Follow TV Tropes

Following

Apocalypse How / Class Z

Go To

Apocalypse How
0 | 1 | 2 | 3a, 3b | 4 | 5 | 6
X | X-2 | X-3 | X-4 | X-5 | Z

"We will go where none can follow. We will complete the Ultimate Sanction. At my hand a mighty rupture will tear the time vortex apart, putting an end to our enemies and this miserable reality! We will shed these bodies and take our true forms, to be bound by cause and effect no more!"
Rassilon, The Last Great Time War (paraphrased from his words in Doctor Who's "The End of Time, Part Two")

Omniversal-scale Annihilation, where not just our Universe, and not just The Multiverse, but the totality of The 'Verse/Series Franchise, containing all alternate dimensions, planes of existence, parallel universes, possible universes, timelines, alternate continuities, realities, and Multiverses get wiped out somehow. This can take on three forms, and though every form is pretty permanent, for largely theoretical reasons they actually range in "severity" a bit, thus:

  • Omniversal FUBAR (Class Z-1): The Physical Destruction of everything, including all universes and anything that exists in the same manner as part of a universe. Examples of this might be the entire universe getting crushed into a singularity, and for whatever reason this destabilizes the larger neighborhood of universes or parallel realities, causing them to similarly end up crushed out of existence. Alternately, something might simply travel from universe to universe and devastate them one-at-a-time until all are destroyed with no remaining loose ends. Maybe some inevitable physical process simply leads all physically real things towards a final end state of chaos or void.
    • The "least" severe form: if some truly godlike thing was around (maybe a supernatural being, or just a Sufficiently Advanced Physical Godnote ), it could possibly Deus ex machina everything back — perhaps by reversing entropy, or reformatting the structure of the multiverse to at least allow some manner of interesting story to take place once again. Alternatively, if absolute entropy is the fate of everything, then perhaps one day in a googolplex years, simple physical processes might eventually lead to something interesting happening purely at random.
  • Omniversal 404 (Class Z-2): The Metaphysical Annihilation of everything. It is not merely "the end of all things", because if this happens, nothing's there to start with. All cosmic data is irretrievably lost, and no viable backup or recoverable state exists for anything in the setting. The omniverse hasn't just been rendered into some unrecognizable state — there simply isn't a state of the physical omniverse now, and something that simply isn't there can't have a history. Examples might include the laws of physics themselves changing or being tweaked such that they do not allow the existence of things as we understand it, or perhaps it's already possible given the metaphysics of the setting for things to get so metaphysically deranged that they cease to be real in any cognizable sense. In any case, the point is that the multiverse and everything associated with it haven't merely been destroyed — they don't exist in any meaningful state and never did.
    • This is less fixable, and would require, essentially, the intervention of an actual god or some other thing with control over the setting's metaphysics — a physics-based cosmic backup system built into the laws of the universe wouldn't cut it, as that might be affected as well. There would be nothing to recover at any rate, but perhaps a new reality could still be created from scratch: Omniverse v.n+1, if you like.
  • Original Negation (Class Z-3): The Ontological and Complete Annihilation of everything. There's no coming back from this one. Even the Powers That Be or the One True God of the setting, the Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient Ein Sof that has absolute control over everything and anything in the setting — even these things don't survive. Bluntly, all universes, every physical thing, the laws of physics themselves, whatever metaphysical realities there might be, and whoever or whatever is ultimately behind it all — all of it simply doesn't exist once this happens. Not only is it categorically impossible for anything in the setting to have ever existed, but it's also modally impossible that anything about the setting could ever exist "again".

Fridge Logic/Fridge Brilliance/: audiences can potentially claim that this is occurring offscreen when an author dies suddenly before finishing the series.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 
  • In Digimon Adventure 02 we learn there are seven Cosmic Keystones called Destiny Stones (among other things in other translations) that keep each dimension separate from all others. Destroy them all, and all dimensions collide, resulting in the destruction of all reality. (Worryingly, every dimension has its version of them, and this will happen if any world's set are destroyed. For the record, Earth's are seven particular shrines in Kyoto.)
  • In Dragon Ball Super, it's said by Beerus that Zeno can pull it off as he is said to be powerful enough to destroy ALL 12 universes if he wants to in a second! It's a good thing he's a Reasonable Authority Figure. Although this is actually downplayed, since there are multiple timelines, with even Zeno having his own counterparts in these. Furthermore, Zeno can only destroy the multiverse in his own native timeline (that being a Class X-5). But there was a strong possibility of a Class Z Omniversal FUBAR scenario happening if Goku didn't summon Future Zeno in time, and the little guy promptly destroyed the multiverse in Future Trunks' timeline, which was at this point completely corrupted by an Eldritch Abomination form of Fused Zamasu who assimilated it into his own very being, destroying all life, and even threatening to spill into all timelines in existence by distorting the fabric of time and space, which could result in Zeno of all timelines destroying their own respective multiverses in response. Even if that didn't happen, Fused Zamasu was still trying to wipe out all mortal life and would've wiped them out himself.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure: Near the end, the Dark King is purportedly destroying multiple planets in his spare time. His goal, as stated throughout the series, is the total destruction of all existence.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, The Omnipotent has the power to do this, and that's why the SOS Brigade is so desperate to keep her own powers secret from herself.
  • El Hazard 2: This is the reason Kalia exists. According to Yuba Yurias, once she assembles the Trigger of Destruction, she begins to wipe out all life, in all worlds until nothing remains. She then crosses over into the next nearest dimension and begins this process anew, and was to repeat this until all that remained was a void. Upon which, her final act would be to turn the "Trigger" on it/herself and perish.
  • In The Noozles, this is threatened by the accelerated separation of the real world and Koalawallaland.
  • In Soul Eater, Death The Kid goes mad and decides at one point that the only way to create ultimate symmetry is to destroy all of existence. Luckily for everyone, Black*Star manages to pretty much (literally) beat some sense into him. He's back to normal now. Which is good because if Kid's choice is the "logical" extent of the Madness of Order, then presumably his ascension at the end of the series means he could now initiate this at will without outside interference. There's a reason he took the A God I Am Not option.

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City: A noteworthy case appears in "The Eagle and the Mountain", when Samaritan and Infidel ended up creating a Class Z event by destroying all of existence.
  • DC Comics:
    • Crisis on Infinite Earths threatens the vast majority of the multiverse, and in the end, only five worlds remain, to be saved by collapsing them into one Merged Reality.
    • Darkseid War: Either Class Z2 (Omniversal 404) or Class Z3 (Omniversal Negation) is gonna happen to reality, courtesy of the Anti-Monitor, according to the Amazonian prophecy.
    • Doom Patrol: In Grant Morrison's run, this is what will happen if the Decreator, let free by the Cult of the Unwritten Book, is able to proceed with unmaking the universe. "Nothing. Forever and ever." The Patrol isn't able to stop the Decreator, but they are able to combine their powers in such a way that the Decreation is slowed to such a crawl as to be effectively paused.
  • In Lucifer, the spin-off from The Sandman (1989), all of Creation was nearly unmade when God left creation. Since His name is on everything in Heaven, Earth and everywhere else, and it holds it all together, everything started to slowly break down. It was averted when God left His job as supreme deity to his half-angel granddaughter. Chances are her universe — the third at the time — would have survived anyway, not being entangled with God's crappy handiwork.
  • The Adventures of the X-Men had averting a Class Z1 as the heroes' goal during the series' Grand Finale. It could not be stopped, but the destruction of the original multiverse led to the creation of the Marvel Multiverse as we now know it.
  • In Secret Wars (2015), Class Z1 (Omniversal FUBAR), at least, is what things were going to, courtesy of the Beyonders destroying the Multiverse (assuming they might have gone suicidal if succeeded). But, thankfully, Doctor Doom blew them up.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) suffers a weird Class Z2 case. Thanks to the Super Genesis Wave, the entire old continuity is wiped out for good, including all Zones (catch-all term for multiverses) and pocket dimensions. Even the core of all of these Zones, Mobius Prime, is gone for good to pave the way for one single, streamlined universe. What makes this otherwise normal Class Z2 weird, however, is that while all physical records of the old universe are completely gone, several characters, most notably Sonic and NICOLE, have very vivid memories of the old universe. Said memory tropes are subverted, however, in that the new universe has a cosmic phenomena in play that slowly, but surely wipes away the memories of the old universe in physical creatures. (NICOLE, being a holographic manifestation of an AI, is exempt from this phenomena)
    • In addition, the Sol Zone, being in posession of a magic artifact called the Jeweled Scepter that stabilizes parallel universes, manages to escape the multiversal rewrite mostly unscathed, including containing the remains of a Metal Sonic variant from Mobius Prime from the old multiverse, which was now never built in the first place (since the new main dimension only ever had the one Metal Sonic).
  • Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!: This is pretty much Parallax's plan — he plans to completely and utterly wipe out time/space just so he can recreate everything in his own image.

    Fan Works 
  • The Infinite Loops: This is actually the premise of the setting; Yggdrassil, the magical World Tree higher-dimensional supercomputer that underpins all of reality, suffered an unexplained systems crash that rendered eighty percent of the multiverse essentially defunct and forced the Admins to initiate the titular loops. It's very heavily implied that while things are getting better, more and more problems are cropping up as they go...
  • Distorted Reality starts with Aang being sent back in time to a Mirror Universe by Avatar Yangchen, an action which several characters (including Enma, Roku, and Guru Pathik) point out risks the oblivion of the Spirit World- which may take the material world(s) with them.
  • In Shattered Skies: The Morning Lights, a Magical Girl Crisis Crossover, this is the purpose of Dead End's Merry-Go-Round. Using the unending combined agony of the hundreds of captive magical girls grafted to it, it's supposed to harnesses intent (i.e., the captives' constant thoughts of "Make it stop!") to cause an Original Negation... in effect, making everything stop. Subverted when Joker says that's not what the Merry-Go-Round does, having intentionally spread misinformation about it to intimidate the troops and keep them in line. He says that what it really does is "far, far worse"... but this is Joker, so it's anyone's guess.
  • This is how Harry Potter and the Fairy Tome kicks off. Kurome wins, with only two characters escaping the annihilation of the Neptunia-verse.
    • Histoire is sent outside the dimensional cluster with the Sharicite of the goddesses, making it possible for the CPUs and Makers to eventually be revived. She finds Harry Potter, kicking off the plot.
    • Gust was outside the dimensional cluster, and also wound up on the Harry Potter Earth. By the time Harry starts Hogwarts, she has taken Snape's place as head of Slytherin and Potions instructor, while also getting Happily Married.

    Film — Animated 
  • Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths: This is Owlman's goal, once he learns of the existence of the multiverse. It is quite awesome, but ultimately foiled by Batman.
    "Somewhere in the multiverse, there is a world I call 'Earth Prime'. Every Earth is a variation of this one, the original—and once I destroy it, all reality will follow."

    Film — Live-Action 
  • In Dogma, if the Word of God is ever proven wrong, all of creation will cease to exist. This is Azrael's Evil Plan — he gives Loki and Bartleby a newspaper telling of a church that, in celebration of its 100th anniversary, will absolve them of their sins when they pass through the doors. This absolving would end up contradicting God's mandate that Loki and Bartleby be banished from Heaven and never return. They do come damn close.
  • Warlock (1989): This is the Warlock's goal (specifically - learn the true name of God, which was spoken In The Beginning, and which, when spoken backwards, can undo the Creation), and he comes damned close.

    Literature 
  • Archangel Protocol: Essentially, the Biblical Apocalypse. Once Satan is defeated, the universe will cease to exist.
  • The Belgariad by David Eddings features a the End of All things scenario: If the Child of Dark were to win the battle with the Child of Light, the universe would cease to exist. However, in The Malloreon, it changed to the Cosmic Do-Over.
  • G. K. Chesterton argued that the act of suicide is this trope from the perspective of the one committing it, assuming of course that there is no afterlife (though in that case, this would be true of any death).
  • City At The End Of Time, by Greg Bear, has the end of ALL universes come about (semi?-)naturally, around about the year 100 trillion, at the hands of the strange, physics-warping Typhon. Even better, the destruction travels backwards in time and screws around with modern-day Seattle. The main cast still manage to escape the collapse of all worlds using Green Rocks! Better yet, putting all the rocks together reboots everything from the start, which it is implied they did. Eventually.
  • One of the most powerful entities in the Cthulhu Mythos is Azathoth, a being that will end the universe when he wakes up. He won't have to actually do anything, waking up will be enough to destroy the entire omniverse. This is because existence itself is nothing more than Azathoth's dream. When he wakes up, the dream ends.
  • In Keys to the Kingdom, if the House is destroyed by Nothing, reality will cease to exist (including all the Secondary Realms). This does end up happening, but it's only class Z-1 and it gets better, since Arthur is able to recreate the Realms from the Atlas.
  • Odakint Sötétebb ("Its Darker Outside"): A Z3 is in progress, and all the weirdness in the world is caused by it. The cellofoids are attempting to save our universe by separating it from the multiverse, but ultimately fail. In the end it's softened to a "mere" Z2.
  • Spider Robinson's time-travel stories are all fueled by the premise that a genuine temporal paradox will result in the complete annihilation of space-time from beginning to end, not only destroying everything but causing it never to have existed at all.
  • In The Wheel of Time: This is what Moridin wants — he's a Death Seeker and nihilist who projects his suicidal tendencies on the universe at large and thinks it would be best to just end Eternal Recurrence by ending everything. The last book shows that his master, the Dark One, has the power to do this but would probably never go through with it — torturing the universe for eternity is just so much more fun.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Glory's portal would have merged our dimension and all others. Considering the differences in physical laws between dimensions, this probably would have killed almost all beings in almost all of them. As it turns out, the protectors to the key of said portal were already aware of this and mitigated this threat by turning the key into a mortal girl (Buffy's sister, Dawn). As a result of the key being mortal, once said key died the portal would automatically close, reducing the possible damage done by the overlapping dimensions.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019), the sixth Crisis Crossover of the Arrowverse is definitely this, much like the comic event it's based on. It not only threatens The Multiverse created by the franchise but also settings of other unrelated DC-based media like Smallville (which has its own multiverse), Lucifer, and the DC Extended Universe. When the multiverse is rebooted at the end, everything that is core to the Arrowverse is merged into a single reality (called Earth-Prime), while the aforementioned unrelated media are still kept separate, and it's implied that universe-breaching has been made impossible.
  • Doctor Who: Unsurprisingly, the series has a few examples of this extreme. If there's one thing these people know, it is how to kill a lot of people/planets/etc.
    • In "Journey's End", Davros comes within a hair's breadth of firing a device to cancel out all matter in the universe save for himself and his fleet of Daleks, expecting its wavelength to then break through a space-time rift into every other universe and dimension across the entire multiverse so that nothing besides themselves will remain anywhere across the multiverse.
    • In "The Big Bang" it threatens to reach Class Z-2 to Z-3 — as if: All realities never existed. Creation never existed. Nothing ever existed. The above statements ignore Earth and the Moon, for now, but in a couple of hours they will no longer have existed either. The Sun was destroyed too, since the big ball of fire that rises and sets every day was the TARDIS exploding. Note it's easy to miss that it's a Z and not an X(-5), since its status is only confirmed in a single, blink and you miss it line of dialogue from a Cyberman in the previous episode. "All universes will be deleted."
    • "The Wedding of River Song": There are "fixed points" in time that cannot be altered lest a Reality-Breaking Paradox ensue. When River risks it to save the Doctor anyway, the denial of a fixed point in history creates a temporal explosion threatening to collapse and kill all of reality, spreading outward from the point that was broken.
  • Kamen Rider Decade: Tsukasa, AKA the eponymous Decade, is supposedly fated to destroy all the other Kamen Riders, which in turn will destroy all the Rider worlds. Much of the tension in the series is the question of whether Tsukasa is actually evil, or just kind of a dick. This comes up again at the end of Zi-O as Tsukasa decided to destroy the world over Reality Breaking Paradoxes.

    Multiple Media 
  • In the pre-reboot Transformers multiverse where Unicron and Primus were the same beings in every iteration, this is Unicron's ultimate goal. Given that his overall method is to eat the entire multiverse one planet at a time, it's taking him quite a while, but, impressively, he's already devoured about 22.5% of known universes that way before the reboot.

    Music 
  • Food for the Gods: This is how the story ends. Satan leads an army of the damned into Heaven, and starts utterly laying waste to everything in sight. God responds by going completely insane with rage and obliterating all of creation.

    Pinball 
  • Pro Pinball: Timeshock! has the player attempt to avert an anti-time shockwave that's capable of destroying all of reality.

    Podcasts 
  • The Adventure Zone: Balance: This is the Hunger's ultimate goal. They're an entire plane of existence, whose inhabitants became so disillusioned with life in general that they transformed their entire plane into a living Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, a being so powerful it devours entire Planar Systems to keep growing. If it grows big enough, the laws of physics will start to completely break down around it, taking the entire multiverse with it.

    Roleplay 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Arkham Horror: Should you play against Azathoth and he awakens, his card clearly states the universe just ends entirely. Based on the literature that features him, the rest of the omniverse would go with it.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • This is the goal of Tharizdun, the Mad God of Destruction. He seeks to unmake reality and destroy everything, ending with himself.
    • Die Vecna Die: This is Vecna's goal. He threatens to consume all of reality and remake it in his own evil image.
    • In Planescape, two factions had this goal, but neither seriously believes it can be accomplished in their lifetimes or even that of many descendants.
      • The Doomguard believes omniversal destruction is imminent, and they try to prevent anyone from stopping it. Some try to hurry it along.
      • The Believers of the Source believe in a concept like Nirvana, where every being (mortals and gods alike) are being tested. Pass the tests, you Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Once everyone passes every test, the multiverse will end.
  • In Exalted, the Abyssal Exalted were created by the Neverborn with the express intent of throwing Creation into Oblivion, freeing the Neverborn from their fetters to existence by getting rid of existence.
  • Nobilis: This is the fate of Creation if the Imperators lose their Valde Bellum. Retroactively, no less.
  • Pathfinder:
  • The Greater-Scope Villain of Sentinels of the Multiverse is OblivAeon, a singular entity (god-like beings who are distinguished from the rest of the multiverse by the fact that there is only one of them) who desires to destroy every single timeline in the multiverse. To do this he crashes timelines into each other by making them so similar they're attracted to each other.
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: This is the presumed goal of the Wyrm, although some speculate that Its goal is actually to make things as horrible as possible and keep it that way forever.

    Video Games 
  • Asura's Wrath: Chakravartin's last resort. He will do this if he doesn't find an heir to replace him. He's done this countless times already in multiple cycles. Asura is the final one to break this cycle.
  • Baba is You can end this way, if you complete a series of mind-bending meta puzzles and make your way to "Center". Assemble the rule "All is Done" and the level, the overworld map, and even the end credits will all float off into nothingness.
  • In Bayonetta, Balder wants to instigate this in order to reunite the Trinity of Realities, which in turn, would destroy the current universe to do so.
  • Bravely Default: Interestingly, the True Final Boss, Ouroboros, is aiming for a Class Z-4. Apart from devouring thousands of other worlds on the regular, and seeming to want to annihilate the game's universe just for fun, his main goal is to invade and destroy the Celestial Realm. It's vague as to what it actually is, until the final phase of his boss fight: it's the real world, shown through the 3DS' camera. And in the event that he wins, narratively speaking, you, the player, would be his first target.
  • Chaos Rings: The Qualia does this if the heroes fail in the final battle.
  • In Chrono Cross, the Time Devourer intends to consume every timeline, destroying everything in existence. It can only be stopped by the titular Chrono Cross, which temporarily merges the timelines and allows Serge to Ret-Gone Lavos.
  • Demon's Souls: This is the ultimate "goal" of the Old One. The Old One is literally nothingness, and it slowly annihilates entire lands and eventually the world and beyond if not stopped.
  • Doom Eternal: In The Ancient Gods: Part Two, this is the ultimate goal which Davoth, aka the Dark Lord, is striving to achieve. Once known as The Father of creation, he was betrayed and sealed away by the Maykrs who served under him, robbing his city of Immora of perfection and all life of immortality because they were worried Davoth would become mad with power. No guesses on what he is now. Out of resentment, he vows to destroy all of reality, and reshape it to his liking; a perfect utopia free of death. Ultimately, the Doom Slayer leads a siege of Immora and ultimately defeats Davoth in ritual combat, preventing the end of existence.
  • Drakengard: The fourth and fifth endings, if not for the intervention of the heroes.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka manages to succeed in a severe Class 1 destruction of the world, and when he learns to his disgust about people's hopes, love, and dreams, he decides that he'll "Destroy everything and create a monument to Non-existence."
    • In Final Fantasy VIII Ultimecia plans to use a spell called time compression to compress all of space and time into a single point, which she would then absorb and become God with a capital G, or as she calls it All Existence Denied. You can even see stars being sucked into her final form as you fight it! Fortunately Squall and co. sabotage the process, leaving it half-complete and allowing them to reach Ultimecia's time period and kill her.
    • In Final Fantasy IX, Kuja comes within a hairsbreadth of pulling one of these off. He almost manages to destroy the crystal that holds the fabric of reality together. After he manages to beat the party to death, forcing them to fight and defeat Necron, the embodiment of death who was awakened by the attempt to destroy that crystal and decided that since Kuja wanted to destroy everything, it was time to end the universe. in the end however, Kuja has a last-minute Heel–Face Turn, resurrects the party, and dies offscreen after Zidane has found him inside the now death-throwing Iifa Tree.
    • In Dissidia the Cloud of Darkness and Exdeath had a talk about the differences in their plans to destroy existence. Exdeath himself may have rather ruled over everything but the Void has other plans.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Big Bad Caius Ballad seeks to destroy all of time to free his charge, Yeul, from her curse of reincarnation. Unusually for this trope, he succeeds, and the third game is about fixing everything.
  • In Genesis 2009, it's revealed that after too many dimensions are born, they are all destroyed at once, melting together into one. Gelyan plans to delay this by destroying all other dimensions.
  • In I Miss the Sunrise, according to the Black One, the Big Bad's plan (compressing the universe into a single point of energy — essentially an artificial big crunch) will cause "the end of all things". It's not entirely clear how or why, though.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Although it's not discussed often (likely due to the younger target audience), when the story starts, a seemingly endless horde of planet-devouring hellspawn is already well underway at tearing the multiverse apart at the seams. Traverse Town, a sort of base-camp for your character, is literally an interdimensional refugee camp for people who managed to survive their world's utter annihilation.
  • In Kirby Star Allies, This is Void Termina's ultimate goal, and because he exists in every dimension there is, he's more than capable of doing so.
  • In League of Legends Thresh's legendary skin, Dark Star Thresh, cares less for everlasting torment of individuals and more of bringing about a Class-Z annihilation of all existence. To put this into perspective, he's a major threat to Aurelion Sol, Bard, and The Void. And one of his voice lines implies he's already done a Class X-4 (Universal Scale, Physical Annihilation) to other realities before he's gotten to Runeterra's.
  • In LEGO Dimensions, the Big Bad Lord Vortech plans to assimilate every single dimension into one.
  • In Live A Live, Odio the Lord of Dark will unleash Armageddon should you fail to defeat him as Purity of Odio in the final chapter . Alternatively, if you play as him in the final chapter, you are the one who can end everything by simply choosing the Armageddon option (provided you take enough damage as one of the chapter bosses). Odio disintegrates everything, in every place, in every time period, all at once (even though just destroying the Prehistoric chapter should have been enough), so you know it's horrible.
  • Two of the Non-Standard Game Overs of Outer Wilds (duplicating your scout by shooting it at the black hole in the High Energy Lab, then removing the black hole warp core after the scout exits the white hole, but before it enters the black hole, and duplicating yourself by getting sucked into the core of the Ash Twin Project as it activates) result in the rupture and complete destruction of spacetime itself, aka complete metaphysical annihilation.
  • In No Man's Sky, the multiverse the game takes place in turns out to be a computer simulation, and the Atlas is the computer it's running on. And in Atlas' world, outside the simulation, a black hole is headed for Atlas' planet. The Atlas will be destroyed in 16 minutes, and this can't be stopped. How much time is left inside the simulation is unknown, and probably unknowable, but when that time is up the entire simulated multiverse will stop existing.
  • In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, this is implied to happen if someone tries to use The Great Clock for time travel. Nearly happens, too, thanks to Azimuth.
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne: True Demon Ending heavily suggests this. After ascending to become a true demon, Demi-fiend manages to not only destroy YHVH's avatar who oversees the creation, destruction and rebirth of countless universes within the Amala, he precludes it from existing in any universe ever again which pretty much means countless universes are destroyed without any chance of being recreated. Even Lucifer comments time itself is dead to support this.
      • That being said, later games in the franchise (particularly Shin Megami Tensei IV and especially Apocalypse) confirm this is actually a case of Class X-5 specific to the Amala group of universes, because other groups of universes are proven to continue existing even after Demi-fiend has successfully destroyed Kagutsuchi, as shown in the "Messiahs in the Diamond Realm" DLC.
      • Shin Megami Tensei V further clarifies the consequence of Demi-fiend's actions. Koshimizu, or rather Tsukuyomi, clarifies that 18 years prior to the main character entering Da'at, the Conception had occurred but failed to reshape the world due to unclear reasons. This implies the Demi-fiend's actions of reducing Kagutsuchi Deader than Dead did not destroy all universes within the Amala, though it likely did broke the Conception system.
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV has a group of Humanoid Abominations called the White, who wish for this level of Apocalypse How, since they have learned the true scope of the Forever War plaguing their world. They want to push Flynn over the Moral Event Horizon and overload the Yamato Reactor to create a black hole which will destroy the universe. It is one of the possible endings which you can choose; though the end result subverts this as it is nowhere near a Class Z Apocalypse How, being a Class X-4 at most.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) comes dangerously close to Solaris (the joining of Mephiles and Iblis) devouring all of time, past, present, and future and all of existence if Sonic, Shadow and Silver hadn't stopped him.
    • In Sonic Generations, the Time Eater (controlled by current and past versions of Dr. Eggman/Robotnik) has the ability to erase time and space. The game starts during this process of time erasure, but because of the two Sonics, it never gets very far.
    • In Sonic Frontiers, THE END's final plan is this, as it proceeds to tear down entire dimensions and wants to consume all of existence.
  • Soul Nomad & the World Eaters: Featured in the Bad Ending of Demon Path (when you win the final battle, that is). Devourlord Revya consumes Gig, kills all other gods and destroys all reality. Just because it was fun.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • Tasty Planet: At the end of the game you eat the fabric of time and space.
  • Undertale: When you complete the No Mercy/Genocide Route, the Fallen Human repays you by absolutely pulverizing reality as we know it in the blink of an eye.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Z attempts to perform an Original Negation using the power of Origin, as he figures that if nobody is willing to conform to remaining the same for all eternity, then he may as well erase all of existence in order to prevent an unknown future from ever arriving. He almost manages to pull it off, until N and M perform a Heroic Sacrifice and end up taking Z with them.

    Webcomics 
  • Awful Hospital: This is the Parliament's end goal — they want to completely reset the multiverse back to its original state before it grew into the immense and complex thing it is today using a reality-infecting disease that can jump across different planes of existence. It's not entirely clear what that state would be, but it's generally taken as something that wouldn't include anything we'd recognize as life.
  • Goblins: Psion Minmax would, ideally, like to enact a Metaphysical Annihilation. He wants to negate things, not just from existence, but from history, so that they never existed at all. His reasoning is, existence is pain, so to end all pain, he must end all existence. He can't manage it on a universal scale, but he's figured out how to manipulate the laws of physics within the Maze of Many, a self-contained dungeon that runs on an artificial Stable Time Loop. He comes damn close, but ultimately fails because the main story's version of Kin, Minmax and Forgath disrupt his calculations.
  • In Homestuck, messing around with the fourth wall is supposed to be even worse than Class Z-3, according to Karkat:
    CG: BUT SUFFICE TO SAY THERE ARE JUST SOME THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO SCREW WITH.
    CG: THERE ARE OUTCOMES THAT ARE EVEN WORSE THAN THE COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF EXISTENCE ITSELF
    CG: FORCES MORE DAMAGING TO THE INTEGRITY OF REALITY THAN THOSE CAPABLE OF TURNING IMAGINATION INTO PURE VOID
    GC: THEY ARE FORCES WHICH IF HANDLED RECKLESSLY WILL NULLIFY THE BASIC ABILITY OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS IN ALL REAL AND HYPOTHETICAL PLANES OF EXISTENCE TO GIVE A SHIT.
  • Klunscomic: The third experiment led to a Class 3a, with it absorbing every B in its path. If B.B and Miss B were to reunite with the it, it would lead to a Class Z, with reality ceasing to exist.
  • The Order of the Stick: The threat of such an event is a major plot point, in that breaking all of the Gates would presumably bring about the unraveling of the world, eventually.
  • Narrowly avoided and ultimately played for laughs in Girl Genius. When Tarvek, Gil and several others are working to build a mermaid disguise for Agatha so she can negotiate with the Deepdwellers, the Extradimensional Entity suddenly reveals that their current plans will result in the complete destruction of reality itself. Turns out that Gil and co secretly added a crapton of weapons into the disguise, and Agatha immediately orders them all removed, averting the proposed disaster.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 
  • In The Flintstones, The Great Gazoo is sent to Earth of the cavemen time as punishment for creating a device that could annihilate the entire universe and quite possibly everything else.
  • Futurama: Professor Farnsworth makes doomsday devices as a hobby, including one that "destroys everything everywhere" (it looks a lot like a lava lamp). There is also the Sphere-O-Boom, which bends objects around it in a non-specific radius and implodes them with doom radiation.
  • In The Penguins of Madagascar, Kowalski invents a time travel device known as the Chronotron. It malfunctions and starts threatening to do this. Rico narrowly subverts this by, despite Kowalski arguing that it should've broke all known laws of the universe, throwing the Chronotron itself into the ripped fabric of space. In fact, Skipper points out both in this episode and on a regular basis that a large number of Kowalski's inventions threaten to destroy them all regardless if they actually threaten to end the world or just them alone.
  • The Simpsons: Done as a joke for an intro, where Kang and Kodos create a wormhole that's powerful enough to even suck God into it, leaving nothing but a blank slate.
    Kodos: Smooth move, space-lax! You've destroyed the totality of existence!
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series: Attempted by Spider-Carnage. After losing Uncle Ben and Aunt May, then experiencing his world's version of The Clone Saga and having to face a 50/50 chance that he's not the real Peter Parker, then becoming possessed by the Carnage symbiote, this alternate universe Spider-Man sets a new standard for Ax-Crazy. He attempts to, in his own words, "Destroy all reality". His plan is basic: trigger a bomb similar to the Doctor Who example with Davros, above, unraveling the bonds that keep atoms together. It won't stop at destroying the Earth, or even the universe: With the help of a portal courtesy of the technology that created The Spot, the blast will be replicated across the entirety of the multiverse, ensuring that when Spider-Carnage dies, all of creation dies with him.
  • Turtles Forever takes this concept meta when Ch'rell, the Shredder from the 2003 animated series inadvertently kicks off a Class Z. Having stumbled on The Multiverse, Shredder hypothesizes that if he can take out "Turtle Prime", that is the original universe that spawned the rest of the multiverse, he'll be unmatched and can have free reign to do as he pleases. This "Turtle Prime" turns out to be the 1984 comic book universe. While it is true that destroying the original turtles will also eliminate any TMNTs that forked off their existence, it will also destroy all of reality because if the original 1984 Turtles are erased from existence then the franchise cannot be given birth. And the Shredder doesn't even care if he'll be erased as well. Thankfully he is thwarted and Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman remain unimpeded in bringing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to store shelves.
  • Voltron: Legendary Defender: In the final season, Haggar/Honerva's motive is to be together with Zarkon and Lotor by finding a reality where the two of them are alive, but doing so would instantly destroy other realities in the process. Although she managed to reach the world she desperately craved, both alternate versions of Lotor and Zarkon reject her after realizing that she is not their real Honerva, and in a rage, she decides to obliterate all other realities until the fabric of existence has been reduced to absolute nothingness.


 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

Z (SPOILERS)

Upon defeat, Ouroboros tells Z that there's no way to change the future if it's kept eternally in place, but Z doesn't listen to a word they say, and believes that the only way left to keep an unknown future from coming is to destroy the entirety of existence itself, while childishly proclaiming that he hates the entire world, proceeding to then jettison Aionios into oblivion.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (10 votes)

Example of:

Main / SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum

Media sources:

Report