Anvilicious: The Japanese soldiers tear down a statue of Sun Yat-sen, plant their flag on the pedestal, and then drag the statue through the streets behind a tank. Suspiciously similar to the way the American troops in 2003 tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein, and drove off with it.
Complete Monster: Second Lieutenant Osamu Ida is the soldier in charge of conquering Nanjing for the Imperial Japanese Army. Under his military command, Nanjing is turned into a slaughterhouse where people are raped, tortured and killed in a variety of sadistic ways, disgusting even John Rabe, a man affiliated with the Nazi Party. After over 500 prisoners are executed en masse and the Nanjing Safety Zone is established, Ida and his men frequently force themselves into the zone to rape more women and children, and uses a collaborator, Mr. Tang, to get information on incapacitated Chinese soldiers, invading the hospital to cowardly execute them when they were unable to fight back; Tang is rewarded by having his daughter thrown out of the window to her death. Promising to call his troops and destroy everything in the zone if Rabe doesn't give him at least a hundred Sex Slaves, his soldiers murder some of the "comfort women" in the process, with Ida personally raping and killing Tang's sister-in-law, later executing Tang himself. Sending Chinese soldiers to execution when they were promised to be spared if they turned themselves, Ida allows civilians to claim at least one prisoner for each after an American missionary interfered, but sent a woman to be gang-raped when she tried to save more people.
Nightmare Fuel: The Rape of Nanking, from beginning to end.
The later tragedies top this scene, but for sheer horror it's the part where the Chinese prisoners of war are being buried alive in masses. Or the part where the schoolgirls are raped.
Stoic Woobie: Ms. Jiang. As well as the poor women who volunteer to be sex slaves.
By the end of the film, the whole population of Nanjing.
And after the events of the film, John Rabe. He returned to Germany and tried to appeal to Hitler on behalf of the Chinese, hoping that his country would be able to rein in their allies, and for his undue compassion towards a "lesser race", was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo. Things didn't get any better for him after World War II, as he was denounced for his membership of the Nazi Party and therefore unable to work. Until his death in 1950, he survived on food packages sent regularly by the grateful survivors of Nanjing. Way to go,karma.
