[[MagicTheGathering http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Wrath_of_God.jpg]]

->''there should be more comics in which everybody dies''
-->-- AltText for '''DinosaurComics''' [[http://www.qwantz.com/archive/000300.html #300]]

-->''No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves...''
-->-- GeorgeRRMartin

When AnyoneCanDie becomes "Everyone Will Die."

Many series are noteworthy for the extremely high body count among the main cast that they rack up in their last few episodes. In some cases, ''all'' of the heroes make a HeroicSacrifice, or otherwise find themselves wearing the RedShirt. Occasionally, the protagonists simply fail to prevent TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, resulting in a DownerEnding. (Possibly DyingAlone to cap it all.)

Compare the BattleRoyaleWithCheese, but hold the cheese. Also compare the BolivianArmyEnding, only we actually see the attack of the Bolivian Army. Inverted in EverybodysDeadDave, where everybody except the main characters are dead. See also FinalGirl, where just one person survives.

Usually, however, either they accomplish something in death, such as killing the BigBad and thus preventing TheBadGuyWins, or it becomes clear that likeable as they may be, the world is better off without them, or their deaths are clearly an escape from a FateWorseThanDeath. If none of these happens, and they prove completely ineffectual in both life and death, it's a ShootTheShaggyDog ending.

In a {{Prequel}}, they may be DoomedByCanon: all characters who do not appear in the sequel and can not be disposed of otherwise will have to die.

A short historical digression: the words "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ([[OminousLatinChanting Latin]]: "Kill them all. God will know his own," popularly rendered as, "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.") are [[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Latin_proverbs#Kill_them_all attributed]] to Abbot Arnold Amaury before the massacre of Béziers during the Albigensian [[KnightTemplar Crusade]] -- albeit not in the any of numerous contemporary accounts of it.

You know the drill. This is a '''[[DeathTropes death trope]]'''. Spoiler city ahead. The funny thing about this particular trope, however, is that knowing that ''everyone'' dies is somehow much less spoiler-ish than knowing that, say, only your favorite one does. The wonders of perception... And, as some guy ([[strike:[[YouLookFamiliar probably]] [[{{Lzherusskie}} Russian]]]], [[BeamMeUpScotty actually, German]]) once said, "The death of one man is a tragedy, [[AMillionIsAStatistic the death of millions is a statistic]]."
----
!!Examples:

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* {{Devilman}} manages to kill off the entire main cast [[strike:except]] including Akira in the span of five volumes. Violence Jack technically bring many of them back... only for them to [[CrapsackWorld go through hell again.]]
* ''{{Vagabond}}'' has a ''heroic'' example in the form of MiyamotoMusashi versus all seventy remaining Yoshioka swordsmen at the drooping pine of Ichijouji. (Subverted in that [[spoiler:their leader Ueda Ryouhei survives both being "cut down" at the beginning of the fight long enough to cripple him before finally succumbing]].) What he didn't expect was that the cycle of death and killing didn't stop there...
* ''SpaceRunawayIdeon'' is the all-time heavyweight champion of this. The entire cast (including children! [[spoiler: poor Ashura]]) die bloody and gruesome deaths, culminating in the complete destruction of the entire universe and everyone in it. Between this series and its predecessor ''Zambot 3'', creator YoshiyukiTomino actually earned the nickname "Kill 'Em All Tomino".
** The ending to ''SpaceRunawayIdeon'' was ''so'' depressing, that even Tomino himself wonders how he came up with it.
** Enough so that ''SoukouNoStrain'', whose directing team worked with Tomino, ended up being a subversion. It began as an EverybodysDeadDave [[spoiler:and ended that way, but just about everybody expected Sara and her cohorts to drop off.]]
** ''{{Saikano}}'' feels incredibly influenced by Ideon, particularly considering the two have essentially the same ending; the main difference is, ''Saikano'' has no EarthShatteringKaboom, and Shuji stays alive as the last man on Earth as Chise accompanies him as an EnergyBeing.
** Also ''AuraBattlerDunbine'' sees one character survive, a sylph by the name of Cham Fao, who Tomino seemed to have a soft spot for. Everyone else went down in flames and explosions, taking most of Earth and Byston Well with them.
*** And even that they tried to push, as it was mentioned that she was never seen again.
** Many of the ''{{Gundam}}'' series directed by Tomino also have high death counts, ''ZetaGundam'' and ''VictoryGundam'' in particular. The ironic thing about the Gundam series is that Tomino's stated reason for his Kill Em All tendencies was to discourage sequels.
**To illustrate how associated Tomino is with this Trope, for a good time the picture for this page was of him smiling.
** Though Tomino is not involved with ''{{Gundam 00}}'', the latter half of the first season (''especially'' episode 24) sees a ''massive'' die-off of both main and named characters.
*** Likewise, the finale of ''GundamSEED'', while leaving nearly all the main heroes safe, killed off the majority of the supporting cast, and the only survivor among the antagonists was via a last-minute defection to the good guys. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, '''the''' most blatantly obvious death (and the most moving one at that) got eliminated via {{Retcon}} in the sequel, with [[FirstLawOfResurrection no explanation ever given]].]]
** ''[[GundamIGLOO MS IGLOO 2]]''. '''Everybody''' dies, except for one lucky as hell Federation soldier and a Feddie higher-up. It's no small wonder some people have compared this to V Gundam in terms of bleakness.
* The SDF-1 and its entire crew are wiped out at the end of the first third of ''{{Robotech}}''. (In the original ''SuperDimensionFortressMacross'', however, everyone is fine...which makes this the rare {{Macekre}} that ''ups'' the death count.)
** Since the characters in question never show up again in the entire Macross franchise, though, they may as well be dead.
*** Exedol, Max and Miriya are all in ''{{Macross 7}}''. It's only the core LoveTriangle that have disappeared without trace (in universe, contact with Megaroad 01 was lost sometime after it set out).
* The entire town of Hinamizawa is wiped out in one of the continuities in ''HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi'' ([[AllThereInTheManual several, actually]]), and most of the main characters die - generally in horrible and bloody ways - in the other continuities as well.
** Subverted in [[spoiler:Matsuribayashi-hen]]. It says a lot about the series that '''not''' killing everyone could be considered a subversion rather than just an aversion.
** The entire ''WhenTheyCry'' series is like that. UminekoNoNakuKoroNi follows suit and even underlines it by giving you the body count at the end of each arc, which is most frequently read, "[[TitleDrop When the seagulls cry]], nobody has been left alive."
* ''GenesisClimberMospeada'' pulls this in its ''first episode''. The one character who survives becomes protagonist by default.
* In ''{{Dragonball}} Z'', the villain Super Buu has an attack dubbed "Human Extinction", that does exactly as the name implies. To add to that, anyone who isn't killed by this attack he kills personally (by turning them into candy, no less). Then he [[EarthShatteringKaboom blows up the Earth]]. Then, he turns to the rest of the universe, and eventually makes his way to the afterlife, and starts destroying stuff there. This is one of the rare cases where the heroes have a ResetButton - which itself becomes a plot point, as the surviving secondary cast rushes to find it before it becomes too late for everyone (as the ResetButton has a time limit, ''and'' it's something that Buu is capable of destroying if he gets to it first).
** And in Future Trunks' timeline, Goku dies from a virus, all of the Z-fighters are killed by the Androids, and eventually Gohan meets his maker as well. There is no ResetButton here, since Piccolo died, disabling the Dragonballs (and finding the other set of Dragonballs, located on planet Namek, wouldn't work because of the above-mentioned time limit, which has already expired), and altering the past only creates an alternate timeline (aversion of TemporalParadox).
* The end of the second season of ''MonsterRancher'' kills all of the {{mons}} off. There is a third season where they come BackFromTheDead; it was never released in the US.
** However if you watch it careful enough, you can deduce that much from ending of season 2. In short, mon's discs come in two varieties: sleeping mons (discs on the ground), which can be brought to life in temples and "lost mons" (caught by a bush-like growth), which cannot, and represent killed mons. At the end of season 2 we see ''all'' lost mons transform into sleeping mons, implying they will be revived again.
* Most of the cast of ''FushigiYuugi'' died through the course of the series. This was, however, [[DisneyDeath undone]] in the {{OVA}}s.
* Staying true to the original ''[[SevenSamurai Shichinin no Samurai]]'', by the end of ''[[SamuraiSeven Samurai 7]]'', Gorobei, Kyuzo, Kikuchyo, and Heihachi have all died in battle, leaving only three of the original seven.
** Naturally, this is also true of its Western remake ''The Magnificent Seven''.
* In ''SailorMoon'', every secondary heroine sacrifices her own life to allow the title character to press on toward the FinalShowdown. ''Twice''.
** In the manga, they die EVERY ARC...some more pointlessly than others.
*** Yes and no. Although [[spoiler: the Inner Senshi do get killed in the first and third arcs of the manga]], and [[spoiler: ''everybody'' dies]] in Stars, nobody on the good side dies in the fourth arc, and only [[spoiler: [[HeroicSacrifice Sailor Pluto]]]] dies in the second arc.
** Subverted in the final season of the anime, while 99.9% of the secondary heroines die the Starlights actually live to see Sailor Moon save the day.
* Mangaka Mohiro Kitoh may be said to be a challenger to Tomino's KillEmAll Throne:
** ''{{Narutaru}}''... Don't mess with the little girl who can use the ''whole world'' as a weapon. Oh, and while at the end, it resembles ''[[NeonGenesisEvangelion The End of Evangelion]]'' in that [[spoiler: there are [[AdamAndEvePlot two people alive]]]], it doesn't [[TearJerker feel]] that way.
** ''{{Bokurano}}'' makes a valiant attempt to out-Tomino Tomino himself. Early on, the children discover that even if they win their battles, they're guaranteed to die. Only later is it revealed that [[spoiler:for every battle they win, ''an entire AlternateUniverse'' is destroyed. Which they are, on occasion, forced to watch by their RobotBuddy.]]
* ''{{Basilisk}}'' is the fight between the Iga and Kouga clans. 10 members of each clan are pitted against each other, and they die one by one until all that is left are the StarCrossedLovers, [[spoiler: who are both DrivenToSuicide]].
* In ''[[WolfsRain Wolf's Rain]]'' every character dies, one at a time. While [[ApocalypseHow the world dies]]. And then the world is born again. And everyone is apparently reincarnated a really long time later... possibly in the modern day.
* ''ChronoCrusade'' fell victim to this. In fact, the only major character that wasn't either permanently killed off or otherwise rendered ineffective was the BigBad. DownerEnding, indeed.
** And a ShootTheShaggyDog ending.
** Luckily, this is only true of the anime. The manga has most of the cast surviving in the end (some even into the 1990s!)
* ''DaiMahouTouge'' features "Kill Them All" as the {{invocation}} activating the lead MagicalGirl's powers... Mayhem ensues, as you may imagine.
* ''{{Berserk}}'' closes the "Band of the Hawk" arc by killing every major character but four: [[spoiler:Guts, Casca, Griffith (who has turned evil anyway), and one other member of the Band who had the good luck not to be there when things went to pot]]. The entire world of the series seems to be heading that way, as well.
* ''{{Hellsing}}'', while not over yet, is definitely veering in this direction. As of the latest chapter, only [[spoiler: Integra, Seras, possibly Heinkel, Islands, and the Major (who's a freaking ''robot'')]] are still kicking out of the named cast, and there's a high probability of more killing. [[spoiler:Millennium, Iscariot, and likely the Wild Geese]] have all been destroyed, [[spoiler: the Hellsing organization]] is just barely hanging on, [[spoiler: Islands]] is planning to bomb the area into oblivion to end the mess, and, oh yeah, [[spoiler: ''the entire population of London]] has been completely obliterated.''
** It is over now, and, out of the entire original cast, only [[spoiler: Seras, Integra, and a now immortal Heinkel]] are still alive after the 30-year timeskip. As for everyone's favourite psychopathic vampire, well...see below.
** [[spoiler: Alucard got better after 30 years]]
* ''DeathNote'': All but two of the main characters are killed off: [[spoiler: Matsuda and Near,]] unless you count [[spoiler: the SPK and the Taskforce.]]
** [[spoiler:[[AndZoidberg And Ryuk.]]]]
*** But he goes without saying. [[spoiler:He doesn't care enough about any human to fall victim to the one way a Shinigami can be killed, after all.]]
* Osamu Tezuka used this trope often, even in his early career. In his late '40s work ''Lost World'', out of the dozen or so main characters, only three survive to the end & several nameless extras are killed when the rocketship crashes on top of them. AstroBoy storylines frequently ended with everybody who wasn't a main character or a {{Recurrer}} dead (and sometimes even them!). Most of the ''Phoenix'' stories end with everybody except the titular bird dead, including the entire populations of a couple of planets, which is understandable since the main theme of the series is that the quest for immortality is futile & we should be happy with the lives we have.
** One could also argue that Midnight's sudden [[spoiler:accident leading to [[GenderBender his brain transplanted in his ex-girlfriend's body]], effectively killing the girl he wanted to revive all the time,]] was a rather unsubtle way to end the story abruptly.
* In ''GaReiZero'', the entire named cast dies in the last 2 minutes of the FIRST episode. It's an effective cliffhanger, but...
** Then they kill half of the cast not presented in first episode. Body count keeps rising in the manga including some survivors of GaReiZero.
* ''LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'' has most of the main cast dead by the end of it. The author, Tanaka Yoshiki, was given the [[FanNickname nickname]] "Mass Murder".
* A slight subversion of this trope comes from the not-very-well-known anime ''{{Shin-Hakkenden}}'' in which, [[spoiler:by the end of the series, only two of the named characters are alive. One is the narrator (who doesn't really even take part in the story until 3/4 of the way through the series) and the MisledVillainGirl, who's pregnant. The reason this sort of counts as "subverted" is the two main characters die.]]
* ''[[NeonGenesisEvangelion End of Evangelion]]'': Subverted. [[{{Instrumentality}} Third Impact/Instrumentality/Tangification/whatever]] ''[[MindScrew appears]]'' to be a KillEmAll at first, but it's later explicitly stated that nobody is ''really'' dead, and the process is completely reversible--making it a potential EverybodyLives instead.
* ''RahXephon'' ends up with about half of the main cast dead by the end of the penultimate episode.
** It seems like that at first until Ayato "retunes" the world to get a happy ending.
* The ''VenusVersusVirus'' anime ends with every major character dead. The only characters who survive are minor comic-relief characters. The anime {{Overtook The Manga}}.
** [[spoiler:Actually,Sumire and Lucia survived. All Lucia did was [[CooldownHug hug]] her.]]
* In the DownerEnding of ''{{Texhnolyze}}'', everybody either dies gruesomely or [[AndIMustScream becomes a permanently stationary automaton]]. Given the nature of the show, this is probably expected.
* The ''{{X1999}}'' movie starts killing off its cast literally from its first scene - in some cases not even bothering to pause to introduce the characters first - and doesn't stop until everyone but Kamui is dead. The TV series is a little gentler, but as far as the manga is concerned, [[AnyoneCanDie all bets are off]].
** Also by those [[{{Clamp}} Sadistic Lady Mangaka]], ''RGVeda'' (which was also their debut longrunning manga). Some people were actually surprised that two major characters survived.
* Characters in ''{{Gantz}}'' die once to get involved in the story (and can possibly die again). Being a MauveShirt or even a main character is no protection from death. Then came the Osaka arc, and after ''that'' came the Italy arc.
* By the end of ''{{Akira}}'' the only survivors are Kaneda, Kei, Kai, and the Colonel. Everyone else is either killed by Tetsuo or killed when Akira sucks everyone else into a vortex, Tetsuo's fate is left ambiguous.
* ''{{Uzumaki}}'': in the end, [[spoiler:everybody dies. Not only the main characters, but everybody who's in Kurôzu-cho]].
* At the end of ''MDGeist'', the main character, who is a military developed human killing machine [[spoiler: reactivates a canceled countdown time that unleashes a self-replicating robot army designed to exterminate all human life on the planet, just so he can have a stronger opponent to fight.]]
** Then in the sequel to ''MDGeist'', he [[spoiler: foils a plan to nuke all of the robots in one stroke, and then leads them to humanity's last remaining stronghold so that they completely destroy it.]]
* Though possibly expected, in the space of about three chapters, ''{{Gunslinger Girl}}'' has ''rapidly'' descended into this, with almost half of the named SWA cyborgs ([[spoiler: Beatrice being among them]]) and likely their handlers, in the case of the others, being killed in a bloody battle against a well-armed terrorist group in possession of a missile.
* By the end of the first volume of ''{{Urotsukidoji}}'' (otherwise known as Legend of the Overfiend) the only survivors are Jyaku, Megumi, Nagumo, and Akemi everyone else is killed by demons, Niki, or Nagumo in his transformed state.
* ''Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom'' does this over the course of the series, and then finishes its spree ''very'' callously in the final episode. At the episode's end, after the series seemingly following the "Cerulean Blue Sky" route of the {{Phantom of Inferno}} visual novel, [[spoiler: Reiji/Zwei, at the episode's end, is shot dead by either Elen/Ein or a completely random passerby on a cart, and depending on the interpretation of the final scenes, Elen/Ein herself possibly committed suicide by deadly nightshade.]] In conclusion, [[spoiler: every major character, except MacGuire, possibly Ein, Shiga and Mio is dead by the end of the series.]]
* In ''TetragrammatonLabyrinth'', [[spoiler: this is what happens to any character that shows up more than twice in the story. It's less of a DownerEnding rather than a bittersweet ending, though. It's kind of ambiguous what kind of ending it is, but it seemed like it was a EarnYourHappyEnding type.]]
*''GallForce'' series manage to do that nearly all time. Each time lots of cast is introduced just for one purpose: to gradually kill everyone and finally wipe all life from entire galaxy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''PrideOfBaghdad'' ends with all four protagonists being gunned down by American soldiers without even achieving the freedom that they'd been dreaming of. It should probably be mentioned that [[spoiler:the protagonists are lions]].
* ''CoheedAndCambria: The Amory Wars - The Second Stage Turbine Blade''. Not only do Coheed and Cambria get tricked into ''brutally murdering their own children'', they also die mostly because Cambria destroys a spaceship's engine in a fit of rage. Secondary characters also die in a failed coup, by the truckload. And that's just one of the chapters in the story!
** ItGetsWorse: Claudio (the protagonist for much of the storyline followed SSTB) is supposed to ''destroy the entire solar system, and release the souls of the Keywork!!!'' (The Keywork is the fictitious Solar System thing). Because DestinySaysSo.
* The AlternateContinuity story "ThePunisher Kills The MarvelUniverse" is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin.
** Not to mention ''ThePunisher: The End'', where after a nuclear apocalypse, the Punisher and his sidekick venture out of a bomb shelter when the radiation has gone down enough for him to make it to the people responsible. He kills them, then his sidekick (who was actually a murderer), and then dies.
* The {{Elseworlds}} graphic novel ''Comicbook/{{Batman}}: Crimson Mist'' ends up with every named character in the Batman world, except Dr. Jeremiah Arkham and, apparently, a female expert in the supernatural, killed off.
* ''X-Force/X-Statix'' kills off team members intermittently throughout the series, before slaughtering the survivors ''en masse'' in the final issue. Still managed to have a sequel series, by showing us some of the characters' fates in the afterlife.
* ''Marvel Zombies'' ([[ZombieApocalypse as one would expect]] [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin from the title]]) killed off a good 90% of its characters.
* The original ''{{Transformers}}'' Marvel comics run featured vast numbers of deaths. In fact, something like one-fifth of all the characters introduced in the comic series had died by the end (in the case of Optimus Prime, twice over, but pretty much everyone else was for real). In fact, sometimes characters who had been the focus for multiple storylines with them evading death multiple times would suddenly be killed with no warning in a very off-hand manner several years later [[spoiler: most notably Blaster, who had something like two year's worth of storylines based around him during which time he was repeatedly shot, infected with a horrific robotic illness, at one point completely disassembled and then tortured non-stop for months on end by Grimlock before finally getting some semblance of a normal life, only to be killed a year later by Starscream without a second's thought]]. This trope then went insane in the ''Generation 2'' sequel series in which the corpses mounted up at an alarming rate.
** The later ''Universe'' comic introduced a gigantic number of characters in the first issues. This was way more than could be properly handled, so they massacred most of them until it was at a better size.
** Furman would be brought in to write the series finale for ''BeastWars''. His first question to the staff? "Who can I kill?" The answer? [[spoiler: Tigerhawk, Depth Charge, and every Predacon except Megatron and Waspinator.]]
** It's probably not much of a stretch to say that Simon Furman is basically the white YoshiyukiTomino.
*** Notably, every character that he kills off that gets a death scene of their own concludes it with the line "Oh well. Never did want to live forever!"
* ''Rising Stars'' is about 113 people with superpowers, called the Specials. [[spoiler: At the end, they're all dead. The two most important non-Special characters also die.]]
* ''UsagiYojimbo'' author Stan Sakai wrote a Kill 'Em All FinalBattle as an experiment, but decided it was "too depressing".
* ''{{X-Men}}'' featured at least one story arc which took place in an alternate future in which Sentinels had killed most of Earth's heroes and enslaved the rest. By the end of it, the adult Shadowcat is the only X-Man alive. [[spoiler:Though Rachel Summers managed to also survive via TimeTravel, and now lives in the main MarvelUniverse.]]
** There's also the AgeOfApocalypse, an alternate timeline where Professor Xavier was killed years before he would've formed the X-Men, and [[{{Darwinist}} Apocalypse]] takes over half the world and has already killed off most of the population. It goes downhill from there.
* The ''GreatLakesAvengers'' have a nasty habit of losing members, including Mr. Immortal's love interest in issue 1.
** Probably the only safe characters are Mr. Immortal (whose power is ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin; he absolutely cannot be killed by any means, not even by completely obliterating his body) and Squirrel Girl (who's too popular to kill).
* ''Ultimatum'', Ultimate Marvel's big CrisisCrossover before the title reboot, cut a wide swath through the heroes and villains of the canon. By the time it's over, around 70% of the named characters and millions-strong chunks of international populations are dead.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: FanFiction]]
* The HarryPotter fanfic ''Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness'' has what can be described as a Kill Em All ending, with some very nasty curses involved and some major {{TearJerker}}s.
** The sequel, "Sluagh", is worse. That is one...erm...INVENTIVE young man. [[spoiler:Depending on how you look at it, NONE of Our Heroes are left standing after the Battle of Druim Cett, and if half of those creatures aren't out of the author's imagination, there's some funky stuff in water of those Irish springs.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''{{Serenity}}'' [[spoiler: acts like it's going to do this, only to stop after Wash]].
** but that's unforgivable.
* ''StarWars Episode III: RevengeOfTheSith'': Order 66
* The movie ''ChildrenOfMen'' leaves only one main character standing at its conclusion, unless you count [[spoiler: her baby]].
* The last few scenes of ''The Departed'' ends up with every main character but one getting shot by each other - then the very last scene has that final main character getting shot by the other main character's boss.
* ''Sidehackers'' was a brutal, gritty biker film in which almost every character (including the hero's extremely likable love interest, whose death ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'' had to cut out of the aired version and have Crow explain) was gang raped and killed. The hero himself was gunned down by the fatally wounded villain whilst walking away from a MexicanStandoff. The three that lived (the black guy, the guy who told bad jokes, and the hero's friend) all ran off when the battle was in progress. ''Sidehackers'' incidentally, was the movie which prompted Best Brains to institute their policy of watching a movie ''all'' the way through before selecting it for their show.
* ''Rocketship X-M'' features a bunch of people going to the moon, but [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale ending up on Mars]]. They are able to find about people that are horribly mutated from a war and on the way back, and only have enough time tell the people of Earth about this, before [[DiabolusExMachina a leak makes them run out of gas on the way home and they are unable to land]]. As Crow put it on ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'', "There's nothing more depressing then being stuck in a spaceship, watching people die in a spaceship."
* ''Beneath the PlanetOfTheApes'' ends with pretty much the entire cast getting shot. And then Charlton Heston's dying act is to trigger a gigantic nuke that [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroys the entire planet]]. They still managed three more films, though.
** Oh the irony... Heston actually '''re-wrote''' the ending to the script (in which Taylor destroys the entire planet) because he didn't want it to become a FranchiseZombie, and would rather just end it then.
* ''{{Transformers}}: TheMovie'' killed off most of the [[TransformersGeneration1 first generation of Transformers]], Autobot and Decepticon alike, in order to facilitate the introduction of the new toy line.
** The later season of the cartoon series casts doubt on this, as many of the Transformers killed in the movie are seen up and walking around again, although some of these occasions are believed to have been animation gaffes.
*** And of course the impact of this is lessened since the highest-profile fatality, [[spoiler:Optimus Prime]], returned in the cartoon series. In the comics set after the movie, impressively, he stayed dead permanently.
* At the end of ''SavingPrivateRyan'', out of the original squad sent to find Ryan as well as the entire paratrooper force defending the town of Ramelle, only two members of the original squad and Ryan himself survive when Allied reinforcements finally arrive.
* In the ''Village of the Damned'' remake with Christopher Reeve, only the teacher girl and her kid (the only alien child who had more or less normal emotions) survive. Everyone else in town is dead.
** A subversion of the original story (''The Midwich Cuckoos'' and the original ''Village of the Damned'' movie) in which none of the kids had human emotions. They all died along with the teacher responsible for their deaths, but almost everybody else survived.)
* ''{{Scarface}}'' ends with Tony and crew dead and the drug lord who ordered the film-ending attack still alive. Fortunately or not, we don't get to see his presumable satisfaction with this.
** The recent video game based on the film picks up after Tony's 'death' and has the player control him as he attempts to rebuild his drug empire. This can be viewed as an alternate continuity.
* Those who do not die onscreen in the cult [[LaResistance French Resistance]] movie ''Army of Shadows'' are killed off in the epilogue screen titles.
* ''TheWildBunch''. Good guys. Bad guys. Worse Guys. Bystanders. Livestock. Only two named characters are still breathing as the closing credits roll.
* In ''TheFall'', Roy almost ends his story this way, much to Alexandria's horror. Only her confession of love convinces him to allow their avatars to live.
* In the ''{{Saw}}'' franchise, there isn't a single character who survived all five movies, up to and including the titular serial killer himself.
* The Quentin Tarantino movie ''ReservoirDogs'' ends with just about the entire crew dead except for [[spoiler: Mr. Pink, who gets caught by the cops as the credits roll]]. And some would argue that even ''he'' is [[spoiler: not captured, but instead shot to death by the police]].
** And he returns to this with a vengeance in ''InglouriousBasterds''. [[spoiler: All but two of the basterds die, along with a Nazi officer who presumably doesn't die but does get a swastika carved into his forehead. Every other major character, ''including Hitler?'' Yeah, dead. (Marcel's fate is also left unclear, although given how fast that film went up...)]]
*** Marcel locked all the doors, ignited the film canisters, and lit a cigar as he watched it all burn. I think it's safe to say he's dead.
* John Woo's ''TheKiller'' ends with just about every major character dead except for [[spoiler: Jenny and Inspector Li]].
* Let's see... ''NightOfTheLivingDead'' ([[spoiler: the only survivor is mistaken for a zombie and shot in the head]]), ''Cabin Fever'' ([[spoiler:ditto, in an obvious homage]]), ''ResidentEvil'' ([[spoiler:Alice is the only survivor IN THE ENTIRE CITY]]).
** [[spoiler: Ben isn't mistaken for a zombie. They were just a bunch of rednecks who felt like killing a black man]]
* The Scottish film ''Outpost'' has an entire squad of mercenaries and their scientist/corporate employer [[spoiler: wiped out by undead Nazi super-soldiers. The end of the movie leads the view to believe that a second team was wiped out the same way.]]
* ''DeadMan''. [[spoiler:Interestingly, the only death we don't really see is that of William, presumably the titular "dead man."]]
* The entire crew of Icarus II dies in the sci-fi movie ''{{Sunshine}}'' (2007), but they do manage to save the world in the process.
** [[spoiler: Though it is hinted that Kappa does not die, but is frozen in time right before his death, stuck admiring a wall of fire. This is either a happy ending or a FateWorseThanDeath, depending on your point of view.]]
* ''[[{{REC}} [REC]]]'' Nobody survives. Leading lady, camera man, hero firefighter, mother and daughter, Chinese family, young cop... they ALL bought it and/or [[NotUsingTheZedWord came back]].
** Except probably [[spoiler: an old couple]].
* ''{{Quarantine}}''. There's a few {{Hope Spot}}s, in particular one close to the end when the landlord says there's a way to get out through the basement, but really. What really sells it is that most characters who die pop back up as [[NotUsingTheZedWord (let's just say)]] zombies, and near the end there's a sequence where the two leads have to fight through what's left of the rest of the cast.
* ''{{Cloverfield}}'', although the ending is left intentionally ambiguous.
* ''TheBlairWitchProject''. Of course, considering that the whole conceit of the movie is "Hey, we found this video camera out in the woods..." why would you expect anything else?
* ''{{Star Wreck}}: In the Pirkinning'' ends with pretty much everybody dying in the massive P-Fleet vs Babel 13 space battle. A few survive, though, and Earth is freed from Emperor Pirk's tyranny.
* All eight characters who got a speaking part in ''TheDescent'' died. At least in the original version. The US got a different ending, and [[FridgeLogic now a different team is filming a sequel featuring the two main characters.]]
* The ''FinalDestination'' series. The survivor of the first movie gets killed in the second and the survivors of the second one are told to be dead at the beginning of the third one. Said third movie [[spoiler:decides to not waste time and kills everyone in a not very ambiguous ending]].
** [[spoiler:ItGotWorse in the newest.]]
* Very common in European war movies, especially WWII movies from Germany:
** In ''DasBoot'', just as the titular submarine returns home and the crew is greeted by the cheering people [[spoiler: the air raid siren sounds and Allied aircraft attack the harbour, sinking the sub and killing everyone]].
** This is actually an anti-war subversion, the U96 and all her crew returned safely home (U96 was considered a lucky boat in that none of her crew was killed). Her captain Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock went on to captain Germany`s first and only nuclear powered freighter. So although the book/film (based on the real crew) had a downer ending, RealLife did not.
** And in ''{{Stalingrad}}'', only 3 characters are alive near the end, and then [[spoiler: a Russian sniper kills one of them, and the last two take cover and slowly [[SnowMeansDeath freeze to death in the snow]] in the most beautiful scene ever]].
*** [[spoiler: Did we mention that as the two stop moving and are slowly covered by the falling snow, the credits roll? [[DownerEnding Yes, it's that kind of war movie.]]]]
* ''{{Valkyrie}}'' ends with the deaths of virtually all of the major conspirators who organized the botched July 20th assassination attempt on Hitler.
** [[BasedOnATrueStory It's not like the screenwriter had a choice]].
* By the end of ''Miracle at St. Anna'', with the exception of Hector and Angelo, every single villager and Allied soldier in St. Anna is killed during a battle with German soldiers.
* By the end of the first ''ScaryMovie'' everyone except for Cindy's father, Gale, and Doofy are killed. Of course, many of said characters inexplicably come BackFromTheDead in the sequels.
* In ''Dead Snow'', the cast is slaughtered one by one during an exceptionally bloody standoff against the Nazi Colonel Herzog and his stiff soldiers. The toughest one survives after figuring out that the Nazis are after a box of stolen gold and presenting it to them. [[spoiler: Though when he finally gets back to the car, he discovers he has accidentally brought a gold coin with him. The Colonel appears and offs him shortly afterwards.]]]]
* The credits of ''Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance'' start rolling when all characters are dead except one, who is fatally wounded. As the screen fades to black, we continue to hear his mumbling and moaning as he slowly bleeds out due to having his gut sliced to ribbons. At the end of the credits, ''he is still not dead.''
* In ''StrangerThanFiction'', this is stated to be author Karen Eiffel's SignatureStyle. It becomes an issue when the main character Harold Crick becomes her new protagonist and when confronted with this she is plagued by guilt at how many actual lives she might have ended.
* The {{Akira Kurosawa}} film ''{{Ran}}'' -- not surprising since the plot closely resembles that of ''{{King Lear}}'', with a bonus [[CycleOfVengeance cycle of vengeance]] element thrown in for good measure.
* ''The Dirty Dozen''. [[spoiler: 11 of the titular group die, and the last is badly injured.]] The two officers with them both survive, though.
* ''[[{{Ptitle1d5irnza}} 9]]''. First, humanity is, apparently, completely wiped out. Then, [[spoiler: the only two explicitley named human characters die, one before the movie even begins]]. ''Then'', [[spoiler: all of the stitchpunks, except 3, 4, 7 and 9, die along the course of the film.]] Granted, the ending itself [[BittersweetEnding isn't all that bleak]], but that doesn't mitigate the loss of life.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* In LloydAlexander's ''Westmark'' trilogy, any character with a name [[AnyoneCanDie had a fifty-fifty chance of making it out of book 3 alive]]. There were more deaths than in the previous two books combined - and the second book took place ''during a war''.
* ''[[TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy Mostly Harmless]]''. At the end, most of the main characters and all possible Earths are completely obliterated from all possible timelines. Permanently. (The only possible survivor is a character who stepped into a teleporter in a previous book and wasn't seen again.) And then, to make it even worse, the ''author'' died.
** The author had, before his death, adapted the novel for a radio version; he had stated some dissatisfaction with the downbeat ending and, in the radio version, it is revealed that [[spoiler:the Babelfish can teleport its host if they're about to die. Since all the main characters are using a babelfish for translation, they survive (landing at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe).]]
** The cop-out nature of that ending is somewhat redeemed by the fact that Adams himself had intended to subvert this trope in a later novel. [[AuthorExistenceFailure His death complicated things.]]
*** Not as much as you might think. Eoin Colfer (Author of Artemis Fowl et al) was contracted to deliver a 6th book, ''And Another Thing''.
* ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' has been going this way at full speed since A Storm of Swords, and it's not like the first two books lacked corpses either.
** From [[http://web.archive.org/web/20001005212114/eventhorizon.com/sfzine/chats/transcripts/031899.html Martin himself]]: "No one will be alive by the last book. In fact, they all die in the fifth. The sixth book will be just a thousand-page description of snow blowing across the graves..."
*** To some extent this is overstated. Although the death of the presumed main character in Book 1 was shocking, most of the deaths since then have been of secondary characters at best. The only other truly central character to die came back. Most notably, the 'big three' core characters, [[spoiler:usually held to be Tyrion, Dany and Jon]], are still alive and kicking.
* Shakespeare's tragedies, anyone?
** Hamlet has 10 major deaths (if you count Claudius's as 2 because he got stabbed and drank the poisoned wine). The only major character still alive is Horatio.
**By the end of the fifth act of King Lear, only two or three people are left alive, one of which wants to join his king in death (though his death was never really shown by the end). Depending on the version, the ending is different (where either Edgar or Albany is crowned).
* Noticeably averted in ''HouseOfLeaves''. I say "noticeably" because in the photograph insert after the cover, there is a typed note in the middle of the mess, detailing the author's desire to kill off Will Navidson's children in brutal ways. "Drown them in blood" was the particular phrase.
* Todd [=McCaffrey=]'s ''DragonridersOfPern'' books have, thus far, featured exploding mine holds, '''three''' continent threatening plagues (two of which infected dragons) and almost an entire Weyr taken out in one swoop by a bad jump ''between''.
* ''BattleRoyale''. Of course, everyone dying is pretty much the ''premise'' of the book. [[spoiler:In fact, in the end, one more survives than was supposed to...]]
* HPLovecraft never pulled this off, probably because he always presented his stories in a semi-realistic manner, so ending it with "then everybody died" when the world is, very clearly, not dead, would kinda ruin the setting. Instead he had lots of "everybody WILL die. And there's nothing we can do about it".
** Well, he did write things like ''Nyarlathotep'' and ''The Doom That Came To Sarnath'', which basically describe the sudden and mysterious fall of entire cities. Might avert the trope mainly by virtue of not having a lot of explicitly ''named'' characters, mind.
* Somewhat subverted in the final {{Narnia}} book, in which all nearly the characters from our world appear, [[spoiler: having died there in a train accident.]] They get a HappyEnding, while much fan consternation is caused by the fate of [[spoiler: Susan, who is "no longer a friend of Narnia", does not appear in the book, and survives. I.e. the sole survivor is the one who, in typical plot terms, gets casually killed off]].
**Apocryphally, NeilGaiman deals with this lost end in his 2004 short story [[spoiler: ''The Problem of Susan'']] (the title of the story is a spoiler itself in this context).
* In [[Literature/AndThenThereWereNone ''And Then There Were None'']] by AgathaChristie,[[spoiler: everyone on the island is killed off and the culprit leaves a confession in a bottle, sends it out to sea, and commits suicide.]]
* By the end of Cormac [=McCarthy=]'s ''Blood Meridian'', [[spoiler:every character in the posse, including the protagonist The Kid,]] is dead. The only exception is [[spoiler: Judge Holden.]]
* Approximately half of the characters introduced in the first book of Steven Erikson's ''MalazanBookOfTheFallen'' series are dead by (and mostly during) book three. 75% are gone by the end of book six (including most of the BigDamnHeroes from earlier on).
** Almost all of those characters are either reincarnated, resurrected or continue to play an active role as ghosts.
*** Tell that to Coltaine and the Chain of Dogs. Or Whiskeyjack. Or Dujek Onearm. Or T'Amber. Or the Sengars. Or...
**** [[spoiler:Coltaine is clearly going to reincarnate, according to the end of ''Chain of Dogs''. And Whiskeyjack is very much present in the most recent book, ''Toll the Hounds'', which also mentions Dujek Onearm as one of the commanders in the army of the dead that Iskar Jarak commands ...]]
* Raymond E. Feist's ''Riftwar'' cycle of novels have spanned something like 200 years to date, so with a few magical exceptions every major character from the first book is mow dead. However, the end of the ''Serpentwar' sub-series was notable for not only wiping out most of the then-supporting cast and a couple of leading characters in a devastating war, [[spoiler:but also destroying the city of Krondor, where a significant amount of the action in the books had taken place. Later books took this to an insane extreme by blowing up the entire planet of Kelewan, which had seen a lot of the action take place there as well]].
* Paul Kearney's splendid five-book ''Monarchies of God'' series ends with the death of every single character of note. Seriously, I think the only character who isn't expressly shown to be dead is a second-tier character who ceased being of any importance and vanished after the third volume.
** Except for the King of Torunna, who rode of into the sunset, and somehow ended up meeting the Prophet Ramusio who had founded both the worlds great religions. A long time ago.
* This was originally supposed to be the fate of most of the main characters in the Honor Harrington novel ''At All Costs'' in which even the protagonist herself was supposed to die so that her son could take up the mantle a few decades down the road. The Author decided to change that however.
* In {{Stephen King}}'s novel ''The Tommyknockers'', except for two kids, pretty much every character is dead by the end.
** In TheStand, 99.4% of humanity is killed off in the first quarter of the book, and then [[spoiler:most of the many, many main characters die over the course of the book, leaving two or three alive.]]
* Iain M. Banks is a big fan of this. Both ''Consider Phlebas'' and ''AgainstADarkBackground'' end with just one main character alive (barely).
** And now ''Matter'' as well.
** ''Consider Phelbas'' goes further than the main characters: virtually everybody picked out of the crowd, even just as "the security guard", is killed off.
* ''AllQuietOnTheWesternFront''. Almost every character dies, even including the narrator.
* It's not everybody in RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms, but after the [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome battle of Chi Bi]], the fan favorites start dying off one by one. By the end of the series none of them are left and nobody cares that [[TreacherousAdvisor Sima Yi's]] grandson has [[DarkHorseVictory taken over all three kingdoms]].
* A few of the OneHundredAndEight heroes of ''Heroes of the Water Margin'' (or ''Suikoden'', for those of you more familiar with the Japanese title) had already died before the end, but a huge list of them get killed off fighting another rebel group, just as the government had hoped because they feared the heroes' power. Whichever survivors that didn't scatter to the winds after that were poisoned by order of the emperor.
* [[KingArthur The Arthur legend]]. At the end, a whopping ''five'' characters are left living: Lancelot and Guinevere (who join the Church and die anyway), Bedivere, Morgan, and Arthur, who [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence was carried off to Avalon with a mortal wound]], [[KingInTheMountain to wait and sleep there until England needs him again]].
** Wait, Morgan died. She turned into a snake and got cut in half. But there was one minor knight besides Bedivere who came out alive.
* In Ben Counter's {{Warhammer 40000}} HorusHeresy novel ''Battle for the Abyss'', [[spoiler:every single character, named and unnamed,]] ends up dead. [[spoiler:By HorusHeresy standards, this is a BittersweetEnding: at least the loyalist Space Marines' {{Heroic Sacrifice}}s are not in vain.]]
* In David Weber and John Ringo's ''Prince Roger'' series, they start with a full company of body guards. Throughout the four books, only 14 or so of the group are left. The planet was a great example of Everything Trying to Kill You
* Has a lampshade hung on it by Mark Twain in the afterword to ''Pudd'nhead Wilson,'' where he explains that the solution to the convoluted original plot was to drop the original characters down a well in the back yard, which only ceased when it seemed likely the well would fill up.
* In BenCounter's {{Warhammer 40000}} novel ''Daemon World'', the epilogue states that [[spoiler:there is a ''legend'' that one of the book's characters lived. Other than that slight possibility, all the characters (named and unnamed) and the entire population of the world died -- plus [[GeniusLoci the world itself]]. An Eldar maiden world, it commited suicide because of all the horrors that had been committed on it.]]
* In Gav Thorpe's {{Warhammer 40000}} novel ''Angels of Darkness'', the Dark Angels realize that they can remain in a hermetically sealed fortress, and so keep the virus released it from destroying the world, and [[HeroicSacrifice die themselves because their suits won't last that long]]. Fearing what they might do when dying of hunger and aspixation, they [[DrivenToSuicide all commited suicide together]].
* In BenCounter's {{Warhammer 40000}} GreyKnights novel ''Hammer of Daemons'', [[spoiler:Alaric himself survives. Also some low-level unnamed Mooks, and two Grey Knights who weren't captured in the opening chapter.]] Other than that, every named character and large chunks of the unnamed masses die.
* ''MobyDick''. Everyone and every''thing'' except the narrator dies. There's a reason he starts the book by saying "Call me Ishmael."
* This is exactly the point of [[DeadlyGame the Hunger Games]], [[TheHungerGames the novel's]] titular reality TV-show. Suberted when [[spoiler: Katniss and Peeta attempt a double suicide with poison; to avoid this, the Capitol makes them both winners. The Capitol is [[{{Understatement}} not very happy]] about it, either.]]
* ''The Hero of Ages'', the final book in the ''{{Mistborn}}'' trilogy. By the end, the series' body count includes, [[spoiler: Kelsier, Dockson, Clubs, Ore'Seur, The Lord Ruler, Tindwyl, Zane, Preservation, Elend Venture, and ''Vin, the main character herself.'']] Note that doesn't include outright villains, such as [[spoiler: Straff Venture or Ruin.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''BlakesSeven''. They even threw in a line of dialogue which revealed that the only previous regular character to make it out of the series alive had [[DroppedABridgeOnHim died off-screen at some point since]].
** It is worth pointing out that this was unintended. The writers had a fifth season planned in which it would be revealed that only one character was definitely dead. The rest had merely been stunned and taken prisoner. However, the BBC decided to cancel the series at that point, so it was just assumed that almost everyone was dead. It should be pointed out that [[spoiler:Avon]] and [[spoiler:Tarrant]] weren't gunned down on screen and in theory survived, although the latter was severely injured [[spoiler:in the crash-landing of Scorpio]].
*''[[{{Blackadder}} The Black Adder]]'' ended with all but two of the main characters dying from drinking poison as a result of a convoluted power struggle. Later seasons of the ''{{Blackadder}}'' also tended to end with the wiping out of all or most of the cast. This was played for morbid laughs in ''Blackadder II'' and ''Blackadder the Third'', and ''[[TearJerker anything but]]'' in ''Blackadder Goes Forth''.
* The ''{{Dinosaurs}}'' finale, "Changing Nature," had the dinosaurs in the process of going extinct due to environmental catastrophe brought about by the actions of the [[FunWithAcronyms WESAYSO]] Corporation. A [[DownerEnding very bleak ending]] to a generally light-hearted show.
* ''{{Mortal Kombat}}: Konquest''. Reportedly, there was supposed to be a second season, which either undid some of the deaths, or continued with a new crew, but the series was canceled, and thus finished with a DownerEnding.
* ''ColdCase'' dealt with a mall shooting where the perps killed and maimed more than 15 people before offing themselves. After further investigation, it's learned that one of the survivors helped motivate them into the shooting, thinking they'd just take out the jerks who tried to rape her earlier that day, only to have this revenge plan backfire when she realized they were unstable enough to go after people at random. The survivor eventually tried to off herself, as well, thus fulfilling the trope in spades.
* ''{{The Young Ones}}'' ends with the four main characters dying in a bus crash. Granted, they died just about every episode, but we're to assume this one sticks.
** Also, Vyvyan's hampster and their landlord both died in the same episode, under different circumstances. (Although the landlord was eaten by lions in the previous season, oddly enough.)
* British soap opera ''DreamTeam'' took this to insane lengths: ''37'' deaths of (mostly) main characters over its run, which considering the show is set at a relatively normal soccer (football) team is quite some achievement.
**These deaths range from freak coach explosions to chewing gum.
* ''SixFeetUnder'' features a doozy of an finale, as the audience finds out [[spoiler:how every main character died: Ruth, David and Federico die of natural causes, Keith is shot to death as he exits a security van, Brenda is literally 'talked' to death by her brother, and Claire dies at the age of 102.]]
* ''{{V}}: The Series'' had numerous secondary characters being killed off during the series, including resistance fighters who had been present since the original miniseries (not to mention other long-term characters simply leaving, never to be seen again). At the end, the viewer is left to infer that resistance member Robin's child, Elizabeth (a.k.a. "The Star Child") and her boyfriend were killed when they boarded a transport with a hidden bomb on it.
* DoctorWho: ''The Caves of Androzani'' where all but two characters die - Peri and the villain's secretary. Even the Doctor dies, well, [[TheNthDoctor kind of]].
** In ''Horror at Fang Rock'', the entire guest cast dies. The Doctor and Leela sail off, leaving a lighthouse full of corpses behind them.
** Killing ridiculous numbers of people is standard fare for ''DoctorWho'', but it is almost guaranteed every time the Daleks make an appearance, with ''Genesis of the Daleks'', ''Resurrection of the Daleks'', and ''The Dalek's Master Plan'' (among others) all ending with obscenely high body counts of both major and secondary characters. They aren't [[ThoseWackyNazis Space Nazis]] for nothing.
**Not to mention ''Logopolis'' in which [[spoiler:approximately a tenth of the ''universe'' gets destroyed. ''By accident.'']]
** And then there's the Fifth Doctor adventure ''Warriors of the Deep,'' where almost everyone and their dog (except the Doctor and his two companions) bite it in particularly painful ways. Or ''Castrovalva,'' where seemingly everyone (except, again, the Doctor and his three compansions) die. Hell, the Fifth Doctor had a lot of these, didn't he?
*** This was actually pointed out in ''Resurrection of the Daleks'' and given as the reason for one of his companions leaving him.
*** Of course in ''Castrovalva'' the characters who die are [[spoiler: sentient illusions created by the Master.]] It still is kind of poignant.
***We had tyo wait until the {{Revival}} for one EverybodyLives. Even then it is just one episode in almost forty years.
**** [[DidNotDoTheResearch Except for 'Fury from the Deep' in 1968 and 'The Androids of Tara' in 1978.]]
* The short-lived NBC show ''TheOthers'' ended with all but one character ([[spoiler:Albert]]) biting it.
* The final episodes of the Canadian TV series ''Butch Patterson: Private Dick'' ended with five of the seven main characters being killed off one by one, the sixth going to jail for their murders, with only the title character being the last man standing.
*''ForeverKnight''. Oh, ''ForeverKnight''. Virtually everyone on the show was killed off over the course of the third season, culminating in the hero killing his beloved and then asking his sire to stake him.
* In the five-episode zombie series ''{{Dead Set}}'', [[spoiler:absolutely every character, and, indeed, most - if not all - of Britain, is either dead or undead by the final episode]].
* ''{{Angel}}''. In the final episode, [[spoiler: Wesley and Lindsey are both killed in the final battle, and Eve refuses to leave the collapsing building, and may or might die. Doyle, Cordelia and Fred have all died previously. Connor escapes, as does Lorne. The last thing we see is Angel, Spike, Ilyria and a mortally wounded Gunn facing off impossible odds. Although JossWhedon later wrote comics in which most characters survive (sort of, but in the process the entire city of Los Angeles was literally sent to Hell), this was the end for a lot of the TV audience.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* See RocksFallEveryoneDies.
* ''{{Warhammer 40000}}''. KillEmAll doesn't ''begin'' to describe it.
** Rape and torture them all to death, and then capture all their souls and rape and torture them for all eternity might go a little ways towards describing it.
* Most games of NuclearWar end this way.
* WerewolfTheApocalypse promised this end from the word go, and to its credit, most of the end-game scenarios defaulted to it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theater]]
* An anonymous quote summarizes the work of {{Shakespeare}} as "Shakespeare's tragedies: They all die. Shakespeare's comedies: Half of them die, and the other half crossdress." It's a fairly accurate summation.
** Not that accurate; this troper checked, and the only two Comedies involving death are ''Love's Labour's Lost'' (where the dead character never appeared to begin with) and ''Troilus and Cressida'' (which is just as likely to be described as a Tragedy, Romance, or Problem Play as a Comedy).
*** Well. there's also ''A Winters Tale'', which features the deaths of Mamillius and Antigonus (as a result of the hero's actions, no less). Though again, it's more a problem play than a true comedy. And there's those people who presumably died in the shipwreck at the beginning of ''TwelfthNight'', though that's offstage and more implied than stated bluntly.
** Case in point: ''TitusAndronicus'', where the only two major characters left alive when the play ends are Lucius, Marcus and CardCarryingVillain Aaron. And Aaron's being taken off to his execution.
** Another one: ''{{Hamlet}}''. Everyone dies except Horatio and Fortinbras.
** Not so much with the cross-dressing, but ''{{Macbeth}}'' serves as another strong example of the trope.
** "RomeoAndJuliet", anyone? It's almost a trope in itself for a character [[AnalogyBackfire not to realize this]] and say something like: "Oh, what a beautiful, heartwarming love story, just like Romeo and Juliet!"
** ''King Lear''. Only Kent, Edgar, and Albany are left at the play's end, and of the two, only Kent and Edgar really count as main characters. Oh, and it's implied Kent will die shortly anyway.
* ''Götterdämmerung'', the final play in RichardWagner's operatic cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', culminates with Siegfried's death prompting Brünnhilde to make a HeroicSacrifice that burns down Valhalla with all the gods inside.
* Wagner started on the path of Everyone Dies early. His boyhood tragedy ''Leubald'' featured 24 deaths and by the last act he was having to bring characters back as ghosts.
* In ''SweeneyTodd'', All but Toby, Anthony, and Johanna wind up dead. The original Broadway musical and [[WordOfGod Stephen Sondheim himself]] indicate that [[spoiler: Anthony and Johanna do, in fact, survive, having burst onto the scene with the constable in tow (Sondheim has said that they are the only two characters to have a "happy" ending, relatively speaking). Toby, however, has gone completely and incurably insane.]]
* Explicitly referred to in the ''Toxic Avenger'' musical, in which the titular monster considers doing this in the appropriately named song, "Everybody Dies." Averted when he changes his mind after one murder.
* '' 'Tis Pity She's a Whore'' ends with most of the main characters dead. It wasn't just Shakespeare who loved to kill off characters during that era.
* Greek tragedies often killed off all or nearly all the main characters, leaving only one or two minor characters to carry on. Example: Antigone. Other times it was EverybodysDeadDave.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''{{Drakengard}}'s'' fourth ending does this to all the main characters. Hell, even all the ''supporting'' characters are gone.
* ''OdinSphere'' has a bad ending in which the [[spoiler:Ragnarok is carried out]] (okay, to be fair, it's carried out in the good ending, too, but what makes it different is that, in the bad ending, [[spoiler:''everyone'' dies. As in [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the world ends]]]]).
* ''CallOfDuty 4'' has [[spoiler: one of the main characters as well as his entire squad, a pilot he just rescued, and countless other Marines, dying in a nuclear explosion. On the SAS side, the player is forced to watch as his entire squad is slowly killed off]] before being able to kill the BigBad once and for all.
** And even then, depending on your interpretation of the final scene, [[spoiler: Soap may have died of his injuries as the Russians were airlifting him to safety.]]
** Apparently, according to the upcoming sequel [[spoiler: he lived]]
** The American campaign is a complete ShootTheShaggyDog.
* ''[[PlanescapeTorment Planescape: Torment]]'' ends with [[spoiler:the entire party dead and one's character sent to eternal punishment in the lower planes or erased from existence entirely. It's possible to save everyone but the main character, who goes to his eternal punishment if you do so. And that's the ''good'' ending. Though it is implied that he kicks ass in the afterlife, as well.]]
* ''{{Unreal}} II: The Awakening'' ends with a massive [[DroppedABridgeOnHim Bridge Drop]] on the whole squad except the main characters. While there was a vibe of TheWarHasJustBegun, the sequel hook was surprisingly vague and no actual sequel materialized. DownerEnding all around.
* The Base Defense missions in the middle-late portions of ''{{Marathon}} II: Durandal'' have the player scouring a friendly base from evil clones of the friendlies. How to tell them apart (except that clones explode when approached)? Well, the first such mission is called ''God Will Sort the Dead''. Yes, it's a very viable strategy, and on the Xbox 360 port, it's actually necessary for OneHundredPercentCompletion.
**[[http://marathon.bungie.org/story/maptext.html The levels in the Marathon games frequently included interesting messages if you viewed them using a map editor.]] The text for ''God Will Sort The Dead''? "Q: How do you tell the difference between the good Bobs and the bad ones? A: Good Bobs?" The first game had it's own share, namely Bob-B-Q's "BOB-JAM? APPLY GRENADES LIBERALLY!!", and yes, you were supposed to save the Bobs on that level, too...
* ''NeverwinterNights2'': RocksFallEveryoneDies.
** [[spoiler: Not quite, according to the ExpansionPack ''Mask Of The Betrayer''. Apart from the player character, Amon Jerro survives, chasing the gargoyles who kidnapped the PC into the shadow plane only to somehow ends up in the Soulless Ward of the Academy of Binders. Retrieving his soul and talking to him reveals that Kelgar, Sand, and Neeshka may have also escaped the collapse. Khelgar survived by being badass, Neeshka dodged most of the debris and outran everyone, while Sand transformed into an iron golem. One ending comfirms the first two survivors, another confirms Neeshka and Kelgar (they both attend your wedding). Another expansion pack (Storm Of Zehir) implies that Casavir made it out alive (contrairy to what Amon Jerro saw), though grievously injured. He was captured an imprisoned by Luskans. Qara, Bishop, Elanee & Grobnar are the only four confirmed to be dead.]]
*** [[spoiler:Still, not quite. Other than the confirmed survive: Ammon, Khelgar, and Casavir, and the confirmed dead: Bishop, Qara, the Construct, and Grobnar, [[strike:other characters are probably]] Elanee is determined by the actions of your character in the OC, so it might be different for each player, ''but'', even if Qara remains loyal at the end Ammon confirms her head was split open by a falling piece of debris.]]
* The [[MultipleEndings bad ending]] of ''{{Persona 3}}'' has this happen to SEES, [[spoiler: as well as about [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt six billion-plus]] extras]].
* The [[MultipleEndings appropriately named Armageddon Ending]] in ''LiveALive''. The worst part is that [[spoiler: ''You're playing as the bosses, it's you who gives out the command and to gain access to the ending, you must let the heroes beat you within an inch of your life, so you must deliberately search for the ending.'']] [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt You sick filthy bastard]].
* In ''SoulNomadAndTheWorldEaters'', [[spoiler:the 'bad ending of the Demon Path leads to the killing of most of the cast on-screen, followed by [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum Revya destroying both worlds and killing everybody else, him/herself included]].]]
** Also [[spoiler:the [[SecretCharacter Asagi]] Route; in a divergence from her normal characterization, Asagi spitefully destroys the world, forcing you to start a NewGamePlus with her on the team.]]
* In ''FarCry 2'', [[spoiler: every named character (except for one) is dead, including all of your buddies and the player character. In fact, you kill them all yourself, other than the Jackal - who was the one you were sent to Africa to kill in the first place...]]
* Same thing happens in the original ''Far Cry''.
* The final mission of ''{{Freespace}} 2'' [[spoiler:unexpectedly ends with the local star going supernova, and both the player's character and his entire squadron are incinerated. If you replay the final mission forewarned and position yourself near the jump point and can escape before the star explodes, you survive but your team-mates' heroic sacrifice is mentioned in the final cut-scene, implying that it's a bit disappointing you didn't join them.]]
* Most of the lead and supporting cast of the ''MaxPayne'' games is dead by the end of the second game, with only Max himself and one of the minor secondary characters surviving, [[spoiler:unless you beat the game on the hardest difficulty, in which case Mona Sax also survives]].
* A humongous number of named characters are dead by the end of ''StarCraft: Brood War'', with only four characters of note from the first game surviving [[spoiler:(Kerrigan, Jim Raynor, Zeratul and Arcturus Mengsk)]].
* ''{{FEAR}}: Extraction Point", the [[CanonDisContinuity non-canon]] MissionPackSequel to ''{{FEAR}}'', ends with all the protagonist's teammates dead, the protagonist himself on the verge of death, having failed to defeat the BigBad, and TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt looming.
** The actual canon continuation, ''FEAR 2'', isn't much better... [[spoiler:Every ally that protagonist Michael Beckett comes into contact with except one dies throughout the course of the game, and Beckett himself is ''raped'' by the BigBad at the very end, his fate after that left hanging]].
* DeadSpace has you see everyone die, [[spoiler:and depending on how you see the ending, Isaac as well]].
** WordOfGod confirms that [[spoiler:Isaac is still alive. For now...]]
* ''ShinMegamiTenseiI''. Starts off an ordinary day in a modern Japanese town setting. By the end, it's just [[spoiler:you, the Heroine and the Old Man left alive in the entire world]], more or less.
* ''PhantomDust''. Turns out [[spoiler:it's the year 12010, and the human race has completely died due to an unspecified event. One man, Edgar, survived as he was in space at the time. (An accident involving a black hole caused him to skip ten thousand years.) On his return, he realised he was alone. In his loneliness, he found he had the ability to forge 'creations' from the dust that covered the surface of the Earth, and created a whole city of ordinary people to talk with. Edgar's final act before dying was to create a copy of himself, and charged it with the task restoring the world by removing the dust. The Edgar duplicate was a demented psychopath and decided to destroy the world instead. In the endgame, the protagonist lets the duplicate of Edgar's girlfriend talk herself into disappearing, defeats Edgar's duplicate (who then turns to dust), and ultimately dispels the Phantom Dust. This fixes the world, but causes ''every single person in the entire game'' to cease to exist (as they were 'dust creations'). The game's final shot is of a trail of footprints in sand leading away from Edgar's ship, where it's implied that the protagonist, being a 'dust creation' and fulfilling his friend's dying request, had ceased to exist. Everybody is dead.]]
** This troper thinks the ending is more open to interpretation than that. There's no real evidence that the protagonist really [[spoiler: dispelled the dust, or even has the power to do so, and an alternate explanation is that he fulfilled the role the falesly Edgar was supposed to by restoring the world. While the above explanation is certainly feasible, there's no concrete evidence of it occurring. All we know is that the main character sent Edgar's ship into orbit, that the world has regained its original beauty, and that he took a stroll in the desert. Moreover, it is directly stated in game that the protagonist is specially made, and could continue existing even when finding out the truth of his origins. Even if the Dust were dispelled, it isn't a stretch to assume that he and one or two of the other characters who gained true autonomy could exist without its presence. Not to mention that the underground city the characters live in is clean of the dust, so it's not like being away from it is hazardous to their existence.]]
* In the bad ending of ''BreathOfFire IV'', the final boss fight is against your former party members, ending with them all dead, as it's impossible to lose. It's then implied that your character goes on to end humanity as the credits roll over a black background.
* In Final Fantasy X-2, losing, or taking too long, against the final boss Vegnagun will result in it [[NonstandardGameOver firing, obliterating not only your party, but all of Spira]].
* ''{{DEFCON}}'''s motto is "Everybody Dies". Appropriate as [[KillEmAll everybody DOES die]] [[spoiler:as a result of a [[ColdWar nuclear war]]]].
* MortalKombat: Deception [[DroppedABridgeOnHim drops a bridge]] on most of the older characters at the beginning of the game, including Cage, Sonya, Kitana, Jax, Liu Kang, and Raiden.
** Liu Kang was actually killed in the previous game. And as for Raiden, [[spoiler: it's not like death keeps him down for long - he's unlockable anyway.]]
* Some advanced ''NetHack'' players choose to accept the "extinctionist" challenge, a special form of play where you have to drive every single monster to extinction. This can be accomplished by casting an appropriate spell on the monster you want to wipe out, or killing 160 of it. NetHack being [[NintendoHard how it is]], most of those players' characters end up dying anyhow.
* ''FallOut 3''. At least the way I did it.
* WordOfGod confirms that ''MassEffect 2'' will have at least one ending where the entire cast dies, including Shepard.
**Bioware was ''stopped'' from doing this for [[KnightsoftheOldRepublic KOTOR]]. A female-only ending had Carth making a [[HeroicSacrifice last-ditch effort to plead with the PC]] if she chose the Dark Side. The player could accept his offer to [[spoiler: turn on Bastila and allow the Republic to destroy the Starforge]], [[TogetherinDeath dying with him to save the Republic]].
* In ''FateStayNight's'' [[spoiler:Heaven's Feel]] route, [[spoiler:almost the entire supporting cast, and Saber, the LoveInterest]] from the other routes die, and in [[spoiler:one ending]] even [[spoiler:''Shiro'', the ''protagonist'', dies.]]
** The prequel ''FateZero'' is even worse. The protaganist Kiritsugu is [[YourDaysAreNumbered diseased]], and everyone else except for [[BigBad Kotomine]] and another main character dies.
** [[spoiler:In both cases, the Heroic Spirits can't really "die" because they're already dead; they could be (and in Saber's case, are) summoned again in a future Grail War. Since when they're not being summoned they exist outside of time.]]
* A traditional end to your fort in ''DwarfFortress'' is when goblins/orcs/megabeasts/kobolds/zombie-carp massacre pretty much everyone in the fortress.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In ''NobodyScores'', the main characters have a low chance of surviving any [[NegativeContinuity single]] comic. As the author puts it, each scenario is a "more or less intricate machin[e], the end result of which is always failure".
* ''CollegeRoomiesFromHell'' seems to be heading in this direction - with [[spoiler: Mike murdered by April and Marsha gunned down by Mike's mother to keep her from killing April... before she could]].
** They all [[IGotBetter got better.]] For a given value of "better", of course; this being CRFH!!!.
* WordOfGod is that ''UglyHill'' was originally going to end with one of these, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
* Not the end of the world, but LastDaysOfFoxhound has its [[MetalGearSolid reasons]] to kill of most of the main cast.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Pretty much the entire premise of ''SurvivalOfTheFittest'' (although it's something of a given, considering it is based off ''BattleRoyale'') By the end of the game, only one student it going to be left alive, something which entails the death of over 100 named characters to get to that point.
* The {{Pokegirls}} were created by [[MadScientist Sukebe]] and given one simple task: KillEmAll. They eventually fail, narrowly, but humanity is so depopulated that even three hundred years later, which is where the 'modern era' is set at, a wide-scale relapse of {{Pokegirls}} into madness would finish the job.
** Considering what society has degraded into in the meantime, there are those who would consider such an improvement.
* This is pretty much the premise of {{Happy Tree Friends}} usually only one character survives an episode.
* MadnessCombat. [[IGotBetter They usually get better, though.]]
* Played for laughs in one of the [[MultipleEndings alternate endings]] of the original ''RedVsBlue'' series. [[FamousLastWords "Son of a bitch!"]]
* In ''TheDementedCartoonMovie'', the ending credits point out that only one character survived the movie. Everyone else died in explosions, head explosions, car accidents, explosions, crushing, and explosions.
** Then again, [[{{Fridge Logic}} technically even that character died off-screen when the Earth blew up. Multiple times.]]
*** It's speculated to be one of the Blah Guys on Mars...but Mars fell into the sun a couple of times anyway.
[[/folder]]
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