History Main / AMillionIsAStatistic

** ''Film/CabinInTheWoods'' ends with one of the protagonists refusing to kill one person in order to [[spoiler:save the world]] - despite the fact that the prospective target will then ''die anyway''.

** Then Spoofed when Folken reveals that the two soldiers in question were "[[{{Twincest}} Incestuous]] [[LesYay Bisexual]] [[ActionGirl Ninja]] {{Cat Girl}}s with [[BuxomIsBetter big breasts]]." Then everyone instantly understands.

* In the PostNineElevenTerrorismMovie ''Film/{{Unthinkable}}'', a homegrown terrorist and aspiring mass murderer has scattered several nuclear devices across the United States and rigged these to explode, which would kill millions of people. A TortureTechnician attempts to force the information out of him by [[NecessarilyEvil any means necessary]], with the film questioning the validity of such. While this "dilemma" will seem downright farcical to most people, a better case is presented when the interrogators are considering torturing the man's two innocent children. Later on, the female FBI Agent who's taken the strongest stance against the interrogator's actions trusts the terrorist at his word and causes the deaths of 53 people. Despite this, she plays the trope horrifyingly straight when she openly voices her preference to let ''thousands'' of children all be killed to preserve the lives of his.

* Invoked in ''Manga/OnePiece'' by Nico Robin, who states that anyone willing to issue and carry out a Buster Call (a coordinated, take-no-prisoners Marine attack powerful enough [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill to reduce an island to ashes]]) is so detached that they can't truly comprehend the sheer amount of death and destruction it causes, Especially [[SmugSnake Spandam]], who flaunts the authority he was given to issue one every chance he gets.
** Robin tells the crew that the Buster Call is essentially just removing an island from the world map, and people aren't visible on such a map.
* In ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', due to a food crisis, the government sent 250,000 people to [[BlatantLies reclaim Wall Maria]] with only less than 200 returning. One of the casualties is Armin's grandfather who handed him his hat before leaving. Another happens in Episode 25 where the large number of civilian deaths are all represented by a bloodied little girl crying and stumbling in the streets over several corpses.

* Light Yagami from ''Manga/DeathNote''. Certainly [[spoiler:L's death]] evokes a stronger reaction from the audience than the thousands of others killed before (and the even greater number killed after). This is somewhat justified however, in that the majority of the people he killed were not just faceless masses but also [[AssholeVictim criminals]] killed for the sake of Light's ambition to [[WellIntentionedExtremist make the world a better place]], while the named characters he takes out are done for the sake of saving his own ass.

** Weirdly, ''Anime/MobileSuitZetaGundam's'' Titans have a much worse reputation than Zeon even though they only gassed ''one'' colony (Zeon did this to several, ''at least'', and then ''dropped them on the Earth'') and were in general only slightly more JerkAss-ish than Zeon was. To be fair, when Zeon was doing it, there wasn't yet a treaty forbidding this very behavior. The Titans did it in response to ''peaceful protests'' in a part of the colony. Also, the Federation was also doing ''something'' in response to Zeon as well, since both sides lost half their population during the first week. And some level of CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority is also likely involved, since Zeon were rebelling against the Federation which the Titans worked for.
** Harshly averted in the miniseries ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam0080WarInThePocket''. Not only are you able to witness the carnage close up from a bystander's point of view, you also meet most of the mooks fighting in the story's conflict. [[spoiler:While a lot of the main characters are part of a special-forces team, in the end they're still just a bunch of mooks - all of whom die, either in a shootout against overwhelming odds or {{curbstomp|Battle}}ed by the Gundam, no matter how much the viewer expects any of them to pull out an InfinityPlusOneSword and destroy the Gundam. To top it off, the anime made a very specific point of making their deaths utterly pointless, even if the last remaining member of the team succeeds in his immediate goal - the destruction of the Gundam - at the cost of his own life.]]
** In general though, the Universal Century averts this by often pointing out that every soldier is human in and of themselves, have emotions, dreams and an identity of their own, and that every soldier that dies is another life lost pointlessly in war (in fact, in ''Zeta Gundam'', when protagonist Kamille Bidan gets angry at resident PsychoForHire Yazan Gable, he is quite obviously angry that Yazan treats war like a game and that people on all sides are dying not just on his side).

* ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'' averts this. Nagi spends a good chunk of his time after the war saving refugees, and Arika went to great lengths to save as many civilians as she possibly could. Negi holds to the same philosophy; the main reason that he doesn't join [[spoiler: Kurt Godel]] is because he doesn't believe in this trope, and if joining forces means that they can't save ''everyone'', then to hell with an alliance.

* ''Literature/LegendOfTheGalacticHeroes'' suffers horrendously from this, coupled with having millions of people killed in ''virtually every battle''. However, it's never taken lightly. Most officers strive to minimize loss of life, and at least on the Alliance's side it's one of the sources of the country's problems that so much of its youth dies on the battlefields, with almost no veterans to speak of.

* Toward the end of ''Manga/MuhyoAndRoji'', 500 Executors die when Vector attacks the northern Magical Law headquarters, and a few panels of memorial services are shown. They get significantly less of a follow-up than many other deaths, like Enchu's mother, [[spoiler:Panza]] (whose death weighs heavily on Roji) and Kid. Even Fujiwara, a minor character who was one of Imai's subordinates before he got killed in the Arcanum, comes back as a haunt and is mentioned as an example of someone who was incompetent but determined.

* ''Manga/RurouniKenshin''. Kenshin's vow not to kill stems from the overwhelming number of people he killed during the Bakumatsu. Although Kenshin was an assassin and thus knew the name and face of his main targets, he killed all who were accompanying said target at the time, many of whom remain nameless. Part of the series of events that led him to making that vow involved him learning that the woman he had married during the war (and then accidentally killed when she got between him and an opponent in a fight) had been engaged to one of those mooks.

** Subverted by Eren when [[spoiler:he screams at Reiner and Bertlolt for being mass murderers, absolutely livid and disgusted at all the deaths they caused]]. A much later TimeSkip, on the other hand, turns his stance on its ear when [[spoiler:he starts killing civillians, assassinating military officers, and putting together a plan to commit ''mass genocide'' on everyone outside of Paradis Island after he starts channeling his titan-killing rage into a war against the rest of humanity]].

* During the Fourth Shinobi World War in ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'', when tens of thousands of nameless ninjas died during the skirmishes, they are given nary a reference. Neji's death on the other hand, is treated as this is a huge thing for everyone, not just his own comrades but also other members of the Alliance who never knew about Neji in one bit, despite the fact that there are also other Shinobi members that had died during the same attack (And potentially other members that could possibly be looked up more than Neji for other people).

* Averted in ''Fanfic/SonOfTheSannin'' during the Fourth Ninja War. The casualties suffered by the Shinobi Allied Forces are treated very seriously by the commanding officers, though it really hits home when [[BigBad Madara Uchiha]] shows up in the battlefield, [[OneManArmy and wreaks havoc on the Second Division decimating almost half their forces by himself]]. To drive the point further, Maito Gai [[DeadlyUpgrade using the Eighth Gate at the cost of his life]] is treated as a HeroicSacrifice, given all the lives he managed to save by destroying Madara's [[ColonyDrop Shinra Tensei meteors]] and then injuring him enough to leave him temporarily out of commission, giving the allied forces a ''very'' needed reprieve.

** In fact, the audience ''does'' know them. Many were at the wedding at the beginning, proving them to be friends of the main characters. Owners of the DVD can even get to know ''everyone'' by looking at their profiles in the Extras where they talk about their life, their hopes and secret identity. Those are not just names with a face, they are people with a personality and Creator/{{Pixar}} tried hard on evoking as much empathy for them as possible.

* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' has been criticized for this. Billions die, but who cares? It's [[SceneryGorn Disaster Porn]], and the only people who count are in a little plane. This is the reason for the huge cast that drags down the film. Giving the audience as many characters with actual names as possible to care about to give the audience more of a connection to billions dying.

* ''Film/HappyDeathDay'': When the killer [[spoiler:(one of them anyway)]] gets free and murders a cop, a hospital orderly and the movie's RelationshipUpgrade, it's because of ''the latter's'' death that the protagonist decides to reset [[GroundhogDayLoop the loop]] to before they all died and save them before the loop ends for good, with the other two deaths going unmentioned in her decision.

* At the end of Creator/DanAbnett's ''Literature/GauntsGhosts'' novel ''Only In Death'', Mkoll is {{Mercy Kill}}ing the victims of the Blood Pact's [[ColdBloodedTorture tortures]]. When he comes to one, Eszrad stops him: [[spoiler:it's Gaunt himself. Him, they take out of there to recover.]] Though, to be fair, due to the time of capture and the fact they wanted [[spoiler:Gaunt]] to suffer longer, and from the description, you find out most of the prisoners had lost their slew of eyes, legs, arms etc, leaving them just barely alive husks. [[spoiler:Gaunt]] had only lost his eyes, something they could easily replace.
** Though Gaunt himself averts this rather pointedly; he takes time to memorize the names, faces and details of every man he's fought with or who's died under his command, and can recite them from memory. He gets quite visibly upset when it turns out there's someone he has forgotten.

*** The reason for the Emperor's realization is still stated to be him realizing that Horus was irredeemably evil. Before that point he had been hoping he could reason with Horus and make peace, but seeing him personally kill another human being, who had no way off injuring him, without a thought made the Emperor understand that Horus couldn't be reasoned with. This is also the reason why most fans like the "Guardsman"-version better.

* The ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'' books are set amid genocidal galactic wars that are said to have killed trillions, the vast majority of which die offpage with little more than a footnote. The characters, up to and including the Emperor of the known universe, are far more concerned with their own personal issues to seemingly give it much thought.

** Leto II also bears the weight of his 'enforced peace' in ''Literature/GodEmperorOfDune'', though his Fremen nature allows him to accepted easier than his father as a necessary lesser evil.

* Intentionally invoked for the [[Literature/TheCulture Culture-Idiran]] War in ''Literature/ConsiderPhlebas''. The epilogue quotes from a historical text which details the overall casualties, including over eight hundred ''billion'' lives, the destruction of over fifteen thousand planet-equivalent habitats, and six stars. The very next sentence notes that from a galactic perspective it was a minor bushfire war with low casualties and a small scope (".02 percent of the galaxy by volume and .01 percent of the stellar population.").

* Used by name in ''Literature/{{Doom}}''. At the end of the first book, the two main characters watch from space as the earth is carpet-nuked. They aren't nearly as disturbed by this as they feel they should be, until they start thinking about specific people they know who are probably dead.
* In the Literature/BelisariusSeries, soldiers die in frequently large quantities. Belisarius tries not to kill his men, but he knows that there will be casualties. And then [[spoiler:ally and friend Eon]] dies, and he goes to pieces. Partly justified in that [[spoiler:Eon's death causes a succession crisis, because his son is an infant]].

* In ''[[Literature/TheBelgariad the Mallorean]]'', Zakath starts out trying to commit genocide. His Mallorean soldiers kill every Murgo they can find, adults and children alike. While he may not have killed a million, it wasn't for lack of effort. Granted, he's quite crazy and everyone hates Murgos, but the protagonists forgive him quite easily. It's jarring when you consider the fact that these are the same people who [[spoiler: entombed Zedar in solid rock for all eternity, because he killed Durnik in self-defense. The prequels attempt to justify this, mostly by having him KickTheDog, but we don't see that in the Belgariad]]. It probably helps at least a little that the Murgos are [[MoralMyopia their peoples' traditional enemies]], and further have a rather despicable national culture based on slavery and HumanSacrifice, but the broader point remains.
* In L. Jagi Lamplighter's ''Literature/ProsperosDaughter'', Miranda completely inverts it. She cares passionately about the deaths of thousands while behaving with such LackOfEmpathy to those near to her that her siblings thinks their father put a spell on her to cause it.

** While not involving death, this is the point of The Total Perspective Vortex from ''Literature/TheRestaurantAtTheEndOfTheUniverse''. It's purpose is to show a person how insignificant they are in relation to the whole universe. The result is madness in all but one case. The creator was saddened by the madness of his wife, but was satisfied that he proved that if life was to exist in a universe this big, the last thing it could afford to have was a sense of proportion.

* In ''Literature/ASymphonyOfEternity'' we have the Volunian war in which millions of soldiers have died have died and before that there was the war for what in now [[OccupiersOutOfOurCountry The Occupied Territories]] where hundreds of millions died in the war, the real kicker? Both are considered TERTIARY fronts and MINOR AND BRIEF conflicts.

* ''Literature/DungeonCrawlerCarl'': Averted. There is a counter in every safe room showing the number of surviving crawlers. It starts in the millions, and goes down rapidly. Carl cannot stop watching it, and his primary motivation is revenge over the murder of his entire species ''for a reality tv show''. The exact number is mentioned repeatedly, with Carl reeling over the sheer amount of dead since last he checked.

*** Also, during the final scene, a PADD is being passed hand-to-hand among the crowd watching the news report. This PADD holds a list of the casualties, and several of the un-named background characters turn away with crestfallen expressions, implying that they too had friends/acquaintances among the fallen. Stories Never Told...
** Although the crew is pretty sure that President Clark is a xenophobic bastard that gradually converts Earth into a fascist state, and they receive evidence that he indeed masterminded the assassination of his predecessor, it is only him having several civilian transports destroyed with some 10,000 people killed that truly infuriates Sheridan and Ivanova and drives them to declaring an all-open war on Clark. On the other hand, it was their attempts to remove him from power without bloodshed that sparked his doing so.

* The Cylon attack which claimed billions of lives in ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' is almost forgotten in comparison to the suffering of the main characters aboard the escaping ships. Seeing the baby in the Riverwalk Market and Cami die in the Miniseries is more upsetting than knowing that almost all children of the Colonies are now dead. Even the other survivors rarely get screen time, primarily because they don't live on the titular ship, but a single woman suffering from cancer takes up a great deal. Late in the fourth season during a certain [[TheMutiny mutiny]] it is shown that the ordinary people very much keep it at the forefront of their minds, the main characters are unusual in having a broader view of things thanks to their experiences. Put simply, the lives of everyone is a mixture of nightmare, deprivation and mindless drudgery, but at least they are alive. Better to focus on the problems happening to them ''now'' than dwell on the genocide. But it is never forgotten. To be fair, that single woman with cancer ''is'' [[spoiler:the President.]]

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS18E7Logopolis "Logopolis"]] involves the destruction of one quarter of the entire universe; by even the most conservative estimates that's a single-episode death toll expressible only in scientific notation. And not only does nobody seem to care (including one character whose home ''intergalactic supercluster'' was destroyed[[note]] He also killed her Dad.[[/note]]), the villain responsible gets the full DracoInLeatherPants treatment despite being possibly the worst mass-murderer in all fiction (but in all fairness, it was an accident)!

* The destruction of the Gamak Base in ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' should give the viewer pause. Yes, the Peacekeepers are an evil army who torture prisoners, but there are unknown numbers of techs like Gilina on the base who aren't combatants or necessarily bad people. Yet the main cast never seem to have any qualms about the base's destruction. In contrast, when the Command Carrier (which has children and non-combatants living on it) is attacked two seasons later, the characters do make the point that there will be time to evacuate the inhabitants.

** Subverted in the Season 1 finale, when Daenerys gets a harsh dose of reality. She expects Mirri Maz Dur to be grateful to her for saving her from being killed by the Dothraki - only to be reminded that her village was invaded, temple burned to the ground, friends and family all butchered and she herself raped three times - so she really doesn't have much to be grateful for.

** The series initially went to great lengths to subvert the trope - showing how the small folk were affected by the scheming and machinations of the nobles; for example, Catelyn simply seizing Tyrion under suspect of attempting to murder Bran leads to Tywin having his armies slaughter innocent peasants in the Riverlands as revenge. Likewise [[spoiler:Ned Stark's execution and Joffrey's reign of terror]] leads to massive riots and unrest amongst the civilians of King's Landing. But by the final seasons, this is ignored; [[spoiler:Cersei blowing up the Sept of Baelor and wiping out House Tyrell and the Faith Militant in the process]] gets barely a passing mention, and any times characters question the lack of food for the upcoming winter it's never followed up on (with no mention or signs of people starving).

** The show observes that this applies to good deeds as much a bad. If you buy the town a new school it just reminds people how rich you are but if you help raise one person out of poverty you're a hero.

* A memorable, early episode of ''Series/{{MASH}}'' actually delves into this thought process and how it can keep a man sane in war. Hawkeye had just witnessed a good buddy of his from home die on the operating table, and goes outside to get out some well-deserved angst. When Henry Blake goes out to give comfort, he finds that Hawkeye isn't just mourning the fact that he lost a friend, but that he's witnessed innumerable casualties die in the same manner, and didn't cry for them.
* ''Series/StargateSG1''. In order to save Teal'c's life, the main characters destroy a piece of technology that is stopping a Goa'uld invasion! (said invasion was not imminent or known about however - the defense was in place and so Goa'uld did not send troops there. Unfortunately one must have decided to send a scout at some point after the tech was destroyed). When the Goa'uld do invade in the second season, they destroy half of the planet's population. This is made worse by noting that the defense technology they disabled could probably have been circumvented by the humans.

*** As mentioned above, they do get [[WhatTheHellHero called on it]] every now and then. Jacob [[spoiler:after he takes a Tok'ra symbiote]] points out that while SG-1 has done more in a few years than other factions who have been at work for centuries, their actions have created power vacuums among the System Lords that have resulted in massive amounts of killing. One episode in particular starts off playing the trope straight, then subverts it. the SG-1 travels to a planet where Teal'c had been to previously when he was First Prime for Apophis. He is brought to [[KangarooCourt trial]] for his crimes. He states at first that he's [[ButForMeItWasTuesday killed so many people]] that he doesn't even remember this one world. Later in the episode he states that he regrets every single act he committed as First Prime, and that the he carries the weight of every person he killed in Apophis' name.

* Referenced word for word in "the Fight Song" by Music/MarilynManson, from ''Music/HolyWoodInTheShadowOfTheValleyOfDeath''.

* Averted during Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}}'s Season 14 (2014). The focus of that Season was the feud between CHIKARA and [[MatryoshkaObject The Flood]], the amalgamation of {{Heel}} groups out to destroy CHIKARA, who were led by Wrestling/{{Deucalion}}. Deucalion debuted at the end of the return show ''You Only Live Twice'', May 25, 2014, by destroying [[Wrestling/TheBatiri Kobald]], which led to the hashtag [=#Vengeance4Kobald=]. He destroyed several characters, both ''[[{{Face}} tecnicos]]'' and some of his own followers. After he destroyed [=deviANT=] of GEKIDO, some fans on the message boards floated the hashtag [=#VengeanceForDeviant=], even though he had tried to ''burn down the Wrestle Factory'' in the ''Ashes'' videos.[[note]]Kobald, Wrestling/{{The Estonian Thunderfrog}} and, if only briefly, Wrestling/ArchibaldPeck all returned in 2015.[[/note]] That these characters were destroyed were acknowledged by the promotion and the fans. At the SeasonFinale, ''Tomorrow Never Dies'', on December 6th, [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/us/pa/e/chikara/chikara-g.html CHIKARA Grand Champion]] Icarus defeated Deucalion in a cage match and then destroyed him with The Estonian [=Thunderfrog=]'s Hammer of War, ending The Flood.

** Imperial Guard Commander Chenkov of the Valhallan 18th is mentioned as sacrificing ''10 million'' Guardsmen without using artillery or armored support in a single conflict in order to end a year long siege. He did get a nice merit for it though.

** The {{Space Marine}}s are exceptionally powerful and skilled elite soldiers and are thus operating on extremely low numbers, by the standards of the setting at least (Based on given information there are at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of Space Marines). As a result they operate on the opposite end of the spectrum, where every loss sucks due to their relative rarity. This also translates well in game as Space marines are, model for model, far more valuable than something like a guardsmen and will generally operate in much smaller groups. However this means that losing even a single squad of Marines is can be very costly, while the Guard can often afford to sacrifice a ''squad or two'' just to keep a group of elite enemies busy. This can actually a surprisingly effective tactic, as, although the elite unit in question ''will'' eventually get through the guardsmen, they might take several turns to do so, allowing the guardsmen to gain the advantage elsewhere in the battle while the enemy elites are tied up and unable to help.

** The trope is played horribly straight by Konrad Curze[[note]] aka Night Haunter, Primarch of the scariest legion of Astartes in the galaxy. Arguably even more the case after he rebelled and got assassinated by an agent of the God-Emperor, as now his boys have no-one holding their leashes[[/note]]: he transformed his dark, gloomy and rainy homeworld from a terrified crime-ridden anarchic hellhole into a terrified crime-free dystopian police state by brutally murdering lawbreakers. Not in job lots though, not until they made him their king, but one by one criminals would disappear, only to be found later brutally killed, and rarely in one piece.
** Tau Ethereals play this trope straight. You can lose several squads of your fire warriors, but god forbid if the Ethereal dies (recent rule changes seems to have inverted this, as the Ethereal dying grants a bonus instead of a handicap now).

** This also applies to named characters in game as well. A hero or named charater is often roughly as valuable as a block of normal infantry. Which often means that, points value wise, losing 20 or 30 spearmen is about the same as losing a single character. Losing frontline troops is almost always just acceptable loses, while losing your general or other characters is a very quick way to lose.

* In any ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' campaign that features the Outer Planes (such as ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'') it is common knowledge that even a small battle in the Blood War is at least a hundred times bigger than any fought among mortals, and casualties can often amount to millions on ''both'' sides. This becomes even remarkable when you consider that neither side has made any progress towards winning the conflict since it started eons ago. While it's hard to feel sorry for fiends, the thought of incredible loss of life that the war causes can often make one pause.
** One official ''Planescape'' adventure takes the players to a place called the Field of Nettles which is a frequent battlefield in the Blood War. The place doesn't have landscape, it has ''gargantuan piles of bodies'' that never rot for some unknown reason. The piles are so grand they make large hills or small mountains, and there are so many that the Field has become a maze, nigh-impossible to navigate without flying support. Whole armies can be outfitted just from scavenging the piles. Even the adventure can only barely reflect on the sheer death toll of mortal and immortal lives that goes into making the place, and is more concerned with the logistics of crossing it while worrying about fiendish patrols.

* In one sidequest in ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', the player must choose to save either a small RagtagBunchOfMisfits they've bonded with in an earlier scene, or a dreadnought full of sailors they've never met. Tellingly, most players go for the former.
** Even more tellingly is that the most often cited reason for choosing the latter is not 'There were something dangerously close to a thousand sailors who there was no evidence of escaping the doomed vessel' but rather 'I needed the Qunari to fight the demons'. Even the people who choose to save the faceless many instead of the likable few didn't do so as a subversion of this trope at all. Although another common cited reason is the information provided by the continued Qunari alliance will save far more people in the long run than the Chargers ever could, so the trope isn't always ''completely'' played straight here.
** Another side quest prioritizing the needs of the few over the needs of the many is the Inquisitor discovering that the Mayor of Crestwood [[spoiler:isolated and flooded a few dozen Blight-infected refugees to keep them from infecting the rest of his village]] during the Fifth Blight. Considering the Blight is ''extremely'' deadly, contagious, and incurable, the fact is he saved far more lives [[spoiler:by flooding the infected refugees]] than not. Except, the game depicts his actions as purely monstrous on account of the few dozen lives he ended over the hundreds he saved with that action.

** Aside from these two quests, the game often bends over backwards trying to avert the trope. The game often emphasizes how many millions of people will die from the Breach [[spoiler:and then Corypheus]], yet the player is often shown random civilians struggling to get by in a world gone mad to generate pathos. Most side quests in the Hinterlands (the largest explorable area in the game) involve finding food, blankets, and medical care for random people you've never met, and if you do then for the rest of the game you'll randomly hear random background [=NPC=]'s blessing the Inquisitor for making their lives better. You can spend a lot of time getting to know random people working for you in Haven [[spoiler:and then, when Haven is attacked, you end up saving those same people in the wreckage.]] Companions Sera and Iron Bull often take a lot of time telling you how you should care about the nameless faceless people who work for you, and most characters will take at least one moment every thirty seconds to emphasize the [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife tragic waste of human life]] the countless deaths at the Conclave, [[spoiler:Haven]], Orlesian Civil War, and [[spoiler:Corpheus]] cause, rather than just focusing on the fact that tons of people died. YMMV on how successful this was to most players.

** It can be averted, however, in the fact that ''every single dwarf'' (and plenty of other creatures) is unique, with different personalities and tastes (and, in the new version, ''physical appearance''). Therefore, it's not uncommon to grow very attached to your little dwarves, and mourn their loss.
** Which means it's playing it straight, because as easy as it is to feel attached to your original seven dwarves, as the numbers pile up, they become more and more meaningless.

* In ''VideoGame/FarCry2'', one of the central characters, the Jackal, who you were hired to kill to put an end to his arms dealing which is only fanning the flames of the various civil wars that are going on in Africa, makes a very good point about this during one of his interview tapes which can be found in the game. During one of the tapes, he mentions that despite how powerful the U.S. military is (and he would know, being a former Navy SEAL before he became an arms dealer), they let petty morality get in the way of doing whatever it takes to win, and that their media focuses too much on how many of our servicemen and women die in combat when they need to realize that soldiers dying is part of the cost of war. He notes that the American public can't accept heavy casualties and care more about the deaths of individuals rather than honor the cause they died for, stating that "the death of a 23 year old from Iowa gets more air time than the death of 50,000 people he gave his life to protect. So even if they did give a shit, their own media prevents them from taking any action." The death of even one of our troops is a tragedy, while the death of those he was fighting for even if goes into the thousands or millions is a statistic, and the Jackal is disgusted at the hypocrisy of this. It is for this reason that he believes that his arms dealing is actually helping the world - if the U.S. Military won't do anything to stem the tide of all these terrible wars going on in the world then he will.

*** Impressively however, the game manages to simultaneously avert ''and'' play this trope straight in regards to the destruction of the planet. While ''FFVII'' is ultimately yet another "save the world from destruction" plot (and would thus be highly susceptible to this trope), the threat maintains its emotional intensity because ''the planet itself is a living organism'', with its own blood and spiritual essence (the lifestream), and [[GeniusLoci possibly even sentience]] (many of the game's {{Superboss}} are guardians the planet created to protect itself because it senses it's in danger).

* On one end of the scale we have the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games. Each unit represents an individual character who has their own personality, skills, and motivations; as such, some people are hesitant to put even relatively unimportant characters into harm's way. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d by Pelleas in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn'': "Individual lives taken before your eyes weigh more heavily than the many lives taken during the chaos of war. If that life is someone dear, the burden is even worse."

** Further averted concerning the Citadel Battle in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' when you encounter an asari on Illium who first seems like a two-dimensional JerkAss, but if you manage to get through her, she will reveal that the cause of her bitterness was the loss of her daughters on Citadel. And if you manage to put the pieces together, you will realize that those daughters were two very minor characters you spoke once or twice in the course of the first game.

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil6'': Averted: during Leon and Chris' fight over [[spoiler:Carla]], they get in this argument; when Chris points out that [[spoiler:Carla]] killed all of the men in his squad, all of whom had names and whom Chris [[AFatherToHisMen deeply cared about]], Leon reminds him of the big picture by informing him that [[spoiler: Simmons]], the other source behind the C-Virus outbreak, killed the entire population of Tall Oaks (approximately 70,000 people), along with President Adam Benford himself. This revelation helps to snap Chris out of his RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
* The ending of ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'', where Tails happily declares that "Alls well that ends well, right?" This is despite the fact that the city is utterly destroyed, at least half the population is dead, and Eggman gets away... [[KarmaHoudini again]]!

* ''VideoGame/StarRuler''. Massive ships can have a crew in the tens of thousands or ''more'', but are thrown into unwinnable combat by the player and A.I.. Planetary invasions consist of butchering the entire population via orbital bombardment.

* This example overlaps between Webcomics and RealLife. In ''Webcomic/TheCrossoverlord'' for most of the people Smiling Man's MoralEventHorizon was revelation that he [[spoiler:killed most or all alternate counterparts of main characters]] to get what he wanted, despite that much earlier he changed the position of all stars in the firmament, destroying all planets that were running around them and slaughtering every life form that could live on those planets. [[ForTheEvulz Because he wanted to make the sky smile at him!]]

*** The term "murder" comes up often in connection with Tavros, though that's an oversimplification of the event. However it never appears in descriptions of the many fellow larpers sacrificed to her lusus or the many spirits of the dead she dominated and threw into the fire to smoke out the [[BigBad villain]]. In fact, fellow trolls who still resented her for causing the deaths of their friends didn't fully realize the atrocity of the latter until [[OnlySaneMan John pointed it out]].

* Quoted in [[http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20120810.html this]] ''Webcomic/{{SSDD}}'' strip. For context the one saying that nuked Texas, and is horrified at the thought that she might get away with it.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Parodied in "Bart the Mother". Bart accidentally kills a bird and decides to hatch her eggs out of guilt. The eggs hatch and they turn out to be a species of lizard that eat bird eggs, replace them with their own and eat the mother once they hatch. Skinner wants to kill the lizards since they're responsible for the extinction of several bird species but Bart lets them go, after which they completely eradicate Springfield's pigeon population, causing Bart to receive a commendation. After the ceremony...

* In ''WesternAnimation/WinxClub'', Bloom pays a lot of angst and attention to the disappearances of her parents in the fall of Domino, but does not really remark on the fact that the entire planet full of people was destroyed and is now an icy wasteland. In ''The Secret of the Lost Kingdom'', she is really only looking for her parents and just happens to [[spoiler: rescue the entire planet and its population along the way]].

* A joke (with many variants) goes something like this: Two national leaders (let's say, the top political guy and the top military guy) are sitting in a diner, planning a war. They decide to kill a million citizens, and a completely unrelated bicycle repairman/pizza delivery driver/clown. They pitch this idea to a random bystander who is shocked to hear that they would go out of their way to kill the unrelated civilian. One leader turns to the other and says, "See, I told you no one would care about killing the million enemy citizens."

* Creator/EddieIzzard has a section in his comedy show ''Dressed To Kill'' where he discusses this in relation to Pol Pot.
-->"Pol Pot killed 1.7 million people. We can't even deal with that! You know, we think if somebody kills someone, that's murder, you go to prison. You kill 10 people, you go to Texas, they hit you with a brick, that's what they do. 20 people, you go to a hospital, they look through a small window at you forever. And over that, we can't deal with it, you know? Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning. I can't even get down the gym! Your diary must look odd: “Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch- death, death, death -afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower…"

* The SignatureScene of ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine'' involves the death of 47 [[spoiler:innocent civilians, including women and children, all of whom burned to death slowly as the result of ''you'' mistakenly launching a white phosphorous mortar round in their direction.]] Not only is this moment the most famous, it's also widely regarded as the most disturbing scene. Many players had to stop after this scene, because they found it too disturbing. But the death count of this moment is nothing compared to later in the game, when [[spoiler:you accidentally help CIA agent Riggs]] deliberately cause the death of thousands of people by [[spoiler:dehydration after you destroy the city's water supply.]] Despite the fact that the death count of the latter will reach roughly a hundred times higher, the white phosphorus incident is ''easily'' the more famous of the two.

* ''Manga/InuYasha'': Miroku and Sango are so used to the mass destruction of their era that, while they're sympathetic to the loss of entire villages, they're also pragmatic about not being able to do much about it. Inuyasha is also a half-demon who is generally not too sympathetic to most humans. Kagome, however, subverts this trope. As a modern girl thrust back in time, she generally reacts more strongly than the others and once was absolutely horrified at Inuyasha stopping for a meal break in the middle of a corpse-strewn battlefield. That said, even Kagome is more likely to react to the plight of someone she's personally attached to than the loss of strangers. It's how [[KarmaHoudini Kouga]] became a friend of the group - despite being responsible for the destruction (and eating) of at least three villages that the group knows about, they ended up forgiving him and becoming friends with him. Notably, however, they were never allowed to find out that Kouga had destroyed Rin's village and killed Rin.

*** During the battle of Narita, Lelouch and Kallen destroy a small town and kill everybody in it. They only think about how many enemy soldiers they just killed. Only when they find out the father of a classmate was also killed, they feel remorse about it. C.C. calls him out on this, asking if he thought this was somehow a unique instance, and pointing out that pretty much all of the soldiers they killed also had loved ones who are now grieving for their loss.

* Toward the end of ''Manga/MuhyoAndRoji'', 500 Executors die when Vector attacks the northern Magical Law headquarters, and a few panels of memorial services are shown. They get significantly less of a follow-up than many other deaths, notably Enchu's mother, [[spoiler:Panza]] (whose death weighs heavily on Roji) and Kid. Even Fujiwara, a minor character who was one of Imai's subordinates before he got killed in the Arcanum, comes back as a haunt and is mentioned as an example of someone who was incompetent but determined.

* Invoked in ''Manga/OnePiece'' by Nico Robin, who states that anyone willing to issue and carry out a Buster Call (a coordinated, take-no-prisoners Marine attack powerful enough [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill to reduce an entire island to ashes]]) is so detached that they can't truly comprehend the sheer amount of death and destruction it causes, Especially [[SmugSnake Spandam]], who flaunts the authority he was given to issue one every chance he gets.

* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', over 10,000 people were trapped in a virtual reality MMO for over two years and by the time they were freed, almost 4000 of them had died. Aside from things involving the main characters, and the establishment of a survivor school meant to counsel and help those who made it out, the series ignores the massive controversy and consequences that would occur from such an event, though the resident government agent all but outright states it's because of the Japanese government taking a direct hand in handling the press that's keeping the survivors from being hounded day in and out. In fact, not only did virtual reality games become more popular after the SAO incident but they feature a far heavier emphasis on killing (albeit due to the fact the technology that caused the players to be trapped and killed in the first place was replaced with tech that ''couldn't'' do that). Even so, this becomes incredibly egregious for some when the main character compares the person responsible for said deadly MMO to a villain he was fighting, responsible for merely trapping and brainwashing, not killing, a tenth of that amount, with the end result is the former being somehow the ''lesser'' of the two evils, with the justification that the first guy [[CardCarryingVillain wasn't being such a complete and unrepentant asshole about the whole thing like the current one]].

* Exploited in ''LightNovel/HeavyObject''. While a single murder in a safe country is headline news, the death of an entire military unit in a battleground country is barely worth a one-paragraph article. The [[spoiler:Polar Bear]] unit was able to fake its own massacre and then began posing as the [[spoiler:Unicorn]] unit because they knew nobody would investigate too deeply.

** Also invoked by Starscream, after [[spoiler:Metalhawk sacrifices his life to destroy the 70 billion Ammonites attacking Cybertron in one fell swoop.]] It should be noted that Starscream's only trying to paint him in a negative light.

* In ''Fanfic/ShadowchasersConspiracy'', a disturbing discussion of this comes up as Francis tries to reason with Sheeva, or so he wants her to believe. He challenges her claims of being an honorable fighter by mentioning the long lifespan of the Shokkan and asking how many deaths such a warrior who has lived so long must is ''personally'' responsible for if such battles to the death are commonplace among them. He suggests Sheeva must have killed ''thousands'' (even one victim every two months would do so) also mentioning how many families she must have torn apart, even suggesting that some of her opponents may have been children of previous ones, seeking revenge. (Of course, he's playing on Sheeva's confusion resulting from being yanked into a setting where [[WrongGenreSavvy the rules of her own reality]] don't apply.)

** In fact, the audience ''does'' know them. Many were at the wedding at the beginning, proving them to be friends of the main characters. Owners of the DVD can even get to know ''literally everyone'' by looking at their profiles in the Extras where they talk about their life, their hopes and secret identity. Those are not just names with a face, they are people with a personality and Creator/{{Pixar}} tried hard on evoking as much empathy for them as possible.

* ''Film/GIJoeRetaliation'': With [[spoiler: London basically being blasted into the bottom of the ocean]], millions of people had to have died. While people are terrified when they see the attack, it is soon forgotten once the Joes save the other cities. Then everyone is all smiles.

* Notably averted in ''Film/Godzilla1954''. It's one of the very few movies where a monster ravaging a city and killing thousands of people is treated like a real disaster, and the result is played for tragedy rather than popcorn fluff, even though none of the main characters are killed.

* ''Film/ManOfSteel'' is an interesting examination of this. Metropolis is ground zero for a HostileTerraforming machine that literally ''pancakes'' an area of downtown the size of a sports stadium (and doing considerable damage well beyond ground zero) before it is stopped, and later the site of a superpowered battle between Superman and General Zod that is moderately smaller. For both events, named characters and unnamed civilians together are shown fleeing in terror. When the threat is over, the story moves on to wrap things up and while maybe not celebratory, is rather upbeat and optimistic. The sheer destruction involved spawned many [[MemeticMutation memes]] on the subject, with many accusing Superman of simply not caring about collateral damage.[[note]]Which is not really supported by the actual movie; Superman was simply unable to contain Zod, who was responsible for the majority of wanton destruction.[[/note]] The sequel, ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'', {{exploited|Trope}} this, with the titanic destruction unleashed by the warring Kryptonians motivating several characters, including both Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor.

* ''Literature/DungeonCrawlerCarl'': Notably averted. There is a counter in every safe room showing the number of surviving crawlers. It starts in the millions, and goes down rapidly. Carl cannot stop watching it, and his primary motivation is revenge over the murder of his entire species ''for a reality tv show''. The exact number is mentioned repeatedly, with Carl reeling over the sheer amount of dead since last he checked.

*** Note also that, during the final scene, a PADD is being passed hand-to-hand among the crowd watching the news report. This PADD holds a list of the casualties, and several of the un-named background characters turn away with crestfallen expressions, implying that they too had friends/acquaintances among the fallen. Stories Never Told...

** Sansa shows zero remorse for [[spoiler:betraying the secret of Jon's parentage to Tyrion]] in the last few episodes, which leads to [[spoiler:Daenerys's allies betraying her, resulting in her burning all of King's Landing to the ground. Sansa never once seems to care that thousands of innocent civilians (not to mention surrendering soldiers) died because of her attempts at political scheming.]] She merely says it was the "only way".

** A different version of that is, "One dead in Putney equals 10 dead in Paris equals 100 dead in Turkey equals 1,000 dead in India equals 10,000 dead in China" (though, of course, that last one also owes much to the "life is cheap in China" cliché, as China is home to literally ''billions'').

* Discussed occasionally in ''Podcast/RelativeDisasters'' when the death toll is particularly high, such as in the literally apocalyptic K-Pg mass extinction event, or in the 1556 Jiajing earthquake, which killed an estimated 830,000 people.

* Defied in the ''Literature/BookOfJonah'', where [[GodIsGood God]] calls [[EgocentricallyReligious Jonah]] out on showing no concern as to whether 120,000 people in Nineveh repent or not. To be specific, Jonah tried running away to Tarshish when he was told to go to Nineveh. Then, after spending three days in the belly of a whale, he warns Nineveh of its imminent destruction, only for the Ninevites to, surprise-surprise, ''repent''! Jonah is furious and [[ManChild throws a temper tantrum about it]], but God reminds him that he created all 120,000 of these people, including little children, and as many cattle.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' uses this trope very heavily. The Imperium of mankind in particular contains such an absurd number of individuals that even counting exactly how many planets there are is pretty tough. There are literally millions of planets in the Imperium, some of which contain trillions of people, meaning that a ''Billion'' isn't just a statistic for the Imperium, it's a rounding error. The Imperial Guard consists of at least trillions of individual members, and several of the forces that the Imperium fights are operating on similar scales. On the other end of the spectrum are numerous stories focusing on particular individuals or small groups that can be surprisingly sympathetic and touching. This is a trap.

** A famous joke illustrating just how worthless human lives are in the setting is that entire planet populations are often lost because of ''rounding errors on tax forms''. One story mentions an entire planet being accidentally drafted this way, and then posthumously sentenced to death for letting the now-abandoned world be conquered without a fight.

** Saying Orks may die at the hands of their [[BadBoss Warboss implies the possibility they won't]]. If they didn't, their WAAGH wouldn't stay together. Plus, [[TheUsualAdversaries the Orks come back soon after anyway...]] It's been said that if the Orks managed to actually all work together, nothing in the galaxy could stop them. Of course saying that "A Million is a Statistic" applies to the Orks may be misleading, as it implies they actually care about other Orks dying, or that they have any understanding of statistics.

* Regular ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' has its own examples. [[RatMen Skaven]] live by this rule, happily firing their artillery into their own troops, as long as it's hitting the enemy too (they're the only faction allowed to do so, in fact). Greenskins such as Orcs and Goblins also aren't overly worried about individuals dying. The Vampires counts also field massive armies of expendable undead. That said in all three cases the armies do still have some more valuable elite units, and losing those can be quite problematic. Of course other races like Dwarves and Warriors of Chaos are on the opposite end of the spectrum, appearing almost exclusively in much smaller numbers. Losing a few dozen Skaven or Orcs and Goblins to kill a handful of Warriors of Chaos, Dwarves or similar races is often a notable victory.

* ''[[TabletopGame/MutantYearZero Mutant: Year Zero]]'' averts this trope significantly, billions of people died at the end of the world and only a small number of them survived in small pockets. And the game emphasizes this loss by having the populations of the [=PC's=] races act as an in the game timer, a timer that tics down every session with a six-sided dice roll. So there's only so much of a stable population in the Core Rule Book and Source Books; around two hundred in The Ark, one-thousand-three-hundred-and-ninety in Genlab and just about ten-thousand in Elysium-1. The robots of Mechatron-7 are incalculable. Once it reaches zero, it's game over.

* The FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' has an attack that ''consumes an entire AlternateUniverse'' as fuel, [[SlapOnTheWristNuke aptly named "Armageddon"]]. The first time he uses it, he specifically calls you out on this trope, saying he doubts that you truly comprehend the magnitude of what he just did. The characters' terror at the implications are far more effective at stopping them from fighting than the attack's actual battle effect, and [[spoiler:they end up surrendering after the fifth world eaten, just to stop him from doing this anymore]].

** To an extent, regular soldiers as well. Since an entire military unit is represented by a single sprite, a player is unlikely to be too choked up by the loss of hit points, representing members of the unit, as long as the guy is still standing. ''IV'' and ''V'' address this by making each unit composed of several figures, but it's still not very daunting to see half of them get slaughtered, knowing that they can fortify in one place and eventually regenerate.

*** The destruction of Sector 7 is a rare (for this game) villainous example of this trope. After all, apart from Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, ''nobody the audience knows was killed'' -- and so Reno, the man directly responsible for the destruction, is never brought to justice for his actions. Hell, in ''Advent Children'', he's a comic relief character who nobody takes very seriously.

** In-game, the player can toy with this trope in various ways regarding their {{Red Shirt|Army}} [=NPC=] allies. Some players will work hard to make sure all their allies survive, while others (particularly on higher difficulties) will not bat an eye as their allies are cut down. Of course, how one reacts to the death of an NPC ally may depend on how useful they are; the loss of a rocket jockey or a Warthog gunner will usually cause more upset than the death of someone who only had an Assault Rifle.
** While the series has several parts where the objective is to rescue NPC soldiers, you can then often let all your newly-freed allies die without having anyone comment on it. A notable exception is ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved''[='s=] second mission, where if you let an entire Marine squad die, MissionControl will actually point it out.

** Horribly deconstructed in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', where you play as a [[EliteMooks semi-expendable]] [[SuperSoldier Spartan-III]]. As powerful as you are, your shirt is still [[MauveShirt mauve]], and you and your [[TheSquad team]] are expendable. [[spoiler:By the end, almost your entire squad is killed - Jorge and Carter in {{Heroic Sacrifice}}s, Kat and Emil [[BoomHeadshot taken]] by [[BackStab surprise]], and you [[LastStand holding off an entire army for as long as you can]] - and only [[TeamMom Halsey]] laments it.]]

* Notably averted in ''VideoGame/StarCraftIIHeartOfTheSwarm'' when Raynor reminds Kerrigan of not just Fenix but also the "millions [she's] butchered" as the Queen of Blades.

* ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick:'' Implied to shape many of the Gods' various attitudes, down to their view of the races themselves. [[spoiler:And, ultimately, to entire worlds. [[EldritchAbomination The Snarl]] hasn't slaughtered and erased just one world, or a hundred, or even a billion. The number of realms the Gods have made, only to see them eventually destroyed, is incalculably high to any mortal. As a result, they're totally fine unmaking the current realm, essentially executing everyone living in it, because it's just yet another gravestone in the Astral Realm after all they've gone through.]]

* The FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/BravelyDefault'' has an attack that ''consumes an entire AlternateUniverse'' as fuel, aptly named "Armageddon". The first time he uses it, he specifically calls you out on this trope, saying he doubts that you truly comprehend the magnitude of what he just did. The characters' terror at the implications are far more effective at stopping them from fighting than the attack's actual battle effect, and [[spoiler:they end up surrendering after the fifth world eaten, just to stop him from doing this anymore]].

* Inverted and lampshaded by Kyubey in ''Anime/PuellaMagiMadokaMagica''. Kyubey has [[LackofEmpathy no empathy]], and cares a lot more about a million deaths than about one.

* One point five million children were murdered by the Germans in UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust. But, because that is too big for the "average person" to mentally process, [[Literature/TheDiaryOfAYoungGirl Anne Frank]] is used as a figure in popular culture and media to repesent all of them. The official Auschwitz Museum is working hard to remember the individual children through its social media accounts. See an example here with [[https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/1533373094798163968 French Jewish child Gina Goldstein]] who was gassed upon her arrival at Auschwitz not long after her sixth birthday.

* Discussed occasionally in ''Podcast/RelativeDisasters'' when the death toll is particularly high, such as in the literally apocalyptic K-Pg mass extinction event.

[[folder:Professional Wrestling]]
* Averted during Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}}'s Season 14 (2014). The focus of that Season was the feud between CHIKARA and [[MatryoshkaObject The Flood]], the amalgamation of {{Heel}} groups out to destroy CHIKARA, who were led by Wrestling/{{Deucalion}}. Deucalion debuted at the end of the return show ''You Only Live Twice'', May 25, 2014, by destroying [[Wrestling/TheBatiri Kobald]], which led to the hashtag [=#Vengeance4Kobald=]. He destroyed several characters, both ''[[{{Face}} tecnicos]]'' and some of his own followers. After he destroyed [=deviANT=] of GEKIDO, some fans on the message boards floated the hashtag [=#VengeanceForDeviant=], even though he had tried to ''burn down the Wrestle Factory'' in the ''Ashes'' videos.[[note]]Kobald, Wrestling/{{The Estonian Thunderfrog}} and, if only briefly, Wrestling/ArchibaldPeck all returned in 2015.[[/note]] That these characters were destroyed were acknowledged by the promotion and the fans. At the SeasonFinale, ''Tomorrow Never Dies'', on December 6th, [[http://www.wrestling-titles.com/us/pa/e/chikara/chikara-g.html CHIKARA Grand Champion]] Icarus defeated Deucalion in a cage match and then destroyed him with The Estonian [=Thunderfrog=]'s Hammer of War, ending The Flood.

* ''Film/HappyDeathDay'': When the killer [[spoiler:(one of them anyway)]] gets free and murders a cop, a hospital orderly and the movie's RelationshipUpgrade, it's because of ''the latter's'' death that the protagonist decides to reset [[GroundhogDayLoop the loop]] to before they all died and save them bfore the loop, with the other two deaths going unmentioned in her decision.

* ''Franchise/StarWars'':
** ''Film/ANewHope'', Princess Leia sees her entire planet, including her parents and most of the people she knows, destroyed. Luke [[MentorOccupationalHazard loses]] his old friend and teacher. ''She'' comforts ''him''. Obi-Wan has screen time, while nobody on Alderaan does, so his death is treated as a bigger emotional moment. May be justified to some extent, since the Princess is an aristocrat raised from birth to work in [[DecadentCourt Imperial politics]], and presumably better able to control her emotions than the naive farmboy.
*** [[https://youtu.be/Ix5h-hZfLTY Robot Chicken naturally poked fun at this. With a little help from the real Carrie Fisher.]]
** Averted in ''Film/TheForceAwakens''; when [[spoiler: [[WaveMotionGun Starkiller Base]] destroys the capital of the New Republic, we actually get to see the terrified faces of its many citizens as they see the bright, red light bearing down on them]].
* Sort of lampshaded in Creator/CharlieChaplin's ''Film/MonsieurVerdoux'': "One murder makes a villain, millions a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow."

* In the PostNineElevenTerrorismMovie ''Film/{{Unthinkable}}'', a homegrown terrorist and aspiring mass murderer has scattered several nuclear devices across the United States and rigged these to explode, which would kill millions of people. A TortureTechnician attempts to force the information out of him by [[NecessarilyEvil any means necessary]], with the film questioning the validity of such. While this "dilemma" will seem downright farcical to most people, a better case is presented when the interrogators are considering torturing the man's two innocent children. Later on, the female FBI Agent who's taken the strongest stance against the interrogator's actions trusts the terrorist at his word and causes the deaths of 53 people. Despite this, she plays the trope horrifyingly straight when she openly voices her preference to let ''thousands'' of children all be killed to preserve the lives of his.
* This was a problem in ''Film/StarTrekGenerations''. Dr. Soran's plan to get into the Nexus involved blowing up a star, which would also destroy an inhabited pre-industrial planet. We had never heard of this planet before, knew nothing of its people, and never even saw its surface, so it may as well have been an uninhabited rock for all the audience cared.
* ''Film/TwoThousandTwelve'' has been criticized for this. Billions die, but who cares? It's [[SceneryGorn Disaster Porn]], and the only people who count are in a little plane. This is the reason for the huge cast that drags down the film. Giving the audience as many characters with actual names as possible to care about to give the audience more of a connection to billions dying.
* The Joker's [[BreakThemByTalking Breaking Speech]] to Harvey Dent in ''Film/TheDarkKnight'' mentions this.
-->'''Joker:''' If tomorrow I said that a gang-banger would get shot, or a truck-load of soldiers will be blown up - nobody panics, because it's all "part of ThePlan". But when I say that ''one'' little old mayor will die... well then ''everyone loses their minds''!
* In ''Film/VantagePoint'', a bomb wipes out the crowded lobby of a five-star hotel. Moments later, a second bomb goes off under a podium in the middle of a large crowd. Dozens, if not hundreds, are killed. The movie hardly blinks. But one little girl whose first name the viewers know is about to be run over, and you'd think the world was about to end.
* Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse:
** ''Film/{{Thor}}'' is an interesting aversion. The audience is shown no reason to see the Jotunns as anything but AlwaysChaoticEvil, yet the climax still successfully conveys using only Thor's own reaction to it that Loki's attempted genocide is a horrendous crime.
** In ''Film/{{The Avengers|2012}}'', Loki killing loads of people, having his brainwashed mooks kill loads of people, and loudly announcing his plans to TakeOverTheWorld aren't what makes the audience (and the heroes) hate him. It's his murder of [[spoiler:Agent Coulson]] that does it.
** At the end of ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', [[spoiler:the villain Thanos succeeds in his plan to wipe out half of all life in the universe. The bodycount from this is stated to number in the trillions, but the climactic moment focuses on just a dozen deaths among the main characters. Justified, as how would you show ''half the universe'' dying? TheStinger also shows a lot of random people being disintegrated, along with the shock and terror that it brings.]]
* Invoked in ''Film/GodsAndGenerals''; after a [[LittlestCancerPatient young girl dies]], General Jackson, who has largely been TheStoic, begins to [[ManlyTears break down and cry]]. One of his soldiers comments that he's seen many men fall in battle yet didn't seem to care about them at all, but cries because of a little girl dying. Another soldier then mentions that the General is probably crying for all of them at this time.

* ''Film/ManOfSteel'' is an interesting examination of this. Metropolis is ground zero for a HostileTerraforming machine that literally ''pancakes'' an area of downtown the size of a sports stadium (and doing considerable damage well beyond ground zero) before it is stopped, and later the site of a superpowered battle between Superman and General Zod that is moderately smaller. For both events, named characters and unnamed civilians together are shown fleeing in terror. When the threat is over, the story moves on to wrap things up and while maybe not celebratory, is rather upbeat and optimistic. The sheer destruction involved spawned many [[MemeticMutation memes]] on the subject, with many accusing Superman of simply not caring about collateral damage.[[note]]Which is not really supported by the actual movie; Superman was simply unable to contain Zod, who was responsible for the majority of wanton destruction.[[/note]] The sequel, ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'', {{exploited|Trope}} this, with the titanic destruction unleashed by the warring Kryptonians motivating several characters, including both Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor.
* ''Film/SchindlersList'': Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess (often diagnosed as a sociopath after the war), whose whole industry is mass murder, is extremely casual about the matter when Schindler arrives to bribe him for the female Schindler Jews who were shipped to the death camp instead of Schindler's factory in Moravia by mistake. Hoess refers to the prisoners they're killing as "units", first offers Schindler 300 other arrivals instead of the ones he wants, and is only bothered by the extra paperwork that it will bring.
* In ''Film/WarGames'', the NORAD computer WOPR/Joshua is programmed to calculate damages from different nuclear attack scenarios, which include civilian deaths. Its programmer, Dr. Stephen Falken, tells David that he eventually got disgusted by the military's dispassionate attitude towards nuclear conflict.
-->'''Falken:''' Back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be "acceptable losses."

* {{Discussed|Trope}} and {{inverted|Trope}} in ''Compulsion,'' where Judd brings this up to justify the fact that he and [[ToxicFriendInfluence Artie]] [[WouldHurtAChild killed a little boy]] ForTheEvulz.
-->"There were nine million people killed in [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI the war]]! What does one little Chicago boy matter?"
* ''Film/MiracleAtMidnight'': Referenced by Georg when he explains his role in thwarting the holocaust in Denmark.
-->'''Georg:''' It's easy to persecute the nameless, and the faceless, but these people are not faceless to me.

*** Lampshaded in the episode "The Immunity Syndrome". When [=McCoy=] expresses disbelief that Spock is capable of "feeling" the deaths of four hundred Vulcans, Spock replies, "I have noticed that about your people, Doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million."
*** In "The Devil in the Dark", Spock attempts to defy Kirk and have the Horta brought in safely ForScience, in spite of the fact that it's been killing lots of miners. But when [[TheNotLoveInterest Kirk]] is facing the Horta, even though it's not doing anything, Spock starts baying for its blood and has to be ordered not to attack it.
*** The theme of the episode "A Taste of Armageddon" is that adopting this attitude towards wars actually helps in facilitating it.

* {{Discussed|Trope}} and {{inverted|Trope}} in ''Compulsion,'' where Judd brings this up to justify the fact that he and [[PoisonousFriend Artie]] [[WouldHurtAChild killed a little boy]] ForTheEvulz.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in an episode of ''Series/{{Wonder Woman|1975}}'', "The Man Who Made Volcanoes". As Wonder Woman, along with Soviet and Chinese agents, confront a scientist who is threatening widespread devastation on Earth, the Chinese agent notes that even if he killed 90% of the population of the People's Republic of China, there would still be "over 100 million" of them.

The concept of this is related to the theoretical Dunbar's Number, which says at some point, it is simply impossible for a person to truly care about so many people. This is further explored and explained in Website/{{Cracked}}.com's article

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''

-->'''Kaldalis:''' Our honor, lost.\\

* Both averted and played straight in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''. After all, when your game is about heroic eco-terrorists, there's no escaping this trope:
** Cloud's paycheck putting a dent in Marlene's educational funding is given more attention than the fact that Cloud and AVALANCHE just returned from bombing a power plant, probably killing hundreds of people.
** Barret breaks down when [[spoiler:Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie are killed by Shinra, and he thinks Marlene has been killed by the collapsing Sector 7 pillar.]] Cait Sith [[WhatTheHellHero calls Barret out on this]] later in the game, when he asks him how many people AVALANCHE killed when they blew up that reactor. Barret actually tries to refute him ''with this trope'', but Cait Sith shoots him down, and Barret doesn't seem fully convinced of his own argument.
** The destruction of Sector 7 is a rare (for this game) villainous example of this trope. After all, apart from Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, ''nobody the audience knows was killed'' -- and so Reno, the man directly responsible for the destruction, is never brought to justice for his actions. Hell, in ''Advent Children'', he's a comic relief character who nobody takes very seriously.
** Impressively however, the game manages to simultaneously avert ''and'' play this trope straight in regards to the destruction of the planet. While ''FFVII'' is ultimately yet another "save the world from destruction" plot (and would thus be highly susceptible to this trope), the threat maintains its emotional intensity because ''the planet itself is a living organism'', with its own blood and spiritual essence (the lifestream), and [[GeniusLoci possibly even sentience]] (many of the game's {{Superboss}} are guardians the planet created to protect itself because it senses it's in danger).
* Averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX''. On the three occasions that cities are attacked and/or destroyed altogether, there is a huge amount of mourning: when [[spoiler:Cleyra]] is wiped off the map, the main characters (Freya in particular) are shocked by the loss of life- though they are forced into action very quickly; Zidane and Garnet are visibly horrified by the attack on [[spoiler:Lindblum]], especially since they actually have to walk through the [[SceneryGorn ruins]] soon after; finally, Garnet actually has a HeroicBSOD when confronted with the destruction of [[spoiler:Alexandria]] and the casualties that resulted.
** Doubled by the fact that the [[SummonMagic Eidolons]] used were [[spoiler:forcibly extracted from Garnet.]]
* Averted with a [[PlayerPunch potent emotional punch]] in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': when [[spoiler:Auron, Jecht, and Tidus]] fade away, their deaths are given all due respect, honor, and grief by the party. But the destruction of Kilika and the [[spoiler:mass slaughter of Al-Bhed and Crusaders at Operation Mi'ihen]] are treated as the single most tragic event in the game, and the characters respond to these with far, far more sorrow than even the aforementioned instances.
** Yuna's Guardians were far more unhappy with the idea that [[spoiler:Yuna has to die to accomplish the final summoning]] than the idea that Sin kills ''thousands'' if [[spoiler:she]] doesn't. [[spoiler:Also, it was insane that they simply didn't have a stock of fully trained summoners/final fayth ready and willing to beat up sin the SECOND it shows up. Sure it means certain death, but the crusaders sign up en masse and they have even LESS chance of surviving a Sin-encounter.]]
*** Because even trying to reach the Final Fayth is likely to kill the Summoner, and summoning it to defeat Sin. In fact, most Summoners either eventually give up and turn back at Mount Gagazet OR die while trying to pass Mount Gagazet. If the Ronso didn't help Yuna, it would of been an even more treacherous journey, though the presence of a certain Boss makes you feel it's difficulty anyway.
*** Admittedly, Yuna herself only agrees once she learns that [[spoiler:The Final Summoning can ''never permanently stop Sin'', contrary to belief that there was some chance that it could]]. Everyone else, however, including all the Guardians and the entire Al-Bhed people, do not need such an argument - a single death is apparently too much for these residents of post-apocalyptic Spira to bear thinking about, even though every one of them has lost someone they care about to Sin. In fact, [[spoiler:the Al-Bhed are more than willing to kidnap Summoners who are going to sacrifice their lives of their own free will, and imprison them for life to stop those Summoners from making the honest and heroic choice to give themselves for the greater good - and the player is clearly expected to agree with them. WhatTheHellHero?]]
* Again in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' where [[spoiler:the destruction of an airship fleet is simply a slap-on-the-wrist warning against Nethicite, and the complete annihilation of the crews on board (with the protagonists as the sole survivors) hardly even warrants mention.]]
* Brought up briefly during one of the quests for the Dark Knight class in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', where you get to meet a spectre of Sidurgu's master, Ompagne. After you defeat him in combat he tells you of the reason he left the Temple Knights before he adopted Sid and Fray: every time he went into battle, the younger knights under his command ultimately ended up dying, leaving him to be given the unearned praise for his men's accomplishments and then having to train and command a new batch of even greener knights who would ultimately suffer the same fate. He'd finally had enough when one day he realized he could no longer remember the face of the first knight to die in his service.

* The Time Lords in the Series/DoctorWho fanfiction ''Fanfic/TheLastGreatTimeWar''. They don't care about planets or even galaxies being destroyed in the War unless they are of significant strategic importance.

* ''LetsPlay/GrayStillPlays''' kill counts for things like destroying Earths in ''Universe Sandbox [[superscript:2]]'' and various roller coaster and/or theme park simulators are ''staggering''.

->''"And how could he feel so anguished about the loss of two privates, when, if you added up all the losses around the Front, ten billion died every year? It made no sense, and yet it hurt even so. It is estimated that in all some thirty trillion humans have given their lives to the war: a number orders of magnitude higher than the number of stars in this wretched Galaxy we're fighting over. What a waste of human lives!"''
-->-- '''[[Literature/XeeleeSequence Pirius]]''', a fighter pilot from the Interim Coalition of Governance in the Xeelee Sequence

* ''Literature/XeeleeSequence'': The Xeelee Sequence puts millions as an ''understatement''. In Exultant, Pirius contemplated how 30 ''trillion'' child soldiers died in vain over a pointless war for ''20,000 years''. So many children perished in the name of the monstrous (And we mean capital M: ''monstrous'') regime of the Interim Coalition of Governance that their names were etched in a mausoleum at only a ''micron length''. There is a ''good'' reason why the Xeelee has a front quote for this page.