History Main / TheEndoftheWorldasweKnowIt

** In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' if the protagonist decides to take the Nihilist route because of the endless war between Law and Chaos, four Pale Tribe beings (white-clothed, pale-skinned people) help him destroy the entire world. With a black hole for irony.

** In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' if the protagonist decides to take the Nihilist route because of the endless war between Law and Chaos, four Pale Tribe beings (white-clothed, pale people) help him destroy the entire world. With a black hole for irony.

* In ''Videogame/MassEffect'', Shepard's mission is to prevent the End of the Galaxy As We Know it at the hands of Saren, whose [[spoiler:ship is in reality an AI known as Sovereign, a representative of an ancient race of sentient machines (AIs) who are responsible for bringing about the destruction of all sentient organic life in the galaxy every 50,000 years or so.]]
** In Mass Effect 3, this happens in the first TEN MINUTES of the game.
*** At the end of VideoGame/MassEffect3 [[spoiler: this happens no matter what you do as the mass relay network, which galactic civilization is built around, is destroyed. In the worst ending, the Earth is completely scorched from your poorly thought out actions.]]
*** The Extended Cut gives more optimism towards the galaxy returning to normal after the war…[[spoiler:unless you choose to reject using the Crucible, resulting in galatic civilization being purged from existence by the Reapers. A new civilization does rise from the ashes, having saved themselves by spending every second of every day of every year after finding a time capsule building nothing but anti-reaper warships making the fleet shepard gathered look like a small squadron.]]

This is a common trope in SpeculativeFiction, horror and over-the-top espionage shows, as well as many {{anime}} series. It may serve as a prequel to an AfterTheEnd series, or the culmination of a JustBeforeTheEnd story. May also include CosyCatastrophe and/or ScavengerWorld elements. It's also very common in video games, where it's occasionally unavoidable, sometimes occurring halfway through the game; in other cases, poor play may result in the world coming to a bad end.

* The ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' FanFic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7614248/ The Ed Of The World]]'' parodies this trope rather well. Ed's monster movie marathon is suddenly interrupted by a test of the EmergencyBroadcast System. Ed, being [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Ed]], then thinks the world's going to end. He suddenly comes up with a crazy theory of the moon getting out of orbit and striking Earth (this may be a reference to MajorasMask though). Eddy, being a opportunistic JerkAss that he is (take note that this takes place before TheMovie) decides to take advantage of the situation for a scam. He convinces the kids that the world IS going to end and declares Ed's basement a bomb shelter, on which they could pay 50 cents to refuge themselves. They obviously fall for it, having no idea that it's a scam. When the "hour of doom" passes and they see that the world hasn't ended, {{hilarity ensues}}. What really takes the cake though is that ''you can totally see this happening in the show!''

* The ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'' FanFic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7614248/ The Ed Of The World]]'' parodies this trope rather well. Ed's monster movie marathon is suddenly interrupted by a test of the EmergencyBroadcast System. Ed, being [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} Ed]], then thinks the world's going to end. He suddenly comes up with a crazy theory of the moon getting out of orbit and striking Earth (this may be a reference to MajorasMask though). Eddy, being a opportunistic JerkAss that he is (take note that this takes place before TheMovie) decides to take advantage of the situation for a scam. He declares Ed's basement a bomb shelter, on which the kids could pay to refuge themselves. They obviously fall for it, having no idea. When the following day comes up and they see the world hasn't ended, {{hilarity ensues}}. What really takes the cake though is that ''you can totally see this happening in the show!''

[[{{Recursion}} It's the end of the world as we know it]]\\

* In [[AdversaryCycle ''Nightworld'']]. Also just in general in that series and the RepairmanJack series, this is the goal of Rasalom and the Otherness.

* The series ''TheDeadZone'' has a recurring {{Arc}} about Greg Stillson somehow being responsible for TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt in the near future, and Johnny Smith has to find a way to stop him. [[spoiler: He screws up in the series finale and ends up causing it instead. NiceJobBreakingItHero]]

* Most of the ''Literature/SkulduggeryPleasant'' novels have this theme. For the first three books, Skulduggery and Valkyrie must prevent religious fanatics from releasing a race of EldritchAbominations called the [[EvilInASealedCan Faceless Ones]] who used to rule the world until they were banished into another dimension. If they return, they will inhabit human bodies, tear down man's cities, destroy the countryside, destroy half the human race, enslave the rest and work them until they die before moving onto another world. In the fourth book, a madman named Dreylan Scarab tries to provoke a war between the "mortal" and magical communities that will almost certainly result in the end of civilisation. In the fifth, a race of evil spirits are released who are looking for an evil sorceress named Darquesse who will raze the world.

** And then there's the Ba'ali, who believe a different set of [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] will rise, the so-called 'Children' who existed before God created light and who will surely destroy all of mankind should they ever wake up. To prevent this, the Ba'ali commit as many utterly depraved acts as possible in the name of the Children, in an attempt to ensure they don't realise how relatively nice the World of Darkness is and come to remake things in their image.

* The smallpox-typhus-cholera-influenza pandemics in the Americas make a great example, though it only affected 1/10 of the planet's population[[hottip:*: Despite the widespread use of corn and potatoes, two crops with excellent calorie-returns on the effort required to cultivate them, the Inca confederation was on giant not-very-fertile mountain range and the Empire of the Aztecs wasn't too fertile either and was smaller. The Americas lacked beasts of burden, so all the farm-work had to be done by hand (no horses or oxen available, ergo no plows). The population of the entire Americas was no more than 50 million - about the same as Europe or 1/4 of the Chinese Empire of the Ming]]. Within a few decades the recurrent pandemics reduced the population to some 10% of what it had once been, the coastal and riverine areas being hardest hit. It was in this environment that the Castilians arrived and two small bands (of 100-300) of free-lance soldiers sided with the powerful rebel factions within the highly-decentralised Aztec Empire and Incan Confederation, bringing down the established governments and installing themselves at the apexes of the new hierarchies. Funnily enough, though figures like Bartolomé de las Casas talk of many natives being literally worked to death under the slave-labour system established shortly thereafter, in reality most of the natives used as slaves died of disease because of their close proximity to Europeans and their diseases. In fact, the mortality-rate continued to be so high among those exposed to Europeans that slaves had to be brought from Europe, the middle east, and increasingly from Africa to make up for the massive labour-shortage. These ''also'' died in high numbers because the Caribbean's swamps were great breeding-grounds for malarial mosquitoes, which meant the slave-stocks constantly had to be topped-up by new purchases from the African slaver-kingdoms[[hottip:*: Which, you guessed it, were kingdoms built around organised agriculture and periodically enslaving one's neighbours at gunpoint and selling them off to the western-Europeans, Indian Muslims, and Arabs]].

* The smallpox-typhus-cholera-influenza pandemics in the Americas make a great example, though it only affected 1/10 of the planet's population[[hottip:*: Despite the widespread use of corn and potatoes, two crops with excellent calorie-returns on the effort required to cultivate them, the Inca confederation was on giant not-very-fertile mountain range and the Empire of the Aztecs was not very big either. The Americas lacked beasts of burden, so all the farm-work had to be done by hand (no horses or oxen available, ergo no plows). The population of the entire Americas was no more than 50 million - about the same as Europe or 1/4 of the Chinese Empire of the Ming]]. Within a few decades the recurrent pandemics reduced the population to some 10% of what it had once been, the coastal and riverine areas being hardest hit. It was in this environment that the Castilians arrived and two small bands (of 100-300) of free-lance soldiers sided with the powerful rebel factions within the highly-decentralised Aztec Empire and Incan Confederation, bringing down the established governments and installing themselves at the apexes of the new hierarchies. Funnily enough, though figures like Bartolomé de las Casas talk of many natives being literally worked to death under the slave-labour system established shortly thereafter, in reality most of the natives used as slaves died of disease because of their close proximity to Europeans and their diseases. In fact, the mortality-rate continued to be so high among those exposed to Europeans that slaves had to be brought from Europe, the middle east, and increasingly from Africa to make up for the massive labour-shortage. These ''also'' died in high numbers because the Caribbean's swamps were great breeding-grounds for malarial mosquitoes, which meant the slave-stocks constantly had to be topped-up by new purchases from the African slaver-kingdoms[[hottip:*: Which, you guessed it, were kingdoms built around organised agriculture and periodically enslaving one's neighbours at gunpoint and selling them off to the western-Europeans, Indian Muslims, and Arabs]].

* The smallpox pandemic in the Americas makes a perfect example, except that it affected only half of the planet. Within a century it reduced the population down to about 5% and then strangers from unknown lands with superior technology arrived in huge numbers, often killing or displacing what little islands of civilizations had survived.

* Standard thing the heroes of ''Manga/DragonBall Z'' are trying to prevent, although the ante was upped in the Buu saga, where the BigBad could easily have wiped out the entire universe had he not been stopped.

* While ''Manga/ElfenLied'' starts as a story about two cousins hiding an abused and escaped mutant from an evil covernment agency, it is later revealed that said mutants may very well destroy all human life on earth and it becomes a very close call near the end. [[GeckoEnding It is absent in the Anime.]]
** Considering the fact that the humans in ''ElfenLied'' are universally portrayed as [[HumansAreBastards irredeemable]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters monsters]] who are practically ''deserving of dying'', one might argue that humans surviving while the [[DyingRace Diclonii]] have been all but condemned to extinction makes the entire human race itself a KarmaHoudini.

** Considering the fact that the humans in ''ElfenLied'' are universally portrayed as [[HumansAreBastards irredeemable monsters]] who are practically ''deserving of dying'', one might argue that humans surviving while the [[DyingRace Diclonii]] have been all but condemned to extinction makes the entire human race itself a KarmaHoudini.

** Considering the fact that humans are universally portrayed as [[HumansAreBastards irredeemable monsters]] who are practically ''deserving of dying'', one might argue that the humans surviving while the [[DyingRace Diclonii]] have been all but condemned to extinction makes the entire human race itself a KarmaHoudini.

* Lori Petty's opening narration for ''TankGirl'' uses the trope name exactly -- hear it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9-VfuOoI4 here]], at about 2:48 -- to describe the cause of the film's AfterTheEnd setting.