The End Of The World As We Know It - Television Tropes & Idioms

So, Earthlings. Basically, um. End of the world. Here come the drums!

— The Master, Doctor Who

"It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine."

— R.E.M. It's the end of the world as we know it.

We will all bake together when we bake,
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation in that grand incineration,
Nearly 3 billion hunks of well-done steak!\\

— Tom Lehrer We will all go together when We go

What will happen if the heroes don't stop the Big Bad or the Omnicidal Maniac from doing its nasty work. Can be either supernatural or superscience, depending on the villain, but in either case the bad guy must be beaten down and his toys broken in order to save the planet, or the universe, depending on the focus of the story.

Is usually figurative — expressed as "merely" the death of humankind, the obliteration of Civilization, or its subjugation to aliens, for example — rather than the literal rendering of the planet down to gravel.

Common in Speculative Fiction, horror and over-the-top espionage shows, as well as many anime series. May serve as a prequel to an After The End series. May also include Cosy Catastrophe and/or Scavenger World elements. Also very common in video games. It is occasionally unavoidable, sometimes unforgivingly occurring halfway through the game.

If the heroes are slated to succeed in preventing the End, they (and the audience) may be treated to a detailed preview of what's coming.

Inevitably draws the suitably heroic into a Saving The World plot. See Apocalypse How for various types of End Of the World.

Examples

Anime

Mai-HiME.
Magic Knight Rayearth.
Kannazuki No Miko.
In the anime X/1999, both sides actually believe they are fighting to prevent the end of the world. The Dragons of Earth are attempting to destroy all humans to prevent humans from destroying the Earth, while the Dragons of Heaven are trying to save humanity from the Dragons of Earth.
The second and third season of Yu-Gi-Oh (dub version only), emphasized with a mantra frequently repeated by Yugi to the point of exasperation: "The fate of the world depends on it!"
Carried over in the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh GX but with the pressure upped even more, when Jaden is told, "The fate of the universe now rests with you."
X/1999. It's a show about the millennial apocalypse. Do the math.
Anyone living in the world of any Pretty Cure series should try not to get too attached to the universe. It was already one lost fight away from total destruction in the very first episode, with multiple near-misses along the way; in particular, almost all life was wiped out near the end of Futari Wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, though the heroines managed to reverse it by defeating the bad guy.
The Digimon multiverse, which shares similarities with the Pretty Cure worlds except for the whole shounen mon series thing, has the exact same looming threat every time.
The Suzumiya Haruhi franchise has a rather unusual condition for The End Of The World as We Know It to happen: If the title character becomes too bored with her life, she could inadvertently destroy the universe in a subconscious attempt to create one more to her liking. Not only that, the rest of the SOS-dan suspects that she has already done it once before, but obviously no-one can tell.
Sailor Moon comes close to this here and there. The Moon Kingdom was completely destroyed in the past; the Earth is constantly in danger, as one villainous group invades it after another. In the manga, the world (along with the Big Bad) is destroyed at the end of the third story arc by Sailor Saturn... only to be immediately restored by Princess Serenity. The last season's Big Bad has already rendered most of the Galaxy dead before attacking the Earth.
- In Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, in addition to the destruction of the Moon Kingdom in the past, Princess Serenity does the same with the Earth at the end of the series.
In Tokyo Mew Mew, the aliens want to cause this by accelerating humans' destruction of the environment, just so the Muggles can see what they've done to the Earth and actually care about it.
While the main cast of Pretear does eventually succeed in preventing The End Of The World As We Know It (the standard Big Bad's goal), the manga puts a nice description of the world drained of Life Energy — not only without living beings, but without wind, sounds, temperature, light. The anime version further illustrates the possible outcome by having the Big Bad destroy the local Magical Land.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is set After The End, when most of humanity was wiped out by the machinations of the Anti-Spiral. When they start making a comeback thanks to the protagonists, a failsafe kicks in to drop the moon on the planet and finish humanity off.
The final Story Arc in Magical Project S revolves around saving Earth.
The first two seasons of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha involved unstable Lost Logia and the heroes trying to prevent the destruction of a few worlds, including the one they call home. The third season, however, had a Big Bad who knew how to handle Lost Logia, and thus would have only ended with The Federation obliterated and the entire multiverse effectively taken hostage should the heroes fail. Jail's an Evilutionary Biologist, not an Omnicidal Maniac, after all.
The main goal of the ancient conspiracy from Rah Xephon is to both cause and reverse this.
Neon Genesis Evangelion has not one but three groups trying to destroy the world, each in their own way and for their own reason. Gendo Ikari wishes to be re-united with his dead wife, which involves ending the world as we know it. SEELE wishes to end the individuality of the human race in accordance with Ancient Prophecy. The Angels merely want to eliminate all of humanity.
- Of course, being Evangelion, it's not clear which one of the three succeeded.
Of Drakengard's multiple endings, two imply the end of the world, one overtly and the other not so much.

Comic Books

Same thing goes for the Lucifer comic books — which, somewhat ironically, involved the Devil's effort's to prevent this.
Many a comic book Crisis Crossover has this as its premise, the archetype being Crisis On Infinite Earths (see below).

Film

In Kevin Smith's Dogma, the continued correct functioning of the laws that govern the universe are all dependent on/derived from one truth: that God is infallible. The heroes have to stop the "villains," angels cast out of Heaven, from exploiting a loophole in some obscure Catholic canon to get themselves re-admitted to Heaven, thereby contradicting God and unmaking the existence of Creation.
In Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the distant-planet-colonizing rocket seems benign, until it's revealed that the rocket's afterburners will ignite the Earth's atmosphere.
The film (and book) of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy puts a comedic twist on this — the world is destroyed to make way for an inter-stellar by-pass.
- The joke is that the protagonist was trying to stop his house from being demolished for much the same reason...
  - Although (in the book at least, although the implication is present in the film) this becomes more of a Shoot The Shaggy Dog moment when it is revealed that the destruction of Earth took place mere moments before the unveiling of the Heart of Gold and Infinite Improbability Drive, which render hyperspace by-passes completely obsolete.
Playfully subverted in Men In Black — the universe is inches away from Armageddon due to alien interference all the time. The Men in Black casually erase the memories of anyone who catches wind of these impending disasters to prevent a general panic. Very similar to The World Is Always Doomed
In the movie Armageddon, a large asteroid is coming with enough force to blow every last bit of life into oblivion, and two teams are sent with a very large amount of explosives to split the asteroid in half ~~just at the right moment~~ before it's too late, so the two halves fly over and under the earth.
The sun is dying in the sci-fi movie Sunshine and has to be reignited with a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan Island.
Godzilla Final Wars not only has the titular monster saving the world from an asteroid, but also dozens of other monsters as well.

Literature

Literary example: Spider Robinson's novel Callahan's Key is based on the notion that if the heroes do not accomplish the save-the-day task, the entire universe not only will cease to exist, but will retroactively cease ever to have existed.
Every couple of books, the Discworld is threatened with The End Of The World As We Know It. In The Light Fantastic, it nearly collided with a red star; in Sourcery, the birth of a sourcerer nearly brings about a second Mage War and the Apocralypse [sic]; in The Last Hero, Cohen the Barbarian's scheme to get revenge on the gods threatens to destroy the magic that holds the Discworld together; and in Thief of Time, the Auditors trick a human with unusual abilities into building a clock that will leave the Discworld, and possibly the universe, frozen in time forever.
Double Subversion in Weis and Hickman's novel series The Sword of Joram, in which Joram succeeds in stopping the destruction of Thimhallan by the attackers from the Earth, only to end up destroying the magic that made it habitable
An angel and a demon team up to prevent the scheduled Biblical Apocalypse in Good Omens. Hilarity ensues.

Live Action TV

Buffy The Vampire Slayer built each season around a Big Bad whose plans usually threatened the End of Everything if he wasn't stopped by late Spring. At one point, when Giles proclaimed the Big Bad was about to cause the end of the world, everyone present groaned, "Again?"; one of Buffy's boyfriends once lamented that hanging around her had caused him to need to know "the plural of apocalypse."
The aliens in the 1980s miniseries V intended to harvest the human race for use as snack food and were turning the planet into a thinly disguised version of Nazi Germany to make it easier.
The destruction of all life on Earth happened, then un-happened, at least once a season on Seven Days.
The series The Dead Zone has a recurring Arc about Greg Stillson somehow being responsible for The End Of The World As We Know It in the near future, and Johnny Smith has to find a way to stop him.
Star Trek, repeatedly and in many different ways.
Supernatural has a demon apocalypse on the horizon. Any day now. Really. Soon. We promise.
Subverted in the Doctor Who episode 'The End of the World'. The Doctor takes Rose to see planet Earth finally bite the dust billions of years in the future, but it's a natural event that's supposed to happen. When asked if he's going to swoop in at the last moment and save the planet, he replies that there's no point because everyone has moved to greener pastures already.
- Played straight several other times, though. Menaces such as the Slitheen, the Daleks, the Cybermen, or the Master are all the time trying to cause The End Of The World As We Know It.
The premise of Battlestar Galactica is that this has already happened, and now the Colonials are on the run in search of a new home.
In the sci-fi series Lexx, the main characters go through much of the second season unaware that an enemy they defeated earlier is still alive. The villain, Mantrid, rebuilds himself, takes an army of simple-minded floating robot drones, and destroys much of the "Light Zone", one of two parallel universes. The heroes eventually stop him, but soon afterwards, the entire universe collapses in on itself. The main characters (and their ship, the Lexx) are spit out as interstellar debris into the "Dark Zone", the second universe.
One episode of Big Wolf On Campus has hero Tommy Dawkins prevent the end of the world by winning a wrestling match against a demon. Yup....Wrestling....Against a demon....

Tabletop Games

From Bliss Stage: "The effects of the Bliss were sinister and immediate: every human above the age of 18 were struck with a sudden weariness, and when they fell asleep, they did not awaken... ...Society, particularly industrialized society, begins to collapse one month later, as food production and utilities break down."

Video Games

The Super Robot Wars Alpha sub-series's finale had several endings that involved trying to stop the death of all sentient life in the universe. The worst one involved the embodiment of life and rebirth going nuts and using its Wave Motion Gun at the party... which kills everyone in the quadrant.
Treasure of the Rudras pretty much followed this pattern of extinction of races about 5 times before the game actually begins; Every 4,000 years, a being called Rudra kills off the current race and creates a new one. This turns out to be a plan established by Mitra: Creator of the world in order to create a race that can defeat invaders from destroying the world in the first place when she is defeated or unable to do her duty.
In Star Ocean 2 the main antagonist plans on erasing the universe by causing the Big Crunch. His plan goes through anyway even after you defeat him.
The Halos in the Halo video game series are weapons designed to wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy to prevent the Flood from spreading; naturally enough, when such an outbreak occurs in the first game, the Player Character has to stop the weapon from firing.
Commander Keen had to prevent this a couple of times in the classic platform-game series by Apogee. His first game-series was titled The Earth Explodes, and he had to prevent the mind controlled Vorticons — who were being manipulated by his Evil Counterpart — from doing just that. The sequel, 'Goodbye Galaxy', upped the ante as suggested. The next series was supposed to be about him preventing the end of the entire universe, but at that point, Apogee was running out of money, and he only got enough funding to save his babysitter.
- In the second game it is in fact possible to blow up the earth by 'accident' by flipping the switch on one of the Death Rays before disabling it, leading to a Nonstandard Game Over.
This is the main goal of the Big Bad in the Chains of Promathia expansion in Final Fantasy XI. It really doesn't help that the avatar Bahamut thinks that the best way to prevent this is to wipe out all sentient life on Vana'diel.
A falling moon threatens to wipe out the world of Termina in The Legend Of Zelda Majora's Mask. Most other games in the series, the villain's only trying to rule the world.
A Similar event occurs in Dark Cloud 2: The being who is the true identity of the assumed Big Bad is the one who has invoked and is responsible for stopping the Star of Oblivion from falling.
Would have been the fate of the world in three of Drakengard's multiple endings if not for the intervention of the protagonists.
In Kingdom Hearts, The Darkness is attempting to extinguish the Heart of reality itself. The protagonists get a glimpse what will happen to the multiverse if they fail when they visit a place literally called "The End of the World." It's the center of all Darkness — a bleak, mostly formless mess made up of the stuff of worlds devoured by The Heartless, who themselves are made up of the stuff of people devoured by The Heartless or devolved by their own descent into evil.
In Super Paper Mario, Count Bleck and Dimentio wish to destroy ALL worlds via the Dark Prognosticus. They actually succeed in destroying the Sammer Guys' Kingdom — almost while the heroes are still in it.
In Live A Live You are actually given the option to end all of existence by your own hands just by selecting the Armageddon option!
Every Shin Megami Tensei game (including the spinoffs) deals with this in some fashion or another.
- In one of those spinoffs, Persona 3, the Main Character is explicitly told pretty much from the start that "the End" is coming soon. If he chooses, he can delay it a couple of months and have it come without knowing it's coming. Or, he can go out fighting, but it's ultimately portrayed as futile. And then you win.
- In Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (Or Lucifer's Call) the world ends after the first hour of gameplay and you spend the rest of the game rebuilding it while not getting ganked by the Demons who roam freely now.
Subverted in Final Fantasy VI, wherein Kefka actually succeeds in destroying the world, despite your best efforts otherwise. You watch as countless NP Cs are killed as their land is ripped apart, and the world map is left permanently scarred. The rest of the game is basically spent trying to get revenge because you failed the first time around and trying to break his tyrannical grip on society.
- It is heavily implied that all plant and animal life on the planet is gradually going extinct due to Kefka's influence, so the heroes do at least get to prevent a more thorough The End Of The World As We Know It.
It also bears mentioning that this is at least part of the villain's plan in almost every Final Fantasy game.
In Chrono Trigger, the driving point of the game is to prevent Lavos from destroying the world in 1999 AD. (Bear in mind that the 'present' year in the game is 1000.)
In Mass Effect, Shepard's mission is to prevent the End of the Galaxy As We Know it at the hands of Saren, whose ship is in reality an AI known as Sovereign, a representative of an ancient race of sentient machines (A Is) who are responsible for bringing about the destruction of all sentient organic life in the galaxy every 50,000 years or so.
Terranigma kinda reversed it. The world has already ended from the start of the game and it's then the job of the Hero to starts the world again
Pratically every major villain since Sonic Adventure, much to the inconvenience of aspiring world dictator Dr. Eggman.
All four games in the Guild Wars series involve a looming threat that will destroy the world if the player characters don't stop it. The first game (Prophecies) twists the trope by having you discover at the end (just in time to be able to do something about it) that you've been duped by the Big Bad, and all your actions have been helping to bring the end of the world, instead of averting it. The next two (Factions and Nightfall) play the trope straight. The fourth (Eye of the North) subverts it at the end, when a cutscene seen by the players (but not the characters) hints that you didn't actually kill the Big Bad, and something end-of-the-world-ish is still going to happen anyway. Word Of God has confirmed this interpretation in pre-release information about Guild Wars 2.
In World Of Goo — and this meets the original definition of sheer I Am Not Making This Up — the world becomes incompatible with its inhabitants, like software, when it's upgraded into three dimensions.

Webcomics

College Roomies From Hell. Don't be fooled by the early years; the "from Hell" part is quite literal.
In The Wotch, Anne actually laughs at Xaos when he reveals that he wants to use her to destroy all worlds, claiming she is "not sure [he] thought this diabolical plan all the way through."
This is the threat K'Z'K poses in Sluggy Freelance. Other dimensions shown in the series have visited have faced similar threats. On a couple occasions the main characters have helped save these other worlds; on a couple other occasions, they're actually the ones responsible (directly or indirectly) for the destruction of the human race. Oops.

Western Animation

This sort of thing happens a lot, to any number of planets, at various points in the assorted Transformers cartoons, comics, etc. Some planets make it, some don't.
The end of the world was threatened so many times by so many different villains of Xiaolin Showdown that it was eventually Lampshaded.
Used in Futurama, when the Professor and his crew must prevent a giant ball of 20th century New York garbage from returning to Earth and destroying the planet.
- Then there was the What If episode where Fry destroyed the universe by never coming to the future and causing a Temporal Paradox.
- And again when the Brainspawn plan to destroy the Universe after learning every piece of data in it.
The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy enjoyed doing this in as many ways as possible: Martian Zombies, allpowerful demons, everyone being turned into Cthulu-esque monsters, everyone being turned into demons, everyone being turned into a different TYPE of monster...
The Grand Finale of Danny Phantom does this with an asteroid.

Other

Dominaria, the central world of Magic The Gathering, has suffered no less than three apocalypses: the Brothers' War (the entire face of the planet shattered, two thousand years of ice and snow), the Phyrexian Invasion (the greater part of the world's population slaughtered by demonic invaders), and Karona's apocalypse (all magic in the world briefly extinguished); each of these had the good guys fending off an even greater threat, but at high cost. The "Time Spiral" crisis was an attempt to keep the entire plane from folding in on itself in the wake of these and various other huge magical events- an apocalypse caused by having too many apocalypses, and this doesn't count near-apocalypses like the end of the Thran War. It's a wonder the old rock's still holding together.
This video
In many political ads, this is the implied consequence of voting for anyone other than the person who paid for the commercial.

Examples in which the protagonists fail

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy begins with the utter and complete destruction of Earth. (Of course, this is too good to leave as-is, and the planet is recreated, re-destroyed, revisited and reimagined on more than one occasion.)
- Until it's completely and utterly erased in all possible multiverses.
Similarly, in the book The Killing Star, 99% of human life (which is spread throughout the solar system) is destroyed in the first few pages. The rest of the book deals with the stragglers being picked off one by one.
Battlestar Galactica (both versions) also begins with a genocidal holocaust that the heroes must flee.
- As does Titan A.E.
Super Dimension Fortress Macross and its American adaptation, Robotech. Of course, this doesn't stop the heroes from kicking some major Zentraedi tail...
Andromeda
The Earth has already been pounded into an uninhabitable wasteland at the beginning of Uchuu Senkan Yamato.
The destruction of all life on Earth forms part of the Back Story in several series, ranging from Firefly to Dirty Pair.
- And also in Zelazny's To Die in Italbar.
Bakuen Campus Guardress — Subversion: The barrier to the demon dimension is forever destroyed, but the demons turn out to be nice people and everyone gets along just fine.
The video game Final Fantasy VI: The world's not destroyed, but it's rent asunder and large portions of humanity are wiped out. "On that day, the world was changed forever..."
The Distant Finale from the fourth season of Babylon 5 ends with the destruction of the Earth — but everyone is fine; they've gone elsewhere.
In the Doctor Who episode "The End of the World", The Doctor purposely doesn't save the Earth from being consumed by the sun, since it's simply part of the natural order and all sentient life has already left the planet anyway. Instead, he, Rose and a number of aliens watch its destruction from the (apparent) safety of a spaceship.
- On the other hand, Last of the Time Lords opens with the Master having already conquered the world following the ending of the previous episode after slaughtering exactly one-tenth of the population as an opening act then enslaving the remainder to build his war fleet.
- Furthermore, 'Utopia' is set several trillion years in the future and at The End of All Reality As We Know It. The Toclafane, the 'alien race' allied to the Master in 'Last of the Time Lords', are actually humans from this time period who have been driven mad by the universe's impending demise and are travelling back in time to avoid the end of literally everything.
Comic book examples:
- In Crisis On Infinite Earths (1985), the Big Bad actually succeeds in erasing uncounted worlds, not just from existence, but from history itself. Only one, "Post-Crisis" universe is spared.
- In Zero Hour (1994), the Big Bad actually succeeds in wiping out all of history and rebooting the universe from the moment of the Big Bang, though the heroes prevent him from reshaping it to suit himself.
- In Infinite Crisis (2005), the Big Bad succeeds in shattering the universe into multiple timelines again, only to have them re-merged into one.
- In Final Crisis (2008), the Big Bad is fated to succeed in — you guessed it — erasing and rebooting everything again.
- No, this doesn't get repetitive; why do you ask?
- No, this doesn't get repetitive; why do you ask?
All of those comic book examples are from the DC Universe; the Marvel Universe tends to keep its world-destruction either safely in the future (e.g. the aptly named Age of Apocalypse storyline in the X-Men comics) or in parallel universes, as in the What If? series. What If? was notorious for its death-filled, depressing stories, the worst of which was "What if the Avengers became pawns of Korvac?" Answer: Korvac would get hold of the Ultimate Nullifier and destroy the entire universe. Guess we dodged a bullet there, then...
In the eighth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike Nelson accidentally blows up not only Earth, but two other planets as well.
Double Subversion in The Fairly OddParents, where an evil bug plans to possess the president to use the button "that blows up the planet". It is stopped, but Cosmo then presses the button. It blows up the planet Pluto, which makes this a Triple Subversion. (This episode was obviously written before Pluto was "voted off the island" in real life.)
In the Dragon Ball series, The End Of The World As We Know It has occurred at least twice... good thing the heroes have that handy Reset Button around, huh?
- Actually, any (major) villain that came after Raditz in Dragon Ball was capable of this.
In Terminator 3, the protagonists fail to prevent the launch of Skynet and its subsequent war against humanity.
Subverted after a fashion (played with, maybe?) in the anime, manga and novels of Scrapped Princess, where the protagonist Pacifica is effectively the Big Bad destined to cause The End Of The World As We Know It. Though the "heroic" opposition ends up killing Pacifica, she is close enough to the critical point that she ascends to the prophesied position and indeed causes The End Of The World ... As We Know It.
The first episode of Superman The Animated Series has Jor-El trying to convince his people that Krypton, which is about to explode, must be evacuated and he has a practical means to do so. However, he fails because Brainiac, the central artificial intelligence of the planet, knowing that if he revealed the impending doom, he would be ordered to find a way to prevent it (which was impossible), chooses instead to devote his energy to uploading all of Krypton's information and fleeing the planet. In the end, Krypton's entire population perishes in the explosion, except for a few who got away:
- Baby Kal-El, who was spirited away in the small ship heading for Earth and eventually grew up as the titular Superman;
- Brainiac, who fled beforehand;
- The Phantom Zone prisoners, who were trapped in Another Dimension;
- Kara (Supergirl), the only survivor of the neighbouring Argos colony that was fatally devastated in the shockwaves;
- ...and, if you count Krypto The Superdog as part of Diniverse canon, Krypto, Kal-El's dog, who was used as a test animal for the spaceship that would eventually save Kal-El.
if you've read Dream: The Heart of the Star, a Neil Gaiman Sandman one-off, the living spirit of Krypton's sun, Rao, is seen speaking to Despair, who suggests that she came up with the idea of deliberately allowing life to form on one of his doomed planets, and allowing a single being to escape, which she calls "perfectly beautiful", allowing the lone being to remember and to mourn.
Space Runaway Ideon ends up killing almost everyone in the galaxy through meteors and several incredible battles. That's close enough.
...as does Lexx, although the main characters manage to escape to a different universe.
- I. E., our universe, where between their bungling and the bad guys' scheming they manage to destroy not only heaven and hell but — eventually — planet Earth as well. A few people escape.
The ending of the game Oni sees the world turned into poisonous wasteland by the machinations of the Big Bad.
Shin Megami Tensei and Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Digital Devil Saga counts in a way too.
The premise of Fallout and its sequels centers around life after a global nuclear holocaust.
Silver Surfer ended its one season on a Cliff Hanger: the destruction of the universe.
It took us this long to remember a little movie called Doctor Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The Cataclysm in the Dragonlance setting of Dungeons And Dragons.
In the film Tale of the Mummy, having reawakened, the titular mummy decides he wants to get a new body and destroy the world. And... he does. No thematic closure or subversions, he just wins, the stars align, and he's all set to get started when the movie ends.

Music

Plus Rien by Quebecois group Les Cowboys Fringants is narrated by the last human being on Earth as he feels his life coming to an end. The culprit this time is environmental destruction perpetrated by the rich: "I've never seen anything but a desolate planet/Lunar landscapes and suffocating heat/And all my friends dying of thirst and hunger/Falling like flies/Until there was nothing more." Possibly the most depressing song ever written.

Tabletop Games

The Old World Of Darkness ended the product line with a series of apocalypse-themed books for all the different games. The last one — in fact, the final book for the Old World of Darkness — was Time of Fire; it concluded with a piece of short fiction that described the end of the world. In other words, when they ended the World of Darkness, they ended the world.

Real Life