Destroyer Deity

See me rise the Mighty Surtr, Destroyer of the Universe; Bringer of flames and endless hurt, scorcher of men and earth!
Image by SaneKyle.

White Mage: Did you feel that?
Black Belt: What?
White Mage: A great disturbance in the order. As if millions of voices cried out to say, "Oh shit."
(elsewhere...)
Matoya: Stupid Light Warriors must have broken my crystal. I keep asking for lotto numbers and all I get is "The Destroyer is Manifest".

— 8-Bit Theater

This is a god or other entity associated with destruction.

Often, this guy's job is to cause The End of the World as We Know It. He will read the final scroll, sound the trumpet, loose the beast, and sit back and watch the show (or take a starring role himself). He may not actually be evil per se, but the hero is very likely going to be trying to stop him. Or prevent or reverse the conditions that require him to perform his duties.

Alternatively, he can simply be a natural part of Eternal Recurrence, representing the destruction of the old that must take place to allow room for the new. His name may be associated with The Cycle of Empires, Order Versus Chaos, and Gaia's Vengeance. Therefore, not an Omnicidal Maniac by default; a destroyer deity may just have a God Job to perform without any malice attached. Depending on the perspective, this can either signify Dark Is Not Evil, Blue-and-Orange Morality, or Light Is Not Good.

The Grim Reaper is a Sub-Trope — incarnations of death should go on that page unless they also have a more general role in destroying things.

Contrast The Maker (if the maker happens to be God, the destroyer deity is likely to be The Anti-God), though some gods may be enough of a multitasker that they combine both the creator and destroyer god roles. Compare Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Beast of the Apocalypse, and War God. See also Apocalypse Maiden, where it's some average mortal (of either gender). They can intersect if the mortal is an Angel Unaware or an Amnesiac God.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball:
  • Beerus, the main villain of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, the God of Destruction whose job is to destroy old planets so that new planets can be born. While not exactly evil, he isn't a nice person either, destroying planets on a temperamental whim for offenses as minor as serving him mediocre food and with little regard to the consequences. The biggest problem with Beerus is that he acts independently of the Supreme Kais, the Gods of Creation (even worse now that there's only two of them left, and he is more powerful than all of them combined, so they can't really try to stop him). It's later revealed there's one God of Destruction in each of the 12 universes, and Super introduces his twin brother Champa, the God of Destruction of Universe 6.
  • Dragon Ball Super also shows a Dark Is Not Evil twist with the other universes: Gods of Destruction who work with their associated Kais destroy only where needed, leaving room for growth and aiding the development of their universe. By contrast, Beerus, who not only destroys at a whim but ignored the likes of Frieza and Majin Buu, allowed his universe to decay to the point that it is now ranked second-lowest in mortal development among all the universes. Yet even he manages to act as frequent company to the first two mortals to provide him a true challenge along with their group of friends, mainly because he too is not evil, but rather lazy and mercurial.
• Ga-Rei: The Nine-Tailed Demon-Fox is introduced as the spirit-beast of the evil exorcist Lady Tamamo — a reference to the Japanese legend of Tamamo-no-Mae — but the final arc reveals it's actually an Eldritch Abomination created by the Will of the Planet as part of a convoluted cycle of creation and destruction.
• Noragami: The titular character used to be one of these before he decided to become a god for hire.
• In Sgt. Frog, Angol Moa has come to Earth to destroy it, in accordance with Nostradamus' prophecies. Fortunately, she's one of the sweetest girls you could meet, so convincing her to forgo the plan isn't too hard. Unfortunately, she's also rather flighty and doesn't fully understand the implications of her role, so she's prone to offering to destroy the world as a solution to any minor difficulty the other characters are having at the moment.

Comic Books

• The Authority has Rose Tatoo, the incarnation of murder.
• The dragon Barbatos from Dark Nights: Metal was once tasked with destroying unstable worlds in order for them to be recycled and reused by the Forger of Worlds to make new, stable ones. Unfortunately, Barbatos' lust for destruction turned him into a conqueror, and it led him to kill the Forger. He then took it a step further by beginning a conquest to drag the entire multiverse into the Dark Multiverse where it would twist and corrupt everything it touches.
• Fenrir, Abonsam, and Bet from Lucifer are gods associated with ending the world in their own respective mythologies, and thus orchestrate a plan to end the universe after Yahweh abandons it. They try and trick a mentally ill man named Charlie to spill family blood (in his case being his wife and daughter) and water Yggdrasil with it, poisoning the world tree and unravelling reality at a faster rate. Fenrir would later assist in the war on the Silver City in an effort to prevent Elaine from replacing God, God himself stating that he is only doing all of this because he is a "god of entropy" and that is simply what entropy gods do.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The "space gods" known as the Celestials are tasked with testing out planets. If the planets fail the test, Exitar the exterminator is brought in to obliterate them.
  • Although he isn't actually a god in the divine sense, Galactus nonetheless serves this function. He regularly destroys entire planets while consuming their Life Energy as food.
  • The Phoenix Force is a Sentient Cosmic Force that embodies both creation and destruction, with the latter aspect being represented as "Dark Phoenix", a bloodthirsty entity that revels in razing entire planets and stars with its flames.
  • Cyttorak is a malevolent being, variously described as both demon and god, who transforms anyone who serves as his avatar into the Juggernaut, an unstoppable engine of destruction. Cyttorak accordingly prefers avatars that have an active interest in causing violence — when Colossus became the Juggernaut for a time, Cyttorak found him a better avatar than the previous (and current) Juggernaut, Cain Marko, on the basis that Colossus, as a superhero, is constantly getting into fights while Marko was an unambitious thug who spent too much time laying low from the law and too little time wreaking havoc, in Cyttorak's opinion.
  • Chaos War: Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the Japanese god of evil, is revealed to be an Eldritch Abomination made of living darkness and older than the universe itself, and seeks to return the cosmos to the void by devouring everything. He almost succeeds but is tricked by Hercules and trapped in a pocket dimension.
  • Venom (Donny Cates): Knull, a primordial god of darkness older than the universe itself, created the symbiotes in order to wipe out all life and return the cosmos to the void. His first creation — All-Black — is so powerful that even a mere mortal like Gorr is able to cleave planets to pieces and extinguish stars.
  • Immortal Hulk shows a Bad Future that introduces one called the Breaker-Apart. It's the Hulk after being possessed by The-One-Below-All. The Breaker-Apart takes the Hulk's potential to become bigger and stronger to its logical extreme, being a Cosmic Entity capable of destroying anything. At the end of the story, it's revealed that Hulk Prime was one of these all along, as the Top God The-One-Above-All created him to serve as a counterbalance to himself being a force for creation, while cryptically telling him You Are Better Than You Think You Are.
• In The Sandman (1989), Destruction is the Anthropomorphic Personification of... well... take a guess. He quit the position when he saw humanity heading down the path to nuclear weapons because he didn't want responsibility for that level of destruction again. He spends his retirement attempting creative endeavors such as art and cooking, but his own nature causes them to come out terrible no matter how hard he tries.

Fan Works

• Better Bones AU: This is One-Eye's role as one of the four gods. He is reincarnated repeatedly to terrorize the Tribe of Rushing Water until he is killed.
• The Bridge (MLP):
  • The Big Bad, Bagan, styles himself as Terra's God of Extinction, dedicated to destroying all life in order to "free" the souls that are "trapped" in mortal flesh.
  • When Flurry Heart comes back in time to avert a Bad Future, she specifically mentions a God of Destruction who appears to be distinct from the above Big Bad. An identity isn't given, but in the context, it may be either Grogar or a corrupted Godzilla Junior.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Destruction of the Endless, in this case a Composite Character with the Phoenix Force — however, the flip side to that is that She is responsible for Creation, too. Fire to cleanse and burn away that which doesn't work, and Life to bring, which She usually does through hosts. Just... don't make them angry.
  • Galactus is also mentioned, and his herald, the Silver Surfer, makes a brief cameo in Book 1.
  • The threat of Surtur's emergence is a key plot point in the second book. Additionally, he's the original Dark Phoenix.
• Pony POV Series:
  • Destruction, one of Discord's older siblings, is, as his name suggests, the God of Destruction. He's not evil, just a very child-like natural aspect of all creation and having a need to destroy. If he doesn't destroy anything for too long, he goes into a berserker rage and destroys everything in his path until it wears off. In this state, he once blew up a black hole. He also caused the wish spell that created the Lost Age to fail catastrophically and blow the world back to the stone age, but only did so because that was a better outcome than if it succeeded, which would have resulted in a Time Crash. The low end of his power is simply snapping his fingers and causing a nuclear blast. He's currently deceased, as Discord killed and ate him, meaning Discord is technically this trope. In Dark World, their sister Rancor stole Destruction's essence back from Discord and she took his place.
  • Entropy, the mother of the Draconequi, takes her son Destruction's role up a notch. She's the Anthropomorphic Personification of The End, and when the universe one day dies of heat death, she will devour what's left to clear the slate for a new universe to replace it.

Film — Animated

• FernGully: The Last Rainforest: Hexxus is described by Magi Lune as the primordial spirit of destruction in the intro who was initially birthed out of a volcano. He feeds off of anything that is toxic to life, especially human-based pollution. His whole purpose is to destroy the forest and create a Polluted Wasteland in its place.
• Moana: Te Kā, a massive demon of Earth and Fire that acts as a mindless force of destruction, lobbing lava at all who go near her. She is actually Te Fiti with her Heart stolen by Maui, along with all of her powers of creation along with it.
• Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas: Eris the goddess of discord is kept in check by the Book of Peace, a MacGuffin that Sinbad must recapture from her realm. Otherwise, Eris will sunder civilization and plunge humanity into gloom, misery, anguish, and death, just For the Evulz.

Film — Live-Action

• Ghostbusters (1984): Gozer the Destructor has visited the world several times, and apparently visited several other dimensions and laid waste to them. It does seem to give the world a fairly sporting chance to pick their destruction, which proves its undoing during 1984 when the form it assumes is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
• X-Men: Apocalypse: En Sabah Nur's code name is Apocalypse, and he describes himself as a "god of death/destruction" to Magneto.
  Apocalypse: I am born of death. [...] And when the forests grew rank and needed clearing for new growth, I was there to set it ablaze.

Literature

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The dragons and salamanders, as well as the giant Father Time, who were all introduced in earlier books, are awakened to destroy Narnia at the end of The Last Battle.
• Jame, heroine of Chronicles of the Kencyrath, is an avatar of Regonereth — the Third Face of God, That-Which-Destroys. The Kencyr God also has creative and preservative aspects, but Regonereth is pure destruction.
• Discworld:
  • The novel Hogfather reveals that Death has a special room for the lifetimers belonging to very important personages. There is a very large one with a world-turtle engraved on it, carrying on its shoulders four elephants, which in turn support the entire Discworld. The implication here is that when the day comes for the last of its sand to run through, Death will square his shoulders, lift his scythe, and rise to the task... Soul Music explores this further; it's Death's job to one day play the anti-chord that will end everything, using a pick made from the very tip of his scythe.
  • Reaper Man goes even further with Azrael, the Death of Universes, who is so vast that nebulae are but twinkles in his eye, and his single word takes up a two-page spread on the text.
• Ruin from Mistborn: The Original Trilogy is, as his name suggests, the Anthropomorphic Personification of entropy and destruction. He's a Deity of Human Origin and used to be a pretty decent guy, but over the millennia the powers he embodies warped him and he now believes that the only value of the world lies in its unmaking. He seeks to bring about The End of the World as We Know It and used to be held in check by his opposite, Preservation, but by the trilogy's end Preservation is dead, the God-Emperor who took over the job of keeping Ruin at bay was corrupted, and Ruin is very close to completing his goal. In the end, Ruin is killed and his power and Preservation's are taken up by Sazed, who ascends as the new god Harmony, balancing protective and destructive forces.
• The fifth novel of the Moribito series has a girl named Asra who is a member of an oppressed minority group called the Tal in a kingdom known as Rota. The girl herself is not the deity, obviously, but a vessel for a cruel and destructive god named Talhamaya who is worshipped by her people. This god comes into the human world whenever the spirit world's century-long spring begins.
• Old Kingdom: Orannis the Destroyer is one of the Nine Bright Shiners, seven of whom created the universe while the eighth stood back and watched. Guess what the ninth wants to do?
• The Redemption of Althalus: Daeva is the god of destruction, an essential cosmic role; as his sister, Dweia, puts it: "Deiwos makes things for me to love, and Daeva hauls out the trash." Unfortunately, Daeva became so dissatisfied with his thankless role that he decided to destroy everything.
• Sword of Truth: The Keeper of the Underworld wants to kill all living things, so he can torture them forever in the afterlife.
• The Wheel of Time: The Dark One, whose goal is to destroy all of existence, though people who follow him don't realize this (or fool themselves). Before that, he spreads death and destruction however he's able to.

Live-Action TV

• Ash vs. Evil Dead: In the series climax, the Dark Ones summon Kandar the Destroyer, a skyscraper-sized demon whose only purpose is to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
• Doctor Who:
  • Sutekh from "Pyramids of Mars" is also known as 'The Destroyer' and is certainly powerful enough to be a god (and was worshipped as one) but is actually an ancient alien.
  • The being actually named 'The Destroyer' from "Battlefield" is a demon that seeks to devour the world.
• Legend of the Seeker: The Keeper of the Underworld wants to destroy all living things, and originally created death in pursuit of this.
• Star Trek: Picard: In Romulan mythology, the female twin khalagu ("demons") that bring about Ganmadan ("the Day of Annihilation") are Seb-Natan ("the Foreteller") and Seb-Cheneb ("the Destroyer").
• Supernatural:
  • There are many grim reapers who take souls. However, Death himself is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and says that it's his job to reap God himself, though it might not necessarily be him personally, since it turns out that being Death is a God Job and he gets replaced by one of his Reapers, Billy, after Dean kills Death first.
  • A more literal example is The Darkness, a.k.a. God's "sister" Amara. They're both primordial entities, but she embodies Chaos and Destruction and tries to unmake reality by killing God.

Multiple Media

• The Makuta of BIONICLE, at least his earliest incarnations. Everyone just called him the "Spirit of Destruction", a presence inhabiting things like burnt-down forests. This is how co-writer Alastair Swinnerton envisioned Makuta, a pure immaterial concept, before LEGO requested a reinterpretation that they could sell to kids as a toy. This early version of Makuta did show up in the Mata Nui Online Game, claiming to be Destruction and Nothing, the counterpart of Creation who had to destroy the things of the present so that new things could be created out of them — an analogue to playing with LEGO toys. Some stories and rewrites later, it turned out this was a bluff. There was a species of highly powerful beings known as Makuta who were tasked with creating wildlife, and "The Makuta" was called Teridax. However, they still obsessed over destroying things and created particularly destructive monsters with the help of the Energized Protodermis, a liquid Cosmic Entity that could both transform and destroy with a mere touch. Once Teridax stole the body of Physical God Mata Nui, he also technically achieved the status of a deity.

Mythology & Religion

• In The Bible, God is both the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, which means He's both The Maker and this. Then again, as a monotheistic deity, He kinda already fills any and all godly roles by default.
• The Fierce Deities of Mahayana and Vajrarayan Buddhism are Buddhas who take the form of angry monsters to destroy the enemies (both human and non-human) of Dharma, although like Shiva they are not evil — quite the opposite. Some scholars believe they are actually a Hindu influence over Buddhism as, among other things, they are very Shiva-like and have multiple arms.
• Classical Mythology has Typhon, the Draconic Abomination offspring of Gaia and Tartarus who combines this trope with Gaia's Vengeance. There's also the titan of fire Perses, though little else is known about him so it could be a confusion with a different character.
• Egyptian Mythology: Apep, also known by his Greek name Apophis, is a giant primordial serpent who chases the sun god Ra every day in an attempt to eat him and so end all life. Any souls who get lost on their way to the afterlife are also devoured by Apep. He was sufficiently bad that Set, the notoriously ill-tempered and nasty god of chaos and storms (and a frequent "bad guy" in Egyptian myths), helps protect Ra against Apep every night. Apep is notably the only god in the Egyptian pantheon who was prayed against.
• Hindu Mythology:
  • Shiva is the "Destroyer" in the main trinity (the others being Brahma the Creator and Vishnu the Preserver). Interestingly, because Hinduism has a lot of focus on cycles and reincarnation, Shiva's also the god of change/rebirth (and since you can't kill someone without making them reincarnate, one of his symbols, the Lingam, represents... fertility). He's a rare benevolent example of a destroyer god (still a very bad idea to anger him, though).
  • There's also Kali, the hulked-out form of Shiva's consort Parvati. Kali isn't exactly evil, but she can be indiscriminate when riled.
  • Kalki, the final avatar of Vishnu, is the god of The End of the World as We Know It. His coming will lead to the destruction of evil and the renewal of virtue in the universe, restarting the great cycle of existence.
• In Islamic texts, the angel Israfil (a.k.a. Raphael) is described as "the herald of the apocalypse" whose horn sound (the musical instrument) signifies, well, the apocalypse.
• Norse Mythology: Surtr's job is to end Ragnarök by raining fire down on the land, wiping out everything.
• Orcadian Myth: The Nuckelavee's primary goal is bringing about the end of humanity out of sheer hatred and sadism, and to that end, it wreaks the world with both pestilence and famine, hoping to cause as many casualties as possible in a slow, painful fashion.
• Zoroastrianism has Angra Mainyu (aka Ahriman), the evil twin of Ahura Mazda (aka Ormazd) who is equal in power to his good brother, however he is the embodiment of everything evil in the cosmos including death and destruction. Angra Mainyu's ultimate goal is the malicious destruction of the entire universe.

Tabletop Games

• Exalted: Amoth City-Smiter, Sub-Director of Tumbled Ruins, is one of the few gods to benefit from the Age of Sorrows, his domain of ruins and destruction increasing well, indeed. His vote in the Celestial Bureaucracy is so assumed - to destroy property - that he doesn't even show up to planning meetings, his vote already cast. He exists in contrast to Wun Ja, Goddess of the Shining Metropolis, who seeks the benefit of and increase in number of civilizations in Creation.
• Forgotten Realms:
  • Garagos is the god of the destructive aspects of warfare and pure, savage bloodlust, formerly the Netherese War God before that Magocracy fell and he was forced to reinvent himself after losing some of his portfolios. He is actually actively opposed by the main pantheon's other War Gods Tempus, Valkur, and the Red Knight, who all feel that war is only worthwhile when there is peace to follow it.
  • Talos is the god of destruction through natural disasters, mostly associated with thunder and lightning but also capable of creating and controlling forest fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, and cyclones.
• Iron Kingdoms: The Devourer Wurm is believed to be a primal spirit of destruction that tears asunder everything civilised. The Circle Orboros hope to keep it from rendering humanity extinct through the violent destruction of civilisation, thereby ending its wrath.
• Mutant Chronicles: Algeroth is the apostle of war and dark technology. He has the largest armies and most numerous bases, his factories supply all other apostles with ordnance, he himself manifests as a huge demon whose body is fused with countless weapons, and his whole schtick is relentlessly waging war on humanity.
• Pathfinder has Rovagug, whose titles include The Great Destroyer, The Unmaker, and The Worldbreaker. It tore a bloody swathe through the multiverse before every other god in existence came together to seal it away at great cost. Eventually it will get out and finish what it started, but until then it's reduced to releasing its spawn into the world through cracks in its prison that it itself cannot escape through.
• Ponyfinder: Apep revels in spreading death and destruction for its own sake; he spent centuries on a continuous rampage when he was summoned to Everglow in the ancient past, killing or destroying everything he came across and causing the total collapse of all civilizations in existence at the time. He still plots to return to the Material Plane and pick up where he left off, but notably does not actually want to completely destroy everything — after all, if there were no order, life, or structure anywhere, what would he look forward to destroying in the future?
• Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000:
  • The elven War God Kaela Mensha Khaine.
    • In Warhammer, he is venerated by the High Elves and the Dark Elves, but for differing reasons. The High Elves worship him as a God of War but are also aware of how destruction can be indiscriminate, tempering their reverence. The Dark Elves, on the other hand, openly worship him as a God of Murder, a living representation of their Social Darwinism.
    • Warhammer 40,000 has the Eldar worship Khaine as a God of War and Destruction, as Khaine is responsible for slaying the single greatest hero the Eldar had and was responsible for torturing another of their gods. In the present, he is revered as their god of war and ruin by the Aspect Warriors, Eldar warriors who have lost control of their hunger for war. He also crosses over with Physical God by having broken into countless millions of pieces, which can only be activated by a sacrifice, to become a fragment of his utter potential as a force of complete fiery decimation as the Avatar of Khaine.
  • Older editions of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K have Malal (later named Malice), the embodiment of pointless destruction, including self-destruction. He's a renegade of the Chaos God pantheon, as even the other four oppose him on account of his desire to destroy them too. Due to copyright issues, he hasn't shown up since except for a few references to a Chaos Space Marine Legion who worship him, and pointless destruction has split between Khorne and Tzeentch, the gods of rage and change respectively.
• Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The Wyrm is the personification of destruction, part of the Triat alongside the Wyld, personification of creation, and the Weaver, personification of order. Originally, it was an agent of balance, destroying what was created so it could be recycled for the purpose of new creation. Then the Weaver went mad and imprisoned the Wyrm, sending it insane in turn. Now, it is effectively a deity of corruption and decay, trying to rot the Weaver's webs with the end goal of destroying everything beyond hope of restoration so that it may finally die.
• World Tree (RPG): Accanax presides over Destroc, the magic of destruction. He's a very good match for it in personality — sullen and violent by turns, he is interested in creating little besides monsters, sometimes spawning a dozen species of horrors one at a time to scatter on the edges of civilization. He is one of the likeliest Verb gods to manifest in the Tree itself; when he does so he appears as a dark thundercloud in whose shadow happen terrible things.
• Wraith: The Oblivion features a different destroyer deity in the World of Darkness in the form of Oblivion and its servants, the Malfeans. Whereas the Wyrm actively tries to corrode and rot the world, Oblivion represents the cessation of all things. Although originally serving as a passive presence that helped wraiths to surrender their burdens and pass on, the Sundering that threw up the barriers between life and death knocked it into imbalance, gave birth to the Malfeans, and turned its agenda towards the destruction of meaning.

Video Games

• Asura's Wrath: Asura becomes this by the end of the game, "Asura the Destructor". He's gigantic enough to crush planets and blast stars to nothing. He's also the rare example of a completely benevolent destroyer god, which serves him up as a nice contrast to Chakravartin, who despite his title is very much evil.
• BlazBlue: Central Fiction reveals that Yuuki Terumi is this... when he's wearing Hakumen's armor. His body, the armor, became a dormant shell free of evil which would later be occupied by Jin Kisaragi, becoming Hakumen. His will, or mind, became the entity that would later be known as Yuuki Terumi. When mind and body reunite, Susanoo-no-Mikoto is reborn. His personality changes completely, becoming a ruthless killing machine that seeks to destroy everything in sight. He hates humans because they are creations of his sister Amaterasu, who he also hates with a burning passion. Destroying what Amaterasu creates is the only thing that gives his existence meaning, as well as sustains his life.
• Daikaiju Daikessen Versus: Ascha'Vovina is a Gigeresque six-armed Draconic Abomination that was used as a Bioweapon Beast by an evil god of war, who sicced it on countless civilizations until it was worshiped and feared as a Beast of the Apocalypse.
• Diablo III: Malthael, once the Archangel of Wisdom, seeks to be this in the expansion Reaper of Souls. And it's your job to stop him.
• Dragon Quest II: The final boss is Malroth, god of destruction, although it's mostly an Informed Attribute because he doesn't appear at all before the final battle, and at best is mentioned on an item. Dragon Quest Builders 2 expands on this, where he's an amnesiac God in Human Form who is very good at smashing things. This Malroth averts God of Evil; he's not just a god of killing and despoiling, but harvesting, forestry, mining, foraging, and the hunt. All forms of breaking things to make something new.
• The Undreaming is revealed to be this in Dreamfall Chapters. Just like the universe was brought into existence by the Dreaming of a creator deity named Lux, the First Dreamer, the Undreaming is the Dark Is Not Evil counterpart to Lux that continuously destroys parts of the Dreaming in order to make space for new stuff. The game's villains have actually imprisoned the Undreaming to harness its destructive powers, and the heroes' main goal turns out to be to free it, restoring the Balance between it and Lux.
• Dwarf Fortress: Very little is said of Armok, but they seem to be creator and destroyer alike of the Dwarf Fortress worlds. And perhaps a representation of the player.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Lorkhan, the "dead" creator god of Mundus, the mortal plane, is theorized to be one in some accounts. To note:
    • Some accounts state that the destruction of the Aurbis (loosely, universe) is Lorkhan's original purpose, goal, and what he ultimately embodies. He was said to be "begat" by Sithis, the force of chaos, to destroy the Aurbis, and disguised himself as an et'Ada to convert other entities to his cause. Mundus is essentially the embodiment of "limitation" and by feeding their power into creating it, the Aedra forced limitations onto the Aurbis and themselves. This is part of the reason why worship of Lorkhan is forbidden by the Mer races and one reason why the Aldmeri Dominion under Thalmor leadership is staunchly opposed to Talos; one of the beings that is theorized to make up Talos is Wulfharth Ash-King, a "Shezarrine" (Lorkhan's soul), and thus Talos is doing the same thing Lorkhan once did as one of the Divines.
    • Lorkhan's Yokudan counterpart, Sep, also fits the Destroyer Deity motif. Yokudan/Redguard mythology believes that the world is devoured over and over again by a primordial entity called Satakal. A being named Ruptga discovered a way to survive this but found there were way too many souls to save. Sep was created by Ruptga from "worldskins" Satakal left behind, but this gave him the same Horror Hunger that afflicted Satakal. After Ruptga stopped Sep from eating the souls they were supposed to be saving, Sep betrayed his creator and tricked the other gods into creating Mundus.
  • Alduin is a colossal black dragon and Beast of the Apocalypse. He is destined to "eat the world" at the end of every cycle of time, resetting it for a new world to take form. However, he isn't the Big Bad in Skyrim because of this. Rather, it's because he has decided to shirk his "destroy the world" responsibility and would rather Take Over the World instead.
  • The very idea of "destruction" falls within the sphere of Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of Destruction. He is an Omnicidal Maniac and Person of Mass Destruction who seeks to invade and destroy Mundus above all else. However, like most of the other Daedric Princes, he is not an inherently evil being. For example, he is no more "evil" than a flood or an earthquake, and destruction is frequently necessary for creation and positive change to happen. According to a Loose Canon text written by former series developer/writer Michael Kirkbride, Dagon was once a kindly demon who attempted to protect parts of Mundus from being eaten by Alduin at the end of every kalpa, until Alduin banished and cursed him into his current state.
    Alduin: You I curse right here and right now! I take away your ability to jump and jump and jump and doom you to [the void] where you will not be able to leave except for auspicious days long between one and another and even so only through hard, hard work. And it will be this way, my little corner cutter, until you have destroyed all that in the world which you have stolen from earlier kalpas, which is to say probably never at all!
• Among Final Fantasy XIV's pantheon of Twelve is Rhalgr the Destroyer, breaker of worlds, who is the patron deity of the proud warrior nation of Ala Mhigo.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening introduces the fell dragon Grima, who is also referred to as the God of Destruction.
• Freespace: The Shivans were named after the Hindu god due to the indiscriminate destruction they bring, but the Fan Sequel Blue Planet reveals them to be the physical emanations of a Sentient Cosmic Force of destruction that exists for the sole purpose of exterminating advanced species... but only those species that are themselves destroyers who threaten the existence of other life. The full scope of their 'duties' isn't clear yet (and possibly unknowable), but destruction permeates every perceivable aspect of their existence:
  We hypothesize, as clinically as we can, that in its basal state Shivan metacognition — the system that produces their behavior and decisions — must be understood as constructively destructive, a form of thought that emerges from the constant, ruthless, self-perpetuating principle of annihilation. Whatever selective pressure, system design, or runaway process created the Shivans predicated their fundamental quiddity on the devastation of organized information in every state from the atom to the genome to the encryption of a secure combat computer to language itself.
• The Big Bad of Horizon Zero Dawn is a sci fi version of this trope. The the Big Good, Gaia, is an AI designed to rebuild Earth's biosphere After the End. Gaia has several sub-programs that handle different parts of the process, all named after Greco-Roman deities. Among them was Hades, the program responsible for destroying a dead end biosphere so that Gaia could start over. The game proper deals with a malfunctioning Hades that's trying to destroy a perfectly viable biosphere.
• Indivisible: Kala, the destroyer (and creator) of the universe, as well as countless other universes before. She admits in the end that she herself has lost count of how many. The inhabitants of the current universe, not wanting to see it destroyed, sealed her in the prologue before she could destroy the latest iteration of reality.
• Kirby Star Allies has the Final Boss, Void Termina, whose Boss Subtitles label him as "The Destroyer of Worlds". Indeed, he was summoned into this world via the Cult of the Jamba Heart because its high priest Hyness wanted revenge on those who cast him to the edge of the universe, even after he helped save them from "a nightmare of galactic proportions". Interestingly, Void Termina wasn't initially aware of his purpose after being summoned, only regaining his sentience after his inner essence (which looks exactly like Kirby) was awakened.
  • However, there are some hints in "The Ultimate Choice" sub-game that there's more to him than this trope. Void Soul, the True Final Boss of Soul Melter difficulty, mentions that Void Termina is filled with positive or negative energy depending on how he was summoned. His mission to destroy the universe was brought upon by the hatred and evil Hyness had during his ritual, and the pause screen description mentions that there's a possibility that Void Termina can be reincarnated as a friend.
  • This is further compounded by Soul Melter EX, the secret Harder Than Hard difficulty. This time, the True Final Boss is simply named "Void", and his pause screen description mentions the possibility that instead of being an Omnicidal Maniac, there's the chance that he'll instead dream of food, napping, and friends reuniting — and that seems to be the case upon defeating him, where he has a cheerful, Kirby-esque smile before dying.
• Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer: The titular entity is more of a Physical God-slash-Sufficiently Advanced Alien but he does have godlike powers and his sole purpose in the world is to destroy it. It's up to the Player Party to punch him out. Except you never do, even if stopping his plan seems to lead to his death. He would crush you, but he invokes Double Think as a way to let you go unmolested, give you the means to undo his plan, and hint at what you need to do with those means, while still being able to tell himself that he isn't doing anything that could stop his plan. Turns out he feels really bad about being forced to destroy your world needlessly, but his failsafes keep him from stopping.
• Pokémon Y: Yveltal, the mascot Legendary Pokémon, is the embodiment of destruction, contrasting Xerneas, embodiment of life.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic Unleashed: Dark Gaia is an Eldritch Abomination that clashes with Light Gaia at the center of the Earth, tasked with destroying the planet and killing all its inhabitants every millions of years or so so Light Gaia could restore the planet to make way for new life to spawn. When Eggman cracks open the planet to unleash Dark Gaia and harness its power, it incorrectly thinks that the time of destruction is at hand and upon being restored at the climax of the game sets out to start its job, forcing Sonic and Chip/Light Gaia to take it down.
  • Sonic Adventure: Chaos is called the "God of Destruction". While it's not very likely that it was born this trope, it certainly earned its title after genociding the Echidnas and flooding Station Square.

Webcomics

• Kill Six Billion Demons: While his fellow Demiurges' Boss Subtitles all end with "God of the Seven-Part World", Jagganoth's titles end with "Destroyer of the Seven-Part World". Jagganoth's many titles include "Red-Eyed Heir" (an In-Universe way of calling him Satan's Successor), God's Monster, the God-Eater, and "the annihilator of falsehood".^note The latter seems like Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking until you remember that the Creation Myth of the setting states that existence itself is a lie told by The Creator YISUN. By definition, then, the "annihilator of falsehood" is the annihilator of creation. Jagganoth's job in the "Groundhog Day" Loop that the setting is seemingly stuck in is to battle and kill The Successor, leading to the death of Creation and the resetting of the loop. Having fought this battle an uncountable number of times and never failed, and being one of the few beings in creation with enough Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory to realize what's happening to everyone, Jagganoth is more than tired of this job at this point and wants to destroy both the loop and all of existence along with it to free himself and everyone else from their fate.
• The Order of the Stick has The Snarl, a monster that was accidentally created when the gods first made the world, and sealed away in another dimension after it devoured a pantheon before it could destroy everything. It almost broke out again a century or so before the comic begins, but a group of heroes locked it away with magical gates, which the main villains seek to control in order to blackmail the gods into giving into their demands, unaware that the gods are prepared to outright destroy the world themselves and start anew rather than risk the Snarl ending everything forever, though they seek a way to to seal the Snarl permanently. In fact, they already have destroyed and remade the world before, millions of times before...
• Sluggy Freelance: K'Z'K is initially introduced as a demon who took over the world and caused The End of the World as We Know It in an alternative future that a time traveler has come to stop. Then he tries to do the same in the past, and there's talk about prophecies of him doing so. But later, a demon cultist of K'Z'K states that he is The End — all a prophecy can say about his causing the end of the world can relevantly say is when and how. Finally, it's revealed that K'Z'K is not an ordinary if really powerful demon, but one of the pillars of creation, the counterpart of the Creator created at the very beginning: Kozoaku, the Destroyer. He's been causing the end of the world — extinction events — repeatedly since forever while the Creator and its lesser allies try to stop him, including by trapping him in the form of a demon.

Web Original

• Alanna:
  • The cosmology involves three gods, one of which represented creation, one analysis, and another destruction. The second one would dissect everything to subatomic dust to satisfy its curiosity, while the latter would devour the dust to satisfy its hunger. Both destructive gods actually tried their hand at creating shortly before the adventure began; the Big Bad wanted to distract them with this new hobby while he worked to steal their power.
  • Due to the Big Bad attempting to possess protagonist Alanna with the Destroyer, not only are his creations instinctively friendly to Alanna, but she also gains ice magic (since cold is draining energy) with Cast from Calories.
• RWBY
  • The God of Darkness is responsible for natural disasters such as floods and famine, was the creator of the creatures of Grimm, and was responsible for the destruction of the original race of humanity when Salem led them in rebellion. However, he aided his brother in the creation of humanity and imparted on them the gift of choice (along with the ability to perform magic in the case of the aforementioned original human race).
  • While Salem isn't actually a goddess, her Ax-Crazy Serial Killer follower Tyrian worships her as a goddess of destruction, and sees her cause as an Apocalypse Cult trying to bring about the end of the world, while all the other members of Salem's Inner Circle believe that she intends to remake and rule the world. It turns out they should have listened to Tyrian, as he's absolutely right, and in this one regard he's essentially Crazy Sane. Tyrian outright calls Salem a goddess and uses titles like "divine savior" when referring to her.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Korra has Vaatu, a Dark spirit representing chaos, and destruction. Before the age of the Avatar, there was a cycle where every 10,000 years he and his Light counterpart Raava would fight for dominance. If Vaatu ever won, there would be 10,000 years of darkness, and all life on the planet would eventually die completely. He was sealed away by the first Avatar because of this.
• Plagg from Miraculous Ladybug is the Anthropomorphic Personification of Destruction and kwami of the Cat Miraculous. While rude and aloof, Plagg, like the other kwamis, is predominantly a force for good, imbuing wielders of his miraculous with the power of destruction to make them into heroes. This also seems to work as a much-needed Power Limiter; in a hero's hands, Plagg's power can destroy a single target on contact. In Plagg's case, it's a wave of mass destruction that can damage nearby buildings by accident and supposedly killed off the dinosaurs.

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