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Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds
Yeah, he's a whiny bitch. But maybe we shouldn't have said that to his face.

"Love is a cruel trick of life. Its bond is broken by death and unable to be fixed like my new body. By eliminating organic life, I eliminate the suffering that comes with it."
- Hank Henshaw, AKA Cyborg-Superman.

Alright, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school because nobody loves me! Let's face it, alright. The only place where different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.
- JD, Heathers

"He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution."
-Kid Radd, discussing G.I. Guy.

A character who wants to destroy everything because it's the only way to end his suffering. At some point this character's pain and misery became so great as to drive him or her across the Despair Event Horizon (but not the Moral Event Horizon, which bars a character from Woobiedom forever). The Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds either thinks (s)he is doing the world a favor, or just wants to take the whole world down with them. Depending on how well it's done and what the intentions of the writers are, this trope can result in a Woobie. Often caused by Break The Cutie.

Omnicidal Maniac is this without the motivation of "ending life will end suffering". Not to be confused with Mike Nelson Destroyer Of Worlds.

Examples

Anime and Manga
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion. Shinji Ikari. The main plot point of The End of Evangelion was his finally being broken sufficiently at exactly the point where the plot granted him the power to embody this trope.
    • Gendo aspires to this, believing that initiating Instrumentality will allow him to reunite with Yui. Unfortunately for him, Rei abandons him in favor of Shinji, leading to the latter's ascension in his father's stead.
  • In Saikano Chise decides it would be better to destroy the world rather than let it suffer in life. It's strongly implied (at least in the manga) that the war has already put the planet well on its way to self-destruction; Chise simply accelerates the process by euthanizing humanity.
  • Vincent from the Cowboy Bebop movie.
  • Lucy from Elfen Lied. Oh, so very, very much. We even get to see in full detail how Lucy's painful childhood turned her into such a deranged Person Of Mass Destruction.
  • Hayate Yagami at the end of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha's second season, though it required a massive Break The Cutie moment created by other parties to push her past the "world that hurt me must die" breaking point, and when she regained her senses, she chastised her Artifact Of Doom for thinking that that's what she really wanted and put a stop to things.
  • Trigun features Legato Bluesummers, the very embodiment of this trope and to an arguably lesser extent, his boss Millions Knives.
  • Hiroko "Hiro-chan" Kaizuka from Narutaru is an intelligent, modest young girl who is broken by abuse from both unbelievably sadistic bullies and overly demanding, repressive parents. Eventually, she, along with her Shadow Dragon, Oni, attempts to make everything she doesn't like disappear... by way of going on a horrific, murderous rampage.
    • A similar thing happens to the main character, but with someone else doing the destroying, Shiina, right at the end of the manga.  *
  • Elaine and Diana, the two unbelievably powerful psychic sisters, in the anime Genocyber, who both go through some truly nightmarish shit, before transforming into the titular Anthropomorphic Personification of destruction, Genocyber. Or, maybe not...
  • Gaara from Naruto starts out as this, basically being the male equivalent of Lucy. He gets better though...
    • It now appears as if the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox's escape plan is to turn Naruto into one of these.
    • And Pain/Nagato likes to paint himself as one of these. Frankly, most fans are not buying it; his past was definitely bad, but not bad enough to justify the crap he's pulled.
      • Neither does Naruto, who can't forgive him but doesn't kill him for reasons entirely unrelated to Nagato's backstory. Unlike some examples of this trope, he does this to show other people his pain, rather than to ease his own.
    • Sasuke seems to have settled on this as his MO: He's going to destroy Konoha because it (or more accurately Danzo) destroyed his family and if anyone disagrees with him he'll kill their loved ones so they can understand his pain.
  • Lelouch from Code Geass would count.
    • Lelouch is a major subversion to this trope, because after he realizes what has actually been going on, he decides that the only way to make everything right is to get the world to destroy him.
    • Word of God tells us it was his last drastic measure to "save" the world from war, and give his beloved sister a peaceful planet. Sucks for him because noone realized what he was doing until after. This troper knew what was going on all along, and was crying buckets in the last episode.
  • Takano Miyo from Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. ...Ironically, though, she's aiming at the wrong target in order to become a god. Guess Tokyo's a little too big to take down single-handedly.
  • Yuuhi from The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, with one heck of a Freudian Excuse to match: His father, a detective, was killed by his colleague. After the funeral his mom simply left, and his grandfather literally beat into him the idea "Make no enemies - they'll stab you in the front; make no friends - they'll stab you in the back.". Sami's reasoning is that she wants to own the world by destroying it so that it doesn't go on without her when she dies.
  • Valgaav from The Slayers TRY. A tormented half-demon dragon who believes that all the cosmic forces in his world are caught in an endless, senseless war that only causes suffering, and wants to erase everything from existence to end this. He doesn't actually seem to be wrong, as The Lord Of Nightmares who created Both sides of the conflict, seems to have done so mainly to watch them fight for its own amusement, a fact the Lord of Good and Lord of Evil equivalents from another dimension that combined with him are all too familar with...
  • Darcia from Wolfs Rain, who after the loss of his lover Hamona turns insane, and decides to ruin the paradise the protagonists are trying to create. In a sense, he doesn't want to destroy the current world, as the Earth is dying anyway, but prevent the next.
  • Rau le Creuset from Gundam SEED. He's a dying man at the age of twenty-eight, as he was born with the telomeres of the thirty-something Al de Flaga, his genetic "father", and is in constant pain that can only be subdued by daily drug cocktails (the dose is shown to double twice over the course of the series). His dealings with people, hatred of his flawed body and the people who ensured he was born that way, and his emotional pain at being a clone and thus seeing himself as having no "identity" of his own eventually became a bitterness towards humanity in general. And in a very literal bid to make the pain stop, he tried (and nearly succeeded) to wipe Earth of human life.
    • Once again, depending on your point of view, after he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by killing Flay in cold blood, he might lose the Woobie and retain the Destroyer Of Worlds.
      • As he was Beam Spamming everything around him at the time, it may not have been intentional. Depends on the viewer's perspective, and probably how much you liked Flay in the first place.
    • And an example from Gundam SEED Destiny, Stellar - she stomps through city and wilderness alike in a giant robot slaughtering innocent bystanders by the thousands, because they're scary.
  • At the end of Fushigi Yuugi, Yuu Watase attempts to turn Nakago into one of these with a Motive Rant explaining how when he was a young boy his entire tribe was wiped out, he witnessed his mother being gang-raped, his power awakened in an effort to defend his mother from said gang-rape and accidentally blew her up in the process, resulting in his being sent to the Kutou emperor, who raped him repeatedly. As a result he wants revenge on existence itself for giving him such a horrible life. But since Nakago had been portrayed as a Complete Monster until this point, many fans simply regarded it as a Karma Houdini moment instead.
  • Rokudo Mukuro from Katekyo Hitman Reborn! wants to cleanse the world of mafia (and then everything else) in blood due to his ''tragic backstory'. Also because he hates humanity. Either way.
  • Has this page existed for so long without mentioning Black WarGreymon from Digimon Adventure 02? He wanted to destroy the Digital World because he thought that was the only way for him to understand his purpouse in his artificial life and soothe his pain.
  • Shinobu Sensui may count as one of these, as his plan to destroy humanity via the tunnel was really a way to end his suffering, both from the guilt of killing demons when younger/his resultant Split Personality, and also from a terminal disease. However, Your Mileage May Vary depending on whether or not you think he crossed the Moral Event Horizon.

Comic Books
  • The Joker, in some of his ever-shifting personas. Literally in the Emperor Joker storyline, where he almost destroys all of existence, having decided that any universe that could let a guy like him come into being and exist was too horrible to let live.
  • Hal Jordan was also like this for a fair amount of time, in his persona 'Parallax.' Literally, in the Zero Hour storyline, where Hal decided that he needed to remake the universe to prevent the recent loss (re: utter annihilation) of Coast City, his home town, among other major disasters.
  • Hank Henshaw, who provided us with the delightful page quote, is utterly convinced that existence is the source of nothing but pain and misery and wishes for a "A universe void...Of even a void." Incidentally, he is the one responsible for the destruction of Coast City mentioned above.
  • The Scarlet Witch undergoes a fluctuating life where the good (a family with the Avengers, marriage to her One True Wuv, having her longed-for kids) is outweighed by the bad (her father is a supervillain, her husband gets mindwiped and divorces her, her kids aren't real), along with a number of possessions, kidnappings, and multiple forced amnesia inflicted by her most trusted friends. Then she rewrites the universe. Then she does it AGAIN.
  • Judge Dredd has what is probably a interesting varient of this, Judge Death, who decided that Only the Living commit Crime, thus Living itself must be a Crime (Try to guess the Sentence, look at his name for a clue ), and proceeded to commit Omnicide in his home dimension. Only it doesn't seem he was ever driven to do this by some terrible event in his life, and is a massive hypocryte, since he and his Dark Judges cheat his own system by being Walking Deadmen, thus exempt.

Film
  • J.D. (Christian Slater) in Heathers.
  • Jigsaw, one ungrateful bastard at a time. His first deathtrap is discussed in the fourth movie.
  • The villain in Dogma wants to unmake all existence, because then at least he won't have to be in Hell anymore.
  • Nero the Romulan, from the new Star Trek movie, REALLY wants Spock to understand his pain ... by destroying his homeworld, as Romulus was destroyed in Nero's original timeline. And after Spock, the rest of the Federation is to get the same treatment, starting with Earth.

Literature
  • Frankenstein's Monster (in the book, that is, not the movies) is the Ur-example. All of his rage against man, and against Victor Frankenstein in particular, would be gone if just one person would bother to associate with him. But Humans Are Bastards, so...
  • The Wintersmith in the Discworld novel of the same name wants to win Tiffany's heart by saving people from their constant fear of death... forever.
  • Dragonlance: Raistlin Majere has a life that progressively increases in Suck, until he decides that he's going to take vengeance by becoming a GOD. And he does it, too. Of course, after he finds out that his godhood will destroy all of creation, leaving only himself in an empty universe, he... does exactly the same thing. So Yeah.
  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson, the Crippled God is in constaint pain after being forcibly summoned and having subsequently crashed into the planet like a meteor. The Crippled God now tries to share his pain with everyone else. Several characters have speculated whether or not his followers' twisted faith won't let him heal or is it that his pain twists the followers' minds (even more).
  • In Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series, Flinx's "sister" Mahnahmi is given this treatment in a big way. Considering how messed up she is and what she's suffered in her life, it's hardly surprising that she's become nihilistic, but for some reason she insists on taking Flinx and everything he loves with her, even while he's busy saving the galaxy.
  • Ineluki the Storm King, the Big Bad of Tad Williams' Memory Sorrow And Thorn.
  • In The Dresden Files book Summer Knight, Aurora, the Lady of the Summer Court (generally the nicer of the two courts) thinks it would be better to cause the end of the world than continue the harmful battles between the Faerie Courts.

Live Action TV
  • Willow on Buffy The Vampire Slayer attempted to do this in the sixth season finale because of the death of Tara and because her magic let her feel everyone on the planet's pain - oh, and made her perfectly capable of destroying the world. She was stopped by the The Power Of Love.
  • Adam Monroe on Heroes is arguably an example, as his path of destruction is fueled by his heartbreak over Yaeko.
    • That and living through over 300 years of man's inhumanity to man and seeing mankind never learn from their mistakes, repeating the same stupid actions over and over again. Think about it, the guy's lived through more horrible shit than anyone on earth. That would make ANYONE crazy.
  • Connor in Angel. He doesn't quite have the firepower to destroy the world, but he certainly expresses his desire to, and starts small.
  • Dr. K in Power Rangers RPM. She unleashed a possibly alien computer virus that is suspected to have nuked the planet, and is confirmed to have wiped out all of humanity outside of one city. Her motive? Escape from a top-secret government think-tank where she was being more or less imprisoned.
    • In her defense, the guards caught her before she could set up a firewall. So she unintentionally killed most of humanity in an attempt to escape unjust imprisonment.

Tabletop Games
  • This is one possible interpretation of Exalted's Neverborn, undead gods who want to destroy the world. They were overthrown and killed by their own creations, and now they can't even completely die unless the world goes first.

Video Games
  • Belkt, the Big Bad of Another Centurys Episode 3 is this due to an immense quadruple-whammy. Not only was he born into a Crapsack World where everyone is trying to kill each other (as well as Aliens And Monsters) with Humongous Mecha after barely surviving The End Of The World As We Know It as well as being considered nothing more than an expendable tool to his superiors in The Federation, but he's also got a bad case of Cloning Blues coupled with the fact that he thought his "father" didn't care about him either. So not only does he decide to wipe out his own Earth, but also the Earth of an Alternate Universe where his "father" was originally from and his "base" (i.e., the boy he was cloned from) is living a somewhat less screwed-up life as an Ordinary High School Student via smashing them into each other.
  • Kerghan from Arcanum Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, who intends to destroy all life after a visit to the afterlife convinced him that life only creates pain and delusions and that death is the natural state of the universe. Basically, the Magneto side of Buddhism.
    • Virgil, after being resurrected from a plotline death, indicates that the afterlife is quite pleasant, so he has a point.
  • The Time Devourer in Chrono Cross.  *
  • Sirus, aka Dark Emperor Griffon, from Dark Cloud 2.  *. His grief was so great he swore vengeance on all of mankind, and started systematically erasing it from existence via Time Travel, acquiring the Mac Guffin for himself so he could reduce the world to nothingness. Regardless, the player and the protagonists are made to feel sorry for him by means of flashback scenes scattered throughout Moonflower Palace.
  • In Fable II, Lord Lucien became obsessed with the power of Old Kingdom technology after the death of his wife and daughter, which eventually drives him to reconstruct an Old Kingdom device known as The Spire, with slave labor, and use it to reshape the world to his liking. Oh, and along the way he murders your sister, along with countless others, including your wife and kids, if you have a family, and even your canine companion.
  • Sakura of Fate Stay Night when she finally gets some spotlight. Actually, the attention she gets is what makes her a destructive woobie because it increases her insecurities. Of course, her denial over her actions, Dark Saber's end, the last bad end (the one where she inflicts upon Tohsaka what happened to her, whereas normally the fight would end with Tohsaka unable to actually hurt Sakura) and non brainwashed status are all some pretty heavy dog kicks, leading many to view her as The Scrappy as much as a woobie.
  • F.E.A.R.'s Alma is a dead straight example of this trope. Having been driven insane by her own psychic powers as a child, experimented on and locked up since she was eight years old, medicated into a coma and locked away in a shield vault for most of her life, forcibly impregnanted and then having both of her children taken away, then killed once the project was terminated, all by her own father, and then repeatedly shot at by one of her own children while trying to embrace him, its no surprise that the second she gets loose, people die. F.E.A.R. 2 continues her rampage as she tries to get revenge on everyone who ruined her life, and kills anyone who happens to get in her way.
  • Although her motivations are mostly left undefined, Ultimecia in Final Fantasy VIII seems to be trying to compress time at least in part because of some past trauma which left her with a vendetta against the passage of time.
  • Kuja in Final Fantasy IX, after learning that his lifespan is limited and will soon run out, throws a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum and decides to take two worlds down with him.
  • Seymour in Final Fantasy X.  * His idea of destroying Spira to save it from further pain actually sounds half-sane. He was waaaay too far gone to Take A Third Option.
  • Sephiran/Lehran tries to call the judgment of a goddess down upon Tellius in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, all because he thought it would be the only way for him to finally be put out of his misery and that humanity was completely irredeemable after witnessing 850 years of slavery, tragedy, and war.
  • Crimsoness casts one of these as the Player Character.
  • Durandal, an AI from the Marathon trilogy, was deliberately threatened by his creator in order to drive him to rampancy (as part of an attempt to safely study rampancy), made to open and close doors for hundreds of years in order to stifle his creative development and slow his rampancy, and was probably about to be experimented on more when he entered the "anger" stage of rampancy, secretly contacted hostile aliens and drew them to Tau Ceti to enslave or kill every single human on the colony or in the ship. Though he becomes less of a woobie later, when he turns into a Bad Ass Chessmaster.
    • Lets be fair to the bastard. He brought the Phor as a distraction so he could get loose. Once that was done, he started working on stopping them, freeing their slaves (admittedly to work for him), and helping the Security Officer do that which he does so well. The extermination of those on Tau Ceti IV was not intentional.
  • The King of Planet FM from Mega Man Star Force. Everybody, including his family wanted to kill him to overtake his throne. As a result, he stopped trusting people. He destroyed Planet AM and almost Earth, because he thought that the people there would want to kill him as well.
  • Strega of Persona 3 is a trio of this, all of them being artificially implanted with the powers of Persona by the Kirijo Group and being forced to take drugs that shorten their lifespan in order to control their powers. The leader Takaya later embraces Nyx coming to destroy life, proclaiming that his fight against SEES is him fighting for his way of life.
  • The Shadow Hearts series has a few, but Masaji Kato from Covenant wins the cake.  * Even the protagonists feel sympathy for him as the final battle starts.
  • Alessa Gillespie from Silent Hill is another textbook example. She was burned to the point of near death but kept alive in excruciating pain, force-fed experimental hallucinogenics, and forcibly impregnated with God. This was all done by her mother.. Claudia from the third game and Walter from the fourth certainly counts as well.
  • The Ur-Quan of Star Control. After spending thousands of years psychically enslaved by evil toads who forced them to exterminate whole species of their friends, only finally clearing their minds long enough to revolt by putting themselves through unspeakable agony, anyone would be in a bad mood. The nice ones want to forcibly subjugate all sentient life in the galaxy. The rest... yeah.
  • The main antagonist in Super Paper Mario, Count Bleck, who wanted to use the Chaos Heart to undo and redo all reality because he was heartbroken by his one true love. Except it actually turns out it's without the "redo" part. He's that messed up by the loss of his love.
  • Kohaku of Tsukihime has become so emotionally broken that she thinks of herself as a doll and has no idea how she really feels about anything. Oh, and she's plotting the deaths of Akiha and SHIKI, is implied or perhaps stated to be involved in Makihasa's death and may view Shiki as a target as well, though she doesn't succeed there in any path. It's okay if everyone dies except Hisui, pretty much. Oh, and she's indirectly behind all the serial killing going on in the Far Side routes.
  • Depending on how charitable you feel, the darker Forsaken from World Of Warcraft fall into this trope: their penchant for obscenely lethal plagues, doomsday weapons, and tendency to respond to any threat violently are a direct result of having once been decent, devout humans and elves before having been infected by the Plague of Undeath, killed, resurrected into undeath, corrupted by the Lich King and forced to massacre friends and family, and finally breaking free of his control only to be rejected by their faith and persecuted and hunted down by any remaining friends, family, and acquaintances. No wonder so many of them snap with apocalyptic fury.
    • Sargeras, the creator of the Burning Legion was so traumatized by the evil of some of the demons he fought against as the pantheon's chosen warrior that he decided that an universe where such things were allowed to happen was flawed, its attempts at Order pointless, and should be remade.
  • Nessiah of Yggdra Union has spent the past thousand-odd years living in misery, unable to age or die, as a punishment for being a pacifist in Asgard's time of war. He has spent his life since then trying to get revenge or just to free himself, and makes a nice mess of the mortal world he lives in doing so.
  • Mithos Yggdrasill of Tales Of Symphonia is one of these. Having suffered discrimination all his life, he hit his Despair Event Horizon when his sister who raised him was killed in their attempt to save the world. He decided that the only way for her dream of equality to be realized was for everyone to become "identical soulless beings", and while the protagonists clearly and repeatedly point out that he's going about things all wrong, the vicious cycle of abuse and discrimination portrayed in the game does make it pretty clear where he's coming from.
  • King Valentine in Odin Sphere throws a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum in the final book by using the Cauldron to turn Leventhan into a really pissed-off Sheng Long, which ends up destroying him along with pretty much the rest of the world existence.
  • Vayne in Mana Khemia after he discovered the truth and failed to take it well.  *

Web Comics

Western Animation
  • Demona from Gargoyles nearly succeeds in eliminating all the humans on the planet-but we still feel sorry for her because of her tragic Back Story.
    • More percisely, we feel sorry for her because she continously blames the humans for everything while failing to grasp that the one she's hurting the most here is herself.
  • Butters from South Park tries really hard to do this in the form of Professor Chaos, but fails since he is just too adorable and inherently innocent to do anything really destructive or dangerous.
  • In season two of Teen Titans, Terra's angst over not being able to control her powers leads to her becoming Slade's apprentice so she can receive his training.
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