Web Animation / Fallen Kingdom

Reading order from Top Left: Fallen Kingdom, Take Back the Night, Find the Pieces, Dragonhearted

"I used to rule the world
Chunks would load when I gave the word
Now every night I go stow away
Hide from the mobs I used to slay"

Fallen Kingdom is a five-part Minecraft fanfilm by CaptainSparklez. The first and most well known, a music video parodying "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay, covers the rise and fall of a happy kingdom with a Downer Ending of the King all alone… but it turns out the Prince survived, and the Kingdom might not stay so Fallen. Even if he has to take on the hordes of the Nether to do it.

The five videos are Fallen Kingdom, Take Back the Night, Find the Pieces, Dragonhearted, and Rising Kingdom (a prequel). Or you can watch the original tetralogy all together here.

Not to be confused with the Super Mario Bros. Dark Fic of the same name.

The Fallen Kingdom quintology include examples of the following tropes:

• Adaptational Villainy: Zombie Piglins in the game are harmless unless provoked. Here they're minions of the Piglins.
• The Beastmaster: After obtaining the Staff of Herobrine, the King uses it to take control of a Warden and escapes while his tamed Warden fights against the other Warden summoned. In "Dragonhearted", he is seen retrieving it from his ender chest to tame the Ender Dragon.
• Big Bad: Herobrine is the antagonist who sets all the series' conflict into motion by attacking the King for stealing his sceptre and motivating his son into training himself into a fearsome warrior to defeat Herobrine. He is also shown to be one of the three primary leaders of the Pigman Army, as well as being implied to have been resurrected in the Piglin Brute's corpse in "Find the Pieces" and "Dragonhearted".
• Bittersweet Ending: Herobrine is dead, the Nether invasion has been crushed and the kingdom is being rebuilt, but at the cost of the Prince's life.
• The Chosen One: The Prince's heroic destiny was foretold in ancient engravings.
• Decapitated Army: The destruction of the Piglins' fortress deactivates their zombie mooks, destroys their Nether portals... and for some reason, causes their ships to sink.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In spite of being the Big Bad, Herobrine serves as this when he's defeated and slain at the end of "Take Back the Night", avenging the fallen kingdom... but now, there's a Nether invasion to deal with left in his wake.
• Doomed Hometown: Twice for the Prince. His kingdom is destroyed when he's a child, and then as an adult, his adopted Village is attacked by Piglins. In both cases, they're rebuilt, though.
• Dual Wielding: The Piglin General uses two Gold Swords in the final battle.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Riding a missile right into the enemy's HQ? Good way to go.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The song in the first video is a spoof of a Coldplay song. The others are all original.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: In "Rising Kingdom", when confronted with two demonic guards, the King shoots an arrow to drop a chandelier on them.
• Fantastic Nuke: The Nether Star missile that's used for the finale.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: A few rules of Minecraft are overlooked for the sake of the narrative:
  • The Prince destroys the Wither by shooting an arrow into a nearby convenient pile of TNT. This would not work in the game without a Flame enchantment.
  • The entire concept of the Nether invading the Overworld is impossible, since there is no Obsidian in the Nether for them to make portals from.
  • While the Piglins being able to survive in the Overworld without becoming zombies may seem to be this to modern viewers, at the time of the video's release non-undead Piglins had not actually been added to the game.
  • The Warden is summoned after one Sculk catalyst/shrieker is triggered. In the game the animated music videos are based on, it takes four to be triggered in a time span of about 10 minutes for this to happen.
• Giant Mook: Both regular and zombie Piglins have large, hulking variants that aren't seen in the source material.
• The Good King: The King was a kind, beloved ruler who often went out and mingled with his subjects.
• A Handful for an Eye: The Prince turns the tide in his battle with Herobrine by doing this with lava, though he does it with a sword instead of his bare hand.
• Happy Flashback: All of "Fallen Kingdom" shifts between the King's happy memories of his kingdom… and wandering through the mob-infested wreck it is now.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Prince, stuck on the Nether Star missile, guides it into a Nether Portal and right into the heart of the Piglin's war machine.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: In "Dragonhearted", the King is able to turn the tides of battle by doing the impossible and taming the Ender Dragon. In the prequel, he similarly saves his own life by taming a Warden to fight against the other Warden pursuing him.
• Hot Blooded Sideburns: The Prince has a blocky blonde pair.
• Human Shield: At one point in "Rising Kingdom", the King impales a zombie on his sword and uses it as a shield against a Creeper explosion.
• Humongous Mecha: The Piglins' ultimate weapon is a giant Nether Star-powered mech which boasts great strength, though it's no match for the Ender Dragon.
• Last Breath Bullet: The Piglin brute, reanimated and turned into the Piglin mech's pilot and possibly possessed by Herobrine, launches the Nether Star-powered missile from the rocket to stop the King's son from killing him. Where he had this trope in mind or just tried to save himself, he probably didn't last long without the mech's power source, but assuming he's possessed by Herobrine, it's possible that he could've narrowly survived and escaped.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Herobrine's castle collapses upon his defeat, though all the damage the battle did to it probably didn't help.
• Martial Arts Headband: The Prince wears a long green one.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: The Sensei Villager taught the Prince combat and other monsters in the world. When some pigmen attack his village, he doesn't make it.
• No Name Given: Except for Herobrine, the Wither and the Ender Dragon (who aren't named in the actual videos) no one has a name due to the lack of dialogue.
• No-Sell: The Sensei Villager is shown defeating ordinary minions with ease, but when a giant zombie Piglin appears, his kick just bounces off him.
• Not So Stoic: The stern, stoic Sensei Villager chuckles to himself when the Prince trips over some steps, but quickly stops when he sees another Villager looking at them.
• Oh, Crap!: The Piglin Emperor is shown quaking in fear as the Nether Star missile is about to crash into his palace.
• Old Master: The Sensei Villager, though he's not that old when they first set out.
• Outliving One's Offspring: By the end of the series, the King has outlived both his wife and son.
• Plot Device: The staff the King uses to tame the Ender Dragon during the events of "Dragonhearted". "Rising Kingdom" reveals he stole it from Herobrine, and similarly used it to tame a Warden.
• Portal Cut: The Prince defeats the giant zombie Piglin who killed his master by shoving him into a Nether Portal and then knocking one of the bricks out. It's top half is later used as the controller for the Piglin's mecha and is possibly possessed by Herobrine.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: The King can still wield his Diamond Sword against the invading mobs in "Fallen Kingdom", but there are just too many of them.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Needless to say, the Piglin invasion has a lot of this. They seem less about conquering humanity than destroying it.
• Rasputinian Death: A brief example, but the Piglin General has his hand cut off, is impaled with a sword, and then thrown into a fire for good measure.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The King. Monsters invading your kingdom? Put down the crown and pick up a sword!
• Silence Is Golden: Partial example, there's plenty of music and singing in the background, but nary a word of dialogue from the characters.
• Soft Water: Just like in the game, the King is able to survive falling hundreds of feet by landing in a small basin of water.
• Shown Their Work: In the happier times flashback in part one, the King is seen teasing a Creeper in a cage, which doesn't explode. Creepers won't detonate if there's a wall in the way, even if it's not a solid one.
• Trilogy Creep: Or rather, Tetralogy Creep. "Dragonhearted" was released in November 2016, and everyone thought it was the end of the story... until "Rising Kingdom", a prequel, was released in December 2022. Lampshaded in the latter video's description:
  After 6 years, we revisit the not yet Fallen Kingdom.
• Warrior Prince: The Prince is the hero, and a deadly fighter.
• Weaponized Animal: The Nether invaders are shown riding Ghasts with cannons strapped to them, and using flamethrowers powered by captive Blazes.
• When You Snatch the Pebble: The Sensei Villager trains the Prince until he can disarm him. It takes him until he's an adult.
• Xanatos Gambit: The Piglins unleashing a Wither into an Overworld city will destroy their enemies, unless someone defeats it... in which case they can swoop in and grab the Nether Star to power their Humongous Mecha.

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"Oh oh, oh oh
Oh oh, oh oh
Oh oh, oh oh
Oh oh, oh oh
We are the dragonhearted!"