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Person Of Mass Destruction
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I'm a walking nightmare, an arsenal of doom I kill conversation as I walk into the room I'm a three line whip, I'm the sort of thing they ban I'm a walking disaster, I'm a demolition man
- The Police, "Demolition Man"
From the other side a terror to behold Annihilation will be unavoidable Every broken enemy will know That their opponent had to be invincible Take a last look around while you're alive I'm an indestructible master of war
So you've got a force capable of destroying vast amounts of people, land, and possibly the universe, and essentially have the ability to commit a war crime with the wave of a hand. It's just what any super villain or Omnicidal Maniac could possibly want, and then some. There's just one catch...
It's contained by the most unstable thing in the universe. A person.
Uh oh.
A Speculative Fiction trope dating at least to World War II and the Hiroshima disaster (possibly even earlier), the Person Of Mass Destruction is almost always a metaphor for real-world weapons — either subtly, not subtly or somewhere in between. Often the result of trying to create a Super Soldier. Almost always comes with an Aesop about the dangers of letting the metaphorical genie out of the bottle or to convey a Science Is Bad message. Especially if female, the Person Of Mass Destruction is very likely to turn into The Woobie or suffer a Super Power Meltdown at some point.
You'd think their own side would take this into account and at least try to make things easier; on the logic that one would want to be on the good side of a weapon capable of saving or destroying them, but curiously this is not the case. No, people who resort to using a Person Of Mass Destruction usually treat them like crap and go Bullying A Dragon. It's possible that that this indicates that they are shamed for having to resort to this, and are displacing this into abuse. Or maybe it just never occurs to them that they would benefit from having good relations with the person that can either save them all or kill them all instantly. On the other hand, the prerequisite megalomania to build or exploit such a person, as well as the ego to assume that one can control it, tends to mean that the people controlling (or trying to control) the PMD are of the sort that isn't particularly concerned with their personal well being. Nice people tend not to have uses for tools of unimaginable destructive force, after all.
If they're a main or recurring character, a common plotline for them will be trying to avoid Bad Powers Bad People, or coming to realize that they're better off leaving the planet; either by realizing A God Am I and turning into an Energy Being or, more tragically, committing suicide. If they didn't start so overpowering, they may give up their powers or lose them in some other fashion.
Likely overlaps with Weapon Of Mass Destruction and Walking Disaster Area. Omnicidal Maniacs themselves often have such powers (hence why they're capable of being Omnicidal Maniacs) but tend to take a more... pro-active approach in using their abilities than normal examples of this trope. Compare and contrast One Man Army, where the character in question is usually not imbued with incredible powers but nevertheless gains an impressive kill-count.
Examples:
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- The Incredible Hulk is one of the earliest examples.
- As is his DC Comics pastiche Goraiko, who is of Japanese origin and even has an attack shaped like a mushroom cloud.
- Superman has gotten this treatment in several instances, often when under Mind Control.
- Notably in The Dark Knight Returns, where “Ronnie” tells the American people not to worry about rising tensions with the Soviet Union because God is on their side, or (wink) the next best thing anyhow.
- Doctor Manhattan of Watchmen is one of the most blatant examples, having been turned from a career of watchmaking to study nuclear physics by his father and given God-like powers thanks to a nuclear accident.
- The original 1940s All-Star Comics had a story where the Justice Society Of America started fighting in the war, logical issues aside. This was Ret Conned to be a hallucination to which they were subjected when captured by psychic supervillain Brain Wave. Green Lantern was shown horrified at the destruction he had caused in order to defeat the Japanese, uttering the line "I have become death, destroyer of worlds," a quote known for its use by Robert Oppenheimer (originally quoted, incorrectly, from the Bhagavad Gita) after the first deployment of the atom bomb.
- This was taken further in the Elseworld story The Golden Age, in which Green Lantern witnesses the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, realizing that his power is on par with the atom bomb, puts his ring away and retires in the belief that no human deserves to wield such power. His reluctant return at the end of the story to combat the archvillain is his shining moment, and one of the few times in or out of continuity we truly see how much Alan Scott means to The DCU.
- Flare stories, online since the fourth quarter of 2007, feature Marian Press, a literal "Blonde Bombshell".
- The Wildstorm universe actually uses the trope name as one of several generic terms for superhumans — and with The Authority around, who can blame them?
- The Authority is, after all, a team where one single member freezes a whole country (on a different world, mind you) in time for a second, effectively teleporting the entire landmass and everyone and everything on it into space. Then they go kill the thing that accidentally put life on Earth in the first place, and is almost as big as the planet itself.
- In the Marvel Universe, Black Bolt
of the Inhumans, whose voice is so powerful that a shout could awaken volcanoes and cause earthquakes on the other side of the planet. His birth cries devastated a city. He fears his own powers so much that he's taken a lifelong vow of silence...but when he declares war, he really declares "War."
- In the "War Of Kings" storyline he and the Inhumans do go to war against the Shi'ar and their evil emperor Vulcan (aka Gabriel Summers), who is also a Person Of Mass Destruction and a Complete Monster to boot. What happens when two of these forces collide? Both are apparently dead by the end of the story.
- In the House Of M storyline in the Marvel Universe, Scarlet Witch ends up becoming one of these when her proclamation of "No more mutants" causes Decimation.
- The term is used in reference to the Ultimates in the first issue of Ultimates 2, after Captain America single-handedly frees hostages in the Middle East; the world is worried that the US government might start using the Ultimates in politically-motivated conflicts. Gee, ya think?
- Jean Grey, in any incarnation when she takes on the codename Phoenix. In the original Dark Phoenix storyline, Jean destroyed a star, snuffing out the billions of lives on an orbiting planet. In the end of that story, she realized what she would become and chose the more tragic option of committing suicide.
- While rarely portrayed as dangerous, Franklin Richards, son of Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Woman, has occasionally exhibited nearly omnipotent reality bending powers. He even created a universe.
- DC's Spectre. The Wrath of God, Old Testament-style. Destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Annihilated an entire country. And sank modern-day Atlantis.
- Kingdom Come has Captain Atom's protective armor torn off, releasing enough radioactive fallout to sterilize several midwestern states.
- At the beginning of the Marvel Universe Secret Wars, the Beyonder destroyed an entire galaxy just to create the Battleworld. It was later stated that he could destroy the entire universe if he wanted to.
- In Supreme Power, Marvel's Alternate Company Equivalent and Deconstruction of the Justice League, when Mark Milton aka Hyperion (Superman- expy) learns that his whole life has been controlled by the United States government, the head of the project discuss what an angry high-powered Flying Brick could do. To adequately describe the casualty rate that Mark can inflict from THE ATTACK ALONE (not factoring in all the deaths from various infrastructure failures that result from the attack and cut-off supply lines making aid impossible) one researcher uses the term "Mega-deaths". At one point, he is traced by the Richter Scale vibrations he causes with his attacks! They are very graphic in the images as well.
- Depending on the author, Jack of Hearts from the Marvel Universe has been considered this. His powers came from every cell of his body being infused with an experimental power substance called "Zero fluid." Without his suit, designed to channel and control the energy he generates, he would effectively turn into a small sun. (He has been ret conned enough that this is probably no longer canon. Also he's dead now.)
- Max, from Sam And Max, has been called the most violent force in the universe by the Season 1 Big Bad.
- X-Men favorite Gambit always seemed to have an okay power, nothing too special, then he met one of his alternate universe counterparts New Sun, and, well, lets just say that is a VERY apt name.
- Magneto, although it sometimes depends on who's writing the stories. When his powers are used less imaginatively he could threaten you with silverware, but on the occasions when he's shown to control the electromagnetic spectrum, he's capable of wrecking entire cities.
- Marvel's Civil War was kicked off when Nitro, previously a C-List villain whose power was to "explode" detonated with the force of a pocket nuke. This leveled a small town and brought the attention and ire of the general public down on the heads of superheroes everywhere. (Amazingly enough, at no point in the Civil War storyline did anyone ever utter the line "Its all Nitro's fault". So Yeah.)
Fan Fiction
- The Unexpected
Results series (a Trinity Blood fan fic) has Johanna Sinclair, a character with time manipulation abilities that can trigger what is referred to as 'temporal whiplash', with the effect varying according to the age of the victim. In the case of a human it'll have a similar effect to an electric shock and usually knocks them out. When used on a vampire the result is akin to a bomb going off and it is theorized that using it against anything older then a vampire (i.e. a Crusnik) would be like setting off a nuke. This puts her in the rather difficult position of being theoretically capable of taking out the Big Bad but not without a hell of a lot of collateral damage.
- Shinji in Shinji And Warhammer 40 K, due in part to the ever-increasing scale of the battles with the Angels, usually ends up destroying much of Tokyo-3 in his efforts to save it, to his considerable chagrin. After a leave of absence, the fact that surprise reinforcements cause so much devastation tips off the defenders that he's returned. There's also a time when whatever ability lets him sync with an Eva get flipped inside out, briefly giving him the power to "crack the planet in half," but he spends a whole story arc trying to fix it.
- Deep Sleep
a Heroes fanfic has Peter and Sylar battle (fully utilizing their powers) and inadvertently shattering continents, leaving the west half of the Americas a smoking wasteland, killing millions, and bringing about a very Bad Future.
- Mark Westion in Yukari Is Free [1]
(an Azumanga Daioh Mega-Crossover) possesses the power to fire giant lasers. At one point in the story, he fires one so big it accidentally destroys a planet. His girlfriend then hits him in the face with a baseball bat.
- The villain Nuclear Man from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was supposed to be an Anvilicious statement about nukes... until it was shown that he was actually solar powered, making him possibly the greenest super villain in existence. Ouch.
- Aurora/Marie Zorn in Babylon A.D. is believed to be a viral weapon at first. In the book "Babylon Babies" another woman is used in this fashion — when she comes into proximity with the pheromones of her target, her body rapidly creates a virus that kills several hundred people in minutes, wiping out the upper echelons of the Neolite sect.
- Neo in The Matrix. I assume that's not a spoiler.
- Paul Atreides, especially in the David Lynch version of Dune, is capable of calling gigantic sandworms, using the voice and using sonic weapons without the weirding module.
- Anyone in Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time that can channel the One Power. Three thousand years before the books start the male channelers going insane resulted in continents being reshaped and set humanity back thousand of years. Lews Therin's suicide alone reared up a large volcano. The less powerful damane and Aes Sedai of the current age can be compared to bringing tanks into a medieval conflict when on the battlefield. The Asha'man are worse. And then there's the pair of devices that are powerful enough to let a single man and woman working together break the world all on their own, or challenge God.
- The supposed potential to challenge God (or The Other Guy) is one woman's opinion. The potential to "crack the world like an egg," on the other hand, is a physical feat and thus more likely to be an accurate appraisal.
- Not everyone who can channel the One Power counts as this. Channelers come in a variety of power levels, and although someone of moderate strength could probably kill a small army if they really put their mind to it, the sliding scale dips very low, as with Morgase.
- In Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, one antisocial character, Raven, connected himself through a Dead Man Switch to a literal nuclear bomb and claimed individual sovereignty. The Aesop appears to be about the elasticity of sovereignty rather than the perils of nukes.
- Mind you, Raven is a very obvious parody of the type of Badass characters often found in Cyber Punk fiction. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, hangs a big lampshade on him.
- Kurt Vonnegut's 1950 short story Report on the Barnhouse Effect is about Professor Arthur Barnhouse who develops the ability to affect physical objects and events through the force of his mind. He becomes the first Weapon Of Mass Destruction with a conscience.
- In Charles Sheffield's novel Dark As Day, one character has a bloodstream full of nanodevices that, if dropped into a gas giant, would cause the planet to collapse and release a burst of energy sufficient to wipe out civilization... and an obsessive fascination with the kind of turbulent weather patterns gas giants are full of.
- Obligatory Stephen King reference: Firestarter.
- Also (arguably) Carrie. She did total an entire town, as an adolescent who had only recently gained her powers on any sort of reliable basis. She very likely would have gotten a lot stronger if she'd survived.
- Melantha Green from Timothy Zahn's The Green and the Gray. It's implied that her earthquake-causing powers could level New York City if the Green/Grey rivalry ever escalated to full-on war.
- Any Sourcerors from Discworld. Coin from Sourcery almost led to the end of the Disc as we know it—and in fact, did, temporarily. He had so much power he was effectively able to fix things up afterwards.
- Any sufficiently powerful magic user in L.E. Modesitt's fantasy novels will have the capability to become one of these, and will usually end up killing large numbers of people no matter how much they wish they didn't have to.
- In Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series Covenant is one of these through his partial control of wild magic. In the Second Chronicles the Big Bad'saim is to force Covenant to surrender not by making him weaker but by making him so powerful he can't use his power without risking all of reality.
- The Freehold Black Ops in Mike Z. Williamson's The Weapon fit this trope because of their Spartan Way training. Instead of special powers, it's a matter of being ruthless, creative, and cross-trained to the point of being Crazy Prepared.
- Some Adept-level mages in the Heralds Of Valdemar books have power of this magnitude - Vanyel is said to be capable of destroying a fair-sized city, and indeed does go kaboom in a fairly spectactular manner in his final Heroic Sacrifice. Occasionally, even "ordinary" Heralds can get fairly destructive, especially Lavan Firestorm who essentially outdoes Vanyel's feat with mind-magic alone.
- In the Mage Wars prequels, the combined detonation of the accumulated magical power of two opposing Mage Lords set off the Cataclysm whose effects are still felt thousands of years later. (The large, almost perfectly circular inland sea on Valdemar's border? The equally circular, considerably larger grassland some kingdoms to the south? Those were the least important.)
- Flinx, of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series, is something of a walking psychic time bomb, as he has a tendency to erupt in massive, uncontrolled telekinetic detonations when severely provoked. These are invariably highly destructive to his immediate surroundings, albeit not quite at the city/planet level. Ironically, this ability may turn out to be the key to saving the universe.
- The canonical example from the early Perry Rhodan universe would be Ivan Ivanovich Gorachin — a Russian-born mutant best remembered for having two heads (with separate personalities) and the ability to cause nuclear explosions at will so long as he had targets containing carbon or calcium to work on. (Like, say, humans. Fortunately for the good guys his Heel Face Turn followed shortly after his introduction.)
- Jame from Chronicles Of The Kencyrath is already this to a degree, although she tends to be more of the spark that lights the powder-keg. It looks, though, like she's destined to be Nemesis, the avatar of the Destruction aspect of her God, and that's quite some mass destruction indeed.
- Aside from the obligatory demons, vampires and such, the German horror/fantasy/SF pulp series Professor Zamorra features a recurring species of near-human aliens, the so-called 'Eternals'. (Who did, of course, try to invade Earth at least once before.) Aside from having the obligatory advanced technology, much of their personal power comes from magical crystals known as Dhyarras, which come in distinct numbered power levels; social rank is determined largely by the ability to control the more powerful ones (with failure to do so generally resulting in insanity or death). Crystals of the highest (13th) order, only one of which is technically supposed to exist at a time because it doubles as the symbol of authority of the Dynasty's absolute leader, are explicitly stated to be powerful enough to destroy entire planets.
- Goddamn Carnival of the Deepgate Codex books.
- Some characters from the Nightside novels qualify, such as Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, who even became The Woobie after John Taylor gave her teddy bear back to her.
- She can erase you from reality by ceasing to believe in your existence.
- On a small scale, Markie from Little Myth Marker may qualify, given her penchant for throwing magic-enhanced temper tantrums. Sure, she doesn't trash cities or planets, but destroying an entire store is pretty Mass Destruction for a toddler. Subverted in that she was faking both her age and her loss of control.
- The Archive from The Dresden Files. Even putting aside that she knows the nuclear launch codes for every country on the planet, Ivy's ten years old and capable of holding off 8 fallen angels at once, with almost no resources, without breaking a sweat. But what else do you expect from the repository of all human knowledge?
- Ebenezar McCoy once pulled a disused Soviet satellite out of orbit and dropped it on someone, and he's the weakest member of the Senior Council. Guess that's where Harry got his tendency to burn down buildings...
- Harry Dresden himself gets pretty close to this. He's capable of throwing a giant demonic werewolf across a city block with no preparation. When faced with the start of a Zombie Apocalypse, he responds by making his own zombie out of something much bigger than people, which stomps on National Guard trucks as an afterthought. When he goes to rescue someone from faerieland and encounters more resistance than he expected, he sets the whole place on fire.
- In something of a subversion, Harry Potter is harassed by his non-magical relatives who walk a fine line between their own perceived power over him and his ability (and their knowledge of his ability) to cause them magical damage.
- In Simon R. Green's Deathstalker series the protagonist at one point seeks out an artifact used by his ancestor, the Darkvoid Device. To Owen's surprise, the Device is not some alien artifact but rather an infant. Placed in suspended animation at the center of the Madness Maze, it had absorbed so much power that the one time it awoke it had created the Darkvoid, a region of space where hundreds of stars had simply been extinguished.
- Any of the High Lords from the Codex Alera will absolutely destroy you, since they're incredibly powerful crafters with control over all six elements. But especially the First Lord; Gaius Sextus wiped out two entire legions worth of brainwashed Super Soldiers by himself without slowing down.
- Ted's power on Heroes was nuclear based, and despite the fears that he'd use those powers to detonate New York, turns out it wasn't Ted they had to worry about...
- The 4400 has a returnee who was a non-nuclear example.
- Doctor Who had the Empty Child: "There isn't a little boy born who wouldn't tear the world apart to save his mummy. And this little boy can."
- The Doctor himself qualifies sometimes, well capable of entirely wiping out two ancient, all-mighty races at the same time when he really gets to it.
- I think the best example in Who would be Rose Tyler in "Parting of the Ways", when she aborbs the vortex and is turned into an all powerful living god who proceeds to wipe out the entire Dalek race with a thought, bring people back from the dead and generally do anything she wants.
- At one point Crichton of Farscape winds up wearing a nuclear bomb with a few dozen kinds of dead-man's switches. He's not happy about it. "Hi... Honey. Huh. Guess what I did at work today? I wore a bomb. A nuclear bomb in a field of flowers. I could get lucky. Tomorrow I could have a bigger bomb. I could kill... more people. Maybe they'll be innocent people. Children... maybe." And this is to say nothing of his wormhole knowledge.
- Several telepaths in Babylon 5 fit this trope, most notably Jason Ironheart, Talia Winters (thanks to the former) and Lyta Alexander (after being Touched By Vorlons).
Lyta: You know the Vorlons used telepaths as weapons during the Shadow War, but what no one stopped to consider was that, in a war, you have a certain number of small weapons, a certain number of medium weapons, and one or two big ones. The kind of weapons you drop when you are out of small weapons and medium weapons and you've got nothing left to use.
Garibaldi: Someone like that would be the telepathic equivalent of a thermonuclear device. A doomsday weapon.
Lyta: *eyes start to glow* Pleased to meet you, Mr Garibaldi.
- In an another episode, she demonstrates those powers by mind-controlling everyone in the room, and it's implied that she could do that to an entire planet.
- Star Trek Voyager ("Child's Play"). Icheb has been genetically engineered to pass on an infection that will destroy Borg cubes when he is assimilated (this causes problems when Voyager returns the youth to what they assume will be his doting parents). When you think that the average cube has a crew of ten of thousands of drones and can destroy a Federation battlefleet, this is pretty damned impressive.
- By the end of season seven of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Willow is pretty damn near this level.
- By the end of season six she is one of these. Even if she was empowered by draining other people's magic, this is someone capable of destroying the world on a few minutes notice.
- Aside from having been an Eldritch Abomination, Illyria in Angel goes through an unstable phase after taking on human form. Had her powers gone critical, she'd have taken out (at minimum) Los Angeles, and possibly the entire continental shelf.
Spike: So what kind of damage are we lookin' at if Illyria Chernobyls on us?
Wesley: Conservative guess, several city blocks.
Angel: And what about unconservative?
Wesley: Rand and McNally will have to redraw their maps.
- Sam Carter blew up a sun.
- In Bleach, all the Captains and Vice-Captains of the shinigami have 80% of their energy sealed away when in the real world without special permission to release all of it. Guess why.
- During the Karakura Town Attack arc, Shinigami scientists had to find a way to teleport the whole town into another dimension, because otherwise it would be for sure destroyed by the power of captains and Espada fighting all over the place. And it almost failed.
- Ulquiorra's Segunda Resurrecion Etapa and Hollow Ichigo's full power form in chapters 347 to 352, are probably the biggest (and most explosive) examples so far.
- Barragan before his death in his Resurrecion form counts as this. Starrk is most likely this, stating to be able to fire 1000 ceros at once in his Resurrecion form, and Wonderweiss is probably greater still.
- One of the best-known examples is eponymous Akira and his fellow Numbers, complete with an opening scene of a mushroom cloud destroying Tokyo. And that's just in the first thirty seconds. The ultimate example is probably Akira's successor, Tetsuo, proving that the Japanese government didn't learn a blessed thing the first time around.
- Hayate of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS demonstrates personal offensive magic on the scale of a small nuclear device, complete with evacuation warnings and authorisation requirements to release her limiters for combat. Due to the way she received her magic, "sub-nuclear explosion" is in fact the only way she can use it. Nanoha, Fate, Signum, and Vita qualify to a lesser extent, also requiring Power Limiters. They are all treated with enormous amounts of respect.
- When the character Caro was discovered by her village to be an insanely powerful dragon-summoner, she was shunned. Even some members of the TSAB suggested she would only be useful as a weapon. Fortunately the above people thought this idea was stupid.
- And Nanoha herself is not called White Devil without reason. In doujinshi, especially, she (or her device) is very prone to unleashing destruction anywhere, anytime.
- There's also the kings of Ancient Belka, who sacrificed their bodies to become living weapons of mass destruction that could lead their people to war as symbols of power. Considering how the few still existing come in Mysterious Waif form, they're quite sought after by those planning acts of terrorism.
- Reinforce fits most, being literally a tool that fulfills its masters wish to destroy everything. Power-wise, Reinforce might just be the most powerful character in the franchise, easily fending off Fate's Plasma Smasher and Nanoha's Excelion Buster at the same time, breaking through Nanoha's shield without much effort and casting a Starlight Breaker that leaves a city-sized explosion.
- Chise of Sai Kano is a particularly cruel example of the horrible repercussions after she is turned into a super weapon. Everyone dies. Everyone.
- To be fair, she doesn't actually cause the destruction. She just isn't powerful enough to stop the rampaging Eldritch Abomination and gives up about halfway through story. Maybe.
- In the manga, she consciously and single-handedly kills everyone in the human race, save for Shuji.
- The Otome of Mai-Otome are thinly veiled analogs for WMDs, complete with a "SOLT" conference based on the real world "SALT" (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks) and issues similar to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The main Otome also have the added danger of being volatile young women in the middle of a twisted Love Triangle, so you know there's going to be trouble. One of the girls involved in that triangle (Nina) snaps and literally tries to destroy the world in the last few episodes.
- Most Gundam heroes qualify to some extent (especially since most are of the Tyke Bomb variety). In one early draft of Gundam SEED, the character Flay was originally supposed to die by piloting a mech into battle as a literal human bomb, though this was later changed to be a more regular (but still heartrending) death.
- Mewtwo of the Pokémon movies, despite not being human, is definitely a Person Of Mass Destruction, made all the more apparent by the fact that in some translations his birthplace is listed as Mile Island. His power is so great the he was able to create a unnaturally huge hurricane that would've eventually wiped out all life on the planet, aside from those on his island in the eye of the storm just by thinking about it, then dissipated the storm just as easily after his Heel Face Turn. Note that he was in no way focusing his full power on the storm at any time, and in fact kept expanding it even while taking on his ancestor Mew in a psychic battle (in which Mewtwo had the upper hand) and psychically suppressing the abilities of every other Pokemon on the island.
- Vash from Trigun is (literally) single-handedly capable of destroying cities without meaning to, and is referred to as "the Humanoid Typhoon" throughout the series. His weaker, genocidal twin brother, on the other hand, wipes out millions of people and by the end of the manga poses a danger to humanity throughout the entire galaxy. This example, incidentally, shows us one effective Restraining Bolt for such a character: pacifism and/or guilt.
- Tomoe Hotaru in Sailor Moon, partially because she's possessed by a demon that wants to cause The End Of The World As We Know It, partly because her own powers, if she ever brings down her weapon, will do just that. (Luckily, she's not the Dojikko of the group; one wonders what would happen if she just dropped it one day...)
- In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the title character herself is a Person Of Mass Destruction, thanks to the power of Silver Crystal. Especially when she becomes Princess Sailor Moon...
- The manga version of Usagi shouldn't be discounted either. By the end of the series she's powerful enough to destroy a galaxy.
- Stink Bomb, the second story in the Memories anthology film, is about a chemist who swallows a tablet, thinking that it's harmless cold medicine. Unfortunately, it turns out to be an experimental drug that makes him emit clouds of poison gas. (It also gives him immunity to most conventional weaponry.) What makes this Person Of Mass Destruction particularly dangerous is that he has no idea that he's emitting all this poison, and is on a delivery mission that will take him straight into a major population center.
- As a "Rynasapien", Kurau from Kurau Phantom Memory can potentially wipe out entire populations. Her sense of morality prevents her from doing so, but unfortunately other Rynasapiens feel less restricted.
- A running theme in Suzumiya Haruhi is keeping the title character from getting bored, since as an immature and easily fed up Reality Warper, she has the potential to destroy the world as we know it (without consciously intending to) and remake it into something more entertaining. Several factions within the series make it their goal to prevent this, while others actually want it to happen.
- The diclonius from Elfen Lied are a borderline example; through their spreading of The Virus that propagate their species and their powerful psychic abilities, they're a very real danger for humanity (especially due to the masquerade)... However, most are already shamelessly homicidal due to genetic imperatives, and the Government Conspiracy treating the few diclonii they don't cull as lab rats do not improve matters.
- Lucy also gets steadily less borderline as time goes by in the manga, and eventually disappears by the end of it all, where her vectors become so numerous and massive, she can wipe out all of humanity from a single location.
- The Contractors from Darker Than Black are also borderline versions of this. Few of them have powers that would make them a serious danger to an organized military force, but they're nonetheless extremely dangerous and also possess an emotional detachment, including a lack of compunction towards killing. While humans know better than to use them as unwilling lab rats, they're nonetheless shunned, feared and hated by most people aware of their existence and treated as little more than living weapons.
- Victor of Busou Renkin is significantly smaller in radius than most Persons of Mass Destruction, but more deadly: thanks to his always-on energy absorption powers, he would likely kill every human being within a kilometer or two if he stayed in one place for more than an hour. Main character Kazuki is immune, but only because he's turning into a Victor-alike himself.
- Lina Inverse from Slayers routinely hurls spells that blow up cities. Her most powerful spell has the potential to unmake creation. In fact, In the first episode of the new series, Slayers Revolution, Lina is arrested "On suspicion of being Lina Inverse". There is perhaps only one person in the world that she fears: her elder sister Luna, who is implied to be even more powerful (what with being the mortal avatar of a god, Cepheid the Flare Dragon).
- "Implied" here being the fact that she is stated to have taken down a Plasma Dragon with a mundane kitchen knife. And she possesses an Infinity Plus One Sword. Word Of God says Luna is equal in power to Xelloss, who is really freaking powerful. (In fact, now that Chaos Dragon and Hellmaster are dead, he's the fifth most powerful demon in the world). Unlike Lina, though, rather than travel the world righting wrongs, Luna's only goal in life is to stay in her hometown as a part-time waitress.
- To be fair though, Lina doesn't want to right wrongs either. She just wants to make some cash and ends up getting dragged into the life or death struggles kicking and flailing.
- Ranma's final opponent in Ranma 1/2 is the Phoenix Emperor Saffron. If his maturation ritual is completed successfully, he becomes a living "power plant" to Mt. Phoenix and all its people, constantly shedding light and heat without the slightest effort. If something goes awry, though, he loses control of his power, becoming psychotic, and releasing his energy as raw flame and beams capable of vaporizing mountains. As one character put it, he's like "a flamethrower without a safety valve."
- Naruto and his fellow jinchuuriki all have very nasty demons sealed inside of them. It is a bad idea to piss them off.
- Pain manages to catapult himself up to Dragon Ball Z levels of destruction with ease. Not only does he control 6 different bodies at the same time, each of whom have impressive destructive powers, but he also completely and utterly annihilates the village of Konoha with a single attack that can be best described as a Wave Motion Gun that uses gravity to crush the entire town.
- Variation in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: According to the Big Bad, the entire human species are People Of Mass Destruction, the Spiral Energy they possess a threat to the very existence of the universe. Simon agrees (Villains Never Lie after all), but that simply makes him more determined not to let it happen. Who the hell do you think he is?
- Once the two sisters come together to form Genocyber, nothing is left standing after their rampage.
- The Crusniks in Trinity Blood would probably qualify as this since while we don't really get to see them go flat out, what we do see gives the distinct impression that if they put their mind to it any one of them could probably take out quite a sizable area without much difficulty.
- It's more than just implied. In the backstory (which isn't discussed in the anime, but is All There In The Manual), during the Armageddon War Abel singlehandedly killed seven million humans.
- Ifurita of El Hazard is one. However, she's far more level headed and self-controlled than most examples.
- Mahoro of Mahoromatic is an extraordinarily powerful Robot Girl who wields a huge pistol and can rip apart Humongous Mecha with her bare hands. She was created specifically to battle aliens. The trope of her creators treating her like crap is notably averted, as everyone really likes her and are friendly to her.
- Not exactly hurt by the fact of her Restraining Bolt, either; the more she uses her ultimate weapon, the shorter her lifespan is. Has a major part in parts of the plot, where using it could kill her. It eventually does.
- Kyouran Kazoku Nikki has Gouykouou, whose mere presence on Earth could make it violently explode if he doesn't actively suppress his power. Thankfully, he's the nicest guy anyone will ever meet.
- Several people in Mahou Sensei Negima qualify. Just about any powerful mage could probably take out a good chunk of a city with little trouble. Then you have the really strong guys, such as Jack Rakan (accidentally blew up a mountain), Fate (pretty much obliterate an entire city sector with the flick of his wrist), Evangeline (beat the crap out of Fate when they fought), and Nagi (who beat Evangeline with no trouble at all). But the most ridiculous example is Asuna; her Anti Magic actually caused a Floating Continent to crash, and nearly destroyed the entire Magic World. Even worse is the fact that she didn't intend to do that; other people are capable of harnessing that power.
- In-Universe, many people believe Queen Arika to be one of these, thinking she caused a Floating Continent to crash. She's actually taking the taking the blame for Asuna.
- Given that she's in a way artificially made, many have argued Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo fits here, at least in her original OVA form.
- This is entirely true, given that she is listed as destroying several planets in her past. An honourable mention should also go out to Tenchi himself, as when his godself manifested in OAV 3, he nearly destroyed ALL THAT EXISTS. Give him his due, he doesn't mess about.
- Dragonball Z loves to play with this trope, and virtually all the major characters qualify on some level. It seems most of the characters have the ability to lay waste to continents at least, several have demonstrated enough destructive power to destroy entire worlds, and at least one or two have claimed to be able to destroy an entire solar system or even larger pieces of real estate; given what it's already established characters in this Verse can do, there's good reason to believe them. Vegeta's particularly of note, as the master who'd enslaved him since childhood, Frieza, operated under the assumption that enough scorn and abuse would break Vegeta's will and make him more manageable. It didn't work. Buu comes to embody this trope even more in the last story arc, as his creator and then his creator's son, both physically puny wizards, are scornful, abusive bullies towards Buu, a universe-destroying being with the temper and self-control of a toddler. That didn't work out so well either.
- One Piece has a bunch of these, mainly as villains. Blackbeard has black-hole powers, and chooses to demonstrate this by destroying an entire town just for the sake of a demonstration. Ace has insane fire powers that also level cities and blow up ships. Enel sets about destroying an entire complex of sky islands because he feels like it. Red-haired Shanks and Whitebeard are powerful enough that when they cross swords, the clouds split. And we know what happens when you make Luffy angry, especially after the Water 7/Enies Lobby arc. Gear... THIRD!
- In Chapter 552 of the manga, Whitebeard takes it Up To Eleven due to the Devil Fruit that he has. This power allows him to form earthquakes anywhere, even below sea level (thus forming tsunamis). Due to its extremely destructive power, Sengoku even declares that Whitebeard has the power to destroy the world.
- Sousuke from Full Metal Panic is an example where it is somewhat unintentional. He uses destructive solutions to simple problems, and is quite literally a walking disaster. In one instance, finding that his locker has been altered slightly is enough to prompt him to detonate the entire rack of lockers, just to be safe. In another, he completely dismantled a car parked outside the school's parking lot, assuming it to be a bomb car, when it was actually Kagurazuka-sensei's brand new car. Lampshaded in another instance, where he blasts a hole through the wall to get to the room next door... only for Kaname to ask exasperatingly why he couldn't just use the door. He replies that this way is easier and more efficient.
- Quite a number of State Alchemist in Fullmetal Alchemist, but the most egregious probably Mustang and Kimblee. Seriously, you don't want to get Mustang pissed off.
- Yu Yu Hakusho villain Toguro Ototo. His demonic aura is so powerful, weaker humans and demons are instantly disintegrated when exposed to it, and even stronger beings have a tough time resisting it. His raw physical strength while untransformed is so great, he can punch holes in giant demons with ease, flick a man's head with his finger and make it explode, and carry an enormous arena on his back without struggling. At 80%, his strength goes beyond that, being able to shatter the concrete tournament arena by punching in it's general direction, and at 100% power, he can create bullets from thin air by flicking it with his thumb, and his body unconsciously rips the souls out of the remaining audience to sustain itself.
- In the Chapter Black arc, Sensui and Yusuke's demon form take this to even more ridiculous extremes. While as Shinobu, Sensui's original personality, possesses holy energy with enough power to crumble the cave they're in at one-tenth of its full power, as well as casually deflect the strongest barrier in the series. Sensui even says that if he released his full power in the human realm, he could destroy the entire planet. Later, when Yusuke dies and is revived as a demon, Yusuke gains power equivalent to Sensui's, and when they fight, their colliding energy is strong enough to shatter entire mountains and cause a variety of natural disasters, including twisters powerful enough to kill A+ class fighters.
- Chrono in Chrono Crusade is a somewhat mild example. While he probably doesn't have the power to destroy the entire planet, he's one of the most powerful of his kind. Mix that with a sometimes explosive temper and you have the makings of a disaster—he earned the moniker "Slayer of a Hundred" when he killed a hundred of his kind in one rage-fueled massacre. Later in the manga, Aion manipulates his emotions to "awaken" that side of him again, causing him to go through a blind rampage that sets much of San Fransisco on fire and kills dozens of innocent people in the process. This is without his horns, too, which weakens him quite a bit. In the anime, he gets upgraded to the title "Slayer of a Hundred Million". It's not quite explained how he got that title, but it's implied he earned it.
- Also in Chrono Crusade are Aion and Joshua. While Aion is much calmer than Chrono, he's also his Evil Counterpart (and, in the manga, his Evil Twin), so it's not unlikely that his power level is about the same as Chrono's. As for Joshua, he has Chrono's horns on his head, which means he has all of the demon's powers in his control...and they make him insane, to boot. He destroys much of the orphanage he lived in and freezes the children that lived there in time, and it's implied he could easily fly off the handle and do it again if Aion didn't keep him carefully under control.
- The "Codes" of Code: Breaker are people of mass destruction under the control of EDEN and protect Japan; the "Re-Codes" are Terrorists Without A Cause led, ironically, by the Aloof Older Brother of the Jerk Ass Fascade character. People in both groups were abused because of their powers, and now feel useful and free, respectively.
- A Mad Scientist creates PoMDs in Out Code (no relation to Code: Breaker aside from pyromkinetic main characters), including a guy who's basically Seto Kaiba with Magneto's powers (but weaker) and causing several people to weep and sweat acid.
- Angol Mois of Keroro Gunsou is capable of destroying an entire planet with a few whacks of her "Lucifer Spear".
- If one really thinks about it, Shinji Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion could technically fit this trope. Although it's because he pilots something that makes this possible, he himself and only himself is the one that makes it happen. In End of Evangelion even, Shinji might as well temporarily sit on the throne of God for a few moments as the Eva-01 becomes a God. And even in the alternate continuity retelling Rebuild of Evangelion's second film, Shinji causes the Eva-01 to go berserk himself to save Rei which nearly causes the Third Impact as the Eva's true form shows itself. One way or another, that's one very volatile person to be at the controls of a possible God.
- Guilmon from Digimon Tamers, when you piss him off and unleash the Digital Hazard, resulting in a creature that could destroy the world simply by existing.
- While we are on the subject of Digimon, there are a good large number of PMDs among them. Pretty much everything above and in the middle upper Mega/Ultimate and Super Ultimate tiers is a PMD all its own, a few of whom are capable of Multi-Dimensional and Universal levels of destruction.
- The Tribe of Heroes in Heroic Age was a race composed entirely of Blood Knight Kaiju who nearly wiped themselves out in a massive civil war that obliterated entire star systems in the crossfire. As punishment, the Tribe of Gold (the gods of this particular fictional universe) sealed each of the five surviving members of the tribe into the bodies of members of other tribes. These individuals, called "Nodos", possess incredible powers (like super strength and the ability to survive in hard vacuum) even in their normal forms, and can also call upon the Heroes within them to transform into Nigh Invulnerable Kaiju capable of annihilating entire armadas without breaking a sweat.
- All psykers (psychic humans) in Warhammer 40000 are treated like this by the unbelievably repressive Imperium. Then again, most of the time they actually are; being a psyker automatically opens you up to Demonic Possession.
- Not to mention that the most powerful psykers (class Alpha Plus) can (depending on the type of power they have), mind-control entire cities, incinerate armies or snap a battle titan (the series' Humongous Mecha) in half with a mere thought. To make matters worse, the minds of current humans aren't built to handle Beta-and-above levels of psionic power, causing most psykers of such power levels to usually be batshit insane, not to mention very short lived, as their presence attracts daemons like flies to honey, usually resulting in them exploding apart in a gory fashion while reality tears asunder and daemonic legions march forth to slaughter all life on the world. One of the very few and most notable exceptions is the Emperor of Mankind (Alpha Plus), who is pretty much a superhuman in both body and mind.
- More literal version of the trope: Ork Weirdboyz use a form of magic tied to "Orkiness", that latent gestalt energy generated by every Ork, and used by them every day on an instinctual basis to tell the laws of physics to sit down and shut up. Weirdboyz tap into it more directly than other Orks, channeling it into power blasts or giant feet falling from the sky. The more Orks around the psyker, the more powerful his magic is. There is a catch, however: if there are too many boyz around, or they get too excited, the poor Weirdboy can't handle the sheer amount of power, which can cause his magic to fizzle... or himself to go nuclear. Yuks ensue.
- Considering Rifts has rules for playing as a minor god, this should not come as a surprise. However the bar for Person Of Mass Destruction is low; anyone in MDC body armor and packing an energy weapon is as durable as many modern armored fighting vehicles. Annihilating a rural village is well within the means of low-level player characters, unless said village pulls Superweapon Surprise with a supernatural protector or someone hiding a suit of power armor in their shed.
- The Epic level spellcasting rules in the third edition of Dungeons And Dragons allow spells of essentially unlimited destructive potential to be created. Want a spell dealing thousands of damage across a ten mile radius with no saving throw? You just have to pay the cost and have a high enough Spellcraft score.
- Who needs Epic? With the right feats and metamagics, one can turn "Locate City" (A 1st level spell, same tier as Magic Missile) into a 4th Level spell that immediately and violently ejects anyone within a 10 mile (per caster level, mind you) radius of the caster, dealing 1d6 "falling" damage per 5 feet to the victims (no way there will be just one) moved this way. For comparison, a standard 4th level attack spell, Ice Storm, deals 5d6 cold damage in a 40 foot area.
- To elaborate, on a failed save this combination can easily deal several thousand points of damage point blank, enough to kill most gods, and still does insane damage miles away. Epic spellcasting is way worse: if you first spent around a year to (permanently) summon assisting spellcasters, pretty much all bets are off. There really is not much point to bother with most things if you can just go and animate planets when you feel like it, is there?
- At least in its earlier editions, Shadowrun spellcasters didn't really have a ceiling to how much destructive force they could sling, except the personal cost in terms of Drain suffered. This inadvertently gave everyone capable of sorcery the capacity to be devastating suicide-bombers.
- The flexible, comic-book-based rules system of Mutants & Masterminds and its parabolic power progression make it easy to create a starting character with the ability to take on an army or wipe out a city. Omega, the Big Bad of the Freedom City setting, is a threat on a cosmic level and could personally blow through a mountain in seconds.
- Duplication and a reasonable smattering of other powers can provide you with a starting character that is an army and can wipe out a city by personally dismantling it piece by piece.
- That's nothing. It is possible to make a PL 4 (most starting characters are PL 10) character with an 8-point (out of 150 for the average starting character) power which completely destroys a planet.
- While not as extreme as some of the others on this page, the mages in Mage The Awakening essentially become one of these when they reach mastery of virtually any Arcanum. The archmasters are more direct examples, to the point where they essentially have a non-aggression pact to prevent themselves from destroying the world, and instead conduct their affairs through a series of proxies, ala the Cold War.
- The whole point of Exalted is that you play as one of these. Exalted are very, VERY powerful - but no more mentally stable than the average person. In fact, due to the Great Curse, they're quite prone to become unhinged and abuse their power. It's a game mechanic. When an experienced Exalt starts to look even a little bit angry, run.
- Nobilis is another one where PCs tend to be phenomenally powerful but not particularly stable; most Nobles were pretty screwed-up people even before they were given their godlike powers and found themselves serving an inhuman morality code. Oh, and the Earth is ruled by a Complete Monster who, among other things, has forbidden Nobles to love on punishment of being forced to kill their own loved ones if caught.
- GURPS suggests 750 points as the threshold for someone who can fight an effectively infinite number of normal people and 1000 points as the threshold for effectively "godlike" compared to a modern human. Both assume that the majority of points are spent on powers rather than money or social skills. For scale: a moderately powered version of Superman would cost about 2500 points.
- In Tales Of The Abyss, it's stated that anyone who can use hyperresonance would be able to use the ability to destroy everything, right down to the atmosphere itself. It's because of this reason that Asch, the only character who can actually control it, never uses it: it's just too powerful.
- On the subject of Tales Series games, Tales Of Vesperia gives us Estelle, whose powers consume so much aer that they could potentially lead to the destruction of the world.
- Soulless Colette from Tales Of Symphonia is another example. Not quite as destructive as the others, but the amount of power she has is still quite scary.
- Splosion Man is practically a Trope Namer.
- The Touhou character Flandre Scarlet is a perfect example. Despite being the younger of two siblings, her vast apocalyptic powers far exceed the powers of her older sister Remilia, and she has the unique ability to instantly and effortlessly destroy any being or object she chooses just by willing it. On top of that, she has a very simple mind, and doesn't understand the concept of holding back during fights, which leads to her almost instantly obliterating most opponents. She hasn't left the Scarlet Mansion in almost five hundred years (whether this is self-inflicted or imposed by Remilia is unknown) just to protect everyone from her.
- Nevertheless, Reimu, Marisa and Aya all confront Flandre, and all of them make it out alive. This is because Flandre was merely playing with them during those fights, showing that she does at least have some control over her power.
- Utsuho Reiuji from Subterranean Animism pretty much tops Flandre in terms of destructive power: she has the power to manipulate nuclear fusion, making her a living, breathing
atomic bomb star. It doesn't help that out of all the games released, she's the only one who has ambitions of world domination.
- While nowhere near as flashy, Yuyuko Saigyouji has the power to kill anything mortal simply by inviting it to die. It's just a good thing that she barely ever uses this power, being the super-duper nice Cute Ghost Girl that she is.
- Justice from the Guilty Gear series is certainly this. Converted into a magic-infused superbeing known as a Gear and intended as a weapon by "a certain major country," she grows to resent and hate humankind (despite having been one herself before becoming a Gear), turning on them in a fit of spite and malice. As she also possessed the ability to mentally control every other Gear in the world, it was a very impressive fit. She begins in grand fashion by disintegrating the islands of Japan. The boss of the next game, her daughter Dizzy, takes up the mantle in Guilty Gear X, though is notably much more benevolent, and in fact fearful of her own powers.
- Considering Sol Badguy kicks BOTH Dizzy and Justice in the ass himself he most certainly counts as one. Then there is Raven who fights Sol to a draw, and "That Man" who toys with a fully released Sol.
- Final Fantasy VI starts with the Empire subjugating Terra, half-human and half-Esper, whose powers are so great she annihilated a battallion of Magi Tek troopers in seconds. Locke's rescue of her, and Kefka's attempts to recapture her, drive the first 10 hours or so of the plot. Afterwards, the Empire sets its sights on the Espers themselves.
- And while we're speaking of the FFs, FFXII gives us Ashe: who chooses at the end not to become one (being a one woman army helped by five one sidekick armies is reasonably sufficient to restore her throne), and of course FFX: Yuna's pilgrimmage is basically a quest to become a nun of mass destruction.
- They don't have any superpowers as such, and if you have them dead to rights are as easy to kill as any other human being—but the deliberate unleashing of a Silencer from the Crusader games is viewed not unlike the use of a small tactical nuke. When one goes rogue, it doesn't take the bad guys long, once they figure out where he's gone, to imagine exactly how much trouble they're in.
- Id from Xenogears, the crimson-suited demi-god, who is the alternate personality of Fei after he snaps. Id, being as he shares a mind with Fei, is influenced by his emotions. When the vilains try to kill a certain white-uniformed redhead, Id lets loose for pretty much the first time onscreen, and effortlessly annihilates an extremely techonologically advanced civilization within the space of an hour. Oops! And don't go thinking that you have to threaten people to provoke this reaction. Back before the game starts, Ramsus gets shellshocked from seeing Id - who is only under orders - singlehandedly destroy an entire squadron of Gears. On foot and by himself.
- KOS-MOS from Xenosaga. Despite her harmless appearance, she is capable of resorting to extreme violence, as seen when she annihilates an entire fleet of Gnosis with her ridiculously over-powered X-Buster ability, and when she saves the Elsa and its passengers from reentry into the atmosphere. Not surprising, especially considering she is the vessel for the soul of Mary Magdalene.
- Galen "Starkiller" Marek, the main character of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is trained to use the Force to its maximum potential, uncaring of supposed limits and truly embodying "size matters not". He can bring down a Star Destroyer by himself, as well as create what are practically Force Shockwaves. And then there's Luke. If he went Sith, he would've been a definite Person Of Mass Destruction. As it is, he's just the Jedi's personal assassin.
- In addition to their horrendously powerful fighting abilities, such as deflecting tank shells, the Valkyria in Valkyria Chronicles are capable of using the Valkyria's Flame, a devastating suicide attack that causes an explosion powerful enough to rival most nuclear bombs.
- Fayt, the hero of Star Ocean: Till the End of Time turned out to literally be able to just plain delete things out of existence. As can the secondary female lead, Maria. Although she requires a physical catalyst.
- Some characters from Disgaea can and will destroy the world if really ticked off. Though they can only do to when using Cutscene Power To The Max. Laharl does do it in a Bad End, as does Mao.
- Crypto of Destroy All Humans!
- Pretty much anyone and everyone in the Geneforge games who uses the augmentation canisters or the eponymous Artifactof Doom. Combine this with the tendency of such people to turn into Ax Crazy psychopaths, and you've got a recipe for disaster on your hands.
- Your (nameless) character in Crackdown.
- In the backstory of the Warcraft series, the Guardians of Tirisfal were an order of these. Each Guardian was a powerful mage who, upon growing old, transferred all their magic to their successor. Things go downhill when Medivh, the last one, gets possessed by the demon they were supposed to fight.
- Just about any of the end-game bosses would qualify. Arthas a.k.a. The Lich King is currently the most powerful incarnation, evidenced by the player quest where they play the role of Arthas when he defeats Illidian Stormrage — the previous "end-game" boss who required 25 well-equipped players to bring down — in a battle that lasts under a minute.
- Any maxxed-out player character could qualify. In the current end-game dungeons, 25 well-geared players are capable of destroying an Eldritch Abomination/God.
- You don't need to me maxed out... Just go anywhere that's twenty or thirty levels below whatever level you're on, and you are of mass destruction in that place.
- Yuriko Omega in Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3 is basically the Japanese schoolgirl version of Tetsuo.
- Either in the video game and in the movie, the Postal Dude is capable of killing almost everyone he meets - and he kills almost everyone he meets - and is responsible for the annihilation of the USA and China.
- Jak, in Jak II, was injected with Dark Eco in order to be used against the Metal Heads. Since he proceeded to rack up a hecatomb of Metal Head and Krimzon Guard kills, one can only assume the Baron was too successful for his own good.
- Quite a lot of people in the Nasuverse are like this.
- For Tsukihime you have Arcueid, who has to use 70% of her power to stop herself from going into an Unstoppable Rage and even with the remaining 30% can apparently use her Marble Phantasm to pull the moon from 1000 years into the future into the sky for one night. See also: Zelretch, Aozaki Aoko, some of the Dead Apostles and even Shiki if he had the time to actually prep himself before his brain burned out. Example, killing the world around the entire school area in order to partially depower Arcueid and make her somewhat more vulnerable in Ciel's True End. Imagine if the 'point of death' of the entire world happened to be nearby him.
- Fate Stay Night has, surprisingly, Dark Sakura because she has more magical energy than she could ever possibly use no matter what and can summon up apparently infinite giant freaky monster things if she has time. Is also the avatar of the devil. Some of the Servants like Gilgamesh could also probably blow up entire cities in a single blow if they felt like it. Servants tend to be much more about focused destruction than the characters in Tsukihime though, who cause wide area damage. Aozoki can blow up cities on a whim, for example!
- Alex Mercer in Prototype - He can not only consume basically anyone he wishes to, slash them into two, pierce with a whip, cut with claws, bludgeon to death with hammers or variations of them, he can also unleash devastating... Devastator attacks, capable of killing dozens of people and destroying vehicles.
- To put it into perspective, even when The Virus is overtaking the city and every military base is in danger of being overrun, the military still has something like half its attack helicopters specifically tasked with ignoring the literally thousands of soldiers fighting for their lives to charge across the entire city and start attacking everything they find suspicious if a soldier so much as suspects he's seen you.
- In other words, the game takes place during a pitched three-way war between a fully-armed military force, a very dangerous zombie virus, and Alex Mercer. Alone. And he wins.
- It is also revealed at the end of the game that he was responsible for killing a million people over 3 weeks and consuming thousands of them.
- The 3 million killed was the doing of the real Alex Mercer, who released the virus at the start of the game. The Alex Mercer you play as is simply a viral mutant who thinks he's Alex Mercer. And despite literally eating people, he's less of a Complete Monster than the original Mercer was.
- In the Fallout 3 expansion Broken Steel, the player can take the Nuclear Anomaly perk, which causes the player to release a nuclear explosion when their health drops to a certain point, quite literally making them a Person Of Mass Destruction.
- As well as being an all around badass, Solid Snake, now Old Snake as of Metal Gear Solid 4, has to deal with some very heavy complications. Most pressing of which is that due to his unfortunate bout of accelerated aging due to being an artifical human, the FoxDie virus implanted in him in Metal Gear Solid has mutated and Snake must face the prospect of becoming one of the most dangerous biological weapons on Earth in time. By the end of the game Snake makes the decision to kill himself before this happens, but thankfully however this is averted by the end with the timely arrival of Big Boss, who relays the information that a new FoxDie virus injected into him has eliminated the mutant strain. Snake can at least spend what's left of his life in peace.
- On that subject, Big Boss/Naked Snake was considered such an incredible soldier that his post mortem (or so they thought) DNA became a highly prized commodity. So much so that the antagonist of Metal Gear Solid, Liquid Snake, makes it one of his ransom demands. Big Boss may not have caused things to explode by winking at them, but if your genetic material becomes that valuable after you die you might as well be on par with weapons of mass destruction.
- The eponymous character in Bomber Man. Once you get the fire walking buff that makes you immune to your own bomb blasts you can waltz through the game melting everything within a massive radius.
- Arc The Lad gives us Choko, and The Big Bad: he was a normal human who willingly turned himself into an Eldritch Abomination and nearly destroyed the biosphere more than once.
- While Gordon Freeman of the Half-Life series is "merely" a One Man Army, the Combine view him to be this trope. Considering what happens to them within days of his arrival, they might be correct.
- Kyrie of World Destruction is really called the Destruction Code. Appropriate, because he can literally turn everything in the world into sand. And he almost does before The Power Of Love says otherwise.
Web Original
- Pretty much all the humans and humanoids housed by the SCP Foundation (and that may or may not include the researchers).
- Tennyo, of the Whateley Universe. What, the whole 'antimatter in her body' thing doesn't bother you? What about the 'neutron star blast' thing she did in her combat final? Or the death-blow that dissolved Killbot and disintegrated his soul? Or the thing she did when defending herself from over a hundred badguys that ripped a hole in space-time? Or when she ate the demonically-tainted Weres that attacked the school? Or...
- Or what we found out in "Ayla and the Great Shoulder Angel Conspiracy": the part of her that is not Billie Wilson is older than Mankind and has destroyed entire interplanetary civilizations.
- In Teen Titans, Red Star's powers were fueled by intense, deadly radiation and were the results of scientific experiments performed by the Soviet government, in the hope of producing a new Super Soldier. Fearing that he could lose control of his powers again, Red Star locked himself away in an abandoned nuclear power plant, releasing his excess energy into canisters to regulate his powers.
- Terra's powers could have likely done a lot more before she turned to stone, if they hadn't all been directed inward at the volcano rather than outward.
- For that matter, Raven of the Original Five, in the season four arc. Where she ended the world and brought it back, stopped time, let a lot more of her real power out during a battle to keep Slade away by pulling skyscrapers together on him...
- To be fair, Raven has very deep-seated emotional issues that lead to her self-imposed limitations. The prophecy that she would one day end the world was only the beginning.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, the eponymous Avatar is capable of bending all four elements, and can tap into the mystical Avatar State, which summons the power of all previous incarnations of the Avatar to be controlled at their whim. An Avatar can break pieces off continents to create new islands, summon tidal waves and tornadoes. Not to mention they are able and expected to commune with the powerful spirits which control the natural forces of the Avatar universe, and in extreme cases channel the spirit's power, which in one case resulted in an Avatar controlling the entire ocean.
- An episode of Justice League Unlimited featured a guy with (basically) a black hole in his gut.
- There's also Captain Atom, who's pretty much a walking nuclear fallout contained in a suit.
- In Transformers Generation 1 Megatron has a fusion-powered particle cannon strapped to his arm. His later incarnation, Galvatron, has an even more powerful version that in one episode, reduced a combat oriented space station to space debris. In some episodes, Megatron gets upgraded with newer power sources (antimatter, the Star of Cybertron crystal, etc.) that make him even more powerful. And in the comics, he can actually channel and draw energy from black holes (it is unclear if he generates them or somehow draws energy from existing ones at a distance) to be able to generate blasts big enough to reduce entire cities into molten slag (thus the reason he is "The Slagmaker").
- Unicron fits this trope far better. He literally is a planet sized transformer that eats entire planets.
- The giant battleship Omega Supreme in Transformers Animated was designed to be one of these. He was purposefully given a "simple processor" so he would not question his orders, but he still seems to understand the devastation he's caused.
- Similar to Omega Supreme, one of the better examples is Sixshot in the IDW comic continuity. The Decepticons have a six-phase world invasion plan: phase six often sees Sixshot single-handedly raze the planet.
- In one episode of Beast Wars, Terrorsaur briefly becomes one of these after absorbing power from a literal mountain of energon.
- This troper is half joking when he brings this example up, but if one thinks about it Homer Simpson might as well be a walking weapon of mass destruction at this point.
- Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy, Hu Jintao, Dmitry Medvedev, Benjamin Netanyahu, Manmohan Singh, Asif Ali Zardari. Sure, they aren't nukes themselves, but they still have control over them, and since most of them are, you know, elected officials, well... let's say that if you are French, or British, or Indian, or American, you are one cell in the body of a person of mass destruction, so voting for Ax Crazy politicians is NOT a good idea. If you're Chinese... well, if you're Chinese you're screwed.
- According to an article run in a local newspaper, people with swine flu are more dangerous than Russia's supply of nukes.
- Even if you think of swine flu as some kind of killer disease on par with the spanish flu (which killed ca 25 million people), you have to admit that thousands of nukes launched simultaneously would end up much, much more devastating.
- Typhoid Mary was a Person Of Mass Destruction, although she didn't know it at the time.
- She did know it. After the wave of typhoid fever was traced back to her, she was specifically forbidden from having anything to do with food preparation. So she escaped, changed identity, and went back to making food... and triggered another wave of typhoid.
- She was told, but she never believed she was responsible for those typhoid outbreaks. She'd never had typhoid herself, after all.
- Likewise, the spread of HIV in the first decade or so of the AIDS epidemic has been traced back to a specific handful of infectees. Many of the first wave of North American AIDS cases originated with an individual male flight attendant who'd contracted HIV overseas, then scored in dozens of U.S. and Canadian cities where his flights had stopped overnight.
- It's rare, but a few HIV-positive individuals have been brought up on criminal charges for deliberately passing their condition on to others without their knowledge (which, naturally, is featured in an episode of Law And Order). Those who did so with numerous partners may qualify as PoMD.
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