[[quoteright:238:[[PerryBibleFellowship http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/PBF-ExecutiveDecision.png]]]]

->''"[[WheresTheKaboom Where's the kaboom?]] There was supposed to be an [[TropeNamer Earth-shattering kaboom!]]"''
--> -- '''Marvin the Martian''', ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes''

Sometimes, TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt just isn't enough. If you really want to end the world, why not destroy the whole planet -- tear the very ground from under everyone's feet?

ScienceFiction writers have devised many methods of demolishing a planet: you can [[WaveMotionGun blast it with a laser]], you can [[ColonyDrop hit it with a really big object]], you can feed it to self-replicating all-consuming {{Nanomachines}}, or use [[ApocalypseHow other, even more imaginative ways]].

This is understandably worse than just conquering a world or wiping out the present civilization. Mankind can always rebuild after that. There's usually no [[AfterTheEnd "After"]] for ''this'' End. Destroying a planet is usually reserved for the most "[[{{HSQ}} Holy crap]]" moments in a Sci-Fi or even Fantasy series. Blowing up an entire, inhabited planet is one of the fastest ways to really [[KillEmAll ratchet up the body count]] and cross the MoralEventHorizon.

Some series prefer to have this as the final goal of the BigBad, with the heroes racing to stop him. In other series, there's no way to stop the Earth Shattering Kaboom, and the subsequent storylines focus on the actions of the few survivors as they try to carry on, seek revenge or simply live with the fact that their home has been completely obliterated.

A slightly less devastating variation of this is to simply blast the surface of the planet until the air hums with radioactivity and nothing can live on it, for example, the "glassing" of planets in the ''{{Halo}}'' verse. This is ColonyDrop and KillSat taken to the extreme. Compare the PlanetEater.

Wikipedia refers to ships and weapons capable of doing this as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_killer Planet Killers]]. Actually ''shattering'' a world is in fact [[http://qntm.org/destroy considerably harder than TV makes it look]]. Even if your huge laser manages to blast into the planet, you still have to overcome the gravity of all that rock with some sort of explosion capable of sending all thousands of quintillions of tons far enough away that it won't just clump together again. 'Cause if you've just got a big laser, all you're going to do is drill a button hole in it.

Think of it as a [[TheTokyoFireball Tokyo Fireball]] on a planetary scale. The full-on Earth Shattering Kaboom is a Class X on the ApocalypseHow scale, often represented with an EarthShatteringPoster. Of course, some villains one-up this by going StarKilling, destroying ''stars'' (and thus entire star systems) instead of just planets.

The villain archetype who wants to cause this is called the OmnicidalManiac. Alternatively, if he does it by accident (or just doesn't know ''why'' he'd do it), he's the MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds.

Oh, and if somehow if some part of planet still remains, and someone settles on that, then it becomes ShatteredWorld. See also WhyYouShouldDestroyThePlanetEarth.

Contrast GenesisEffect, where planets are created instead of destroyed. See also OrbitalBombardment, which may overlap.
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!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime]]
* ''{{Gunbuster}}'' goes past mere planetary destruction with the Black Hole Bomb, a weapon capable of destroying the core of the galaxy. One of the weapon's components? The planet Jupiter. (Quick! Blow up Jupiter!)
** A certain pair of moronic monarchs from ''HeroicAge'' could help out with that one.
** In the images of the final battle, planets and moons are shown being destroyed as ''collateral damage''.
* The Jabberwock from ''ProjectARMS''. [[spoiler:After it absorbes a nuclear missile]] it is capable of generating ''two fists'' of [[spoiler:antimatter]].
** [[spoiler:It was super-sized at the time, so those 'fists' were probably car-sized or bigger.]]
* ''SpaceRunawayIdeon'' goes even further than that, as the titular HumongousMecha has three main weapons that ''start'' at planet-killing, and go up from there.
* The ''LightNovel/DirtyPair'' count as planet-killing weapons all by themselves - they have blown up at least seven planets ''[[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds entirely by accident]]''.
* The ''DragonBall'' saga is full of characters who can destroy the world. All the major villains starting with Vegeta are capable of it (we see Vegeta destroy other planets, although it should be remembered that the times we do see him destroying planets are in {{Filler}}s); the usual reason they don't just do it is that they want to fight Goku first. Earth is ''successfully'' destroyed once in {{canon}}, though, by Kid Buu.
** They added a nice touch when it was destroyed by the worst villain of the series, Pilaf, in GT.
** Frieza destroys Planets Vegeta and Namek, Gohan blows up the Makyo Planet, Cell blows up King Kai's planet while trying to destroy the Earth, and Earth isn't the last planet destroyed by Kid Buu.
** The God of Destruction, Bills, is the strongest planet buster in the series. [[spoiler: He's strong enough to completely destroy an entire galaxy at full power, if not more.]]
* In ''Anime/DigimonAdventure'', Vademon summons a planet (complete with rings) to keep [=AtlurKabuterimon=] ([=MegaKabuterimon=]) away. The insect digimon promptly blows it up.
** In ''Anime/DigimonFrontier'', Lucemon beats the shit out of the heroes by piledriving them straight into conveniently-placed moons. Said moons promptly explode.
* [[LostTechnology Lost Logia]] in ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' can, and have, destroyed several worlds across multiple dimensions in the past. Needless to say, the heroes don't want them falling into criminal hands and/or going out of control.
* In ''InfiniteRyvius'', the Blue Impulse uses gravity manipulation to destroy Saturn's (inhabited) moon Hyperion.
* ''UchuuSenkanYamato'': although the original WaveMotionGun is not in fact a planet-killer, several of the alien races have (and use) this capability.
** In the ''2199'' remake the WMG is capable of blowing up a floating continent the size of ''Australia'' in one shot and implied to be capable of doing the same to Pluto, so it fits.
* Sailor Galaxia is shown blowing up "junk planets" during her search for the strongest star in ''SailorMoon: Stars''.
** Sailor Moon went ahead and destroyed a planet in the second story arc, too.
** Sailor Saturn is infamous for her ability to end the world, with the price being her own life.
** Sailor Chibi Moon is a planet buster as well. The anime may have made her the most incompetent fighter ever, but she was pretty strong in the manga.
* Angol Mois from ''KeroroGunsou'' is from a whole tribe of HumanoidAliens with the power to destroy planets.
* Subverted in the Clow Card arc of ''Manga/CardcaptorSakura''. With the Clow Cards free, Kero warns of a catastrophe that will befall the world if they're not captured, only to later reveal that the catastrophe ''isn't'' this trope. In fact, it's actually worse... kinda'.
* TsutomuNihei, the author of ''{{Blame}}'', stated that Killy's [[WeaponOfMassDestruction GravitonBeamEmitter]] would cause a substantial environmental change when fired on Earth.It doesn't take a genius to figure out what would happen if it's fired ''at'' Earth.
* ''TowardTheTerra'' has two such cases.
** [[spoiler: Nazca, Mu’s new home, gets completely destroyed by Megido]] and the combined efforts of Blue, Jomy and the Nazca children aren't enough to prevent this.
** [[spoiler: The Earth]] almost gets shattered into a million pieces, when the Grandmother decides it's time to get rid of the Mu for good.
* ''GurrenLagann'' has [[spoiler:planets being ''thrown'' at the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann.]] And that's ''nothing'' compared to the FinalBattle: [[spoiler: '''GALAXIES THEMSELVES BECOME WEAPONS!''']]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Card Games]]
* In Flying Buffalo's ''NuclearWar,'' there is a rule that allows an improbable series of events to result in a nuclear chain reaction that not only destroys the Earth, but the entire solar system.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* Comic books like this trope as a sufficiently worthy threat for the best heroes to deal with. The most famous is probably {{Galactus}} of the MarvelUniverse, a gargantuan being who [[PlanetEater eats planets]].
** While there is some debate over what ''actually'' happens if Galactus succeeds in eating, the zombies who ''ate'' his dimensional double definitely create massive rubble.
*** The planet dies, it goes from Earth-like to Mars-like, that's it.
*** It depends on the current author. Some authors say he "consumes the life force" of life-sustaining planets, turning Earth-like worlds into sterile rocks, others say he "eats" the planets leaving, I dunno, an asteroid belt-like ring of planet crumbs or something.
*** They're pretty explicit about what Ultimate Galactus would do to a planet. Intelligent life would be wiped out by psychic attack and death cultists. A flesh-eating supervirus would reduce all (multicellular?) life to sludge. Then robotlike nodes would descend to the planet, crack open the crust and charge themselves up by siphoning off geothermal heat. Maybe there was more to it, I don't remember, but the end result is that Galactus would be recharged ("fed") for a voyage to the next planet in its path and the world would stripped of all its current life and unable to support anything like that for a long time, if ever.
** This is also a major threat for the planet Sakaar in the ''Planet Hulk'' saga. The ChekhovsGun finally goes off in ''Skaar: Son of Hulk'', as Galactus devours Sakaar.
** In Jonathan Hickman's ''Comicbook/NewAvengers'', Black Panther meets a woman who destroys a second Earth hanging over their heads. The comic is broadly hinting that the New Avengers will have to destroy Earths too, possibly even ''the'' Earth, to save the rest of reality.
* Superboy-Prime becomes one of these during the ''CountdownToFinalCrisis'' miniseries. Having been displaced from his own universe, he tries to find his way back - repeatedly flying into a rage at the inferior copies of Earth he finds in the alternate universes and destroying them.
* DCComics has a species of giant space critters called Sun Eaters, who do just that.
* This happens to Earth in ComicBook: ComicBook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}} [[http:http://www.comics.org/issue/52235/ v4 #38]], shortly after the Moon had been exploded a few issues earlier. Approximately 20 cities are saved and become a ShatteredWorld, but even with the advanced technology of the 30th Century, everyone is not able to get off planet. (The issue also includes of of the few times Neil Gaiman's Death appeared in a Mainstream DCComics issue (as opposed to Vertigo.)
* Earth is blown up on the very first page of ''{{Shakara}}'', which then follows battles between various aliens.
* An old ''Series/DoctorWho'' comic had an insane hermit living in some ruins in an asteroid belt, desperately seeking to capture the TARDIS. When the Doctor caught up with him, the gun he was holding turned out to be sentient, and the Doctor asked it to explain why an asteroid belt had formed when there should be a planet. [[spoiler:It turned out the lunatic was once a famed inventor interested in creating the ultimate weapon. He finished building it and tested it on a spittoon. The blast took out the ''entire freaking planet'' and he only survived because of the energy shield the gun created.]]
* [[http://www.ghira.mistral.co.uk/bombs.gif This strip]] by {{Quino}}.
* In ''{{Starslayer}}'', Torin mac Quillon comes into possession of a weapon that can implode a sun into a black hole. He ends up using it.
* Possibly the oldest comic book example is in ''ComicBook/TheMonsterSocietyOfEvil'', where it nearly happens a couple of times. Mister Mind tries firing giant shells at America and Russia from a ten-mile Big Bertha, then in another chapter he tries to blow the Earth in half using explosives set up by tiny Americans living underground in case the war went badly for America.
* Averted in ''Sonic The Comic''; the Metallix are trying to convert the Miracle Planet to metal to use as their base, using something called the Alpha Device created by Grimer. After dealing with the Metallix, Sonic proposes 'just yanking the thing out', but Porker Lewis states doing so would blow the planet up.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]
* In Chapter 10 of ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3140820/10/Chronicles_of_the_Crusade_Book_2_The_Long_Road Chronicles of the Crusade: The Long Road]]'', Captain Gideon and the crew of the ''Excalibur'' detonate the Mark IX inside of Enceladus so that Kathenn can be destroyed. They later remark that Sheridan would be pissed that he wasn't the one who pushed the button to detonate it.
* This happens several times throughout ''Fanfic/ReunionsAreABitch''.
* In ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5759289/1/ Reaper's Origin]]'', this happens during the Battle of Antarctica and when the SGC destroys Erebus.
* In ''Fanfic/KeepersOfTheElements'', [[BigBad Radcliffe]] does this to Zenith by taking out its central power core.
* During the course of ''ThirtyHs'', Harry kills the fuck out of at least two planets, and Dumblecop kicks another planet in half.
* According to ''Fanfic/CalvinAndHobbesTheSeries'', if Thunderstorm doesn't stop exploiting another dimension using a portal, this will happen to ''both'' out world and the other dimension.
* What happens to Equestria and Unicornicopia in ''Fanfic/MyLittleUnicorn''. ItGotBetter.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* One of the most famous Planet Killers is the Death Star from ''StarWars'', and poor Planet Alderaan to supply the Kaboom. Later on in the movie, the Death Star gets its ''own'' EarthShatteringKaboom (okay, space station the size of a small moon, close enough).
** The second (and larger) Death Star gets its own as well in ''ReturnOfTheJedi''.
** The lesser version is known to the Franchise/StarWarsExpandedUniverse as Imperial Order ''Base Delta Zero''. Much is made of the fact that the Empire can do this in a few hours or days with ''standard'' fleet elements. Superweapons are just for flash.
*** Base Delta Zero just kills off the biosphere and renders the planet uninhabitable. Death Stars (or the like) are still needed if you want to blow it up like a firecracker.
** And speaking of the ExpandedUniverse, further planet-killers are encountered there, some built by Imperial forces, others not. These include the Darksaber (the Death Star's laser, rebuilt without an actual Death Star. And it doesn't work), the skeletal prototype Death Star, the Eye of Palpatine, Centerpoint Station, and the Sun Crusher (which is even ''worse'' than the Death Star; it's a ''tiny'' indestructible ship that, if you replace "crush" with "supernova", [[StarKilling does what it sounds like]]).
*** FridgeBrilliance: To release enough energy to blow a star up, you need to crush its core with the outer layers.
** The "planet killer arms race" featured in the StarWars EU, in which every planet-killer has to be somehow bigger and badder than the last, is one of the most-cited reasons why some fans consider several fair-sized chunks of the EU [[FanonDiscontinuity non-canonical and ridiculous]]. This was only really happening in the nineties, when Bantam had the license. Del Ray, for all their perceived faults, mostly uses this gimmick with the [[NewJediOrder Vong]], who possessed and often were Planet Killers themselves.
*** Nearly all of the Bantam superweapons were [[JediAcademyTrilogy Kevin J. Anderson's]] doing. He put at least one in each novel except in the YoungJediKnights series.
** And then there were the [[DarkEmpire World Devastators]]. They were [[KnightsOfTheOldRepublic Star Forges]] in miniature, except taking materials from planets instead of stars and having to chew said planets up to get them. These "merely" rendered the planet an uninhabitable ball of rock significantly smaller than it used to be, rather than an actual kaboom. Notably, in the first RogueSquadron game players could fly against the World Devastators as Wedge Antilles.
** The ''Eclipse''-class Super Star Destroyer had a superlaser that extended the length of the battleship. It had only 1/3 the power of the Death Stars' superlasers, but it was still powerful enough to rip a gap in the crust of a planet. It wasn't nicknamed the "Continent Cracker" for nothing.
* And while the Death Star and Alderaan are fresh on our minds, the similar destruction of the peaceful planet Basketball in the ''StarWars'' parody film, ''HardwareWars''.
* ''TitanAE'' begins with the destruction of the Earth, and [[AfterTheEnd continues with the survivors from there]].
** [[spoiler:Near-perfectly inverted at the end with an Earth Creating Kaboom. The BigBad shows up to try to destroy the Titan, but instead destroys himself and creates [[strike:a new earth]] Bob.]]
* ''Film/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''. Ironically, rather than a "terrible, ghastly noise" (as the book, listed below, describes), the destruction of the Earth in the film version is silent (more like an earth ''imploding'' "zip").
* The Genesis Device from ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' and ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock''. While technically a subversion (not only does it actually create habitable planets through {{terraform}}ing, rather than blow a habitable planet into random debris, it can blow random debris into a habitable planet), the problems with it stem from the fact that if used against an inhabited planet, it would quickly destroy every living thing on a planet in favor of its new creation. In addition, the newly minted planet fell apart after a few weeks in ''Franchise/StarTrek III''.
** Kirk's son couldn't actually get the technology to work [[ToxicPhlebotinum so he put proto-matter in it.]] Being an unstable substance, the new planet slowly but surely implodes on itself.
* Disturbingly enough, the trope repeats itself ''by accident'' in the beginning of ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', when the Klingon moon of Praxis explodes due to overmining. About 1/6 of the planetoid remains, and a massive shockwave spreads throughout the sector.
* Not to be outdone, ''Film/StarTrekGenerations'' introduced the "Trilithium Warhead," a small device which could implode a star, causing a shock wave that could destroy a solar system, and which could be produced and deployed by one person.
* The new ''Film/StarTrek'' movie ups the ante even more, with the Romulan BigBad's plan being [[spoiler:to destroy every single planet in the Federation, just to get back at Spock for not being able to stop Romulus from being destroyed by a star going supernova in time. The villain actually gets as far as destroying Vulcan, and is in the process of trying to destroy Earth before he is stopped by Kirk and Spock]].
*** Technically, it's an implosion, rather than an explosion as [[spoiler: the red matter is injected into the planet's core and ignites, setting off a black hole]].
* At the very end of the Argentinian animated film ''Mercano, el marciano'' (Mercano the Martian) the Earth explodes because the characters cut the wrong wire of the remote controlling all of the world's computers, that were turned into bombs.
* In ''Film/RedPlanet'', [[MadBomber Burchenal]] triggers a [[WorldWreckingWave Surface Kaboom]] by [[PlayingWithFire dropping a torch]] on ''[[ChemistryCanDoAnything oxygened-algae]]'' and ''[[KillItWithFire oxygened-bugs]]''.
* In ''Beneath the PlanetOfTheApes'' (the first sequel), a group of mutants (who captured Taylor, his girl and the guy who came to rescue him) [[CargoCult worships a powerful nuke]], that when detonated would destroy Earth. Then the apes attack, and while Taylor is falling dead, he triggers the bomb... one DownerEnding, specially due to the InsignificantLittleBluePlanet speech that follows.
** Parodied in ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'' in Season 8. The Satellite of Love was orbiting a Planet of the Apes-like Earth...when Mike Nelson gives advice that starts the bomb that a cult worships. Predictable results...and Mike was [[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds only beginning]].
** It is slightly hinted that ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' parodies this as well. [[spoiler: When [[BigBad President Skroob]], Dark Helmet, and Colonel Sandurz crashland on the Planet of the Apes, an ape says "''Oh shit, there goes the planet.''" The scene changes after that, and never switches back to the planet, making it seem more of a WhatHappenedToTheMouse, but if you've seen ''Beneath the Planet of the Apes'', [[GenreSavvy we can assume what happens next]].]]
* In ''Film/BattleBeyondTheStars'', the BigBad has a weapon called a Stellar Converter that, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin converts planets into stars]].
* In ArthurCClarke's ''TwoThousandTenTheYearWeMakeContact'' (both film and book) the SufficientlyAdvancedAliens who made TheMonolith invoke its abilities to cause Jupiter to collapse and ignite as a star. It's notable that this is ''not'' for nefarious purposes; instead they want to provide an energy source to the evolving life forms on Europa, who would otherwise have died out as the geothermal vents keeping them warm went cold.
* In ''DaleksInvasionEarth2150AD'', the Daleks planned to detonate a bomb which would remove the Earth's core.
* A Q-Bomb is used to crack Planet OM-1 in ''[[Film/StarshipTroopers Starship Troopers 3: Marauder]]'', though the sight wasn't enough to distract General Dix Hauzer from snogging Captain Lola Beck (seeing as we're talking about [[MsFanservice Jolene Blalock's]] luscious lips I can't blame him).
* In ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace'', an alien comes to Earth to explain that, since HumansAreBastards, they will not stop at atom bombs and hydrogen bombs, and will soon produce the solaronite bomb, which, by exploding sunlight and everything it touches, will create a chain reaction destroying the universe.
* The JohnCarpenter's ultra low budget film ''Film/DarkStar'' featured a starship crew whose job was to traverse the Galaxy, using "Exponential Thermostellar Bombs" to destroy planets that might someday threaten human colonies. For twenty years. On the ragged edge of terminal boredom.
* In ''Film/GodzillaVsDestoroyah'', it's revealed that Godzilla's heart is a nuclear reactor. When Birth Island erupts and exposes Godzilla to a bed of radioactive materials, he absorbs too much and begins to undergo meltdown. Unfortunately, his self-destruction will also take most of the planet with him, sending scientists and the military scrambling for a way to prevent it. Things get more complicated when Destoroyah arrives on the scene, making Godzilla's meltdown occur faster and become more powerful due to his rage at Destoroyah's actions.
* The TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} fanfilm ''{{Damnatus}}'' [[spoiler:ends with Inquisitor Lessus ordering an Exterminatus on the planet of Sancta Heroica in a DownerEnding after the heroes [[NiceJobBreakingItHero fuck up their mission]] and [[KillEmAll die trying to escape]]. Given this is the [[CrapsackWorld Crapsack Verse]] of 40K, this is par for the course]].
* The beginning of ''Film/MenInBlack II'' shows Sarleena destroying planets she passed by.
** Even more amazing when we find out that the ship is [[spoiler: only a foot tall]]
* In the end of ''TransformersDarkOfTheMoon'', [[spoiler: Cybertron collapses in on itself when the Autobots destroy Sentinel's Space Bridge.]]
* Lars von Trier's ''{{Melancholia}}'' revolves around the destruction of Earth by collision with an immense rogue planet (though there's not a lot of suspense about it, as the world's fate is revealed up front in the opening sequence).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy''
** [[Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1 The first book]] starts with the Earth being demolished to make way for a hyperspace expressway.
** And then ratchets it up at the end of ''Literature/MostlyHarmless'' by [[spoiler: destroying every Earth in every alternate dimension ever.]]
* In the ''Gray Lensman'' book of Creator/EEDocSmith's ''Literature/{{Lensman}}'' series, two planets have their inertia dampened (i.e. forward momentum placed in stasis), after which they are moved into place on opposite sides of a planet of villains. When their inertia or forward momentum is returned, they rush together to crush the planet between them. This is merely a coda to the use of an antimatter bomb of planetary size. Later in the series, this is deemed insufficient and more powerful weapons are used, including planets from other universes with intrinsic velocities significantly above lightspeed.
* The ''RevelationSpace'' universe features many Earth Shattering Kabooms: First, the main antagonists destroy at least three planets during the main trilogy and an unknown but very large number more during the previous one billion years; second, defeating those antagonists releases a rogue terraforming agent, which, it is implied, destroys the whole ''universe'' in several billion years. From the very first novel a group of humans have a cache of 40 weapons, each capable of destroying a planet. And then finally, there are the Nestbuilder Weapons, of which little is seen but [[TakeOurWordForIt much is said]].
** The eponymous device of Alastair Reynolds' short story, ''Merlin's Gun''.
* Julian May's ''Magnificat'' the final book of the Literature/GalacticMilieu series ends with the destruction of a major colony planet, alluded to in the rest of the series as the biggest mass murder of all time.
* In DanSimmons's ''Literature/HyperionCantos'' saga, the Earth has been destroyed a long time ago, but not before mankind had colonized a major part of the known universe. It later turns out that it wasn't destroyed, only hidden by some [[PowersThatBe Higher Power]].
* OrsonScottCard's ''EndersGame'' involves the "Little Doctor" device, which is indeed capable of blowing up a planet, and is used for that purpose near the end of the book. In the sequel ''Children Of The Mind'', a second such disaster is narrowly averted.
** The device is nicknamed the "Little Doctor" because it's actual name is the Molecular Disruption device, abbreviated MD, which is also the abbreviation for "Medical Doctor". It works by creating an energy field that prevents atoms from clinging together. The field's strength and area of effect is related to how much mass the target has. The effect spreads from atom to atom in a chain reaction. This means that the weapon requires the same amount of energy to be used against a single ship as it does a planet.
*** The weapon's range isn't actually that great, which means that any ship using it against a planet is on a suicide mission, as the field from the planet's destruction will get anything in orbit. The ships using it in the first book had 70-year-old equipment, so it's possible that later developments upped that range.
**** Specifically, in Ender's Game, the weapon is explicitly stated to be NOT a missile. Circa 3000 years later, by {{CotM}}, it's shown to be the payload of a missile or missile-like device.
* David Weber and Steve White's ''The Shiva Option'' features this (in the form of anti-matter warhead barrages from fighter swarms) being used against a genocidal alien race as a regular tactic, once the good guys discovered the aliens communicated by telepathy. Kill anything over several hundred million on-planet, and the psychic hammerblow of the mass deaths cripples anything else in-system. Given that the alien species was a lot of ancient horror cliches come to life (including HumanResources to the point of making conquered races into planetary-scale livestock ranches), the inclination is to rule it necessary. Especially since an earlier book in the series ended with a Terran Federation ex-President sacrificing his own health to prevent the destruction of a different species' planet where only the world government was at fault.
** In Weber's ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' stories, everyone can do it, but no one does because of the "Eridani Edict." Anyone indiscriminately bombarding planetary targets will themselves meet the same fate, when everyone else in the galaxy turns around and does the same to them.
* In ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'', Mike mentions that he is able to destroy the Earth with his psychic powers, although he reassures Jubal Harshaw that he is morally unable to do so. The book also mentions that the asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter was created when the Martians used the same powers to destroy a planet between them many eons ago.
** In the epilogue of the expanded edition of that novel, it is noted that [[spoiler: the Martians eventually do decide to destroy the earth; by then, however, ''humanity'' has colonized space, a lot.]]
* In the novel ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'', the Terran Federation develops the Nova Bomb. It is used on planets that are heavily occupied by bugs and of no strategic importance to the Federation.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein originally used the term "nova bomb" in the 1953 version of his short story "Gulf". It was a theoretical bomb that could destroy the entire Earth.
* In Creator/GregBear's ''The Forge of God'', [[spoiler:Earth was blown up after (a) being shot with one giant neutronium bullet and one giant anti-neutronium bullet that met and exploded '''and''' (b) having vast quantities of hydrogen extracted from the oceans and turned into hydrogen bombs.]]
* Possibly [[spoiler: Charlie [=McGee=]]] from Creator/StephenKing's novel ''Literature/{{Firestarter}}''. [[spoiler: ''"Suppose there is a [[PersonOfMassDestruction little girl]] out there someplace this morning, who has within her...the power to crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery?"]]
* ''[[Literature/BattlefieldEarth Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000]]'', in both the book and [[Film/BattlefieldEarth movie]], Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler detonates [[spoiler: the Psychlo homeworld by teleporting a nuclear device to the planet]]. [[spoiler:The nuke]] is a plain old one, but it's the way [[spoiler:nuclear radiation]] interacts with the [[spoiler:Psychlos' breath-gas]] that causes the big boom.
* Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''HumanxCommonwealth'' series features a couple of these, starting with the basic mechanism used for FasterThanLightTravel -- immensely strong artificial gravity fields that can theoretically demolish large chunks of a planetary body if brought too close. Needless to say, doing this is considered a horrific crime, and would almost certainly be suicidal to boot. The novel ''The End of the Matter'' features a search for a LostSuperweapon that creates anticollapsars, or white holes, made out of antimatter. The [[{{Precursors}} long gone race]] that created the weapon did so in order to counter rogue black holes, but also threatened to use it on the planets of their contemporary rivals. (The resulting arms race destroyed both species.)
* MatthewReilly's ''Temple'' has the Supernova - a nuke capable of vaporising one third of the Earth's mass and knocking the rest out of it's orbit around the sun. [[spoiler:There's 3 of them]]
* Creator/CJCherryh wrote about one method in her ChanurNovels. The main character speculates how the bad guys might hijack loose interplanetary debris and accelerate same, followed by aiming said debris at the main character's homeworld.
* In Michael Reaves' ''The Shattered World'' and ''The Burning Realm'', this had happened to a fantasy world a thousand years ago. The damage-control efforts of every wizard in the world allowed fragments of the broken planet to be saved, orbiting one another in a bubble of atmosphere. The Shattering was blamed on the power-mad Necromancer's final, spiteful spell, cast when the nations of the world refused to bow down to him. [[spoiler: He was actually a scapegoat for a collision between planets, and had really used his powers to keep the world's fragments from disintegrating into dust.]]
* The oldest and still canonical example of this in the ''Literature/PerryRhodan'' universe is the Arkon bomb, a reasonably portable device capable of causing a runaway nuclear chain reaction that will destroy the planet it is planted on over the course of only a few days. The arguably most destructive weapon ever built by Terrans, the Hyperinmestron, was used only three times in the series and only once for actual military purposes -- it's capable of blowing up a star, and that first use resulted in side effects that caused supernovae and other general chaos and devastation throughout the center of the Andromeda galaxy.
* ''Literature/CreaturesOfLightAndDarkness'' by Creator/RogerZelazny includes shattering "worlds", supposed to contain multiple planets, in the course of the battles of the gods.
* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} Literature/BloodAngels'' stories, the planet Orilan is Exterminatus'd to sterilize it of corruptive daemonic taint. [[spoiler: Shenlong]] follows when the Blood Angels find its people fallen too far from the God-Emperor's light.
** And in the CiaphasCain novel ''Caves of Ice'', a bomb that was placed in a mine that was flooded with millions of gallons of highly volatile promethium resulted in a gigaton range explosion that obliterated a mountain range and caused a shockwave that could be felt from ''orbit''. Despite that, they're still not certain whether or not the explosion destroyed the Necron tomb hidden below the mine.
* In the ''NightsDawnTrilogy'', the scientists studying the ruins near the habitat Tranquility crap themselves when they realize that the planet of this ancient alien civilization was ''actually destroyed'', as in reduced to large chunks of rock floating around space. This reaction is largely provoked by the fact that the ''best'' that their technological advances so far, which include light-speed warping, anti-matter bombs, living thinking Bitek space vessels and habitats (Tranquility is actually one of these), and techno-telepathy, have only made it as far as being able to [[DepopulationBomb completely screw with the surface of a planet and destroy its climate and ecology]]. It gets worse, because for reasons unknown, this ancient alien race apparently ''[[CyanidePill did it]] [[StartsWithASuicide to themselves.]]''
* Quite a few examples from the StarTrekNovelVerse:
** Thallon in ''StarTrekNewFrontier'', by virtue of the Great Bird of the Galaxy, which has been gestating inside its core for millennia. Now ready to "hatch", it destroys the planet from within.
** Several planets in the Taurus Reach during the 2260s, due to the use of Shedai technology by Federation and Klingon researchers. Some planets were destroyed accidentally as a result of inept use of [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Shedai]] artifacts, others were [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill destroyed deliberately by the Shedai Wanderer]] in her attempts to prevent her people's technology coming into the hands of other, younger races. Palgrenax was one such planet. See: ''StarTrekVanguard''.
** In ''StarTrekTitan'', the Shalra homeworld was destroyed by a space-going creature, which fed on the remains. Also, Oghen - and possibly other worlds in the Neyel Hegemony - were destroyed by the effects of the Red King protouniverse.
** Erigol in ''StarTrekDestiny'', deliberately destroyed in order to maintain a stable time loop.
** Dokaal in ''StarTrekATimeTo'', in a natural disaster.
* Vernor Vinge's ''Literature/AFireUponTheDeep'', set in the part of his Literature/ZonesOfThought verse that allows FTL and other ubertech, contains at least two types of planetcracker weapons: antimatter warheads (with sufficient yield to, at the very least, sterilize a planet's surface) and kinetic missiles accelerated to relativistic speeds. As typical warships carry thousands of the former as their standard armament, space conflicts can (and do) become fast and bloody...
* In the ''{{Sten}}'' series, the Empire has Anti-Matter Two weapons called planetbusters. The Eternal Emperor tries not to use them much, for the pragmatic reason that blowing up entire worlds tends to attract unwanted attention from other governments and is generally bad for business. [[spoiler:However, in ''Empire's End'', one is deployed against the Manabi homeworld.]]
* The old earth is destroyed in this fashion at the end of the LeftBehind book ''Kingdom Come''.
* In ''TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy'', the LIGHT annihilation device is an {{Antimatter}}-based weapon that can blow up a Moon-sized planetoid. That's actually the largest target it ever had and was its first use in battle. How? By luring the enemy armada to it and turning all the planetoid's mass into energy with an anti-matter stream. That was the plan, anyway. What actually happened was both fleets got wiped out, except TheEmpire still had plenty of ships left, while LaResistance (who used the weapon) only had 8. Oh, and the weapon was destroyed as well. Can you say PyrrhicVictory? The only thing that saved the colonists was that the enemy had no idea they were defenseless. The device is later mounted on flagship cruisers but almost never used.
* In SergeyLukyanenko's ''Literature/ALordFromPlanetEarth'' trilogy, quark bombs are relatively small spheres. One is fully capable of starting a process of total subatomic fission that is impossible to stop and consumes a planet in a matter of minutes. Even small chunks of the planet can re-start the process on another world if they happen to make it that far. Luckily, the bomb has to be delivered by ship, as teleportation renders it inert. After only two uses, it was banned by the entire galaxy. The only safe way to dispose of the bomb is to take it to a very remote area of space and blow it up.
* In the 1932 novel ''When Worlds Collide'' by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, a Jupiter-sized rogue planet drifts into the Solar System on a direct course for Earth with a result one character compares to tossing a walnut in front of a cannon at the instant the cannon is fired.
* Creator/RobertWestall's ''Literature/UrnBurial'' has this happen to the home planet of the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s in the backstory; blown up with superweapons by the alien whose grave the human hero finds while herding sheep.
* Creator/JackMcDevitt's ''Deepsix'' (part of his ''Literature/PriscillaHutchins'' series) is about a last-minute xeno-archeological expedition to a doomed planet that is about to be hit by a large rogue moon. The team only has three weeks before the planet-shattering kaboom, so it's important that nothing go wrong. Of course....
* In the fifth ''{{Literature/Dune}}'' novel, ''Heretics of Dune'', an Honored Matres fleet blasts the surface of [[spoiler: Arrakis (called Rakis in that era)]] into molten slag, effectively sterilizing it.
* The {{Creator/Larry Niven}} short story "The Hole Man" involves a team of explorers uncovering an ancient alien device on Mars that is powered by a miniature black hole in a containment field. When the black hole is accidentally released, it falls through one of the explorers standing underneath (killing him) and through the surface of the planet, leaving a tiny pinhole. The explorers predict that the black hole will settle in the planet's core and slowly add the planet's material to its mass, with the whole of Mars eventually collapsing into it--but this supposed outcome doesn't occur within the timeframe of the story itself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* In ''Franchise/StarTrek'', The USS ''Enterprise'' can be assumed to have planet-killing abilities (of the lesser kind), unless Captain Kirk was bluffing when he mentioned General Order 24...
** The [[TheEmpire ISS]] ''Enterprise'' in the MirrorUniverse clearly does have the capacity to destroy a planet or at least sterilize its surface.
** The planet killer from the episode "The Doomsday Machine".
** In addition, in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' Species 8472 could combine the energy from 9 of their ships to create a beam powerful enough to make a planet explode.
** The Xindi superweapon in season three of ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'' was designed to do this. In fact, we actually see it happen in the alt-future episode "Twilight".
** In "The Die Is Cast", it is stated that a fleet of 20 Romulan and Cardassian ships can destroy a planet down to its core within 6 hours (1+5). The opening volley alone destroyed 30% of surface, [[spoiler: after which the fleet was interrupted by 150 Dominion ships and destroyed.]]
** The ''Defiant'' could supposedly reduce the surface of the new Founder Homeworld to a smoking cinder in short order (While it was Garak who said this, he said it to Worf, who would be the most familiar with the ''Defiant''[='=]s systems).
* Subversion: Earth is destroyed on-screen in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "The End of the World", but [[InsignificantLittleBluePlanet nobody in that era makes a big deal out of it]]... because it's five billion years from now, Earth's destruction was long overdue anyway, and humanity has abandoned it long before.
** In the season finale episode "Journey's End," [[spoiler:the Daleks]] prevent [[spoiler:Martha Jones]] from using [[spoiler:the Osterhagen Key doomsday device]]. Just as well.
** This is played straight in ''Doctor Who'' too many times to count. Not always with ''Earth,'' but with ''a'' planet inhabited by humanoids. Gallifrey, for instance, goes boom in the new series, and in ''The Invasion of Time'', the [[spoiler: Sontarans threaten to blow it up.]]
** And in ''The Pirate Planet'', the eponymous planet destroys other worlds by materialising around them, stripping them of their resources and shrinking them down to the size of a basketball, after which they are displayed in the captain's trophy room.
** It's the plan in ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS6E1TheDominators The Dominators]]''.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' destroyed or rendered completely uninhabitable at least two dozen planets in its fourth season, when the SpaceColdWar between the Vorlons and the Shadows escalated and both brought out their versions of planet-killer ships to destroy worlds of younger races "touched" by the influence of the other.
** In the sequel movie ''A Call to Arms'' (which was also the movie-pilot for the spinoff ''Series/{{Crusade}}''), the [[HenchmenRace Drakh]] acquire a planet-killer left behind by the Shadows, test it on an inhabited planet, then threaten Earth with it.
** And in an episode that depicts the human race a million years in the future, humans are leaving the Solar system as the Sun is about to go nova, implicitly [[StarKilling not by natural causes]].
*** The Dilgar sun "went nova" supposedly by similar mysterious but deliberate means not elaborated, shortly after the Dilgar War (which preceded the ''Babylon 5'' timeframe), according to WordOfGod.
* ''{{Lexx}}'' featured the destruction of many planets over the course of the series (some deliberately, some accidentally), culminating in the last episode, when [[spoiler: the Lexx is tricked into blowing up the Earth!]]
** "Lexx, use every last bit of juice you've got to [[spoiler: blow up that ugly blue planet!]]". [[spoiler: 790]] had to have loved saying that.
* The Showtime series ''{{Odyssey 5}}'' started with the world blowing up, and had five astronauts, who had survived because they were on the titular Odyssey space craft at the time, getting sent five years into the past to prevent it.
* The premise of [[{{Space1999}} Space:1999]] is a spontaneous nuclear explosion (from [[AppliedPhlebotinum radioactive waste undergoing excessive magnetic flux]]) that blows the Moon apart. The series' characters reside on the remaining fragment of Moon, now hurtling independently through space.
* Probably named for Heinlein, the series ''Series/{{Andromeda}}'' had Nova Bombs. How powerful were they? Well, the Andromeda carrying 40 of them was enough to send resident badass and proud warrior race guy Tyr into a fit because it was enough firepower to conquer an empire. The bombs cause stars to go super-nova, and can be volley-fired into black holes to turn them into white holes.
** Incidentally, [[spoiler:there is a literal Earth-shattering kaboom in the series' final episode. Nova Bombs are not to blame but rather something called Radical Isotopes: stuff with negative mass from another dimension.]]
** Harper also designs an even more destructive variant of the Nova bomb, and it's used to destroy an artificial sun.
* Crichton's wormhole weapon on ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' could easily destroy planets, and sizeable chunks of the galaxy, were it ever deployed in warfare.
** Peacekeeper Wars shows that it's more than capable of destroying ''the entire universe.'' And Crichton isn't gun-shy.
* In ''Series/StargateSG1'', several different Goa'uld take a crack at Earth, although Anubis nearly succeeds a couple times. But none of them top Major Samantha Carter using a Stargate to blow up a sun and wipe out a solar system, complete with (almost all of) Apophis' fleet.
** "You know, [[RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun you blow up one sun]] and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water!"
** In "Chain Reaction", under orders from a GeneralRipper that [[TenMinuteRetirement replaces Hammond for the episode]], the SGC blows up an uninhabited planet using a naquadah-enhanced nuke to start a [[TitleDrop chain reaction]] in its naquadah veins. In theory it would have been a strategic superweapon for use against Goa'uld planets, but [[NiceJobBreakingItHero it causes the stargate to lock open temporarily due to the energy release on the far end]].
** [=McKay=] destroys one in a similar manner in ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' though. Accidentally.
*** He would like to remind you that it was "only five-sixths of a solar system," and an uninhabited one. And then later there was the [[spoiler: Replicator homeworld...]]
** ''Series/StargateUniverse'' blows up a planet in the first episode through a combination of an unstable radioactive core, plugging a Stargate into said core and dialing it to a ship billions of light-years away, and having the Lucian Alliance bombard the base.
*** And then, in the season finale, the situation gets reversed - it's a Lucian Alliance base planet getting attacked/destroyed by Earth forces.
* The doomsday planet from {{Vintergatan}}. With a name like that, it was pretty certain to be...well, [[IncrediblyLamePun doomed]].
* While not actually ever used for its intended purpose, missiles with the power to blow up a planet are known to exist in Franchise/PowerRangers. In ''Series/PowerRangersInSpace'' it took one of them to take out the DimensionLord BigBad ManBehindTheMan. He was stabbed in the back with it by TheStarscream. Being hit with said missile ''didn't kill him''. It took Darkonda hitting him with a ''second'' Planet Killer to destroy him for good, and he still survived long enough to [[TakingYouWithMe take Darkonda with him]].
** Also from Power Rangers is [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Serpentera]], a colossus of a Zord (which is saying something) built by Lord Zedd and his subordinates which on its maiden voyage blew up an abandoned planet in an attempt to stop the [[Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers Mighty Morphin]] Rangers from retrieving the Sword of Light. Unfortunately for Zedd, and fortunately for the universe at large, Serpentera was never able to build up anywhere near that kind of power again.
*** And [[Series/PowerRangersWildForce the one time it did]], the RookieRedRanger rammed his motorcycle into it and blew it up.
* ''KamenRiderKuuga'' is said to be able to do this in his Ultimate Form with his Rider Kick...probably why we never see it.
* In the ''NightGallery'' episode "Little Girl Lost", a military scientist has delusions that his dead daughter is alive. A wounded pilot becomes his body guard and must act as if he is interacting with the daughter. At the end of the episode it is revealed that [[spoiler:the scientist has subconsciously realised that his daughter is dead and has found a way to be reunited with her and get revenge on who killed her. And it turns out he has been working on nuclear fission. oops.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Multiple Media]]
* "The Shattering" in ''Franchise/{{Bionicle}}'', the planet of Spherus Magna splitting into [[SingleBiomePlanet Bara Magna, Aqua Magna and Bota Magna]] due to the forces of the Energized Protodermis within its core. Although in some media, it's depicted not as a true "Kaboom", but more like a large planet spitting out two smaller ones.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* The video for Music/FrankieGoesToHollywood's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTOQUnvI3CA Two Tribes]].
* On the cover of the album ''Fragile'' by {{Yes}}.
* Occurs in the end of "Third Stone From The Sun" by The JimiHendrix Experience.
* On the cover of the SelfTitledAlbum ''Boston'', by Music/{{Boston}}.
* We're Going To Destroy The Earth by M.O.T.O.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Role-Playing Games]]
* The ending of Roleplay/DinoAttackRPG's [[WhatIf alternate ending]], ''December 21, 2010''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop RPG]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' gives us a number of ways to kill a planet, from the appropriately named CoolStarship ''Planet Killer'', to fleets of Space Monsters that can ''eat'' a planet down to the rock. Like ''StarWars'', they also have a planet-killing order, called "Exterminatus." Exterminatus is usually used on planets where there is no possible way of ever using the planet again, say because soldiers deployed to it invariably defect to Chaos.
** Most of these methods usually leave a dead ball of rock, however. Except the Planet Killer; that really ''does'' blow up planets. And then we get to the Blackstone Fortresses...
*** There are many methods of Exterminatus, and while it is true that most of them just leave a dead rock, Two-Stage Cyclonic torpedoes indeed cause a [[EarthShatteringKaboom Planet-Shattering Kaboom]]
* ''MaidTheRPG'' includes among its numerous strange items (which venture often into territory) the "Earth-destroying bomb," which when used turns the world setting to post-apocalyptic.
* The Alphatians of ''{{Mystara}}'' came to that planet after destroying their own in an academic dispute between rival factions of wizards.
* ''{{Exalted}}'': [[TheTropeWithoutATitle She Who Lives In Her Name]] invoked a Creation-shattering KABOOM that destroyed ''90% of the the world she helped create''. [[IfICantHaveYou Apparently one of the creators of the universe decided that if she can't rule it, she would rather have it destroyed]]. The fact that her very name is deeply intertwined with the sub-structure of the universe make it very easy for her to do so.
** Fans and Authors argue about the Three Sphere Cataclysm. Some feel that making it too cosmic runs the risk of causing the pre-cataclysm era to be fundamentally unrelateable as a storytelling medium. Others feel that letting her destroy 90% of just raw land mass isn't grand enough for a newly-minted horror. The deepest fan-theories hold that she annihilated Creation's Dynamic Link Library (its card catalog), thus making it impossible for anyone in the world to feel like the world as a whole makes sense... which, granted, is the one thing she would've coveted over the purely physical parts of reality.
** Creation isn't actually a planet, but it's close enough in that it's a bubble of stability in an infinite ocean of chaos. To TheFairFolk who lives outside Creation, even the glorious First Age was but a tiny spark of what Creation used to be in the age of the Primordials.
** Then there's the giant dragon, what was his name, Kukla-something? Anyway, he's a 1,200 foot long gently slumbering beast guarded by twelve high-level war gods, whose job it is to kill anyone who tries to summon or otherwise disturb Kukla's sleep. Why? Because when he wakes up, he'll blow up Creation through liberal application of insane quantities of the five elements, and then go on to blow up the Wyld. Then, seven scales will fall down from his body and form the continents of a new world... Yeah.
*** That's The Kukla. He's given as one example of a mid-power Greater Elemental Dragon. This isn't even touching the Five Elemental Dragons, who are the apexes of the Elements.
* In ''TabletopGame/StrikeLegion'', the only warship weaponry that ''matters'' are weapons that deal this scale of damage. Most light ship-based weaponry are more suitable to providing heavy orbital supporting fire or rearranging continents, while the weapons used in actual ship-to-ship combat are capable of casually destroying planets. There are also "singularity grenades" which are capable of destroying small planets, and can be launched from standard-issue grenade launchers (though obviously, the burst radius is quite a bit larger than the range on said grenade launcher....).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/StarRuler'' allows players to bombard planets until they break up - usually by shooting giant railgun slugs the size of Cyprus at a sizable fraction of the speed of light.
** And then there's the DSM, or Directed Spatial Manipulator, a super-weapon so powerful it can only be fired manually, which can blow up planets and suns.
* ''{{Defender}}''.
* ''KingdomHearts'' deals with the destruction of several worlds by TheHeartless, [[spoiler: which are reformed, just as they were before they were destroyed, at the end of the game.]]
* ''{{Starcraft}}'' had [[strike:at least one]] [[strike:two]] three planetary surfaces sterilized by the Protoss to stop the spread of the Zerg; Chau Sara, Mar Sara and Antiga Prime.
** Also the planet Korhal was glassed with nukes by the Confederacy in the backstory. By ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' however, it's been rebuilt into a CityPlanet.
* StarTrekOnline has Starfleet players fighting a [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Planet Killer]] discovered by the BigBad of the Klingon storyline; it destroys a small planet with its' primary weapon in a cutscene just before the player fights it to give them an idea just what kind of power they're up against.
* The Covenant in ''{{Halo}}'' "glass" planets - they blast them from orbit until the surface has melted into a glasslike substance.
** The UNSC NOVA bomb. It is a cluster of nine nukes, each surrounded by a shell that, when the bomb goes off, briefly compresses each of the nine explosions to neutron-star density, giving each blast a 100x boost. One is [[spoiler:accidentally set off on an Elite loyalist vessel in orbit around a loyalist world: the planet is wiped clean of life, its moon ''is shattered'', and nearly the entire fleet massed nearby is annihilated.]]
** Actually subverted with the Covenant. They ''can'' do it, but it takes a huge number of ships and several years; the idea of glassing a planet is pure UNSC propaganda. In practice, the Covies just glass population centers.
* The ''VideoGame/WingCommander'' series of games had ''two'' of these in ''Wing Commander III'' - a Cool Ship (the ''Behemoth'') a slimmed down Death Star (read as: one honkin' big cannon with a ship wrapped around it) is used to destroy a world, and is later destroyed itself since the ship conveniently wasn't finished before being rushed off to destroy the BigBad's homeworld. The job is later finished by a "Temblor Bomb" dropped into a faultline by a solo space fighter ([[ItsUpToYou the player]]), resulting in the BigBad's home being utterly blown apart through the resulting earthquakes, magically stopping the war.
** In the first game of the series, fighter missiles are armed with an explosive mineral referred to in the (necessary for the copy protect scheme) manual as Illudium Q36. Missile explosive power was measured by their "ESK" rating. Three guesses what "ESK" stood for.
* The Destroyer from ''RomancingSaGa3'' blows up more than just the earth, it wipes out the entire universe!
* Planet FM in ''MegaManStarForce'' killed Planet AM using Andromeda. Two items are required to wake it up for its malicious deed; the controller, [[spoiler:held by king Cepheus,]] and the key, which Omega-Xis stole before bailing to Earth.
** In the anime, Omega-Xis uses the Andromeda Key to blow up a planetoid as a diversion to get away from his pursuers; Cygnus managed to trail him despite such efforts.
* Many villains from the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series are examples (although most only attempted to do so). These include [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Kefka]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV Neo Exdeath]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Sephiroth]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX Kuja]], etc.
** Kefka very nearly succeeded with the lesser version, notably.
** Kuja fully succeeded in doings so, [[spoiler:fortunately, it was merely a long-dead planet hidden inside the regular world...somehow.]] Frankly, it didn't make much sense while they were explaining it in-game either.
** Zodiark's Final Eclipse boosts right past EarthShatteringKaboom and reaches "Existence Shattering Kaboom". It still deals a measly 50.000 damage to every target, when the hardest BonusBoss in the game has FIFTY MILLION HP, in addition to the attack being AwesomeButImpractical.
** Some of these (e.g. Sephiroph's Supernova) are regular magic attacks that get used possibly dozens of times in the relevant boss battles. How that works is anyone's guess.
*** Weaker versions, maybe?
* The MacGuffin from ''SpaceQuest I'' is the Star Generator, a device which turns a planet into a sun. It was meant for the best, honestly, but obviously it gets stolen and used for extortion. The device is blown up at the end of the first game, for which the evil villain takes revenge in ''SpaceQuest II''
** In the VGA remake it is also possible to [[NonStandardGameOver escape the alien ship without destroying the Star Generator, leaving them free to use it]].
* ''VideoGame/CommanderKeen'' episode two, appropriately called "The Earth Explodes" has the bad guys from the first episode position a planet-destroyer ship over the Earth. At GameOver, ''or'' if the hero is foolish enough to push the BigRedButton, it activates rather spectacularly. The fifth episode repeats this, with a ''galaxy'' destroyer.
** "IT SLICES! IT DICES! It causes a 100,000 light year-diameter quantum explosion! THE OMEGAMATIC. Available from Vitacorp. Assembly required."
* ''SpaceEmpires'' allows any empire to destroy nebulae, stars, planets, black holes, wormholes, or create any of these, given the proper research.
* The Planet Buster missiles in ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' may not be powerful enough to destroy Planet, but they can level ''entire continental masses!''
** More than level, it can blast down to below sea level and the ocean will reclaim the area quickly. "Dude, didn't there use to be a continent here?"
** Planet [[GaiasVengeance does not appreciate you doing this.]]
* ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion II'' has the Stellar Converter, a weapon that can vaporize most battleships and blow an undefended planet to bits when used in the post-battle bombardment,[[hottip:*:use during the battle phase doesn't destroy the world, but it still hurts for whatever's targeted]] reducing it to an asteroid belt (which a sufficiently advanced race can actually reconstitute later.) It makes for a great defense when built planetside, but in space it needs one of the largest ship hulls initially, though with further research it can be squeezed into a ''very'' barebones cruiser hull. At the stage of the game where the Stellar Converter becomes available, the usefulness of the weapon is minimal from a purely logical viewpoint. Does this stop players from zapping worlds? [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Not at all.]]
** For those who absolutely insist on every planet being useful, one can use the Stellar Converter to destroy a crappy world (abnormal gravity, poor resources, toxic environment, small size) and rebuild it into something eventually useful. [[MST3KMantra Just don't think about how the rubble of a "tiny" world with ultra-poor resources can be made into a "large" planet of abundant resources.]] Sadly, you can ''only'' [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential use it on inhabited worlds]].
** For those who don't care about having planets but don't want their opponent(s) to have ''any'' use of them, it's the ultimate "screw you, you RubberForeheadAlien bastard!". (AI players can research building planets, but are unable to use the fruit of that research.)
* Two space shooter games take this to the next level, with star-destroying weapons. The Shivans in ''{{Freespace}} 2'' can do this with some eighty dreadnoughts combined, and ''{{X-COM}} Interceptor'' had a nova bomb you could research, which was needed to destroy the moon-sized alien superweapon to win the game. What was cool about the nova bomb was that it ''wasn't'' just needed for the final mission - you could use it any time you liked to wipe stars off the map, along with any bases or fleets in the system.
** In ''Descent: Freespace'', the Shivans also have technology to destroy the surface of planets, in the form of their superdestroyer the Lucifer.
* Most demons of overlord level or higher in the ''{{Disgaea}}'' series and ''MakaiKingdom'' ([[CutscenePowerToTheMax about level 1000+ in-game]]) are capable of this.
** Laharl actually does it if you beat him in the battle that you're suppose to lose.
** His father, the overlord, split a planet in two when his wife died.
* In what may be one of the earliest examples of player-controlled planet-cracking power, ''StarFlight'' gives the player 3 Black Eggs, artifacts that can destroy a planet. Of the 3, you only need to use at most 2 in the course of the game, and can beat the game with only ''one'' of them...so which planet would you like to see destroyed today?
* Several ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' games love to blow up planets and have Samus [[AlwaysClose narrowly escape]] (more info at Samus' entry in NeverLiveItDown). Some examples are Zebes, Dark Aether, Phaaze, and SR388 (Dark Aether was of the lesser variety, as it was a pocket dimension).
* The objective of ''[[RaySeries RayForce]]'' [[spoiler:and its [[BittersweetEnding ending]]]], due to the [[AIIsACrapshoot Con-Human]] taking over the Earth.
** In [=RayStorm=], this is what the Secelians plan to do as the finishing stroke to permanently replacing Earth as known space's new emperors. The giant battleship Hannibal is how they plan to do it. [[spoiler: In the end, it's ''Secelia'' that winds up suffering a version of this--Yggdrasil's destruction warped its orbit to make it plunge into a ''gas giant''. In [[ThirteenIsUnlucky Thirteen-Ship Mode]], ''Earth'' suffers this too. Presumably because [[TemptingFate you sent EVERY R-Gray you had off-Earth]]--leaving no way to [[TooDumbToLive fend off replacements for Hannibal.]]]]
* ''VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl'' had Team Galactic set off a bomb at one of the three main lakes, and the resulting kaboom was enough for a city ''on the other side of the region'' to feel it.
** This is ignoring the semi-kaboom (but probably counting as 'earth-shattering') that was born from the top of Mt. Coronet...
** According to ''Webcomic/VGCats'', an [[EarthShatteringKaboom ESK]] is the answer to giving [[OlympusMons powerful Pokémon]] to kids and then asking, [[TemptingFate "What's the worst that could happen?"]] Team Galactic [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=282 thought too small.]]
* In ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'', the most powerful weapon in the Space stage is the Planet Buster. It does ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin and gets nearby empires mad with you, even if they were not the target.
** Destroying Earth is actually ''required'' for HundredPercentCompletion.
* In ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'', Mario and his friends are on a quest to assemble the Pure Hearts in order to stop the destruction of all worlds. They don't achieve this goal in time for some.
** ALL worlds. Each of the game's levels are actually separate universes, meaning that Count Bleck is destroying everything. Everything as in EVERYTHING everything - including Heaven (the Overthere), Purgatory (the Underwhere), and Hell. In fact, the only universe left would be the one created by Dementio, which was created specifically for that.
*** Actually, the Big Bad emphasizes that he is not destroying worlds, but actually erasing them, so that the worlds would have never existed, if that makes sense.
* Not quite a kaboom in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss'', but careful manipulation by [[BigBad The Big Bad]] and quick scrambling by the heroes did result in [[spoiler:half the world missing at one point]].
* In ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'', one of the minigames is called Megaton Punch. Do well enough on the three timing sections, and the little pink puffball will destroy a pile of bricks, the stage, and split the entire planet of PopStar in half.
* The very first thing that happens in ''PlanetBusters'' is that Earth gets blown up by aliens. During the course of the game, you blow up Mars, and countless extra-solar planets, moons and asteroids.
* In ''VideoGame/MortalKombat3'', [[HollywoodCyborg Cyborg]] Smoke has a [[FinishingMove Fatality]] in which bombs come spilling out of his chest panel. We then see a shot of Earth exploding from space.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Meteos}}'', planets must constantly ignite the meteor blocks raining on them to get them off. If the stack goes too high, the planet ''explodes''.
* In ''SinsOfASolarEmpire'', Siege ships do exactly that, and one of the specialized Capital Ships you can build does it with a bigger bang. Also, the Novalith Cannon superweapon fires an obscenely large nuke at faster than light speed. The explosion takes up a large portion of the gravity well and kills nearly everyone planetside.
* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Turok}} Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil]]'', it is said that if the Primagen escapes, he will cause a rupture in the fabric of space, leading to a universe-shattering kaboom. However, as told by {{Retcon}} in the manual for ''Turok 3: Shadow Of Oblivion'', it happened anyway after you destroyed him. Although a few characters survived, including the similar Oblivion.
* Averted in ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'', where Eggman uses a cannon that one would think would cause an EarthShatteringKaboom, but which instead ends up cracking the planet into eight floating continents with few ill effects on the populace other than minor earthquakes, according to the characters in the game.
** Prior to (and similar to) ''Unleashed'', this trope was part of the plot of ''[[SonicAdvanceTrilogy Sonic Advance 3]]''.
** The ARK's Eclipse Cannon was capable of destroying a planet with the power of the Chaos Emeralds. It was used twice: first to blow apart half of the moon in ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'', and to annihilate the Black Arms Comet in ''ShadowTheHedgehog''.
*** The Eclipse Cannon actually takes this one UpToEleven; At it's full power (with the 7 Chaos Emeralds powering it), it is said to have the power to pierce stars.
* In ''VideoGame/{{R-Type}} Final'', the Giant Warship's Giant WaveMotionGun is said to have the capability to do this. It just takes a ''long'' time to prime if that's the intent.
* The goal of the MadScientist villain in ''ImpossibleMission'' is to crack the world's missile codes, triggering nuclear Armageddon.
* In the first ''[[VideoGame/RatchetAndClank2002 Ratchet & Clank]]'' game, the villainous Drek needs to remove a planet in order to give his man-made world the perfect orbit. Drek's tool for achieving this goal is the appropriately named Planet Buster. The weapon does produce an Earth Shattering Kaboom, but not on the planet you'd expect.
* In ''EVEOnline'' the storyline that heralded the Apocrypha expansion and the formation of wormholes, sympathetic reactions from the explosion of a LostTechnology device caused several distant stars in the galaxy to flare and space-time to rupture; the kaboom from one of the star flares burnt the inhabited mining world of Seylin I to a cinder.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Darius}} Gaiden''[='=]s Zone Z ending, [[spoiler:Darius]] explodes.
* In ''VideoGame/MightAndMagic VI'' if you don't [[spoiler: [[NiceJobBreakingItHero release a previous villain, Archibald]] so he can give you a seriously powerful scroll that encloses an area in its own pocket dimension. Without it when you blow up the reactor in the Kreegan Hive ship, or if you die afterwards thus preventing you from using it]] not only does the world explode but the moon inexplicably blows up afterwards.
* ''RayForce'' ends with the explosion of the Con-Human-transformed Earth.
* ''Franchise/StarOcean''
** The villians of ''[[VideoGame/StarOceanTheSecondStory The Second Story]]'' unleash the Symbol Of Annihilation, a magical incantation that when cast would cause the entire ''universe'' to stop expanding and collapse in on itself. The destruction of the cosmos is prevented only by the heroes' use of the Symbol of Divinity, which limits the Symbol of Annihilation to merely destroying the planet that they were on.
** In the [[VideoGame/StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime third installment]], the Earth itself is destroyed from an attack by the Executioners. In this case, the Executioners doom many other worlds off-screen as well.
* Atrea, the world in which ''VideoGame/{{Aion}}'' takes place, is a hollow sphere whose inhabitants live on the ''inside'' rather than the outside. The Tower of Eternity is a large tower running through the inside of the planet which provided light to its inhibitants in lieu of a star, although the planet does still orbit a star. However, when the Tower of Eternity broke in two, the resulting explosion blew the planet into two pieces connected only by a magical field created through HeroicSacrifice.
* ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'': At the beginning of ''Infinity'', a Wrkncacnter escapes and causes a universe shattering kaboom, forcing our hero to jump between {{Alternate History}}s to try to prevent its release.
* Happens in ''VideoGame/{{Anachronox}}.'' [[spoiler:What else do you think could happen to a planet called "Sunder"?]]
* The ''{{Warcraft}}'' series: At the end of ''Warcraft 2: Beyond The Dark Portal'', the orcish warlock Ner'zhul opens up too many portals at once and ends up ripping the orcish homeworld to pieces - the remnants are [[ShatteredWorld still reasonably habitable]], though, and are featured in Warcraft 3 and the Burning Crusade expansion to ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''.
* In ''TheLegendOfSpyro'''s culmination, ''The Dawn of the Dragon'', the world is subjected to this at the end of the final boss fight. [[spoiler: It's fixed by Spyro's HeroicSacrifice ]]
* In the 8-bit games ''Driller'' and its sequel ''Dark Side'', this is what will happen to the planet Evath if you fail in your mission. The first game takes place on a moon where gas has begun to build up under the surface; eventually, the moon would explode, the debris destroying the planet as well. The second one takes place on the other moon of the same planet, where terrorists have built a [[KillSat superweapon]] which continuously collects energy from the Sun (with obvious results should it be fired on Evath).
* In ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'', [[spoiler: you find out that the planet you're living on isn't really your home planet. Then just as you're about to set off into the stars to search out your true homeworld, a hostile fleet comes out of nowhere and razes your planet....with most of your civilization still on it.]]
** Worse: [[spoiler: They did it for the sole reason that you broke a treaty that was so old, nobody from ''your'' civilization even remembered it.]] It's also implied that the hostile fleet was merely a ''patrol''.
** Made [[TearJerker even more tragic]] by the [[OrchestralBombing music]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJaXybK4_A playing]].
* ''VideoGame/MarvelVsCapcom3''. The final boss is the very first entry in ComicBooks, Galactus. As you fight, he's already siphoning off energy from the Earth, turning it more and more of a hideous red shade the longer you battle. If you lose, he then proceeds to crush what remains of the planet between his hands, sending shattered chunks hurtling toward your screen as it fades to white. [[ItsAWonderfulFailure You can see the aftermath of his attack]] [[NonstandardGameOver if you refuse to give it another go]].
* The Twilight of the Arnor expansion for ''GalacticCivilizations 2'' adds the Terror Star. While wildly impractical in some respects due to its horrendously slow travel rate, the Terror Star can vaporize any star, completely obliterating any planets in that solar system. One famous AfterActionReport depicts a player attempting to beat the game through peaceful means and cultural influence, then saying "to hell with it" when one too many races get belligerent with him and going on a massive solar killing spree.
* In ''SwordOfTheStars'' the System Killer [[RandomEncounters Unknown Menace]] is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. The Von Neumann Construct, labelled in data files as "final solution", is a copy of the System Killer and can be on the field at the same time as the original.
* The Novalith Cannon from ''SinsOfASolarEmpire'' launches a massive nuclear warhead at an enemy planet that eliminates all life and wipes it clean with radiation if it is not fully upgraded, especially horrifying when you consider that the last thing people see is a blinding flash of light.
* ''TheGuardianLegend'' - You have to save the world from this fate by blowing up NAJU, the massive alien base on a collision course with Earth.
* In ''[[StarFox Star Fox Assault]]'', this is how the villains, the aparoids, are defeated. The heroes use a selfdestruct program on their queen, and when she explodes, so does the aparoid homeworld.
* Can be invoked by the player in the Nintendo3DS AR Games. When playing with the globe, all you can do is spin it around by shooting it at different angles. However, shooting it repeatedly causes it to start turning red. Should you keep shooting it beyond that state, it ''explodes'' into a million fiery pieces, leaving behind a message that says "Take care of our planet" and is accompanied by creepy doomsday-like music that shifts into a sad melody. The globe is erased from your games list and you have to buy it again to play with it again.
* In ''{{Evolva}}'', the Parasite tries this in the final level.
* In ''VideoGame/AsurasWrath'', Asura does this to Wyzen, after wyzen beccomes as big as the earth, with his bare fists. It's also hinted that Gohma Vlitra [[spoiler: even before going one winged angel]] could do this, and Augus stabs through the planet with ''[[RuleOfCool a sword]]'' at the end of your fight with him.
** [[spoiler: [[BiggerBad Chakravartin]] in his giant form has a laser attack that casually blows up planets in it's way without loosing momentum. He eventually starts THROWING Planets and entire Stars at you, including a Red Super Giant.]]
* ''TerminalVelocity'' features two planet killers: one the ''Moon Dagger'', that must be taken out ''before it cores the Earth'' (actual in-game text), and the other the asteroid ([[ScienceMarchesOn now minor planet]]) Ceres that has been sent on a collision course with Earth.
* In ''[[VideoGame/EscapeVelocity EV Nova]]'', the Federation Navy is quite capable of the lesser kind. They do it by bombarding the planet from orbit with nukes and biological weapons. Any survivors will die of disease and starvation.
* This is believed to have happened to the Kha'ak homeworld in the ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X-Universe]]'', which is the source of the [[{{Unobtainium}} nividium]] asteroids floating around. The plot of ''X: Beyond the Frontier'' revolves around the Second Xenon Conflict, the effort to prevent the [[AIIsACrapshoot Xenon]] from using their M0 planet-killer against an inhabited world. The Kha'ak do this to the sector President's End in ''X2: The Threat'' using their own M0; the plot revolves around preventing an encore performance.
* ''VideoGame/{{Bioforge}}'': [[spoiler:The reactor explosion in a moonbase somehow manages to blow up the entire moon.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}} 11: Subterranean Animism'': Utsuho Reiuji is a hell raven girl that suddenly gains the power of nuclear fusion. Overwhelmed by so much power, she goes on a power rampage with the mission of ''glassing the entire Earth''. Will our heroines Reimu and Marisa be able to stop her?
* Invoked in a level of ''VideoGame/{{McPixel}}'' to stop an explosive from destroying the moon.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In ''FollyAndInnovation'' this trope is used with [[http://follyandinnovation.com/2010/10/going-out-with-a-bang/ hilarious effect]].
* The Earth exploding randomly is a constant RunningGag in the SpriteComic ''NeglectedMarioCharacters''.
* The end of the War In Hell arc in ''DominicDeegan'' ends with an EarthShatteringKaboom in hell, which is powerful enough to breach dimensional barriers.
* ''IrregularWebcomic'' ended 2008 with not just an EarthShatteringKaboom, but with a ''[[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2166.html universe]]''[[http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2166.html -shattering kaboom]]. [[spoiler: (or lack of a "kaboom", per se...)]]
** It was actually the ''entire MULTIVERSE''.
* ''DarthsAndDroids'' has one, naturally. [[spoiler: But it's Naboo, not Alderaan, that is destroyed.]]
* Played for laughs in ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' when this happens to the planet of Gritania during the GOFOTRON arc.
** The GOFOTRON arc ends with a universe-shattering kaboom, in fact. But it's only a tiny universe.
* In ''QuentynQuinnSpaceRanger'', the Racconan Empire of the Seven Systems owns a small fleet of Stellar Lances. One of which was used to destroy a Kvrk-Chk solar system. WordOfGod is that the Lance operates by firing a planet-sized beam of "antigravitons" through the heart of the system's star, causing it to hemorrhage from either side, spraying the surrounding planets with white-hot stellar matter (picture a water balloon with a pinhole on either side spinning on a string).... the lawn sprinkler from Hell. If conditions are just right, it goes downhill from there, into a stellar collapse and supernova...
* [[http://www.salon.com/entertainment/comics/this_modern_world/2010/05/25/this_modern_world This]] ''ThisModernWorld'' strip.
* In ''TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' space villain Fructose Riboflavin likes to extort cooperation from people by threatening to do this. "Remember, Galatea... threatening to blow up a planet ''always'' works." Bob is the only person who has ever [[TooDumbToFool called him on it,]] realizing the fact that Riboflavin ''[[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds needed]]'' [[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds Earth for his plan and so]] ''[[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds couldn't]]'' [[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds blow it up,]] so the threat was an obvious bluff.
* [[http://www.drunkduck.com/The_KAMics/4790117/ God shows how it's done]] in ''TheKAMics''
* Used [[http://www.viruscomix.com/amtaham.html here]] in ''Webcomic/{{Subnormality}}''.
* In ''BobTheAngryFlower'' it is [[http://www.angryflower.com/yes.gif easy to do]].
-->Two weeks later...
-->'''Freddie''': ...and then you blew up the Earth!
-->'''Bob''': Yeah, yeah, yeah... are you ''ever'' gonna let that go?
* Fractal bombs in ''ComicBook/{{Buck Godot|Zap Gun for Hire}}''.
* [[EldritchAbomination The Snarl]] did this to the first world the gods made in ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick''.
* The [[http://www.drivecomic.com/archive/110623.html Spark of Thought]] in ''WebComic/{{Drive}}''.
* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' had [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-02-29 Io-shattering kaboom]].
* ''Webcomic/EightBitTheater'': Described in the "[[http://www.nuklearpower.com/2006/09/30/episode-750-the-end-of-everything/ formula for the end of the world]]", written by a [[Creator/HPLovecraft lovecraftian]] [[ApocalypseCult apocalypse cult]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* On DeviantART, there are "Power emoticons" that [[MundaneMadeAwesome take regular emoticons to the EXTREME]]. Many include a view of the Earth (or a part of it) being destroyed.
* Three words: [[TheDementedCartoonMovie "Gleeg Snag Zip"]].
** "Zeeky Boogy Doog".
*** Technically, one of the latter by itself wouldn't do the trick. A whole *bunch* of "Zeeky Boogy Doog"s (or one broadcast all over the world), however, would and did.
* ''TechInfantry'' has an dinosaur-killer-sized asteroid dropped on earth in the backstory. After the Earth partially recovers and is just starting to be recolonized by rebels against the main human government, said government sends in a fleet that blows up the moon, first by firing several small black holes through it to weaken its structure, then ramming it with a miles-long starship moving at 90 percent of the speed of light. The shattered fragments of the moon rain down on the surface of the earth, melting the top few miles of crust into a continuous layer of molten lava, boiling off the oceans, and blasting the atmosphere away. A few decades later, some nasty aliens invade, and the invasion is only stopped by using Dooms Day Devices to send the suns of the main alien homeworlds into supernova.
* Parodied in ''[[WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged]] [[TheMovie Movie]]'': when Anubis announced his intention to destroy the world, Yami asks him what he could possibly gain from that. As revealed on his [=LiveJournal=], the creator included this because he considered Anubis to be a terrible movie villain with, in his own words, '[[CardCarryingVillain generic motives]]'.
** Also in the Abridged Series, a running series called "Zorc and Pals" features BigBad Zorc Necrophades and Yami Bakura discussing Zorc's plans to destroy the world. The clip from "Zorc and Pals: The Movie" in the Abridged Movie details what Zorc is going to do after he destroys the world... [[ImGoingToDisneyWorld He's going to Disney World.]] And then he's going to destroy it. However, he found it much too fun, so he destroyed Euro Disney instead.
* In ''Literature/FineStructure'', [[spoiler:this is the ultimate fate of Earth during the FinalBattle. Luckily humanity from the [[AlternateUniverse next universe over]] jumps in to pick up survivors.]]
* In the ''DeathBattle'' match between [[DragonBallZ Goku]] and {{Superman}}, [[spoiler:Goku and Superman destroy the Earth when Goku's Dragon Punch takes on Superman's Infinite Mass Punch. Superman wins.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* As indicated by the page quote, the TropeNamer here is the ChuckJones character Marvin the Martian from ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'', who says the line after Bugs Bunny steals his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Mod-U-Lator in the short "Hare-way To The Stars". His motive was that Earth was obstructing his view of Venus.
** In the earlier short ''WesternAnimation/DuckDodgersInTheTwentyFourthAndAHalfCentury''. Dodgers (Daffy) and Marvin manage to reduce Planet X to a rock the size of a basketball.
* In ''[[WesternAnimation/TheTransformers Generation 1]]'', the Quintessons blow up their own planet to destroy the Autobot Matrix (they fail). Later, Rodimus Prime has the planet Paradron detonated to prevent its energon falling into Decepticons. Then in ''TransformersHeadmasters'', Scorponok succeeds in blowing up both Cybertron and Mars before the show is halfway through. Later, the ''TransformersZone'' {{OAV}} begins with the planet Feminia being destroyed.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' has never shied away from destroying planets, but the best example of destruction comes from the episode "I Dated A Robot":
--> '''Sal:''' So your fantasy has always been to destroys a planets, huh?
--> '''Fry:''' Sure! What have they ever done for me?
--> ''Fry presses a button - a planet explodes''
--> '''Leela:''' Wow! The most mundane events look almost exciting through your eyes.
* In the ''TotallySpies'' episode "Evil Professor", the titular professor tries to use the stolen "inflator" weapon to blow up the planet.
* ''Once Upon a Time, Man'' ("Il était une fois l'homme") was a multiple nationality and educational cartoon,from 80's and about History (as a serious ''WesternAnimation/{{Histeria}}!''). The credits were Abridged History, and future of humanity was already told [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNURUGCOQ5I at the end:]] mens running away with rockets and then, Ka-boom.
* An episode of ''PinkyAndTheBrain'' had the destruction of the Earth at the end of the episode, but it's all right...everyone had already moved to Brain's papier-mache replica.
* ''ReBoot'' had an episode where this happened inside a game. While not world ending, it still pissed off Bob since he was ''inside'' the planet when binomes triggered it. Bob chews them out after barely escaping, then lectures everyone else.
* In the ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode "Car Alarm", Shego seems to [[DependingOnTheWriter graduate to]] OmnicidalManiac by hoping to use a rocket car she and Motor Ed stole in order to use its full powered rocket boost to destroy the planet. Ed on the other hand just wanted to use it to drive around with Shego as arm candy.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'': The teaser for "Joker: The Vile and the Villainous!" ends with Joker pressing the button on the Omega warhead. Which blows up the Earth.
* ''Disney/TheLittleMermaid'': King Triton blows up the model of the planet Earth in Ariel's lair, along with the other of Ariel's human things.
* The French cartoon Once Upon a Time... Space has a type of warship used by the androids of planet Yama that combine to form one larguer star-shaped vessel with enough firepower to destroy a planet. It's tested on a planet of their system [[spoiler: and in the penultimate episode of the series it's used to force the surrender of Cassiopeia threatening to destroy that planet.]]
* The ending of the ''IAmWeasel'' episode "The Hole" had this, due to I.R. Baboon plugging up a huge hole that turned out to be a ground-level volcano (complete with buildings, cars and a plate of ''pork butts and taters'' flying from the explosion). The only survivors left are Weasel, his local assistant and Baboon, on a very small fragment of land left from the blast, but then Baboon gets in his car and ''drives off the edge to his death''.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheRenAndStimpyShow'' featured this at the end of the episode "Ren's Brain." Originally in the JohnKricfalusi-written version, the mayhem would end after only North America explodes. But Nickelodeon Animation Studios produced the episode long after John K. was fired, and took it to the extreme: after several viewers' [[YourHeadASplode brains explode]], followed by several houses and then North America blowing up, we then cut to the Earth from space and see it dramatically blow up (complete with PreExplosionGlow ), to which a narrator says "And thus endeth the Republican party as we know it!"
* In the ''FamilyGuy'' episode "It's A Trap!", the earth-shattering Ka-Boom from the first movie is shown and a piece of Alderaan floats through space to come down on top of Princess Leia on the Moon of Endor, knocking her off her (ten-speed) speeder bike. Luckily for her, it was just a small piece, about the size of a baseball.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
* A lawsuit was filed to keep CERN from turning on the Large Hadron Collider for fear that it would create a black hole and destroy Earth.
** [[http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html Check out their webcam]] and see for yourself.
* [[http://qntm.org/?geocide This website]] has instructions on how to achieve such a result.
** ''Number of times the Earth has been destroyed: '''1''''' - wut?
*** [[http://qntm.org/board Apparently CERN was responsible]]. They destroyed the Earth in advance just to be sure the LHC wouldn't.
* The current prevailing theory of the formation of Earth's moon is that the proto-Earth was hit by another proto-planet that blasted both the proto-Earth and the impacting planet into a loose conglomeration of material, most of which reformed into the Earth and some of which coalesced into Luna, the moon Earth has today. ''Literally'' Earth-Shattering. Although there was [[SpaceIsNoisy (probably)]] no Kaboom.
** It is a testament to just how hard it is to blow up a planet. Even running head long into another planet at full speed isn't going to cut it.
** On a smaller scale than that, there was the Late Heavy Bombardment - few hundred kilometer wide objects pummeling the Earth and Moon for a few hundred million years. This likely served as a preemptive RocksFallEverybodyDies. And somewhat smaller still, the dinosaurs had to deal with a certain asteroid impact ...
* It's been hypothesized that Miranda, a moon of Uranus, had been shattered by an impact and its fragments reassembled; thus explaining the patchwork of geological features on the moon.
** Insert [[IncrediblyLamePun rocky fragments near Uranus pun]] here.
* Discussed in the History Channel series ''The Universe'', where they point out that blowing up the planet would require hitting it with something extremely massive (i.e. another planet).
* Try ''Star''-Shattering. Stars have a limited supply of nuclear fusion-fuel, and when a particularly large-massed star reaches the end of its supply, its core loses the battle against gravity, [[OhCrap allowing the outer layers of the star to come crashing in]]. The resulting collision releases enough energy to actually [[StuffBlowingUp blow the star apart.]] "Kaboom" doesn't even begin to cover it.
[[/folder]]

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