Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
|
|
Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum
|
Bethany: Look, asshole - I don't know if anyone explained the rules to you, but if you succeed, everything gets blinked out of existence - even you. Azrael: Human, have you ever been to Hell? [...] I'd rather not exist than go back to that. And if everyone has to go down with me, so be it.
Well damn it... if that's how it is... I'm just gonna blow up the planet!
For some villains, Global Domination is no good. Ditto on the universe or The Multiverse. Nope. It all has to go. Everything has to be destroyed, every speck of life killed, every mote of light extinguished. No, this isn't reshaping reality into their own image, however that trick works. This is the need for oblivion and taking everyone else down first.
Possibly, the villain has a reason for this. Maybe they're some kind of Cosmic Horror version of The Punishment, and destroying reality is the only way to end their own pain. (Or their ego is too big to just kill themselves. No, they have to be dramatic about it.)
But more often then not, they're a Nietzsche Wannabe; and just wanna show everyone who is boss. What's mystifying is when these type seem to genuinely like existing and interacting with the world. What exactly are they going to do should they succeed? And then what? Where, as The Tick puts it, would they put all their stuff? In this case, they often exist only for the Heroes to have someone to stop.
If any villains have Take Over The World as their goal, they logically should not want this to succeed. Can result in Evil Versus Evil and Eviler Than Thou...if logic is involved.
Related to the Omnicidal Maniac, who does this kind of thing; many of that trope's example plans on sticking around afterwards, however.
Anime and Manga
Comic Books
- In Kurt Busiek's Astro City, Infidel narrates that he once destroyed the universe in a "fit of pique." After discovering even that wouldn't kill Samaritan (and Samaritan realizing the same for Infidel), they collaborated to put everything back together. Once that was done, they decided to have lunch together once a year.
- Peter David's Captain Marvel (the one with Rick Jones, the latter one) has gone full on looney tunes, mainly because he knows everything. With the assistance of the personification of Entropy (Marvel Comics loves their personifications) all of reality is ended. 'Cept Rick, Entropy and the Cap. Rick convinces Entropy to become his 'dad', Infinity and the universe is rebooted.
- Lucifer played with this. When informed that he can either take his father's position or let every universe in reality fall apart, unable to get over his daddy issues Lucifer begins an extremely arduous quest to fix the problem some other way.
- Final Crisis: Once Darkseid is fatally poisoned by the radion bullet, he decides to take the rest of the universe with him, hastening the decay of space-time that his rebirth had already started.
- Several X-Men What Ifs were written between Jean Grey's death and resurrection in the '80s that showed Phoenix going Dark again and doing this, had she survived her final battle. Presumably the editors really, really wanted to keep her dead...until they didn't.
Film
- Azrael, the mastermind behind the plot of Dogma fits the bill. Being trapped in Hell forever is a pretty compelling motive for wanting to undo existence.
Literature
- In J.R.R. Tolkien's Silmarillion, Morgoth's ultimate motivation is to destroy everything, simply because he wasn't allowed his own way during the creation.
- In Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Lord Foul wants to destroy the entire fantasy world, because he's imprisoned inside it and, if it's destroyed, he gets to leave.
- In Life, The Universe, and Everything, the people of the planet Krikkit live on a planet surrounded by a totally opaque dust cloud, so for centuries, they know nothing of the universe beyond their planet and the star they orbit. When a spaceship crash-lands on the planet, they use it to take an exploratory trip, curious of where it came from, and see the universe for the first time. Their immediate reaction? "It'll have to go."
- In The Fionavar Tapestry, this is the motivation not so much of the Big Bad as of his Dragon. The reason? Long ago, he couldn't get the woman he considered his One True Love (she went with a mere human instead, who became Fionavar's first wizard) and swore an oath that he would end the world that had witnessed his rejection; how and whether he's planning to survive at all if and when he succeeds isn't clear, but towards the end of the trilogy he gets the chance to try. He fails, though only through the timely arrival of the one character who can stop what he's just unleashed — and in the process learns to his own surprise that he's not yet beyond redemption himself.
- In The Courts of Chaos (book 5 in the Book Of Amber), a giant tries to convince Corwin to stop trying to save the multiverse. Corwin, of course, refuses to give up.
- Utuk'ku, the Norn Queen in Memory Sorrow And Thorn, is the oldest living being in the world, and wants to drag as much of the world as possible with her into death.
Live Action TV
- In Doctor Who "The Underwater Menace" (most of the episodes are lost, but it's widely considered one of the worst ever) Professor Zaroff, embittered because his wife died in a crash (at least in the original script), has the goal of making a hole in the seabed under the Atlantic so the erupting lava would boil away the ocean, destroying the Earth. Only the Earth would be destroyed, not the universe, but it still pretty much counts.
- Willow goes here after Tara's death results in a Heroic BSOD, after Giles tricks her into feeling the pain of everyone in the world. It was supposed to fill her with compassion, and it did. Fortunately Xander manages to stop her.
Tabletop Games
- In the new cosmology of Dungeons And Dragons, the Primordials, the original creators of the world, wish to destroy reality in order to start all over again. The Gods, both good and evil, oppose them, with the help of Epic-level adventurers...
- Though they are not really out to kill themselves and everyone with it, they more want to return the world to its original state as component matter in the Elemental Chaos so they can build the world anew and destroy it over and over again to act out their roles as amoral sentient forces of nature. But because many beings like existing or like the beings they made, they tend to oppose them.
- Tharizdun from 3.5 and earlier fits this trope to a strong degree, except his exact reasons for wanting to annihilate all existence aren't ever explored.
Video Games
- In Makai Kingdom, this is Alexander's stated goal. He is the God of Destruction, after all. In a neat exploration of this, in one bad ending he succeeds, and is subjected to a horrifying Fate Worse Than Death, existing forever in an empty universe.
- The destruction of the multiverse is Count Bleck's goal in Super Paper Mario, in vengeance for his lover's apparent death. He finds an Artifact Of Doom and a Tome Of Eldritch Lore created by a downright evil branch of the Precursors just for this goal.
- Kuja in Final Fantasy IX, on discovering his imminent mortality, decides to take everyone else with him.
- Neo-Exdeath from Final Fantasy V wishes to draw everything into the Void, and then disappear himself. This isn't out of anger like Kuja; it's just what he does.
- And in Dissidia Final Fantasy, Chaos decides to tear apart the combined realities that make up the battlefield for the Conflict of the Gods, and then disappear himself. Its due in part to just being sick of the endless cycles of conflict, death, and rebirth, and in part because of the recent absolute death of Cosmos, his opposite number hitting him harder than he thought it would.
- Sort of what Nietzsche Wannabe Kefka wanted to do in Final Fantasy VI, although it was never clear whether he intended to destroy himself afterwards.
- Implicit in Seymour's plans: He views death as a wonderful release from the suffering of life, hence everything deserves the so-called mercy of dying, himself included given how much he has suffered.
- The 'bad' ending of the Demon Path from Soul Nomad And The World Eaters ends like this. Revya kills both Haephnes and Drazil and erases both their worlds from existence, killing everything on them and him/herself with it. Any last words as they lament the destruction of everything with their dying breaths? Oh yes:
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. The titular mask contains the spirit of a rogue shaman trickster who apparently thought it'd be a hilarious prank to destroy the world by making the moon collide with it. Even the moon doesn't like this idea!
- Ghadius from Klonoa: Door to Phantomile attempts to destroy the world as revenge for being sealed away 3000 years ago. He doesn't care that his plan would destroy him along with the rest of Phantomile.
- The King of Sorrow from the sequal appears to be attempting the same thing, as by linking the Kingdom of Sorrow to Lunatea is implied to cause some degree of destruction.
- Diablo: According to the Diablo I manual, the minions of Baal, the Lord of Destruction, seek the undoing of the universe.
- In God Of War: Chains of Olympus, Big Bad Persephone hires the Titan Atlas to use the kidnapped sun god Helios' powers to destroy the pillar that holds the world up, causing it, Olympus, and the underworld to crash down on top of each other and kill everyone. It's a form of suicide-revenge; she's tired of living in a loveless marriage to Hades, and wants to get back at her husband and Zeus for trapping her in it, believing The End Of The World As We Know It to be a fitting way of solving both problems. Verily, hell truly hath no fury like a woman scorned...
- Live A Live, the Armageddon Ending, triggered as a menu command.
- Mother 3, (mega end of the game spoilers) As a result of his time-traveling, immortal body, and countless years of life, Porky has grown supremely impossibly, crushingly bored with all of creation. So he plans to have the Needles sealing away the Dark Dragon pulled to destroy what little there is left of the world, and live alone forever, just him and the Dragon.
- The 'Bad Ending' of Disgaea 3. Mao personally kills the last shred of truth left in his heart, unleashes his full, uncontrollable dark power as 'The Strongest Overlord'... and after Aurum kills his childhood friend Raspberyl, he proceeds to curb-stomp him (with a genuine curb!), and then explodes. Annihilating everything. Netherworld, Celestia, Human World, EVERYTHING. Leaving only himself, floating immortally in the midst of nothing...
- Elvin Atombender in Impossible Mission, who plans to blow up the planet.
Webcomics
Western Animation
- In The Tick, oblivion is the goal of the entire Hey species, due to being Scary Dogmatic Aliens who literally worship nothing.
- Parodied in Earthworm Jim. Evil the Cat wants to destroy all of creation. When someone asked him what he would do afterwards: "Gloat, I suppose."
- In Ben 10 Alien Force, this turns out to be the plan of the Highbreed; they're going to die out within a generation due to inbreeding and subsequent genetic problems, so dammit, they're going to take every other species down with them.
|
|
