War Crime Tropes

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War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

— Charter of the International Military Tribunal - the United Nations

This is an index of tropes about many common types of atrocities, human rights abuses, and international war crimes against humanity; which are usually (though not necessarily always) illegal, often happening during armed conflicts between military or paramilitary forces; along with tropes about war criminals and their victims, and the causes or aftermath of war crimes.

In both fiction and reality, War Is Hell, especially because it almost always devolves into violently barbaric cruelty, mass murder, and destruction. While in modern times, there are many international laws (most notably the Geneva Conventions) which prohibit unnecessary acts of violence against captured/disarmed/injured/surrendering enemy combatants, and especially any intentional violence against unarmed noncombatant civilian men, women, and children, this doesn't prevent atrocities from occurring anyways amidst the brutal chaos and lawlessness of warfare.

Most of the time, war crimes will be prosecuted only after the war, and only against perpetrators who were on the losing side; or at least anyone who was unlucky enough to be captured by vengeful enemies, or were arrested and detained by another country interested in their prosecution. Some countries may investigate and prosecute their own military personnel or other people on their own side who were accused of committing war crimes, but good luck ensuring a fair or impartial trial given their government's obvious nationalist biases and conflicts of interest.

Tropes:

• Alien Invasion: Most examples of this trope involve an evil extraterrestrial empire starting an expansionist war of aggression against Earth (or sometimes another alien planet). At worst, the ultimate objective of the invasion is the genocidal extermination of humanity (or other native sapient species of the invaded planet); or at least a very brutal colonial occupation, with the planet's population suffering enslavement or other abuses by their new alien masters.
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: There were some fugitive Nazi war criminals who fled to South America after World War II to escape prosecution for their wartime atrocities.
• Armies Are Evil: Militaries in general are all portrayed as being filled with violent thugs who wantonly commit atrocities against their enemies or any civilians in their way.
• Arms Dealer: Weapon merchants, regardless of whether they are legitimate arms manufacturers and distributors, or illegitimate arms smugglers and traffickers, tend to have no problem doing business with known war criminals and other morally dubious clients.
• Atomic Hate: Nuclear bombs are the deadliest Weapon of Mass Destruction, easily capable of wiping out entire cities, and poisoning the surrounding environment with radioactive fallout. While some countries are well-known to keep an arsenal of nuclear weapons, these are meant to be more of a deterrent and ultimate weapon of last resort in case of an existential threat from their enemies, as actually being the first party in a conflict to use them invites the risk of retaliation and escalation into a catastrophic nuclear war. While international nuclear proliferation has been generally frowned upon since the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, this hasn't stopped some countries from acquiring their own nukes anyways.
• Atrocity Montage: A sequence showing various disasters and tragedies, which may include depictions of massacres or other war crimes.
• Attack Drone: While drones have never been internationally forbidden by the laws of war, their common usage as a weapon of counter-insurgency/terrorism to assassinate enemy guerrilla fighters has been extremely controversial, due to the high rate of (allegedly "accidental") civilian casualties which often result from such drone bombings.
• Biological Weapons Solve Everything: Biological warfare is the weaponization of deadly infectious diseases to wipe out enemies or civilians. Biological weapons are internationally outlawed as an illegal Weapon of Mass Destruction.
• Booby Trap: The use of booby traps which will attract and harm civilians is prohibited by international laws of war.
• Child Soldiers: Young minors (underage teenagers or prepubescent children) are recruited (often involuntarily) to fight for an armed faction, thus directly putting these kids in harm's way.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Physically and/or psychologically violent abuses against prisoners of war, whether to interrogate information out of them, or just for the sake of pure sadistic contempt against them.
• Collateral Damage: When a military claims that civilian casualties they caused were accidental rather than intentional. Whether they're being honest or not is debatable.
• The Colored Cross: Because of a real Geneva Convention rule, fictional stories don't show the actual Red Cross/Crescent/Crystal symbols and instead show them with a different color.
• Coup de Grâce: Killing wounded enemies instead of taking them alive for medical treatment is a war crime.
• Court-Martialed: When a soldier (or sometimes a civilian) is arrested and prosecuted by a military court after being accused of doing something illegal, which may include charges of alleged war crimes.
• Creepy Souvenir: Taking human body parts as trophies is a war crime under the Geneva Convention's Article 16.
• Crushing the Populace: A conquering force begins repressing the population of a place they conquered through indiscriminate violence and oppression, often with collective punishment against civilians in efforts to eliminate guerrilla insurgents rebelling against the occupying forces.
• Deadline News: It's not uncommon for civilian journalists in a warzone to be intentionally attacked by armed forces, especially if they work for a news agency which that army doesn't like.
• Deadly Gas: The use of poisonous gases and other chemical weapons have been internationally outlawed since the end of World War I.
• Death from Above: Airstrikes and artillery bombardment, especially against populated cities and towns, have a very high chance of causing (allegedly "accidental") civilian casualties. Under international law, aerial bombings must contribute to a military objective, focus on military targets, and not inflict disproportionate damage to civilians.
• Death March: When prisoners are forced by their captors to travel on foot in lethal conditions, or with the ultimate goal of executing all of them.
• Dehumanization: Denying someone's status as a person, often acting as a precursor to war crimes and other atrocities.
• Desecrating the Dead: Mutilating or mistreating corpses is considered a crime under the Rome Statute.
• Dirty Bomb: A hypothetical type of radiological weapon (and thus considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction), in which conventional explosives are used to scatter radioactive material around (kind of like a cheaper and lower-grade version of a nuke, though actually much less destructive). While these have yet to actually be used in real life, these are portrayed as an especially deadly weapon for terrorists in fiction.
• Doctor von Turncoat: A scientific expert defects to the opposing side in exchange for benefits and protections, which often includes pardons from or immunity from war crime prosecutions.
• Dressing as the Enemy: It is illegal to attack enemy soldiers while wearing their uniform as part of a False Flag Operation. However, war crime charges can be avoided if you remove the disguise, then attack.
• The Empire: A large and powerful country built upon invading, conquering, occupying, and annexing the territories of other nations and states. After the end of World War II, such imperialism and colonialism has gone out of fashion; nowadays, fighting a war for the sake of territorial expansion is viewed as an illegal war of aggression, while annexation is now just illegitimate land theft violating another country's sovereignty.
• Evil Colonialist: Colonial empires often used brutal tactics when invading and conquering other nations, and during the subsequent occupation they were especially ruthless about suppressing any hints of dissent or insurgency by native rebels through collective punishment against civilians.
• External Combustion: Car bombing, in which a motor vehicle loaded with an improvised explosive device (IED) is detonated. While using these weapons against armed combatants is technically not a war crime, terrorist groups often intentionally use car bombs to murder civilians anyways.
• False Flag Operation: While technically not a war crime by itself, a false flag operation can become a war crime if soldiers are Dressing as the Enemy while also directly attacking the enemy, instead of simply infiltrating them for stealth or espionage purposes. It would also be illegal to conduct a false flag op to attack enemies while impersonating unarmed civilians, or in order to frame another (neutral) nation or third party that's not involved in the conflict.
• The Famine: While most famines usually have natural or accidental causes, they are sometimes intentionally planned, including in wartime situations to make civilian populations starve to death by blocking or destroying vital food supplies.
• Fictional Geneva Conventions: Laws forbidding specific war crimes that can only happen in a fantasy or science fiction setting.
• Final Solution: Genocidal extermination of a large population of (mostly civilian) people, especially members of a specific ethnic/national/political/religious demographic targeted for persecution by armed forces.
• Flesh and Bombs: Using the corpse of an enemy as bait in a Booby Trap. Considered a war crime under Article 6 of 1980 Protocol II of the Geneva Convention.
• General Ripper: A warmongering military officer who's overly eager to use aggressive force against (real or imagined) enemies. These commanders are unsurprisingly always quick to order their troops to commit blatant war crimes.
• Genocide Survivor: A surviving victim of genocidal massacres against their people.
  • Serial-Numbered Holocaust Survivor: A tattooed serial number indicates that a character is a concentration camp survivor.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: A genocidal war aimed at completely wiping out an entire nation, race, or species.
• Hostage Situation: Using captive war prisoners (who may be soldiers or civilians) as expendable human shields or bargaining chips, typically to coerce or extort one's enemies into following specific ransom demands, with threats of killing these hostages if provoked or unsatisfied.
• Hostage Video: Terrorists record a threatening video message featuring someone they kidnapped, either to extort ransom demands from their enemies, or to record the hostage's execution for the sake of fear and intimidation.
• Human Shield: Capturing a hostage or prisoner in an attempt to deter enemies from attacking you is a war crime. It's also a war crime to murder someone taken hostage by the enemy anyways.
• I Surrender, Suckers!: The war crime of perfidy, in which soldiers pretend to surrender as a ruse to lure enemies into an ambush. It is a war crime because it encourages people to kill soldiers trying to surrender and to refuse to accept any attempt to surrender.
• Just Following Orders: An individual accused of a war crime tries to defend their actions by saying they were just obeying higher orders.
• Just Giving Orders: An individual accused of a war crime tries to defend their actions by saying they didn't actually commit the crime; they just ordered it, and their subordinates actually performed the actions.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: Shooting those who are rendered unable to fight is a war crime.
• Kill It with Fire: Under Protocol III of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons, the use of incendiary weapons against civilians or against areas with a heavy civilian presence is prohibited.
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Anti-personnel land mines are very controversial due to the hidden threat they pose to any unwitting civilians unlucky enough to step on them, making any place littered with landmines extremely hazardous for a long time after the war has ended. There's an international treaty to ban their usage, and many (though not all) countries have signed it. Under Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, it is a war crime to plant mines without marking or recording their locations so they can be removed later.
• Leave No Survivors: Ordering a massacre without even attempting to capture anyone alive.
• Playing Possum: The Laws and Customs of War state that those soldiers that are hors de combat ("out of the fight"), a category that includes prisoners, the severely wounded, sailors abandoning ship, the dead and ejecting aircrew — although not paratroopers — are not to be attacked. Feigning that status is perfidy and highly illegal, since it would lead to the other side killing the genuinely wounded on the spot (which is also a war crime) to make sure.
• Plunder: When soldiers commit theft, looting, and robbery of other people's property. This was an especially common practice in pre-modern warfare, when soldiers did not usually receive a regular salary, and were allowed to steal to make their income.
• Poison Is Evil: Deadly Gas and other highly toxic chemical weapons are considered to be an especially horrible form of Weapon of Mass Destruction, which is why their usage is internationally banned as a war crime.
• Police Brutality: While this phenomenon is usually associated with civilian law enforcement in peacetime, governments have frequently used their military or paramilitary forces to police civilian populations, especially in areas under martial law or military occupation during times of war or internal conflict. And when soldiers are ordered to play the role of cops, things can get ugly very fast if they feel like violently abusing their authority against other people.
• P.O.W. Abuse: Killing soldiers after they've been captured or while surrendering is a huge war crime, as defined by the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Rape, torture, starvation, slave labor, or other inhumane mistreatment of captive (military or civilian) prisoners-of-war is obviously also a very serious war crime.
• P.O.W. Camp: While detaining prisoners-of-war isn't an issue by itself, many military prison camps have been sites of various atrocities against prisoners. There's also the controversial wartime practice of military/police forces extrajudicially imprisoning noncombatant civilians (or civilians accused but not yet convicted of committing espionage, insurgency or terrorism) in internment/concentration camps, indefinitely holding them without any due process or a fair trial; which is not always illegal, but is often considered to be a serious civil/human rights abuse.
• Private Military Contractors: Hiring professional mercenary soldiers from foreign countries is often frowned upon in modern warfare, as the Geneva Convention considers mercenaries to be illegal combatants, and as such they can be prosecuted for being mercenaries if captured. Some mercs try to exploit loopholes by instead claiming to just be private security guards who happen to be working in a warzone, or by serving as foreign volunteers who formally enlisted as official members of a military organization.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Sexual violence, especially against women and children, has always been one of the oldest terror tactics in warfare. Rape is also sometimes used to torture male soldiers taken prisoner as well.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Soldiers attack a city, town, or village to destroy this whole place, all while robbing, raping, and massacring the local civilian population.
• Recording Your Crime: Thanks to the spread of mobile phones and the internet, it's not unusual to see stories of soldiers sharing movies and/or photos of themselves perpetrating atrocities.
• Recursive Ammo: The use of cluster munitions is controversial in warfare due to their large area of effect, indiscriminate targeting of soldiers and civilians, and the fact they may leave large numbers of unexploded submunitions that can harm civilians after the war has ended. There's an international treaty to ban their usage, and many (though not all) countries have signed it.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: When rebel groups, resistance, and revolutionary movements commit terrorist atrocities against real or imagined enemies, especially against anyone believed to be pro-government loyalists or counter-revolutionaries.
• Rogue Soldier: When military personnel defy or even betray their leaders. This can include rejecting orders to not commit war crimes against civilians and unarmed soldiers.
• Salt the Earth: Scorched-earth tactics targeted at a civilian population are banned by a 1977 amendment to the Geneva Conventions.
• Sex Slave: Rape and slavery have both been very commonly recurring atrocities throughout military history and have often been combined together, with women and children being forced by their sexually depraved captors into concubinage or prostitution.
• Shoot the Medic First: Attacking civilian (or even military) medical personnel and facilities is a serious war crime, especially when they're trying to evacuate or take care of injured patients. It's also illegal for an armed combatant to impersonate an unarmed medic.
• The Siege: It is a war crime to blockade a civilian population with the intent to deprive them of vital necessities such as food, water, medicine, or humanitarian aid.
• Sink the Lifeboats: It is considered a war crime under Protocol I of the Geneva Convention to attack pilots, aircrew, and sailors who survive the destruction of their craft as they are considered out of combat due to no longer being able to perform their intended role (paratroopers and airborne troops are not protected under this law and it is still legal to attack them).
• Slave Mooks: Forcing slaves or other people who don't really want to risk their lives to serve as involuntary Cannon Fodder would probably be illegal, or at least highly unethical. One reason why using Child Soldiers is internationally recognized as a war crime is that these kids were often forcibly recruited or manipulated into fighting against their will (never mind that underage minors probably can't give any valid consent to become combatants in the first place). However, conscription is technically not considered to be a war crime, even though drafted soldiers are coerced through the threat of legal penalties into enlisting, even if they really don't have any desire for military service.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: In pre-modern warfare, it was a very common practice to take war captives (both soldiers and civilians) and sell them into slavery. This sometimes still happens in modern warfare, with prisoners of war being illegally coerced into performing forced labor for their captors.
• Sociopathic Soldier: A ruthlessly psychopathic soldier or terrorist who's ready to commit war crimes without hesitation or remorse.
• State Sec: A military or paramilitary police force tasked with crushing dissent and insurgency against the government, often through extreme terror and brutality.
• Suicide Attack: Suicide bombing, in which someone blows themselves up with an improvised explosive device (IED). While using this tactic against armed combatants is technically not a war crime, terrorist groups often intentionally use suicide bombers to murder civilians anyways, or while impersonating civilians.
• Synthetic Plague: A deadly infectious disease which was artificially created as an insidious biological weapon. Of course, biological warfare is still a serious war crime.
• Tested on Humans: Involuntary biomedical experimentation on captive prisoners of war is a cruel form of torture, and therefore a war crime.
• Truce Trickery: The war crime of perfidy, in which at least one side violates an armistice or ceasefire where all sides are supposed to be at peace for a while.
• Urban Warfare: Fighting in cities will invariably involve local civilians, who often end up being caught in the middle and becoming casualties.
• War Crime Subverts Heroism: When soldiers from the protagonistic armed faction of a story commit atrocities to establish that they're not necessarily "good guys".
• War Criminal in Victim's Clothing: A fugitive war criminal attempts to hide by impersonating one of their own victims.
• War for Fun and Profit: Big businesses and private companies, especially defense contractors in the military-industrial complex, are often portrayed in a villainous manner in war fiction due to their amoral corporate greed and eagerness to profit off the mass death, destruction and suffering caused by warfare. From producing and selling weapons to anyone with ill intentions, to employing mercenary soldiers to fight for their own agenda, to extracting and selling valuable resources like oil or diamonds found in active warzones. While this technically isn't illegal because they're always close business partners with national governments around the world, there's a reason why they're seen as being morally bankrupt and complicit with international war crimes.
• War Hawk: A warmongering politician (or activist) who advocates aggressively militaristic or even expansionist foreign policies, which often means starting or supporting illegal non-defensive wars of aggression.
• War Is Hell: The main reason why warfare is generally considered to be the height of human evil and cruelty is because of the extreme brutality exchanged between rival armed forces, and especially against countless more civilians who are unlucky enough to be present when it happens.
• War Refugees: Wars often displace entire civilian populations, forcing them to attempt to flee or hide for survival, fearing they will become casualties. Attacks against refugee camps are obviously a war crime too.
• Water Source Tampering: Adding poisons or pollutants to a body of water used for drinking. Considered a war crime if it causes disproportionate suffering to civilians.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: WMDs (which include biological, chemical, nuclear, and radiological weapons) are extremely controversial due to their potential for mass death and destruction on a wider scale than even conventional weapons. Biological/chemical weapons are completely banned for warfare, while nuclear/radiological weapons are heavily discouraged and refrained from being used for fear of escalation beyond the point of no return.
• The Women Are Safe with Us: Forbidding the obvious war crime of raping and murdering female civilians (or captured female soldiers).
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": Denying, downplaying, excusing, or justifying very real and well-documented war crimes, particularly genocidal massacres and ethnic cleansing.
• Would Hurt a Child: Because Children Are Innocent and the most vulnerable segment of the civilian population, inflicting any harm on young kids is often viewed as being one of the most wickedly cruel atrocities of warfare. It's also a war crime to make use of Child Soldiers, as that forces these kids and anyone else they're fighting with into very ugly kill-or-be-killed situations.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Armed forces are generally expected by the laws of war to never intentionally attack unarmed civilians. Yet they often still do it anyways to the point that any war that's run long enough will see far more civilian than military casualties.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Guerrillas, insurgents and rebel fighters often commit ruthless acts which can be considered terrorism or war crimes; but this doesn't stop them from getting genuine support from at least some segment of the population, who view them as heroes bravely resisting an oppressive national government or foreign occupation force.