10 Times WWE Asked You To Blindly Hate Foreigners
2. The Orient Express
The very worst example of WWE's flagrant marketing of blind mistrust towards East Asians, Pat Tanaka and Akio Sato's Orient Express unit was an act entirely predicated on ensuring American audiences thought Japanese people were low-down, sneaky cheats.
Sato and the Hawaiin-born Tanaka were brought in by the 'devious' Mr Fuji (because of course they were) in 1990, which was punishment enough considering the failure he was as a manager in storyline terms.
The first combo to use the panpipe/glockenspiel music that would be fused to every Japanese performer for the next half-decade, the company didn't remotely attempt to characterise them beyond their ethnicity.
Largely unsuccessful despite a count-out victory in their only WrestleMania appearance against The Rockers in 1990, the tandem were flattened by the rhetoric-spewing duo of Jim Duggan and Nikolai Volkoff at SummerSlam, before suffering demeaning elimination on Sgt Slaughter's racially-driven 'Mercenaries' Survivor Series team in a match watched by the first wave of troops stationed across the Middle East during the early stages of the Gulf War.
Sato's retirement shortly after reunited Pat Tanaka with former 'Badd Company' partner Paul Diamond, with the toned-down variant of the duo going on to earn huge plaudits for fabulous matches against The Rockers and New Foundation at the 1991 and 1992 Royal Rumbles respectively.