Well, funny how that went. And here I was thinking that it was high time to say goodbye to another time-honored, storied B-movie cliche: the capable, but mentally damaged Vietnam veteran suffering from flashbacks to the horrors of war.
It was a very convenient cliche, since the capability could be triggered by circumstances, just like the mental damage. Therefore, even a normally incapable character like Biff could suddenly turn into a highly efficient war machine – with the slight drawback of seriously impaired IFF skills.
But, convenient or not, I was pretty sure that the days of that cliche were finally over, simply due to chronology. The last men drafted for service in Vietnam were born in 1952, so they’re 63 by now – making the Professor still too old, but everyone else on the team far too young for it.
It seems, though, that the cliche received an unexpected respite via the medium of gaming. Biff might be too young to have served in Vietnam, but he still could have played a FPS game on the subject – and, if certain media outlets are to be believed, playing that sort of game is at least as mentally damaging as actually taking part in a war, if not more so!
Yeah…I know, the media outlets in question are not to be believed. But, hey, it’s a B-movie, so it’s justified that it draws its information from the B-news.
Plus, hey, it’s Biff – even if humans aren’t affected by games in that way, Biff still might.
More on Thursday!