir's Russian syndicate going to war, with the title character caught in the middle of it.

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* ''Series/PersonOfInterest'': When the Machine provides the numbers of the heads of the Five Families, Finch and Reese realise that [[DiabolicalMastermind Elias]] is finally making his move to take over the New York Mafia. They briefly consider [[AssholeVictim sitting this one out]], but decide to intervene because of the risk to innocent bystanders. Later Elias in turn finds himself being challenged by the Brotherhood, an alliance of New York's street gangs who are making their own bid for power.

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* ''TableTopGame/{{Warhammer40000}}'':

* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': a massive gang war is going on between the three top supervillains in the Arkham City prison--Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face, based out of the steel mill, museum, and courthouse, respectively, with some other supervillains running around as well; the Mad Hatter seems to want to get a foothold in the war using mind control, but is ultimately a minor threat. As it turns out, all of the supervillains are being supplied with the guns and other weapons they're using, as well as information against each other, by Dr. Hugo Strange, who runs Arkham City, as pretense to activate Protocol 10: [[spoiler:the attempted massacre of every single inmate in Arkham City, which includes some innocent civilians such as doctors trying to help everyone in there and people who simply knew too much about Arkham City's true purpose. The ultimate goal is to murder all the worst criminals in Gotham City and then do it again all over the world and replace Batman as Gotham's savior in the process]].

* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' has the Punchinello mob and Vladimir's Russian syndicate going to war, with the title character caught in the middle of it.

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* In the final episode of Season 2 of ''Series/CobraKai,'' Tory's hijacking of the PA system to threaten Sam sets the stage for what turns into a full-scale fight-to-the-finish bloodbath between the RivalDojos.

* Played for Laughs in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. When Marge's homemade pretzel business is about to fail, Homer hires TheMafia to help. This works wonders until they come to take all of the profits for themselves. The mob is about to kill Marge and Homer for refusing to turn over the money when a group of Yakuza hired by Marge's business rivals arrive, [[VillainousRescue and start a brawl with the mafia]], leading to the two gangs forgetting about everything except fighting each other. After a while the two groups just keep brawling in the front yard while the Simpsons family go about their usual business indoors.

** Following the Kingpin's arrest, the remnants of his organization come under fire from a mysterious superpowered Chinese gang called the Inner Demons. Initially, everyone assumes this conflict is about some dangerous upstarts trying to establish themselves by carving out territory from Kingpin's crumbling empire, but that's all just a smokescreen. [[spoiler:What the Demons ''really'' want from the are the Kingpin's secret leverage on [[MayorPain Mayor Norman Osborn]] and his illicit caches of military-grade firearms and explosives, and the "turf war" is simply a means to an end to acquire those from him. Once they have them, the Demons break off from the war to focus on their ''real'' objective: [[FarEastAsianTerrorists domestic terrorism]] against Mayor Osborn.]]

** Following the Kingpin's arrest, the remnants of his organization come under fire from a mysterious superpowered Chinese gang called the Inner Demons. Initially, everyone assumes this conflict is about some dangerous upstarts trying to establish themselves by carving out territory from Kingpin's crumbling criminal empire, but [[spoiler:it's all a smokescreen. What the Demons ''really'' want from the Kingpin are his leverage material on [[MayorPain Mayor Norman Osborn]] and his illicit caches of military-grade firearms and explosives, and the "turf war" is just a means to an end to acquire them. Once they have those, they break off from the war to focus on their ''real'' objective: [[FarEastAsianTerrorists domestic terrorism]] against Mayor Osborn]].

** Following the Kingpin's arrest, the remnants of his organization come under fire from a superpowered Chinese gang called the Inner Demons. Everyone assumes this gang war is nothing more than some dangerous upstarts trying to establish themselves by carving out territory from Kingpin's crumbling criminal empire, but [[spoiler:all the Demons really want from the Kingpin are his blackmail material on [[MayorPain Mayor Norman Osborn]] and his illicit caches of military-grade weapons, and the "war" is just a smokescreen for them to acquire them. Once they have those, they break off from the war to focus on their ''real'' objective: domestic terrorism aimed at bringing down Mayor Osborn]].

** Following Wilson Fisk's arrest, the remnants of his organization come under fire from a superpowered Chinese gang called the Inner Demons. Everyone initially suspects this gang war is nothing more than some dangerous upstarts trying to establish themselves by carving out territory from Fisk's crumbling criminal empire, [[spoiler:but the war itself is just a smokescreen. All the Demons want from Fisk is his illegal weapon stashes and his material leverage on [[MayorPain Mayor Norman Osborn]], and once they have those they break off from the war to focus on their ''real'' objective: domestic terrorism aimed at bringing down Mayor Osborn]].

* A major part of the plot of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfHeroesTrailsFromZero'' is a war between the Erebonian mafia group operating out of Revache & Co and the Calvardian triad family operating out of Heiyue for control of the criminal underworld of the Erebonian/Calvardian buffer state of Crossbell. Heiyue comes across as more sympathetic, because their crimes are kept in the background of the story, and are primarily gang-on-gang, while Revache is openly shown committing crimes against normal citizens.

* Steven Brust's ''Literature/{{Yendi}}'' is about an all-out Mob War between Vlad's organization and a neighboring Jhereg crime boss.

* Creator/DashiellHammett's novel ''Literature/RedHarvest'', written in 1929, is possibly the ur-example of this trope, and is thought to have inspired [[Creator/AkiraKurosawa Kurosawa's]] film ''Film/{{Yojimbo}}'', which in turn has been remade in different settings many times.

* The Swedish ''Literature/StockholmNoir'' trilogy centerers on different attempts to remove the iron grip the Serbian mob holds on Stockholm's underworld by Swedish, Arabic, Chilean and other Serbian elements.
* A major component of the ongoing plot of web serial ''Literature/{{Barkwire}}''.
* The second book of ''Literature/TheWitchlands'' has two pirate groups go to war over who gets to claim [[spoiler:Owl]] for the BigBad.

* In ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts: From The New World'', you end up in Chicago... and the game is set in the 1920s. One of your party members is a capo in Capone's mob, while another is in love with Capone's sister. Add some dark magic and the mob war gets ''weird''. Oh, and said capo is also a MegaNeko. [[WidgetSeries Yeah]].

* The ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "A Piece Of The Action" does this in satirical form.

* ''Series/PersonOfInterest''. When the Machine provides the numbers of the heads of the Five Families, Finch and Reese realise that [[DiabolicalMastermind Elias]] is finally making his move to take over the New York Mafia. They briefly consider [[AssholeVictim sitting this one out]], but decide to intervene because of the risk to innocent bystanders. Later Elias in turn finds himself being challenged by the Brotherhood, an alliance of New York's street gangs who are making their own bid for power.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' has a well-loved sidequest arc where the Vault Hunters start a WarForFunAndProfit and break the truce between two FeudingFamilies (who are both over-the-top stereotypes of Irishmen and rednecks respectively), in a parody of the 1920s "Beer Wars". This starts from simple pranks to piss both families off, then it gets increasingly brutal from there until the final mission, where you have to kill the godfather of whatever family annoys you more and their entire honor guard in a bloody firefight at the local train station.