Complete Monster: Henry Tucker is the leader of a drug ring that smuggles high-grade heroin into the Baltimore area inside the bodies of American soldiers killed in The Vietnam War. He distributes the drugs via a stable of prostitutes that he controls using drugs, rape, and torture. When one of his girls escapes and befriends the hero, ex-Navy SEAL John Kelly, Tucker has her kidnapped, then rapes her, tortures her, and mutilates her corpse, forcing the other girls to watch, before dumping it in a public fountain. As Kelly tracks him down while murdering his people, he grows increasingly desperate, going so far as to kill his own associates out of paranoia, then attempts to kill his remaining girls when they prove to be a security risk.
Designated Hero: John Kelly does some very nasty things to get his revenge on the drug dealers. Asshole Victims they may be, it can still be rather hard to read the decompression chamber torture scene without being disgusted. To be fair, Clancy does lampshade this both in this book and subsequent novels whenever Mr. Clark's past is brought up. Jack Ryan himself subtly calls him out in Executive Orders, saying that he can't condone or forgive Clark for what he did.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Doris Brown gets one of the most powerful and interesting arcs of the story, which feels like too much for the unceremonious fate Clancy gave her, especially when it didn't do anything to substantially move along the plot and even if there had been a reason for it, just killing her father in a Heroic Sacrifice moment could have achieved the same plot effect and made for better writing.
Arguably, it is the straw the breaks the character arc for Sandy, without such she wouldn't be convinced of Kelly's line of thinking and would not have continued helping neither be romantically involved with him.
Pamela Madden had a really shitty life. She was driven to run away from home as a teenager due to her controlling, emotionally abusive father. She was then taken in by a pimp who knew just how to spot young girls who had run away from home. He got her hooked on drugs and started prostituting her. She endured the horrors of watching Henry Tucker and his associates rape, torture, and kill girls who got out of line. Eventually she escaped and met Kelly. The two of them quickly fell in love and it was looking like Pamela might actually have a shot at happiness, but then she was recaptured by Tucker. She was raped, tortured, killed, and her body dumped in a public fountain.
The other girls don't have it much better, especially her friend Doris (her brother died in Vietnam, and her mother of breast cancer, she ran away from home after some very cruel Slut-Shaming by her father in a moment of drunken weakness that he instantly regretted but couldn't find her tell her that, she's beaten for information on Pam then sees her die anyway, and then after being rescued she's tracked down again by the mob).
Film
Captain Obvious Reveal: It is blatantly obvious that Clay is the true Big Bad behind the conspiracy, and that Ritter was Good All Along, despite obvious set ups like him being a Jerkass to the team and not being around for them in desperate times.
Harsher in Hindsight: Clay's plan revolving around stopping the political divide in American society by making Russia an enemy again, hits different when a year after the release of the movie with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Michael B. Jordan plays a Navy SEAL. People immediately started making jokes that the film is Killmonger's prequel movie.
