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"There is no profit to be made in the world's destruction. It is...bad for business."
Our first character or faction is a villain with either a sense of self-preservation, a taste for others' misery or a plan to Take Over the World. He's an evil guy, no mistaking it, but happens to enjoy his life and would prefer that the world continue existing, if only to continue his Evil Overlord rule, indulge his greed, lust or other carnal sins, and/or generally pursuing his own evil interests and schemes.
Our second character is a Nietzsche Wannabe or an Omnicidal Maniac and wants to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Even if the first villain would be able to somehow escape from this disaster unharmed, there likely wouldn't be anyone left to rule over or torment for his own twisted pleasure. So the first villain steps in to, surprisingly, help save the day, if only to prevent the second from upsetting the status quo that allows him to continue being evil on his own terms.
A subtrope of Evil Versus Evil where the story avoids Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy by offering two reasonably different flavors of evil. May overlap with Even Evil Has Standards and Enemy Mine or result in a Męlée ŕ Trois with the heroes. Often present in worlds with Angels, Devils and Squid, with the Devils representing Evil and the Squid representing Oblivion. Villains opposing The End of the World as We Know It can be on any part of the "evil" side of Character Alignment, although Lawful Evil ones are a bit more common since they rely on an established system of rules to benefit themselves, which would be upset by a threat of this scale. Chaotic Evil and Neutral Evil examples generally have the "I'm having too much fun to stop now" motivation in comparison. On the flipside, the oblivion side can be the sympathetic side too, especially if the villain in question is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds wanting to destroy the world to end the cycle of suffering caused by the evil side by any means neccesary. After all, if the universe is already in a state of endless suffering, it is a lot easier to end the cycle by destroying it all than trying to restore it.
This trope has a Fridge Brilliance side: it justifies many heroes for their Thou Shalt Not Kill attitude. The Fridge Logic side is that a villain who sides with the hero to prevent world destruction should realizes it's not that smart trying to kill the hero in the next episode. He may achieve world domination, then having the world destroyed because the hero is not here anymore.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Slayers Try has Xellos, who wants the world to be destroyed - but by locals. So when aliens try to do it, he works against them.
- Xellos...oh, Lord of Nightmares, Xellos. How about Slayers: NEXT? The end-of-the-world fails and Xellos was entangled in this all. Complete with him appearing healthy and smiling right after destruction of the strongest Dark Lord who tried to bring it all down. It seems that he and his boss are more interested in power struggles between their kin than in serious apocalyptic activity. And then there's..."My Evil Plan to Save the World
 " AMV with Xellos.
- Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro had Neuro, a demon who feeds on solving mysteries (like solving who killed someone) faces down Sicks, a Complete Monster who wants to kill every human because, if every human was dead, who would kill each other and provide mysteries?
- While mostly doing anything for amusement, Alucard of Hellsing's stated reason for working for the good guys is that if vampires in general won; they'd eat all the humans; and there wouldn't be any left.
- An odd variation in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure! : Cyrus's plan is to wipe out the universe and create a new, perfect one. When he realizes that the legendary Pokémon he summoned to do it will only destroy everything without the ability to recreate anything, he decides that even a horrifically flawed world is better than no world at all. Basically, he played this trope on himself.
- In Pokémon 2000, Ash is bewildered when Team Rocket assists him against the threat. They explain that they are thieves; they have no interest in killing, and definitely don't want the world to be destroyed.
- In the final arc of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Milliardo Peacecraft plots to destroy Earth out of a misguided belief that the people of the Space Colonies were purer in purpose than those of Earth, who he saw as hopelessly tainted with the specter of the planet's bloody history and could never achieve lasting peace. Among the people arrayed against him is Treize Khushrenada, the leader of OZ, who the protagonists have fought on many occasions. For all his faults, he loves the Earth and does not want to see his people destroyed. It's implied that Treize and Milliardo cooked up the war between them to exhaust humanity's will to fight and demonstrate the foolishness of war once and for all...and it sort of works.
- Jinnai of El-Hazard is the main characters Rival Turned Evil and a self-proclaimed Young Conqueror. However he's quick to join with the heroes when the true Big Bad tries to destroy the world. Claiming that meaningless destruction is anathema to a true conqueror.
Comic Books
Film
- And inverted in xXx. Xander tells the agent he works for "when you hire somebody to save the world, make sure they like the world the way it is."
- The Mummy Returns opposes O'Connell, Imhotep and the Scorpion King. They are trying to save, conquer and destroy the world, respectively.
Literature
Live Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer, episode "Becoming": Angelus is planning to perform a ritual that will bring about the end of the world. Spike sides with the heroes to stop him.
Spike: I want to save the world.
Buffy: You do remember that you're a vampire, right?
Spike: We like to talk big. Vampires do. "I'm going to destroy the world." That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got...dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people, billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real...passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Picadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square. You know what I'm saying?
- At one point in Supernatural, a powerful, successful and very evil demon helps the brothers to combat a world-shattering threat, as he's quite enjoying himself.
- Heroes has Sylar. Head-splitting serial killer of specials by day, but would rather not have New York explode since it doesn't fit his agenda. He comes around when he gets a vision of the future where it does fit his agenda.
- In Charmed, the Hollow can be restrained only by a Yin Yang Bomb spell of good and evil.
- In Doctor Who, the Daleks and most of the Eleventh Doctor's Rogues Gallery concluded an alliance to repair the cracks in the universe. However, this plan backfired spectacularly.
- Before that, the serial Logopolis did this with the Master.
- Also the Master did the same in The End of Time though it was for more personal reasons.
The Master: *fires electrical blast at Rassilon* "You did this to me! All of my life!" *fires second bolt* "You made me!" "1!" *fires 3rd bolt* "2!" *fires 4th bolt* "3!" *fires 5th bolt* "4!" *fires last bolt*
Tabletop Games
- This trope is the main thing that distinguishes the "Good Guys" of Warhammer 40,000, such as the brutal, Lawful Evil Imperium and the Ultra-manipulative Eldar, from the "Bad Guys", the Omnicidal Necrons, Tyranids, and legions of Chaos.
- In "The Plane Below" for fourth edition Dungeons & Dragons, it goes into the psychology of Archons. Created by the Primordials to wage war on the non-elemental creatures that served the Gods, they still exist and still regularly attack and kill non-elementals. However, they need battle and slaughter like humans need shelter and companionship, so they stop just short of pure genocidal mayhem. If they ever actually destroyed every non-elemental creature, then they wouldn't have anything to fight anymore.
- This is true in Legend of the Five Rings. The Sleeping Void is seen as not being truly evil, because it simply wants to end everything, while the forces of the Shadowland ARE evil, and want to conquer the world.
- In Nomine, by Steve Jackson Games, has a few instances where Heaven and Hell have come together to destroy a rogue Demon Prince who attempted global devastation. Most notorious was Legion, the Prince of Corruption, but the second Prince of Pestilence who kicked off the Black Plague had to be taken down as well.
- The Seers of the Throne from Mage The Awakening have "maintain the Abyss" as one of their commandments. "Maintain" is the key word in that phrase — the Seers keep humanity fractious and miserable to prevent them from Awakening. They do not take kindly to people like the Scelesti actively serving the Abyss, and a Scelestus is one of the few things the Seers and the Pentacle Orders will work together against.
- Similarly, in Mage The Ascension, the Technocracy distrusts the Traditions but recognizes that the Nephandi are far worse.
- In Exalted, we have the Neverborn, the tormented, undead remnants of the murdered Primordials; the Deathlords, ancient and powerful ghosts sworn into their service; and the Abyssal Exalted they corrupted from stolen Solar shards, all of whom want to drop Creation into the Well of Oblivion. Absolutely no one else wants this to happen, including the other "bad guy" factions, such as The Fair Folk and the Infernal Exalted. Even the Ebon Dragon, the personification of evil, cruelty, treachery, and general bastardry, opposes them, if only because nonexistence would put a severe crimp in his plans to bring about eternal suffering and torment. *
Note that the Dragon inverts the usual Eviler than Thou arrangement - one supplement specifically notes that, horrible and nihilistic though it would be, the utter extinguishing of all Creation would be better for everyone than letting the Ebon Dragon remake it in his image. - In Magic: The Gathering, even the most selfish planeswalkers (godlike multiverse-travelling mages) sometimes help the good guys to thwart something even more horrible.
- In the Zendikar and Innistrad storylines, the planeswalker Sorin Markov is not exactly a nice guy, being an arrogant, hedonistic vampire who goes around eating people and so forth. But even he had the decency to go out of his way (even risked his life?) to prevent Eldritch Abominations, demons, and other vampires from depopulating entire planes of all intelligent life.
- In the Time Spiral storyline Nicol Bolas, an Elder Dragon planeswalker and one of the oldest and most evil characters in the game, actually offered some help in preventing the time rifts from destroying the whole multiverse. Not that he stooped to sacrificing his own planeswalker spark to do so; he killed Leshrac and used his instead. Then again, Nicol Bolas is also the bastard who mucked up Sorin's plans and let the plane-eating Eldrazi loose again, for no particularly discernible reason. Jerk.
- Nobilis presents us with the Imperators and the Excrucians. The former include Angels, Demons, Aaron's Serpents, Wildlords, Lords of the Light and Dark, and a smattering of other god-like entities, all of whom tend to follow Blue and Orange Morality. The Nobles, their semidivine servants (which includes the Player Characters), are human enough that they can be nicer than their bosses, but also human enough that their malice can arise from genuine sadism rather than disinterest or ignorance. Not exactly a nice bunch, but at least they're a better group than the Excrucians, who want to unmake reality to the point of it never having existed in the first place. They've already succeeded in part, but the extent of that success is by nature unknown and unknowable.
- Pathfinder has the Lawful Evil devils and Chaotic Evil demons; the former want to crush the universe under their heel and the latter want to corrupt and destroy everything they can, but neither really want to kill every living thing; that's the Neutral Evil daemons' goal. They all tend to clash together thanks to their rather mutually exclusive goals.
Video Games
- The World Ends With You: The Big Bad, Megumi Kitaniji, is actually in a game with the Composer to decide the fate of Shibuya. Neku happens to be playing for the Destroy Shibuya team.
- In Sacrifice, there's a prophecy that one of the gods is going to bring about the end of the world, and suspicion immediately falls on Charnel, the god of death and suffering. He denies, pointing out that if the world ends, there will be no people left to suffer and die, so it's in his interest to keep the world as it is.
- Bowser from Super Mario Bros.. does this sometimes, when he doesn't accidentally destroy the universe himself. Most prominently used in Super Paper Mario where he's actually playable and fulfills a role in the prophetic group of heroes.
- Bowser also still is the King Koopa, and if something threatens his subjects or his reign, he'll try to stop it.
- Similarly, most of the mainline 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games generally end up with this conflict as justification for Dr. Eggman fighting alongside the heroes against some ultimate evil in the True Ending. It started in Sonic Adventure, and the trend wasn't really bucked until Sonic Unleashed (where Eggman really couldn't care less what Dark Gaia was up to) and Sonic Colors (where Eggman is the ultimate Big Bad). Sonic Generations plays with it, as Time Eater captures Eggman no less than twice throughout the game, seemingly against both parties. Except that both Classic and Present Eggman control Time Eater; these were actually elaborate escape plans to throw Sonic off their trail.
- Inverted in Mastermind World Conqueror: the Mastermind apparently believes that conquering the Earth and blowing it up are in fact the same thing (he looked it up).
- Arguably the Nightmares from Link's Awakening, who are trying to stop you from carrying out your mission: It's a Dream Apocalypse.
- The "Earth Defenders" (IE: Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Anguirus, Baragon, King Seesar, and Varan) in Godzilla: Unleashed fall under this. While most of them couldn't care less about what happens to humanity in particular, they are more than willing to protect the earth (hence their title) from any threat that wants to destroy it.
- The Villain Team Up in Dissidia: Final Fantasy fractures a bit along these lines, dividing the group between the characters who want to rule the world, and those that just want to see it go boom. And that's not even including the ones that aren't really evil to begin with.
- From the main series, Emperor Gestahl of Final Fantasy VI objects to Kefka assuming supreme magical power because then there wouldn't be much of a world left to rule afterwards.
- Similarly, the Shinra Corporation in Final Fantasy VII wants to stop Sephiroth just as much as the protagonists do.
- Halo has an odd example of what could be considered oblivion vs oblivion. The Gravemind wants to consume all life in the galaxy, leaving nothing but a pestilent mass of Flood, while the Prophet of Truth wants to activate the Halo rings and thus wipe out all organic life in the galaxy (under the mistaken impression that it will ascend him and his followers to a higher plane of existence). If you factor in 343 Guilty Spark (who has the same goal as Truth, but for wholly different reasons) then you have an unprecedented 3-way war in which each side wants to destroy the galaxy.
- Kingpin in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.
- In the first day DLC of Mass Effect 3, "From Ashes", it's revealed that The protheans were a highly militarist Empire that considered themselves the galaxy's Master Race, and went around eradicating and enslaving or every race they could find, making their struggle against the reapers a case of this trope and Abusive Precursors versus Abusive Precursors, rather than Benevolent Precursors versus Abusive Precursors as originally thought.
- City of Villains has a few storylines where you, an aspiring supervillain, get to save the world.
- In Warcraft, this is essentially the difference between the demons of the Burning Legion and the Eldritch Abominations that are the Old Gods. The Legion sees itself as fighting against the "corruption" of the Titans and destroy it so that a utopian order can rise. It almost sounds benevolent. The Old Gods are, on the other hand, entities of raw, primeval chaos and do not care for existince one way or the other, their goals explicitly stated as "nihilistic".
- It is also the point of a questline in Hyjal, where you must convince a Satyr (Legion supporter) to help against some Twilight's Hammer cultists (Old God supporters). He eventually agrees to help you after admitting that he does not understand how anyone could see abject destruction as desirable.
- DC Universe Online shows the obvious problem for villains having this attitude: Lex has to time-travel to find the Justice League to help him saving the world. Because previously, he won against the League. So if you don't want oblivion, villains, maybe you shouldn't try to kill the heroes at all.
- The protagonists of Drakengard include a sociopathic mute whose only desire is to slaughter anyone in his way, a blind pedophile and a cannibalistic (with a particular taste for infants) Elf. They're the only ones who can save the world from the Eldritch Abominations that are about to undo the world.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Atop the Fourth Wall has Lord Vyce and The Entity. The former claims he started as a genuine hero, merely warning alternate realities of the danger they were in, but became a ruthless Multiversal Conqueror after everything else failed.
- Also, Doctor Insano is not only willing to call a truce, but even ignore Linkara stealing his prized deathbot in order to defend the stability of hypertime.
- Happens in the backstory of Reflets d\'Acide when the Demon Lord Belial shew up for the first time. His arrival resulted in Evil Overlord Alkor joining force with King Mage Maender, presumably for this reason. Notably, it seems the alliance actually survives after Belial was defeated.
Western Animation
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