Trash the Planet
is an Idle Game and "anti-capitalist clicker" by This Game Is Haunted, released for free on March 15th, 2021. What starts out as a simple resource management game about a colony of raccoons becomes much more complex when they suddenly become self-aware enough to start their own society. Their rapid evolution leads to raccoons quickly becoming the dominant species on earth, stealing trash all the while. And in their studies of human culture, they decide that the ultimate theft comes in the form of the stock market...
Due to the spoiler-heavy nature of this game and the fact that it is freely available online, it's highly recommended to play it before reading the tropes below.
Trash the Planet contains examples of:
- After the End: Act 5 looks at the community that Cool Teacher set up in the woods, trying to eke out a living and avoid the mistakes that led to this.
- Blamed for Being Railroaded: In act 4, the other characters will rip into TK for, among other things, not trying to help people or stop Money Baby. This is despite the fact that there are no options to do these things in act 3 when they have the chance, and all the "good" decisions in act 4 are either undone, ineffectual on a large scale, or are outright impossible as a result of TK's previous forced inaction. However, it's easier to tell a story about how Capitalism Is Bad when the player actively engages in capitalism.
- Brutal Honesty: Once the wildfires start to destroy everything, TK's former employees do not mince words telling them that they are a shortsighted asshole and this is all their fault.
- Cap: Numbers past around a quadrillion in act 3 are simply rendered as "lol".
- Card-Carrying Villain: Money Baby, though they admit to wishing they had been more subtle.
- Controllable Helplessness: Nothing you do in act 4 will make a difference about the wildfires, and every Dialogue Tree results in the same outcome.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The entirety of act 3 allows you to become this by gaming the stock market.
- Dramatic Disappearing Display: Act 4 starts out by every stock and resource option burning to nothing.
- Global Warming: In act 4, climate change causes massive wildfires that destroy half the planet.
- Green Aesop: Rampant capitalism and corporate greed will trash the planet.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: TK, after realizing just how much destruction they've caused, seems to be genuinely sorry, but by that point it's far too late to fix anything. The fires reach their apartment before they can even really accept that it's their fault.
- Money Fetish: Money Baby, appropriately enough.
- My Card: Money Baby introduces themself to TK as "CEO of Raccoons."
- Never My Fault: TK refuses to take any responsibility for the end of the world, blaming all of it on Money Baby despite the fact that they never lifted a finger to actually help people or curtail the power of the Obviously Evil Money Baby.
- At the end of the game the other raccoons rip into you, despite only barely lifting a finger themselves to find some way to fix the world, instead complaining that since you didn't fix it, it's all your fault
- Obviously Evil: Money Baby's nature as an outrageously greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive is extremely unsubtle. Lampshaded at the end when they point out that they didn't even bother hiding it and TK was an idiot to trust them.
- Partially Civilized Animal: What the raccoons quickly develop into, developing language, currency, agriculture, and an understanding of the stock market by the end of Act 1.
- Puppet King: TK, particularly after The Reveal.
- Polluted Wasteland: What the earth becomes after raccoon society falls.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: TK dies friendless, burning to death alone in their apartment and knowing that it's all their fault. Society is collapsed, billions are dead, and of the named characters only Cool Teacher survives. However, their community living in the woods seems to be able to sustain itself, and is intent on remembering the mistakes of the past so that they are not repeated.
