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A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes This a Useful Notes page. A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes

Osama bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian noble and the leader of the international Sunni Muslim terrorist organization al Qaeda. He was responsible for both major terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole.

He was eventually located in a fortified compound in Pakistan. He was killed at the compound on May 1, 2011 during a U.S. Special Forces operation, closing a chapter in the war on terrorism.


Osama Bin Laden provides examples of the following tropes:
Osama bin Laden in documentaries and fiction:

Anime and Manga[]

  • Osama is the only guy the H-Doujinshi Viva Freedom who doesn't get to have sex. (And serve him right!) Specifically, his men kill him for interrupting their orgy.

Film[]

  • Mentioned in Planet Terror as having been found and killed by Bruce Willis' character.
  • James Bond: A Captain Ersatz version of Bin Laden turns up in The Living Daylights as one of the good guys. This was before The Great Politics Mess-Up when Bin Laden was one of our stalwart allies whose band of brave freedom fighters were nobly trying to get the evil Soviet occupiers out of their countries.
    • That's actually a Hamid Karzai expy. And at no point in his life was Osama bin Laden ever an ally of the United States, even back when him and the US had a common enemy. Look up his pre-Gulf-War history before he even got into terrorism in the first place and was a (somewhat) prominent and respected citizen of Saudi Arabia, and you'll find a guy angrily ranting that Saudi Arabia didn't need the Americans' help for anything and should instead mobilize a 'holy army' to go stop Saddam's invasion all by themselves.
  • The movie Osama — the first film to come out of Afghanistan since the Taliban banned films in 1996--is actually not about that Osama. Well, not explicitly about him.
  • The 2008 Morgan Spurlock documentary Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden.

Live-Action TV[]

  • Appeared in Dead Ringers, particularly in one memorable sketch where he went on a Blind Date-style show.

Literature[]

  • An absolutely bizarre book entitled Where's Bin Laden? parodies the Where's Waldo? series with bin Laden and his minions hiding around the globe, in the midst of their own terrorist plots.

Newspaper Comics[]

Video Games[]

  • Fugitive Hunter, a PlayStation 2 first-person shooter/fighting game, has Osama bin Laden as the final boss. You kickbox him to a gangsta rap about...beating up Osama bin Laden.

Web Comics[]

  • He appears in a Bob the Angry Flower - Space Cat crossover strip from way back in 1998 or rather someone else with the same name as it turns out.
  • Sore Thumbs: He appears in an out-of-freakin'-nowhere context as the villain of a storyline in the webcomic.

Web Original[]

  • Homage: Broken Saints features an aging, bearded middle-eastern man of a fearsome disposition who speaks in quotations from the Qu'ran. His name is Osama. Coincidence? The character's first involvement in the series occurred before 9/11, his identity (as father of Iraqi Anti-Hero Oran) was revealed well afterwards, and his canon name is never mentioned in the series itself at all. Make of that what you will.
  • A Brazilian comedy website, Charges.com.br, have Osama (and sidekick "Zuanta", pun on "sua anta", "you ass") as frequent characters.

Western Animation[]

  • Appears in 2DTV, usually in sketches where he gets annoyed by the Taliban's lack of high-tech weapons to fight the Americans with.
  • American Dad did one episode where Osama is already in the US working undercover as an accountant.
  • Family Guy: Osama bin Laden is beaten up by Stewie Griffin in the opening sequence of the episode "PTV", after being prevented from sending a hostile message to the United States.
  • There was a "Bin Laden in a Blender" web site on The Simpsons. Implied in one episode (where Homer and Marge met each other as kids) that he was Homer's pen pal.
  • South Park: Osama bin Laden Has Farty Pants.

Other[]

  • Eminem plays him in the video for the D 12 song "Without Me".
  • Brazilian comedy group Casseta & Planeta has a sketch in their TV show depicting Osama living in Rio de Janeiro with an abusing wife.
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