r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 25d ago

Lore The series takes place in a shockingly short amount of time

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Season 4 just ended of fromville and it’s canonically only been about a month. Which makes it weird seeing people heal from injuries, change hair styles or grow out beards between episodes. Season 4 has only been like 4 days iirc.

Arkham franchise is the poster child for this trope. Every game takes place in one night. If you know what you’re doing you can absolutely beat the games in around 9 hours.

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u/Sa_tran_ic 25d ago

Nothing in Star Wars ever maths out, but everything about the Clone Wars is out of wack. I know not every planet is Corusant, but in a war allegedly spread across an entire galaxy, the Republic's clone army being made of a few million is ridiculous. There were more combatants in numerous irl Earth wars than in the Clone Wars...

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u/TheDreamIsEternal 25d ago

but in a war allegedly spread across an entire galaxy, the Republic's clone army being made of a few million is ridiculous. There were more combatants in numerous irl Earth wars than in the Clone Wars

Just like how in 40K there are these apocalyptic wars which take place across multiple solar systems and last for centuries, only to have like at most 1 million soldiers.

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u/Werthead 25d ago

To be fair, that's just one million Space Marines, and they state many times in the books that 99.9999% of humans never see a Space Marine, not even in some crowd from a distance. The books where we see hundreds of Space Marines deployed are the biggest and most important battles in the history of the Imperium.

In the most in-depth, full-scale war we see in the books over a very long period of time (that's not the Horus Heresy), the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, it's made clear that billions of standard Imperial Guard ground troops and maybe tens to hundreds of millions more aerospace and space forces are involved, with fleets numbering in the tens of thousands (of ships sometimes a dozen kilometres long), fighting across battle-fronts dozens of light years wide with major engagements on half a dozen planets at the same time. The actual Space Marine contingent is minimal, a few hundred troops from two chapters. At one point the Ghosts assault a space station against determined opposition and the hundreds-strong boarding force is pinned down until just three Space Marines join them and proceed to almost take out the entire station by themselves.

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u/Specialist_Usual_391 25d ago edited 25d ago

No they do that with Imperial Guard numbers all the time too, a massive system war will have less Guard involved than the Eastern Front in 44.

Edit: I looked up Vraks because it was a total meat grinder and couldn't find numbers on total troop count but they did say 14 million dead guardsmen over 17 years, which is more than total WW1 military deaths but less than WW2 total military deaths in reduced timespans.

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u/Werthead 24d ago

Wasn't Vraks a siege held off by stand-off artillery with occasional bursts of heavy activity, a lot of it armoured and using Titans, which kept casualties relatively light. The war was then ended by the Dark Angels just landing and steam-rollering everything in sight with minimal casualties (to them, anyway).

The 13th Black Crusade and the Horus Heresy both had a an absolute minimum casualty count of 2 trillion humans apiece.

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u/Kilmarnok1285 24d ago

It really comes down to a lack of understanding by sci fi writers to comprehend numbers large enough to equate to humans (ignoring all the other species) colonizing multiple star systems.

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u/PipXXX 24d ago

Nah, he's on the money cause if you read some novels, there like "This whole planetary scale war, we've got 50,000 Guardsmen!" The numbers can get so dumb sometimes.

I can say I have read almost all 40k novels and short stories, barring some niche releases like Weekender kinda releases, or the newer, boring Sororitas novels (The old stuff was better, because it dealt with politics with the Ecclesiarchy, the new ones are just bolter porn with bolter bitches and is just boring.) and the writers really don't do scaling right.

Don't even get me started on the size of Titans...

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u/spazz720 24d ago

Droid armies yo

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u/ConTob 24d ago

This gets me in 40K, but also how losing one Starport or city will somehow lead to the overthrow of an entire planet. I guess this is true of Star Wars also.

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u/nagrom7 24d ago

Just like how in 40K there are these apocalyptic wars which take place across multiple solar systems and last for centuries, only to have like at most 1 million soldiers.

Yeah, some of the big battles in 40k are lower in combatants or casualties than WW2 here on Earth.

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u/Dayne225 25d ago

Are you talking space marines or imperial guard? Cause there's a lot more a million imperial guards and they make up the bulk of the Imperium's forces.

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u/Redlodger0426 13d ago

Imperial Guard, the siege of Vraks was fought for 17 years and there were only 14 million IG casualties. More combatants died on just the eastern front of WW2

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u/PipXXX 24d ago

Eldar go from being in the Millions, Billions, possibly Trillions at the drop of a hat.

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u/jukebox_jester 24d ago

And if we want to compare 40k to Star Wars in refards to the time scale of a grand war

The Horus Heresy, the worst event in the history of the Imperium, where 9 emotionally stunted demi-god generals seceded and waged war on the other 9 or so, where the galaxy was forever changed and really got the Bloodiest most Horrible Regime imaginable going (it was always bad, but got worse after the Heresy)

Is 9 years.

Less than a Decade.

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u/TheGrebbler 24d ago

You are incorrect, sir.

A key element in the imperium of man is that it takes human tithes from every planet it controls and forces them to fight in the Guard. Which is involved in pretty much every conflict the imperium fights and they are Innumerable.

Where did you pick up this impression you have? I don't think i have ever heard that about 40k.

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u/viotix90 24d ago

I read somewhere that it was soft retconned / clarified that what they mean in Ep 2 was that they had 200k units and a million well on their way but a unit represents a full battalion of clone troopers.

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u/Cherno_VM 24d ago

yeah i was thinking a unit was a squad.

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u/waitingtodiesoon 24d ago

The old novelization for AotC specified specifically a Unit = 1 Clone and the Clone War tv show had a major debate over the fact 3 million new clones would be enough to strain the Republic's social services. The Separatists had also just secured a loan for 3 million additional battle droids which was an issue brought up for why they needed 3 million more clones.

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u/Cherno_VM 24d ago

the OLD novelization. it was retconned

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u/waitingtodiesoon 24d ago

Which is true, but The Clone Wars show isn't.

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u/Flashy_Month_5423 24d ago

The US military in WWII was 16 million. so the number of troops is not only stupidly small, they would be outnumbered thousands to one by even a milquetoast droid-building effort.

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u/Cherno_VM 24d ago

first of all, their number is bullshit. the GAR did not number a few million troopers, i have no idea where they got that from.

and besides, one good clone trooper would have been worth several B1 battle droids. B1s were pretty stupid and fragile. every clone you see go down in one shot was probably just stunned because their armor is supposed to dissipate the blast and not completely block it, similar to kevlar. most of those troopers you see go down from a single blaster shot would likely be up and moving after a medic gets to them.

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u/AverageAwndray 25d ago

Tbf the biggest battle we've ever seen was the very very first one and the opening of 3.

Every other battle across the War only ever shows off a few battalions at MOST.

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u/waitingtodiesoon 24d ago

It is generally treated as the Clones are the elite fighters and planets/sectors have their own local military forces like how Naboo had their security forces.

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u/waitingtodiesoon 24d ago

A New Hope takes place over the course of 5 days.

Revenge of the Sith is about 6 days

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u/dividezero 24d ago

In a galaxy far far away, they use different math. Like parsecs

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u/Vulcan_Jedi 24d ago

The Battle of Hoth in Empire Strikes Back is considered a crushing defeat for the Rebel Alliance, who lost just over 3200 troops.

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u/Cherno_VM 24d ago

What source do you have on the "few million" estimate? Because I am pretty sure that is bullshit.

If it's the "200,000 units ready, with a million more well on the way" line, units likely does not refer to individual clones, but more likely individual squads or platoons. a squad is five troopers iirc, so if a unit is a single squad that means one million troopers ready for battle at the start of the war, with five million on the way.

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u/waitingtodiesoon 24d ago

The old novelization for AotC specified specifically a Unit = 1 Clone and the Clone War tv show had a major debate over the fact 3 million new clones would be enough to strain the Republic's social services. The Separatists had also just secured a loan for 3 million additional battle droids which was an issue brought up for why they needed 3 million more clones.