Times where a villain's attempt to Screw Destiny and solve their problems through mass-murder completely backfires on them in Anime and Manga.
- In Attack on Titan, Eren attempts to end the Cycle of Revenge plaguing his people, thereby letting his friends live in peace, by exterminating 80% of the human race in a Thanatos Gambit. While the genocide part of his plan went off without a hitch, and his friends do get to live out their lives in comfort and peace , the rest failed miserably as the series ends as Eldia in the distant future is bombed to dust by the survivors and a lone child enters the World Tree to restart the cycle.
- Patry along with the other elves from Black Clover were massacred by royals at Licht's wedding. He was the only one reincarnated into a human body, and to avenge his murdered tribe he formed the Eye of the Midnight Sun and resurrected the Third Eye to kill all the humans in the Clover Kingdom five centuries later. He goes on to defeat Julius and reincarnate the other elves using the magic stones to try to kill all the humans. However, it's later revealed the devil Zagred chose him to be his Unwitting Pawn as the only elf reincarnated, and intended him to try to avenge the elves when it was Zagred who had lied to the royals and persuaded them to kill the elves.
- Bleach: Soul Reapers cleanse Hollow souls back into the reincarnation cycle while Quincies destroy the soul completely, damaging the Balance of Souls between worlds. To save existence itself, the Soul Reapers wiped out the Quincies but didn't know until too late that most Quincies were in hiding, building their power to retaliate. Only a very few on both sides suspect the two sides are equally to blame.
- In Demon Lord Dante, God wipes out the original human race in order to replace them with himself, but some of those exposed to his power absorb it and mutate into the first demons.
- In Dragon Ball Z, this trope applies to Frieza:
- Frieza exterminated the Saiyan race in an attempt to prevent any from potentially becoming the legendary Super Saiyan. He missed four (excluding the ones from the movies, which put it at eight or so). Two of them, Raditz and Nappa, worked for Frieza alongside Vegeta, the prince of the Saiyans, but Goku, the fourth, would eventually take Frieza down by becoming the very thing Frieza feared. What's more, after getting turned into a cyborg and coming to Earth to take revenge, both he and his father King Cold are taken down for good by Future Trunks, who turns out to be the son of Vegeta, the other major Saiyan to survive.
- Vegeta even lampshades this shortly before Frieza transforms into his second form.Vegeta: So, you tried to eliminate the Saiyans, yet you left the strongest one alive! Smooth move!
- For bonus points, Dragon Ball Minus reveals that if Frieza hadn't ordered all the Saiyans back to their home planet to destroy them all at once, Goku wouldn't have even been sent to Earth for his protection by his suspicious parents.
- Vegeta even lampshades this shortly before Frieza transforms into his second form.
- Frieza's cavalier extermination of the Namekians almost became this when he discovered that simply having all seven Namekian Dragon Balls wasn't enough to grant his wish. Realising that the Namekians knew something about their use that he didn't, he made a quick but frantic search for any survivors.
- Frieza exterminated the Saiyan race in an attempt to prevent any from potentially becoming the legendary Super Saiyan. He missed four (excluding the ones from the movies, which put it at eight or so). Two of them, Raditz and Nappa, worked for Frieza alongside Vegeta, the prince of the Saiyans, but Goku, the fourth, would eventually take Frieza down by becoming the very thing Frieza feared. What's more, after getting turned into a cyborg and coming to Earth to take revenge, both he and his father King Cold are taken down for good by Future Trunks, who turns out to be the son of Vegeta, the other major Saiyan to survive.
- The Ishvalan Genocide from Fullmetal Alchemist is an interesting case. The purpose of the extermination was not to prevent a prophecy from being fulfilled or to dispose of a threatening ethnic group per se, but to simply kill as many people as possible (Ishval was chosen simply for its location) - their aim was to kill every Ishvalan, but as you would expect, there were some survivors. Now, one of those survivors was Scar, whose brother was killed in the extermination and who was determined to avenge his death to the State Alchemists... that is, in the beginning. Later, he does a Heel–Face Turn and starts helping the Elric brothers. In the end, he plays a crucial role in causing the Big Bad's Evil Plan to fail and kills Bradley, the man who ordered the genocide - which he would not have done, if the genocide had not existed in the first place.
- In Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the purpose was to make the Ishvalans desperate enough to attempt to create a Philosopher's Stone — something Scar ends up doing by using an entire army unit of Amestris as the resources for one. Meanwhile, Bradley is killed by one of the soldiers who was a part of the Genocide and was instilled with an immense hatred of the current system by the atrocities committed there — Roy Mustang.
- In Hunter × Hunter, this seems to be creeping up on the Phantom Troupe, who murdered the entire Kurta clan, maimed their corpses by removing their pretty eyes to sell them, and treat it as no big deal, which further angers the last surviving Kurta, Kurapika. Kurapika has already killed two of their members, and is quite intent on finishing what he started.
- On top of that, if it weren't for some timely intervention from their leader, Kurapika would've killed 6 — half of the entire group by the time he killed the second. That's how big of an enemy they've made.
- Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam: The Titans gas colony after colony hoping to crush Spacenoid dissent, but all it does is outrage those not just in space, but all across the Earth sphere to rise up against them. Most villains stop when they're stupid enough to Create Your Own Hero, but the Titans go one further and Create Their Own La Résistance.
- Deliberately invoked in Naruto by Itachi with the Uchiha Massacre. He leaves Sasuke alive because he wants to die by his hand. It falls through, though; by this time, Sasuke has abandoned the Leaf Village, and afterward, he decides to actively destroy it.
- In One Piece, the World Government was worried that the scholars of Ohara would discover the Void Century, a point in time they didn't want anyone to know about. Therefore, they exterminated the entire island. The lone survivor, Nico Robin, vowed revenge by discovering the Void Century; and the incident is what prompted Dragon to build the Revolutionaries. On top of that, thanks to Vegapunk, several research records from Ohara were salvaged and preserved in Elbaph.
- Played with in Saiyuki, which inverts the usual perspective of the trope. Hakkai kills off an entire youkai clan in a fit of madness caused by them kidnapping his sister/lover Kanan, only to have an apparent survivor of the massacre, Chin Yisou (who is, for bonus points, the child of the clan's head), turn up three years later with clear intents of getting revenge. By that time Hakkai fails to recognize him, complaining bitterly that he thought he murdered them all. Then subverted when Hakkai finally remembers the incident, realizing that he did actually kill Chin Yisou back then; the youkai "survived" by turning his own body into a shikigami seconds before death, just so he could get revenge on Hakkai. Naturally, Chin Yisou doesn't survive the second time.
- An interesting take in She Retaliated Because Her Entire Family Was Wrongfully Executed. The villains succeed in carrying out horrific genocide in chapter 1, as punishment for false charges of treason upon the Sabluveir fief and its entire population. This turns out to be a fundamentally horrid idea, as the moment that the last survivor, Emilia, is killed, the entire population rises again as undead, fueled by the hatred spurred by the horrific and sadistic manner in which they were killed and their deaths were celebrated. The rest of the story involves the Sabluveir fief putting their enemies through the same experience exactly, and then swelling their ranks by assimilating the corpses into The Horde in a Zombie Apocalypse!
- In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, the Majin Gelmund approached the Ogre prince with the offer of a name and evolution to his next form, but the prince refused. In return, Gelmund had the Orc Lord Geld send his orcs to destroy and devour the ogres, with only six survivors including the prince. Of course, even if the prince had accepted, Gelmund would have still sent Geld to destroy them since the Orc Lord gets stronger with every victim he or his army devours and the strengthened/evolved prince would simply be more empowering for the plan to make Geld a new Demon Lord. The six ogres would later run into Rimuru Tempest, who agreed to help them with their vengeance and gave them names that evolved them in Kijin. The Kijins were instrumental in decimating the orc forces, which set the stage that lead Gelmund to be devoured by the Orc Lord Geld to initiate his transformation into Demon Lord.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- In the Millennium World Arc, it turns out that the Millennium Items were a result of an alchemical ritual that involved sacrificing 99 human lives. Deeming it a necessary evil to restore peace to the land, the Pharaoh's brother neglected to inform him of that and harvested the lives of the denizens of Kul Elna, the wickedest people in the country. Only one child survived, bearing witness to the massacre, and he grew up to be Thief King Bakura, The Dragon to Big Bad Zorc.
- In the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga, it turns out that there was another survivor who wasn't in the village at the time, and his hatred and malice when he learned what happened gave birth to a very powerful, very evil spirit. That spirit was thwarted by the Pharaoh's priests, who stripped it of its physical form and sealed it away. Some time after the original series, he was released by explorers and became the Big Bad of this series.
