Order vs Chaos themes in fiction

[Cain]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrderVersusChaos

There is a great list here so I will reproduce it.  If you have any, please add to the thread.

Anime and Manga

One Piece has — at least as a background story so far — the war of the World Government and their policy of "absolute justice" against the free-spirited pirates. The World Government is portrayed as corrupt and pretty much completely evil, aside from a few story-prominent Navy officers who reject "absolute justice" in favor of their own brand of justice. The pirates, on the other hand, range from nice guys like Luffy to jerkasses like Buggy to dog-kicking scumbags like Arlong and Crocodile.

s-Cry-ed (anime version) casts the independent mercenary Kazuma as a proponent of chaotic ideals and the military-mindset HOLY member Ryuhou as a big fan of order. Then Kyoji Mujo shows up, representing unadulterated evil.

Tsutomu Nihei's Blameverse features this conflict prominently. In Noise, the main character is a cop investigating a cult who worship the power of chaos who are kidnapping children to use for human sacrifices in their bizzarre Magi Tek rituals. When they kill her, she is ressurected by a The Safeguard, protectors of order, but they turn out to be a pack of fascists who plan on disenfranchising & killing everybody who can't afford network implants & brainwashing the ones who do. Then in Blame!, we see the aftermath of this; the cult succeeded in throwing the world into chaos, but since they're so poorly organized their descendants, the Silicon Lives, don't amount to much more than a bunch of roving cyber-barbarians. The Safeguard doesn't fare much better, as their directives become so corrupted that they essentially believe that everything that's not them must be exterminated.

Very much present in Soul Eater, which likes to play around with the concepts on a regular basis.


Comics

The Invisibles had the good guys as agents of Chaos, fighting off the evil forces of eternal Order.

The original, Silver Age run of Doom Patrol had the team tending toward Good Chaos, as they were the rejects and cast-offs of society. Grant Morrison's later run kicked this into overdrive, with surreality as the order of the day, and characters like Crazy Jane (each of whose multiple personalities has its own superpower) and Danny the Street (a sentient transvestite boulevard). It also featured Evil Chaos in the form of the Brotherhood of Dada, and Evil Order as Darren Jones and the Men From N.O.W.H.E.R.E.
* Granted, the Brotherhood of Dada wasn't evil so much as plain weird.

The DCU has the Sufficiently Advanced Energy Beings known as the Lords of Chaos and Lords of Order. Several previously-existing magical beings were retconned to fit in with this; Dr. Fate's mentor Nabu became a Lord of Order, the Legion Of Super Heroes' antagonist Mordru was revealed as a Lord of Chaos, and so on. Most portrayals of these focused on balance, especially Hawk and Dove, who represent, respectively, Chaos and Order and were created by a Lord of Order and a Lord of Chaos who had fallen in love and tried to find some happy middle.

The DCU also has Jack Kirby's Fourth World of the New Gods, where Order is represented by the oppressive tyrant, Darkseid, who demands absolute obedience and seeks the Anti-Life Equation, mastery of which will force any mind to submit to the will of he who wields it. He's opposed by the Space Hippies of New Genesis, who believe in peace and free will ("That is the Life Equation!") — and his own son, who is essentially a personification of pure, primal fury.


Film

One of the underlying conflicts in Demolition Man, with several characters representing different levels on the spectrum, and the two main villains of the movie lying on opposite extremes.

All the Pirates Of The Caribbean want to do is sail around the world, drink rum and get saucy women at Tortuga. But noooo... The Company just has to have its Order.

In 2008's The Dark Knight, the Joker claims that he is a representation of chaos.


Literature

The Ur-Example is of course the works of Michael Moorcock, especially the Elric and Corum series, where the Lords of Chaos and the Lords of Law pick Champions to fight for them. Neither Order nor Chaos are portrayed as very nice.

Zelazny's Book Of Amber also had Order and Chaos, respectively embodied by the Unicorn/Pattern and the Serpent/Logrus, as the main cosmological forces of his multiverse. In the second series, they were rather insistent on main character Merlin picking a side, much to his annoyance. Too much imbalance was especially said to endanger the existence of the universe.

Part of the world's magic system of Modesitt's Recluce novels. His system is very complex but normally the Chaos side is evil. This is increasingly subverted in the later novels, but we have not yet seen an Order mage as a major villain. Ironically, the Chaos mages have (or had) a well-organized Empire, while the Order mages were generally either rebels or refugees for much of their history.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy seemed to portray Chaos as good and Order as evil, but it subverted, double-subverted, and triple-subverted this. You gotta love those Discordians.

Nonfiction example: Hobbes's Leviathan is very pro-Order, characterizing totalitarianism as the only alternative to "the war of all against all".

A semi-viral unpublished novel called The Cloven Accord depicts Chaos as evil natural-disaster-causing demons and Order as a mind-destroying cult. The happy medium, the Ilyarians, appears to be extremely metaphysical hedonism. Uniquely, all symbolism inherent in these concepts is helpfully listed at the back of the book.

Mickey Zucker Reichert's Renshai series ties this trope to a modified version of Norse Mythology. Odin has been keeping the world as orderly as possible to delay Ragnarök. One of the main characters in the book decides the world needs a little bit more chaos. The efforts of other characters to stop him end up being counterproductive, tilting the balance the other way.

The Discworld makes heavy use of both sides of this trope.

    * The Auditors of Reality represent Evil Order (they want to destroy all life because it's untidy), and Death typically finds himself against them, though he's more of a Balancing force than Chaotic. However, Kaos does show up toward the end of Thief of Time, in order to tip the balance in the battle between the Four Horseman against the Auditors.
    * There's Evil Chaos on the Disc in the form of the Elves. Not to mention the Cosmic Horrors from the Dungeon Dimensions.
    * Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, represents Order in the human world; whether he is good, evil, or just Lawful Neutral depends on how you interpret the motives behind his methods. Vimes tends to support order through chaotic methods.

The Old Kingdom series has Charter Magic (Order) vs. Free Magic (Chaos), though the Abhorsen makes use of both.

Perdido Street Station has the Construct Council, a giant sentient colony of robots, avatar of Order and the superego, and the Weaver, described as "the dancing mad god", an Arachnomorphic Personification of dream, creativity, and the subconscious.

The Thursday Next books have the Hades family as Evil Chaos and Goliath Corporation as Evil Order. Thursday tends towards Neutral Good.

In John C Wright's Chronicles of Chaos, the central conflict of the setting is that of Cosmos vs. Chaos. The children are caught in the middle; indeed, one consideration when thinking of escaping back to their parents is that they aren't certain the forces of Chaos are right, even though the forces of Cosmos have been holding them hostage.


Live Action TV

Babylon 5 had the Vorlons and the Shadows. Originally they were portrayed as Good vs. Evil (Vorlons projecting angelic images of themselves, shadows causing utter fear with their ships). Later, their millennial conflict is revealed as rival philosophies run amok: Order (Vorlons) vs. Chaos (Shadows), with the younger races being forced to choose a side or die. The idea was taken from Babylonian mythology, hence the name of the show, which of course makes it one of these.

Firefly: The chaos-loving Independents (several of whom comprise Our Heroes) vs. the order-loving Alliance (the antagonists, responsible for a number of nasty things in the name of the greater good, but still more noble-minded and sympathetic than, say, the Empire from Star Wars).

In Get Smart, the government spy agency the heroes belonged to was called Control, while their enemies' organization was Kaos.

Depending on the writer, the conflict between the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods in HP Lovecraft's mythos can be viewed as order vs Chaos. The Outer Gods are also often associated with Chaos, being essentially not-really-anthropomorfic personifications of primal forces, hence Azatoth often being called the Nuclear Chaos and Nyarlatothep's epiphet "the Crawling Chaos"


Mythology

Norse Mythology falls in this categorization, with the lawful Aesir, chaotic Jotnar, and neutral Vanir.

This is the central tenet of Zoroastrianism. Followers worship Ahura-Mazda, the embodiment of truth, order and justice — and oppose chaos and disorder (also known as the Lie). One of the offshoot sects, called Zurvanism, names the Lie as Ahriman, the brother of Ahura-Mazda, and holds that the two are always in conflict over the spirits of mankind. The two are both the sons of Zurvan (aka Time).

In Khemetic Orthodoxy, the god Set is considered to embody constructive chaos (the forest fire that allows new growth, for example) while the... thing... known as Isfet represents Chaos taken to its potentially universe-destroying extreme.

Discordianism. What else could be expected when the Goddess is Eris, goddess of chaos


Video games

Order and Chaos have been divided into separate worlds in The Longest Journey. Although generally both sides try to leave each other alone, sometimes someone gets it into their head that their side is the superior.

Garrett of Thief forms an alliance of necessity with the forces of Order when Chaos grows too strong. Then he switches sides for the sequel.

Shin Megami Tensei had this. In fact, several of them had both a Good/Evil and an Order/Chaos balance going on.

The entire premise of Primal was this. Arella was the literal personification of order. Her polar opposite is Abbadon, who has begun to tip the balance of power towards chaos.

Grandia II ends up portraying the two Gods of the story (Granas and Valmar) as personifications of Order and Chaos, both supposedly created by humans who leaned too far one way or the other. It spells it out, but very briefly, and the characters do not comprehend any of the implications. A little robot makes the remark in question. You see, Granas and Valmar were some ancient civilization's scientific researchers, who jointly discovered how to transmute matter and energy at will, i.e. the key to utopia, and promptly became as gods. Their partnership broke up when they realized their ideologies were split neatly along the line described by this trope — Granas wanted a perfect world full of happy people who never experience anything negative; Valmar insisted that life is made interesting by conflict... so he started one. The details are foggy, but we do find out that the war ended with Granas down for the count and Valmar (or at least his giant bio weapon) still hanging around. Gameplay ensues.

Subverted in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. In Path of Radiance, the direct prequel, as well as much of this game, the player is lead to believe that Ashera (Goddess of Order) is a typical, benevolent fantasy deity, while the Dark God (Chaos incarnate) is a sealed evil threat to the world, blamed for a global flood that nearly wiped out the world save Tellius. It's later revealed that the reason why the Dark God can't be released is not because the Dark God itself poses a threat, but rather because waking it will also awaken Ashera. Ashera herself is bent upon nothing short of the complete destruction of sentient life as part of her judgment against the two main races of Tellius, Beorc and Laguz, for their inability to stop fighting each other. The "Dark God", Yune, is the one that gives the main characters the ability to oppose her, as well as being generally friendly. In fact, the two goddesses were once one being, Ashunera, the creator of the world. Ashunera sought to stop the two races from fighting before, but lost control of her emotions, and thus caused the flood. Blaming her emotions for weakening her, she divested of her chaotic side in order to become a more perfect goddess. In the epilogue of the game, though, it is revealed the two halves were reunited 1200 years after the game's events.

If the words of a certain traitorous Bishounen priest are any indication, this may well turn out to be the most primal conflict in the Suikoden series. There are many ways one could wax fauxlosophic about this, but so far most of the writing on the wall seems to be margin notes. For instance, the conflict that created the Suiko-verse was between two embodiments of protection and destruction. Refreshingly, the series chastises both extremes, showing the horrors of "true Order" (dharma, in the words of the aforementioned priest) at least as often as the horrors of "true Chaos."

The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles is based around this trope. The Daedric Prince of Order and his forces periodically destroy the Shivering Isles, the realm of madness, creativity, and free will. The main quest of the game? To stop them this time.

    * In general, the Aedra and Daedra (basically, the two pantheons) of The Elder Scrolls are divided among the lines order/stasis vs chaos/change. It often does come across as simply good/evil, though.
    * Especially in the later games. In the earlier games they were pretty much all bastards.

The main villains of the game Anachronox are revealed to be a species devoted to Chaos, who were sent back to a former universe by a species devoted to Order — though not much is made of this, since the sequel was never made.

Mortal Kombat has the Order Realm/Seido, and the Chaos Realm, who are constantly at war with each other.

Dungeon Master features a group of heroes sent on a quest by Lord Order to defeat Lord Chaos. Complete the quest as stated and Lord Order thanks you, then murders you. To win, you have to defeat them both by merging them back into the one human they were originally created from.

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning had two factions: Order and Destruction (since one of the races is Chaos). With Empire, Dwarves and High Elves on one side and Chaos, Greenskins and Dark Elves on the other. However, it has somewhat been criticised for making the Order side a bit too 'Good', although that could just be in comparison to the pure baby-murdering evil that is Destruction.


Western Animation

Codename Kids Next Door had the Delightful Children From Down the Lane and their Father as Evil Order, and more widely, the adult world in general. Interestingly, the KND could themselves be highly Knight Templar-ish, erasing the memories of their own operatives once they got "too old".

To quote The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, "The world has almost completely fallen into order. It's up to us to restore chaos." Eris, the goddess of chaos, is a recurring character. The one time she was ever calm, life was becoming so routine that it might as well not exist. However, her plans are as chaotic as she is, varying from pranks to antagonizing people to massive upheaval of all life, and involving everything from brainwashing dolls to giant flying babies to giant alien zombie lobsters.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I Have Some Proposed Additions to this List:

Roleplaying Games:

Paranoia/Paranoia XP The setting of this RPG goes heavily into the idea of destructive order, and destructive chaos (and constructive chaos) The setting of this game is a futuristic dystopia ("Alpha Complex") run by a deranged automated sentient computer system that serves as its absolute ruler (evil order), the computer grows continually more and more insane over time due to the technicians in charge of its upkeep programming it with contradictory (and self-serving) orders (Evil Chaos), and the only thing keeping the Alpha Complex from completely destroying itself is a combination of poor orgaiization that keeps the Computer's order's from being carried out effectively (generic (good and evil) chaos), and a number of secret societies (Including the Illuminati  ) plotting to overthrow the computer and install themselves as the new rulers (Generic (Good and Evil) Order)

Toon In the "Crawl of Catchooloo" campaign setting, the "Elderly Gods" and "Pretty Good Old Ones" gradually drive the (naturally insane cartoon) characters sane by their mere presence (Evil Order)

Dungeons and Dragons This one is perhaps the most significant for these purposes. The game's "Alignment" system divides every character's moral and behavioral ideology into two entirely independent dimensions of Law(Order)-Vs-Chaos and Good-Vs-Evil, in a manner similar (nearly identical, actually) to the dimensions of Order-Vs-Chaos and Creation-Vs-Destruction presented on Page 63 of the Principia Discordia ("The Curse of Greyface and the Introduction of Negativism"), except that the D&D version also allows for/actually shows neutrality between Order and chaos and between good and evil.

Movies (Warning: Spoilers)

SkulHedFace, an hour long film by the heavy-metal rock band GWAR, deals with an evil space-alien (acting, for this thread's purposes, as an agent of evil order) stealing/harvesting the individuality the individuality of the members of rock-and-roll bands, in the form of a substance called "Jizmoglobin"

Renzezvous with RagNaRok, also by GWAR, involves a "Holy Robot From Outer Space" named "Cardinal Syn" coming to enslave the Earth (Evil Order)

[LMNO]

In "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", the Antagonist (judge something-or-other) wants to rid the world of the disorderd antics of the other 'toons.

[Xooxe]

Garrett of Thief forms an alliance of necessity with the forces of Order when Chaos grows too strong. Then he switches sides for the sequel.

To elaborate; you are Garrett, a rebel who distanced himself from a secret society, obsessed with balance, that watches over The City. Indifferent from their desire to manipulate events from the shadows, you put your skills to use by stealing from the wealthy. After retrieving an artifact for a client who turns out to be a shapeshifting trickster god, you are betrayed. One of your eyes is plucked out and you are left for dead. You meet with former enemies from the Order of the Hammer, a highly conservative mainstream religion who worship their deity the Master Builder along with strong work ethics and all the symbols of industrial production. They give you a mechanical eye and in return you venture into The Maw of Chaos to stop the Trickster from finishing a ritual which will open a portal to The City for all his chaos minions to smash civilisation. You end up killing the trickster god by mindfucking him.

In the second game an offshoot cult emerges from the Order of the Hammer. The Mechanist Order goes beyond worship of industrial production by placing a delusional importance on high technology. By selling advanced security systems and rubbing shoulders with the powerful elite, their leader, Karras, plans an insurgency to create his idea of utopia. Under manipulation from the Mechanists, the city watch embarks on a campaign of oppression directed towards pagan sympathisers. You end up allying with someone who helped betray you in the first game.

They're both brilliant games.

[Requia ☣]

Screw you Cain I just lost a whole day to TV Tropes.   

[dontblameyoko]

I think V for Vendetta had some of the order/chaos theme.  I haven't seen the movie; i've only read the graphic novel.  (and i actually don't read a lot of those.)

on a side note, i find Xooxe's bouncing McCain avatar to be somewhat amusing.

[Zenpeanut]

Wow, I've always loved Paranoia...a game with nor rules? I'm in. Also, the book based on it is a pretty good read (I think the title's "Extreme Paranoia" or something)

Also x2, Reichert's Renshai series is what got me into this mess in the first place.

[Chairman Risus]

I'm not so sure the Vanir are neutral in Norse.  They mixed in with the Aesir early on.

[Requia ☣]

Somebody really needs to get an account there and write a coherent sentence for the Discordianism part.  (Not me, I tried to do that and got trapped in the site).

[the last yatto]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_vs_E
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_between_good_and_evil



write a coherent sentence
well that counts me out

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Movies (Warning: Spoilers)

SkulHedFace, an hour long film by the heavy-metal rock band GWAR, deals with an evil space-alien (acting, for this thread's purposes, as an agent of evil order) stealing/harvesting the individuality the individuality of the members of rock-and-roll bands, in the form of a substance called "Jizmoglobin"

Renzezvous with RagNaRok, also by GWAR, involves a "Holy Robot From Outer Space" named "Cardinal Syn" coming to enslave the Earth (Evil Order)

Come to think of it, the conflict against forces of evil order is pretty much a common theme in all GWAR products.

It should probably also be mentioned, by the way, that GAWR themselves represent evil chaos, which is nonetheless consistently presented as still being preferable to evil order...

[Cain]

Possible mention in Equilibrium?  When Jurgen, the leader of the resistance, is talking to John Preston, he makes the link between emotions and chaos.  And when we consider the regimented, subdued society of Libria, where even individuality is considered a sign of sense-crime...

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Here's Three More:

1.) How about Les Miserables... The theme isn't "Order Vs. Chaos" per se, but it is, however, "Super-Rigid-Order Vs. Not-Being-A-Douchebag". (Inspector Javert represents being a rigidly lawful douchebag, and Jean Valjean represents not being a douchebag.

2.) Has anybody mentioned The Odd Couple yet?

3.) Also, how about Dennis the Menace (Dennis is chaos, and Mr.Wilson is order)

4.) In any episode of Spongebob Squarepants in which Spongebob interacts with Squidward, Spongebob (and Patrick) could be seen as representing chaos, and Squidward could be seen as representing order)

5.) In the Anime Irresponsible Captain Tylor, the title character could be seen as representing chaos; his skill as a military leader arises from the ironic fact that he has absolutely no idea what he is doing, and this makes it difficult for his enemies to predict his actions (which they assume, incorrectly, must have some overarching plan behind them)

[Cain]

Definitely Les Miserables and Dennis the Menace, yeah.

[Faust]

Aeon flux the series:
Each episode is its own continuity, and most of the events are meaningless beyond their character building purposes.
Aeon represents chaos and Trevor Goodchild represents order.
Each fails to fully understand the other, at various instances each character can be presented with positive or negative characteristics.
Its also one of the best love/hate relationships i've seen in visual media.
Its also probably one of the best series ever made.