Basic Trope: Communists are portrayed as friendly and benevolent by a non-communist point of view.
- Straight:
- The American heroes meet up with contacts from the USSR, who are all friendly and affable people.
- Nicole is a domestic American communist who cares for other people.
- Exaggerated:
- The communists live in a utopia where the communist vision of Karl Marx has been achieved and everyone living in it has Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
- In a world 20 Minutes into the Future, the Communists have created numerous Boom Towns while treating robots as people too.
- Downplayed:
- The communists are Jerkass Heroes or Combat Pragmatists that aren't afraid to fight dirty, but are still good people and allies.
- The communists, or at least the ones the protagonist opposes, are Punch Clock Villains who respect the protagonists and could easily have been friends with them if they didn't suffer from My Country, Right or Wrong.
- The communists met by the protagonists follow a different strain of socialist thought than the USSR's state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and are actively working against its authoritarian nature despite still believing in Marxist values.
- The communists live in a realistically-portrayed Brezhnev-era USSR with all its flaws, but benefit from a Sympathetic P.O.V. in a non-Soviet movie, a la Goodbye Lenin.
- Justified:
- Just because the communists follow a different ideology, doesn't mean they're evil.
- The Communists are helping the Americans fight Team Hitler, Team Not-Quite-Hitler, and Team Alien Hitler. At that point, both sides realize that they need to team up to survive, whatever their ideologies might be.
- The communists in question are found in an Alternate History or a Fantasy Counterpart Culture, and the movement's people prevented it from descending into tyranny, thus ending up much more friendly.
- The story is set during real-life Communist reforms trying to liberalize oppressive Leninist states, such as the Khrushchev Thaw
, the Prague Spring, the Perestroika, or the era of Goulash Communism. - Nicole is a communist simply because she believes in caring for others before oneself.
- Inverted:
- The Americans suffer from a clear case of Capitalism Is Bad and work for a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- The rank-and-file American soldiers, scientists, workers, and merchants make no bones about their preference for capitalism over communism in a Soviet-made film, but it portrays them as good people all the same.
- A film made in a communist country portrays capitalist Americans and Brits fairly positively as misguided but noble allies against the Nazis.
- Subverted:
- A friendly, gregarious communist later turns out to be a generally nasty bastard once he's not trying to butter up the capitalists.
- A friendly, gregarious soviet communist turns out to be secretly planning to defect.
- The Americans mislabelled their Communist friends as Politically Incorrect Heroes.
- Double Subverted:
- A seemingly friendly, gregarious communist is used as a Sheep in Sheep's Clothing.
- Turns out, the Communist friends were right all along.
- The defector is still a communist; he just dislikes the Soviet version and thinks it will go better in America.
- Parodied:
- The communists play with bears, are perpetually drunk and can smile through anything wicked since they've been Conditioned to Accept Horror from their own homelands.
- The cast's resident communist is the Only Sane Man who gets saddled with managing the problems that capitalism creates for their friends, and/or the problems that said friends create for each other and everyone else.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The main villain of the film is an evil Soviet General, but the heroes who fight him are aided by resisting communist soldiers, but one of the allies is a traitor motivated by the general bringing glory to the people, until he sees the general cares only for himself and not the good of the people.
- The story is actually political commentary examining the differences of Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism, and the communist heroes are a storytelling device to examine how a regulated, equal-opportunity free market that won't tolerate MegaCorps and monopolies creates much better places to live than a One Nation Under Copyright hellhole running entirely on Screw the Rules, I Have Money!
- The Defector from Commie Land goes through half a dozen allegiances, and is ultimately implied to be an agent for communist aliens... who, as The Stinger shows, do have a good communist society up and running.
- Averted:
- It's a standard Cold War-era film and communists are bastards.
- It's a Cold War-era film, but the Communists, hostile or friendly, are conspicuously absent.
- Enforced:
- The filmmakers are all communist sympathizers, so they make them appear as positive as possible.
- The movie was made by Americans during World War II and the producers didn't want to make their allies look bad.
- The writer wanted to portray communist teens in a positive light.
- Lampshaded:
- "All the propaganda was wrong, these guys are really nice!"
- "Nicole is a commie? Wow, she's so nice."
- Invoked: The communists establish a country that is explicitly not aligned with the USSR, to try and better their lot without falling into oppression.
- Exploited: The capitalists take advantage of the communist's kindness and their willingness to work for the greater collective to further their own ends.
- Defied: Whenever anyone among the communists says or thinks something sufficiently cheerful, they are immediately kicked in the shin or punched in the groin by the Jerkass members of the Secret Police bent on harassing the citizenry.
- Discussed: "Hey, are you with the—" "With the communists, yes! And tovarisch, you've got to join us next week! We're having a party! ...not the political kind."
- Conversed: "If I were you, I wouldn't watching this movie anymore knowing about the Soviet Union's crimes." "Hey, it wouldn't be accurate, polite, or nuanced to say all the Soviet people were bad." "No, but their government was and it had all the power, and that was the problem, or one of them, anyway."
- Implied: In a Cold War-era film, the protagonist reflects really fondly on his time working with the Soviets to track down and stop a common enemy, but it's never elaborated on.
- Deconstructed:
- The Soviets being personally nice and caring leads the protagonists to turn a blind eye to how the Soviet system is still very flawed.
- The communists in the story live in a Post-Scarcity Economy where the Marxist utopian vision has been realized, but there are still some Jerkasses among them, because human psychology is messy and complex and can't be "solved" just by changing the political economy to a better model.
- Reconstructed:
- The protagonists ultimately acknowledge this, but also realize it's important to give their Soviet allies credit where it is due and be willing to work with them for a time, possibly even helping each other to improve their respective systems.
- That being said, it turns out to be near-impossible to find a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk among the utopian communists, because a successfully-run and healthy communist society really is helpful in letting the people be their better selves.
- Played for Laughs: A Corrupt Corporate Executive who doesn't believe in altruism ends up stranded in a communist country, and is terrified by all the friendly people jumping out at him.
- Played for Drama: The friendly Communist government is overthrown by hardliner Dirty Communists or a corrupt MegaCorp, and its people have to fight to get things back to where they were.
- Played for Horror: The friendly Communists are cast as well-meaning and not-too-dumb, but completely Genre Blind protagonists in a Slasher Movie, a zombie flick, or any other kind of horror film.
Let's head Back to Chummy Commies, tovarisch! I'll get you a vodka!
