Basic Trope: A path in a Video Game where the player chooses to kill everyone rather than join one side or the other.
- Straight: The Hero Rune can choose to join The Good Kingdom of Lrright as they fight to purify and unite the world in peace, or side with The Empire of Darkonn and conquer the world one realm at a time. Alternately, he can choose to fight both factions, killing his way up their ranks until he can take out both Llyrr the Lightbringer and Emperor Evulz.
- Exaggerated: In order to maintain his independence, Rune must slaughter Llyrr, Evulz, every single knight, soldier, assassin and Mook they command, and reduce each of their strongholds to a smoldering wreck. Many of their strongholds are in cities and fortified towns, vital to their respective countries and communities.
- Downplayed:
- Rune nominally sides with Evulz, but wants to rule alone and so is climbing its ranks by Klingon Promotion and Civil Warcraft almost as often as he is actually fighting against anyone under the Lrright banner.
- Rune refuses to join either side, knowing full well that the two will eventually grind each other into oblivion and mutual destruction, but does nothing to hasten the inevitable.
- Rune needs to be surgical in his violence in an omnicidal neutral path to maintain a positive to neutral reputation even after killing leadership. Killing only Llyr and Evulz who are fanatics about the conflict will result in peace for the two factions as they conclude the violence isn't worth it. A negative reputation with one locks him into effectively serving the other while angering both results in two whole armies out for vengence.
- While Rune kills both he mostly uses stealth and trickery and does so only when they would prevent him from proceeding in peace.
- Rune 'only' has to destroy one division of Llyrr and Evulz respectively and they take his message to leave him alone and he will serve nobody, seriously and will leave him to his quest.
- Justified:
- Neither Llyrr or Emperor Evulz will simply let Rune be; if he won't join them, they both attempt to eliminate him to keep him from interfering with their plans thus forcing him to fight them simply to survive.
- Lrright is chaos, Evulz is order, both take their ideologies to the extreme, and Rune's moral compass won't let him side with either.
- Inverted: Alternately, Rune can choose to broker peace between the warring nations, which requires him to find alternate methods of defusing conflicts as they come.
- Rune is neutral through Suicidal Pacifism.
- Subverted:
- Tries to kill em all, but finds himself siding with one faction over the other.
- By killing everything, Rune is actually fulfilling the goals of a third faction.
- Double Subverted:
- ...Only because they were too hard to kill upfront, but now he destroys them from the inside.
- ...Which he promptly destroys as soon as he learns about them.
- Parodied:
- Rune is a Blood Knight who takes the 'neutral' path simply because he knows it will let him kill EVERYTHING. Emperor Evulz is both repulsed and impressed.
- Rune is only one of many men considering the same decision to oppose both Lrright and Darkonn, and forms a third faction. This third faction calls itself "The Omnicidal Neutrals", despite clearly not being neutral.
- Zig Zagged: Rather than join either side, Rune chooses to stay out of the conflict entirely, not wanting to get dragged into the war.
- Averted: Rune has only one path he can take; or MUST choose Llyrr or Evulz, with no middle ground.
- Enforced:
- Llyrr and Evulz come gunning for Rune, and he must defeat them to continue.
- Both sides are almost identical, with little characterization and no reason not to kill both. That, or the game lets you to keep playing after destroy a side, making the destruction of the other side the only way to continue.
- Lampshaded: "Well, I guess you could pick no side but who'd be crazy enough to do that?"
- Invoked: An unforeseen third party is hoping that Rune would take this option and is willing to frame the two sides against Rune.
- Exploited: The sequel reveals that a previously unmentioned faction took power after the events of the first game simply by waiting until Rune killed both leaders and declaring themselves in charge. Thanks to Rune, there was no one to stand in their way.
- Defied:
- The two kingdoms realize that Rune IS capable of wiping them out and decide to either leave him alone or make peace with each other.
- Rune's buddies tell him that no matter how badass he is, he's not badass enough to take on one entire army, let alone two. He is thus forced to either commit to one kingdom or say Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
- The two sides have a certain understanding, and will put their conflict on hold to punish upstarts.
- Discussed: "You'll have to pick a side, Rune. You can't possibly take them all!"
- Conversed: "Wh-What do you mean, he's killing everyone?!"
- Deconstructed:
- In taking out the Kingdom of Lrright and the Empire of Darkonn, Rune leaves their respective realms in tatters, as survivors try to scrape together their own little parcels of land and fill the power gap. Instead of ending the war decisively, he's prolonged it indefinitely.
- Both sides have been made morally gray, so Rune ends up being the worst person of them all.
- Although Rune initially has noble intentions, the inherent extremism in trying to achieve peace by destroying both sides causes him to undergo Motive Decay, and at the very tail end of the game, he has deteriorated into an Omnicidal Maniac hell-bent on eradicating all life on the planet, since otherwise there will always be people like Llyrr and Evulz.
- Rune is just one man picking a fight with two of the most powerful kingdoms on the planet. He dies horribly.
- Reconstructed:
- As crapsack as the world becomes, Rune believes that this state of affairs is still better than what either Llyrr or Evulz would have brought if they achieved their goals.
- Nevertheless, there will be people who adamantly believe that Rune was right about both sides being equally awful, forming a cult in Rune's name.
- After Rune Jumped Off The Slippery Slope and killed off almost all of the leadership of both factions, everybody in both factions unite to stop Rune from killing everyone, and in doing so, both factions realize that they're similar and end up brokering peace after Rune is vanquished. So Rune did complete his initial goal, albeit in a very roundabout way.
- It's a video game with multiple endings, and Rune is just one man picking a fight with two of the most powerful kingdoms on the planet. Without excellent command of the game's mechanics to win the fights he finds himself in, as well as a lot of attention paid to its lore and characters to avoid being manipulated, he's doomed. But if he manages it, the Golden Ending is agreed to be well worth it.
- Implied: The sequel is set in an After the End setting where aether storms ravage the entire continent. The aether element was used only by Rune in the previous game hinting either he accidentally killed everyone, did so deliberately, or someone else did it. Historical records are understandably hard to come by so nobody knows for sure.
- Played For Laughs: Fairy Companion Blythe keeps bringing up the "Plan C: KILL EVERYONE" option whenever Rune is faced with a decision to make. Any decision.
- Played For Drama: Rune is made fully, painfully aware of the potential ramifications of killing off the two most powerful, influential leaders of his time. His family lives in one of Lrright's provinces, along with most of his childhood friends, and most of them are staunch believers in Llyrr's goal of ultimate peace. On the other hand, he sees firsthand that not everyone living in The Empire is evil, even among Evulz' soldiers... And some of his other friends are among their ranks. Stopping both Llyrr and Evulz will mean putting everyone at risk — but is the risk of letting one of them succeed far worse...?
Back to Omnicidal Neutral
