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"Nine killed you. Nine shall die and be returned your loss. Nine times, nine! Nine killed you! Nine shall die! Nine eternities in DOOM!"
Dr. Anton Phibes, The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Gotta Catch Them All with a twist. The Plot Coupons or MacGuffins in question have to be found... and then destroyed. Perhaps they are Artifacts of Doom that menace the existence of the world as we know it, or maybe they are a group of Villains that just appeared and instead of ganging up and going against The Hero, they decide to spread and be evil elsewhere.

Many a Roaring Rampage of Revenge plot will involve the hero hunting down each bad guy on his hit-list in this fashion and slowly working his way up to the Big Bad behind it all for the final showdown. Or it may involve a villain hunting down another Big Bad and beating his minions, champions, and commanders, eventually leading to a showdown between the villain and the Big Bad in order to become an Ascended Demon.

Compare There Can Be Only One, Enemies List and Shoot Everything That Moves.

Often part of an Assassination Sidequest.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Anime & Manga 
  • In Bakuman。, the main characters show their editor, Hattori, a story idea for a series about a world infested with demon dragons that has a sword with many demon dragons sealed inside. Every time one is killed, another emerges from the sword, and if the hero kills all of them without losing the sword to them, peace will be restored. Mashiro finds the story to be old-fashioned and stereotypical, but thinks it's worth showing to Hattori, and Hattori tells them they'll have to come up with a better idea than that if they want to go mainstream.
  • Villainous example in D.Gray-Man, where the Millennium Earl wants to destroy all Innocence. This may be made easier by the fact that one of the 109 Innocences is the Heart, which will destroy all the rest if it is destroyed.
  • The last Story Arc in Dragon Ball GT has Goku and Pan looking for the Seven Dragons formed by the bad energies gathered by the Dragonballs, and they have to destroy them to purify the balls and make them usable again. This could have presented a bit of a problem for them when one of the "evil" Dragons turned out to actually be a fairly decent guy, and a walking biohazard that was destroying the planet. They were saved from any moral dilemma when he got defeated and absorbed by the most evil Dragon of all.
  • Fabricant 100: Ashibi's stated goal is to make No 100 kill the other 99 Fabricants, with at least 7 already killed in the flashback. By the end of the first chapter, 82 remain as far as he's aware.
  • Being given a Future Diary means you are now a candidate to become the next God. To claim the title, you have to be the only one left who has a Future Diary, meaning you have to kill any others you know about or erase them by destroying their Future Diaries. Oh, and there's a time limit. You have until God dies to claim the title or else the world dies with Him.
  • Kurapika in Hunter × Hunter is out for revenge with a double shopping list: Kill all the members of the Phantom Troupe that killed his tribe, and then retrieve the eyes that they stole from the bodies of his people.
  • In Maria no Danzai, Maria's main goal is to hunt down Okaya's gang one by one and grant each of them a Cruel and Unusual Death as payback for the death of her son Kiritaka at their hands.
  • Villainous example in Naruto - the Akatsuki are seeking to collect and extract all nine tailed beasts in order to form the original ten tailed beast. The extraction process is fatal to the Jinchuriki.
  • The Angels of Neon Genesis Evangelion: NERV's strategy is to kill them one by one as they invade.
  • The core premise of Oddman 11 is similar to the below-mentioned Scott Pilgrim: Setsu decides to become Itami's girlfriend by defeating all of his exes (even though this time around it's completely unnecessary and the only reason everyone's going along with it is because it's "like that movie." In this case it's relatively non-violent, as the goal is just to get each Oddman to concede defeat, at which point they join Setsu's ever-growing Oddman harem.
  • Rave Master uses this, where the group's quest is to destroy the Dark Bring (Shadow Stones).
  • The Poseidon saga of Saint Seiya has the heroes go and destroy 7 giant pillars below each ocean, to be able to destroy an even larger pillar in which Saori is trapped. Each pillar has a guardian of course, and 5 of those guards end up dead.
  • Shinzo: While the overall Myth Arc is about Yakumo trying to find the fabled city of Shinzo, season 1 also set up a plot where the heroes had to confront the Seven Generals who started the Human-Enterran War and kill them to collect their cards. This plot is abandoned halfway through by the time they get to the third major villain on the list.
  • In Star Driver, Takuto's goal is to destroy all of the Glittering Crux's Cybodies so that Wako will be allowed to leave the island and fulfill her dream of becoming a pop idol in Tokyo.
  • A Downplaying of this trope is the central plot of Zatch Bell!. Although you don't technically kill your enemies (you just send them back to the alternate dimension where they came from), the effect is the same.

    Comic Books 
  • The Crow, in all its adaptations, sticks with the Back from the Dead version of this.
  • Rom Spaceknight was on a quest to wipe out all the Always Chaotic Evil Dire Wraiths in the universe... or at least banish them to Limbo. He does encounter one Wraith who did a Heel–Face Turn after disguising himself as a family man and Becoming the Mask, but this Wraith gets killed by his comrades when they discover he isn't evil any more.
  • The premise of Scott Pilgrim, albeit a quirky spin on it in terms of the trope and its execution. In order to date the (literal) girl of his dreams, Scott has to defeat her League of Evil Exes. In this case, "defeat" roughly translates to "inflict bodily harm until they explode in a shower of coins".
  • In the X-Men novel series Time's Arrow, our heroes have to take out the Time Arrows that threaten to delete parallel universes a la DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths. Or at least that's what it's supposed to look like at first.
    • In the comic storyline "End of Greys", a group called the Shi'ar Death Commandos arrive at the Grey household when there's a gathering to make Rachel Grey feel like part of the family. They proceed to eradicate all but Rachel (and Cable for some odd reasonnote ) to eradicate the "Grey Genome" so that the Phoenix no longer has a host. Apparently they'd forgotten that the Phoenix doesn't have to chose a Grey as its host.

    Fan Works 
  • In The Fifth Act, Cloud is sent back in time due to an accident with some Time Materia, and his objective becomes to kill Hojo, Jenova, and Sephiroth. Preventing Sephiroth's Face–Heel Turn works too.
  • In Hakkōna and Kaitō Kokoro, Obake are creatures that can shapeshift into just about anything. Unfortunately, their powers made them feared by humans and massacred as a result with Kiku as the only survivor.
    Obake. A subcategory of Yōkai, supernatural creatures of Japanese Shinto myth. Obake are beings that can take on any shape, from an inanimate household object to the most ravenous of beasts. However, despite that, Obake can be of various species, possessing various base forms; cat, dog, monkey, even human are just some of them. Obake have generally lived in peace, respecting all those around them. Secluding themselves from people, they are one with nature, in perfect harmony with it and each other as they live through existences which aren't limited by the passing of time. Everything was perfect until that fateful day...
  • My Hero Academia: Unchained Predator:
    • The Slayer becomes the Judge, Jury, and Executioner against the Steel Sabers, brutally slaughtering them all throughout the Steel Sabers Arc.
    • After a lull in fighting Wolfram, Miruko tells the Slayer to get ready to be shipped to Tartarus, where all the dangerous inmates of society are. The Slayer mentally notes that he would escape out of there in a heartbeat, but not before making sure all those prisoners leave in body bags.
  • Paradoxus: Trisha, once she loses it after her sister’s death. She starts a vengeful rampage with one goal in mind — to exterminate every single person that has contributed to Bloom (her mother) and Stella’s untimely deaths. This, of course, includes Eudora herself.
  • In Perfection Is Overrated, the goal of the SUEs is to kill all the Himes, and the one who succeeds will seemingly be rewarded with the power to change the world as she sees fit. In reality, she will be possessed by the Usurper.

    Film— Live-Action 
  • 5 Card Stud: After a card shark is caught cheating, he is taken out and lynched by the drunkards he was playing against. Soon afterwards, the men who were in the lynch mob start being murdered, one after another; all by hanging, strangling, or smothering.
  • In 7 Men from Now, Ben Stride's wife was killed during a robbery performed by seven men. Stride is now aiming to kill those seven men in revenge.
  • The Shaw Brothers classic The Avenging Eagle revolves around an escaped assassin of the Eagle Clan, who's targeted by his twelve ex-comrades, and in order to survive must kill all twelve of them over the film's entire runtime before confronting his ex-mentor, once he had killed everyone.
  • In Billy Madison one minor character is shown to have a neat little list titled "people to kill". Notable in that we discover this when he's taking the eponymous character off it after he called on the phone to apologise for bullying the former in high school years ago.
  • In the 1945 pirate flick Captain Kidd, the title character keeps a list of accomplices he intends to eliminate. The first time the list appears, he's adding back a name he'd already crossed out, because the man he'd previously left marooned on a coral reef has turned up alive.
  • In Cold Pursuit, Nels Coxman goes seeking revenge on the people responsible for his son's death. Initially, he only has one name, so he hunts that man down and forces the next name in the chain out of him before killing him. He then repeats the process with the next name in the chain, and so on.
  • In Curse of the Headless Horseman, the Horseman is seeking the eight gunmen who caused his death. He may have killed eight stuntmen in the theme park after mistaking them for the gunmen, but this is not made clear and, like so many other plot points, is never mentioned again after it is first brought up.
  • In Death Rides a Horse, Bill hunts down his family's killers one by one, knowing each of them by a Distinguishing Mark.
  • In Even Lambs Have Teeth, Katie and Sloan escape from their imprisonment, stock up at a hardware store, and go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge through everyone responsible for their kidnapping and sexual abuse.
  • Every Last One of Them: After finding out what happened to his daughter, Hunter becomes obsessed with identifying those responsible and killing all of them.
  • This is half the plot of Faster (the other half being those chasing Driver).
  • Final Score (1986): After Richard's wife and son were killed, and he finds out the identities of the killers responsible, he then proceeds to write down their names on a sheet of paper - Alfred, Hengky, Markus and Dony - and sets out to hunt them all down, in order, crossing their names each time he killed one of them.
  • In Frankenstein Created Woman, Hans's soul forces Christina to kill the three men who murdered her father and framed him for the crime.
  • If you don't kill all Gremlins, you'd better try to get them all next time they come around. In the first film, one manages to get away and breeds a whole army by jumping into a pool. Then nearly succeeds a second time after the rest of his brethren are all wiped out.
  • The Immortals from Highlander. In the end, There Can Be Only One. Some, like the protagonists, are content to coexist peacefully for the time being, but the evil ones are constantly coming out of the woodwork to cause trouble.
  • In 1990 Kid the eponymous character is killing his parents' murderers. Making it look like accidents. Subverted: he doesn't kill the last one — the mayor — he just tells the story to his children and they leave him. Alone in a town that hates him and is no longer afraid.
  • The Bride of Kill Bill literally has a list. She sets out to kill the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad who attacked her on her wedding day, murdered her fiancé, beat her into a coma, and put a bullet in her head.
  • This is the basic premise of the film Kill List — two Professional Killers are given a list and contracted to kill everyone on it.
  • In Kind Hearts and Coronets, Louis Mazzini, black sheep member of the D'Ascoyne family, kills off six members of the family in order to become the Duke of D'Ascoyne. Bonus — the six D'Ascoynes (plus two more who save Louis the trouble by dying on their own initiative) are all played by Alec Guiness!
  • The Man Who Came Back: After escaping prison, Paxton returns to Thibodaux determined to kill everyone who was involved in the lynching, his Kangaroo Court, and the death of his family.
  • The Man They Could Not Hang: After being brought back from the dead, Dr. Savaard sets out to murder the jury who convicted him, the detective who arrested him, the district attorney who prosecuted him, the judge who sentenced him to death, and the nurse who betrayed him.
  • In The One, Yulaw is going around The Multiverse and killing his doubles in order to make use of this 'verse's Conservation of Ninjutsu. By the time the movie starts, he has succeeded in killing 122 of his doubles and kills another in the opener. With each kill he becomes stronger and faster, to the point where he can outrun a car and use police motorcycles as clubs. Yulaw believes that by becoming "the One", he will achieve godhood. There's only one version of him left, but Gabe Law has no intention of going down quietly, especially since his strength and speed are at Yulaw's level.
  • One Foot in Hell: As part of his revenge scheme, Mitch Barrett is determined that all three men who hindered the purchase of his wife's medicine will die, and know why they are being killed before they die.
  • The premise of Parting Shots, where the main character Harry Sterndale, a cancer-ridden photographer with only six weeks to live, plans to kill a number of people who made his life a misery.
  • The killer in The Rawhide Terror is determined to kill all of the renegades, and leaves a countdown of how many are left on his rawhide Calling Card.
  • Rimfire: Is the Vengeful Ghost of The Abilene Kid killing everyone who found him guilty or was otherwise involved in his execution? Or is there some other connection between the victims and a more mortal killer at work?
  • In the film Shadowzone, John Doe inflicts this on all but the main character since he wasn't involved in the experiment that unintentionally brought him to our dimension. John Doe also didn't kill any of the test subjects, or Bingo the monkey.
  • In Stiletto, Raina is determined to kill all of the men involved in her sister's rape.
  • Ten Dead Men: Ten men took away Ryan's life. Now ten men have to die.
  • The Terminator: Because Skynet has little information about Sarah Connor's 1980s whereabouts other than that she lived in Los Angeles at the time, as soon as he arrives to the past era the Terminator simply looks up "Sarah Connor" in the phone book and goes down the list killing anyone with that name - it even gets him labelled the "phone book killer" by the media.
  • In Thirteen Women, Ursula is determined to kill (or otherwise destroy) the thirteen women she blames for ruining her life.
  • Tombstone - After Wyatt Earp's family is attacked by the red-sash wearing Cowboys, he declares, "From now on, I see a red sash, I kill the man wearing it."
  • In Underworld U.S.A., Tolly vows to kill the four men who beat his father to death, and embarks upon a 20 year campaign of revenge. In the end, all of them die as a result of his actions, although he kills none of them directly.
  • In Vicious Fun, Carrie keeps a notebook on her of all the serial murderers she plans to kill, organized by state.

    Gamebooks 
  • The horror-action themed gamebook, Blood of the Zombies, have you escaping a castle full of zombies, and you must kill every single zombie on your way out - otherwise the moment you escape, the book states that several surviving zombies make their way to the countryside, infect the local populace, and in the next morning, you end up having an army of zombies barging into your inn and killing you on the spot. There's 333 zombies in total, so happy hunting!
  • The third Sorcery! book, The Seven Serpents, pits you against the seven titular monsters, which you will encounter during your trek throughout the Baklands. Subverted that you're not required to kill all seven of them, but merely to cross the Baklands without dying, but by killing only two or three serpents you'll be penalized at the end of the book. Killing all 7 during your quest, however, will boost your SKILL, STAMINA and LUCK stats to a new level and reward you in the fourth book with a clue (which makes the adventure a whole lot easier).

    Literature 
  • Battle Royale is similar to The Hunger Games in that it involves a group of young people being forced into a game where the objective is for each of them to kill their competitors and to be the last boy or girl standing. In this case, the number of kids who are still alive is noted at the end of each chapter.
  • Daniel X - The whole premise of the book series. Danny essentially has a big wanted list of alien criminals on Earth, and surprise surprise the one that killed his parents is number one on the list. The entire series basically revolves around him killing off or capturing the aliens on the list one by one, making his way to the one who killed his parents.
  • Jack Vance's The Demon Princes quintology has the protagonist tracking down each of the 5 beings who destroyed his Doomed Hometown and enslaved all the survivors except for him and his grandfather.
  • In the original novel Dracula, the vampire hunters have to track down and destroy the 50 boxes of earth Dracula transported to London from Transylvania and scattered throughout the city so that he will have no safe haven to go to when the sun rises or to change his shape.
  • Harry's quest in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows have him searching for Voldemort's Horcruxes, which keep him alive while they are intact.
  • In The Hunger Games, twenty-four adolescents are thrown into an arena to fight to the death until only one is left alive. Throughout the book, the main character frequently recounts how many competitors are left.
  • In A Madness of Angels, each section of the book consists of Matthew tracking down and killing or defeating the head of one of the subsidiaries of the Tower, until the climactic scene where he fights the head of the Tower itself. More or less.
  • Arya Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire has her (in)famous death list, with the names all of people that hurt her, her family, her friends or are just evil (which makes a lot of names). One of the overarching elements in her plot is the mentioned list and how she crosses the name from it. To make it even creepier, she calls it "a prayer". It becomes a literal prayer after she joins the Faceless Men.
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Relaunch novels, Iliana Ghemor is on a mission to kill every version of Kira Nerys in the multiverse .
    "I don’t fault you for not seeing the big picture, Captain. After what was done to me, it took me a while to understand what I needed to do so that I could be whole again. But when I meet the Prophets, they’ll see inside me, just as they did with your Emissary. They’ll understand what I need to get my life back. And I’ll use the Soul Key to find every other Kira that has laid claim to a piece of my soul".
  • In The Wheel of Time, although not necessarily required, Rand & Co. are killing off the 13 Forsaken one by one since they are trying to release the Dark One. Their efforts are largely negated by the fact that most of the Forsaken are actually resurrected by the Dark One via a method of putting their souls into living bodies, something the good guys don't find out until just before the end of the series. As such, most of the baddies are truly killed in the Final Battle.
  • In the Warrior Cats novella Mapleshade's Vengeange, after Mapleshade's kits drown, she decides that for each one of her three kits, she's going to kill one cat she blames for their deaths. In her delusional grief she has dreams of the kits crying out for her, and each time she kills someone, one more of the kits in her dreams seems to be at peace.

    Live-Action TV 
  • The entire premise of Arrow at the first season; Oliver Queen even has a literal list to work from and cross names off of.
  • The nineties show Brimstone features a policeman brought back from hell (it's complicated) by the devil to return a number of escapees to hell the hard way (killing them, though the vast majority are only vulnerable in the eyes.)
  • In Crisis on Infinite Earths, Lex Luthor steals the Monitor's Book of Destiny and goes on a rampage across The Multiverse in order to kill every single Superman in existence. He changes his tactic after meeting and sparing the Clark Kent of Earth-167, who has given up his powers to have a family. Instead, he forces the Superman of Earth-96 to fight the Superman of Earth-38. Except all this was the Monitor's plan in order to help the heroes find that version of Superman.
  • This is part of the Thinker's plot in The Flash Season 4. He provoked the heroes into freeing the Flash from the interdimensional prison in the Speed Force, unleashing a wave of dark matter on the passengers of a bus in close proximity of the opened portal, turning them into metahumans. And the Thinker wants to steal the powers of all these "Bus-Metas" and add them to his own, in a method that also involves taking their lives.
  • Arya Stark in Game of Thrones recites the names of the people she wants to kill every night before she goes to sleep. She's nine years old.
  • Sylar to other superpowered people in Heroes, although it's more like a combination of both this and Gotta Catch Them All.
  • Kamen Rider Decade has the titular hero being told that, in order to avert the collapse of The Multiverse, he has to travel to the realities of the last nine Heisei Kamen Rider series and kill all of the heroes. He refuses, of course, and helps the Riders. It turns out that the collapse proceeded apace, accelerated by the villains but inevitable with or without them. When Decade was provoked into going to his Superpowered Evil Side, slaughtering all Riders as Decade Fury, the worlds, no longer being forced together by the Riders' powers, were all restored to their original states - including the slain Riders. It turned out plan A was the right one and Everybody Lives in the end.
  • Kamen Rider Drive has to kill all 108 Roidmudes to save the world from their rampage. It is as simple as it sounds. Individual numbers get crossed out on a checklist as the story goes on.
  • Ziggzagged in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Kamen Rider Chronicle can end only if a player clears all the games it consists of and clearing a game usually means defeating its Bugster. First stage Bugsters are simply video game characters, so defeating them is the only way. Second stage Bugsters are video game people and can be reasoned with. CR Crew uses a picture overview of all games to plan their next steps rather than as a "we have to kill so and so" list.
  • In one episode of Law & Order, the detectives are investigating a series of murders when they find a hit list in a car abandoned by the killer. It's a list of important people in a specific murder case from years before ... and one of the names is Jack McCoy.
  • Uther's Roaring Rampage of Revenge against magic users in Merlin probably counts.
  • In the NCIS episode "The Meat Puzzle", the team discovers that the butchered corpses that Ducky and Palmer have been piecing together over several previous episodes are the judge, prosecutor, and jury foreman from a rape-murder case several years before. One other critical person from that case is still alive: the chief witness for the prosecution, Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard.
  • Walker, Texas Ranger:
    • Season 9's "Legends" sees the Big Bad of the episode, Michael Viscardi, going on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against everyone responsible for convicting his father, Samuel Viscardi, a noted Dallas mobster, for a number of serious crimes his organization committed. His targets include the jurors, the judge, and to top everything off, the prosecuting attorney, Alex.
  • Omar from The Wire is found to have a list of people from the Stanfield Organization he intends to kill. He only had a chance to cross out one name...

    Tabletop Games 
  • In FASA's Earthdawn, in order to kill a Horror one must first kill its physical body, then travel to the astral plane and kill its astral body.
  • Liliana Vess from Magic: The Gathering made a Deal with the Devil - well, several devils - for eternal youth and beauty and power and all that good stuff, in exchange for which the demons would get her soul. Then she decided that, while the youth and beauty and power were all well and good, she'd also like to keep her soul. Cue Liliana going and hunting down each of the demons to permanently terminate the contract. One of the demons, Griselbrand, was trapped in a magical vault on the plane of Innistrad. Good thing for the people of Innistrad that when Liliana shattered the vault, she also freed their archangel Avacyn...
  • The ultimate goal of the Necrons in Warhammer 40,000: by exterminating all life (including bacteria), they close off the Warp (an alternate dimension essentially made of emotion), the only power that can stop them. Fortunately, most of the Necrons are still dormant.

    Video Games 
  • The Chaos Saga of AdventureQuest Worlds has the protagonist setting out to take down the Thirteen Lords of Chaos to stop Drakath from destroying Lore. Things get complicated when not only does King Alteon of Swordhaven become the Twelfth Lord of Chaos as a result of tragic events brought on by the Chaorruption he suffered at the very beginning of the saga, but the final Lord of Chaos turns out to be YOU!
  • The Assassin's Creed series basically embodies this trope. From the main plot of every game revolving around assassinating a group of villains, to the optional sidequest of killing the 60 Templar Knights in the 1st game.
  • In Battletech, most missions have specific objectives (destroy a particular target, escort and defend a target until it extracts, etc), but destroying all your opponents will almost always results in a mission victory (snatch and grab missions, for example, make it clear that defeating the enemy forces allows your dropship to pick you up without opposition). Some missions give the enemies unlimited reinforcements, however, requiring a different path to victory.
  • The six dragons in Chrono Cross. Well, you can get by without beating the Black Dragon, but that's only if you fail to do it the right way.
  • The goal of Crackdown is simply to kill about 20 different gang bosses, and a skilled player could simply charge off and get to work immediately upon starting a new game. Of course, leveling up your skills and finding new weapons will help out a lot.
  • In Dark Souls, the player needs to collect the remaining Lord Souls to open the way to the First Flame. How do you get the Lord Souls? By killing the badass gods you see in the Action Prologue.
    • Similarly, in Dark Souls II the player needs to kill four specific bosses in order to get their Old Souls (which are the remnants of the Lord Souls from the previous game) to open the door in the Shrine of Winter and reach Drangliec Castle, and in Dark Souls III, the player needs to gather the Lords of Cinder together at Firelink Shrine to gain access to the First Flame again, but since none of the Lords will cooperate, simply killing them and gathering their souls will suffice.
  • Deathloop requires protagonist Colt to kill all eight Visionaries in a single day to break the time loop he's stuck in. This is made extra complicated by them deliberately spreading out so he can't reach them all in time.
  • EL Tejon from Dead Man's Hand, the Anti-Hero outlaw who used to be a member of The Nine until he's betrayed and left for dead after refusing to massacre women and children. After escaping from a prison, El Tejon's quest have him hunting down all The Nine to kill them all.
  • This is the premise for Destiny 2 Forsaken expansion. After Cayde-6 is killed attempting to end a prison break, the player character goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Uldren Sov and his Scorn Barons.
  • The first half of Doom Eternal has the Slayer hunting down and killing the three Hell Priests who are overseeing the demonic invasion of Earth, and whose life force is powering it via their Dark Ritual. With each Priest that falls, the demonic consumption of Earth is reduced by a full third, with the deaths of all the Priests needed to stop the invasion. Then the Khan Maykr, who is also overseeing this invasion, gets pissy at the Slayer for killing the Priests and decides to unleash the Icon of Sin upon Earth to complete the consumption, meaning the Slayer now has to kill both her and the Titan.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • In Morrowind, killing all of Dagoth Ur's Ash Vampire lieutenants was intended to have this effect. Each one killed is supposed to dramatically weaken Dagoth Ur during the final battle of the main quest. However, due to a programming error, this does not happen. Killing them all does still have the benefit of looting their powerful, enchanted Unique Items which are permanently missable if you complete the main quest without killing them all.
    • Skyrim has an example of this as a side quest. Eight powerful Dragon Priests are scattered throughout Skyrim, each one bearing a mask with special perks. There's a shrine that can be decorated with each mask as well. Naturally, you must hunt down and kill all eight of them to restore the shrine. Your reward for this is another mask.
  • The Fable series:
    • The "Gnomes Are Evil!" sidequest in Fable III. Due to a magical spell gone wrong, 50 garden gnomes were given sentience and then teleported all over Albion. You have to hunt them down and shoot them, which transports them back to their owner. Fortunately the gnomes are foul-mouthed, annoying little jerks.
    • Fable II is similar, with 50 foul-mouthed stone gargoyles who you must shoot.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • In the final mission (itself a Roaring Rampageof Revenge) in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, you and your squad hunt down a series of targets until you get to the Big Bad, which is then smashed by a train.
  • Going for 100% Completion in Grand Theft Auto IV? Among other things, you'll need to kill all ten most wanted criminals on each island (Broker/Dukes, Algonquin, Alderney), and you'll also need to kill all two hundred pigeons scattered across Liberty City.
  • Grand Theft Auto V ups the ante with the final mission. What do you do when you are blackmailed by two of your worst enemies to kill one of your companions, and you will die if you don't comply? Why, you simply have to Take a Third Option and kill everyone who opposes your band. These consist of a corrupt federal agent, two rival gang bosses, and the tyrannical CEO who’s been the worst of the lot.
  • Half-Life 2 has an achievement where you need to kill 333 Antlion grubs. It's easily the most infuriating achievement in the game.
  • The idea of the Hitman series is to kill the targets in the level as an elite-assassin clone known only as Agent 47.
    • Hitman (2016) has the Patient Zero campaign, specifically the third and fourth missions, which requires you kill 3 random militia members who've been infected by a Death Cult doctor, who you also have to kill. This is done with a sniper rifle in a Colorado military camp, while the other mission has you going around a high tech hospital in Hokkaido, Japan to make sure the virus doesn't leave the hospital facility.
    • There's also the Sniper Assassin missions in the World of Assassination trilogy, where you're given specific targets to kill. And also their bodyguards because hey, you're here and have the ammunition.
  • If one goes through the Ruling End of Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk II, one must kill ALL the other goddesses just to power up a sword to finally kill Magiquone/Arfoire. However, it fails.
  • The evil path in Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is hunting down and assassinating what is left of the Jedi Council.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Battle of Aces has the Dark Pieces and Materials, beings formed from the remnants of the Darkness of the Book of Darkness that must be taken down lest the Darkness of the Book of Darkness return.
  • Most of the NES and SNES Mega Man (Classic) games have the titular character hunting down Robot Masters to take their powers and eventually fight their evil master, Dr. Wily himself.
  • Metroid: The various Metroid evolutions in Metroid II: Return of Samus and the remake Metroid: Samus Returns. An ever-present counter shows how many Metroids are left to kill. This becomes more disconcerting as the Metroids start to mutate, resulting in a mini-boss encounter with each one. At one point, the counter jumps from one to nine (the forty-seventh and final Metroid is, of course, the dreaded Queen). Ironically, the game concludes with a Metroid hatchling imprinting on Samus; rather than snuff out the dangerous species once and for all, Samus allows it to follow her as she begins a peaceful climb back to the surface.
  • This is the goal of every Monster Hunter game, since the majority of quests ask you to kill a certain monster, which you can carve afterwards to get useful parts to build armors and weapons with. There are occasions where you're asked to capture a monster alive, but it's a rarer occurrence.
  • The members of the United Assassins Association in No More Heroes and No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, and the members of the Galactic Superhero Corps in No More Heroes III. As the main character, Travis has to murder the top ranked assassins in the nation (or the top ranked assassins in the galaxy, in the third game), one by one, to rise through the ranks and gain the top spot for himself. The second game bumps this up to 51 (whereas the first and third stick with 10), but you only end up fighting around half of them in a total of 15 boss fights.
  • In Ōkami, there are four sidequests in which Amaterasu is tasked to defeat a group of enemies. The enemies can be identified by having exorcising arrows inlaid in their bodies. They're in Shinshu Field, Taka Pass, Ryoshima Coast and Kamui.
  • The Outfoxies: Seven hitmen were contracted to kill seven art collectors. Each one was also hired to kill one of the other hitmen. You're one of the seven. You don't know who has your contract. Answer? Kill all six of the others.
  • The initial goal of SEES in Persona 3 is to defeat the twelve Full Moon Shadows that have been popping up ever since the protagonist first joined the party. Unfortunately, in doing so, they release the herald of Nyx, the Anthropomorphic Personification of death, who had been split in twelve by Yukari's dad 10 years ago, with one of the pieces sealed inside the protagonist by Aigis.
  • Phantom Doctrine: Most missions allow you to kill enemies or sneak past them, according to your personal preferences and the needs of the moment. If you are attacking a conspiracy cell, however, then you have to kill every enemy on the map.
  • Though you don't actually kill them, the whole point of the main series Pokémon games is to defeat the Gym Leaders in each city by knocking out their Pokémon, so you can defeat the Elite Four and subsequently, the regional Champion. The Frontier Brains can qualify as Optional Bosses in regards to this goal, though.
  • A non-lethal example in Rabi-Ribi, where in order to use the Stone Stele to travel to where Miru's gone and rescue her, Erina needs to meet up with an increasing number of spellcasters for each expedition and convince them to help out. Unfortunately, various circumstances result in Erina having to fight every one of them at least once before this happens. Erina doesn't need to defeat and recruit all of them to beat the game, but she will have recruited at least the majority of them by the end.
  • Romancing SaGa 2 has the Seven Heroes, while Romancing SaGa 3 has the four demon lords.
  • The Desert Treasure Quest in RuneScape involves running around the whole continent and defeating four guardians who hold four diamonds you need to access an ancient pyramid, where the eponymous treasure is located.
  • S4 League's Chaser mode. Each round, one player is randomly designated as the Chaser and has to kill all of the other players, who have to defend themselves until the time runs out. The Chaser gets bonus points for killing whoever has the most points of anyone alive, and gains extra points if they kill every opponent which also deprives the victims of any points (15 if alive when time runs out, 5 if dead but other players survive).
  • A few of the Saints Row games have the Hitman series of diversions, which will give you a list of targets to kill, along with instructions of how to draw them out. Each kill nets you some money and respect.
    • The first three games are all about defeating three rival gangs and claiming their turf for yourself. In the first two games, you slowly slaughter your way up the chain of command until you've capped the gang leader, while in the third one of them eventually declares "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" and flees, while another only dies in one of the endings.
  • There are 666 Dragons in 7th Dragon; the amount listed in the corner of the screen at all times. You don't have to kill every last one but doing so activates the Bonus Dungeon.
  • Wander's goal in Shadow of the Colossus is to kill all 16 Colossi in the Forbidden Land as that is the only way to revive a girl named Mono. Every time a Colossus is killed, a statue representing the Colossus in the Shrine of Worship is destroyed.
  • Being a homage to martial art films, the premise of Sifu is that a young 20-year old martial artist must hunt down the five individuals responsible for massacring their dojo and killing their father.
  • All the Sinjid games require you to do this. Battle Arena tasks you with killing every monster in the game (something you can only fully achieve on Terminator mode, since the lower difficulties end after a certain amount of levels), Shadow of the Warrior tasks you with killing every human enemy to prepare for a war (and getting 100% Completion requires killing every monster found in the game, which is no easy feat), and Sinjid tasks you with killing all the warlords loyal to the Shogun to end another war and get the protagonist's captors to free him so he can continue his initial mission to find his master's true killer (he was falsely charged with said master's murder and they agreed to let him go if he helped them).
  • The only way the characters in SINoALICE can have their wish granted and have their Authors brought back to life is by collecting Lifeforce. Said Lifeforce can only be collected by killing beings that have been granted life through stories, which includes Nightmares and the Characters.
  • In Sonic Adventure 1, E-102 Gamma's story following his rebellion against Robotnik is to find and "liberate" his fellow E-100 series robots. "Liberate" in quotes because he destroys them and frees the captured animals powering them. The last one to die is, of course, Gamma himself.
  • The main objective of Arena mode in Team Fortress 2, your team's goal is to kill everyone on the opposing team while they try to do the same to you. Whichever team still has at least one player standing at the end wins. To a lesser extent, the "Prime Cuts" achievement requires you to use the Classic sniper rifle to score a killing headshot on at least one member of each of the nine classes in the game in one match, leading to most players hunting this achievement to keep a running list of classes to cross off as they get the desired kill. This is no small feat because there is no guarantee you will even see all the classes in one match.
  • Halfway through Trials of Mana, the eight Benevodons are released into the world, and the heroes are forced to go out and slay each one of them. Of course, that just plays straight into the villain's plan.
  • The Genocide/No Mercy route in Undertale, which leads to the worst ending, requires you to systematically hunt down and kill every last monster in an area. If you miss even one you get shunted into a neutral ending instead.
  • The third Way of the Samurai game includes a secret ending, which is achieved by killing every single person in the town. It's a bit more complex than most examples, owing to the fact that they must be killed in the right order to avoid accidentally triggering a different ending.
  • To some extent, the four sentinels in Wild ARMs 5. They're guarding four towers that have to be destroyed before you can fight the Big Bad Volsung.
  • In XCOMUFODefense, the victory objective for most tactical battles requires you to kill every alien on the map. The only maps that don't require it are the second last map, which requires that you get as many soldiers as possible to the exit point, and the last map, which only requires that you find and kill the alien brain to win.
    • XCOM Terror From The Deep mixes things up a bit by giving you different objectives, but you can almost always succeed by killing every alien on the map. The exceptions are the first phase of an alien base assault, which requires that you get your soldiers to the exit point, and Synonium Device missions, which require that you blow up a certain device. The final map will not end when all aliens are killed, but instead will end when you destroy all the revival devices.
    • In both games, you can abort the mission and retreat at any time, but unless you've killed enough aliens or gathered enough artifacts, it will count as mission failure.
  • Most individual missions in XCOM: Enemy Unknown are played this way: to succeed, you have to kill or disable every alien in the zone. There are a couple of Escort Missions where you just have to get one character to the exit area (possibly with a couple of tasks on the way), and to win the final mission and the game, you just need to kill one particular alien (though it's hard to get to him without killing almost every other alien on his ship).
    • Averted in the sequel, though: if aliens start calling in reinforcements, you have to run.

    Webcomics 
  • Elven Lacryment. The lead character is on a quest to rid the world of the orcs that destroyed her village.
  • Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer! from Girl Genius has this as his primary goal concerning sparks. Yes, including himself (last).

    Web Original 
  • Percy, of the Vox Machina campaign from Critical Role, has a self-made enchanted pepperbox pistol, the barrels of which are engraved with the names of those he intends to kill for revenge. Appropriately, this pistol is named "The List", and as Percy kills each name on it, it vanishes from the barrel. It turns out to be a conduit for Orthax, the demon that Percy unwittingly contracted with, and as Orthax tries to gain more of a hold on him, he starts putting new names on the barrels. Only when Scanlan destroys The List is Percy set free from Orthax.
  • After some goofy meandering in episode one of Girl Chan In Paradise, Kenstar's goal is to fight Galacticamaru by defeating his 32 Captains/Bushido Blasters/Taishos/Bushido Captain Blasters/Captain Taisho Bushido Blaster Busters. No respect is paid to the task, as Galacticamaru is defeated offhandedly early in Episode 3 (by Yuusuke, no less,) and after defeating 4 of them Yuusuke gets annoyed by the whole ordeal and beats all but one of them with a single kick.
  • The Holders Series - of course, it's a tossup as to whether the results of bringing them together or preventing them coming together are worse, and if they are all destroyed they will "unite in the destroyed state", so it's rather a no-win situation.
  • The Dark Generals in Sailor Nothing.

    Western Animation 
  • Blue Eye Samurai. The title character has suffered Half-Breed Discrimination all her life, and as there were only four white men in Japan around the time she was born and she's not sure which of them fathered her, Mizu resolves to kill all of them to get revenge for the suffering she endured. She has tattoo on her arm with four spaces, one of them already filled in when the series starts, revealing that she has already killed her first target.
  • The Men in Black: The Series episode "The Head Case Syndrome" has the Men In Black trying to track down an anti-alien Conspiracy Theorist who blames the MIB for bringing aliens to Earth and uses a time-travelling device to erase the five founding members of the organization from history. Agents J and K eventually track down his home and find the list he uses to mark off who's next, just as the fourth name of five fades out of existence and leaves only K.


Alternative Title(s): Gotta Kill Em All

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