YMMV / Icarus Falls

• Complete Monster:
  • Leonid Brezhnev is the ruthless dictator of the Soviet Union and reviled pariah in the international community. Escalating a border dispute with China into a major diplomatic crisis, Brezhnev assassinates Mao Zedong, hoping to frame the United States for it and get the two nations to go to war. When this fails, Brezhnev sends over a hundred nukes to destroy China in the subsequent war, only refraining from launching more due to Western pressure. When an attempt at starting a purge devolves into a civil war, Brezhnev has towns and cities indiscriminately firebombed and has unarmed protesters massacred in the streets. When the war starts to turn against him, Brezhnev uses nuclear weapons on Grozny, Perm, and Central Asia, and orders that every missile silo in the Soviet arsenal detonate their warheads if he loses. Personally executing people who refuse his orders or bring him bad news, Brezhnev is a sadistic tyrant who takes joy in killing people.
  • Lin Biao becomes the Chairman of China after Mao Zedong is assassinated. Deciding to use nuclear weapons first in the Sino-Soviet war, Biao holds no concern over the prospect that the Soviet response will devastate China for decades. When famine and anarchy begin to break out in war-torn China, Biao threatens to attack any United Nations convoys attempting to bring badly needed food and medicine to the mainland. When rebellions against his rule start to break out, Biao throws masses of starved conscripts at them, prepared to accept any price to crush the rebels. When the tide of the war turns, Biao uses every Weapon of Mass Destruction at his disposal, utilizing poison gas, biological weapons, and his last nuclear weapon, and throws Child Soldiers armed with spears and knives to remedy his manpower shortage. When finally caught in inescapable retreat, Biao destroys any town in danger of falling to the rebels, via immolation or impalement, and orders his troops to conduct guerilla warfare, ensuring that the war continues for years after his death.
  • Gerhard Von Schubert is the manager of neo-Nazi mercenary group Paladin, selling the group's services to various dictatorships around the globe. After becoming the group's leader, Gerhard sponsors several far-right terrorist attacks in Italy while on the run from the authorities. Buying a nuke from a corrupt CIA agent, Gerhard launches the weapon at the Muslim holy city of Mecca, killing a million people directly and planning on escaping in the ensuing chaos and religious violence that will consume the globe.
• The Woobie: China. The Sino-Soviet Exchange occurs which destroys every major city in the country. This leads to Tibet, Uyghurstan, and even Manchuria and Guangdong declaring independence. The Nationalists, led by the authoritarian President Chen Ta-Ching, goes to war against Chairman Lin Biao over control of China in a brutal conflict known as the Mainland War. The Communists use nukes and chemical weapons but are eventually defeated. Unfortunately, the Nationalists turn China into a right-wing police state.