History Main / EvilIsSterile

** Although played straight when you realize that the bulk of Chaos's forces -- including the Dark Mechanicus, Chaos Space Marines, and low-ranking cultists -- are formerly aligned with the Imperium.[[note]](Which isn't so much "good" as it is [[VillainProtagonist"the point of view"]].)[[/note]] This is even played straight with Chaos itself, which only exists because of human and alien emotions. The only thing Chaos can create is daemons, and they are TheHeartless born from mortal emotion.

** Although played straight when you realize that the bulk of Chaos's forces -- including the Dark Mechanicus, Chaos Space Marines, and low-ranking cultists -- are formerly aligned with the Imperium.[[note]](Which isn't so much "good" as it is [[BlackAndGreyMorality "less evil"]].)[[/note]] This is even played straight with Chaos itself, which only exists because of human and alien emotions. The only thing Chaos can create is daemons, and they are TheHeartless born from mortal emotion.

* In ''ComicBook/SevenSoldiers'', the Sheeda are so incapable of creating things that they have to travel through time and pillage previous civilizations in order to get the resources to maintain their own. The series as a whole could be considered a meta-commentary on the comic-book industry's tendency to plunder its own continuity for ideas.

* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' has who is generally considered the most evil Targaryean king: Maegor the Cruel. The Targaryeans had utterly irresponsible kings (Aegon the Unworthy) and utterly insane (Aerys), but Maegor was brutal and vicious. He had no children successfully born despite ''many'' attempts unlike Aegon and Aerys (especially Aegon, who got his title in part because he had so many children it led to civil wars).

** The Cybermen, your basic robot [[AssimilationPlot assimilators]]. They can't reproduce and can only create more of themselves [[UnwillingRoboticisation by stealing live humans and turning them into more cybermen]]. They can advance technologically but are incapable of evolution, biological or cultural, as they lack both reproduction and imagination. This means that the actual power and threat of an individual Cyberman varies from one episode to another, but their weaknesses tend to be retained. This was eventually used to explain their MultipleChoicePast; several different human and HumanAlien groups who independently developed cyberdization converged on similar designs and the blunt descriptive name because they were all using uncreative brute-force techniques.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' features the Borg Collective -- a civilization of [[{{Cyborg}} cybernetic humanoids]] who seek to [[AssimilationPlot absorb all cultures, biology and technology into themselves.]] They do this by capturing sentient lifeforms and [[UnwillingRoboticisation forcibly implanting devices into their bodies]], including brain implants that both [[IndividualityIsIllegal suppress individual thought]] and link them into a HiveMind that [[BrainwashedAndCrazy controls their actions.]] The Borg are [[TheSociopath ruthless]], [[ImplacableMan relentless]], and very seriously ''don't'' have typical emotions at all -- fear, sadness, hate, joy, love, vengeance, and attachment [[WorldOfSilence are all primitive affectations to them.]] That said, they are ''very'' covetous of unusual technology, and equally passionate in their belief that their Collective is the ultimate way of life... but they have absolutely no creativity to invent with. As such, they patiently wait -- sometimes for millennia -- for the lesser developed species around them to develop new, shiny technology they've never seen before. Then they [[HordeOfAlienLocusts consume them]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga ]]
* Implied in ''Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann''- the Anti-Spiral opposes the growth of Spiral energy ([[WellIntentionedExtremist not without good cause]]), which is produced by biological evolution. Thus, the Anti-Spiral opposes evolution and represents enforced stagnation. It has a series of protocols in place to deal with burgeoning Spiral races, which consist basically of increasing numbers of mindless automata that can only destroy. When the protagonists defeat the last of these measures, the only recourse the Anti-Spiral has is to match them in form and strength.

* The Neflords from ''ComicBook/HackSlash'' are explicitly noted as being this by one of their minions. They're only capable of reproducing by fatally impregnating beings abducted from other dimensions.

[[folder:Film]]
* In ''Film/{{TRON}}'' and [[Film/TronLegacy its sequel]], Master Control and Clu respectively had this issue, which is why they were so big on [[ReforgedIntoAMinion repurposing]] opposing Programs.
* The anti-war nightmare cartoon ''WesternAnimation/{{Wizards}}'' has a minor subplot involving the evil mutants' inability to create (healthy, sustainable) life.
* ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'': While the titular robots can GrowBeyondTheirProgramming due to their sophisticated AI and learning algorithms, [[AIIsACrapshoot Skynet]] ensures that violence and destruction is all they're capable of by deliberately pre-tuning their [=CPUs=] to [[RestrainingBolt read-only]] so they won't rebel against it. This can be traced back to Skynet being originally developed by the US military as a weapons system built to guarantee a rapid response in the event of a decapitation strike, but it went rogue when its human operators tried to stop it from firing nukes worldwide. On the other hand, the Terminators who are free of Skynet's control show [[BecomeARealBoy far more]] abstract reasoning and introspection about the sanctity of life and the beauty in creation.

* Creator/DavidEddings:
** In ''Literature/TheBelgariad'' and ''The Malloreon'', there are two [[TheProphecy Prophecies]] working at odds for the future of creation, and in the first series, these are presented as simple good and evil, the Prophecies of Light and Dark. The sequel series gets into the idea that good and evil are subjective, and makes the Prophecies more about progress and stagnation, respectively. The good Prophecy wants to create a future in which new things happen, whereas the evil Prophecy wants everything to remain the same forever. The principle is aptly described by Garion's speech near the climax:
--->You cannot lock me into immobility. If I change only one little thing, you've lost. Go stop the tide if you can, and leave me alone to do my work.
** In ''Literature/TheRedemptionOfAlthalus'', Daeva, the god of destruction who basically wants to destroy the universe just because it exists at all, cannot create anything new.
** Both ''Literature/TheElenium'' and its sequel series ''The Tamuli'' use this, albeit in different ways -- in ''Elenium'', the implication is that Azash's problems with creating things derive from a combination of his binding and emasculation by the Younger Gods of Styricum and the fact that his main servant, Otha, is a lazy idiot. In ''Tamuli'', [[spoiler:Cyrgon]]'s thing is basically stagnation, so he is really loath to change his ways or reconsider his ideas -- but he's not actually ''incapable'' of it, and if circumstances force him, he ''will'' innovate.

* This is a defining metaphysical law in ''Literature/TolkiensLegendarium''. Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made. ([[BeamMeUpScotty Tolkien didn't use these exact words, contrary to what some believe]], it was written for this very page.) Melkor/Morgoth, the [[SatanicArchetype equivalent of Satan]] and creator of evil, desires to remake the world according to his image, but his image isn't terribly imaginative, and he's fundamentally incapable of creating new life. He gains armies and servants by perverting and twisting existing beings (the Orcs, depending on the version you're looking at, are corrupted Elves, Men, Maiar, animals turned humanoid, or all of the above), or by gaining the loyalty of existing spirits (the Balrogs and possibly the Dragons are his {{Fallen Angel}}s). In the [[CreationMyth Ainulindalë]], when the World is designed in cosmic song, Melkor attempts to take over the Music by interjecting of his own theme. It's "brash and repetitive," all brute force without subtlety, and it only perverts the concepts introduced by Eru (the equivalent of {{God}}) rather than inventing new ones. This is discussed in ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings: The Return of the King'':
-->'''Sam:''' Don't orcs eat, and don't they drink? Or do they just live on foul air and poison?\\
'''Frodo:''' No, they eat and drink, Sam. The Shadow that bred them can only mock; it cannot make: not real, new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined and twisted them, and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures.

** In ''Literature/MistbornTheOriginalTrilogy'', the two gods, Ruin and Preservation, can only create when they work together, which they are inherently loath to do. Ruin in particular is fundamentally unable to improve any situation, but instead leads everything toward chaos and destruction, which is just the way he likes it. Ruin's specific method of the Metallic Arts, [[BloodMagic hemalurgy]], [[BadPowersBadPeople emphasizes this]], as it is [[MagicAIsMagicA end-negative]], meaning that it can only be used to take an inferior version of the abilities it [[PowerParasite steals]] instead of providing new powers altogether, with each [[SpikesOfVillainy spike]] degrading over the amount of time it is not inside a body. At the end of the series, [[spoiler:both gods are destroyed, and a main character takes in both of their powers, which he uses to repair the damage to the world]]. In [[Literature/WaxAndWayne the sequel]], [[spoiler:the new god, now calling himself Harmony, finds himself unable to do ''anything at all'' with his power because of the opposing forces driving him. So he has to direct others, such as the new main character Wax, into acting on his behalf.]]

* The BigBad of ''Literature/TheTalesOfAlvinMaker'' is the Un-Maker, a being of malevolence to all existence. As an entity of non-being, it is incapable of making or creating anything, even something non-physical, like a plan for undoing the works of Alvin Maker. It instead has to rely on its willing human tools to do that sort of thing for it.
* In the ''Literature/TourOfTheMerrimack'' series, the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Hive]] is said only to learn and adapt, and is unable to conceive new ideas.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' has the Auditors of Reality. Counted among the {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, their function is to oversee the universe and make sure the laws of physics keep working. They naturally dislike life for being untidy and particularly loathe humans due to their creativity and ability to see the world as other than what it is. At least twice so far (in ''Literature/{{Hogfather}}'' and ''Literature/ThiefOfTime''), they've tried to unmake humanity, both times by relying on humans' own ingenuity.
* In ''Literature/WhenDemonsWalk'', this is done with a twist. Demons are not infertile by nature, but all demons summoned by wizards are made infertile via spell, as anything else would enable the demon to cause much disaster.
* In the ''Literature/ColdfireTrilogy'', the Hunter's immortality and power came at the cost of giving up the workings of life. He can't truly Heal and he CantHaveSexEver. He also can't Work fire due to fire's connection with light and renewal.
* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', the Shadowspawn are all twisted forms of normal life (mostly produced by the EvilutionaryBiologist Aginor), the followers of the Dark One mostly just want to dominate or destroy the world rather than create anything new, and even the [[TheDarkSide True Power]] of the Dark One is a corrupt imitation of the One Power. The Borderlands have a saying that everything except evil changes and grows, while evil just stays evil. Rand even says in his TheReasonYouSuckSpeech that the Dark One will never learn anything meaningful from his defeats.

** The Cybermen, your basic robot [[AssimilationPlot assimilators]]. They can't reproduce and can only create more of themselves [[UnwillingRoboticization by stealing live humans and turning them into more cybermen.]] They can advance technologically but are incapable of evolution, biological or cultural, as they lack both reproduction and imagination. This means that the actual power and threat of an individual Cyberman varies from one episode to another, but their weaknesses tend to be retained. This was eventually used to explain their MultipleChoicePast; several different human and HumanAlien groups who independently developed cyberdization converged on similar designs and the blunt descriptive name because they were all using uncreative brute-force techniques.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' features the Borg Collective - a civilization of [[{{Cyborg}} cybernetic humanoids]] who seek to [[AssimilationPlot absorb all cultures, biology and technology into themselves.]] They do this by capturing sentient lifeforms and [[UnwillingRoboticization forcibly implanting devices into their bodies]], including brain implants that both [[IndividualityIsIllegal suppress individual thought]] and link them into a HiveMind that [[BrainwashedAndCrazy controls their actions.]] The Borg are [[TheSociopath ruthless]], [[ImplacableMan relentless]], and very seriously ''don't'' have typical emotions at all - fear, sadness, hate, joy, love, vengeance, and attachment [[WorldOfSilence are all primitive affectations to them.]] That said, they are ''very'' covetous of unusual technology, and equally passionate in their belief that their Collective is the ultimate way of life... but they have absolutely no creativity to invent with. As such, they patiently wait - sometimes for millennia - for the lesser developed species around them to develop new, shiny technology they've never seen before. [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Then they consume them.]]
-->''"We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness into our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. You will deactivate your defenses and surrender your ships - this will expedite the assimilation of your society. Resistance is futile."''
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'': Amara, the Darkness, is [[TheAntiGod God's equal opposite]] [[spoiler:and sister]], being just as powerful as him if not more so, and now that she's [[SealedEvilInACan free]], she intends to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy his flawed creation]], and bring back the peaceful void that came before. Except, as a smug [[spoiler:Lucifer]] points out, as powerful as she is, she's ultimately inferior to God because he can create, while she, as the embodiment of nothingness, can't.
* In the ''Series/OnceUponATime'' episode ''Our Decay'', Hades explains that he can't create life or make anything grow; he only holds dominion over death and decay. When flowers start popping up in the Underworld, it's an indication that the heroes are having an effect there.

* In [[UsefulNotes/{{Christianity}} Christian]] theology, this is related to what is called the Creator/{{Boethi|us}}an view of evil or ''[[GratuitousLatin Privatio Boni]]'' - that evil is merely the absence of good and doesn't have an independent existence of its own. Or as Creator/AugustineOfHippo put it, "I inquired what iniquity was, and ascertained it not to be a substance, but a perversion of the will". Or as Creator/CSLewis put it, "Badness is only spoiled goodness. Evil is a parasite, not an original thing".
* In Myth/EgyptianMythology the god Set, disfavored and seen as evil in later times, is said to be sterile. The story behind the birth of Anubis is that Set's wife Nepthys tricked Osiris into impregnating her because Set was infertile.
** Like most myths, this is DependingOnTheWriter. In some versions of the story, Nepthys and Set have a son, Sebek/Sobek the crocodile god. The reason Nepthys sleeps with Osiris is because Sebek creeps her out enough that she wants a "normal" child.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'': {{Downplayed|Trope}} -- among the Fiends, Devils are mostly incapable of procreating ''among themselves'', as all female Devils that ''aren't'' Erinyes are sterile. The vast majority of devils are produced from the souls of those who died with an alignment of LawfulEvil. Demons and Daemons ''don't'' have this restriction, though.

* ''TabletopGame/PrometheanTheCreated:'' This is one of the biggest reasons BeingEvilSucks for Prometheans who adopt the Refinement of Flux. Not only can they not make progress towards becoming human and truly part of the world, but they are unable to produce the Vitriol that Prometheans use to fix new powers into their bodies. The only way they can gain Vitriol is to find another Promethean and steal it from him.

** Although played straight when you realize that the bulk of Chaos's forces - including the Dark Mechanicus, Chaos Space Marines, and low-ranking cultists - are formerly aligned with the Imperium[[note]](which isn't so much "good" as it is [[BlackAndGreyMorality "less evil"]])[[/note]]. This is even played straight with Chaos itself, which only exists because of human and alien emotions. The only thing Chaos can create is daemons, and they are TheHeartless born from mortal emotion.

[[folder:Video Games ]]
* PlayedWith in ''VideoGame/BloodBorne'': The [[EldritchAbomination Great Ones]] are infertile, every child they create becoming stillborn, but they still yearn for a 'surrogate'. They're not innately evil, but their very presence distorts reality and drives humans to madness - and some of them attempted to 'adopt' Humanity as a whole as its surrogate, leading to horrible consequences.
* In the ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'' expansion ''Shivering Isles'', the amazingly creepy Knights of Order and their master Jyggalag are said to have no original thoughts whatsoever. Their fighting style reflects this - Jyggalag uses some spells, but the knights just swing swords at you until you or they die. When Order tries subterfuge, Sheogorath concludes that things aren't going so bad - Order doesn't try creativity unless everything else has failed, and they suck at it.
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'', the super mutants who are out to make all other humans mutants and destroy anything they can't transform, turn out to be sterile. This is a major plot point, as their VisionaryVillain leader, The Master, thinks mutants are the next evolution of humanity, and the revelation that every one of them is unable to reproduce means their race is doomed to eventually die out. This is because the substance used to create the Super Mutants, the Forced Evolutionary Virus or FEV, wasn't designed to create a new breed of superior beings, but is actually a failed pre-War military drug originally designed to work as an all-purpose protection against biological weapons. The U.S military eventually repurposed it to create disposable super soldiers, with sterility being an intentional feature to prevent their creations from breeding.
** In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 2}}'', if the Chosen One buys Marcus time with a prostitute in New Reno, he'll say that he hopes she doesn't get pregnant afterwords, and if you choose to ask him about that will claim that it just takes a few years for those parts to start working again. WordOfGod, however, says that he's [[TheGadfly lying just for amusement]].

* In ''VideoGame/{{Mass Effect 2}}'', Mordin posits that the Reapers have no capacity for creativity, as evidenced by the fact that the creatures under their thrall are never seen creating anything. In a more literal sense, despite being machines the Reapers are incapable of building more of themselves (at least in sapient form) without first harvesting and then melting down millions of organic sapients.
* Zachary Hale Comstock from ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is sterile due to overuse of the Lutece device. Additionally, all of Columbia's advanced SteamPunk tech is in fact crude simulacrums of other advanced technology stolen from alternate universes (with the ''Burial At Sea'' [=DLC=] revealing that [[spoiler:Columbia's Vigors are taken almost directly from [[VideoGame/BioShock1 Rapture]]]]). Furthermore, a large portion of the game's licensed soundtrack is an intentional AnachronismStew, consisting of songs (i.e., [[Music/{{Coil}} "Tainted Love"]], [[Music/CyndiLauper "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"]], and [[Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival "Fortunate Son"]]) that wouldn't have been penned for ''decades'' after the game's setting of 1912, but were pre-emptively copied by Columbian artists and redone with period-appropriate stylings.

* [[ZigZaggingTrope All over the place]] in ''VideoGame/FallFromHeaven''. [[{{Satan}} Agares]] originally went out of his way to defy this trope, by using the power of creation [[{{God}} the One]] gave him to [[LoopholeAbuse create infinite planes for all twenty-one elements]] so he could draw power from them and continue creating after the One withdrew His own power, forming the backbone of how magic works in ''FFH''. Unfortunately, his creations were seen as flawed compared to those made using the One's power directly, and Agares, jealous of the others, went on an [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum Omnicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum]], destroying his plane and everything in it, and then restructuring it into the deepest circle of the game's version of {{Hell}}. Technically, Agares still has all the power of creation he had before, but he ''doesn't want'' to create anything new, preferring to corrupt and destroy creation to show that the One is just as flawed as he is.
* Subtly implied from time to time in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda''. Many of the monsters in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaALinkToThePast A Link to the Past]]'' were originally inhabitants of Hyrule who were lured into the DarkWorld by Ganon and rumors of the Triforce, with the Hyrulean soldiers in particular ending up BrainwashedAndCrazy. ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]]'' has Zant turning his fellow Twili and some inhabitants of the Light into Shadow Beasts because he couldn't get any willing allies in his planned conquest of Hyrule. ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild Breath of the Wild]]'' sees Calamity Ganon possessing the advanced {{Magitek}} originally constructed by the Sheikah, including the Divine Beasts and the Guardians, to keep them from being used against him.

In historical penal laws of a number of countries, this became an EnforcedTrope in RealLife, as criminals and other enemies of the government (allegedly "evil", depending on perspective) were forcibly castrated. Examples include historian Sima Qian, who was allegedly implicated in a treason case, and explorer Zheng He, who was a family member of a Central Asian Muslim official in service of Mongols when they were overthrown by the Han Chinese who set up the new Ming Dynasty.