Civil War vs. Armageddon

"The very thing that made us good warriors—the fact that we had fought among ourselves—also made us horrible at banding together in our hour of crisis. We could not unite under one banner or even form a coalition. In fact, every time there was a chance for that, one faction or another did something to enhance the advancement of their own political agenda over the other factions. Often at the expense of the rest of humanity. I can’t imagine the hive-minded Zerg or the glowing Protoss falling prey to such basic human drives as greed and power and raw pig-headedness.
"Of course, those are all basic human drives, and that’s why nonhumans were cleaning our clocks."

— Michael Daniel Liberty, StarCraft: Liberty's Crusade

A work of fiction simultaneously presents two conflicts. The first one is defined with Grey-and-Gray Morality, often political, where every side has valid arguments and flaws. The other one is defined with Black-and-White Morality, where the menace is of an apocalyptic nature and threatens to destroy the world or universe as we know it.

This allows the author to explore themes about the conflict between different ethical and political systems while simultaneously providing the tale with a more simplistic good vs evil narrative to hold the story together.

Frequently the division caused by the morally ambiguous conflict is presented as a waste of time, since all the parties involved should be focused instead on destroying the greater evil. If the morally ambiguous conflict is put on ice to defeat the greater evil when it abruptly shows up, then this is a Conflict Killer. When the morally ambiguous conflict is actively getting in the way of facing against said greater evil to the point where the less evil factions are hurting each other more often, see We ARE Struggling Together.

For this trope as applied to Zombie Apocalypses, see Beware the Living. See also Debate and Switch. Compare Evil Versus Oblivion.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Freezing: Student rivalries at West Genetics and political infighting at Chevalier between executives of the various Pandora research programs actually cause more misery for the protagonists than the Novas, the colossal extrauniversal invaders whom the Pandoras were made to defend Earth from—to the point where all but one of the Nova Clashes depicted in the series' present day was caused by a Pandora experiment going awry due to human venality.

Comic Books

• Runaways: In the "Dead-End Kids" arc, New York City is embroiled in a gang war between the xenophobic Upward Path and outright criminal Sinners. Meanwhile, a precursor to The Pride intends to wipe out the whole city in order to kill off the Runaways.
• Star Wars: Legacy: The Galactic Alliance (the successor state to the New Republic) and the Galactic Empire (a constitutional monarchy descended from The Remnant of Palpatine's Empire) are manipulated into a renewed war by Darth Krayt and his One Sith order, which then launches a coup against the Empire after capturing Coruscant and sacking the Jedi Temple on Ossus. The Alliance is reduced to a remnant fleet led by Admiral Gar Stazi, while the Empire breaks into a civil war between the backers of Emperor Roan Fel and those of the Sith. Stazi and Fel, and the Jedi and Imperial Knights, all struggle to put aside their differences to effectively combat Darth Krayt.

Film — Live-Action

• Star Wars: The prequel trilogy shows that the Galactic Republic has significant problems with political corruption and congressional gridlock, and Expanded Universe materials show that the Separatist worlds have many legitimate reasons to want to secede. Unfortunately, both sides are manipulated to this point by Darth Sidious, a.k.a. Senator/Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, who manufactured the crisis with the assistance of various megacorporations to create a means and pretext to seize absolute power and destroy the Jedi Order.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: Civil War centers on a moral conflict among the Avengers between those who oppose government oversight (led by Captain America) and those who approve of it (led by Iron Man). This split lasts until Avengers: Infinity War, when Thanos's quest to eliminate half of all life in the universe forces the heroes to set aside their ideological differences and join forces against the real threat.

Literature

• Aeon 14: Runs through most of the franchise. Most of the series is focused on conflicts between various groups of spacefaring humans, AIs, and both, all of whom have been played off against each other for millennia by ascended AIs living in the galactic core, who are eventually revealed to have plans that would be apocalyptic for humanity if allowed to succeed. The Orion War series deals primarily with efforts by the protagonists to forge a coalition out of the morass of warring states to root out the core AIs' shards and catspaws and take the fight to them—except it ultimately turns out that the core AIs aren't wholly unified, either.
• The Expanse and its TV adaptation: The Earth-Mars Coalition breaks down into interplanetary war and the Belters openly rebel against both planets due to the machinations of a MegaCorp experimenting with — and failing to control — the alien Protomolecule that threatens to consume all life in the solar system.
• Gleams Of Eterna opens with massive political intrigue and armed power struggles, but as the series goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent there is also something more apocalyptic going on, as the magic holding the reality of Quertiana together starts to unravel. This forces the warring sides to work with each other in order to prevent the total collapse of civilization.
• A Memory Called Empire: The protagonist is Lsel Station’s new ambassador to the massive Teixcalaanli Empire, while trying to dissuade the Empire from annexing her home she gets caught up in a brewing Succession Crisis and the scheming among her station’s own ruling council. At the same time, the Lsel’s scouts are encountering inscrutable alien craft that immediately open fire without trying to communicate.
• The Lord of the Rings: The various powers of Middle-Earth all have beefs with each other both before and during the War of the Ring: the elves and dwarves famously mistrust each other, the hobbits of the Shire mainly remain neutral, and while the Men of Rohan and Gondor are nominally allies, the Rohirrim resent Gondor not aiding them in their recent struggles with Mordor's proxies. Both of them also consider the Wild Men to be subhuman. Defeating Sauron requires all these enmities to be put aside, though the races of Men end up doing the bulk of the fighting (the dwarves fight a parallel engagement at Erebor during the siege of Minas Tirith, and the hobbits battle and defeat Saruman when he takes over the Shire after being cast out of Isengard).
• A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation Game of Thrones: The morally ambiguous War of the Five Kings is caused by a complicated series of political, social and filial problems. This is contrasted with the constant menace of the coming army of the Others (White Walkers in the show), an army of ice demons and zombies that want to overrun the world and scourge it clean of mortal life.

Live Action TV

• Kaitou Sentai Lupinranger VS Keisatsu Sentai Patranger: The two Sentai teams are both opposed to the clearly villainous Ganglers, but as the title indicates, they also oppose each other — partly because the Lupinrangers are self-proclaimed phantom thieves and the Patrangers are police officers, but also because the Lupinrangers are focused on taking the pieces of the Lupin Collection from the Ganglers before defeating them, which can lead to the monsters getting more time to wreak havoc. Meanwhile, the Patrangers want to defeat the monsters as quickly as possible, though doing so might result in the destruction of the Collection piece which would keep the Lupinrangers from reaching their goal.
• The Orville: The secular, liberal Union is locked in a long war with the Krill, a race of religious fanatics, but they put aside their differences in order to fight the Kaylon, who intend to wipe out all organic life regardless of their differing ideologies.

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder:
  • The Kingmaker adventure path (and the video game adaptation Pathfinder: Kingmaker) is set off by Lady Jamandi Aldori of Restov trying to generate allies for a planned independence bid from the kingdom of Brevoy, by sponsoring adventurers to carve out new territories in the an unsettled area of the River Kingdoms. The Player Characters also come into conflict with political rivals such as King Castruccio Irovetti of Pitax (a war with Pitax takes up the fifth volume), but it turns out there's a far more serious reason the so-called Stolen Lands are mostly unsettled going back to the ancient elven kingdoms: the nymph queen Nyrissa has been trying to generate and then destroy "kingdoms" in the region as part of a bet to win her heart back from the Lantern King.
  • In the non-canon bad ending of the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, the heroes fail to stop Deskari's plans and a renewed demonic invasion quickly overruns Brevoy and much of northeastern Avistan. The existential threat that this poses to the world means that the continent's surviving nations are forced to put aside their many long-running cultural and political disputes in order to form the united fronts that they need to survive — notable blocks formed to oppose the hordes of the Abyss include an alliance between the Ulfen warriors and the witches of Irrisen that they have warred against for centuries; the decaying empire of Taldor with its rebellious colonies, democratic Andoran and totalitarian Cheliax; and Nirmathas and Molthune, who had previously been engaged in a centuries-long running war.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Having gone without the unifying hand of the God-Emperor of Mankind for the ten thousand years since the Horus Heresy, the Imperium of Man has become not so much a single country as a loose association of co-belligerents who end up fighting each other, for reasons that vary from justified to idiotic, almost as often as they fight xenos and Chaos.
  • Most of the galaxy's civilized species, such as humanity, the T'au and the Eldar, spend a considerable amount of their time, effort, resources and lives battling each other in wars born chiefly out of imperialism and simple xenophobia, a process that leaves them divided, weakened and extremely distrustful of each other. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to much more powerful threats and factions that cannot be negotiated with, such as the hordes of the Orks, the daemons of Chaos and the seemingly infinite Horde of Alien Locusts of the Tyranids, all of which would stand a good chance of wiping everybody else out even if the civilized races were willing to cooperate with one another. A few characters or factions recognize that cooperation is likely necessary for their survival, but they tend to be few, far between and not especially likely to be listened too.
  • In a moral inversion, the forces of Chaos are always at each other's throats in a four-way Forever War, but on occasion they can work together to prevent their collective defeat. The most notable case occurs during the Emperor's time on Terra, when he creates the twenty primarchs to lead the armies of humanity across the stars with the firm intention of preventing any Chaos worship under his rule. The Chaos gods arrange for the superhuman infants to end up on different planets, where they are raised in the local culture, shaping their characters accordingly (and leaving half of them more susceptible to Chaos). This eventually allows the Chaos-corrupted primarchs (with Horus bearing the blessings of all four gods) to lead a rebellion that ensures the galaxy is a Grimdark nightmare more than ten millenia later.
• Warhammer Fantasy: Due to the need to justify why any army can fight any other army, the lore has the Order races (the "good guys") engaging in low-scale warfare with one another fairly frequently. Empire-Bretonnia and Empire-Empire conflicts are probably the most common ones, but just about everyone has fought everyone else at least a few times (over trade routes, border claims, revenge, and so on) due to each Order power comprising ten or more subfactions (such as High Elves' kingdoms or the Empire's electoral provinces). This state of affairs is more or less accepted as normal. The main conflict of the setting however concerns the forces of Chaos and the Skaven (and to a lesser degree those of the Orcs/Goblins, Undead, and Dark Elves), who would sweep the entire world under their hordes if given the chance. As a result Order generally teams up when a large-scale incursion from those factions is on the loose, and conflicts involving them dwarf those that the Order factions fight with each other.

Video Games

• BlazBlue: In the first game, the story progressed as follows: most characters are just minding their own business as it's just another day in their life, with them fighting each other just to resolve their own problems. Meanwhile, Nu-13 the Robot Girl appears and tries to cause trouble... by trying to "merge" with our protagonist, Ragna, then jump to the past and become an apocalyptic monster called the Black Beast. Only Ragna knows of this plot. After the events of the first game, The Heavy bad guy Hazama starts making himself known; in the second game, all of the previously neutral characters are now forced to focus on him. He aims to bring the world back to its "true" state (as he claims that everything in the current world is lies) and by "true", he means "world filled with despair". The fourth game's Episodic Game formula also follows this: Act 1 has people minding their own business again before Nine the Phantom pulls them into her place to direct them to face the "armageddon", the Imperator, Hades Izanami. Act 2 has them do just that, as Izanami is trying to create a "world of death".
• Dragon Age: Origins was heavily inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire. Ferelden is being invaded by the darkspawn and the Player Character must gather allies to fight them off and slay the Archdemon leading them. Problem is, all the potential allies are embroiled in conflicts of their own. Ferelden's humans and the dwarves of Orzammar each have a Succession Crisis (in the former case, triggered by Loghain Mac Tir's Cavalry Betrayal of King Cailan in a battle the PC him/herself only barely survived). The Circle of Mages has had a demon outbreak and is about to be purged by the Templars. And the Dalish elves are battling a tribe of werewolves. The Player Character must resolve each crisis, one way or another, before getting that faction's support.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: the Civil War between the separatist and xenophobic Stormcloaks and the decaying Septim Empire plays an important part in shaping the game's story and atmosphere. However the main plot line focuses on stopping a Dragon God who is trying to devour the entire world.
• Fallout 2: The conflicts involving the NCR, Vault City, New Reno and other small settlements are the Grey-and-Grey Morality Civil War, while the genocidal Enclave who the player fights in the main quest are the Armageddon.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War starts off primarily about feudal power struggles between various kingdoms of Jugdral, and although the Greater-Scope Villain's agents pop up from time to time, the first half is focused on political conflict. In the second half, post-Time Skip, said villain reveals himself as a tyrannical God of Evil whom the children of the first half's heroes must defeat in order to Save the World, while the political intrigue takes a backseat for them until after they've dealt with the existential threat to Jugdral (in the epilogue, they basically carve it up among themselves to rule).
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, the initial conflict is between Hoshido and Nohr, both of whom are basically portrayed as sympathetic (Nohr needs Hoshidan resources and Hoshido is just defending its sovereignty). However, an evil dragon named Anankos is manipulating them all into destroying humanity, and on the Revelation route it's up to Corrin to rally both nations against him.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses is set in a world with a lot of political conflict, between the Empire, Kingdom, Alliance and Church of Seiros, along with political infighting within each of these factions. And then there's Those Who Slither In The Dark, a group of Mad Scientist Abusive Precursors aiming to wipe out humanity, who are hated by every other faction. Which side of the plot is focused on depends on the route you play. The Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes focus on the "Armageddon" side, with Those Who Slither In The Dark being directly fought on their home turf after The Empire is defeated. The Crimson Flower and Azure Moon routes focus on the "civil war" side, in the former Those Who Slither are dealt with offscreen after Edelgard wins the war against the Church, while in the latter Dimitri ends up killing two of their leaders in his fight against The Empire and Edelgard, without ever finding out their true goals.
• Halo: The video games solely concern themselves with the war between humanity and the Covenant, with the latter being Scary Dogmatic Aliens who attack human worlds with intent of xenocide for little reason beyond religious dogma, which itself is then overshadowed by the even greater threat of the Flood. The books include more ambiguous conflicts, such as that between the UNSC, humanity's international but increasingly authoritarian military authority, and the Insurrection, a coalition of rebellions across many of humanity's colonies that sometimes veers on terrorist (the SPARTANs were originally created as elite counterinsurgency forces for this conflict).
• Honkai Impact 3rd: The two major organizations, Schicksal and Anti-Entropy, are both fighting against the "Honkai" phenomenon, a force that tries to eliminate humanity. The two are also constantly scheming against each other because of the friction that occurred between the two years before the game's present; both of them have done questionable deeds in the past, supposedly for stopping the Honkai threats, and both have good and bad members of their own.
• Mass Effect: Numerous conflicts among the civilizations of the galaxy are presented and war crimes and genocides are committed for painfully understandable reasons. Yet the main antagonist, the Reapers, are a menace to all intelligent species in the Milky Way, and the final game centers around Shepard's efforts to unite the galaxy's feuding nations into a more or less cohesive front against the threat of total extermination.
• Muv-Luv pits humans against the BETA, a truly monstrous and nearly unstoppable alien horde trying to consume the planet. Despite that, almost all of the stories have human conflicts as various countries and political groups within them plot against each other.
• Senran Kagura: The animosity between the so-called "good" and "evil" shinobi is more of a gray vs gray conflict, as both sides face a moral dilemma that arises when they realize that the other side isn't much different from them and that they could be friends if not for this conflict. Both good and evil shinobi are essentially mercenaries, the only difference being that the "good" ones side with the country while the "evil" ones take orders from pretty much anyone. There's also the monstrous Yoma, who are born from the blood, rage, and misery that arises in the two sides' battles; both sides aim to destroy the Yoma when they show up.
• StarCraft:
  • In the Terran storyline, the Magistrate joins Arcturus Mengsk and the Sons of Korhal in waging war on the Confederacy of Man. The Magistrate is motivated by revenge for the Confederate abandonment of Mar Sara to the invading Zerg and Protoss; Mengsk by revenge for the Confederate glassing of his home planet Korhal and murder of his parents for a prior rebellion. Discussed directly by Michael Liberty in the novelization Liberty's Crusade: he points out that the Terrans' past conflicts made them terrible at uniting against their common enemy. Things get messy when Mengsk starts using stolen Confederate technology to sic the Zerg on his enemies; ultimately he overthrows the Confederacy to declare himself Emperor of the Terran Dominion.
  • During the Protoss campaign, Tassadar is under attack from the Conclave for allying with the heretical Dark Templar, even though the Zerg are a considerably bigger threat. In the final level (the destruction of the Overmind), they finally approve of Tassadar's actions (although as Raynor dryly notes, they don't send any actual help).
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: The eight class storylines all take place during a Space Cold War between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire following a recent war that ended in a Sith sack of Coruscant. The Sith Empire is certainly the worse of the two, but the Republic is shown to have significant problems with political corruption and Knight Templar Jedi, while lightside Sith tend to set themselves up as reformers of the Empire. The expansions reveal that this was only a warmup: Sith Emperor Vitiate wasn't actually in charge of the Empire during the Great War, and launches his own separate invasion of the galaxy against which the Republic and the Empire are forced to team up.
• Super Robot Wars: Most games fall into this, as a consequence of characters from Real Robot and Super Robot storylines being placed in the same universe. For game-original factions this often involves conflicts over how Earth should best be defended from aliens, and/or government officials starting to fear what would happen if the protagonist's squad went rogue.
• Terra Invicta: The entire premise of the game is how Earth may respond to the sudden presence of a hostile alien force that has the means and the will to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Some of the factions aren't even necessarily convinced that that's a bad thing, or at least that Earth can do anything meaningful to stop them, but even beyond the basic "pro-alien" vs. "anti-alien" divide, some factions that are notionally on the same side differ wildly in their methods and ultimate goals, and everyone is competing for influence and control in the world's most powerful governments.
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:
  • All the campaigns consist of getting the Alliance, Horde (who want to exterminate each other for past war crimes), and Night Elves (who want to keep their lands free of outsiders) to work together against the undead (and their demonic masters, the Burning Legion) after a great deal of infighting. Even the demon side isn't immune, as Arthas is none too pleased about handing over leadership of the Scourge and points out a way to remove a demon general to the Night Elves. This has far greater consequences than they thought.
  • In the expansion, the Night Elves end up fighting the now part-demonic Illidan when he casts a spell meant to destroy part of the world and the Lich King, taking out the undead once and for all. It fails, so Illidan tries to kill the Lich King personally.
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The conflict between the Nilfgaardian Empire and Northern Kingdoms is a nasty one where no side has clean hands and where horrible atrocities are committed every day under the orders of feudal lords. Even the titular Wild Hunt is presented as not so different to the humans that they fight. However the greatest threat of the game is not the Wild Hunt but the White Frost that accompanies them, an apocalyptic phenomenon that would cover the entire world in ice and end all life.

Webcomics

• Crimson Flag: The Auberwood's latest attempt at secession from Caerreyn turns out to involve a magical artifact tied to the evil goddess that created the Reyn and prompts the return of a cult seeking to restore her and her dominion over the species.
• Unsounded: Alderode is putting down rebellions and its war with Cresce is becoming more active and deadly once more and Cresce is dealing with a rising military coup. All the while a magical superweapon is traveling north through Cresce with its creator bent on destroying humanity, with few aware it even exists as everyone is focused on bigger conflicts. It's also unclear just who is funding the Sliver Weapon, but it seems to be someone involved in trying to overthrow the Crescian Queen even though the weapon is headed to Alderode.

Web Video

• Monster Island Buddies: Played with. Throughout Season 7 and 8, the good and evil monsters go to war with each other after the truce is violated while Cthulhu threatens to rise and destroy the world. However, the alliance only winds up happening after the evil monsters' army has pretty much been crippled and their leader Grand King Ghidorah joins Cthulhu's army.

Western Animation

• Adventure Time: The Grand Finale begins with the impending war between Princess Bubblegum and her uncle Gumbald over control of the Candy Kingdom, which ends with the two sides reconciling before the war can begin. They combine forces to stop Golb, the embodiment of Chaos and Discord, from destroying all of Ooo.
• Ever After High: Most episodes center around the conflict between Rebels (who want to defy their destinies and be free from their fundamentally oppressive society) and Royals (who believe that not following tradition will endanger the world itself). Since everyone's fates are intertwined, this causes a lot of sociocultural friction, but neither side is portrayed as wrong — unlike the villains of the more action-oriented films, who just want to kill everyone.

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