Everybody Dies Ending / Video Games

Everybody Dies Endings in Video Games.

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• A Day In The Life Of A Slice Of Bread: In one ending, the bread cries so much, that he flooded earth with his tears, and everyone drowned.
• The ending of Agarest Senki implies that everyone except the party members is going to die. And guess what? This is not the bad ending or the normal ending. This is the TRUE ENDING. Justified because the gods have supported the world and since you just kicked their asses, the world now belongs to the mortals but first, the ones who live on the continents have to die.
• The True Ending in Akai Katana has all six heroes destroying the Blood Katana at the cost of their lives.
• Staying true to the movie franchise it's based on, Alien: Isolation kills off all characters except for Amanda herself. There are only two characters in the whole game whose fates are uncertain, but they most likely didn't survive either.
• Alundra is the epitome of this trope. Its story revolves around villagers being killed through their dreams, and the titular dream walker Alundra trying to save them. However, he fails to save most of them, and by the end of the game, most of the cast has been killed off, including, depressingly, every single person who Alundra had rescued from a nightmare earlier in the game.
• ANNO: Mutationem: In the Last-Second Ending Choice, if Ann refuses to trust The Consortium, this prompts Ryan to recklessly assault the security forces in front of him, resulting in him getting shot and killed. This immediately sends Ann into a Heroic BSoD that gives Amok the opportunity to fully possess her body, who then proceeds to unleash Mechanical Abominations upon the entire world, destroying everything and everyone, leaving absolute destruction.
• By the end of Asura's Wrath, only Mithra lived to tell the tale. Literally, as she is the one whose voice you hear in the next episode previews.
• Baldur's Gate III added a new Downer Ending with Patch 5: if the Dark Urge doesn't reject Bhaal and makes the wrong Last-Second Ending Choice, they become possessed by him and reduced to a twitching, convulsing mess that can only think of murder. They then proceed to kill their former True Companions in their sleep during the epilogue party.
• In the bad ending of Breath of Fire 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 the Yorae Dragon (Ryu and Fou-Lu reunited, with the latter in control of the fusion) goes on to end humanity as the credits roll over a black background.
• Given the tone through Boktai 2 and 3, this is what happens if you fail to finish off Jormungandr and Vanargand: They fail to stop the Eternal, it screeches, the screen smashes to black, and it is released to erase all life on Earth, Immortal or Mortal, no one is safe.
• Call of Duty:
  • In Call of Duty: Black Ops III, almost every single named character (even the nameless Player) is dead by the end of the campaign.
  • In Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, nearly every character is dead by the end of the game; the only Retribution survivors are Salter, Brooks, "Boats", and Kloos. Additionally, a large majority of the armed forces of both the SDF and the UNSA have been destroyed; the latter, at this point, has literally no navy.
  • Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has 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 Big Bad once and for all.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, only three characters in the main storyline survive. The same three that survived the first game. In the Washington side plot, everyone with a name seems to survive.
  • In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Soap dies near the end of the game, and Yuri buys some time so that Price could kill Makarov. Price survives, along with Nikolai.
• In Calm Time, the conclusion to the game ends with almost everybody except the main character dead. The main character was the one who killed everyone else.
• The two "worse" endings in Cave Story:
  • In the "bad" ending, the only survivors are Quote and Kazuma.
  • The "good" ending adds to this list Sue, Sakamoto, and Itoh.
  • The "best" ending, however, is not an example of this trope; as you have killed Ballos and prevented his powers from running rampant, preventing the freefall of the island to the planet's surface, which would otherwise kill everyone on the island, you also save Jenka, Balrog, Misery and a bunch of Mimigas. Everyone who wasn't already dead by the point you fought the Undead Core.
• Downplayed in The Classroom Trilogy. Although nobody actually succeeds in passing all the tests, many students are eliminated in non-lethal ways — fighting or being caught cheating and removed from the classroom, or implicitly disqualified from continuing offscreen. However, all of the main cast (appears to) die(s) — the geek is blown up by the grenade attack on day 9, the teacher is shot by the third student on day 10, and the protagonist is Driven to Suicide by this. Several other students also (appear to) die, including the initial suicide victim, who throws themselves out of the window, as well as the victims of the grenade attack, the only other student besides yourself to attend on the day of the shooting, and the shooter. The vague nature of the game makes it possible to hypothesize that none of the apparent "casualties" died, merely were grievously wounded and recovered. At least the protagonist survives this way until the sequels.
• In Code 7, this is the objective of Big Bad S.O.L.I. Considering that everyone but Sam and Alex well, actually only Sam is dead, he's quite good at it as well.
• Cognitive Dissonance: In the Bad Ending, the heroes all die trying to distract Gigyas from Zarbol traveling through time. Zarbol then promptly dies as per canon.
• Dawn of War 2: Retribution has this occur in the Tyranids' ending: the resurgent Hive Fleet drives off the Inquisition, then proceeds to devour the subsector, killing 94% of all Guardsmen stationed there, and every last loyalist Blood Raven...to say nothing of the billions of civilians in the subsector. The last shot in the ending is bugged as far as the eye can see.
  • The Chaos ending is similar, with the entire sub-sector subjected to Exterminatus.
  • The original Dawn of War isn't much better, with the majority of the planet's population either slaughtered or corrupted, the planet itself about to be eaten by a Negative Space Wedgie, and all but three characters dead.
  • The Ork ending of Winter Assault has every character except Gorgutz and his unnamed Yes-Man dead.
  • The Necron endings of both Dark Crusade and Soulstorm have the omnicidal Killer Robots do what they do best.
• Dead Space has you see everyone die, except Isaac, who goes on to the sequel Dead Space 2.
  • So does the animated film Dead Space: Downfall, in no uncertain terms.
  • Dead Space 2 repeats the pattern. Everyone except Isaac and Ellie ends up dead or turned into a Necromorph.
  • And then finally the ending of Dead Space 3 where Isaac and Carver make their Heroic Sacrifice as Ellie escapes...until the post-credits Stinger.
    • And then there's the DLC epilogue, where the Brethren Moons have awakened and already devoured all life on Earth.
• Tecmo's Deception series (and its PS2 sequel Trapt) winds up with almost every single character dead by the end of each game, that's any mook you see, any minor or major character along with the main character too, none of them are safe.
• DEFCON's motto is "Everybody Dies". Appropriate as everybody DOES die as a result of a nuclear war. Casualties are literally just a means of keeping score.
• In Detroit: Become Human, it's possible for the story to end with Connor decommissioned and the other two protagonists and supporting cast dead. Pulling this off before the chapter "Crossroads" will unlock a unique ending where the android uprising ends prematurely, Hank is Driven to Suicide, and Elijah Kamski is reinstated as CyberLife's CEO.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution can end up this way depending on your actions, with only Frank Pritchard, Megan Reed, the Tongs, and Bob Page as the certain survivors (with all but Pritchard being Doomed by Canon). Of the key characters who die, Zeke Sanders, Isaius Sandoval, and Faridah Malik can all die if Jensen doesn't intervene. Bill Taggart, Hugh Darrow, David Sarif, and protagonist Adam Jensen also die should the player choose the "Cover Up" ending and destroy Panchaea along with most of the protagonists/antagonists. Since Jensen returns as the main character in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the "Cover Up" ending is the canon one. As it’s revealed that Adam was rescued and recovered...somehow.
• Not only does everyone die in Digital Devil Saga, but the final dungeon is also itself the afterlife (which is deep within the Sun!). Amazingly, you can still wrangle a good ending out of this.
• Dishonored can end in this fashion, if the player goes for the highest amount of Chaos. Over the course of the game, it's possible to not only assassinate your intended targets, but wipe out entire districts full of guards and civilians, coupled with the later stages outright allowing player character Corvo to kill characters who have nominal plot armor, such as Piero, Sokolov and Emily, the Empress you're trying to rescue. As such, it's possible to end the game in such a sorry state that the ending slides are devoid of several characters, the Outsider is practically giddy that Dunwill has torn itself to pieces, and Corvo himself flees the city on the first boat he can find.
• Doom:
  • Doom: By the end of the first episode every single living character, no matter how minor, is confirmed dead. That's every single one of the scientists your crew was sent to check up on, every single one of your teammates no matter what station and the protagonist himself is killed in the episode finale to boot.
  • This is once again the case for Doom (2016), as the Doom Slayer does his work in killing every demon he sees. The body count ends with Mission Control VEGA performing a Heroic Sacrifice, and Big Bad Olivia Pierce turning into the Spider Mastermind and dying in battle. By the end of the game, only you and Samuel Hayden are left.
  • Doom Eternal plays with this, in that Earth survives the demonic invasion, but the game closes off the overarching story of Argent and the Maykrs this way: the Khan Maykr and all three Hell Priests are killed, potentially dooming Urdak due to the pact between them and Hell being broken; the Doom Slayer kills the Icon of Sin stopping the invasion and causing all surviving demons to flee, and the long-extinct Aggadon Hunters turned Doom Hunters are extinct again. Once again are the Slayer, Hayden and probably VEGA are left in terms of the most primary characters. Then, in the DLC, all of these characters are slain as well, along with the Lord of Darkness. In the end, every named character is confirmed dead, with the possible exception of Doomguy himself, who might be merely unconscious and powerless in the middle of the capitol of Hell.
• This is more or less the goal of the Dragon Age: Origins expansion pack The Darkspawn Chronicles. In an alternate universe where the Warden dies during the Joining ritual, the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits who accompany him/her in the main game must prevent The End of the World as We Know It without his/her leadership. But in this expansion, you play the game as one of the darkspawn — and killing all of these heroic characters is your objective.
• Drakengard's 4th ending does this to all the main characters. Even all the supporting characters are gone.
  • Drakengard 3 has four endings, and at most one named character survives in any of the four. In the final ending, even the narrator Accord is slain, leaving only Mikael alive.
• The inevitable end to your fort in Dwarf Fortress is when goblins/orcs/megabeasts/kobolds/zombie-carp/you massacre everyone in the fortress.
  • Although now it is possible to "retire" your fort. Losing control of it and giving it to the AI until you would like to "unretire" it. Although the fortress has to be able to sustain itself without your help to live for very long.
• Lu Bu's ending in Dynasty Warriors 6 can count. In the final stage, an alliance has been formed against Lu Bu and his men. This alliance has many warlords including Liu Bei, Yuan Shao, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, Zhang Jiao, and Dong Zhuo. Even the likes of Liu Yao, Liu Zhang, Yuan Shu, Liu Biao, Zhang Lu, and Kong Rong get involved. When their first attack plan doesn't work, they all attempt to attack Lu Bu together. No points for guessing how it turned out.
  • Being an adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it's no small surprise that when the games from 7 onward introduced a campaign for Sima Yi's conquest at the end of the Three Kingdoms era, the vast majority of the large cast are already dead by the start of it, and only a few of the survivors make it to the end.
• In The Elder Scrolls series backstory, Wulfharth Ash-King, the legendary ancient King of the Nords and noted Shezarrine who has died and come back to life at least three times, was part of two such instances in-universe:
  • According to "The Secret Song of King Wulfharth", this was the fate of nearly all of the leaders at the Battle of Red Mountain. Wulfharth blinded Alandro Sul with a Thu'um shout, but was himself struck down with "grievous wounds". Meanwhile, Nerevar, Dagoth, Dumac, and Shor who had been reunited with his Heart all killed each other but not before Nerevar was able to cut out Shor's heart once again.
  • This was the result of the fight that ensued when Zurin Arctus attempted to trap Wulfharth's soul. Wulfharth killed all of Arctus' soldiers and then killed Arctus himself with his dying breath. However, Arctus' soul-trap spell succeeded. The two were apparently left merged into one undying being known as the Underking. (A title that Wulfharth possibly went by even before this event.)
• Almost every protagonist in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is killed off. Technically there are three survivors (and Alex), as the three characters don't die on-screen, though the final character implies that even if they're still alive in the present day, they'll be hunted down for the rest of their lives.
• The second half of Everhood involves Red the puppet killing every character in the game. Considering that everyone in the setting is trapped by their immortality and Red is basically committing a large-scale Mercy Kill, this is considered a good ending.
• The way Fallout: New Vegas plays, almost no NPC's are essential (children are, as usual, always essential), and thus nearly anybody can die with few particular exceptions. The only NPC you cannot permanently kill at any point is Yes Man, as he will always reappear in Benny's suite and state he uploaded to a new Securitron. The only other real exception is the DLC "Dead Money" where you cannot kill the other NPCs until the very end of the DLC due to plot reasons, and the same for Old World Blues where you cannot kill the NPCs until the end. Beyond that, it is open season on every other NPC you normally come across and can murder the whole Mojave if you're so inclined to do so. This can make the game incredibly difficult as you lock yourself out of XP dumps from quests, and you will lose every vendor in the game if you end up killing them all.
• This is the good option in the Fallout 4 Nuka-World DLC: the Open Season quest is to kill all three Raider groups who are living there instead of working with them. Of course, you can always wait to do so until after you've got all the equipment and perks from completing the evil stuff. Can also be done in Far Harbor if you feel like being a jerk. There's even a unique perk for doing so.
• This is the fate of Appalachia in Fallout 76: the Scorched Plague has left the entire region completely depopulated of human life. All that remains are the Scorched, feral ghouls, super mutants, and the bodies of their victims. By the time you emerge from Vault 76, you and your fellow vault dwellers are the only living humans remaining.
• In Far Cry 2, 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...
  • The Same thing happens in the original Far Cry.
• Final Fantasy:
  • According to Tetsuya Nomura, at one point in development in Final Fantasy VII, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Kazushige Nojima both wanted to kill off every character in the party apart from Cloud and the two other party members the player brings with them. According to them, they were getting pretty excited until Nomura managed to talk them out of it, saying it would rob Aerth' death of its impact. While not confirmed, Cait Sith would have likely survived if this idea happened since Reeve would have been in Midgar and could have made a new Cait Sith like what happened in the Temple of the Ancients.
  • Final Fantasy XV also featured a lot of the main cast killed off. First off King Regis is killed during the invasion of Insomnia, a lot of Niflheim's generals including Loqi, Caligo, and Iedolas are also killed in the boss battles. Lunafreya gets murdered by Ardyn, which causes the starscourge and turns a lot of innocent people into daemons, and he kills her brother Ravus soon after. Noctis sacrifices himself to permanently destroy Ardyn in the spiritual world after defeating and killing him in the physical one. The fates of Ignis, Gladiolus, and Prompto are left ambiguous as they are last seen about to fight a bunch of Iron Giants while Noctis performs his sacrifice but Word of God has confirmed they did survive to rebuild the world in his absence. Cid and his granddaughter Cindy were revealed to have lived as was Gladiolus' sister Iris. Talcott was also confirmed to be still alive at the end of the game as was Aranea Highwind.
  • Depending upon your interpretation of the ending of Final Fantasy Tactics, it might be just this. Every villain is killed, possibly all of House Beoulve the entire playable cast might have been blown away by the Final Boss's death explosion in the Airship Graveyard, and as for Delita and Ovelia, they have a frank discussion of their mutual differences using knives. Every non-playable character you meet is murdered somehow. By the end the last surviving characters are the ones at Ramza's funeral — and one of them is said to have been executed by the Church in the frame story. Valmafra, Mustafo's dad, and ironically Aerith is the only confirmed survivors. Orran also survived long to have produced at least one son but is mentioned in the epilogue to have been executed.
  • At the end of Final Fantasy Type-0, everyone from Class Zero except Machina and Rem (and she died once) dies from the final battle and the epilogue says that Machina dies with a smile after 50 years of bliss with Rem. The New Game Plus ending gave them all a much happier ending, but you still have to see them die. And even then, this is a "what if" ending so, canonically, Class Zero is all dead.
  • In Final Fantasy X-2, losing, or taking too long, against the final boss Vegnagun will result in it firing, obliterating not only your party but all of Spira.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2 is just heartwrenching. Despite all the multiple endings, only one of them is actually canon, and it's the worst ending possible. In the true ending, Serah dies, then EVERYONE DIES (except for Noel, maybe). And then it's revealed that Lightning has been Taken for Granite. The end.
  • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII clears up some of the confusion though. While it is revealed that not everyone died, a good chunk of the population was eradicated during the Time Crash. And the trailers for Lightning Returns show that Lightning, Noel, Hope, Fang, and even Snow are alive and well, along with some form of civilization.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, after fighting his way to the capital to clear his family name and defeat the real villains, Sigurd, and his army is betrayed and killed by Arvis. Just before killing Sigurd, Arvis even shows off his new wife Deirdre who used to be Sigurd's wife before being kidnapped and brainwashed. The second half of the game picks up after a Time Skip, with Sigurd and the rest of the army's children having to pick up the pieces.
  • Fire Emblem Engage: This is the main idea behind the "Fell Xenolouge" DLC. It takes place in an Alternate Timeline where Sombron has won, and uses it to kill everyone (with the exception of Mauvier, but even then, he still dies later) who was playable in the base game, even Alear. Even the royals, who seem to be alive after all, are actually Corrupted. That is why the story mainly focuses on some of the very few who have survived, and how they are navigating through this post-apocalyptic world.
• First Encounter Assault Recon: Extraction Point, the non-canon Mission-Pack Sequel to FEAR, ends with all the protagonist's teammates dead, the protagonist himself on the verge of death, having failed to defeat the Big Bad, and The End of the World as We Know It looming. The actual canon continuation, FEAR 2, isn't much better...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 Big Bad at the very end, his fate after that left hanging.
• The final mission of FreeSpace 2 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.
• Ghost Recon: Future Soldier kills off the first player character and his squadmates in the prologue.
• Surprisingly, God of War features this type of ending, with every member of the main cast dying by the end by the end of the third game except Kratos, who has a Disney Death that he survives.
• The prequel game Halo: Reach is named after and takes place on the planet Reach, which in the Halo Expanded Universe has always been described as the humans' greatest and most devastating defeat, so terrible that it's not even called "the Battle of Reach" but usually just called "the Fall of Reach". The fact that virtually every survivor of the battle had already been long accounted for in canon, with you and your team not being among them, makes it clear from the very start how the game will end. However, later media confirmed that one member of the team, Jun, did survive.
• This is essentially the entire goal of Hatred. The unnamed main character, his hatred for humanity has reached its boiling point, arms himself with as many weapons as he can get his hands on and goes on a rampage, killing everyone and anyone in his path.
• It's quite possible to end Heavy Rain with all of the four protagonists (and quite a few extras) dead.
• Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number sees a number of its characters die at the end of their stories, not to mention those killed in the original game (Wrong Number is both a sequel and prequel). Even those who survive their own storylines die in a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union. The only possible survivor is Biker, as we never see him die, but even then, it's a pretty big stretch to say that he's alive.
• In htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, there are only four characters — the main character Mion, her mother, her father, and her dog. Mion is killed while she is sleeping and her parents try to bring her back by creating clones of her. Things return to normal, but the spirit of the original Mion is angry to find herself replaced and kills the entire family. The spirits of her parents become the fireflies Lumen and Umbra who lead a cloned Mion through dangerous ruins. Eventually, in the true ending, they encounter the original Mion's spirit who kills the clone Mion and possesses her body which brings her back to life. However, the clone Mion's spirit becomes enraged at having been abandoned for the original Mion and kills Lumen and Umbra, destroying her parents for good, and causes the original Mion to be unable to use her body. After the clone and original reconcile, the two bask in the sunlight before their spirits disappear.
• Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 has the Conquest ending, in which Nepgear literally kills off every single one of the CPUs and Gamindustri itself will soon crumble.
• Infinite Space has quite possibly the biggest body count in any video game ever. By the end, billions of people and entire planets are dead.
• Inscryption ends with P03 murdered in front of you and the game itself being deleted, all of the characters you met along the way dying without a goodbye as all the remaining three Scrybes use their final moments to play one last game with you. As if that wasn't overkill, even the player of the game, Luke Carder, is then murdered shortly after.
• Lakeview Valley: In the default ending, the Lake Day festival is crashed by Morgo, who proceeds to slaughter everyone in the entire town except for the protagonist. You can also achieve this yourself by murdering everyone (except the Nigh-Invulnerable Sheriff) before Lake Day, which results in the Sheriff giving you a round of applause.
• LISA ends with all of the primary characters (excluding Buddy) dead. As for the background characters, there are the scattered remnants of the Joy Boys, and Widdly 2 Diddly's followers, with the other half of Olathe's fate being left unclear.
• The appropriately named Armageddon Ending in Live A Live, where Oersted/Odio nukes all of existence. The Bad Guys Win Ending also counts, despite having a far lower body count, because you still kill all the heroes, and at the end Oersted wanders around his now-empty kingdom, suggesting that he slaughtered the remaining inhabitants before the chapter begins.
  • As far as individual chapters go, the Ancient China, Present Day, Far Future, and Medieval chapters end this way, and the player has the option of invoking it in the Feudal Japan chapter. However, it’s downplayed as in each case, the hero of the chapter lives. To wit:
    • China: Halfway through, the villainous kung fu school invades yours, and kills the two students who aren’t the successor. The Master and surviving student break into the villain’s lair to avenge their deaths, and slaughter each of the Big Bad’s minions in the room. Just after the Master passes on his final technique, he dies while taking the last of the Mooks with him, and the successor kills Ou Di Wan Lee.
    • Present: Each of Masaru’s opponents is killed by Odie O'Bright, who is then killed by Masaru in self-defense. This is seven out of eight named characters.
    • Future: The only survivors of the starship are Cube himself, Kato (who is badly injured), and Darthe. Technically, OD-10 is still alive in some sense, but as all its memories were deleted and it was forcibly shut down with its murderous personality destroyed, its original self is pretty much dead too.
    • Japan: One of the paths the player can take is to kill all 100 humans in the castle, including prisoners and innocent bystanders. In this route, the only survivors are Oboro himself, and Ryoma, the man whom he rescues from the dungeon (and it’s implied that the latter will soon be assassinated anyway).
    • Medieval: After the Disc-One Final Boss, Hasshe succumbs to the plague which he had the whole time but did not affect him before now, and Streibough is then crushed by a collapsing ceiling trap. What’s left of the party returns to the castle, and, in the middle of the night, Oersted sees the Lord of Dark seated on the throne, and kills it. Only for it to turn out that the demon was an illusion, and he just killed the real king. He’s arrested, and Uranus uses the last of his power to break him out, and then dies. He is then forced to slaughter all the guards who try to apprehend him and escapes to the Archon's Roost, where he tries to set things right by killing the Lord of Dark once and for all. He makes it to the top, only to learn that Streibough faked his death, and arranged the whole thing. They fight, and Streibough dies for real this time. And when Oersted finally finds Alethea, she commits suicide because of all that happened. This triggers Oersted’s Maddening into Misanthropy, he completely snaps, and becomes Odio, the new Lord of Dark. The final chapter, which is a sequel to this one, shows everyone in Lucrece as ghosts, so Oersted/Odio killed them too. In the endings where the heroes win, he expires, leaving Lucrece empty.
• The Manhunt series, where your objective is to kill enemies to rack up points and survive. Very few story characters remain alive by the time the games are completed.
• The Base Defense missions in the middle-late portions of Marathon 2: 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 100% Completion.
  • 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 its 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...
  • At the end of the Game Mod Marathon: RED, the virus-mutated Player Character is the sole survivor.
• The True Ending for Mary Skelter 2 sees the entire Blood Team aside from Otsuu and Little Mermaid brutally killed off by the Tower Nightmare, while Chiaki had already been killed off in the backstory and the Dawn all gets killed offscreen by the Mysterious Nightmare at the start of the game. The two surviving Blood Maidens opt to reset time itself and set things back to how they should have been in the first game, effectively killing off all survivors from the second game's timeline.
  • The revised True Ending to the first game's remake makes it quite clear that Earth has been covered in Jails, meaning that while the main cast manages to survive almost nobody anywhere else did.
• Mass Effect:
  • The final battle of Mass Effect 2 is the aptly-named "Suicide Mission". Anyone Can Die, up to and including Commander Shepard him/herself if you're insufficiently prepared. Anyone except Joker, anyway. Do note that the worst case scenario for that mission isn't canon, as Shepard's death would make the events of Mass Effect 3 impossible.
  • The Refusal Ending of Mass Effect 3. Everyone from every civilization in the entire galaxy is killed by the Reapers. Also the low-EMS Destroy ending, in which the Crucible misfires and causes massive destruction on Earth and presumably throughout the galaxy. While the final cinematic in the Extended Cut shows that some people survived, every main character is implied to die except Admiral Hackett, who is shown to be in a situation where he probably won't be alive for much longer.
• Most of the lead and supporting cast of the Max Payne games are dead by the end of the second game, with only Max himself and one of the minor secondary characters surviving, unless you beat the game on the hardest difficulty, in which case Mona Sax also survives.
  • Max Payne originally kicks this off with Max Payne, Alfred Woden, Vladimir Lem, and Vinnie Gognitti being the only major characters to live to the second game (with the Gognitti barely doing so when Max leaves him bleeding to death in an alley).
  • Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne takes this to the extreme, as Woden is shot, Lem is shot and falls to his death, Gognitti is blown up, newcomer Valerie Winterson is shot by Payne, and Mona Sax even comes Back from the Dead only to die yet again. The only major characters that live to Max Payne 3 are Max himself and Jim Bravura (and Jim later dies from a heart condition in the MP3 midquel comic.) Hell, it really isn't too surprising that many fans ignore the third as only Max returns.
• Mega Man:
  • The vast computer system that controls the Precursors of Mega Man Legends. Good thing Mega Man's the only surviving entity that can override it, or else it would've actually happened. Twice.
  • Similarly, though it hasn't happened yet, the Mega Man (Classic) must end with everyone dying to kick off the events of the X Franchise.
  • The Elf Wars that took place between the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero series resulted in the deaths of 90% of all reploids on Earth and 60% of all humans. It's safe to say that every character in the X series who's not X or Zero probably died during this period, or in Copy X's purges after he took control of Neo Arcadia since none of them appear again afterward.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Deception drops a bridge on most of the older characters at the beginning of the game, including Cage, Sonya, Kitana, Jax, and Raiden. The last one doesn't stick — even while Came Back Wrong, he's unlockable anyway, but everybody else has to wait until Armageddon.
  • The climax of Mortal Kombat 9's story mode kills off a pretty sizeable chunk of the cast. By Mortal Kombat X, some of the characters are brought back, albeit as revenants (although some get better).
  • On top of that, the beginning of 9's story mode shows the aftermath of Mortal Kombat: Armageddon. Bodies. Bodies everywhere.
  • Not to one-up its predecessor, Mortal Kombat 11 ends with everyone aside from Liu Kang, a Brought Down to Normal Raiden, and if you do well enough on the Final Boss, Kitana, being Ret-Gone. The DLC expansion then summarily kills off everyone again except the player's choice of Liu Kang or Shang Tsung.
• In NetHack, some advanced 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 how it is, most of those players' characters end up dying anyhow.
• The original "good" ending for Neverwinter Nights 2: due to having a Load-Bearing Boss, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon collapses, burying the party. Mask of the Betrayer rectified the matter; over half the party survived.
• By the end of NieR, a large portion of the main cast dies with only Emil, Yonah, and either Nier or Kaine, (depending on which ending you choose) being alive at the end. However, Ending E from the Updated Re-release/Grimoire Nier ends with Nier Back from the Dead. Which makes it optimistic until you realize that, thanks to Nier's actions, all of mankind dies between this game and NieR: Automata.
• Its sequel, NieR: Automata, both plays it straight and subverts it during Route C/D which begins with the Bunker and most of the YoRHa units dying, 2B being infected by the Logic Virus and being killed by A2 (by 2B's order). Later, the virus infects Pascal's village, ending with a few slew of survivors (all of them children) who commit mass suicide, and you can kill Pascal as well if you want. Devola and Popola sacrifice their lives later to allow 9S to proceed to the final area to defeat the Terminals who are the ones behind the whole war. Ending C ends with A2 performing a Heroic Sacrifice with a stinger who implies that 9S also dies, while Ending D ends with 9S killing A2 and, depending on the player's choice, 9S dying on earth. Ending E, the pods, having gained emotions, rebuild 2B, 9S and A2, giving them a second chance at life, making it the happiest outcome in a Yoko Taro game.
  ...All of which makes it sound more optimistic than it is. The total of all survivors in the Golden Ending are the rebuilt 2B, 9S, and A2, Jackass, Anemone, the minority Resistance androids lucky enough to survive multiple assaults on their base, relatively few straggler Machine Lifeforms wandering now their network is gone, and a couple of crackheads out in the desert too stoned to notice the world ending.
• In one ending for Not for Broadcast, all of the main characters die. Jeremy Donaldson dies during his mental breakdown (either by his own hand or via Suicide by Cop), Peter Clements dies off-screen when Julia Salisbury has him assassinated after he speaks out against her using nuclear weapons on other countries, and in the finale, Alan James assassinates Julia Salisbury, shoots Colin and Jenny, then detonates a bomb vest in a Suicide Attack, killing everyone in the studio (possibly including you). The only named character that survives all this is Geoff Algebra — and judging by how depressed he is in a humiliating role on a shitty children's show, he probably wishes he was dead, too.
• The 1989 Amiga game Nuclear War had the potential to end like this. Whenever a nation is defeated, their remaining arsenal is launched in a retaliatory strike against all other remaining nations. Even if one nation remains to wipe out their last opponent, the retaliation can easily be enough to destroy them too. Cue image of Earth exploding.
• Odin Sphere ends in Ragnarok — the game's five protagonists must each fight against the five harbingers of the apocalypse. Fighting them in any but one order (as hinted at through a series of prophecies) results in everybody dying, regardless of the player winning the fights.
  • The Good Ending isn't much better. Four of the five main characters survive, but everyone else in the world is dead.
• OFF's endings both qualify. At most, the merchant, the tutorial's teacher, a single NPC, and an Optional Boss survive. Otherwise, you and the Batter literally pull the plug (or rather, the switch) on the entire world and everyone in it.
• Pandemic has you setting out to achieve this across the entire Earth via disease.
• In the Persona series, this tends to be the result for bad endings.
  • Averted in Persona 2: Innocent Sin, in which this is the only ending; the world is destroyed except for Sumaru City, and party member Maya Amano is speared to death. You go back and change it, wiping the party's memories of each other in the process...until the protagonist remembers, causing the events of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment when it all happens again.
  • The bad ending of Persona 3 has this happen to SEES, as well as about six billion-plus extras.
• Planescape: Torment ends with 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.
• Power Stone 2 has meteors rain down from the sky and kill all the players should they take too long to kill each other in sudden death.
• Radiant Silvergun. The game opens with the end of all life on the Earth at the hands of the Stone-Like, with the protagonists conveniently not being on Earth. Guy dies in a senseless (and rather bone-headed) sacrifice, ramming himself into the Stone-Like in a futile attempt to destroy it. Tengai loses it immediately after and does the same thing, his suicide runs buying Buster, Reana, and Creator time to flee into orbit. Buster and Reana are then teleported to 100,000 BC and are vaporized in one final flash of light emanated by the Stone-Like. Creator, the sole survivor, permanently deactivates years later. Fortunately, this is immediately after completing and awakening clones of Buster and Reana, the first two human beings, in a bizarre Eternal Recurrence plot.
• In the Campaign mode of Rebel Inc. a possible modifier for a map is "Leaderless Insurgency". Without a formal chain of command to negotiate with, a peace treaty is impossible, and stabilizing the region involves killing off every last rebel with a bone to pick with your government.
• In the Gamecube's Resident Evil (which is for all practical purposes the original RE), everybody but the player could and probably would die. In the worst ending, everyone dies except for the player character. Canonically, Jill, Chris, Barry, Brad, and Rebecca all survive, although this is impossible to achieve in the game.
  • In Resident Evil 3 the entire city is nuked, killing all but the lucky few who escaped.
• Romancing Saga 3 plays with this trope a bit. If you lose against the Final Boss, it destroys the planet and kills everyone. If you win against it...it destroys the planet and kills everyone only for the earth and its inhabitants to return shortly after thanks to the efforts of the two chosen ones and the Death Eclipse ^note Morastrum in the official english version. is permanetly over.
• Saints Row IV kills off a sizeable portion of the series' cast, as well as another seven billion people, with an Earth-Shattering Kaboom in the first few hours of the game.
• The Shin Megami Tensei series has this in every mainline game.
  • Shin Megami Tensei I in the Neutral Ending. Starts an ordinary day in a modern Japanese town setting. By the end, it's just you, the Heroine and the Old Man left alive in the entire world, more or less. The Lawful Ending has God's chosen people Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence, which sort of fits. It's averted in the Chaos Ending, but the survivors have a far worse world to look forward to.
  • Shin Megami Tensei II does nearly the same on the Law Route: Satan fires the Megido Ark thus killing off everyone on the planet, only those aboard the Ark survive, and even then, a horrified Satan turns on YHVH and kills Him in the final battle, and following that, Satan dies. By the end of it all, only Aleph, Hiroko, and Gabriel are alive.
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne's True Demon ending involves preventing creation from ever happening again, breaking the cycle of destruction and rebirth.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Siding with The White has you destroying the Yamato Perpetual Reactor (Particle Accelerator) to trigger a massive black hole that engulfs everything. The Law Route involves using it to wipe out Tokyo, including the protagonist and Merkabah.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse: Siding with Dagda leads you to the "Massacre" route where to destroy all gods and create a new universe where gods do not exist, you kill everyone who believes in them.
• Mentioned in The Sims 2 University expansion pack. For Sims majoring in Drama, the first class is called "The History of Ancient Drama: When every play ended with death".
• At the end of Sine Mora, Argus kills his dad, Myryan dies of cancer, and the Enkies are extinct in the end.
• In Soul Nomad & the World Eaters, the bad ending of the Demon Path leads to the killing of most of the cast on-screen, followed by Revya destroying both worlds and killing everybody else, him/herself included. This happens if you win.
  • Also the Asagi Route; in a divergence from her normal characterization, Asagi spitefully destroys the world, forcing you to start a New Game Plus with her on the team.
• Spec Ops: The Line has this through all of the endings as part of the heavy anti-war moral; ignoring the fact that most of Dubai is already dead or doomed before the game even begins, or that Walker's team dies before he reaches the conclusion or the additional probability that the truth could get out and ignite another world war, the player then gets a final whammy depending on the ending chosen:
  • In the non-epilogue ending, Walker is horrified by a revelation after confronting Konrad (that Konrad had killed himself long before he arrived in Dubai and the Konrad he had been encountering was one of his many hallucinations), and kills himself out of guilt over his actions, resulting in Walker joining the already huge body count.
  • If Walker doesn't commit suicide, he is one of the few survivors and the game unlocks the epilogue endings:
    • Attacking the US squadron that finds Walker and dying means that Walker dies horribly along with the truth.
    • Attacking the US squadron that finds Walker and surviving only increases the chance of conflict and leaves Walker trapped and alone in a barren desert city.
    • Surrendering to the US squadron that finds Walker grants the only "happy" ending, but Walker remains shell-shocked and even alludes to the possibility that just because he didn't die doesn't mean he survived.
• A humongous number of named characters are dead by the end of StarCraft: Brood War, with only 5 characters from the first game surviving (Kerrigan, Jim Raynor, Zeratul, Artanis and Arcturus Mengsk). The Epilogue hints that even all the player characters (with the possible exception of the Protoss Executor) were subsequently killed, either because they have outlived their usefulness or, because of the sequential nature of the campaigns, were on the losing factions.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Bioware was stopped from doing this for Knights of the Old Republic. A female-only ending had Carth making a last-ditch effort to plead with the PC if she chose the Dark Side. The player could accept his offer to turn on Bastila and allow the Republic to destroy the Starforge, dying with him to save the Republic.
    • Though the correct sequence of choices will lead to only four of the ten crewmen of the Ebon Hawk alive. Darkside female Revan can kill Mission, Zaalbar, Carth, Bastila, Juhani, and Jolee, leaving Canderous, HK-47, T3-M4, and herself alive.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords had one that was Dummied Out but available with the Restored Content Game Mod. Once again the correct sequence of choices as well as throwing the fight between Atton and Darth Sion will lead to only three (The Exile, T3-M4, and HK-47) of the eleven crewmen of the Ebon Hawk alive.
  • The Force Unleashed II's Dark Side ending has Starkiller's Diabolus ex Machina clone kill him and his allies before going on to do the same to the entire cast of the original film trilogy. Sidious turns on Vader for violating the Rule of Two and threatens to have him killed as well before subjecting the clone to a Bolivian Army Ending.
• In The Suicide of Rachel Foster, Irving and Nichole both commit suicide at the end. All other significant characters are already dead when the game begins.
• While few characters are shown dying in Sunset Over Imdahl, the end implies that absolutely nobody within Imdahl's walls got out alive — the few who survived the plague were slaughtered by soldiers and dumped in a mass grave, which is found in a Bad Future that the hero utterly fails to avert.
• Every single Non-Standard Game Over (and regular game over for that matter) in Super Paper Mario results in one of these, but one of the more notable examples comes toward the end of the game, where you can choose to accept Dimentio’s offer for the power needed to effortlessly crush Big Bad Count Bleck. Doing so turns Mario and Luigi into mindless puppets, and while the result isn’t seen onscreen, it can be assumed what happened…
• Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The cinematic for the "World of Light" adventure mode shows the cast standing against Galeem, who absorbs an enormous amount of energy, unleashing devastating destruction upon the entire universe, killing the entirety of the cast...except Kirby who managed to reach safety. This is downplayed, as the adventure centers around rescuing all the fighters and taking down Galeem and his evil counterpart, Dharkon, too. Played straight in the 'Galeem wins' and 'Dharkon wins' endings, in both of which Kirby is killed too.
• The losing team in Team Fortress 2 is stripped of their weapons and made to run slower while the winning team gets a speed boost and 100% critical hit chance. Hilarity Ensues.
  • In the finale of Payload maps, both teams will be usually be near the bomb as it explodes (one team pushing the cart into the others spawn point), usually resulting in both team being killed.
  • The Heavy says this after eating a sandwich.
• At the end of its second part, Traffic Department 2192 kills off the entire population of the planet on which it was set, except for a few members of the Traffic Department who escape. In part 3, everyone in the Traffic Department except Velasquez, Bob, and Velasquez's young son Ian dies, but they take with them all of the alien chain of command in their region of space except Orlok, who wants to reform the invaders from within, and Mala, another child. Between the two factions a species of Silicon-Based Life is completely annihilated. Velasquez's cybernetic implants are damaging her brain and will kill her soon, so that leaves a grand total of four survivors out of everyone who appears onscreen.
• In Transistor, the entire city of Cloud Bank slowly is absorbed by The Process until only the main character Red is left alive. with the rest of the city dead, she decides to join her friend in the transistor.
• In Undertale, you can do this, earning the most difficult Final Boss and the absolute worst ending in the game for your troubles, aptly nicknamed by the fandom: Genocide Route. Emphasis on all — you must grind until there are no more monsters in each area so that random encounters only say "but nobody came", because you killed them all. And if you spare even one Boss or Unique Enemy ^*Barring very, very few exceptions like Napstablook, or you kill a boss before killing every monster in their area, you get one of the Neutral endings instead depending on which bosses you killed and how many mooks you killed. But if you do succeed in your slaughter of absolutely everyone, you'll kill Sans, Flowey, and the world itself.
• Unreal II: The Awakening ends with a massive Bridge Drop on the whole squad except the main characters. While there was a vibe of The War Has Just Begun, the sequel hook was surprisingly vague and no actual sequel materialized. Downer Ending all around.
• A possible ending to Until Dawn with the anti-thesis of this trope and everything in between also possible.
• Telltale Games' take on The Walking Dead ends with Clementine as the only confirmed survivor. Whether or not Omid and Christa survived is not covered.
  • As of Season 2 Episode 1, they survived for a few months before Omid was killed, then nearly a year and a half later Christa goes missing and her fate is unconfirmed.
  • Season 2 ends with only Clementine, AJ and possibly Jane or Kenny surviving, depending on the player's final choice.
• By the time Xenosaga Episode III's credits roll, all but one of the major antagonists are dead or otherwise out of the picture, three party members (Jin, chaos, and KOS-MOS) are either dead/gone or incapacitated, all of the series's supernatural figures have ascended to another plane for the time being, and about 90% of human life in the universe has been transformed into Gnosis. Episode III's second disc alone is responsible for the majority of these deaths.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 eventually got a Prequel bonus campaign called Torna: The Golden Country, taking place during the Aegis War in the titular country. The main game doesn't even try to keep secret that the entire continent of Torna sank in the climax of the War. Sure enough, by the end of it all only a handful of characters make it out alive (including not even half of the main party), and most of those are either going crazy, suicidally depressed, or both.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3 At the end. Aionios along with the current incarnation of every character ceases to exist once the worlds split apart.
• Yandere Simulator: One of the possible endings in the game, the Genocide Ending, can be achieved if the player kills all the characters except for Senpai and the few other unkillables in the first day. Yandere-chan does this so nobody can come in between her and Senpai, whom she later kidnaps.
  • Trying to do this in a later day won’t work. If 50 students are killed, the headmaster, realizing how dangerous the school has become, shuts it down, and Senpai enrolls elsewhere, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Japan-only Wii game Zangeki No Reginleiv has this as the ending, which is fitting, as the whole story is basically a version of the Nordic Ragnarök mentioned in Mythology. This tends to make the story a bit of a "Shaggy Dog" Story, as Frey and Freya fight off the giants and save civilian lives all for naught in the end, with the Giants eventually wiping out everyone but them. Their final battle with Surtur sees him die in a great ball of fire, as in the myth, which consumes everything, but The Stinger implies that Frey and Freya themselves survived, and became Adam and Eve for our world today. Don't try to think about it too hard...

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