History GodzillaThreshold / Literature

%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order.

* In ''Lupus Rex'' by John Carter Cash, a group of predators essentially declares war on all prey. While the predators are gloating over their victory, [[spoiler: a quail who had fled the battlefield returns with a maddened swarm of hornets right behind him that attacks the predators.]]

** The Endbringers are three NighInvulnerable, superpowered monsters who have collectively brought humanity to its knees over the course of decades of city-destroying and superhero-slaying attacks. Nuclear weapons are the ''least'' of the measures attempted against these monstrosities, as demonstrated when one parahuman makes a plan to attack one with [[spoiler:a weapon capable of destroying ''India''. [[TheJuggernaut It doesn't work]].]] This is codified in the "Endbringer Truce", one of the most sacred rules all superpowered people abide by: all grievances between capes are postponed during an Endbringer attack, be they factional, professional, or personal. The Truce is permitted by the heroes because they really, desperately need all the help they can get against an Endbringer, and supervillains wouldn't show up to help if they were going to be betrayed. The supervillains follow it because none of them are stupid enough to think that they'd have a chance of surviving an Endbringer without the superheroes' help.

** The possibility of opening [[TheAlcatraz the Birdcage]] is discussed several times, as it contains some of the worst and most powerful parahumans in the world -- villains sufficiently horrifying that even the aforementioned Endbringer attacks are not sufficient cause to permit their release. [[spoiler:The characters finally agree to do it when [[PhysicalGod Scion]] pulls a FaceHeelTurn and begins wiping out humanity.]]
** After the above event, [[spoiler:Taylor and her followers manage to ''recruit the Endbringers''. Collateral damage aside (and there is quite a bit of ''that''), it's thankfully easier than expected and they require no appeasement; after their unintended creator dies, they're left with nothing to do and no purpose to exist for, so they may as well]].
** In turn, it demonstrates just how dangerous the Sleeper [[ShroudedInMyth must be]] that even with all the above going down, still no one thinks the situation bad enough that trying to bring him into the fight won't make it worse.
** The [[TheDreaded Slaughterhouse 9]] are a slightly lesser version of this, to the point where the superheroes have issued a kill-on-sight order, to the extent that when some villains capture one of the members and contact the heroes about it, the heroes' response is to tell them to do everyone a favor and execute the captive immediately.

* ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'':

** The Endbringers are three NighInvulnerable, superpowered monsters who have collectively brought humanity to its knees over the course of decades of city-destroying and superhero-slaying attacks. Nuclear weapons are the ''least'' of the measures attempted against these monstrosities, as demonstrated when one parahuman makes a plan to attack one with [[spoiler:a weapon capable of destroying ''India''. [[TheJuggernaut It doesn't work]].]] This is codified in the "Endbringer Truce", one of the most sacred rules all superpowered people abide by: during an Endbringer attack, all personal grievances between capes are postponed. The Truce is permitted by the heroes because they really, desperately need all the help they can get against an Endbringer, and supervillains wouldn't show up to help if they were going to be betrayed. The supervillains follow it because none of them are stupid enough to think that they'd have a chance of surviving an Endbringer without the superheroes' help.
** When the fight with [[spoiler:Khonsu]] drags out far longer than usual without humanity being able to force it to retreat, the world's power players agree to pay the tribute a powerful supervillainess demands in order to get her assistance: thousands of innocent lives.

** The Endbringers are three NighInvulnerable, superpowered monsters who have collectively brought humanity to its knees over the course of decades of city-destroying and superhero-slaying attacks. Nuclear weapons are the ''least'' of the measures attempted against these monstrosities, as demonstrated when one parahuman makes a plan to attack one with [[spoiler:a weapon capable of destroying ''India''. [[TheJuggernaut It doesn't work]].]] This is codified in the "Endbringer Truce", one of the most sacred rules all superpowered people abide by: in an Endbringer fight, villains and heroes fight side-by-side, absolutely no interfering with each other allowed, no matter the bad blood or vendettas between them. The Truce is permitted by the heroes because they really, desperately need all the help they can get against an Endbringer, and supervillains wouldn't show up to help if they were going to get betrayed by the heroes in doing so. The supervillains follow it because none of them are stupid enough to think that they'd have a chance of surviving an Endbringer without the superheroes' help.

** In book twelve, ''Literature/{{Changes}}'', after suffering (in something of a personal best) [[spoiler:a broken back, a kidnapped daughter, and a host of vampires old enough to qualify as gods in their own right about to perform an effectively unblockable curse that will destroy his entire family]], he turns to one of his final options: [[spoiler:swearing his allegiance to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness]]. Harry explains to her quite bluntly that he was also desperate enough to consider [[spoiler:[[PoweredByAForsakenChild performing the Darkhallow rite]] or [[DealWithTheDevil becoming a Denarian]] if Mab didn't accept him, but that she was the [[BlackAndGreyMorality least evil of his available options]]]].

** In book twelve, ''Literature/{{Changes}}'', after suffering (in something of a personal best) [[spoiler:a broken back, a kidnapped daughter, and a host of vampires old enough to qualify as gods in their own right about to perform an effectively unblockable curse that will destroy his entire family]], he turns to one of his final options: [[spoiler:swearing his allegiance to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness]]. Harry was even desperate enough to consider [[spoiler:[[PoweredByAForsakenChild performing the Darkhallow rite]] or [[DealWithTheDevil becoming a Denarian]] if Mab didn't accept him]].

** In book seven, ''Literature/DeadBeat'', Harry is faced with several necromancers competing for the chance to [[spoiler:be the one to perform a dark ritual that makes its performer into a new god by sucking the life from anyone unfortunate enough to live [[UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} nearby]].]] In order to bypass the protective magical barrier surrounding them, Harry [[LoopholeAbuse creatively reinterprets]] the Laws of Magic, and almost literally enacts this trope, by [[spoiler:reanimating a frelling tyrannosaurus ([[NonHumanUndead it's not human]], so he wasn't ''technically'' breaking the law)]].

Examples of GodzillaThreshold from Literature:

* ''{{Literature/Touch}}'', in which we are presented with a monster so far left nameless, which was so powerful that it convinced every global government to work together with one another in order to try and kill it. [[spoiler: They still fail.]]

** The second book, ''Literature/FoolMoon'', had Harry view his use of [[spoiler:the Hexenwulf belt]] this way, with its possibility of turning him into a mindless feral killer.
** In book seven, ''Literature/DeadBeat'', Harry is faced with several necromancers competing for the chance to [[spoiler:be the one to perform a dark ritual that makes its performer into a new god by sucking the life from anyone unfortunate enough to live [[UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} nearby]].]] In order to bypass the protective magical barrier surrounding them, Harry [[LoopholeAbuse creatively reinterprets]] the Laws of Magic, and almost literally enacts this trope, by [[spoiler:reanimating a frelling tyrannosaurus ([[NonHumanUndead it's not human,]] so he wasn't ''technically'' breaking the law)]].

** A situation dire enough to involve [[DestructiveSavior Harry Dresden]] usually means you've crossed the Threshold. [[spoiler:When the necromancers threaten Chicago, the response of the White Council is to send every available Warden, including the Captain -- who recruits Harry (a man they have been fearing is secretly a warlock for the last 10 years) the minute they see him.]]

* ''Literature/CodexAlera'':
** Tavi thrives on plans that are [[CrazyAwesome so crazy they might just work]], reaching a peak at the final battle in which he lures the BigBad to a place where [[spoiler:two of the world's most powerful Furies sleep and then provoking them]]. His lover Kitai figures where he went [[FollowTheChaos by thinking of a place only an absolute fool would go to, and a lunatic would follow]].
** In the last book, Tavi had to get all of his armies to reach a main battlefield in a few days -- moving several hundred thousand almost at the speed of flight. Then [[spoiler:Alera]] warns him that his plan will cause untold weather devastation thousands of years later, he concludes the devastating long term consequences must be borne if anyone in Alera is to survive.
* In Creator/StephenKing's ''Literature/UnderTheDome'', the government does everything in its power to free the town of Chester's Mill from its predicament. This includes firing a cruise missile at the invisible dome surrounding the town, [[spoiler:then a second missile when the first one fails]], using specially modified acid which can melt through two miles of bedrock, despite the possibility that it could ''set the dome on fire'', and then attempting to use a 'pencil nuke', only to have it melt down and kill fifteen people before it could be used. The government continues, trying to build a second pencil nuke, [[spoiler:but by that point, things are so bad they finally decide they don't have time]].
* The ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'' series -- about an alien invasion hitting Earth right in the middle of World War 2 -- is chock full of these. Allying with Nazis, sometimes used even by Jewish partisans who have to choose between the Nazis, and all of humanity getting enslaved. Nuking your own cities. Deploying chemical weapons against your own territory.
* In ''Literature/WorldWarZ'', the government is so stumped as to how to fight the zombie hordes that they are forced to implement the "Redeker Plan", using large parts of the population as zombie bait to give the government a chance to regroup and plan, [[spoiler:[[TheExtremistWasRight and it worked]]]]. The Redeker Plan itself was adapted from South Africa's own "Plan Orange", for how to deal with an all-out armed uprising by the native black Africans against the Apartheid government.
* ''Literature/TheLaundryFiles'':
** When CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (a.k.a, the stars coming right) ensues SCORPION STARE is initiated, a program that loops [[TakenForGranite a basilisk frequency]] through every CCTV camera in Britain. Similarly, in ''The Jennifer Morgue'', Mo is given access to "a big white one" in the case that the Bond villain wannabe manages to resurrect an ancient Chthonian war god -- and is none too pleased to find out "a big white one" is a tactical nuke.
** "Literature/TheConcreteJungle," the story that dives into the origins of SCORPION STARE, shares a historical example - evidence that the [[{{Ghostapo}} Nazis]] were planning to weaponize gorgons (humans who produce the basilisk frequency as an observer effect due to a rare brain tumor) was enough to get the British military to threaten chemical attacks on civilian targets if they didn't knock it off.
* Robert Jordan's ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' series: in the War of Power, the good guys constructed the Choedan Kal, two devices (one for use by a male, one for use by a female) that could draw astronomical amounts of the One Power in order to seal the Dark One away in his prison. Later used to [[spoiler:cleanse the poisoned male half of the Power during the climax of book 9, ''Winter's Heart'' (during which the female Choedan Kal is destroyed).]] In ''The Gathering Storm'', [[spoiler:Rand at first thinks that the male Choedan Kal is the key to defeating the Dark One, but eventually realizes that it won't work. At the end of the book, he destroys it, knowing there may well be another (and better) way to defeat the Dark One this time around. He turns out to be right: the solution is (manipulating TheDragon into) using ''another'' power he had previously decided was too dangerous.]]
* In Creator/DavidWeber's ''Literature/OutOfTheDark'', the alien commander of the forces invading Earth eventually concedes the use of [[spoiler: genocidal bioweapons]] as the only option against a planetful of humans who refuse to submit, and are rapidly depleting the invader's reserves.
* In another David Weber work, ''Literature/HonorHarrington'', the Havenites cross this threshhold when they realize that the Manticorans' new weapons mean inevitable defeat for the Republic of Haven, and decide to capitalize on their dwindling numerical advantage by launching a desperation attack on the Manticoran home system. The resulting battle results in over a million dead and leaves both star nations virtually unable to continue the fighting -- Manticore wins, but at the cost of over half its wall of battle. Later on, things deteriorate so badly between Manticore and the [[UnwittingPawn Solarian League]] (a power that, [[PaperTiger on paper]], is ''much'' bigger and more powerful than Manticore and Haven combined), that the Manticorans sue for peace with the Havenites and declare war on the League. By this point, the Manticoran and Havenite governments have both realized that they were being played by the ''true'' BigBad, [[spoiler: The Mesan Alignment]], and have [[spoiler:signed a ''military alliance'']]. At that point, things start to go downhill for the Solarian League (and [[spoiler:the Alignment]]) rather quickly.
* In Weber's second "Dahak" book,''The Armageddon Inheritance'', the only power source great enough to drive the incredible defensive installations that ''might'' enable Earth to survive the attack of an oncoming genocidal alien horde is nearly uncontrollable and could itself ravage the planet if containment is lost.

* ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'':
** In ''Traitor General'' Feygor gets very badly sick and Curth has nothing left to help him. When Ezrah offers the use of a paste that contains normally highly-toxic - as in scratch a man with it and he dies - poison as a remedy like his tribe did, the team reluctantly decides to use it. It barely works.
** One of the flashbacks in ''Ghostmaker'' has a group of Ghosts encounter a summoned daemon in one of the buildings they're clearing. With little hesitation and less time to flee, the Ghosts promptly request that one of the kilometres-long ships in orbit fire on the building.
* In Creator/IsaacAsimov's ''Literature/TheEndOfEternity'', there is a time traveling group that safeguards humanity over a period of billions of years. [[spoiler:The problem is that humanity never leaves the Solar System, and after at least millions, maybe billions of years humanity dies out. The protagonist goes back to the twentieth century, and there manipulates the timeline so that time travel never arises, wiping out millions of years of human existence and destroying everyone and everything he ever knew.]]
* ''Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse'':
** In the ''Destiny'' trilogy, the Federation president gives Captain Picard permission to do anything necessary, regardless of Starfleet regulations or Federation law, to defeat a massive Borg invasion, up to and including re-creating [[Film/StarTrekNemesis Shinzon's thalaron weapon]]. Picard is ready to do this, [[DefiedTrope until Geordi flatly refuses to carry out Picard's order]] to construct the device and [[CallingTheOldManOut proceeds to tear into him over it]]. Picard, shaken, then rescinds the order and [[TakeAThirdOption finds another way]].
-->'''[=LaForge=]:''' Repeat it as many times as you like, it won't make any difference. I will not resurrect that...that ''abomination''. I won't be party to whatever atrocities it winds up being used for. When Shinzon had one, you were ready to die to stop it. Data [[HeroicSacrifice gave his life to destroy it]]. For me to rebuild it now would be an insult to his memory and a betrayal of his sacrifice. I can't do that. I won't.
** In ''Literature/UhurasSong'' the Federation Council finds the plague sweeping across the Federation so serious that they ''suspend the Prime Directive'' and tell Kirk that they're trusting his judgement on how to get the cure that ''legends'' say exist on a planet he has only vague information about the location of. Spock misunderstands the reasoning and says they seem rather optimistic about their chances of finding the cure, despite his attempts to emphasize how flimsy their information is. Kirk explains that their apparent optimism is really grasping at straws because the situation is much worse than they (on the Enterprise) know. (It is strongly implied that the existence of the Federation and the survival of multiple member species is at stake. General Order One is not suspended lightly.)
* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', the arrival of the Others is considered this for people on both sides of the Wall. Mance Rayder, the King Beyond The Wall, is willing to march the Free Folk south of the Wall to find shelter in the despotic Seven Kingdoms. Jon Snow, for his part, is willing to allow "Wildlings" to settle on the Night Watch's lands and even join the Night Watch to bolster their ranks against the Others. Both plans are considered pretty shocking, and not everyone agrees with them.
* In Timothy Zahn's ''Literature/TheConquerorsTrilogy'', the arrival of a dangerous alien threat starts everyone talking about dusting off a superweapon the humans used once as a last resort and never used again on the grounds of how barbaric the results were. [[spoiler: Subverted in that the weapon doesn't actually exist; a freak accident where a solar flare wiped out the enemy fleet was spun by the human government into the fearsome superweapon. It doesn't take long before everybody wonders why the human government doesn't use it, since the Godzilla Threshold has obviously been long passed.]]
* Creator/DaleBrown's books:
** Villainous example in ''Sky Masters''. His flotilla in shambles after a Filipino ambush, with only death or dishonourable retreat on the cards, BigBad Admiral Yin decided to NukeEm. Things go downhill from there.
** ''Battle Born'' has two. The Korean GeneralRipper, seeing all conventional attempts failing to stop a Chinese invasion, carries out a coup so he can get the nuclear launch codes. In turn, to stop him from making things go nuclear, [=McLanahan=] has Dreamland forces attack his command centre even though Korea is supposed to be America's ally.

* ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'':
** Middle-Earth reached the Threshold at the end of the First Age. [[GodOfEvil Morgoth]] ruled over all of Beleriand and to defeat him the Valar unleashed a war that sank all of Beleriand.
** When Ar-Pharazôn sought to take Immortality from the Valar, the Valar, unwilling to actively kill men, who as Children of Ilúvatar fall under their protection, instead ''give up'' their stewardship of the world and let ''God'' handle it, and the ''World'' is changed for it.
* ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'':

* When the [[spoiler: [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Polypond]]]] attacks the ''Literature/GreatShip'' in ''A Well of Stars'', the crew decide it's preferable to burn away the entire fuel supply of the ship by firing up ''all'' of the ship's 14 [[PlanetSpaceShip world-sized fusion rockets]], rather than allowing the enemy to rendezvous and take over the ship.
* In the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'' prequel ''The Hork-Bajir Chronicles'', the Andalite war-prince Alloran [[spoiler:who eventually becomes Visser Three's host]] knew the Andalites had lost the war over the Hork-Bajir. Desperate to prevent the Yeerks from acquiring the Hork-Bajir, he unleashed a Quantum Virus, a horrific disease of space-time that breaks living beings down into molecules. He targeted the ''Hork-Bajir'' to deny the Yeerks their prize. All for naught, since the Yeerks had already captured enough Hork-Bajir to breed a sustainable population for their use. The Andalites covered up this horrific war crime to save face, and Alloran was left a bitter disgraced ShellShockedVeteran.
* The protagonists in Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/TheRingworldEngineers'' are faced with the problem of Ringworld's increasingly unstable 'orbit'. The Ringworld has, or rather had, {{Ramscoop}}s fixed around its circumference to act as station-keeping jets, using the solar wind as fuel. The Ringworld's inhabitants, presumably not knowing or not caring why the ramscoops were there, had 'borrowed' most of them to use on spaceships. The remainder could no longer keep the Ringworld centered on its star. There is a solution, but even the [[{{Precursors}} Pak Protector]] who discovers it is too horrified to enact it. [[spoiler:They use the solar magnetic controls built into the Ringworld to temporarily increase solar wind output enough to provide the remaining ramscoops with enough fuel to re-center the ring. This has the unfortunate side effect of sterilizing a third or so of the Ringworld, killing '''trillions''' of humanoids via slow, agonizing radiation poisoning.]]
* In Tim Powers' ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheDark'', the Turkish siege of Vienna is only the visible manifestation of a magical struggle between West and East to determine which form of civilization will go on to dominate the planet. At one point Merlin the Magician considers a "desperately sure" move: summoning an arch-demon that could easily win the war, but it would forever be a taint on the West that it had stooped to using such aid.
* in ''Literature/TheBrokenCrescent'', Nate Black/Azrael is the Angel of Death sent by a god who hates Mankind to bring them down. The Monarch and his Shadow College consider using him to still be a lesser evil than allowing the College of Man to continue to run things.
* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos''
** ''[[Literature/AMagesPower A Mage's Power]]'': The shaman of Kyraa gives Eric the spirit of Dengel, an ancient and legendary mage. Then she warns him to never ever give Dengel full control of his body; not under any circumstances, because if he does, the result would be GrandTheftMe. [[spoiler: Near the climax, Eric is imprisoned and about to be tortured and executed. Dengel explains that relinquishing full control is his only way out.]]
** Tiza's mentor teaches her a DangerousForbiddenTechnique to be used in only the most dire of situations. [[spoiler: Trapped in a Fog Cloud, chased by numerous high level monsters, and carrying a civilian, qualifies as such]]. The result is a crisis averted and a HeroicRROD.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}: Legion'' Alcatraz discusses this, stating that with nothing else having worked to stop the [[AlienInvasion Ceph]], going for the NuclearOption is worth a shot.

* In ''Literature/{{Noob}}'', Sin is greatly against Sources (basically the universe's gods), including himself, meddling with the lives of mortals after Lys and Ark'hen isolated an entire contient from the rest of the world to cover up his existence. However, when [[spoiler:a 1000 meter-hight EldritchAbomination from the planet of which Olydri is a moon]] shows up, he ends up giving a hand in getting rid of it.
* In ''Literature/{{Hammerjack}}'', the characters repeatedly emphasize that the highly unstable AI Lyssa must never under any circumstances be allowed to escape confinement, as she would cause a data singularity that could destroy the whole [[{{Cyberspace}} Axis]]. In the sequel ''Prodigal'', however, the SEF Hive takes over the Axis and prepares to launch nuclear missiles, and Lea decides that releasing Lyssa and crashing the Axis is the least-bad of their options.

* Midway through ''Literature/TheBelgariad'', [[EvilSorcerer C'tuchik]] crosses the threshold - when it becomes clear that Belgarath and his posse are going to successfully reclaim the [[{{Macguffin}} Orb of Aldur]] - by breaking the first law of sorcery and trying to remove it from existence entirely. Unfortunately, nothing can be unmade, so the spell backlashes and gives him a CruelAndUnusualDeath that also nearly levels the entire city they were standing in at the time.

* ''Literature/{{Worm}}'':
** The Endbringers are three NighInvulnerable, superpowered monsters who have collectively brought humanity to its knees over the course of decades of city-destroying and superhero-slaying attacks. Nuclear weapons are the ''least'' of the measures attempted against these monstrosities, as demonstrated when one parahuman makes a plan to attack one with [[spoiler:a weapon capable of destroying ''India''. [[TheJuggernaut It doesn't work]].]] This is codified in the "Endbringer Truce", one of the most sacred rules all superpowered people abide by: in an Endbringer fight, villains and heroes fight side-by-side, absolutely no interfering with each other allowed, no matter the bad blood or vendettas between them. The Truce is permitted by the heroes because they really, desperately need all the help they can get against an Endbringer, and supervillains wouldn't show up to help if they were going to get betrayed by the heroes in doing so. The supervillains follow it because none of them are stupid enough to think that they'd have a chance of surviving an Endbringer without the superheroes' help.
** When the fight with [[spoiler:Khonsu]] drags out far longer than usual without humanity being able to force it to retreat, the world's power players agree to pay the tribute a powerful supervillainess demands in order to get her assistance: thousands of innocent lives.
** The possibility of opening [[TheAlcatraz the Birdcage]] is discussed several times, as it contains some of the worst and most powerful parahumans in the world -- villains sufficiently horrifying that even the aforementioned Endbringer attacks are not sufficient cause to permit their release. [[spoiler:The characters finally agree to do it when [[PhysicalGod Scion]] pulls a FaceHeelTurn and begins wiping out humanity.]]
** After the above event, [[spoiler:Taylor and her followers manage to ''recruit the Endbringers''. Collateral damage aside (and there is quite a bit of ''that''), it's thankfully easier than expected and they require no appeasement; after their unintended creator dies, they're left with nothing to do and no purpose to exist for, so they may as well]].
** In turn, it demonstrates just how dangerous the Sleeper [[ShroudedInMyth must be]] that even with all the above going down, still no one thinks the situation bad enough that trying to bring him into the fight won't make it worse.
** The [[TheDreaded Slaughterhouse 9]] are a slightly lesser version of this, to the point where the superheroes have issued a kill-on-sight order, to the extent that when some villains capture one of the members and contact the heroes about it, the heroes response is to tell them to do everyone a favor and execute the captive immediately.

* ''Literature/ThousandSons'':
** In ''Ahriman: Exile'', the titular VillainProtagonist has been captured by [[BigBad Amon]]. Astraeos wants to mount a rescue, but his four-man team is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by Amon’s forces. In desperation, Astraeos releases the daemonhost that was imprisoned in the ship’s hold and [[WillingChanneler binds it to his very soul]] in order to wield its tremendous power against Amon.
** Ctesias is forced to summon all of his bound daemons at once on two separate occasions. In ''The Tale of Ctesias'', he does it to protect Ahriman’s fleet from the millions of daemonettes that haunt the [[DerelictGraveyard Gates of Ruin]]. In ''Ahriman: Unchanged'', he does it as part of Ahriman’s battle plan for their risky attack on the Planet of the Sorcerers. In both cases, the act of summoning so many daemons at once nearly kills Ctesias.

** In ''Ahriman: Exile'', the titular VillainProtagonist has been captured by [[BigBad Amon]]. Astraeos wants to mount a rescue, but his four-man team is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by Amon’s forces. In desperation, Astraeos releases the daemonhost that was imprisoned in the ship’s hold and [[WillingChanneler binds it to his very soul]] in order to wield it as a weapon.

** In ''Ahriman: Exile'', the titular VillainProtagonist has been captured by [[BigBad Amon]]. Astraeos wants to mount a rescue, but his four-man team is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by Amon’s forces. In desperation, Astraeos releases the daemonhost that was shackled upimprisoned in the ship’s hold and [[WillingChanneler binds it to his very soul]] in order to wield it as a weapon.

** In ''Ahriman: Exile'', the titular VillainProtagonist has been captured by [[BigBadAmon]]. Astraeos wants to mount a rescue, but his four-man team is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by Amon’s forces. In desperation, Astraeos releases the daemonhost that was shackled upimprisoned in the ship’s hold and [[WillingChanneler binds it to his very soul]] in order to wield it as a weapon.

** The [[TheDreaded Slaughterhouse 9]] are considered a slightly lesser version of this, to the point where the superheroes have issued a kill-on-sight order, and a wanted supervillain can kill any of them in public with the superheroes doing nothing more than asking them for details for the sake of paperwork.

** The Endbringers are three NighInvulnerable, superpowered monsters who have collectively brought humanity to its knees over the course of decades of city-destroying and superhero-slaying attacks. Nuclear weapons are the ''least'' of the measures attempted against these monstrosities, as demonstrated when one parahuman makes a plan to attack one with [[spoiler:a weapon capable of destroying ''India''. [[TheJuggernaut It doesn't work]].]]

** After the above event, [[spoiler:Taylor and her followers manage to ''recruit the Endbringers'']].

* ''[[Literature/AMagesPower A Mage's Power]]'': The shaman of Kyraa gives Eric the spirit of Dengel, an ancient and legendary mage. Then she warns him to never ever give Dengel full control of his body; not under any circumstances, because if he does, the result would be GrandTheftMe. [[spoiler: Near the climax, Eric is imprisoned and about to be tortured and executed. Dengel explains that relinquishing full control is his only way out.]]

* In ''Literature/VampirosDoRioDouro'', the [[UsefulNotes/BraziliansWithBazookas Brazilian military]] grows increasingly desperate as their [[RedshirtArmy casualties pile up]] fighting against seven Portuguese vampires with superpowers granted by the Devil (the group's leader can [[EvilIsDeathlyCold cover the entire region in snow and ice with his presence]], another can raise the dead with his voice and there is another that can ''[[TimeMaster stop time]]''. Their only hope of victory is [[spoiler:using a ''nuke'' to destroy them while they are in one place. It works, but the time-stopping vampire could have survived on his own if he didn't thought it was his time to die]].

** In the course of the books, there can be so many gods drawn to a nexus of power that drawing in ''more'' hostile gods becomes a viable plan because they might start countering each other.

** "The Concrete Jungle," the story that dives into the origins of SCORPION STARE, shares a historical example - evidence that the [[{{Ghostapo}} Nazis]] were planning to weaponize gorgons (humans who produce the basilisk frequency as an observer effect due to a rare brain tumor) was enough to get the British military to threaten chemical attacks on civilian targets if they didn't knock it off.