Kill Em All - Television Tropes & Idioms

there should be more comics in which everybody dies

Alt Text for Dinosaur Comics #300

When the "Anyone Can" in Anyone Can Die becomes "Everyone Will".

Many series are noteworthy for the extremely high body count among the main cast that they rack up in their last few episodes. In some cases, all of the heroes make a Heroic Sacrifice, or otherwise find themselves wearing the Red Shirt. Occasionally, the protagonists simply fail to prevent The End Of The World As We Know It, resulting in a Downer Ending.

Compare the Battle Royale With Cheese, but hold the cheese. Also compare the Bolivian Army Ending, only we actually see the attack of the Bolivian Army. Inverted in Everybodys Dead Dave, where everybody except the main characters are dead.

Usually, however, either they accomplish something in death, or it becomes clear that likeable as they may be, the world is better off without them. If neither happens, and they prove completely ineffectual in both life and death, it's a Shoot The Shaggy Dog.

A short historical digression: the words "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" (Latin: "Kill them all. God will know his own," popularly rendered as, "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.") are attributed

to Abbot Arnold Amaury before the massacre of Béziers during the Albigensian Crusade.

You know the drill. This is a death trope. Spoiler city ahead. The funny thing about this particular trope, however, is that knowing that everyone dies is somehow much less spoiler-ish than knowing that, say, only your favorite one does. The wonders of perception...

Examples:

Anime

Space Runaway Ideon is the all-time heavyweight champion of this. The entire cast (including children! poor Ashura) die bloody and gruesome deaths, culminating in the complete destruction of the entire universe and everyone in it. Between this series and its predecessor Zambot 3, creator Yoshiyuki Tomino actually earned the nickname "Kill 'Em All Tomino".
- The ending to Space Runaway Ideon was so despressing, that even Tomino himself wonders how he came up with it.
- Enough so that Soukou No Strain, whose directing team worked with Tomino, ended up being a subversion. It began as an Everybodys Dead Dave and ended that way, but just about everybody expected Sara and her cohorts to drop off.
- Also Aura Battler Dunbine sees one character survive, a sylph by the name of Cham Fao, who Tomino seemed to have a soft spot for. Everyone else went down in flames and explosions, taking most of Earth and Byston Well with them.
  - And even that they tried to push, as it was mentioned that she was never seen again.
- Many of the Gundam series directed by Tomino also have high death counts, Zeta Gundam and Victory Gundam in particular.
  - The ironic thing about the Gundam series though is that Tomino's stated reason for his Kill Em All tendencies was to discourage sequels.
- Though Tomino is not involved with Gundam 00, the latter half of the first season (especially episode 24) has seen a massive die off of both main and named characters.
  - Likewise, the finale of Gundam SEED, while leaving nearly all the main heroes safe, killed off the majority of the supporting cast, and the only survivor among the antagonists was via a last-minute defection to the good guys. Unfortunately, the most blatantly obvious death (and the most moving one at that) got eliminated via Retcon in the sequel, with no explanation ever given.
At the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion (whose author has cited Ideon as a strong influence), either zero or two people in the entire world haven't been melted down into dreaming goo (depending on which ending you watch), and much of the main cast has died in the interim. This is a slight subversion, as it was stated that they can return to coming back in a form that isn't dreaming goo.
The SDF-1 and its entire crew are wiped out at the end of the first third of Robotech. (In the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, however, everyone is fine...which makes this the rare Macekre that ups the death count.)
The entire town of Hinamizawa is wiped out in one of the continuities in Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni (several, actually), and most of the main characters die -- generally in horrible and bloody ways -- in the other continuities as well.
- Subverted in Matsuribayashi-hen. It says a lot about the series that not killing everyone could be considered a subversion rather than just an aversion.
Genesis Climber Mospeada pulls this in its first episode. The one character who survives becomes protagonist by default.
In Dragonball Z, the villain Super Buu has an attack dubbed "Human Extinction", that does exactly as the name implies. To add to that, anyone who isn't killed by this attack he kills personally (by turning them into candy, no less). Then he blows up the Earth. Then, he turns to the rest of the universe, and eventually makes his way to the afterlife, and starts destroying stuff there. This is one of the rare cases where the heroes have a Reset Button -- which itself becomes a plot point, as the surviving secondary cast rushes to find it before it becomes too late for everyone.
The end of the second season of Monster Rancher kills all of the mons off. There is a third season where they come Back From The Dead; it was never released in the US.
Most of the cast of Fushigi Yuugi died through the course of the series. This was, however, undone in the OVAs.
Staying true to the original Shichinin no Samurai, by the end of Samurai 7, Gorobei, Kyuzo, Kikuchyo, and Heihachi have all died in battle, leaving only three of the original seven.
- Naturally, this is also true of its Western remake The Magnificent Seven.
In Sailor Moon, every secondary heroine sacrifices her own life to allow the title character to press on toward the Final Showdown. Twice.
- In the manga, they die EVERY ARC...some more pointlessly than others.
Bokurano makes a valiant attempt to out-Tomino Tomino himself. Early on, the children discover that even if they win their battles, they're guaranteed to die. Only later is it revealed that for every battle they win, an entire Alternate Universe is destroyed. Which they are, on occasion, forced to watch by their Robot Buddy.
Wolfs Rain, after much complaint that its 26-episode run had no clear "resolution" in the final episode, made four (yes, Four) new ones... in which every character dies, one at a time. While the world dies. And then the world is born again. And everyone is apparently reincarnated a really long time later... possibly in the modern day. Though what good being reincarnated as an actual flower is, who knows.
Chrono Crusade fell victim to this. In fact, the only major character that wasn't either permanently killed off or otherwise rendered ineffective was the Big Bad. Downer Ending, indeed.
- Luckily, this is only true of the anime. The manga has most of the cast surviving in the end (some even into the 1990s!)
Dai Mahou Touge features "Kill Them All" as the invocation activating the lead Magical Girl's powers... Mayhem ensues, as you may imagine.
Berserk closes the "Band of the Hawk" arc by killing every major character but four: Guts, Casca, Griffith (who has turned evil anyway), and one other member of the Band who had the good luck not to be there when things went to pot. The entire world of the series seems to be heading that way, as well.
Hellsing, while not over yet, is definitely veering in this direction. As of the latest chapter, only Integra, Seras, possibly Walter and Heinkel, Islands, and the Major (who's a freaking robot) are still kicking out of the named cast, and there's a high probability of more killing. Millennium, Iscariot, and likely the Wild Geese have all been destroyed, the Hellsing organization is just barely hanging on, Islands is planning to bomb the area into oblivion to end the mess, and, oh yeah, the entire population of London has been completely decimated.
Death Note: All but two of the main characters have been killed off: Matsuda and Near, unless you count the SPK.

Comic Books

Pride of Baghdad ends with all four protagonists being gunned down by American soldiers without even achieving the freedom that they'd been dreaming of.
Coheed and Cambria: The Amory Wars - The Second Stage Turbine Blade. Not only do Coheed and Cambria get tricked into brutally murdering their own children, they also die mostly because Cambria destroys a spaceship's engine in a fit of rage. Secondary characters also die in a failed coup, by the truckload. And that's just one of the chapters in the story!
The Alternate Continuity story "The Punisher Kills The marvel Universe" is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.

Theatre

There's an anomymous quote summarizing the work of Shakespeare as "Shakespeare's tragedies: They all die. Shakespeare's comedies: Half of them die, and the other half crossdress."
- Case in point: Titus Andronicus, where the only two major characters left alive when the play ends are Lucas and Card Carrying Villain Aaron. And he's being taken off to his execution.
- Another one: Hamlet. Everyone dies except Horatio.
Götterdämmerung, the final play in Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, culminates with Siegfried's death prompting Brünnhilde to make a Heroic Sacrifice that burns down Valhalla with all the gods inside.
In Sweeney Todd, all but Toby, Anthony, and Joanna wind up dead. The original Broadway performance suggests that Toby is left seriously mentally disturbed as well.

Live Action TV

Blakes Seven
The Black Adder ended with all but two of the main characters dying from drinking poison as a result of a convoluted power struggle. Later seasons of the The Black Adder also tended to end with the wiping out of all or most of the cast. This was played for morbid laughs in Blackadder II and Blackadder the Third, and anything but in Blackadder Goes Forth.
The Dinosaurs finale, "Changing Nature," had the dinosaurs in the process of going extinct due to environmental catastrophe brought about by the actions of the WESAYSO Corporation. A very bleak ending to a generally light-hearted show.
Mortal Kombat: Konquest. Reportedly, there was supposed to be a second season, which either undid some of the deaths, or continued with a new crew, but the series was canceled, and thus finished with a Downer Ending.
Cold Case dealt with a mall shooting where the perps killed and maimed more than 15 people before offing themselves. After further investigation, it's learned that one of the survivors helped motivate them into the shooting, thinking they'd just take out the jerks who tried to rape her earlier that day, only to have this revenge plan backfire when she realized they were unstable enough to go after people at random. The survivor eventually tried to off herself, as well, thus fulfilling the trope in spades.
The Young Ones ends with the four main characters dying in a bus crash. Granted, they died just about every episode, but we're to assume this one sticks.
- Also, Vyvyan's hampster and their landlord both died in the same episode, under different circumstances. (Although the landlord was eaten by lions in the previous season, oddly enough.)
British soap opera Dream Team took this to insane lengths: 37 deaths of (mostly) main characters over its run, which considering the show is set at a relatively normal soccer (football) team is quite some achievement.
Six Feet Under features a doozy of an finale, as the audience finds out how every main character died: Ruth, David and Federico die of natural causes, Keith is shot to death as he exits a security van, Brenda is literally 'talked' to death by her brother, and Claire dies at the age of 102.
V: The Series had numerous secondary characters being killed off during the series, including resistance fighters who had been present since the original miniseries (not to mention other long-term characters simply leaving, never to be seen again). At the end, the viewer is left to infer that resistance member Robin's child, Elizabeth (a.k.a. "The Star Child") and her boyfriend were killed when they boarded a transport with a hidden bomb on it.
Doctor Who episode The Fires of Pompeii. And what's worse, the Doctor makes it happen.
- And don't forget the classic series The Caves of Androzani where all but two characters die - Peri and the villain's secretary. Even the Doctor dies, well, kind of.
- Killing ridiculous numbers of people is standard fair for Doctor Who, but it is almost guaranteed everytime the Daleks make an appearance, with Genesis of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Parting of the Ways and The Dalek's Master Plan (among others) all ending with obscenely high body counts of both major and secondary characters. They aren't Space Nazis for nothing.
  - In Evolution of the Daleks, the Dalekified humans have some of the Doctor's DNA and become able to question orders... so the Daleks wipe out the whole batch, untold hundreds.
- Not to mention Logopolis in which approximately a tenth of the universe gets destroyed. By accident.
- In the part two of the third season finale, The Master has the Toclafane wipe out a full tenth of Earth's population. (It gets better, though.
This is how the Fear Itself episode Eater ends: Everyone, and I mean everyone, is dead.

Movies

The movie Children Of Men leaves only one main character standing at its conclusion.
The last few scenes of the movie The Departed ends up with every main character but one getting shot by each other -- then the very last scene has that final main character getting shot by the other main character's boss.
This editor made the mistake of trying to introduce her friends to Mystery Science Theater 3000 during a week when the movie, Sidehackers was being shown. It was a brutal, gritty biker film in which every character (including the hero's extremely likable love interest, who's death they had to cut out of the aired version and have Crow explain) was violently slaughtered. The hero himself was gunned down by the fatally wounded villain whilst walking away from a Mexican Standoff. Needless to say, the editor's friends did not become fans of the show. Sidehackers incidentally, was the movie which prompted Best Brains to institute their policy of watching a movie the whole way through before selecting it for their show.
- The very next episode, Rocketship X-M, features a bunch of people going on trip to the moon, but ending up on Mars. They are able to find about people that are horribly mutated from a war and on the way back, and only have enough time tell the people of Earth about this, before a leak makes them run out of gas on the way home and they are unable to land. As Crow put it "There's nothing more depressing then being stuck in a spaceship, watching people die in a spaceship."
Beneath the Planet Of The Apes ends with pretty much the entire cast getting shot. And then Charlton Heston's dying act is to trigger a gigantic nuke that destroys the entire planet. They still managed three more films, though.
Transformers: The Movie killed off most of the first generation of Transformers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, in order to facilitate the introduction of the new toy line.
At the end of Saving Private Ryan, out of the original squad sent to find Ryan as well as the entire paratrooper force defending the town of Ramelle, only two members of the original squad and Ryan himself survive when Allied reinforcements finally arrive.
In the Village Of The Damned remake movie with Christopher Reeve, only the teacher girl and her kid (the only alien child who had more or less normal emotions) survive. Everyone else in town is dead.
- A subversion of the original story (The Midwich Cuckoos and the original Village of the Damned movie) in which none of the kids had human emotions. They all died along with the teacher responsible for their deaths, but almost everybody else survived.)
Scarface ends with Tony and crew dead and the drug lord who ordered the film-ending attack still alive. Fortunately or not, we don't get to see his presumable satisfaction with this.
Those who do not die onscreen in the cult French Resistance movie Army of Shadows are killed off in the prologue screen titles.
The Wild Bunch. Good guys. Bad guys. Worse Guys. Bystanders. Livestock. Only two named characters are still drawing breath as the closing credits roll.
In The Fall, Roy almost ends his story this way, much to Alexandria's horror. Only her confession of love convinces him to allow their avatars to live.
In the Saw franchise, there isn't a single character who survived all four movies.

Machinima

In a huge "sorta", the Red vs. Blue series has several main characters apparently die when a bomb in their ship is set off; stress on the "apparently". Confusing the issue, one of the characters had already died previously and comeback as a ghost that started living in a robot. In one of the three endings, this causes everyone to go into an all out battle with everyone dying quickly, while all yelling the last words, "Son of a bitch!", except for Sarge, who is shot non fatally. When he is shot fatally a few seconds later, he yells "Son of a bitch again!"

Literature

In Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy, any character with a name had a fifty-fifty chance of making it out of book 3 alive. There were more deaths than in the previous two books combined--and the second book took place during a war.
Two words: ''Mostly Harmless''. At the end, most of the main characters and all possible Earths are completely obliterated from all possible timelines. Permanently. (The only possible survivor is a character who stepped into a teleporter in a previous book and wasn't seen again.) And then, to make it even worse, the author died.
A Song Of Ice And Fire ~~looks to be heading this way as well~~ UPDATE: has been going this way at full speed since A Storm of Swords, and it's not like the first two books lacked corpses either.
Noticeably averted in House Of Leaves. I say "noticeably" because in the photograph insert after the cover, there is a typed note in the middle of the mess, detailing the author's desire to kill off Will Navidson's children in brutal ways. "They should drown in blood" was the particular phrase if this troper remembers right.
Todd McCaffery's Dragonriders Of Pern books have, thus far featured exploding mine holds, a plague that nearly wiped out the entire dragon population, and almost an entire Weyr taken out in one swoop by a bad jump between.
Battle Royale. Of course, everyone dying is pretty much the premise of the book. In fact, in the end, one more survives than was supposed to...
This troper is actually suprised H.P Lovecraft never pulled this off. Probably because he always presented his stories in a semi-realistic manner, so ending it with "then everybody died" when the world is, very clearly, not dead, would kinda ruin the setting. Instead he had lots of "everybody WILL die. And there's nothing we can do about it".
Somewhat subverted in the final Narnia book, in which all nearly the characters from our world appear, having died there in a train accident. They get a happy ending, while much fan consternation is caused by the fate of Susan, who is "no longer a friend of Narnia", and survives.

Videogames

Drakengard's fourth ending does this to all the main characters. Hell, even all the supporting characters are gone. Then again, what else could have happened?
Call Of Duty 4 has one of the main characters as well as his entire squad (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. AND even he could be dead also at the exact end?
- No, Soap survives. Someone at Infinity Ward confirmed it...somewhere. Everyone else, though, dead. Except maybe Price, but since he's not exactly reviving the last time you look at him, it's a pretty sure bet that Soap is the only survivor. Barely.
  - Also note that Soap's last objective, "Survive the escape", is marked as completed before he passes out.
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.
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.
The Base Defense missions in the middle-late portions of Marathon II: Durandal have the player scouring a friendly base from evil clones of the friendlies. How to tell them apart (except that clones explode when approached)? Well, the first such mission is called God Will Sort the Dead. Yes, it's a very viable strategy, and on the Xbox 360 port, it's actually necessary for One Hundred Percent Completion.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Rocks Fall Everyone Dies.
- Not quite, according to the Expansion Pack. Apart from the player character, Amon Jerro somehow survives ends up in the Soulless Ward of the Academy of Binders. Retrieving his soul and talking to him reveals that Kelgar, Sand, and Neeshka may have also escaped the collapse. One ending comfirms the first two survivors.
The bad ending of Persona 3 has this happen to SEES, as well as about six billion-plus extras.
The promptly named Armageddon Ending in Live A Live. The worst part is that YOU'RE PLAYING AS THE BOSSES, IT'S YOU WHO GIVE OUT THE COMMAND AND TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE ENDING YOU MUST LET THE HEROES BEAT YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR HIT POINTS, SO YOU MUST DELIBERATELY SEARCH FOR SUCH ENDING. You sick filthy bastard.

TabletopGames

See Rocks Fall Everyone Dies.
Warhammer 40000. Kill Em All doesn't begin to describe it.

WebComics

In Nobody Scores, the main characters have a low chance of surviving any single comic. As the author puts it, each scenario is a “more or less intricate machin[e], the end result of which is always failure”.
College Roomies From Hell seems to be heading in this direction - with Mike murdered by April and Marsha gunned down by Mike's mother to keep her from killing April... before she could.

Web Original

Once you get past the complex behind-the-scenes plot and rich, well developed characters, this is ultimately what Survival Of The Fittest is all about. Once the smoke has cleared only one of any batch of students will still be alive. Some handlers have mentioned feeling a sense of dread during pregames because of this Foregone Conclusion.

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