Beast of the Apocalypse

Thor's gonna need a ton of thunder-power to even touch this thing.

"And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority."

— Revelation 13:2

We're all familiar with The Antichrist — the Dark Messiah of the forces of evil, destined to lead the Legions of Hell at the end of the world. He's suave, he's clever, and represents the very worst that humanity has to offer.

This guy is a little different. Whereas the Antichrist is a monster in human form, the Beast of the Apocalypse is a literal monster, who also happens to be a harbinger of the end times. This is the kind of beast who gives the gods themselves nightmares, and in action it's liable to be a veritable engine of destruction, trampling over mortals, gods, and anything else that gets in his way. If this thing slips its leash you may as well turn out the lights and lock the universe behind you when you go, because there won't be much left. And even if the creature doesn't actually attack anyone, the simple fact of this creature's appearance means that things are about to get a whole lot worse. If the apocalypse prophesized was not the first time the Beast of the Apocalypse attacked and it ravaged the world earlier in its history, expect it to also be a case of Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs.

For obvious reasons, such a creature is very likely to be a case of Sealed Evil in a Can. It is liable to overlap with Kill the God and Omnicidal Maniac, and will feature prominently in any Götterdämmerung. May be an Enemy to All Living Things.

Compare Destroyer Deity. See also Eldritch Abomination as well as its variants, Humanoid Abomination and Animalistic Abomination, which can all overlap with this.

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Examples:

• Fate Series

Anime and Manga

• 3×3 Eyes: Kalkin is a Sealed Evil in a Can and Eldritch Abomination in the vague form of a man merged with a horse mistaken for the corpse of Vishnu. When unleshed, Kalkin forms a body and proceeds to violently and mindlessly attack and destroy all his surroundings, and according to the monk Naparbha, he may go on for years before running out of steam. He, Yakumo and Hasrath speculates that he was actually created, possibly by a former Triclop, in preparation for "Kali Yuga". Appropriately enough, the heroes awaken him when Big Bad Shiva has started The End of the World as We Know It, pointing him at Shiva's forces and using him in an attempt to finish off the God of Destruction.
• In Berserk, this is the role Emperor Ganishka plays in the Prophecy of the Hawk of Light, particularly once he transforms into Shiva. In a rather cruel twist, he is actually opposed to The Antichrist figure, Griffith, who slays Ganishka to deceive the people of the world into following him.
• Digimon:
  • Digimon Adventure: After Myotismon's apparent defeat, he resurrects himself at 6:06:06 PM as the much more bestial VenomMyotismon, intent on devouring everyone in sight.
  • Digimon Tamers: Megidramon i.e what happens when Takato, in the grip of extreme anger after Beelzemon killed Leomon, forced Guilmon to evolve to Mega-level can cause the slow collapse of the Digital World simply by existing. Fortunately Jeri managed to bring Takato back to his senses, cutting off the mindlessly rampaging Megidramon from gaining more power until Beelzemon defeated him and forced him to revert back to Guilmon.
• In PandoraHearts, this is the role B-rabbit was created for, to cut the chains that keep the world existing. Ironically enough, he becomes an Anti-Anti-Christ Messianic Archetype.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Walpurgisnacht may destroy an entire city with her mere presence, but Kriemhild Gretchen will lay waste to entire worlds the moment she is is born. Said birth is often a result of Madoka fighting Walpurgisnacht and becoming a Witch herself immediately afterwards, so both Witches will likely herald The End of the World as We Know It in whatever timeline they appear in.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, the Greater-Scope Villain Zarc is one, a titanic Draconic Abomination with godlike power who lays waste to the Original Dimension and almost does the same with the multiverse.

Comic Books

• Used in an oddly technopunk style in East of West where Death's son is raised to be the beast of the apocalypse. However the three horsemen (there are three because Death no longer works with them) have their doubts as to who the beast really is.
• Hellboy:
  • Depending on how you class demons, Hellboy himself is either this or The Antichrist (he himself very much considers himself the Anti Anti Christ, and has repeatedly refused the job offer). Much of the imagery associated with him is taken from descriptions of the Beast in Revelations.
  • The Ogdru-Jahad aka The Seven Who Are One, representing the Dragon of Revelations, are definitely this, as are their 369 children, the Ogdru-Hem, who seek to free their parents so that they might reduce the planet to a smoldering cinder.
  • The Conqueror Worm, a Lovecraftian being summoned by Hermann von Klempt as part of his plan to unleash the Ogdru-Jahad, is also an example. Created by allowing a being from the void between the stars to infest the body of a dead Nazi rocket scientist, the Worm will transform all of humanity into their final, reptilian state, and then devour them, causing so much death and destruction that the Ogdru-Hem and then the Ogdru-Jahad will awaken and burn the world.
• The Incredible Hulk: In the Planet Hulk storyline, some of the inhabitants of planet Sakaar believe "The Green Scar" to be their prophesised saviour Sakaarson, and others a demonic being called the Worldbreaker. Initially the latter title seems to be metaphorical and referring to more of an Antichrist figure... until both Hulk and Banner become so angry that for the first time in his life the Hulk crosses the line into Tranquil Fury, at which point it becomes horrifyingly literal.

Fan Works

• In the Fate/Grand Order fanfiction, Fate -- Catbox Fiction it is revealed that Connla Cliste is a counterpart of Connla who was summoned in a parallel timeline for the Akakor Holy Grail War. After she was forced into destroying all life on the Southern Hemisphere, Cliste was "Executed" by beheading and her head was placed in the Holy Grail. In there she gestated as a second personality, separate from Connla's Spirit Origin. This entity, Nagual, would absorb various famous cats and their concepts, Shrodinger's Cat, Nekomata in the form of Berserker of Akakor, as well as the Mesoamerican deity Nagual from which she took her name, turning into a Infantile Beast and later be recognized by Goetia as a potential aspect of Beast I, representing the sin of Disapointment as oposed to his sin of pity. Her manifestation would cause the pruning of the Akakor Timeline and she would've traveled to other worlds, causing the same to happen there, if she hadn't been stopped by Cu Chulainn (Alter) in the physical world and Connla Geal in the dreamscape, with her first stop being the FGO timeline of Geal herself.
• Nine Days Down: Typhon is a monstrous, monstrously huge and monstrously powerful being who slumbers beneath Mount Etna in Tartarus; should he awake, he will embark on a wild rampage and try to destroy everything in his path. He was originally meant to be a protector for the world, but his traumatic birth and the total rejection his family gave him left him filled with nothing but madness, rage and grief; his only goal now is to utterly unmake the world and himself with it.
• Sustenance of Hatred: ALL humans have the potential to become this in the fic's Equestria as a result of a force of darkness known as the Siphon, which can turn them into Physical Gods of Evil if they lose control of it. The protagonist, Jonas, becomes an Apocalypse Maiden as a result.

Film

• Faust: Love of the Damned: The Homunculus is a giant serpent demon who will bring about Hell on Earth.
• Played for laughs in Ghostbusters (1984), when Ivo Shandor's machinations summon the prophesied demon Gozer to destroy the world because "humanity is too sick to live". Gozer proceeds to take the shape of a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and lay waste to the city before being banished back to where it came from.
• Godzilla has been considered this on several occasions.
  • In the MonsterVerse continuity, Ghidorah is stated to potentially have inspired the Christian beast of the apocalypse, as well as Satan himself.
• Holocaust 2000: Played with. Robert has an apocalyptic nightmare featuring the seven-headed Beast from the Sea from the Book of Revelation. However, this actually symbolizes the seven-towered nuclear power plant he is working on.

Literature

• Despite being an angelic being, the Abomination of Desolation is played up as this in The Fallen, with its goal being severing Earth from Heaven, followed by destroying the world. It's not evil, though, just literally made for that purpose.
• Keeper of the Swords: the Skavell Beast, which serves as the catalyst of Fess' transformation into The Destroyer. Fess cannot defeat the Skavell Beast without accepting the power of the Western Darkness, which seals his fate as the Destroyer.
• The Beast of the Rakans in Reflections of Eterna. Up to this point it has never appeared, but it is referenced in terms of dread in almost every book.
• The Beast of Judgment in The Shadow Campaigns is traditionally considered to have been this; believed to have been an Eldritch Abomination sent by God to destroy a corrupt world, the beast was defeated by the local Crystal Dragon Jesus who banished it with his Incorruptible Pure Pureness. The Sworn Church teaches that humanity must stay on the righteous path or God might decide to summon the Beast back for another try. Religious art usually depicts it as a giant wolf-like monster, though this is accepted as being a metaphor. The actual Beast — a rare, fully-sapient demon that can possess seemingly limitless human hosts and wants to pull an Assimilation Plot on the world, currently stuck in a single body in the Church's dungeon — is much more frightening.
• The Sleeping Child in Symphony of Ages was created when the F'dor stole and modified an egg of the Primeval Wyrm. The egg was hidden inside the earth where it hatched, and the Sleeping Child began to feed and grow. By the present time, the Child accounts for one sixth of the planet's total mass. The F'dor intend to use the Child's true name to wake it, as its rise will bring an end to the world.
• The Fikos from Tailchaser's Song is this. It appears at the end of the book and it's a sign that all hell has gone loose. It's a vaguely dog-like Body of Bodies created by Hearteater. It's defeated off-screen after Tailchaser passes out.

Live-Action TV

• The Beast on Angel, a huge, horned monster made out of rock, and prophesied to bring about an apocalypse. It's eventually revealed to be The Dragon to the season's real Big Bad, Jasmine, though this does little to detract from its status as an example of the trope.
• In the series finale of Ash vs. Evil Dead, the Dark Ones kickstart The End of the World as We Know It by summoning Kandar the Destroyer, a massive demon whose only purpose is to destroy everything. And worse, any attempts to stop him with conventional weaponry just makes him stronger.
• Star Trek: Picard: In Romulan mythology, Ganmadan is a great pale hellbeast whose name means "the Day of Annihilation."
• Supergirl (2015): Ancient Kryptonian mythology speaks of the Worldkiller. First, she leaves her mark (it resembles the House of El symbol, but with the "S" replaced with a skull) all over. Second, she kills all sinners. Third, she destroys the world. The genetically engineered being Reign was modeled after the story of the Worldkiller. She proves much more powerful than the average Kryptonian, beating Supergirl to a bloody pulp in their first battle. Later episodes introduce three more Worldkillers: Purity, Pestillence, and a human woman named Oliva who willingly lets herself get possessed by Yuda Kal.

Mythology and Religion

• The Beast from the Sea, a.k.a. the First Beast, or the Beast, from the Book of Revelation, a seven-headed, ten-horned monstrosity who represents the Devil/the Dragon on Earth and wields all of his authority. Having been healed of a fatal wound it seems undefeatable. There is also the Second Beast, a.k.a. the False Prophet, a ram-horned, dragon-voiced being who serves as propaganda minister to the First Beast. One could argue that Satan himself, in the form of the Dragon, is also an example. Islam has a similar concept in the Beast of the Last Days.
• Norse Mythology:
  • Fenrir, also called the Fenris Wolf, and Jormungandr. Brothers and children of Loki, the two were imprisoned because of their prophesied role in Ragnarok. It doesn't work. When the end times do roll around, Fenrir is freed (when his sons, Skoll and Hati, devour the Sun and the Moon), and Jormungandr crawls onto land, and the two of them lead the assault on Asgard, where they batter down the gates and slay Odin and Thor respectively. By this point Fenrir is so large that his upper jaw hits the sky when he opens his mouth, Jormungandr can encircle the world, and the din they create is so loud that it causes the sky to split open, freeing Surtr and the sons of Muspel to make war on the gods.
  • One could make a case for Nidhoggr, an Omnicidal Maniac of a dragon who gnaws away at the roots of Yggdrasil with the intent of undoing all creation.
• Classical Mythology: Typhon, the worst monster in Greek myth, is a failed Beast of the Apocalypse. Following Zeus' defeat of Cronos, Gaia slept with Tartarus in order to conceive Typhon, whom she then turns loose with the intent that he kill the Olympian pantheon and continue the pattern of succession within Greek myth. He fails and is imprisoned by Zeus. Whether he can break loose is never really explored.
• Egyptian Mythology:
  • Apep, the Lord of Chaos, was a monstrous serpent said to have come to life immediately after the birth of Ra, arising from the sun god's own animated, undead umbilical cord. The two deities waged war every night when Ra took the Sun into the Underworld to rejuvenate it, with Apep attempting to destroy it and Ra. Ra would be protected by other gods, even otherwise villainous gods like Set, or battle the serpent himself while in the form of a cat. If Apep were ever to win — which could theoretically happen every time the sun went down — he would devour both Ra and the Sun, and the world would end. Solar eclipses were said to be occasions where Apep actually succeeds in devouring Ra and the Sun, only for Ra to escape once the eclipse ends.
  • Sekhmet, the lion goddess who devoured most of humanity, would have been this if the other gods hadn't gotten her Unsuspectingly Soused.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Tarrasque was portrayed this way (an immensely powerful monster designed for "epic" level play, which can only be killed by slaying it and then asking a god to intervene and finish it off for you). Its considerable power was later eclipsed by other publications, particularly the Epic Level Handbook, which introduced monsters many orders of magnitude more dangerous.
  • The Elder Evils book is completely themed around this trope, each chapter providing one or more such creatures and providing some rules and storylines for employing them.
  • Forgotten Realms: Dendar the Night Serpent an enormous black snake that came into existence when the first being slept and had a nightmare. At some point in the future, Dendar is destined to invade Toril, where she will do battle with the god Ubtao at the Peaks of Flame; if Ubtao loses the fight, Dendar will devour the sun and bring about the end of the realms.
• In Nomine: The fifth sign of the apporach of Armageddon is that "an Ancient Evil Breaks Its Bonds". In The Final Trumpet, the Princes Malphas and Kobal arrange for the awakening of the serpent Jörmungandr, which had previously been regenerating at the bottom of the North Atlantic after nearly being killed by the Archangel Uriel, and unleash it on an unsuspecting world. Even its first stirrings — its equivalent of turning over in its bed — scourge the countries of Northern Europe with tidal waves soaked in neurotoxyn; by the time it fully awakes, it's a monster that can fight an Archangel on even terms and which stands good on its goal of clearing the Earth of life. The players can prevent this by getting Thor to kill the monster, but this is only a ruse to cover Malphas' true plan — the release of Magog, Prince of Cruelty, from his prison beneath the Sahara.
• Pathfinder:
  • Rovagug, the Rough Beast, God of Wrath, Disaster and Destruction. Crawling from a sinkhole at the edge of the universe, Rovagug embodies omnicidal mania, and seeks to devour all of the gods and the very fabric of reality itself. For this reason, all of the gods allied in the distant past to chain him in the center of Golarion. The Archangel Sarenrae threw him down, while the Archdevil Asmodeus forged his prison and the key to his cell. Rovagug is constantly straining to free himself, and it would be a very bad thing if that were ever to happen. In Pathfinder' Space Opera spin-off Starfinder, the planet Golarion has disappeared for unknown reasons, and consequently so has Rovagug's cell. As a result, no one knows where in the universe Rovagug is, and this makes a lot of gods and people very worried indeed.
  • Rovagug's Spawn are played very similarly; what he can do to the universe they threaten to do to the world, ploughing through armies and entire civilizations. Than again, with names like "Festering Ulunat, the Unholy First", "Great Doom Chemnosit, the Monarch Worm", "Tarrasque: Armageddon Engine", "Unyielding Kothogaz, the Dance of Disharmony", "Wrath-Blazing Xoanti, the Firebleeder", and "Volnagur the End-Singer" this isn't exactly surprising.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: The Antediluvians are ancient vampires that have grown so powerful and monstrous that their awakening would lead to Gehenna, the vampiric apocaylpse.

Video Games

• The Binding of Isaac: Repentance:
  • The True Final Boss is the Beast of Revelation itself, a titanic demon with a Third Eye and Mom's dress. As soon as she appears, the setting becomes an apocalyptic magma cavern and powered up versions of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up as the Beast's minions. For good measure, her initial appearance is paired with a narration of the Bible verse serving as the page quote.
  • Dogma is implied to be Isaac's interpretation of the Second Beast/False Prophet. It's an Angelic Abomination embodiment of the maniacal fundamentalist broadcasts that drove Mom insane.
• BlazBlue has The Black Beast. A monstrosity which wiped out a massive proportion of the human population and polluted the world with seither, meaning the survivors (minus some Beastkin who were created to fight it and can process it naturally) have to live on cities built on mountaintops. It's actually Ragna, doomed to be sent back in time and become a Tragic Monster, until the Stable Time Loop was broken by the existence of Noel.
• Brütal Legend: Ormagodden, the God-Beast of Heavy Metal itself. Nobody knows why it exists, only that it brings Rock and Ruin. The first time it appeared, it forced the eldritch Old Ones to see how butt-ugly they truly were inside, and they used the only pure-hearted woman in existence as a lure to destroy the beast, just to make it stop torturing them with self-reflection. This caused it to explode and kill almost everyone, because Heavy Metal. Eventually, Titans were born from the ensuing chaos, and created the game's world. It's unknown if Eddie accidentally caused the apocalypse in his time and the world is actually in the far-future, or if reality ''normalized'' itself after a few millennia.
• Chrono Trigger: Lavos, an Eldritch Abomination from outer space that has fallen onto the planet where the game takes place in prehistoric times, wiped the dinosaurs and the sentient Lizard Folk, paving the way for human civilization, and has been sleeping under the crust of the planet ever since, absorbing the DNA of the local species to evolve itself and the spawn it creates. Eventually it would break free and move on to a different planet; the game's heroes witness the Bad Future caused by its catastrophic emergence and aim to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• In the Gamecube entry of Custom Robo, Rahu, the final boss is this: An entity whose only goal is to cause destruction and grow stronger. Once an invisible organic being that attacked the Earth and then entered a deep slumber multiple times, growing stronger and evolving after each attempt. When it became trapped inside a child's toy it became vulnerable, which led to its defeat but even then, he managed to leave most of the Earth unhabitable AND he still survived. The government's plan consists in destroying him for good before he can destroy the last living terrain on Earth. Thankfully, at the end of the game he is Killed Off for Real.
• Doom Eternal:
  • The Icon of Sin is one of these, created by Hell to drag entire worlds, and often the rest of the universe, into Hell with its rampage and mere presence. It's appropriately titanic, bigger than even the great Titans the Slayer was known for battling, and utterly unstoppable; only a Crucible is able to keep it down for any length of time.
  • The demons consider the Doom Slayer to be their own version, complete with Mark of the Beast. Though rather than heralding the apocalypse or carrying it with him, he is it; every last death that comes from the Endtimes he brings is by his own hands.
• In DragonFable, there are two Dragon Boxes with dragon eggs inside them: The that hatches from the Black Dragon Box will destroy the world, and the one that hatches from the White Dragon Box will save it. The one from the White Dragon Box, Fluffy, is corrupted and turned undead, so the world is doomed, right? Fluffy saves the world by weakening itself after it's forced to gain a lot of power, and the one from the Black Dragon Box destroys a planet... the planet-sized dragon, Fluffy.
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Alduin the World-Eater, a colossal black dragon and "firstborn" of Akatosh, the God of Time and Top God of the Nine Divines pantheon (or possibly an aspect of Akatosh, as sources conflict on the matter). Alduin's divine mandate is to devour the world at the end of every "kalpa", or cycle of time, to make way for the new world in the next kalpa. As Alduin is the embodiment of the end of the world itself, he can only manifest his full power when it is time to actually end the world, at which point he becomes a titanic monster with divine power even beyond that of the Daedric Princes. However, Alduin doesn't seem particularly interested in fulfilling his purpose. He'd much rather rule the world and be worshiped as a god than destroy it. Since it isn't the appropriate time for him to end the world when he serves as the Big Bad in Skyrim, he is "merely" an invincible dragon who needs a very specific realty-warping Thu'um shout (Dragonrend) to even render him into a state where he can be hurt.
  • Satakal, the Yokudan "God of Everything," is this in Redguard culture (with many parallels to Alduin, prompting speculation that they are the same entity/event seen by two different cultures). Suffering from a great hunger, Satakal consumes the world in order to create another, leaving behind "worldskins" as he does. Ruptga, the "Tall Papa" and chief deity of the Yokudan pantheon, was the first spirit to survive this process and helped to teach others how to survive as well. Those who do typically become additional deities in the Yokudan pantheon. "Weaker" spirits, like those of the mortals within Mundus, hope to make it to the "Far Shores," a safe haven from Satakal.
• Final Fantasy XIV has many that would qualify: Bahamut, the Primal that caused so much damage to the world that it was the in-story catalyst for the A Realm Reborn relaunch. Nidhogg, the hateful brother of the original Bahamut and one of the brood of Midgardsormr, seeking to end an entire kingdom (and potentially everything else in his way) for crimes committed many generations ago. Shinryu, a different dragon Primal made to finish what Bahamut started. None of them succeeded due to the actions of either the player or other major characters. They all pale in comparison to the Terminus creatures, celestial horrors who actually DID end the world - the old, unsundered world, that is. And they're coming back.
• God of War Ragnarök: Surprisingly played straight, despite the fact that in the original myths and for much of the story, everyone assumes that Ragnarök is the name of the actual event where the Aesir and Jotnar have their final clash. But then, when Kratos and Atreus go to recruit the Fire Giant Surtr, prophesized destroyer of Asgard, he proposes a plan to use the primordial flame within the Blades of Chaos as a substitute for the essence of his true love, so that he doesn't have to fuse with, and effectively risk her life to fulfill his destiny. The result of the plan is Surtr becoming a mindless being akin to a force of nature that calls itself Ragnarök, and proceeds to Asgard to do as is destined. Unfortunately, when the attacking army led by their General Kratos digresses from its original goal to rescue trapped Midgardians, the monstrous Ragnarök suddenly becomes a massive hindrance, one that ultimately forces Freyr into a Heroic Sacrifice so that the army can safely escape once Odin and the Aesir have been defeated.
• Infamous has the Beast, a giant unstoppable Magma Man who Cole is destined and groomed to fight who literally carves a blazing swathe down the coast killing everyone within miles of it. The big guy robs Cole of his powers and survives a point-blank nuclear explosion, and the entirety of inFamous 2 is dedicated to figuring out a way to stop him. The Beast is actually your friend John White turned into an absurdly powerful Conduit, using his powers to awaken other Conduits, the only people who can survive the plague sweeping the country. He thinks he's doing the right thing - killing millions to save thousands, and the only way to stop him is to kill all Conduits, including Cole, Nix, and Kuo.
• The Legend of Dragoon has the Virage Embryo, the 108th species born from the Divine Tree planted by the creator Soa. The Virage Embryo is destined to be born and eradicate all life on the planet, and the plot of the game involves the party attempting to prevent it's birth, after it's soul and body were separated 11,000 years ago. The Embryo's soul is reincarnated as a human every 108 years known as the Moon Child, seen as a holy symbol, and your party member Rose has spent the last eleven millennia hunting down and killing the Moon Child whenever it is reborn because of the extreme threat it poses. Unfortunately, the Moon Child's current incarnation is your childhood friend Shana.
• The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon: Malefor's plan for destroying the world centers around waking a massive, ancient golem known as the Destroyer, which will march around it, trailing fire as it goes, and start a worldwide conflagration on it's completed its circuit.
• Omega in Mega Man Zero, Ax-Crazy yet loyal Dragon to Dr. Weil. Caused the demise of 75% of all sentient life (combined total of humans and reploids). Making things even more horrifying is that Omega is exactly what Dr. Wily intended Zero to be. Sprinkle a little extra Fridge Horror on there when the reveal is made that Omega is Zero's original body, meaning that Wily succeeded.
• Metroid has a few:
  • First is the Worm aka Metroid Prime, which is responsible for the destruction of Talon IV by spreading Phazon. It takes this trope further and mixes it with The Antichrist upon becoming Dark Samus, upgrading her threat level from Planetary to Galactic.
  • Similarly to Doom Eternal The Space Pirates (And some parts of the Metroid fandom) see The Hero Samus Aran along this lines. Not only is she a One-Woman Army a Person of Mass Destruction (which makes her The Dreaded for the former) but she's also SUCH a Walking Disaster Area that she has become a memetic World Ender for the fans.
• In Monster Hunter, Fatalis plays the part of the one monster who stands above them all, and is famed in legend to be the one to cause The End of the World as We Know It, with verifiably enough power to pull that off at the tip of a hat. Its awakening in Iceborne ultimately connects all the various cataclysmic incidents happening in the New World together, painting a disturbing image as even natural disasters like Alatreon actively flee from Fatalis at the first signs of its reappearance.
• Odin Sphere, being heavily based in Norse Mythology, has several of these in the form of the Five Disasters, the five calamities that are prophesied to bring about the end of the world and must be beaten to save it from total destruction.
  • The Beast of Darkova, the three-headed and six-eyed beast of Armageddon whose role is thematically that of Fenrir and is the cursed form of the prince of Valentine, Ingway, who originally sought the spell that initiated the transformation to wreck vengeance on his father Demon Lord Odin and fulfill the prophesied curse he would die under and welcomed on some level. He transforms in full ironically in a Heroic Sacrifice to try and stop Armageddon, but fails and ends up going on a massive killing spree. His destined fight is with Cornelius, who is cursed into the form of a Pooka by Ingway's own hand and is a member of the very family Ingway stole the spell from.
  • King Gallon, the first Darkova and now new King of the Netherworld who marches the army of the dead onto the world of the living to sate his erupting bloodlust and desire to destroy, making him despite his intelligence little more than a monster out to cause as much death as possible. He annihilates both Ragnanival and his own homeland of Titania, reveling in how his new curse of undeath from Odette makes him all but unstoppable. His destined opponent is Oswald, who wields both the power of Odette to disable the undeath immortality and is of his bloodline, fulfilling a prophecy that Gallon would die again by a relative of his.
  • King Onyx, lord of the Fire Kingdom whose role is thematically that of Surtr in how he and his people will burn the land to cinders. Ironically, he's the least mindless and malevolent of the disasters since his goal is actually of self-preservation for his people since with their home swallowed by the rising seas, they need to set fire to the land in order to survive. They burn what's left of Ringford to the ground, and his destined battle is with Mercedes, who is the "World Tree" who will smother his fire.
  • The Crystallization Cauldron is the very device that first brings about Armageddon, its ability to harvest Phozons from the world en masse to create Psypher crystals weaponized by King Valentine to start draining the very life from the world, triggering Armageddon and the other disasters to start acting. Its destined opponent is Velvet, who understands the Cauldron enough to disable its defensive systems but leave it intact, as ironically it's the only thing that can reverse even in part the death of the world.
  • Leventhan, the last dragon, who transforms into the bringer of Chaos during the game's final events from consuming the massive Psypher crystal made by the Cauldron and is set to raze the world with massive mouth lasers from on high. He's modeled in equal parts on Leviathan and Jormungandr while his name is taken from Surtr's sword, Lavatein, and his destined showdown is with Gwendolyn, who is the only one who learns of his sole weakpoint in the crown of King Valentine lodged in his horn.
• Pokémon, appropriately enough for being the Satanic Archetype, both of Giratina's forms resemble the First and Second Beasts in the book of Revelation.
• One of these shows up as the Final Boss of the Mirage arc in Sdorica: The Beast of the Earth, a massive Eldritch Abomination sealed under Sdorica's Tooth. There's a catch though: it's connected to the setting's Secret History, meaning none of the heroes present knew it existed until the seal broke.
• Solaris, interdimensional lifeform and god of time in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). Divided into Iblis (the body) and Mephiles (the mind) he seeks to cause the collapse of time itself.
• The Adephagos of Tales of Vesperia is an ancient being said to have threatened the world in ages past but was sealed away before it could succeed. It is depicted as a writhing mass of tentacled darkness. When Alexei activates Zaude and frees it, it covers the sky, turning it an eerie violet shade with the only things visible on it being a number of phantasmal tentacles seemingly made of living aer.
• Typhon is portrayed this way in Titan Quest, although much like his mythological inspiration, he never quite succeeds in clearing out all of Olympus.

Webcomics

• Housepets!: The Forgotten. Accidentally summoned into the mortal world through Pete's Mana Pool, Tarot describes it as an Abstract Apotheosis of nothingness; allowing it to enter our world completely would result in its existence acting like antimatter, converting the known universe into more nothingness.
• The Snarl in The Order of the Stick is the result of the constant disagreements between different Gods and different Pantheons during their first attempt at creating the world. Their conflicting pulls on the threads of reality aggregated to form a "snarl" of Divine power. Born of anger and resentment, the very first thing it did was kill an entire Pantheon without breaking a sweat. The three remaining Pantheons hid beyond its reach, in the deep Astral plane, where they came up with a plan to re-create the world. In a coordinated effort, avoiding further conflicts and disagreements, they wove new threads into a multidimensional prison for the Snarl in the form of the material universe. The Snarl has continued to try break its prison, creating rifts in the fabric of reality and inevitably dooming the world, which the Gods have been rebuilding over and over again in different iterations and varieties for eternity. The better part of a century before the main story begins, a group of adventurers discovered the rifts and banded to together as the Order of the Scribble to seal them with magical gates. In the course of the comic's plot, Xykon's attempts to control the gates led to the destruction of several (in both intentional and unintentional circumstances), and the Snarl has become a threat to reality once again.

Web Original

• In Bravest Warriors, the Aeon Worm. Beth's father escapes and uses his sticker pet device to try and summon it.
• The Archangel Roxanne has one eternal, unkillable enemy: Therion, The Beast from the Pit, the Seven-Headed Dragon, the King of Demons. He appears on worlds across the multiverse, single-handedly causes apocalypses, and then either moves on or is captured by Roxanne and imprisoned on their homeworld of New Jerusalem, until he gathers his strength and breaks free again.
• Toyed with, like everything else is, in The Salvation War. The Beasts of Revelation are unleashed by Yahweh and Satan with the intent that they end the world... and are cut down by the human military, albeit with more difficulty than most of the demons they've faced up to that point.
  • They're also Yahweh's pets and named Fluffy and Wuffles. And they're apparently not house-trained.
  • Subverted with the False Prophet/Lamb Beast and the Dragon of Revelation, which are metaphorical titles for Michael-lan-Yahweh and Yahweh himself.
  • To a lesser extent, Uriel. He's Yahweh's right-hand man, and the threat of him being released upon earth is enough to terrify even the demons. When he finally gets going, we see why: he has the power to essentially will living beings to die - and any human killed this way doesn't appear in Heaven or Hell.

Western Animation

• DuckTales (2017): Jormungandr the World Serpent is a godly entity who leads Team Valhalla in the VWE. Should Team Valhalla ever win, Jormungandr will retire from his post and the Earth will split in two, kickstarting Ragnarok.
• Gravity Falls: Bill Cipher is an all powerful dream demon who is refered to as a "Beast with just one eye" and his end goal is a Bizarro Apocalypse.

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