[[PerryBibleFellowship http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/PBF-ExecutiveDecision.png]]
[[caption-width:237:[[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt When you absolutely, positively, have to kill everybody on the planet, accept no substitutes.]]]]

-->''"[[{{ptitleo2c80k49}} Where's the kaboom?]] There was supposed to be an [[TropeNamer Earth-shattering kaboom]]!"''\\
- '''[[LooneyTunes Marvin the Martian]]'''

Sometimes, TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt just isn't enough. If you really want to put the world in danger, why not destroy the planet right 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 that as the final goal of the BigBad, with the heroes racing to stop him. Others have the event be inescapable, and 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]]. Destroying the 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 hundreds of millions 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.

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.
----
!!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!)
* ''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 ''DirtyPair'' count as planet-killing weapons all by themselves - they have blown up at least seven planets ''[[MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds entirely by accident]]''.
* Parodied in ''[[{{Yu-Gi-OhTheAbridgedSeries}} 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... [[{{ptitlelmwmf8fx}} 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.
* 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 twice though, first by Buu and then by the Black Star Dragon Balls. (It gets better.)
* In ''DigimonAdventure'', Vadermon summons a planet (complete with rings) to keep AtlurKabuterimon away. The insect digimon promptly blows it up.
* [[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.
* Sailor Galaxia is shown blowing up "junk planets" during her search for the strongest star in ''Sailor Moon: Stars''.

[[/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 literally [[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, basically 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 literally "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 ChekovsGun finally goes off in ''Skaar: Son of Hulk'', as Galactus devours Sakaar.
* 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 an entire species of giant space critters called Sun Eaters, who do just that.
* Earth is blown up on the very first page of ''{{Shakara}}'', which then follows battles between various aliens.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Film ]]

* One of the most famous Planet Killers is the Death Star from ''StarWars'', and of course, 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 moon, close enough).
** The lesser version is known to the 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.
***Or for destroying planets with shields, which is pretty much all the ones that matter.
** 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", does [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin pretty much what it sounds like]]).
** 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 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.
*** For the last ''StarWars'' books Bantam published they brought back TimothyZahn, who was [[{{Understatement}} not entirely satisfied]] with the way most of the other writers had taken the EU since he published his [[TheThrawnTrilogy famous trilogy]] in the early '90s. The result was the Hand of Thrawn duology, 1000 pages of TakeThat against every single thing that bugged him about the Bantam EU. And it was [[FixFic excellent]]. Superweapon-of-the-week also found itself subject to a TakeThat in ''Destiny's Way'' by Walter Jon Williams, one of the NewJediOrder novels.
** And then there were the [[DarkEmpire World Devastators]]. Basically 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.
* ''TitanAE'' begins with the destruction of the Earth, and [[AfterTheEnd continues with the survivors from there]].
* ''[=~The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy~=]''. Ironically, rather than a "terrible, ghastly noise" (as in the book and, less literally, the radio series), the destruction of the Earth in the film version is silent (more like an earth ''imploding'' "zip").
** As the camera is in ''space'' when we see the Earth destoyed, this is what we'd expect to hear. The fact that it made any noise ''at all'' could even be taken as an indication of ''how loud it'' '''''really was.'''''
* The Genesis Device from ''StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' and ''Star Trek III The Search for Spock''. 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 ''StarTrek III''.
** Kirk's son couldn't actually get the technology to work so he put proto-matter in it. It then worked initially , but proto-matter being unstable that's why the planet self destructed.
* Not to be outdone, ''StarTrek: Generations'' introduced the "Trilithium Warhead," a small device which could implode a star, causing a shock wave that could destroy an entire solar system, and which could be produced and deployed by one person.
* The new ''StarTrek'' movie ups the ante even more, with the Romulan {{Big Bad}}'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]].
*** Considering the process, wouldn't it be rather a [[IncrediblyLamePun Planet-Shattering moobaK]]?
**Also, the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin planetbusters]] from the original series.
* 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 ''Beneath the Planet of the Apes'' (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 hell of a DownerEnding, specially due to the InsignificantLittleBluePlanet speech that follows.
** Parodied in ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' 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]].
* In ''Battle Beyond The Stars'', the BigBad has a weapon called a Stellar Converter that, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin converts planets into stars]].
* In ArthurCClarke's ''[=~2010: The Year We Make Contact~=]'' (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 the 1966 DoctorWho movie: ''Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD'', 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 ''[[{{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 ''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 ultra low budget film ''Dark Star'' 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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

* The Douglas Adams book ''[[TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'' starts with the Earth being demolished to make way for a hyperspace expressway.
**And then ratchets it up at the end of the series by [[spoiler: destroying every Earth in every alternate dimension ever.]]
* In the ''Gray Lensman'' book of E. E. 'Doc' Smith's ''{{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. Later in the series, this is deemed insufficient and even more powerful weapons are used.
** Some of those more powerful weapons included two planets from opposite sides moving faster than the speed of light, and a planetary sized load of antimatter -- and, near the end of the series, two planetary sized loads of antimatter from opposite sides moving faster than the speed of light.
* The ''Revelation Space'' 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]].
* Julian May's ''Magnificat'' ends with the destruction of one of Earth's major colony planets, alluded to in the rest of the series as the biggest mass murder of all time.
* In Dan Simmons's ''Hyperion'' 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 Ender's Game]]'' 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 an entire planet.
* 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), I'm inclined 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 ''Stranger in a Strange Land'', 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 ''[[StarshipTroopers Starship Troopers]],'' 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.
** It is also the first such device called a 'nova bomb' this troper has seen, and probably the reason 'nova bomb' is a common name for a planet-killer.''
** Heinlein 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 Greg Bear'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. Talk about overkill!]]
* Possibly [[spoiler: Charlie [=McGee=]]] from [[StephenKing Stephen King's]] novel ''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?"]]
* ''[[BattlefieldEarth Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000]]'', in both the book and movie, Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler detonates [[spoiler: the Psychlo homeworld by teleporting a nuclear device to the planet]].
* 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. More literally, 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]]
* C J Cherry wrote about one method in her Chanur novels. 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 ''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.
* ''Creatures of Light and Darkness'' by Roger Zelyazny includes shattering "worlds", supposed to contain multiple planets, in the course of the battles of the gods.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* The Xindi superweapon in season three of ''StarTrekEnterprise'' was designed to do this. In fact, we actually see it happen in the alt-future episode "Twilight".
** The USS Enterprise can also be assumed to have planet-killing abilities (of the lesser kind), unless Captain Kirk was bluffing when he mentioned General Order 24...
*** The ISS Enterprise in the Mirror Universe clearly does have the capacity to destroy a planet or at least sterilize its surface.
** And of course the planet killer from the original series episode "The Doomsday Machine".
* Subversion: Earth is destroyed on-screen in the ''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 DoctorWho too many times to count. Not always with ''Earth,'' mind, 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.]]
* ''[[BabylonFive Babylon 5]]'' destroyed at least two dozen planets in its fourth season, when the Vorlons and the Shadows both went, "Oh, now it's ''on'', bitch!", culminating in the entire Earth solar system getting blown up a million years in the future. But it didn't end there, either, as yet more planets were destroyed in the sequel movie, ''A Call to Arms''. Strangely enough, the Earth has come to the brink of planetary destruction three different times, and averted it each time. Lucky, much?
** Maybe not. Under normal circumstances, the solar system will continue to exist pretty much as-is for billions of more years (the Sun is about halfway through its life-cycle.) The [[JMichaelStraczynski show's creator]] has claimed that he knew this when making the episode, thus, the destruction happening a "mere" million years in the future is possibly an indication of deliberate destruction by.. someone.
*** In fact, in one of his interviews he stated that unusual readings inside the sun were being caused by millions of jump gates (portals into hyperspace) being opened, which would be channeling available hydrogen out of the star and shrinking its mass. Not fun.
* ''{{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.
* Probably named for Heinlein, the 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.
* Crighton's wormhole weapon on ''{{Farscape}}'' could easily destroy planets, not to mention sizeable chunks of the galaxy, were it ever deployed in warfare.
**Hell, forget planets. Peacekeeper Wars shows that it's more than capable of destroying ''the entire universe.'' And Crichton isn't gun-shy.
* In ''[[StargateSG1 StargateSG-1]]'', 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 an entire solar system, complete with (almost all of) Apophis' fleet.
** "You know, you blow up one sun and suddenly everyone expects you to walk on water!"
** [=McKay=] destroys one in a similar manner in StargateAtlantis though.
*** 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...]]
** ''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.

[[/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: Tabletop RPG ]]

* ''{{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 literally ''eat'' a planet down to the rock. Like ''StarWars'', they also have a planet-killing order, called "Exterminatus."
** 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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* ''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.]]
* In ''Persona 2: Innocent Sin'', the villains are working to fulfill a prophecy that will cause the Earth to explode, except for a single city that's floated up into space as part of fulfilling said prophecy. They actually ''succeed'', leading to one of the more bizarre applications of MakeABetterWorld.
* ''{{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.
* The Covenant in ''{{Halo}}'' "glass" planets - they blast them from orbit until the surface has melted into a glasslike substance. And, of course, the Halos themselves obliterate sentient life to cut off the Flood. A "Galaxy Shattering Kaboom"?
** The UNSC NOVA bomb. To elaborate, it is a cluster of nine nukes, each surrounded by a shell that, when the bomb goes off, [[TechnoBabble 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.]]
* The ''WingCommander'' series of games had ''two'' of these in ''Wing Commander III'' - a Cool Ship (the ''Behemoth'') basically 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(the player, natch), resulting in the BigBad's home being utterly blown apart through the resulting earthquakes, magically stopping the war.
** This troper feels that the situation is misrepresented. After delivering the bomb, the main character (Blair) is quickly taken prisoner. He gives a pointed speech to his captors that they just lost their ''homeworld'', along with an untold number of political leaders, military strategists, and shipyards.
** 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 the hell away from his pursuers; Cygnus managed to trail him despite such efforts.
* Many villains from the ''FinalFantasy'' series are examples (although most only attempted to do so). These include [[FinalFantasyVI Kefka]], [[FinalFantasyV Neo Exdeath]], [[FinalFantasyVII Sephiroth]], [[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.
** It should be noted that 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.
* 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''
* ''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."
* ''Space Empires V'', and possibly earlier games in the series, allow 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 Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]]'' 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?"
* ''{{Master of Orion}} II'' has the Stellar Converter, a weapon that can vaporize most battleships and blow an undefended planet to bits, 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 a ship the approximate size of the Death Star built around it modulo aggressive miniaturization research. Note that at the stage of the game where the Stellar Converter becomes available, any fleet that can defeat the defenses of a planet should also be capable of obliterating its colony and therefore its significance. Advanced colonies are nigh-impossible to rebuild from scratch and the territorial significance of planets will have waned to negligibility. 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.]]
** 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.)
** You don't need Death Star-size ships to field Stellar Converter. Titan-size (2nd largest) are big enough, if you have certain tech. Of course that ships' equipment is pretty much limited to Stellar Converter.
* 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.
* In what may be one of the earliest examples of player-controlled planet-cracking power, ''StarFlight'' gives the player 3 Black Eggs, artifacts that are capable of literally destroying 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 ''{{Metroid}}'' games love to blow up planets and have Samus [[AlwaysClose narrowly escape]] (more info at Samus' entry in NeverLiveItDown).
* ''{{Pokemon}} Diamond and Pearl'' 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, of course, the semi-kaboom (but probably counting as 'earth-shattering') that was born from the top of Mt. Coronet...
** According to VGCats, an [[EarthShatteringKaboom ESK]] is the answer to giving powerful {{Pokemon}} to kids and then asking, [[TemptingFate "What's the worst that could happen?"]] Team Galactic [[http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=284 thought too small.]]
* In ''{{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.
** Also, the Sol system exists in ''Spore'' and if you find it, you can use one of these monsters pull off a literal [[IncrediblyLamePun ''Earth-shattering kaboom'']]. There's even a hidden achievement for doing this!
* In ''Super PaperMario'', 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.
* Not quite a kaboom in ''{{Tales of the Abyss}}'', 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 ''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 ''MortalKombat 3'', [[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 {{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.
* In ''Turok 2: Seeds Of Evil'', it is said that if the CosmicHorror 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 another CosmicHorror, Oblivion.
* Averted in ''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 ''Unleashed'', this trope was part of the plot of ''[[SonicAdvanceTrilogy Sonic Advance 3]]''.
* In ''RType Final'', the Giant Warship's Giant WaveMotionGun is said to have the capability to do this.
* The goal of the MadScientist villain in ''ImpossibleMission'' is to crack the world's missile codes, triggering nuclear Armageddon.
* In the first {{Ratchet and 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 ''{{Darius}} Gaiden''[='=]s Zone Z ending, [[spoiler:Darius]] explodes.
* In ''MightAndMagicVI'' 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.
* ''Ray Force'' ends with the explosion of the Con-Human-transformed Earth.
* The villians of the second ''[[StarOcean2 Star Ocean]]'' game 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.
* Atrea, the world in which ''{{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.
* ''{{Marathon}}'': At the beginning of ''Infinity'', a CosmicHorror 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 ''Anachronox.'' [[spoiler:What else do you think could happen to a planet called "Sunder"?]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Comics ]]

* The Earth exploding randomly is a constant RunningGag in the SpriteComic ''Neglected Mario Characters''.
* 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''.
* Played for laughs in ''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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Web Original ]]

* On [[http://deviantart.com deviantART]], there are "Power emoticons" that [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome 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"]].
** Don't forget "Zeeky Boogy Doog".
* ''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.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* As indicated by the page quote, the TropeNamer here is the ChuckJones character Marvin the Martian from ''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.
** [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoKvR2Y1t8Q Shown here.]]
** In the later short ''DuckDodgers in the 24 1/2 Century''. Dodgers (Daffy) and Marvin manage to reduce Planet X to a rock the size of a basketball.
* In ''TransformersGeneration1'', 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.
* ''{{Futurama}}'' has never shyed 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."

[[/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.
** Which, of course, didn't happen when they ''did'' turn it on. Or di-
*** Stop it, this isn't fu-
*** Good lord! We have released CandleJack unto the wor
* [[http://qntm.org/?geocide This website]] has instructions on how to achieve such a result.
** Guys, I think we need a new plan, [[HeKnowsTooMuch they already know]]!
* '''Actual Real Life''': 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.
** Though since sound is just vibrations traveling in a medium....there could've been if enough "stuff" was floating around.

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