Like piracy, the mercenary ethos resonates with idealized adventure, mystery, and danger, and appears frequently in popular culture. Many are called adventurers, filibusters, soldiers of fortune, gunslingers, gunrunners, ronin, and knights errant.
Books In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", from Washington Irving's Knickerbocker Tales, the Headless Horseman is said to be the ghost of a Hessian mercenary who was decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolution. Walter Scott's "A Legend of Montrose", set in Scotland during the Civil War of the 1640s includes the character Dugald Dalgetty, an experienced mercenary who does not fight out of political or religious conviction, but purely for the love of carnage. However, he is very professional, and remains loyal to an employer to the end of his contract. He gained his experience fighting for various armies during the Thirty Years' War, then still raging in Germany. Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" features a band of mercenaries referred to as the Free Companions, led by Maurice de Bracy. They are initially supportive of an attempted usurpation of the rule of England by Prince John. During the 1880s, Colonel Thomas Hoyer Monstery wrote or co-wrote a series of dime novel adventure stories said to have been inspired by his own activities as a mercenary in Central America and South America. Richard Harding Davis wrote the 1897 novel Soldier of Fortune. Davis later wrote a non-fiction Real Soldiers of Fortune in 1906. The account featured true stories of Major-General Henry McIver, Baron James Harden-Hickey, Winston Spencer Churchill, Captain Philo Norton McGiffin, General William Walker, and Major Frederick Russell Burnham, chief of scouts. The novel The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth and the 1981 film of the same name, which go into some detail about an actual if fictionalized mercenary operation in Africa in the 1960s. The novel The Wild Geese (originally titled The Thin White Line) by Daniel Carney and the 1978 film of the same name. The plot is that a global British financial syndicate seeks to rescue the deposed leader of a central African nation. It hires a band of mercenaries to do the job. Both the titles Dogs of War and The Wild Geese are derived from other sources. "Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war" is from Act III, scene 1 of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. After the signing of the Treaty of Limerick (1691) the soldiers of the Irish Army who left Ireland for France took part in what is known as the Flight of the Wild Geese. Subsequently, many made a living from working as mercenaries for continental armies, the most famous of whom was Patrick Sarsfield, who, having fallen mortally wounded on a foreign field, said "If this was only for Ireland". An episode in With Fire and Sword (), an 1884 historical novel by the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, set in the 17th century Khmelnytsky uprising, depicts a band of German mercenaries with high professional ethics, who prefer to fight to the death against impossible odds rather than betray their contract to the King of Poland. At the end of Micah Clarke, a historical novel by Conan Doyle, the protagonists – hunted in England for their part in the failed Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 – set out to be mercenaries in Europe, until conditions in their homeland change. The book's young protagonist is told: "You are now one of the old and honourable guild of soldiers of fortune. While the Turk is still snarling at the gates of Vienna there will ever be work for strong arms and brave hearts. You will find that among these wandering, fighting men, drawn from all climes and nations, the name of Englishman stands high". The 1967 novel Dirty Story by Eric Ambler depicts the misadventures of the half-caste petty criminal Arthur Abdel Simpson who takes up a career as a mercenary for a cynical mining company in Central Africa. Simpson is a misfit unsuited for the role of mercenary, yet he manages to outwit his far tougher professional colleagues and keeps the reader's sympathy as an engaging rogue. Tenth Man Down by Chris Ryan, a military novel regarding modern-day British training advisers in a chaotic post-colonial African nation (Known as "Kamanga", possibly after the unrecognized state in Congo), features mercenary characters ranging from minor antagonists to unlikely allies. Many are revealed to be Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans who formerly served with the SADF. The mercenaries in this storyline are initially working for anti-government rebels, paid for their services in diamonds pilfered from a local mine. However, this alliance begins to falter after subsequent clashes with Kamangan Special Forces robs the employers of their payment source. Several of the Afrikaners desert, while two others, including a sniper, are captured and cannibalized by the government troops. The only American mercenary soldier in the unit, a former US Navy SEAL, eventually helps the protagonist Geordie Sharp escape from a rebel camp.
Science fiction and fantasy
Mercenaries have featured in a number of science-fiction novels. Author Jerry Pournelle has written several books about science-fiction mercenaries known as Falkenberg's Legion. Also, author David Drake has written a number of books about the fictional hovercraft armored regiment Hammer's Slammers. Both series of books are brutal in their portrayal of complex low-intensity warfare despite technological advances. Gordon R. Dickson's Dorsai!, part of his Childe Cycle, includes the planet Dorsai with a society structured like that of Switzerland. Like the old style Swiss mercenaries who hired themselves out to the Italian states, Dorsai hire themselves out to other planets. A series by Mercedes Lackey concerning mercenaries is the Vows and Honor Trilogy (The Oathbound, Oathbreakers, Oathblood). Barry Sadler formerly of the U.S. Army Special Forces and singer of "The Ballad of the Green Berets" wrote a series called Casca series about Casca Rufio Longinius, a soldier in the Roman legions who is cursed by Christ on Golgotha for driving a spear into him.
There have been a number of books based on the fictional universe developed for the board game BattleTech and in which mercenaries feature: Robert Thurston, The Legend of the Jade Phoenix; Loren L. Coleman, Patriots and Tyrants and Storms of Fate. The mercenary industry in the BattleTech universe is also depicted as a booming profession, with mercenaries being accredited for work through an interstellar body called the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission.
Also George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire an epic fantasy series, feature mercenary characters known as "sellswords", who are generally seen as greedy, unscrupulous and cowardly by the society. Similarly, Glen Cook's The Black Company series focuses on the adventures of an elite mercenary unit.
Mercenaries are also featured heavily in Joe Abercrombie's The First Law series
The South African mercenary, Christian Rindert is a principal character in Hugh Paxton's 2006 novel Homunculus published by Macmillan in paperback (March 2007, ) which features mercenary operations and the testing of horrific new bio-weapons during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
In the Ashes series by William W. Johnstone, the main character of Ben Raines is mentioned as having worked as a mercenary-for-hire in several African armed conflicts after leaving the U.S. military (having served during the Vietnam War). During his service time, he was a member of the 'Hell-Hounds', a military unit that is said to be the closest version to a mercenary group that the U.S. has ever fielded in battle.
Mercenaries or "Mercs" are a recurring characters in "The Chronicles of Riddick" Universe. In this setting, Mercs are often found filling the roles of Bounty Hunters who take out contracts to capture the universe's most dangerous criminals and turn them over to brutal Triple Max Prisons. These Mercs often work alone or in small groups, however they are known to sign on to larger crews depending on their contract. Mercs are contracted through an umbrella organisation known as "The Guild" which legalizes and loosely monitors their activities, however, many Mercs are partial to the practices of kidnapping for profit and stealing prisoners, often using extreme violence. There are vary few limits to which these Mercs will go to accomplish a mission, such as posing as police officers and infiltrating occupied planets just to capture one rogue convict. The recent Xbox 360 game The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena features a large group of "Rogue Mercs" arguably space pirates, who raid passing vessels and transform the occupants into mindless "Ghost Drones" which become a commodity to sell to the warring factions of the galaxy. Bounty Hunter Mercs are sometimes known as "Fake Badges".
Magazines and comics A magazine ostensibly written for mercenary soldiers is Soldier of Fortune (SOF). The popularity of SOF led to several similar magazines with titles such as Survive, Gung Ho!, New Breed, Eagle, Combat Illustrated, Special Weapons and Tactics, Combat and Survival (still published), and Combat Ready that have mostly ceased publication.
Captain Easy Soldier of Fortune was an American comic from the 1930s to the 1980s.
The manga Hellsing features a band of mercenaries known as The Wild Geese, led by Pip Bernadotte. It is unclear whether the mercenaries are intended to be representing the same group as in the Daniel Carney novel, though this is possible. It is also likely that the group takes its name from The Wild Geese, the Irish who left Ireland following the Treaty of Limerick, since it was the Wild Geese serving France who finally broke the back of the English army at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745.
The manga Dragon Ball features the Ginyu Force, elite mercenaries hired by Freeza.
The manga Berserk prominently features a group of mercenaries, the Band of the Hawk. The main character, Guts, is also raised by mercenaries.
The manga Inuyasha features The Band of Seven, a band of seven mercenaries that loved to kill and were so strong that warlords feared their strength even as allies, before they were hunted down and beheaded. They were revived ten years later as spectres guarding the main antagonist Naraku in exchange for eternal life from Shikon Jewel shards.
Full Metal Panic! and its various sequels focus largely on a mercenary organization known as Mithril.
The manga and anime series Black Lagoon focuses on a group of mercenaries known as The Lagoon Company and pirates in present-day Southeast Asia.
The Marvel Universe features many mercenary characters as heroes or villains, most notably Deadpool. Others include Moon Knight, Taskmaster, Agent X, Luke Cage, Silver Sable, and Bullseye. Mercenaries can make convenient enemies for superheroes because, plot-wise, they require no further motivation than to have been hired by another enemy.
The webcomic Schlock Mercenary follows the galactic adventures of a 31st-century mercenary company.
Slade Wilson, AKA Deathstroke is a mercenary in the DC Universe, and is an enemy of Batman and the Teen Titans. Similarly, Floyd Lawton (Deadshot) is a mercenary sniper and killer in the DC Universe, enemy of Batman, Green Arrow and other characters.
Theatre George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play Arms and the Man, and its adaptations into the 1908 operatta The Chocolate Soldier and later films all center on the misadventures of a decidedly not soldierly Swiss mercenary in the Balkans of the later 19th century.
Films See also List of war films: Mercenaries in the third world