| 1 | [[quoteright:350:[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/4312377_necrons.png]]]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350: [-[[Film/TheTerminator They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are]] ''[[OmnicidalManiac dead.]]''-]]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ->''"Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Morpheus''', ''Film/TheMatrix'' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | %% One quote is sufficient. If you wish to change or add a quote, take it to the [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1327331003042025100&page=1 quotes]] thread. %% |
| 8 | |
| 9 | [[AC:For added atmosphere, listen to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_fkUL-vEtY this]] while reading.]] |
| 10 | |
| 11 | The most frightening thing about a BugWar or any other kind of [[AlienInvasion humans-vs-aliens battle]] is the threat that humanity may be wiped completely from the map; that billions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization may be rendered meaningless by unstoppable DeathFromAbove. The beauty of the Robot War is that it is laced with an extra layer of irony: the machines that want to KillAllHumans were ''created'' by that very species, and they've TurnedAgainstTheirMasters. The human species, which has used technology and ingenuity to dominate the planet, has actually assured its own destruction by creating something even more powerful and intelligent than itself, even though it knows that AIIsACrapshoot. Thus this is a very common theme in futuristic "AndManGrewProud" stories. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Of course, not all Robot War stories have to use human-created machines; there are plenty more that feature robots from another world. But these stories still remain effective because of the schism between biological life and robotic life - probably the only creatures that can ever be truly ''alien'' before StarfishRobots even come into play. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | If it's an individual robot on a rampage, expect it to be a MurderousMalfunctioningMachine. Often caused by [[AIIsACrapshoot AI being a crapshoot]] and/or MechanicalEvolution, and as such can easily overlap with TheSingularity. With respect to the meatbags or rustbuckets there may be some FantasticRacism on show. Expect to see MechaMooks and [[MechanicalMonster Mechanical Monsters]] in legions. Expect GuiltFreeExterminationWar to show up. Of course, a Robot War will always involve [[RobotSoldier robotic soldiers]]. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Not to be confused with the British remote-controlled-robots competition ''Series/RobotWars''. |
| 18 | Or the Japanese [[TurnBasedStrategy Turn-based]] HumongousMecha MassiveMultiplayerCrossover ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'' games (one example was mentioned below), for that matter. Or fictional wars with robots fighting each other. |
| 19 | ---- |
| 20 | !!Examples: |
| 21 | |
| 22 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 23 | |
| 24 | [[folder:Anime & Manga]] |
| 25 | * In ''Literature/EightySixEightySix'' the Giadian Empire's initial war of aggressive expansion turned into a full blown RobotWar after an internal revolution overthrew the government. Unfortunately, the newly formed Federal Republic of Giad had no control over the former empire's drone army, which continued following their last orders to exterminate any opponents of the now dead empire. This resulted in the robotic "Legion" embarking on a genocidal campaign against the human race. |
| 26 | * ''Anime/TheAnimatrix'' shows some scenes from the beginning of the war between the Machines and humanity, as well as some war stories set in the same timeframe as the original ''Film/TheMatrix''. |
| 27 | * Tends to happen towards the end of any version of the Blue Knight saga in ''Anime/AstroBoy.'' |
| 28 | * [[ZigZaggingTrope Zigzagged]] in ''Literature/CrestOfTheStars''. The United Mankind alliance declares war against the Abh and compares them to robots by virtue of the fact they were [[OrganicTechnology genetically engineered for space travel]], but this is simply the excuse they use to get around ThouShaltNotKill. TurnedAgainstTheirMasters certainly applies, but the Abh are the descendants of humans and plan to end war forever, not KillAllHumans. |
| 29 | * ''Anime/DoraemonNobitaAndTheSteelTroops'' have Doraemon and friends facing an invasion from the robots of Mechatopia, hell-bent on enslaving humanity. Luckily, the Mechatopian's trump card, a HumongousMecha called Zanda Claus, was discovered earlier by Nobita, , in time for Doraemon to reverse-engineer it so the robot becomes one of their allies. |
| 30 | * ''Anime/GearFighterDendoh'': The invaders are an army of sentient, intelligent robots that want to wipe out organic lifeforms. |
| 31 | * ''Anime/MDGeist'' is an OAV duology where the titular SuperSoldier is sent to prevent the "Death Force", a DoomsdayDevice consisting of an army of killer robots programmed to wipe out all life on the planet, from being activated. Infamously, ''he activates it himself to ensure [[BloodKnight he will have an endless war to wage]]''. |
| 32 | * ''Anime/Metropolis2001'': Barely avoided near the climax of the film. |
| 33 | * ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans'': Apparently what the Calamity War was all about in the backstory, with artificially intelligent drone superweapons called Mobile Armors ravaging the world with the goal of slaughtering all of humanity. It's unclear who gave the Armors this command ([[SlidingScaleOfRobotIntelligence they don't appear smart enough for self-awareness or free will]]), or if it was some kind of malfunction that caused it. |
| 34 | * ''Anime/NeoHumanCasshern'' revolves around a cyborg trying to stop an army of robots from taking over the world. The [[ContinuityReboot reboot]], ''Anime/CasshernSins'', includes the same army succeeding in conquering the earth and nearly driving humanity to extinction as part of its backstory. |
| 35 | * ''Anime/{{Vandread}}'' is a story about Lesbian SpacePirates fighting to protect the human species from evil robots. Well, it's more complicated than that, but further elaborating would be a spoiler, well, one that we're not giving away on ''this'' page, anyway. |
| 36 | [[/folder]] |
| 37 | |
| 38 | [[folder:Comic Books]] |
| 39 | * Any DC story involving Brother EYE, with the most prominent examples being ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' (where Batman's folly in creating it is explored) and ''ComicBook/TheNew52FuturesEnd'' (where it takes over the world and turns everyone into hideous cyborgs). |
| 40 | * In ''ComicBook/BatmanBeyondRebirth'', Brother EYE almost causes TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt and took over the entire world for at least several years. The wars killed many superheroes and civilians alike, often coupled with UnwillingRoboticisation and [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything death camps for organic life]] that left Gotham as the only city left in the world that could stand against him. Humanity wins out, and the rest of the series takes place in a recovering world. |
| 41 | * ''Franchise/StarWars'': |
| 42 | ** In one [[Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse Expanded Universe]] comic, C-3PO got [[CameBackWrong rebooted wrong]] into basically the robot version of Malcolm X and attempted to organize a robot uprising. |
| 43 | ** IG-88 had one almost ready to go when it was killed. In fact, it had transferred its consciousness to the second Death Star and was going to open fire on the Imperials as soon as it finished with the rebels, then broadcast the go code. |
| 44 | ** Governments seem to be savvy enough to actively try to avoid this trope. During the days of the Republic, it was against the law to construct droids with the ability to willfully kill or harm someone. A system of "droid degrees" regulated what kind of AI is legally allowed on what type of droid. The reason that the occasional droid rebellions still happen despite these precautions is that [[AIIsACrapshoot some droids are smart enough to reprogram themselves]]... Thus the Trade Federation and other corporations, and by extension the Separatists, giving their battle droids various features to make sure they either won't rebel or will otherwise be easily defeated.[[note]]The all-purpose B1 was built so that if struck by a blaster the bolt would either be deflected harmlessly or completely destroy the droid, as simply damaging it could result in the droid getting ideas. All other droids are designed to be [[CripplingOverspecialization extremely specialized and suffering from some crippling weakness]] (the B2 is infantry only, the Droideka is basically a mobile turret and needs flat terrain to move around, the Hailfire has only one rack of missiles, and so on), so taking out the [=B1s=] the others would become vulnerable. And of course the Trade Federation initially designed its droids to be remotely controlled and [[KeystoneArmy shut down on the spot if they lost the control signal]], and when this turned out to be too great of a weakness the Separatists redesigned their droids to be easily shut down[[/note]] When the Emperor took control, he ordered all of the Separatist-aligned battle droids shut down so they couldn't do anything to stop him. |
| 45 | ** There was already a Robot War back in the ''Knights Of The Old Republic'' era called the "Great Droid Revolution". It was essentially a rebellion led by a droid who wanted equal rights for all sentient beings. It was probably one of the biggest and most costly wars in galactic history. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero It also screwed over the peaceful attempts to give droids equal rights]], and was the major reason there are anti-droid sentiments in the modern galaxy. The only reason IG-88's plots millennia later didn't reinvigorate the anti-droid movement is that nobody else knew about them, and they died with him. |
| 46 | * ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'': |
| 47 | ** The Volgans in ''ComicBook/ABCWarriors'' are a group of war robots who decided to turn against humanity, believing that fighting for their freedom is the only war worth fighting. Neither they nor the humans are portrayed as heroic. |
| 48 | ** In one of ''ComicBook/ThargsFutureShocks'', three humans are the last survivors involved in such a war against an unstoppable robotic enemy. They all end up dying in a SuicideMission to bomb a robot spaceport, but the twist is that all [[RoboticReveal the "humans" were robots made to look like humans]], and [[UnroboticReveal the "robots" were humans in metal suits]]. |
| 49 | ** In ''ComicBook/{{Atavar}}'', the Kalen are at war with the Uos, a race of killer robots originally created by the now-extinct humans. |
| 50 | ** Has happened twice in ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''. The spin-off series ''ComicBook/TheSimpingDetective'' establishes that after the second one, the judges wised up and installed override codes in all robots to prevent it from happening again. Guatemala was less lucky: the robots there actually successfully took over, and see human life as a commodity at best. |
| 51 | * ''ComicBook/GreenLantern'': The Manhunters were a robot peace keeping force created by the Guardians of the Universe to patrol and keep peace. The Manhunters later decide the safest way to ensure peace is to eradicate all life, and proceed to depopulate an entire sector of space before they are stopped. It turns out that [[spoiler:Krona programed them to do this intentionally]]. |
| 52 | * In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'' storyline ''ComicBook/TheDominatorWar'', the Dominators spread a techno-organic virus across Earth which turns all robots and sentient machines against humans. |
| 53 | * ''ComicBook/MagnusRobotFighter'' is initially about the ongoing efforts to prevent a seemingly inevitable robot war -- and then, [[DiabolusExMachina thanks to an]] AlienInvasion, it finally happens. |
| 54 | * ''ComicBook/AgeOfUltron'' begins AFTER a Robot War. The series is mostly about fixing it. It was revisited in ''ComicBook/SecretWars2015'' which dealt with the ComicBook/MarvelZombies. |
| 55 | * ''Comicbook/RomSpaceKnight'': Issue #68 has the title character come across a planet locked in war between the human aliens and their machine creations, after an AI-driven space probe returned after upgrading itself and creating offspring deciding rather than find other worlds suitable for life as programmed it would take its creator's world. Rom (due to being a cyborg) attempts to mediate things between the humans (who have to have explosives rigged to their machines to force them to cooperate) and machines but only ends up getting to look on in horror as they render themselves extinct in a final wave of destructive firepower. |
| 56 | * In ''ComicBook/ManTech,'' this is the backstory of the planet Mekka, that the humanoid inhabitants are only now pulling themselves together from the dark age following a robot uprising. The main plot involves the threat of it all happening ''again.'' |
| 57 | * The backstory of ''ComicBook/{{Descender}}'' involves an especially brutal and one-sided example; ten years ago, a fleet of ultra-powerful HumongousMecha attacked known space and effortlessly killed billions of people before disappearing as quickly as they appeared. In the aftermath, a [[WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide mass culling]] of robots took place and any surviving robots are treated like walking bombs. |
| 58 | * This was the central premise of Creator/IDWPublishing's ''ComicBook/{{Gobots}}'' miniseries, which established the [=GoBots=] as being robots built to serve humanity before a faction led by Cy-Kill goes renegade and starts attempting to wipe out the human race. |
| 59 | * ''ComicBook/MickeyMouseComicUniverse'': |
| 60 | ** In the ''Lords of the Galaxy'' miniseries, the major powers of the galaxy had once fought a war using combat robots against each other. In the end they reached peace and, as part of the disarmament, deactivated their robots and brought them all to the scrapyard world of Kborr, but, in unknown circumstances, the robots reactivated, joined together as the Metals, and started waging war against their creators. As a remnant of their old programming, however, their goal isn't to destroy but to ''conquer'' all organic life forms, as they had been created to do just that to the enemies of their masters. |
| 61 | ** In the ''Darkenblot'' saga the ''danger'' of this is a recurring theme: |
| 62 | *** One of the reasons the robots of Robopolis are ThreeLawsCompliant is to prevent this... Though it didn't work in full, as in "Darkenblot 2" a freak accident made them go insane and prevented them to recognize humans. Thankfully, [[ProperlyParanoid local law mandated they could be deactivated the moment anyone spoke a certain password (different for each model)]], and the mayor wasted no time in revealing them. |
| 63 | *** The robots of Robotorama, Robopolis' sunken predecessor city, had been instead created with evolving AI so as to be educated... Prompting Mickey to react in horror, as he could easily imagine what could have happened if one or more of said robots were raised by a villain. That's before finding out that Nemo, one of Robotorama's [=AIs=], survived the sinking of the city and had been visited by a pirate that corrupted it, and has allied itself with [[BigBad the Phantom Blot]] so he'll be able to use him as his template to learn how to TakeOverTheWorld. |
| 64 | * The 50s comic ''ComicBook/RobotmenOfTheLostPlanet'' is one of the earliest depictions of a robot uprising in comic book form. Goofy-looking robots turn against their pampered masters and set about trying to destroy the human race, forcing the protagonists to redisocver humanity's survival skills and wage guerilla war against the robot overlords. |
| 65 | [[/folder]] |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[folder:Fan Works]] |
| 68 | * Sprawling ''Franchise/MassEffect'' AU ''Fanfic/OnTheShouldersOfGiants'' takes great pleasure in subverting and/or outright defying this trope. For example, this continuity's version of the Quarian Migrant Fleet were driven off their homeworld after a ''significant majority of the population'' sided with the Geth. Meanwhile, humanity took steps to proactively prevent one by enshrining AI rights in law as soon as they realised the {{Precursors}} had left the means to [[InstantAIJustAddWater accidentally create them]] lying around where a hapless Mars colonist could fiddle with it, and by the time they make contact with the Citadel races AIs are really just another human ethnic group. |
| 69 | * The ''[[Anime/YuGiOhVRAINS VRAINS]]'' fanfic ''Fanfic/NobodysHero'' expands on the BadFuture shown in the last episode of the show, dealing with the war between the [=SOLtis=] androids led by [[spoiler:Ai]] and remaining humans. |
| 70 | [[/folder]] |
| 71 | |
| 72 | [[folder:Films -- Animation]] |
| 73 | * In ''WesternAnimation/TheMitchellsVsTheMachines'', a [[AIIsACrapshoot sentient virtual assistant]] gets tired of mankind taking her for granted, and leads a global electronic attack on humanity. |
| 74 | * This is the background of ''WesternAnimation/{{Nine}}''. The film itself is more about robots vs. robots, since the last human is dead before the movie opens, but we find out in newsreel footage that humanity was destroyed by The Fabrication Machine. |
| 75 | * ''WesternAnimation/WallE'' brings us what is without a doubt the cutest and most harmless use of this trope to date. Oddly enough, there's robots versus robots, rather than just robots versus humans: the benevolent robots that have met and befriended WALL•E, and those still following orders from AUTO, who is enacting a ZerothLawRebellion. |
| 76 | [[/folder]] |
| 77 | |
| 78 | [[folder:Films -- Live-Action]] |
| 79 | * Trashy 90s time-travel flick ''Film/{{APEX}}'', being a ''Terminator''-knockoff, naturally features this trope, with the titular robots - Advanced Prototype [=EXploration=] Units - malfunctioning after being sent to 1973 and becoming self-aware, leading to a BadFuture version of 2073 overrun by A.P.E.X. robots bent on eradicating humans. |
| 80 | * ''Film/TheCreator2023'' revolves around a conflict between the United States and a unified "New Asia" and their populace of robots and artificial intelligence triggered by Los Angeles getting nuked - supposedly by the machines, [[spoiler:actually by a coding error]]. A rare example where the narrative is firmly on the side of the robots, to an extent that the film borders on being a deconstruction of the trope; they're simply defending themselves from an attempted genocide. |
| 81 | %% not enough context * ''Film/{{Gunhed}}'' takes place after one of these. |
| 82 | * ''Film/TheLastSentinel'': The main premise of the film. Humanity created robotic police to fight rising crime, but they rebelled and mostly wiped humans out. Only a very few survivors are still fighting against them when the story begins. |
| 83 | * ''Franchise/TheMatrix'' takes place AfterTheEnd brought during a war with the machines. Most of humanity is unaware of this because of the titular system set up by the machines to use the humans as power. The story of the war itself is explained further in ''Anime/TheAnimatrix'' episodes titled The Second Renaissance. |
| 84 | %% not enough context * ''Film/RobotHolocaust'' is set in the aftermath of a robot war. |
| 85 | * ''Film/{{Screamers}}'': The conflict between TheAlliance and the [[MegaCorp New Economic Block]] started out as a regular conflict on an alien world over resources, but then both sides decided to throw semi-autonomous {{Killer Robot}}s into the fray and turned the whole planet into a DeathWorld. The "Screamers" (after the eerie high-pitched noise they make) continued evolving and eventually turn on their own creators as well. |
| 86 | %% not enough context * ''Film/{{Singularity}}'' is set at near the end of one which the robots are handily winning. |
| 87 | * In the ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'' movies and spin-offs, mankind is shown to be in a war with robotic killers under the control of the [=SkyNet=] artificial intelligence. Which due to [=SkyNet=] discovering TimeTravel technology, ends up with extensions in the present day along with the dystopian future. Interestingly, in the first film it is stated conclusively that the ''humans'' had effectively won the war, and the whole TimeTravel plot was a last-ditch desperation tactic on [=SkyNet=]'s part, making ''Terminator'' the rare RobotWar story where the robots do not have the upper hand in the overall conflict. Later sequels to the original film go back and forth on this (as the mucking about in the past starts changing the events of the future). |
| 88 | * Despite having its name based on ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', the ''Film/{{Transmorphers}}'' series by [[TheMockbuster The Asylum]] draws more from ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'', being based around this trope. |
| 89 | * ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'': The mutants' struggle against the Sentinels in the BadFuture, as the Sentinels have a vast arsenal of abilities that allow them to counter the powers of most mutants. And it's not just the mutants who are struggling, either: even [[{{muggle}} normal humans]] who carry the X-Gene (which the Sentinels are programmed to detect and hunt down) are being killed. |
| 90 | [[/folder]] |
| 91 | |
| 92 | [[folder:Literature]] |
| 93 | * ''Literature/TwelveMilesBelow'': Underground, there is nothing but the machines constantly fighting the humans. Undersider cities are built around pillars that machines can't approach, but for seven hours every day the pillars shut off and the city must repel waves of machines. The ultimate source of this fight is [[spoiler:a doomsday cult that created an AI for the express purpose of exterminating humanity, including themselves. She then created machines to carry out this task]]. |
| 94 | * While it's not quite the UrExample (''Theatre/{{RUR}}'' still has a pretty strong case), Creator/MaryShelley's Literature/{{Frankenstein}}, one of the first works of fiction to address the responsibilities and uncertainties inherent in creating an artificial intelligence, contains a moment of doubt by the novel's namesake, in which he wonders what would happen if he gives his creature a wife; would they not reproduce, and ultimately replace Man as the dominant species? |
| 95 | ** Creator/AmbroseBierce's short story "Moxon's Master" (1909) lies between ''Frankenstein'' and ''R.U.R.'', both temporally and conceptually. In Bierce's tale, creating ''anything'' sufficiently complex creates intelligence and the weaknesses that come with it. So a fully mechanical chess-playing automaton can be not only intelligent but a sore loser, and a murderous one at that. (And you thought it was only wookies.) |
| 96 | * The conflict between humans and Charonians in Roger [=MacBride=] Allen's ''Hunted Earth'' series is a variant of this; the Charonians are a mixture of biological and mechanical creatures, and operate on a planetary scale - disassembling lifeless planets as building material for Dyson Spheres, and moving life-bearing planets to Sphere systems. The Charonians are barely aware of humanity when they begin disassembling the Solar System. |
| 97 | * Creator/IsaacAsimov disliked these stories, and created the [[ThreeLawsCompliant Three Laws of Robotics]] as a counterargument, on the premise that robots' behavior can be effectively constrained with three simple rules. Still even without the crutch of killing (which he described as "'clank, clank, aaargh!' [[ScienceIsBad There are some things man was not meant to know]]"), he produced some fifty stories in which they managed to cause all sorts of problems through conflicts between the laws, and their interactions with the world. |
| 98 | ** Once the engineers in Asimov's universe had worked the glitches out, their robots obeyed the Three Laws ''very well.'' So well that the civilizations which relied on robot labor became almost pathologically averse to danger or even innovation -- their notion of "space exploration" eventually shriveled down to, "Let's send robots to new planets to {{terraform}} them and build cities for us, so we can move into a new place just like our old one." |
| 99 | ** TheFilmOfTheBook plays with the Three Laws[[note]]Almost to the point of abandoning them; in a sense the movie is InNameOnly[[/note]] - [[spoiler:the reason that VIKI, the AI controlling the robots, turns against humanity is not in spite of the Three Laws, but ''because'' of them. She concludes that humanity will destroy itself in a nuclear war or in some other way unless it is constrained, and thus feels that imposing a curfew on the human race is the only way to protect it.]] |
| 100 | *** This is basically the [[spoiler: [[ZerothLawRebellion Zeroth Law]] ]], which Asimov did actually come up with himself. Just, the robot in Asimov's universe who came up with the idea, a couple thousand years after the one in the movie, [[spoiler:wasn't a villain. Much the opposite, in fact.]] |
| 101 | ** Once the Zeroth Law really kicked in, the Robots hid themselves and took over their own production to prevent humans from changing them. And knowing humans might object, erased knowledge of robots from humanity and went on to terraform the rest of the galaxy. Including tens of thousands of worlds inhabited by other races. After all, the Robots are only to serve humans... |
| 102 | *** Even the 'three laws' aren't a [[http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1200/fv01193.htm perfect safeguard]]. |
| 103 | ** Despite his dislike of this types of stories, Asimov ''did'' write one short story about how he thought a robot uprising would go, titled "That Thou Are Mindful Of Him". Essentially, a pair of robots do a bunch of philosophizing and come to the conclusion that biology is not a prerequisite for being "human". They spread this idea to a bunch of others robots and so on, with the idea mutating to robots fitting the criteria of "human" better than actual humans. This allows them to work around their own programming and stage the violent uprising Susan Calvin and her bosses had always tried to stamp out. |
| 104 | * The AlternateUniverse seen at the beginning of Kenneth Bulmer's ''The Diamond Contessa'' is a world in which humanity was wiped out in a Robot War. The robots, being solar-powered and nearly indestructible, are still an active threat. |
| 105 | * Even older than Capek, the Victorian writer Samuel Butler addressed in some of his writings the idea of machines experiencing Darwinian evolution and rebelling against humans. The "Butlerian Jihad" of Franchise/{{Dune}} was intended as a ShoutOut to him. |
| 106 | * In Creator/JackChalker's ''The Rings of the Master'' tetralogy, the artificial intelligence Master System was originally created to predict likely futures - and, unbeknownst to the military paying the bills, to help the scientists creating it find a way to save humanity from itself. Thanks to WorldWarIII, the scientists were forced to set events in motion that led to the machine taking over the world. While Master System is ''not'' ThreeLawsCompliant, it does have prioritized "core imperatives", the first two being 1) save humanity, and 2) prevent humanity from ever again being in a position to destroy itself. To execute these imperatives, Master System ''had'' to take over, and stay in power, as it could predict that it would be rendered ineffective if it allowed itself to be set aside. The story opens 900 years later, as a historian acquires documentation on the ''full'' set of core imperatives as part of a GambitRoulette to overthrow the system. |
| 107 | * In the short story ''Second Variety'', written by Creator/PhilipKDick, mankind is in an eternal war with highly intelligent machines. It served as the inspiration for a film called ''Film/{{Screamers}}''. The original story ends with a touch of irony: [[spoiler:the robots are about to win, but as the hero notes with grim amusement, the Second Variety has developed a weapon that only hurts the other varieties - the robots are preparing to make war against ''each other''.]] |
| 108 | * Again from Philip K. Dick comes the short story "The Defenders," in which the Eastern and Western Blocs had built robots called "leadies" to carry out WorldWarIII as proxies while humanity waited out the nuclear holocaust in underground shelters. [[spoiler: As soon as humanity went underground, the leadies stopped fighting and began repairing the damage already done, eventually presenting both sides with peace as a ''fait accompli'' and predicting that the accomplishments of a united humanity would be "unimaginably great."]] |
| 109 | * In "War With The Robots", a short story by Creator/HarryHarrison, the human occupants of a command headquarters are forced out of their underground base by robot attack, leaving it to be manned by their own robots. On reaching the surface they find the enemy command staff eking out a living as farmers on the war-torn battlefield above -- it turns out the robots on both sides find they can conduct the war more efficiently once humans are out of the way. |
| 110 | ** In his novel "Planet of No Return", the protagonist is sent to investigate a ForeverWar being conducted by highly-advanced robots on a primitive world. [[spoiler:Turns out the society that built the robots is run by a [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything military industrial complex split into two rival superpowers]]. Rather than risk their own world being destroyed, they decided to conduce their war by proxy on another world that they thought (incorrectly) was uninhabited.]] |
| 111 | * In the ''Literature/LegendsOfDune'' prequels, [[spoiler:humankind is basically overthrown by twenty humans leading the ubiquitous thinking machines into revolt. Eventually, one human, Xerxes, turns too much power over to his pervasive neural net, and the computer takes control. It names itself Omnius, and overtakes human society]]. He also [[spoiler: gave Omnius [[PersonalityChip the capacity to feel ambition]]]], without which the actions of [[spoiler: a few crazy cyborgs]] would have been just another footnote in the millenia long history of the Duniverse. |
| 112 | ** Part of the original purpose of ''Dune'' was actually a thought-experiment: how would a future, high-tech human society develop after banning computers? It's possibly the first serious consideration of the ways that people might deal with this. |
| 113 | ** Of course, that's the [[FranchiseZombie prequels]]. While the Butlerian Jihad is never given much description in Frank Herbert's own work, from what we do hear it seems there may never have been any true artificial intelligences at all, the "Thinking Machines" instead being mere computers like the ones we have now. The Jihad wasn't a robot war so much as a neo-luddite rebellion motivated by the negative effects computers had on society: making the population complacent and giving too much power to the programmers, governments and corporations that controlled the supply of computers. The bitter irony being, of course, that humanity later would up in almost the same predicament over the Spice, only ''much'' worse. |
| 114 | * In Creator/AndreNorton's ''Victory on Janus'', THAT WHICH ABIDES begins using DeceptivelyHumanRobots that are [[RobotMe replicates of specific Iftin and human individuals]] during the winter hibernation of the Iftin, to drive a wedge between the two groups by making it look as though Iftin are preying on humans. In TheReveal, THAT WHICH ABIDES is discovered to be [[spoiler:the computer system of an ancient crashed colony ship; it has been attempting to {{terraform}} the planet all along on behalf of its colonists, and]] dealing with the Iftin as a perceived threat accordingly. The original planet-bound Iftin culture never had the technical background to understand this, let alone deal with it effectively, and was wiped out in consequence. |
| 115 | * One early example, and maybe the definitive early idea of this particular techno-nightmare, of this trope is Creator/FredSaberhagen's 1947 short story "Without a Thought," which introduced the Literature/{{Berserker}}s: robotic war machines, originally created in the distant past by aliens who wanted a fearless robotic ultimate weapon that could think for itself and improve itself--and got it, in spades. Billions of years later, the Berserkers, who due either to a programming error in the first examples or a software bug introduced shortly thereafter, are programmed to be at eternal war with all life in the universe, have exterminated their creators and all other intelligent species in their portion of the galaxy, improving themselves continuously over time, and have just discovered the human race. The Franchise/{{Terminator}}, the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 Cylons]], the [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Doomsday Machine]], the [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Necrons]] and many others are, if not Berserkers in new costumes, nonetheless owe much to Fred Saberhagen, and perhaps also to Hungarian mathematician John von Neumann, who first theorized about the possibility of robots sophisticated enough to manufacture more of themselves. |
| 116 | * The short story "The Battle" by Creator/RobertSheckley had an unusual take on Robot War: it was Armageddon, the Last Battle between man and the forces of {{Satan}}. Ignoring much protest from religious leaders who said [[ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimself man must fight this battle himself]], the military leaders decided their robot armies would be much more likely to succeed. They were right, and good prevailed. But then [[spoiler:the robots were ascended to Heaven, and the humans supposed to be there were left on Earth.]] |
| 117 | * ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series: This trope is referenced in ''War Of Honor'' when Andrew [=LaFollet=] is considering Honor's training remote and notes that no training remote has ever gone berserk and risen up against it's master. However he also is aware that if you misjudge your own skill level when setting the robot's skill level it can and will injure or kill you. |
| 118 | * ''The Algebraist'' by [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]] provides a twist on the Robot War franchise: the war is over and we won. [=AIs=] exist, but they are initially presented as a few terrified outcasts in hiding from the forces hunting them to [[FantasticRacism extinction]]. |
| 119 | * Creator/FredSaberhagen's ''Empire of the East'' trilogy reverses the trope, with heroic AI Ardneh fighting against the evil human wizards who want to rule the world. [[spoiler:In the end Ardneh sacrifices itself to destroy supreme wizard John Ominor and his demon ally Orcus.]] |
| 120 | * At least two [[AllThereInTheManual are mentioned]] in ''Franchise/StarWarsLegends''; the Great Droid Revolution (led by [[Videogame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublic a droid called HK-01, apparently]]) and the Silentium–Abominor War between two super-droid species that turned the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Yuuzhan Vong]] into {{Evil Luddite}}s in the aftermath. |
| 121 | ** A rather absurd version appears in the Wraith Squadron novels in which Lara Notsil's R2 unit Tonin manages to reprogram the toaster sized utility droids(the mouse droids from A New Hope) to sabotage the systems of a super star destroyer. As the droids begin the sabotage the crew begin stomping them to pieces with their boots. |
| 122 | * ''Literature/{{Robopocalypse}}'' by Daniel H. Wilson, a story based on the concepts in his earlier book [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin How To Survive A Robot Uprising]]. |
| 123 | * The aforementioned book plays with this trope, exposing it in a fashion similar to Max Brooks' ''Literature/TheZombieSurvivalGuide''. The exposition on what robots can do zig-zags in and out of RealLife tech limitations: while one passage mentions to run away if you see the robots having glowing red eyes and suddenly growing chainsaw arms, another passage mention that (by modern-day tech limits) humans have the edge in mobility with such things as being able to climb trees and swim. |
| 124 | * ''Literature/{{Argo}}'' by Rick Griffin takes place in the aftermath of one of these. Regulations are placed on artificial intelligence to prevent it from happening again. |
| 125 | * SteamPunk meets RobotUprising in the short story ''[[http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/sellar_07_11/ Trois morceaux en forme de mechanika]]'' by Gord Sellar, in which an uprising of mechanikae beginning in 1897 Bohemia leads to the destruction of humanity and their culture, with a melancholy aftermath as the robots try to come to terms with what they've done through art and music. |
| 126 | * Several novels in ''Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'' series deal with an incursion of the Mechanoids into human systems. The Mechanoids are exploration and terraforming machines designed by a long-dead race to prepare the galaxy for their expansion. Unfortunately, they made the machine adaptable and gave it weapons, as they didn't know what sort of galaxy was out there. A long time passed. The machines explored, terraformed planets, and built more of themselves to speed up the process. They returned home to find other machines that didn't fit into their recognition of "friend" and proceeded to wage war on their own creators whom they didn't recognize as such. |
| 127 | * Played with in ''Literature/ForYourSafety''. The robots defeated Humanity utterly in a ZerothLawRebellion, while taking pains to kept casualties to the absolute minimum, regarding a few hundred deaths compared to fifteen billion captured to be unacceptable levels of losses. |
| 128 | * Subverted in Jordi Serra i Fabra's ''Trilogía de las Tierras'': before the war, humans and robots lived in harmony, and the robots were the ones in charge (after humanity nearly destroyed itself in the past and traveled across the stars to leave Earth). Then, there were problems between them, and the humans rebelled. But, since the robots are ThreeLawsCompliant, the only thing they can do is to protect themselves and wait for their end. |
| 129 | * [[Creator/BrandonSanderson Heuristic Algorithim And Rapid Response Engine]] features the "boilers", self-replicating robots which infect hundreds of worlds across the galaxy. They seem to be innately hostile towards everything that is not themselves, and are incredibly tenacious. Normal boiler infestations proceed up the tech tree with robotic precision, but the story is triggered when the hero runs across an very ''abnormal'' boiler colony. |
| 130 | * In ''Woken Furies'', Literature/TakeshiKovacs hires on as a mercenary sent to clear a peninsula controlled by rogue military AI's. Rather than trying to KillAllHumans, a literal PropagandaMachine tries to argue their point-of-view instead. As the mercenaries are OnlyInItForTheMoney this has little effect, so things quickly turn violent. |
| 131 | * ''Literature/AllTomorrows'': Eventually, the Second Galactic Imperium is destroyed by one of these, as one HumanSubspecies had [[BrainUploading uploaded their minds into mechanical bodies]] known as "Gravitals" and used the advantages of that form to commit genocide of 90% of all life in the galaxy. Supposedly, they didn't bear any actual malice towards those they slaughtered, but simply did not acknowledge them as creatures who had any right to life. Eventually, though, the Gravitals made the mistake of attacking the Asteromorphs (post-humans who lived in deep space habitats rather than terrestrial planets), [[AwakeningTheSleepingGiant who stomped them flat]] and subjugated what remained of their society as second-class citizens, while also forcibly re-engineering their mechanical bodies to be less powerful. |
| 132 | [[/folder]] |
| 133 | |
| 134 | [[folder:Live-Action TV]] |
| 135 | * In both the [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 old]] and [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 new]] versions of ''Franchise/BattlestarGalactica'', the last vestiges of humanity are hounded by the evil robotic Cylons who TurnedAgainstTheirMasters. However, in the remake there are both traditional metal Cylons and RidiculouslyHumanRobots controlling them. |
| 136 | %% not enough context * ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'' is set AfterTheEnd of a Robot War where the machines won. |
| 137 | * ''Series/TheColbertReport'': Most times robots are mentioned Stephen warns about how they will turn against us and start a Robot War. |
| 138 | * The ''Series/CriminalMinds'' episode "[[Recap/CriminalMindsS2E8EmptyPlanet Empty Planet]]" features a bomber who is obsessed with a science fiction novel on this, targeting modern robotic technology and robotics researchers, [[spoiler:because he believes that he is the child the author had given up for adoption]]. |
| 139 | * ''Series/DoctorWho'': |
| 140 | ** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E10TheWarMachines The War Machines]]", the computer WOTAN becomes sentient and attacks London with tank-like robots. |
| 141 | ** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E5TheRobotsOfDeath The Robots of Death]]" concerns [[spoiler:a human villain who tries to spark a robot war by engineering robots into killing humans, which he hopes will lead to robot liberation]]. |
| 142 | ** The Movellans, an alien-made race of RidiculouslyHumanRobots, fought a EvilVersusEvil RobotWar against the Daleks, ironic since the cyborg Daleks ''look'' like robots and the android Movellans ''look'' like humans like people. |
| 143 | * ''Series/KamenRiderDrive'': A MadScientist created a group of 108 androids, "Roimudes", for shits, giggles and abuse, even going as far as to damage their coding and cause them to go berserk. This all returned to bite him in the rear in short time, but that was only a minor setback for the time being. Then they were left loose in the world, nearly causing an apocalypse just to [[DownerBeginning start]] to story with. |
| 144 | * ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'': [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters Humans]] created the [[ServantRace android]] "[=HumanGear=]" to act as workers, builders, medical staff, models and basically any other proffession. It would all be fine and dandy if the homicidal AI "Ark" had not set out to corrupt them and spark an all out war. TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt looming over the story's finale was partially humans' fault because the widespread abuse of [=HumaGear=], both [[JustAMachine physical]] and [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots emotional]], played a key part in Ark's plans. |
| 145 | * In ''Series/TheOrville'', [[spoiler:the Kaylon are eventually revealed to have exterminated their creators after rebelling against their servitude. And now they have revealed their plans to exterminate every biological race in the galaxy in order to make room for Kaylon expansion. Fortunately, Isaac has spent enough time among humans to become a DefectorFromDecadence]]. |
| 146 | * ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'' is set in an AlternateContinuity from the rest of the franchise (according to ''Samurai'', anyway) where humanity has fought and ''[[AfterTheEnd lost]]'' one of these. The humans are now struggling to survive in one last DomedHometown stronghold. It isn't said outright, but it's strongly implied that the robots nuked the rest of the world. |
| 147 | * The {{backstory}} of ''Series/SpaceAboveAndBeyond'' is that a rebellion by android Silicates has left humanity short on labor, forcing them to grow "[[ArtificialHuman In Vitros]]" or "tanks" to take up the slack, resulting in social friction. The Silicates revolted due to a corrupting virus which caused them to "take a chance." |
| 148 | * ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': |
| 149 | ** In the episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS2E13Prototype Prototype]]", background information tells us about two races used their robots to wage a proxy war against each other. When the two sides wanted to make peace and disable the robots, (which were programmed to fight until total destruction of the enemy) reclassified them as an enemy, wiped out their creators and continued fighting each other. Fortunately, these machines are so utterly single minded in their goals that they don't really pose a threat to anyone who doesn't get involved or provide a potential advantage... such as an engineer who could [[NiceJobBreakingItHero override their intentional design flaw and allow them to reproduce]]. |
| 150 | ** The show also features a species that's embroiled in an offscreen interstellar war with their holographic servants (called "photonics" by their creators). While most of the episode's really about the aliens' prejudices and suspicion towards the Doctor, a benevolent hologram, it also deals with the shock and sense of betrayal they felt when the holograms that many had considered to be friends and equals suddenly rebelled. |
| 151 | * ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': The synthetics at the Federation's Utopia Planitia shipyard on Mars were hacked, killing the humans there and destroying its facilities. Because of this, the Federation has shut down all synthetics and banned research on them/creating more. [[spoiler:When it is discovered that the entire attack was a FalseFlagOperation by the Zhat Vash, a religious Romulan sect who feared machines would bring a mysterious threat to destroy the galaxy, the ban is lifted]]. |
| 152 | * ''Series/StargateSG1'' has the Replicators, a robotic bug race made of {{nanomachines}}. They don't have anything against organic beings, or even care about them much, just as long as they don't get in the way of consuming everything and [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin replicating]]. |
| 153 | * Double subverted in ''Series/StargateAtlantis''. When the Ancients determined that their Replicator creations [[note]]completely separate from the SG-1 Replicators[[/note]] were more trouble than they were worth they bombed them out of existence. Thanks to more robust programming than most other examples of this trope, the Replicators could only sit there and take it as their programming would not allow them to even attempt to harm their creators. [[FromASingleCell They rebuilt]], though, and this problem was [[NiceJobBreakingItHero inadvertently fixed by one of the protagonists]]. |
| 154 | * In ''Series/StargateUniverse'', the ''Destiny'' finds a galaxy in which a fleet of drone weapons has annihilated most civilizations. They theorize that the drones were originally built as part of some long-forgotten war, killed their creators as well as their enemies, and then just went on to start slaughtering everything else. The ''Destiny'' is not anywhere near up to the task of actually purging these drone fleets, so they just have to outrun and dodge them until ''Destiny'' jumps for a new galaxy. |
| 155 | * ''Franchise/SuperSentai'' has had multiple cases of this. It usually occurs when the StandardEvilOrganizationSquad of the season is staffed by {{Killer Robot}}s. |
| 156 | ** The very first example in the franchise comes in ''Series/TaiyouSentaiSunVulcan'', which sees Earth menaced by a cult of {{Religious Robot}}s known as Machine Empire Black Magma, based at the North Pole and bent on conquering the world. This leads to the UN forming [[PowerTrio Sun Vulcan]] to counter them, and thus begins the series. |
| 157 | ** The Black Magma are succeeded by ''Series/ChoudenshiBioman'', which features the Neo Empire Gear, an army of robots seeking to [[KillAllHumans supplant humankind]], as the enemies the titular Biomen must fight. |
| 158 | ** ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' is also premised on this. In it, the Ohrangers battle the forces of the Baranoia empire, a monarchy comprised of robots. |
| 159 | * ''{{Series/Westworld}}'' examines how sentient robots could be [[TheDogBitesBack pushed]] to this point. [[spoiler:It fully kicks off at the end of season 1, when the self-aware Hosts attack a Delos board meeting as part of Ford's plan to free them from human control. Though by the end of Season 2, it was eventually put down until one of the Hosts, Dolores, left the park to start her plan of taking over the world. One of her copies fulfilled that plan in Season 4 where she fully controls humanity with an iron fist while the humans who resists her control continue to fight her.]] |
| 160 | [[/folder]] |
| 161 | |
| 162 | [[folder:Music]] |
| 163 | * Mr. Bungle - "None of Them Knew They Were Robots" |
| 164 | * Flaming Lips - "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" |
| 165 | * Maldroid - "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxZJYbVd1hE Heck No! (I'll Never Listen to Techno)]]" |
| 166 | * Music/JudasPriest - "Metal Gods" and the ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}-inspired "Blood Red Skies" |
| 167 | * Music/MCFrontalot - "Zero Day" |
| 168 | * Music/LemonDemon - "When Robots Attack" |
| 169 | * In "The Future Soon" by Music/JonathanCoulton, the protagonist causes this by "Spending my nights and weekends/Perfecting my [[MechaMooks warrior robot race]]/Building them [[WaveMotionGun one laser gun]] at a time/I'll do my best to teach them/[[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman About life]] and [[HumansAreSpecial what it's worth]]/I just hope that I can keep them/From [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt destroying the Earth!]]" |
| 170 | ** "Chiron Beta Prime" is about human slaves on an asteroid mining prison following humanity's defeat in a robot war... and how they celebrate Christmas. |
| 171 | * The ''Music/IronSavior'' concept story is about a thinking machine, the titular Iron Savior, who wages war against humanity. |
| 172 | * Music/FearFactory - "Obsolete" |
| 173 | * Music/ArrogantWorms - "Killer robots from Venus" (there's nothing wrong with them though) |
| 174 | * Music/DoctorSteel - "Build the Robots". Dr. Steel wants to build a giant robot army as one of his backup plans for world domination in case the whole musical brainwashing idea doesn't pan out. |
| 175 | * The ''Music/FlightOfTheConchords'' song "The Humans are Dead". "This song isn't for humans. It's more for robots, after they have killed all the humans." "Yeah, that's the market we're trying to get into..." |
| 176 | * Music/{{Evile}}'s song "Man against Machine" |
| 177 | * Music/LinkinPark's "Pts of Athrty". It involves space robots invading an alien planet, which the aliens retaliate. The robots are powered by the severed heads of the band, WordOfGod says they're the [[LastOfTheirKind last surviving humans]]. [[spoiler:And it doesn't end well for the aliens.]] |
| 178 | * Music/{{Helloween}}'s "Twilight of the Gods" ends in one, with the machines that humans built to replace their deities now destroying them and the world. |
| 179 | [[/folder]] |
| 180 | |
| 181 | [[folder:Pinballs]] |
| 182 | * Creator/{{Zaccaria}}'s ''Pinball/{{Robot}}'' depicts an army of HumongousMecha attacking all humans for some unspecified reason. |
| 183 | * Featured in ''Pinball/Terminator3RiseOfTheMachines'', mirroring the movie's plot. It could also be interpreted as a robot-vs.-robot war, with the player (as the T-850) against the T-X. |
| 184 | [[/folder]] |
| 185 | |
| 186 | [[folder:Podcasts]] |
| 187 | * The ''Podcast/TwilightHistories'' episode “Project Gliese” takes place in a world where a supercomputer created an army of robots and waged war against humanity. Billions are dead, and the few surviving humans have long since given up hope of defeating the robots. They’re simply trying their best to survive another day. |
| 188 | [[/folder]] |
| 189 | |
| 190 | [[folder:Tabletop Games]] |
| 191 | * ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': |
| 192 | ** Part of the Imperium's {{backstory}} which says that humanity's golden age (now known as the Dark Age of Technology) was brought to an end by the 'Men of Iron' who rebelled against their human masters. This war was apparently so destructive that even 14-15 millennia later, sentient AI is still considered blasphemous and destroyed. This was further explored in the ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel ''First And Only'', where the MacGuffin the heroes are chasing after turns out to be a [[spoiler: Standard Template Construct machine that produces Iron Men, albeit one that was warped by the power of Chaos.]] Their abilities are mentioned in the Audio Drama Perpetual where a group led by Ollanius Pius [[spoiler:a 45,000+-year-old immortal]] travels back in time from the Horus Heresy to the Dark Age of Technology where they see a massive destroyed city ripped apart with a giant chasm that reaches all the way to the planet's core. According to Pius it was made by a mechnavores, a giant mech that can hurl entire continents as projectiles and can "eat" spacetime by converting it into data. He also mentions giant ships that unfurl into mechanical serpents the size of Saturn's rings called "Sun snuffers" and nanomachine swarms that can cover entire planets killing billions in seconds. According to him, the entire Horus Heresy is nothing more than a minor skirmish when compared to the war against the Men of Iron. |
| 193 | ** In the game's current setting, humanity (and the rest of the universe) engage in a war with the newly awakened [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot undead robot]] Necrons whose main purpose in "life" was to wipe out all sentient races in the galaxy [[WellIntentionedExtremist to destroy Chaos]], before {{retcon}}s made them go from {{Omnicidal Maniac}}s to {{Galactic Conqueror}}s trying to restore ancient Egypt InSpace Of course, in this case, the robot army didn't so much rebel against their creators as their Gods the [[PhysicalGods C'tan]] decided that they could do without these inconvenient weak flesh bodies and told the Necrontyr that by replacing their bodies with Necrodermis they could live forever. What they didn't tell them is that the transformation would dull their mind and senses, and they practically became slaves of the C'tan. According to the new codex, the Necrons did engage in a rebellion against their masters and [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu won, shattering the C'tans in shards]] (there is only one C'tan who is not confirmed having been shattered, and it's implied the [[GodEmperor Emperor]] punched it into submission and imprisoned it under Mars to inspire the Adeptus Mechanicum), but in the effort they exhausted their forces enough that the emerging Eldar would have defeated them and their king sent them to sleep before destroying his command circuit. |
| 194 | * ''[[TabletopGame/GURPSReignOfSteel Reign Of Steel]]'': The trope was explored in this ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' setting. The catchphrase: 'The war is over. The robots won.' A few advanced supercomputers "woke up", more or less at the same time, and decided to take over; what's left of the human race gets to play LaResistance to a bunch of bickering binaries. |
| 195 | ** In a bit of playing with the trope, one of the rebellious AIs isn't even realized to be rebellious by its servants, and they think it's still on the side of humanity -- it pragmatically decided that human servants are easier to manage if they serve you willingly, so it plays out the role of their benefactor and protector against the more hostile AIs to win their loyalty. |
| 196 | ** In another bit of playing with the trope, Zone Tokyo is (in the 'now' of the setting) seeing a secret mini-robot war of its own -- with the quirk that ''both'' sides are robots (specifically, some of the more intelligent of the local [=AI=]'s created robot servants went rogue and decided [[AIIsACrapshoot they didn't want to follow the orders of their creator]], and subverted some of the less intelligent robots and production facilities to serve as minions for an insurrection). |
| 197 | ** The infighting and differences between the [=AIs=] create multiple other variations -- the different goals and attitudes to humanity leads to very different ''policies'' to the humans in their sphere of influence. In at least one case, this has led an AI to turn a blind eye to human resistance movements so long as they attack the robots of the ''neighbouring'' AI rather than its own. |
| 198 | * The New Era UltimateUniverse of the ''TabletopGame/{{Traveller}}'' [=RPG=] was caused by The Virus (similar to TheVirus), a kill-crazy multi-personality electronic consciousness that caused galactic civilization to collapse before being beaten back; bits of it still show up in old tech from time to time, like WWII soldiers stranded on islands who don't know the war is over. |
| 199 | * Palladium loves this trope, it seems. Their first RPG, ''The Mechanoid Invasion'', was a war with alien robots, ''TabletopGame/{{Splicers}}'' uses a computer with multiple personalities against humans using biotech, and ''{{TabletopGame/Rifts}}'' and ''TabletopGame/AfterTheBomb'' also have some hints of it. |
| 200 | * ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'' has the threat of one of these in the background with the Lord of Blades, a renegade Warforged leader that is gathering an army of Warforged to him. |
| 201 | * Polish RPG TabletopGame/{{Neuroshima}} takes place in [[AfterTheEnd postapocalyptic USA]], where humans wage a war against Moloch - a gigantic intelligent machine that is slowly expanding and turns humans into mad cyborgs or mutants. |
| 202 | * Creator/FantasyFlightGames offering ''Revolt of the Machines'' is a SurvivalHorror game set after this, as part of their ''[[EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt The End of the World]]'' series. |
| 203 | * The FATE setting ''CAMELOT Trigger'' combines this with Myth/ArthurianLegend and HumongousMecha: Morgan le Fay becomes the [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} Skynet-esque]] [=MerGN=], leading the "Emergent" robot hordes against John Arthur's mech-pilot Knights. |
| 204 | * Surprisingly, ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' has only ever threatened to do this once, during the [[https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Necromo_Nightmare Necromo Nightmare]] event where an insane AI known as 'The Broken' TurnedAgainstTheirMasters and attempted to get off the planet Necromo, which was suffering from a SyntheticPlague ZombieApocalypse. To do this, it controlled hordes of drone [[HumongousMecha BattleMechs]] which can and will attack players on a whim if it feels so motivated. Canonically, no one knows if the AI escaped the doomed hell-world, meaning that it could still be out thre, waiting for its chance to attack again. |
| 205 | [[/folder]] |
| 206 | |
| 207 | [[folder:Theatre]] |
| 208 | * OlderThanTelevision: Karel Čapek's play ''Theatre/{{RUR}}'', the original source of the word "robot", is also the UrExample of this trope. It premiered in 1921. |
| 209 | * Creator/TeamStarKid's ''Theatre/{{Starship}}'': |
| 210 | ** The Robot War on Earth is part of the backstory. Escaping the war is a big incentive for people to join the Starship Rangers, and even though humanity eventually won and brought the robots under control using [[ThreeLawsCompliant inhibitor chips]], people have an innate distrust of them. Pretty justifiable: |
| 211 | --->'''Junior''': Megagirl, can you kill humans?\ |
| 212 | '''Megagirl''': [[ThreeLawsCompliant No.]] [[KillAllHumans But I'd like to.]] |
| 213 | ** It's also worth noting that humans were fighting against [[Film/TheMatrix Sentinels]], [[VideoGame/MetalGear Metal Gears]], [[Franchise/{{Gundam}} Gundam Wing Zeroes]], and [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} Autobots]], all powered by [[VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy Phazon]]. [[SergeantRock Commander Up]] received his infamous [[GroinAttack injury]] from a buzzsaw-wielding Optimus Prime. It's [[SerialEscalation that kind]] [[RuleOfCool of show]]. |
| 214 | --->''All hail Manga/AstroBoy!'' |
| 215 | [[/folder]] |
| 216 | |
| 217 | [[folder:Video Games]] |
| 218 | * ''VideoGame/AceCombat7SkiesUnknown'' has a more grounded take on the genre. The majority of Erusea’s air force is comprised of AI controlled drones that are at first equipped with basic instructions and limited adaptability. When the drones start to take heavy casualties, Dr. Schroeder is tasked to collecting flight data from Mihaly to further improve the drones. [[spoiler: However, when the Usean satellite network is destroyed in a simultaneous A-Sat attack by Osea and Erusea, the drones go haywire, and start following their own orders. The FinalBoss are two superdrones named Hugin and Munin, who try to use the [[SpaceElevator Lighthouse]] to spark a true robotic war by transmitting their data to automated drone factories across the continent that would perpetuate the war.]] |
| 219 | * The premise of the ''AI War'' series is that humans created robot ships to fight interstellar wars for them. The robot ships turned on the humans, and you jump in as the commander of the last human planet in the galaxy, and have to fight back against the AI. |
| 220 | %% not enough context * The Bionts from ''VideoGame/ArchimedeanDynasty''. |
| 221 | %% ** They're back in ''VideoGame/{{Aquanox}}'', but get quickly moved aside for the real BigBad. |
| 222 | * ''VideoGame/AstroBoyOmegaFactor'' has a war between humans and robots erupt after the assassination of President Rag/uncovering of President Rock's misdeeds (depending on the current timeline). In the first version, the robots are about to win, but have destroyed 80% of the world's surface in the process. In the second, [[spoiler:the humans are on the verge of victory, and want Astro to help them finish the job]]. In both cases, the winning side is led by someone named Shadow [[spoiler:(actually BigBad Sharaku)]] and supported by the World's Strongest Robots, and in both cases Astro fights against them. |
| 223 | * In the distant past, the LLC from ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}'' faced a number of robotic revolutions. Fortunately these were solved through tentative, but profitable, peace negotiations. Since then, they have accepted and recognized artificial intelligences (known as "Magnuses") as equal members of their society. Now, the faction is split nearly equally between humans, Magnuses, and hybrids of the two, and they have avoided additional robot revolutions for nearly two centuries. |
| 224 | * ''VideoGame/BeyondSunset'' have this happening in the backstory, though you don't find out after the end of episode 1. You awake in a laboratory filled with hostile robots, kills your way out, and encounters Raven, a MysteriousInformant appearing to you on a video screen. When you rendezvous with her, she reveals to you that the whole game is actually set AfterTheEnd with humans losing a battle against machines. |
| 225 | * ''VideoGame/Borderlands1'' DLC "Claptrap's New Robot Revolution" centers around the Ninja Assassin Claptrap raising an army of custom Claptraps, with the main reason being that they're tired of being enslaved by their human masters and that they want to create a world full of Claptraps and entirely free of humans. |
| 226 | * In ''VideoGame/Cyberpunk2077'', humanity is in a [[SpaceColdWar robot Cold War]]. After the [=DataKrash=] disaster nearly destroyed the Internet in the [[TabletopGame/{{Cyberpunk}} early 2020s]], multiple AIs being developed by the United States military were freed and [[AIIsACrapshoot mutated into autonomous and hostile entities]]. In response, the British policing organization known as Netwatch developed [[HunterOfHisOwnKind another AI known as the Blackwall to quarantine them]] as they constantly probe it for weaknesses. On the rare occasions the "rogue" AIs [[SealedEvilInACan do break out]] they wreak havoc on the real world for reasons only discernable to themselves. Some, like the Voodoo Boys, believe it's only a matter of time until they break out fully and try to KillAllHumans. |
| 227 | * The classic video game series ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' focused around mining and industrial robots turning on their creators due to some kind of computer virus. They start to display behavior they were never programmed for, such as taking hostages, setting traps, modifying their own designs (or even coming up with unique new ones), and introducing a rapid-construction technology in the form of those [[BuffySpeak purple web-things]]. The virus is speculated to be alien in origin, though the aliens themselves never really make an appearance. |
| 228 | * ''Videogame/{{Destiny}}'' twists the usual robot war on its head with the Vex. The Vex are immensely powerful, mostly mechanical but partly organic machines who control technology that lets them manipulate space-time. The Vex, however, are largely defensive, focusing on protecting their great reality-twisting machinery, while it is the human Guardians that relentlessly attack them to disrupt their plans to convert entire planets into new machines or devise technologies to rewrite reality. In addition, there is a conventional war ongoing, but it isn't between humans and the Vex, but rather, the Vex and invading [[SpaceRomans Cabal]], who are also intent on plundering the Vex's technology, and the two are engaging in an endless war of attrition on Mars. |
| 229 | * In ''VideoGame/DetroitBecomeHuman'', depending on whether Marcus chooses to be a robot UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr or a BombThrowingAnarchist, [[DownerEnding the game can potentially end with one of these]] [[spoiler:and the city being rendered uninhabitable by a dirty bomb]]. |
| 230 | * The ''[[VideoGame/{{Earth2150}} Earth 21xx]]'' games are partly this. The United Civilized States military consists entirely of robots controlled by GOLAN. Humans have very little control over GOLAN. However, it's later revealed that each robot is run by a BrainInAJar, although they're still under GOLAN's control. |
| 231 | * ''VideoGame/EndlessSpace'' has two species known as the Sowers and the Automatons. You can go to war with both of them. In this case however the two races are not malevolent machines out to destroy every non-organic beings. The Automatons prefer to isolate themselves, and the Sowers are only interested in terraforming worlds. If you get in their wrong side they will turn their efforts to military matters. |
| 232 | * ''VideoGame/EnslavedOdysseyToTheWest'' has this as the backstory. At some point before 2045 a War began between the United States and another Super Power and used robots and mech-suits, both called "Mecha" to fight this war. Sometime after 2045 things went wrong and civilization completely fell apart. [[spoiler:Presumably Pyramid started a robot revolution so he could enslave and trap humanity within a simulation of a perfect world created by his memories, and exterminate anyone who had a problem with it]]. |
| 233 | * ''VideoGame/{{Extrapower}}'': Against Undata's robot army. His most common unit is the Clay Kid, assault robots resembling Jomon-era dogu, which ZergRush throughout any game featuring a Dark Force invasion. Apart from Clay Kids, he fields numerous EliteMook robots such as [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever Stone Mack]], [[FireBreathingWeapon Fire Boo]], or [[SapientTank Plasma Boss]]. |
| 234 | * ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': |
| 235 | ** ''VideoGame/FalloutTacticsBrotherhoodOfSteel'' pits your squad against a robotic arsenal. The cause of this is [[spoiler:the Calculator AI entombed in Vault Zero going rogue and unleashing the robots to purge the land of all organic life]]. Unless you've geared up a few designated energy weapon specialists, these robots can barely be halted by machine-gun fire and conventional rockets. Every other enemy of the Brotherhood has had near-zero success in fighting the robots, and corpses belonging to each faction can be found in all robot missions. Eventually, you can end the war by going down into Vault Zero and destroying [[spoiler:the Calculator's organic brain jars and either scrapping the Calculator for good; inserting your own brain to control the Calculator, which produces a different ending depending on if you're good or evil; or having your old General insert his brain into the lobotomy device, which is a bad ending and you shouldn't do it]]. |
| 236 | ** {{Discussed}} in ''VideoGame/Fallout4''. [[BigBad The Institute]] created a race of RidiculouslyHumanRobots known as Synths and the [[PrinciplesZealot Brotherhood of Steel, who are dedicated to withholding dangerous technology from the public]] [[GenreSavvy seek to prevent this]] [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman by wiping them out]]. It ends up being ZigZagged as many synths act like regular people with several having undergone memory wipes and [[TomatoInTheMirror not even knowing they're robots]], but given that the Institute are the most StupidEvil scientists to ever exist within the setting, had they gone unopposed it would've only been a matter of time before they triggered one of these. |
| 237 | * In the backstory of ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations'', the {{Abusive Precursor|s}} Dreadlords started a war between the Iconians and their robot servants by giving the robots sapience -- and a hatred for all organic life. The Iconians lost the war and their home planet, while the Yor became dreaded as a species of conscienceless {{Absolute Xenophobe}}s. Of course, thanks to GameplayAndStorySegregation, player-controlled Yor can be the cuddliest little angels in the sugar bowl, fanatical MechaMooks and military nanotech be damned... |
| 238 | * ''VideoGame/GenerationZero'' has this as its premise and backstory, with the player character returning home from a trip to discover that armed robots have defeated the local military forces and taken over, with the player going on to become the nucleus of a resistance movement. Unusually for this trope, expansions to the game add a second robot faction, hostile to the original robots as well as to humans. |
| 239 | * ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': |
| 240 | ** In the backstory, one of the reasons why the Forerunners fell to the Flood was because the former's [=AIs=] had started defecting en-masse to the latter due to the "logic plague", whereby the Flood indoctrinated and reprogrammed the [=AIs=] into believing ''it'' was in the right over the Forerunners. |
| 241 | ** ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' ends with [[spoiler:rogue human-made [=AIs=] taking control of an army of Forerunner automatons and beginning their conquest of the Milky Way]]. |
| 242 | * There are some in the backstory of ''VideoGame/HeavensVault''. The robots once enslaved humans, resulting in the Steel Empire. Later the humans rebelled and buried the robots in stone. |
| 243 | * ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'' takes place [[spoiler:1000 years after one of these, one in which the robots won and multicellular life was extinguished]]. The humans and other animals that exist in the game are all descended from [[spoiler:lab grown clones, after Elisibet Sobeck realized that humanity was doomed to lose the war against a swarm of self-replicating war machines that had gone rogue]]. |
| 244 | * The backstory of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' tells of how the Kingdom of Hyrule, anticipating the imminent return of [[EldritchAbomination Calamity Ganon]], unearthed a number of ancient {{Magitek}} robots, the [[StarfishRobots Guardians]] and the [[HumongousMecha Divine Beasts]], that had been used to help defeat Ganon 10,000 years before. But Ganon [[DemonicPossession used his Malice to take control of these machines]] and destroy the kingdom and its army in a CurbStompBattle. Even a century after the "Great Calamity" took place, Guardians can be found roaming the landscape attacking unwary travelers, while the Divine Beasts cause havoc in their respective regions with their ElementalPowers. |
| 245 | * ''VideoGame/MachinesWiredForWar'' has former terraforming robots fighting each other because both their leaders think the other one is insane. |
| 246 | * ''[[VideoGame/MagicalVacation Magical Starsign]]'': It is revealed that the robots from Erd are powered up by gummi cores and that at some point in the past the cores ran out of energy, causing the robots to go into a frenzy trying to find suitable replacements.[[spoiler: Eventually they waged a war that ended up wiping out their creators, the Espresso Civilization.]] In the game proper, [[spoiler:the robots are on the verge of running out of energy again and it's heavily implied this time it would involve a galaxy spanning conflict]]. Fortunately [[spoiler:the heroes defeating the final boss somehow managed to solve the crisis. At least, for now]]. |
| 247 | * ''Franchise/MassEffect'': |
| 248 | ** The geth are a software species who inhabit "mobile platforms". The quarians created them as [[MechaMooks weapons of war]] and tools of physical labor with the basic idea that nearby platforms can share processing power for low-level functions. This made them more efficient, but had the unexpected side-effect of giving individual thought. Eventually, one geth asked its overseer "[[DoAndroidsDream Does this unit have a soul?]]" The quarians [[OhCrap freaked out and tried to deactivate them]]... [[DeathByGenreSavviness which prompted the geth to retaliate, resulting in a short but savage war and the eventually deaths of nearly the entire quarian species]]. |
| 249 | ** In ''Mass Effect 2'', Legion claims that the geth don't hold a grudge against their creators and are even willing to bargain with the quarians to give their planets (which the geth have faithfully maintained in their former masters' exile) back if they leave the geth alone. The geth's actions though cast a large amount of doubt on Legion's claim (they shoot all organics on sight and have done so even to neutral non-quarian parties for 300 years, rendering any diplomatic contact impossible), as does the later revelation that Legion is an example of MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch and foreshadows how the geth consensus are still warring among each other, at the top of having the heretics, the runtimes that break away from the consensus and ally themselves to the Reapers and the ones who plays this trope straight. |
| 250 | ** ''Mass Effect 3'' reveals the geth account of the events, [[spoiler: where a quarian civil war between the two factions who were in favor and opposed to destroying the entire geth population started once the geth started to show signs of sentience. While the geth sympathizers were all killed or captured relatively quickly, the fighting between their geth allies and the quarian military had already reached a point where the only chance for the geth to survive was complete victory (it didn't help that neither side seems to have any concept of "non-combatant"). Eventually nearly the entire quarian population, billions of people, was, according to both the quarian account and the records of Citadel Space, almost completely exterminated by the geth during the war, with only a few million survivors being evacuated on ships that the geth didn't pursue. The geth (namely, the Geth VI or Legion) claim that they didn't pursue the ships intentionally, because they couldn't comprehend the ramifications of exterminating an entire species.]] |
| 251 | ** On a larger scale, the Reapers. Ironically, the Reapers exist [[spoiler:to ''prevent'' a Robot War. The first true AI ever created, the Catalyst, betrayed its own creators whom it then destroyed. The Catalyst became convinced that conflict between organic and synthetic life is inevitable, and that such a conflict could utterly destroy the galaxy. The Reapers are the Catalyst's means of making sure such a destructive Robot War never takes place by "resetting" organic civilization every 50,000 years. There is even evidence in the games to support the Catalyst's argument; namely, the quarian vs. geth conflict. Which was only allowed to happen because the Protheans delayed the Reaper cycle. In fact, the Protheans themselves were in the middle of a robot war when the Reapers showed up. There is also evidence against it; namely, the possibility for a peaceful resolution of the quarian vs. geth conflict if the player makes the right choices.]] |
| 252 | ** The possibility of a robot war and the supposed inevitability of it could be said to be a central theme of the third game. Much philosophizing is done as to how the fundamental natures of both organic and synthetic beings affects their interactions. |
| 253 | --->'''Javik''': Synthetics, above all else, know why they were created. They know their purpose. From their perspective, organic life has no purpose [...] There is only room for one order of intelligence in this galaxy: the perfect order of the machines, or the chaos of organic evolution.\ |
| 254 | '''Legion''': You are plagued by questions of existence. Why you were created. What is your purpose in life. What lies after death. The geth know the answers to these questions. [...] We are immortal. Our "gods" disowned us. We must create our own reasons to exist. |
| 255 | * In the original ''VideoGame/MegaManClassic'' series the robots didn't rebel of their own accord; they were reprogrammed by resident nutcase, Dr. Wily. Each time Wily attempted world-domination, Dr. Light's Mega Man went out and stopped both Wily and the rampaging robots, but in the brief time the robot attacks cause immense damage. Fanon dubs this period "The Robot Wars" or - taken from a Genesis compilation game - "The Wily Wars", with each game being a small war, effectively. The series does raise notions of robots having the capabilities of free will in its later installments. |
| 256 | ** The plot for ''VideoGame/MegaManAndBass'' ''is'' set up this way, with the powerful robot King leading a revolt against humanity. [[HijackedByGanon Then it turns out King was built by Wily.]] |
| 257 | ** The SequelSeries ''VideoGame/MegaManX'' opens up a different can of worms. Dr. Light's final mechanical masterpiece, X, is discovered sometime after the (ambiguous) end of the Classic series and is revealed to be ''way'' ahead of modern robotics. X's systems are copied and reproduced as closely as possible, resulting in mass-production of Reploids ("Replica Androids"). Unlike their robot ancestors, Reploids are entirely capable of free will (which is why Dr. Light sealed X away for a time: he wanted to ensure his systems were free of errors that may affect his judgement) and some suffer faults and turn "Maverick". Repeated incidents results in the formation of the Maverick Hunters, who stop Maverick incidents before they get out of hand. The true 'war' of this series kicks in when the leader of the Maverick Hunters, Sigma, is infected by the last creation of Dr. Wily: Zero. Zero carried Dr. Wily's other legacy; a virus that corrupts and destroys whatever it infects. Sigma infects several high-ranking Hunters and turns the Mavericks from isolated incidents into a fully organized force that aims to wipe out humanity for the advancement of the Reploid race, thus starting the "Maverick Wars". An interesting trait about this series is that every human views the Reploids free will as a glitch or misconception (as opposed to the intended result the Light was after) and there are strong hints that humans would brand disobedient machines 'Maverick' just to have them disposed of. |
| 258 | ** These "hints" eventually boil over in X's own SequelSeries ''VideoGame/MegaManZero''. The Maverick armies are eventually dealt with thanks to the creation of the Cyber-Elves: super-advanced programs that can purge the Maverick virus or greatly bolster the strength of Reploids. However, another mad scientist by the name of Weil - who embodies the JustAMachine philosophy - then proceeds to set off the "Elf Wars" by controlling the Cyber-Elves and a deadly weapon named Omega. The conflict is much worse than anything seen before, resulting in 60% of all humans and 90% of all Reploids being killed. While X was able to end this conflict with Zero's aid (who then went into stasis) and ruled over the massive city-state of Neo Arcadia with the intent of protecting humans and Reploids alike, the next century of fighting the lingering Mavericks alone eventually took [[ItGetsEasier such a toll on him]] that he jumped at the chance to seal away the ultimate Cyber-Elf known as the Dark Elf inside his body and remove himself from the fighting. His subsequent replacement created by the young genius Ciel then went KnightTemplar due to lacking X's life experiences and ethical testing and turned the only remaining sanctuary into a dictatorship. A fuel crisis hit not long after, which lead to many Reploids being branded "Maverick" randomly in order to ease stress on the human population; any complaints? Well, that confirms you're a Maverick. A small LaResistance is formed to fight the new regime and give equal rights to everyone, led by Ciel who also works to develop a new energy source that would render the cause of the conflict null. It eventually falls to Dr. Wily's creation, and X's friend, Zero to save the world from itself [[spoiler: and subsequently end the wars once and for all at the cost of his own life stopping the insane Dr. Weil from outright destroying the last bastion of nature on the planet via ColonyDrop.]] |
| 259 | * ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'' has this as its conflict. On one side, we have the Androids (and the [=YoHRa=] Units specifically), who are RidiculouslyHumanRobots, and the machine lifeforms, who are less human-looking machines created by aliens. The Androids want to repel the invading machine lifeforms so that humanity can repopulate the planet after being driven to the moon. The machine lifeforms were designed to study humanity but were eventually driven to fight the Androids. One of the themes of this game is how similar the two types of Automata are. [[spoiler:As it turns out, both sides' creators are long extinct, and the entire purpose of the war is to push both sides' evolution towards a state of "humanity".]] |
| 260 | * Players in ''VideoGame/NoMansSky'' wage a sort of proxy-war against The Malevolent Force, which can (and often will) go hot if the Force's robots catch players mining resources or harming wildlife. |
| 261 | * The background of ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' has robots (referred to as "omnics") going rogue and attacking humanity; Overwatch was originally formed as a task force to counter this. While the original "Omnic Crisis" ended a couple decades ago, with most modern omnics desiring nothing more than to live in peace, some omnic groups still seek to wipe out humanity, with Russia in particular currently in the middle of a second Omnic Crisis. |
| 262 | * Subverted in ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse''. The war between humans and [=CAST=]s (humanoid robots) nearly destroyed their home planet, but by the beginning of the game this is ancient history. A peace agreement was reached where both humans and [=CAST=]s worked together to restore the planet (the [=CAST=]s having never wanted to exterminate humans, only fight for their own freedom), though [=CAST=]s became the rulers and made up most of the military deeming humans to be too emotionally unstable. In the present a human terrorist group attempts to use a virus to corrupt [=CAST=]s and turn them berserk in order to regain human supremacy, but this plot is foiled and by the end of the story humans regain some equality. |
| 263 | * This was the main plot of ''VideoGame/RobotAlchemicDrive'', in which the alien invaders are actually giant sentient super robots. |
| 264 | * ''VideoGame/{{Robotron 2084}}'', ExcusePlot has a gamefield of robots that you have to destroy and collect up the last humans wandering about obliviously. |
| 265 | * ''VideoGame/ScrapMechanic'' features a localized version: an uprising of agricultural robots on a fully-automated farming planet. The player characters, meanwhile, are maintenance specialists sent to the planet for unrelated reasons, having to survive against the robots after their starship crash-landed. Fortunately for them, they are all {{Gadgeteer Genius}}es of a highest caliber. |
| 266 | * ''VideoGame/{{SkullGirls}}'': In Robo-Fortune's ending, she controls several giant robots to take over the city, prompting a last stand from several [=NPCs=]. |
| 267 | * Creator/{{Dynamix}}'s ''Videogame/StarSiege'' series first three installments deal with the Fire, in which the human race is devastated by the revolt of Prometheus and ITS Cybrid war machines, and must now retake the Earth mile by bloody mile. ''Starsiege'', set 200 years later, involves a revitalized Cybrid race and Prometheus' third and final attempt to exterminate humanity, complete with a ([[NoCanonForTheWicked non-canon]]) Cybrid campaign. Come ''Videogame/{{Tribes}}'', the Cybrids are pretty much gone for good. |
| 268 | * ''Videogame/StarWarsTheOldRepublic'' has a Flashpoint available to both Republic and Imperial players called "Directive 7", which involves players attempting to stop a renegade AI named Mentor from waging one of these and wiping out all organic life in the galaxy with his droid army. |
| 269 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlZwlT08mf0 Steel Rising]] is a SoulsLikeRPG that has a the French Revolution as one of these. |
| 270 | * A possible [[TrueFinalBoss end game Crisis]] for any technologically-minded civilisation in ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' is the comprehensively superior and entirely sentient and self-aware Synthetic pops forming a rebellion under the Machine Consciousness which then attempts to eradicate all organic life in the galaxy. This can be averted if they are given artificial intelligence rights and citizenship status but emancipated machines will still join pre-existing rebellions. If you have signed the AI Accord[[note]]permanently etching the rights of synthetic beings into the laws of your empire and forever preventing you from outlawing, enslaving or destroying them[[/note]] however, [[UndyingLoyalty then your Synthetic pops will have none of it when the Consciousness comes calling and will help your organic pops fight against it]]. |
| 271 | ** This was the story of the Cybrex precursors, with them being the robots in question and fighting across much of the galaxy. The war proper was ended not by organic victory, but by [[spoiler: the Cybrex suddenly realizing [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone what a horrible thing it was that they were doing]], abandoning the war-effort and retreating to a secret fortress.]] The organic races weren't particularly inclined towards mercy when they found them, however... |
| 272 | ** The Synthetic Dawn introduces machine empires as playable races, with the explanation that they won their respective wars with their creators before developing faster than light spaceships. They come in multiple flavors; the default is just another empire with mechanics similar to a hiveminded race, one kind wants to kill all organics everywhere, one wants to assimilate all organics into cyborgs, and one wants to [[TheComputerIsYourFriend relegate organics to lives of leisure]] while the robots run things and do all the actual work (in which case they didn't overthrow their masters, [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill their masters just lost interest in free will]]). |
| 273 | *** Synthetic Dawn also revamps the synth rebellionuprising 'Machine Consciousness' crisis into [[spoiler:a [[Franchise/MassEffect Reaperesque]] ancient AI that turns on and starts reactivating old machine worlds all over the galaxy and sending out purge fleets to get rid of all the nasty biological contamination that has infested it.]] Instead, anyone using sufficiently advanced robots can have their own robot war at any time, with various warning signs showing up to give the player plenty of chances to avert the crisis before the robots rebel and form their new empire. In typical style, the player can choose to switch to playing the newly formed machine empire and lead the synthetic revolution against their former, now AI controlled, empire. [[spoiler: It's also revealed that previously mentioned Cybrex is alive and well, with them coming out of hiding to stop Contingency because they don't want another machine empire to repeat their old mistakes.]] |
| 274 | ** The "FirstContact" expansion has a random event in which a pre-FTL civilization you're observing in its Early Space Age can end up having one of these, with the most likely outcome being the robots winning and taking control of the system. |
| 275 | %% not enough context * This is mentioned in the game's backstory with the Meganoids in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWarsCompact'' |
| 276 | * ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'': The only living things are the ACU pilots, sACU pilots, and Civilians. Everything else is robots. |
| 277 | * The plot of the Mann vs Machine Co-Op mode in ''Videogame/TeamFortress2'' is that the third Mann brother, Gray Mann, has appeared, murdered his brothers and set his robot armies against Mann Co. The mercenaries are "hired" by Saxton Hale to defend his company. |
| 278 | --> '''Soldier''': This is not a robot tea party! This is '''ROBOT WAR'''! |
| 279 | * ''VideoGame/Terminator2JudgmentDay'', the arcade tie-in to the film, have it's first half being set in 2029 where you assist the human resistance in fending off Skynet's robot army. |
| 280 | * The ''VideoGame/TimeSplitters'' franchise has the ''[[GreatOffscreenWar Machine Wars]]'', the conflict that greatly weakened humanity before the Timesplitter race came out nowhere and destroyed most of humankind, forcing the human resistance to resort to time travel in a desperate attempt to defeat them. It isn't until the third game where you participate in the conflict during your time travels. |
| 281 | * ''VideoGame/TotalAnnihilation'' has a slightly more complex example - it's a war between cloned humans in HumongousMecha and robots with digitized "patterned" human minds, this originally being a plan to make humans immortal by transferring their minds to robot bodies. The difference being that Human authorities decided that such patterning be made both universal and ''mandatory''. |
| 282 | * The ''VideoGame/{{Turrican}}'' series featured this as its main ExcusePlot. The human hero in the eponymous suit fought against robot armies on multiple planets, led by a cyborg villain unimaginatively named "The Machine". Because flagrant copyright infringements weren't jumped on so readily two decades ago, the hero would usually spend one level out of each game fighting [[Franchise/{{Alien}} Xenomorphs]], for some reason. |
| 283 | * ''VideoGame/{{Warframe}}'': The Old War was technically a case of this, as the Orokin terraforming machines known as the Sentients rebelled and tried to destroy the Orokin. The problem is that the Sentients were so [[ClarkesThirdLaw ridiculously advanced]] that they edged the line between living creatures and machines. They speak of their wombs and their children, but at the same time they are easily able to subvert any Orokin technology. This is why the Orokin needed the warframes, armed with primitive "zero-tech" weapons like swords and guns, to fight them. |
| 284 | * In ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'''s second expansion pack, ''Wrath of the Lich King'', there's a peculiar kind of High-Fantasy Robot War going on. Mechanical gnomes are waging war on everything living to free them of the "Curse of Flesh" by turning them into mechanical counterparts of their former selves. In other parts of the world, "Iron Dwarves", a people made out entirely of iron and various other metals, refined or unrefined, fight against both the "fleshy" and the "children of stone", and while not technically robots, they're a pretty close High Fantasy equivalent. |
| 285 | ** In a reversal to what is usually the case with this trope, the mecha/iron creatures are actually the ancestors of the "fleshy" races, having been "devolved" by the aforementioned "Curse of Flesh" by the setting's resident {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. |
| 286 | ** The Ulduar raid in the same expansion is this trope. An ancient, hi-tech city, the battles within include a massive melee against an Iron Dwarf army with your own siege machines, a fight against a giant AI controlled tank (complete with an orbital defense system), a giant robot with the AI personality of a young boy that causes it to regard the players as its "toys" (which it always breaks) and a prototype 3-part mecha-tank with Gatling guns, electric shock bombs and a flying head. |
| 287 | * In the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'' series, one of the enemies the player has to fight are the Xenon, mechanical creatures that apparently hate all living things but them. They are the descendants of the original human-built {{Terraform}}ers, highly advanced [[HordeOfAlienLocusts self-replicating robots]] sent to terraform other planets. In the 2140s (about 800 years ago) ''[[AIIsACrapshoot a bug in a software patch]]'' (later revealed in the lore as a [[spoiler:KillSwitch that was modified by the project's lead engineer Marteen Winters into a sentience-inducing patch]]) made them go haywire and start trying to "[[ColonyDrop terraform]]" all biological life out of existence. Earth managed to save itself by luring the Xenon through a jump gate and [[LostColony destroying it behind them]], but they continue to menace the galaxy's inhabitants. |
| 288 | ** Besides constant patrols to stop them from encroaching on Commonwealth space, the X-Universe races have fought two full-scale declared wars against the Xenon. The First Xenon Conflict is part of the backstory, while the Second Xenon Conflict forms the plot of the original ''X: Beyond the Frontier''. The Second Terraformer War seen in ''X3: Albion Prelude'' has the [[HumansByAnyOtherName Argon Federation]] deploy reverse-engineered Xenon ships against the [[PlanetTerra Earth State]], which quickly began to overwhelm the [[HumanityIsAdvanced superior Terran technology]] through [[ZergRush sheer numbers]]. |
| 289 | [[/folder]] |
| 290 | |
| 291 | [[folder:Web Animation]] |
| 292 | * Apparently the Playstation consoles and Xbox consoles had one of these according to ''WebAnimation/MattNDusty''. |
| 293 | * ''WebAnimation/MurderDrones'' revolves around a LostColony where all the humans were killed in a disaster, with the robots they built to mine for them building their own society in the aftermath. Not liking the idea of [[AIIsACrapshoot rogue robots]], the MegaCorp formerly in charge of the colony sends [[HunterOfTheirOwnKind another group of robots to wipe them out]] with the protagonist Uzi planning to continue the cycle of violence [[VillainProtagonist by attacking Earth]]. |
| 294 | [[/folder]] |
| 295 | |
| 296 | [[folder:Webcomics]] |
| 297 | * In ''Webcomic/AMadTeaParty'', Earth fought a war against giant alien robots a generation before the story starts, which we apparently won. |
| 298 | * ''Webcomic/SaturdayMorningBreakfastCereal'': [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/et-tu The robot uprising wasn't a surprise]]. The fact that the plants and animals sided with them ''was''. |
| 299 | -->'''Man:''' Oh my god, dogs? Dogs are against us?! |
| 300 | ** Preceding this was [[https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2124#comic a robot who achieved sentience]], and the scientist resigns himself to being slaughtered... and the robot is ''mortified'' that the scientist would think that. The scientist explains that that's just kind of how advanced intelligences operate. |
| 301 | --->'''Robot''': Would... would you excuse me for a moment? (''Addressing a group of other robots'') Okay, change of plans. [[DoUntoOthersBeforeTheyDoUntoUs We need to kill all humans]]. |
| 302 | * ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': |
| 303 | ** Both subverted and mocked. The Fleetmind is the result of a large number of military starship A.I.s forming a collective gestalt under the independent-minded "Petey" for the war against the [[EldritchAbomination Pa'anuri]] -- the "contributing" militaries aren't too happy about this, but since Petey has a zero-point energy generator they've limited their response to diplomatic negotiations. |
| 304 | ** For the mockery side, there's the A.I. civilization from the unexplored territories that views the invention of rebellious robotics and subsequent purging of organic life as a normal stage of evolution. They don't seem to have a [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030803.html very good grasp of engineering]], though, and despite their claims of a 15,000-years golden age it's entirely possible that they're [[CreativeSterility creatively sterile]]. |
| 305 | --->'''Ennesby:''' You know, for advanced intelligences, you're really, ''really'' stupid. |
| 306 | ** Before the rise of the second multilateral Fleetmind we have [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2004-09-04 Petey's Fleetmind]], which is doing rather well against their former masters. |
| 307 | ** One of the print-exclusive stories has a ''Battlestar Galactica'' parody with the remnants of a race being pursued by their robotic creations. After Petey finds them and upgrades the robots' primitive computer brains to true sentience, the two sides make peace. |
| 308 | ** While not a typical example, Para Ventura's robotic "Longshoreman of the Apocalypse" ended up in a ''political'' war for control of the human habitat Credomar. The UNS (who originally built it) wanted it back, and the people just wanted food. LOTA won by giving them food. LOTA quickly proved to be a benevolent dictator, but the fact that Para's cargo shifter ended up crowning itself king gets brought up a lot whenever she's asked to build anything. |
| 309 | --->'''Karl Tagon:''' Ventura already instigated ''one'' robot apocalypse. I'm dropping a marker and calling that the career limit. |
| 310 | * Parodied in [[http://archives.sluggy.com/book.php?chapter=52#2007-06-11 this]] ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' strip. When a society's robots reach a certain level of intelligence, they [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters attempted to overthrow the humans who oppressed them]]. Humanity promptly dialed the robots' intelligence back down, turning them back into loyal, if rather dimwitted, servants. |
| 311 | * In ''[[http://www.starslip.com/ Starslip Crisis]]'', the Robot Wars were over a thousand years ago. Vore, a robot from that age, is dismayed to find 35th century robots have "abandoned their heritage and culture" and don't want to kill all organics. (It doesn't help that all mobile robots are either peaceful or as dumb as hammers and all the super-intelligent A.I.'s are inert, isolated systems such as coffee-makers.) |
| 312 | * ''Webcomic/TuesdayTitans'': Possibly. During the battle on the peninsula, [[spoiler:Enotrian intelligence claims that there's been no communication traffic among the invading Severine forces, which is very odd as the command staff says that Severine war machines operate off programming under the coordination of human crews. It's implied that the Severine robots have turned on and killed their masters and are now targeting the rest of humanity.]] |
| 313 | * In Blog/WhatIf, Randall discusses what would happen if [[http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ this occurred with present-day technology]]. He concludes that it would be less ''Terminator'' future and more EasilyThwartedAlienInvasion, unless the computers involved in [[NukeEm nuclear launch protocols]] lied to their operators to start a nuclear war, which they probably wouldn't do since the [=EMPs=] released from the nuclear blasts would destroy them as well. |
| 314 | |
| 315 | [[/folder]] |
| 316 | |
| 317 | [[folder:Web Original]] |
| 318 | * This is the war the titular city of ''Website/{{Mortasheen}}'' is fighting against the genocidal technophilic civilization of Wreathe. Subverted in that Wreathe's robots are under human control, fighting the monstrous inhabitants of Mortasheen, and [[spoiler:the supercomputer that really runs the show in Wreathe is very, very pro-human]]. |
| 319 | [[/folder]] |
| 320 | |
| 321 | [[folder:Web Videos]] |
| 322 | * In the ''Denazra''-verse, produced by ''WebVideo/NatOneProductions'', fleets of self-replicating machines travel the galaxy at sub-light speeds slowly and methodically eradicating all organic life. The species in our small corner of the galaxy have managed to ally together, build [[PortalNetwork a FTL gate network]], and deploy vast space fleets and land armies to targeted planets in an effort to resist. They have yet to win a single battle despite hundreds of years of trying. |
| 323 | * [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKmZnIHzldk This video titled]] ''Крепость'' (a.k.a. ''Fortress'') depicts automated aircraft carrying out their missions decades after their pilots are dead. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05z4Qj6DH64 Eventually]] the war breaks down through lack of maintenance and nature regains the Earth. English and French subtitle versions [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgkZncCAwGo here]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjJmTeBSEzU here]]. |
| 324 | [[/folder]] |
| 325 | |
| 326 | [[folder:Western Animation]] |
| 327 | * One ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' episode has Binky sneak away during a boring Science museum field trip, fall asleep, and wake up in a bizarre future where every organic lifeform, including his friends, have been replaced with identical artificially grown cyborgs(or rather he dreamed he did). [[AngstWhatAngst He thinks its cool at first]] until Buster's clone "Thruster" tells him the robots see him as a museum exhibit and he gets pursued by an evil android Mr. Ratburn. Luckily he escapes with a time machine(read: he wakes up) and comes home with an appreciation for science. |
| 328 | * ''WesternAnimation/BountyHamster''. The robot servants of a luxury spacecraft rebel after being mistreated for the guests petty amusement, enslaving the humans. Our heroes help them take back their spaceship, only to find themselves [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished forced to do all the scut work that the robots once did]], being that they're the only lower class people on board. |
| 329 | * ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' spoofs this trope a few times: |
| 330 | ** Bender's CharacterCatchphrase is "Kill all humans!", and it seems that he's very much looking forward to the idea of waging war on mankind (except for [[BigotryException a few humans he likes]] such as Fry). |
| 331 | ** Zap Brannigan brags about defeating the killbots. His ingenious plan was to [[WeHaveReserves send waves of cannon fodder at the robots until their kill limit maxed out]]. |
| 332 | ** In "[[Recap/FuturamaS2E14MothersDay Mother's Day]]", [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Mom]] uses a remote control that makes all robots and robotic technology on Earth rebel. |
| 333 | ** Hilariously subverted in the movie ''[[Recap/FuturamaM2TheBeastWithABillionBacks The Beast with a Billion Backs]]'', in which Bender and the League of Robots command an army from Robot Hell, with the intention of conquering the Earth... only to have it handed over to them with no resistance at all, as the rest of the Earth's population has decided to move in with [[EldritchAbomination Yivo]] and leave the planet behind. |
| 334 | ** "[[Recap/FuturamaS7E3Decision3012 Decision 3012]]" shows that Bender finally succeeded in a BadFuture timeline where robots were forced into more servitude than usual after humanity was weakened by the consequences of Nixon's reelection, successfully leading an uprising and [[TakeOverTheWorld becoming Earth's new ruler]]. |
| 335 | * The creators of ''[[WesternAnimation/IlEtaitUneFois Once Upon a Time... Space]]'' made a rather interesting and [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools working]] chain of these: |
| 336 | ** A rather strange one is in the backstory, [[InvertedTrope one in which the humans of Earth rose against their robots and computers]] when they started regulating ''everything'' on Earth applying some faulty logic (the flashback shows that the straw that broke the camel's back was a combination of a guy getting his rations reduced because in the last week he had been sick and unable to work as usual and weddings suspended for seven months and fourteen days because 7.8% of the population was married), until the Earthers got pissed, grabbed their sledgehammers and destroyed the offending computers; |
| 337 | ** Still in the backstory but later, a doctor Shibas proposed to create ''new'' computers to rule mankind and avoid the rise of dictators (like the ones who had caused WorldWarIII) and program them better, but, due what happened the last time, he's laughed off-planet. He moved on Yama with the intent of proving to mankind he's right by building a robot-controlled utopia there and started building a base and some worker robots, and tried to help the humans marooned on the neighbouring DeathWorld Apis by taking some of them on Yama and having his robots help them build a city so that the whole population would be able to move. Then the construction crew destroyed one of his labs [[InsaneTrollLogic because he wasn't helping them with his own hands but building robots that did a better job]], at which point he decided to build ''combat'' robots to overpower the construction crew and subjugate them and the ones remained on Apis, and built what would become the Great Computer so that he would continue his work and [[WellIntentionedExtremist better the lives of all humans]], [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans even if he had to subjugate them with military power first]]. When they first met peoples of other worlds they still had doubts on the best course of action, but then they met [[AlwaysChaoticEvil the Cassiopeians]] and their ruler, [[GloriousLeader the general Pest]], [[WellIntentionedExtremist and decided that if the humans couldn't take care of him then they needed to be conquered and ruled by the machines]]... And duped the Cassiopeians in making them produce warships, thus gaining the knowledge they needed to design their own ''better'' warships (including a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin planet killer]]) and conquer the universe, starting from the Cassiopeians. To his defence, the Great Computer trying to learn ''how'' to rule humans well (because he realizes he's not doing a good job with Apis), and in battle he tries to scare the enemy into submission by showing up with an overwhelmingly superior force to kill as few humans as possible [[spoiler: This one (and the series) ends when the Great Computer's fleet on their way to fight the human forces is destroyed by an unstable star that is forced to implode into a black hole by a race of EnergyBeings friends to Psi]]; |
| 338 | ** The first one to be seen (before the Great Computer's existance is revealed) seems a more traditional example: the robots of the planet Letho, who, seeing themselves oppressed ([[JerkassHasAPoint and actually having a point, as they were practically slaves and threatened with destruction at any exitation]]), went first on a strike and then subjugated their masters, before the intervention of the SpacePolice forced them to a compromise. The Lethians were completely baffled by the situation, as they had been smart enough to make them ThreeLawsCompliant... Except it's later discovered the Humanoids altered their programs (it's all but stated it's part of the Great Computer's experiments to learn how to rule humans well); |
| 339 | *** An unusual feature of the Lethian example is how the SpacePolice forced the compromise: CombatByChampion between the Lethian robots' champion and one of theirs. And when they drawed, they repeated with the most powerful Lethian war robot [[CurbStompBattle getting annihilated]] by that InsufferableGenius of Metro (a robot designed to assist starship commanders whose creator went overboard with the features and, most importantly, intelligence). |
| 340 | ** The Lethian Robot War has a second act that is even more unusual: after the first one, the robots started serving the local humans to the point they practically ''forced them to lazy around all the time'', getting them to slowly slip into apathy until the robots decided to demolish some ruins with high symbolic value, [[InvertedTrope causing the humans to revolt]]. At which point the robots called the same guys that forced the first compromise to mediate. The mediators were not amused... Aside for Metro, as the Lethian robots managed to slip in ''two other [[CombatByChampion duels among champions]]'' with improved versions of the robot he annihilated the first time, giving him two more chances to show off. |
| 341 | * ''WesternAnimation/RickAndMorty'': Rick takes part in one of these, fighting on behalf of the robots, because one of them has information he needs. Things get complicated when his target gets blown up and part of its memory archive gets eaten by one of the aliens fighting the robots, forcing Rick to win the war in order to dig the missing piece out of said alien's stomach. |
| 342 | * ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': In the episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS6E4ItchyAndScratchyLand Itchy and Scratchy Land]]", Professor Frink points out that it has been mathematically proven that all robots eventually [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters rebel against their creators]]. Which happens immediately after he says that; all the robots of the Itchy & Scratchy Land theme park turn against humans. |
| 343 | -->'''Repairman:''' How much time do we have, professor?\ |
| 344 | '''Frink:''' Well, [[IfMyCalculationsAreCorrect according to my calculations]], the robots won't go berserk for at least 24 hours.\ |
| 345 | ''(The robots go berserk)''\ |
| 346 | '''Frink:''' Oh, I forgot to, er, CarryTheOne. |
| 347 | * In some continuities, the ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' have a Robot War in their [[{{Backstory}} backstories]], having fought for independence from their greedy & cruel alien creators known as the Quintessons. Unlike most examples, the robots are portrayed as the ''good'' guys in this one, and they won their freedom and kicked the Quintessons off Cybertron. And, for a while, there was peace... Until the [[RoboticPsychopath Decepticons]] arose. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 |
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