Omnicidal Maniac

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Kefka Palazzo at the very height of his madness, Final Fantasy VI

"This is my ultimate victory, Doctor! THE DESTRUCTION. OF REALITY. ITSELF!"

Who caused the Earthshattering Kaboom? This guy. Destroying continents, wiping out civilizations, exterminating whole planets: When this character turns up, entire galaxies or universes may die, if not reality itself—the Omnicidal Maniac has made his entrance and where he goes, the survival rate of everything nearby quickly drops towards zero.

Put simply, the Omnicidal Maniac is a villain whose main plan and motive is "destroy the world". He actively seeks the destruction of whatever world the setting is based in, does it as an end unto itself, has the ability to do so, and is both aware of what he's doing and fully motivated to do so. Most Omnicidal Maniacs will aim for at least Planetary/Total Extinction on the Apocalypse How scale, but it may vary from setting to setting—in a Medieval European Fantasy setting, the known world may just be a kingdom or two, while in a Space Opera, expect the whole known galaxy or the universe or even the Multiverse) to be his goal. Despite the name, being completely insane is not actually a requirement, but having a Freudian Excuse doesn't make the Omnicidal Maniac any less of a menace.

Contrast the Person of Mass Destruction (who doesn't want to use their powers to destroy the world), Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds (who causes damage of this scale largely by accident, through ignorance, or for comedic, non-serious reasons intended to elicit laughter), and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds (whose tragic, crapsack lives made them see red and lay the blame on all their woes upon the world). Omnicidal Maniacs are not amusing and have clearly-defined reasons for wanting to destroy everything nearby, which they do with a great deal of malice. The Omnicidal Maniac differs from the Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum and Put Them All Out of My Misery in that the Maniac has "destroy world" as motive and "I go down with it" as unfortunate side-effect (or isn't planning to go down with the world at all if they happen to have the power or means to survive the destruction they wrought), while the latter two has "I die/I am miserable" as motive and "world goes with me" as insurance.

The logical extreme of the less destructive Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence, Kill All Humans, and Absolute Xenophobe. Compare Planet Eater, Planet Looters and Horde of Alien Locusts, whose world-destroying is more of a side-effect of their own desire to stay alive. Fighting against this villain (or scores of them) means Evil Only Has to Win Once to destroy everything.

The Nietzsche Wannabe, the Psycho for Hire or the A God Am I mentality are very popular amongst this character archetype.

Examples of Omnicidal Maniac include:

Anime and Manga[edit | hide | hide all]

  • Anyone of importance in Dragon Ball Z can blow up planets. However, only Majin Buu seems intent on undoing all of creation merely out of malice, spite and boredom. And inability to get ice cream. And that was before he got rid of his conscience.
    • Cell planned on becoming one of these after the Cell Games, but was killed before he could get started.
    • Broly blew up an entire galaxy, and nearly did the same to the entire universe just for fun.
  • Fall, the ultimate Big Bad of 'Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom' was revealed to be this in the final battle by almost absorbing all of the life energy of the Demon World and the Human World with the insane amount of power he had absorbed from Nora, Duece and the Dark Leige destroying all "defective" beings along with it. All of this out of rage and betrayal towards the previous Cerberus, Diegree, after he died giving strength to the current Dark Leige without fighting Fall a final time. After his defeat, he repents by giving Nora his power back along with the stolen power of the Dark Leige, nearly making Nora a Person of Mass Destruction
  • Valgaav, both The Dragon and Big Bad of Slayers TRY wanted the destruction of everything before merging with Darkstar, believing that oblivion was what the world deserved. Afterwards, the knowledge he gained about the nature of the universe drove him to become a Well-Intentioned Extremist merged with Darkstar's godlike power, intending to destroy the entire world and then remake it without strife or conflict.
    • In the novel canon, all Mazoku are nihilistic Omnicidal Maniacs; in the anime this is most visible with Hellmaster Fibrizo:

Fibrizo: "I want to be destroyed. I want to be destroyed! Destruction? Yes... Destruction is the ultimate wish of any Monster. That's what we were created for. Isn't it? That's what we were created for! [..] But this destruction shall consume all things! It shall consume the entire world! [...] All the world! Let all the world be destroyed with me!"

    • Subverted with Xelloss, who pays lip-service to the Mazoku "blow up everything" mentality but clearly enjoys life way too much for him to mean any of it. He attempts to excuse his saving the world from Duragnigdu by saying that destroying the world is his job, not Dark Star's. Riiiiight. We believe you.
      • At that time he wasn't acting for his own benefit, but working as the envoy of the entire Mazoku race, so presumably the surviving Mazoku Lords agreed on his logic there, as well. Plus that he was promised that the power released from the killed Dark Star would be granted to the local Dark Lord, Ruby-Eye Shabranigadu. It's left unclear whether that bargain was held or not, but if it was, then Xelloss definitely hastened the homemade Apocalypse by getting rid of the foreign product.
        • That deal about getting some of Dark Star's energy was never intended to be fulfilled, probably by both sides - nothing shows this more than the fact that Xelloss betrayed the Overworlders shortly after the deal even got mentioned.
        • Given that most Mazoku fight damn hard to stay alive, it's entirely possible that Fibrizo was simply nuts, and paying lip-service to the cause of universal destruction is the normal attitude of "sane" Mazoku.
  • Rau Le Creuset of Mobile Suit Gundam Seed isn't perhaps the most obvious, as his goals merely encompass the extinction of humanity, Natural and Coordinator alike. However, given the much smaller scale (the action never extends past Mars due to limited space travel), it's quite omnicidal in context. His motivation for this is that he's going to die prematurely due to being a flawed clone, and concludes that everybody else should have to die prematurely too.
    • SD Gundam Force gives us the leader of the Dark Axis, General Zeong. His sole motivation is to become powerful enough to fire a beam that would basically wipe out all dimensions.
  • Digimon seems to have at least one per season:
    • Digimon Adventure's got Apocalymon. The name says it all. When he was defeated, he tried to unleash a blast that would eradicate the human world and the Digital World.
    • Digimon Adventure 02: Big Bad (or so we think at the time) Arukenimon's main plan is to destroy the Cosmic Keystones that maintain the barriers between dimensions, which would cause all dimensions to collide, destroying the multiverse. Her intended Dragon refuses to help on the grounds that she's an unworthy mistress, but eventually decides, for his own reasons, to do the same, making him just as much of an Omnicidal Maniac.
    • Digimon Tamers features a non-Digimon AI that was designed to prevent other programs from exceeding their boundaries ('cause A.I. Is a Crapshoot) by deleting them if they surpassed a certain stage of development. It decides all humans and Digimon meet criteria for deletion. Then it gets really nasty.
    • Digimon Frontier's Lucemon is more of a digital Evilutionary Biologist. The data that makes up Digital World's matter (and population) is easily manipulated, and it all had to be absorbed and used to release him from the Dark Area. He planned to use it to rebuild the world as he saw fit.
    • Digimon Savers, aka Digimon Data Squad, has Yggdrasil/King Drasil, the computer that runs the Digital World. When the previous arc's Big Bad's plan backfires and both worlds are going to collide, he decides that the human world must go. When the Digimon fight against him and his minions to protect it, guess what he then decides? He, too, plans on restarting the Digital World after destroying the old one.
    • Digimon Fusion Kai had Bagramon, who had a rather simple goal: destroy everything. But what do you expect from a Digimon called "the Sage of Death" by his peers? He was even willing to kill and absorb his own brother to gain power.
  • The Millennium Earl in D.Gray-man is very open about this, explicitly taunting the hero in his first real appearance.

The Millennium Earl: "You have only witnessed the opening chapter... the akuma in this world will continue to evolve. Now begins the journey leading up to the true tragic end. I am the Millennium Earl, the maker of the akuma. I shall obliterate your puny "God" and lead the world to its death with my akuma. An exorcist, a soldier of life. You can't save this world no matter how hard you try."

  • The berserked defense program of the Book of Darkness in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Its existence is as thus: Appear when Book of Darkness fills all 666 pages, destroy every world and dimension in its path, get temporarily killed either from a really powerful weapon or from having burned out its considerable amount of magic, rejuvenate with Book of Darkness somewhere else, repeat.
  • Sailor Moon has several, Queen Metaria the Big Bad of the Classic season, Wiseman/Death Phantom the Big Bad of the R season, the entire Death Busters organization of the S season and Sailor Galaxia of the Stars season. Sailor Galaxia, in particular, is notable for omniciding at least a half-dozen, and probably much more, habitable planets, before coming to Earth - by the Grand Finale she pretty much wipes out all life in the Milky Way galaxy in both the manga and the anime. Chaos, who directly controls her and is hinted (or outright stated in the manga) to be the Ultimate Evil behind the rest of them, is one too.
  • Ralph Werec in Soukou no Strain went back in time via Subspace or Hyperspace and saw the cost of the research that went into the Black Box that powered the series' Humongous Mecha. His sanity didn't make it out intact, and he decides to destroy his entire race in retaliation, never mind that nobody knows anything about it.
  • Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star gives us Gooyan, the Not So Harmless Man Behind the Man.
    • Many Pretty Cure Big Bads were omnicidal maniacs. The Dark King in the original series and Max Heart started the trend by trying to destroy the Universe because it was in his nature; Lord Akudaikahn in Splash Star was basically his Expy; Dune in Heartcatch was defined by his hatred of everything.
  • Ah! My Goddess, of all series, had one. The Lord of Terror aka The Ultimate Destruction Program, a bodiless entity whose one goal is to destroy the universe and recreate it in its own twisted image. Given the highly idealistic nature of the series, it failed (though it was a close call) and was Killed Off for Real when it was tricked into possessing a floppy disk which Skuld erased using a magnet.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, the Mage of Beginnings and his minions, the three incarnations of Averruncus, want to destroy Magicus Mundus (a pocket dimension planet the size of and dimensionally anchored to Mars). It's ultimately subverted, as Mundus Magicus is collapsing on it's own, and the Big Bad thinks that the only way to save everyone is to move all the inhabitants into a Lotus Eater Machine.
  • Yami Malik of Yu-Gi-Oh! explicitly states in the manga that all he wants is total destruction of everyone and everything.
    • Then of course there's Zorc.
  • Clear Note, the final Big Bad of Gash Bell manga, intends to become the new King of Demons solely so that he can use the associated privilege of erasing from existence any demons he doesn't like, to erase everyone indiscriminately. His reasons boil down to existing only to kill other demons and wanting to do it in the most efficient way. He also nearly makes the Earth uninhabitable with his ultimate spell.
  • The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer has Big Bad The Mage, who is poised to destroy the Earth by hitting it with a giant Biscuit Hammer. His eventual Start of Darkness reveals that he's done this a lot: Being from the future, he has continually travelled backwards in time and destroyed the Earth at every point in time it existed from the point he gained his powers until now. If the protagonists don't stop him he intends to keep on doing this until the Earth no longer exists at any point in time... Simply because he can.
  • In Noein, Noein's goal is to absorb all possible futures into his own reality, then end the entire universe.
  • King Zenoheld from Bakugan eventually decided to do this after undergoing a major Villainous Breakdown, deciding to destroy the entire universe.
    • Mag Mel entered the picture with this in mind. His ultimate plan is to destroy the Earth in such a way as to set off a chain reaction to destroy the entire universe.
  • Dewey Novak in Eureka Seven tries to do this by making the Scub Coral exceed to Limit of Questions (the in-universe theory that only a certain amount of intelligent life can exist in a given space, exceeding this limit causes the collapse of the universe)
  • The second Friend in 20th Century Boys is this. While the first one was comitting genocide with a killer virus for several reasons, he really wanted to be ruler of the world and be worshipped by his circle of "Friends" (all to satisfy his craving for attention and hatred for Kenji). The second one, however, flat out intends to wipe out all of humanity. Despite pretending to be Fukubei (The first one), he really doesn't care one bit about his ideals and doesn't even intend to save those who do support him. He truly wants to destroy the world and his last trap is an Anti-Proton Bomb.
  • Folken in the movie version of Escaflowne wants to destroy all of Gaea—because he's just so depressed and just wants it all to end, even though he presents himself as a Social Darwninist to his followers.
  • Monster has more realistic version of this in Johan Liebert, while his motives are left somewhat vague, his actions certainly suggest that his ultimate goal is the complete destruction of human society by manipulating everyone he comes across into killing themselves or each other.

Comic Books[edit | hide]

  • DC Comics' Crisis crossovers has the following:
    • Crisis on Infinite Earths: Anti-Monitor, whose stated goal is to rule an Anti-Matter universe after all other universes have been destroyed and he has absorbed the energy from their destruction.
    • Zero Hour: Parallax (Hal Jordan, though the circumstances of it was changed during Green Lantern: Rebirth) and Extant
    • Infinite Crisis: Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime
    • Final Crisis: Darkseid and Mandrakk
    • Blackest Night: Nekron
  • While he does not typically fall under this category, The Joker did, in fact, reach this state during the "Emperor Joker" plotline in the Superman comics. In fact, considering that plot and a number of other situations it could be argued that the only things preventing the Joker from permanently attaining this state are a lack of superpowers and his obsession with Batman.
  • Thanos is the most famous Marvel Comics example. He has a vision of Death as a beautiful woman and in order to win her favor he embarks on a quest to wreak death and destruction. Although he has stated on multiple occasions that the elimination of all life might destroy Death as well as it would eliminate her need to exist, so he would eliminate half of all life, thus ensuring Death still has a steady supply of souls.
    • In The Thanos Imperative Thanos goes completely insane when he realizes that his Thanatos Gambit to destroy the Cancer Verse also rendered him immortal, meaning he can never be with Death. He makes an earnest effort to wipe out all life in the Marvel-616 Verse and has to be sealed in what's left of the Cancer Verse to stop him from pulling it off.
  • On a more planetary scale, Onslaught started out as a mutant supremacist of the same stripe as his psychic 'father', Magneto. After seeing the Age of Apocalypse in Bishop's memories, in which mutants really did rule the world and destroyed it, he decided no one was worthy.
  • Abraxas also hails from the Marvel Universe. The antithesis of Eternity, it exists only to destroy anything and everything in all creation. Keeping it imprisoned is one of the reasons Galactus needs the life energy from devoured worlds. The one time Abraxas did break free it...wasn't pretty.
  • Annihilus, also from the Marvel Universe, became one of these during the Annihilation. His vast fleets carved a path of devastation across the galaxy, used a large, tick-like weapon called the Harvester of Sorrows to drain entire planets of their energy to feed on, nearly wiped out the Kree and Skrull empires, and (with the help of Thanos and two cosmic superbeings) imprisoned Galactus himself. Why is he an Omnicidal Maniac instead of just another alien conqueror? Annihilus' true motivation for capturing Galactus was to turn him into a bomb. A bomb that would kill everything in the universe except for himself. What's truly scary is that he came damn close to pulling it off too.
    • Annihilus was always one of these. In fact, he may have the craziest motivation of any character on this page: He has an irrational fear of death, so he got himself the Cosmic Control Rod, which, among its other powers, ensures that he will never age and never get sick. But...he could still die, if someone or something kills him. His solution? Kill every living thing in the they can't kill him first. This was just the first time he was in a position to act on his omnicidal desires on such a large scale. It doesn't work out so well for Annihilus, since the final battle ends with Nova sticking his hand down Annihilus' throat and ripping his guts out.
  • Amatsu-Mikaboshi from the Chaos War Crisis Crossover is also this. He existed long before the universe did and, in the Chaos War, wants to return things to that state. Marvel sure is in love with this trope.
  • Jenny Fractal from the Wildstorm universe. She is the twin sister of The Authority's Jenny Quantum, kidnapped at birth by the Chinese government. She was put in an assassin program where she was forced to watch humanity's evil deeds: rape, murder, genocide, etc... She has the power to fracture/alter reality and wants to use the Earth as the center of a black hole to implode and collapse the entire multiverse. Her reasons for doing this: "It's the only way to save them".
    • Winter of Stormwatch (also from the Wildstorm universe) becomes this after he flew an Alien-infested Skywatch space station into the sun to save the world. Being an energy absorber, Winter became one with the sun. Trapped by eternal agony he lures out The Authority so they can finally put an end to his life; when it's deemed impossible to kill him without destroying the sun and ending the world, he became enraged. Disgusted by humanity's cruelty, he yells "Your world does not deserve to live" and lashes out. He's eventually stopped by using the Carrier's technology to seal baby universes and was condemned to burn for billions of years. Later on he's released by the new Doctor and revived in his previous normal state. In the latest Stormwatch issues it was revealed he still holds some of the sun's power.
    • "The Man Without Hope"(MWH) from the Wildstorm Universe. He comes from the future and with his superior technology he's a match for The Authority. The future is grim, blank and full of suffering and he wants to prevent it from happening by ending existence all together. Swift receives knowledge from the mythical "gods" about the dark future and how to prevent it. She mentions how the MHW with all his technology couldn't figure out the problem and fix it. The MHW commits suicide when his plan is ruined by The Authority and a new unknown time line is birthed yet he is still convinced that everyone is screwed. The issue ends with the words "beginning of the end" hinting that the MWH was probably talking about human nature being the problem seeing it's the central theme of the graphic novel, "human on the inside".
  • One of the four possible backstories for The Phantom Stranger given in his issue of "Secret Origins" features a mad scientist from the future who wants to time travel back to the Big Bang and prevent it from effectively occurring. So not only does he want to destroy the universe, he wants to make sure it never even existed in the first place.
  • The Dark Judges of Judge Dredd have a philosophy that basically boils down to this. Undead psychopaths devoted to Law, they figure that since only the living commit crimes, life itself should be made a crime that is punishable by death. They slaughtered the entire population of their world, then found themselves stuck, as they hadn't any form of space travel, making them come off more as Kill All Humans in practice.
  • Ujo Daja is a dark sorcerer from the Frazettaverse. He planned to free the Oblivion God "Mirahan" by sacrificing a half-breed human/demon and begin the end of everything. When confronted by his former teacher Dreovid, he says it's better to have "cool darkness than searing light". In the end it was revealed that Ujo was the half-breed and son of Mirahan. The Oblivion God swapped his throne of netherhell with Ujo and we watch him rest in peace.
  • John "Grimjack" Gaunt walks away from Heaven to save his friends. The consequences were that he was denied any afterlife and was doomed to be reborn remembering his memories for all eternity. His soul was bound to the pan dimensional city known as Cynosure. Cynosure was build to harvest the good and evil energies of an entombed supreme being (firstborn of the multiverse) until it was ready to repeat the process of birthing the multiverse in an unending cycle. Grimjack's latest incarnation travels back in time to warn himself of the doom and to break it he has to end the multiverse by destroying Cynosure. Future Grimjack succeeds in manipulating present John in freeing the Supreme being from his sleep. In Grimjack's second incarnation we see the Supreme being walking around in mortal form giving the demons the chance to end his life and let the multiverse die in entropy. They fail. We never see if future Grimjack succeeds because the series ended with the death of the second incarnation.
    • The demons created to build Cynosure prefer entropy. They did not see the point of constant rebirths so they betrayed their maker.
  • The Cult Of The Unwritten Book from Doom Patrol seek to summon The Anti-God and reverse creation by "reading" The Word Made Flesh.
  • Doomsday from the DCU. The name says it all. He's also one of the most primitive examples, he's little more than a frightened but sadistic alien man-child who wants to kill everything that might be a threat to him. And he thinks everything is a threat.
  • Maelstrom from the Marvel universe. He's the champion of Oblivion and constantly schemes to destroy everything.
  • Amodeus Q. Termineus from the Marvel universe sought the shattered fragments of the Nexus of all Realities. With them in possession he could destroy the Multiverse.
  • The Cult of Entropy seeks to speed up the destruction of the Marvel Universe/Multiverse.
  • According to some versions of the character (particularly the MAX universe), if The Punisher were given enough time and ammo he would literally kill every person on earth.

Fan Works[edit | hide]

Film[edit | hide]

  • In Dogma, the fallen angel Azrael tries to engineer the destruction of reality, because he figures non-existence will beat eternity in hell. By the end of the film, Bartleby figures out Azrael's plan, but decides to go along with it anyway in order to get revenge on God and humanity.
  • In The Matrix sequels, Smith, corrupted into a virus after his first fight with Neo, has gone rogue and now considers both the machines and humans as equally flawed and deserving of extinction. Whereas he originally just wanted to destroy Zion, his new goal is to infect and destroy everything, which would also destroy him.
    • Although the sequels did have him wanting to destroy the Matrix, and most likely the machines, the original film did briefly imply that Smith hated the Matrix as much, if not even moreso, as he hates humans, and that he also hates the matrix just as much as the Redpills hate it, so it is very likely that he did have plans during even the original film to eliminate the Matrix, and Neo defeating him only gave him the capability to act upon this desire.
  • Although the Earth and Federation have faced plenty of Earth Shattering Kabooms through the Star Trek movies, the villain closest to being an Omnicidal Maniac is Nero from the 2009 film: driven insane by grief over the destruction of his homeworld, he has no plans for galactic conquest or delusions of godhood. His only remaining purpose in life is to destroy each and every planet in the Federation.
  • Thanos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a semi-Omnicidal Maniac. Convinced that the sapient population of the Universe will inevitably exhaust its resources, he is collecting the Infinity Stones with the explicit goal of killing exactly half of the population of the Universe. (He was doing this before he thought to collect the stones, only on a retail basis, one planet at a time. With the stones he can do the entire Universe at once.) The "maniac" part includes enough crazy that he thinks a) the survivors will thank him, b) that the freed resources will be equitably distributed between the survivors with no hoarding or extortion, and c) the populations will not just continue to grow until they've reached the same point again sometime in the future.

Literature[edit | hide]

  • In Peter David's Star Trek novel Q-Squared, Trelane becomes an Omnicidal Maniac who wants to wipe out all of creation. But he wants to practice, so he starts by smooshing a "mere" three adjacent universes together into a chaotic orgy of violence and death. While playing the harpsichord.
  • The clone of Victor Helios (Doctor Frankenstein) from Dean Koontz Lost Souls wants to feed all humanity to some nanite colonies he created. After all of humanity is dead he will die himself to reverse Genesis.
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine trilogy Star Trek: Millennium, the Grigari (who scare the Borg) worship an offshoot of the Pah-Wraiths, who want to reduce the physical universe—including all of history, not just the present—to a timeless, spaceless mathematical abstraction. They succeed.
  • Michael Swanwick's two parallel novels The Iron Dragon's Daughter and Jack Faust are both devoted to showing how an initially fairly sympathetic character can turn into one of these. In both books, it roughly boils down to living in a Crapsack World and being cruelly manipulated by a covert Evil Mentor.
  • In Runemarks, the Whisperer seeks to start the End of Everything so that it can create a new world where it is in supreme control of everything, a desire stemming from being used as, essentially, a Magic 8-Ball by the Norse gods.
  • The eponymous machines of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series will stop at nothing less than the total eradication of all life. Note that this was what they were programmed to do (though this was supposed to be targeted only at a certain enemy star empire), so they don't exactly fit the mold—but whoever programmed them to do it probably did.
  • In David Eddings' The Redemption of Althalus, the god of destruction, Daeva, wants to undo all creation. Interestingly, Daeva was originally a good god, or at least neutral, and had the job of destroying things that were no longer necessary so that creation wouldn't become overpopulated. However, only destroying things meant that Daeva felt nothing but emptiness, whereas his brother Deiwos and sister Dweia got to feel the joy and love of creation respectively. Daeva tried to find a friend in Ghend but if anything, Ghend's company was what finally tipped him over the edge into destroying everything so everyone would feel the same nothingness that he feels, as well as breaking the power of Deiwos and Dweia.
  • The Storm King of Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series hovers on the border between Omnicidal Maniac and Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds. Presented initially as an implacable force of destruction waiting to be released on an unsuspecting world, it's later revealed that he got that way by evolving from The Messiah through Knight Templar to Well-Intentioned Extremist, all in an effort to save his people and return them to greatness. By the end, he's completely insane and dedicated to destroying all living things, but it's his very Woobiedom that provides the key to his defeat.
  • Hactar, from Life The Universe And Everything, is an ancient, sentient computer that was ordered to design the "Ultimate Weapon", and pulverized for disobeying that command (it couldn't conceive of any possible scenario where destroying the universe would be a preferable option). Set adrift as an interstellar cloud of still barely-functioning dust, Hactar spends the next several billion years manipulating another planet's inhabitants into reaching the same xenophobic cultural state as its creators, and then reinventing and triggering the same superweapon in order to put an end to all of existence. Hactar explains its motives as mostly simply fulfilling its original function, but partly to take revenge on the universe for the eons of suffering it has endured as a result of its original decision.
  • The Xul from the Heritage/Legacy/Inheritance trilogies by Ian S. Douglas. They wipe out every race that is more advanced than the bronze age because they could be a threat.
  • Ruin, Big Bad of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy, is basically Omnicidal Mania incarnate. It was one of the two primal gods (its counterpart was Preservation), who combined their powers to create the world- something to which Ruin agreed only on the condition that it would get to destroy said world someday. To be fair, one can't really hold this against Ruin, as it's the literal god of destruction and is just doing its job, but still the thing seems incapable of recognizing that unchecked destruction is bad (or maybe it does recognize it, but because of what it is it is incapable of caring).
  • The main villain of The Dark Tower series. The Crimson King wants to undo all of creation and plunge every universe that has ever existed back into a primordial soup of space-time dis-continuum. The reason: that primordial soup, which was pretty much pure magical energy, was what the Crimson King lived in before reality came about, and he wants to go back to living in the primordial soup.
  • The Speaking Gun, from the Nightside series, is an organic sentient weapon that's capable of annihilating all of creation. And, boy oh boy, does it ever want to destroy it all, if only it could pull its own trigger....
  • Morgoth of The Silmarillion is called "the Dark Enemy of the World" for a reason - his ultimate goal is simply to totally destroy the Earth, reducing it to the original primordial void. This mad scheme is in contrast to his apprentice Sauron (later the Big Bad of The Lord of the Rings) whose original motivation was to impose order and structure upon what he saw as a chaotic and disordered world.
    • Though under Morgoth's influence, Sauron was infected with some seeds of the same madness. As JRRT notes at one point, rebellion against the Creator leads naturally toward nihilism. Ironically, Morgoth has a goal that simply can not be achieved, the universe can only be changed, not unmade, by any power less than God. JRRT noted that Morgorth, if he could, would grind the universe to dust, and then hate the dust because it was made by Eru (God), but the dust would still exist, frustrating Morgoth...and even then the world could in theory by restored by the other Valar.
  • Chaos from the Dragonlance series of novels wants to destroy Krynn, and probably the rest of the universe as well. Chaos is the wellspring from which everything came, and also from which everything will return, the Aspect of Chaos that emerged in Dragons of Summer Flame just wanted to hasten the process. The deity Morgion also appears to have some Omnicidal Maniac tendencies, as he is the god of Madness and Disease. One of his lines in a novel is I am Morgion...I am the end of all things.
  • In the second two books of the Old Kingdom trilogy Orannis the Destroyer is released and wants to, well, destroy pretty much everything.
  • In John C. Wright's Titans of Chaos, Hermes reveals that he wants to destroy the universe. He promises to make it all better afterwards.
  • Wyrm, the enormous serpent who is the Big Bad of The Book of the Dun Cow, plans to burst out of the earth and destroy everything in the universe. It is even explicitly stated that he is capable of killing angels if he wants to.
  • "The Great Lord of the Dark" from the Wheel of Time series: while most of his followers believe that after he his freed and remakes the world they will rule beneath him, a recent book showed that Moridin/Ishmael claims that they are all fools because when The Dark One is freed he will simply destroy everything, including his own worshipers.
    • Moridin expresses that he's quite alright with this scenario, too, as he is quite sick of the cyclic nature of time. This may qualify as a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, seeing as how he'll cease to exist too and is very much aware of this. In fact, it's a good portion of why he keeps working with The Dark One.
  • The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia is pretty nasty, but you don't know how utterly evil she actually is until the Prequel The Magician's Nephew. She used the Deplorable Word to wipe out every single life form in her universe except herself, then preserved herself until someone could free her. When she left her universe, it apparently vanished from existence, as the last living organism was now gone.
  • The unnamed, possibly inhuman narrator of the poem cycle "I Have A Special Plan For This World" by Thomas Ligotti.
  • Skulduggery Pleasant gives us Lord Vile and Darquesse. The need to kill everything also extends to each other. Technically they are both the Super-Powered Evil Side of our heroes, Valkyrie and Skulduggery. It gets awkward.
  • Vilkas of Tales of Kolmar is a heroic mage with immense power that he never uses more than a trace of. This is because he often has dreams he think will come true - that one day he will have to use his full potential, and at that point it goes one of two ways. Either he will become a Sky God of purest benevolence, helping everyone and guiding the world to an age of utter prosperity, or a demon will attack him and he will kill it with a flick of his power. Then he will become what he calls "The Death Of The World" and kill every living thing on Kolmar and in the Hells, finishing by reaching out and crushing the sun in his hand. Either way it feels fantastic, and he's laughing the whole time. Of course he does have to call on that potential and starts well on his way to being the Death Of The World before someone snaps him out of it. He hates them for that since it means the pure delight of genocide suddenly sours, but gets over it eventually and just becomes a strong but unspectacular healer-mage.

Live Action TV[edit | hide]

  • Azkadellia from Tin Man creates a device which the Mystic Man states will bring about "the complete destruction of the OZ." The device is designed to fix the two moons of the OZ in a permanent solar eclipse which as any scientist will tell you, will ultimately result in the destruction of all life.
    • Correction, there is only one moon, but there are two suns. The whole point is that there is an extremely rare double-eclipse happening (i.e. both suns "hiding" behind the moon), which Azkadellia plans to lock into place.
  • Early Power Rangers villains were always talking about conquering or destroying the world, the same villain going from one to the other and back frequently. From season five onward, villains are more certain about what it is they're after.
  • Doctor Who has plenty of these, with the trope perfected in Sutekh from "Pyramids of Mars", who wants to destroy all life in the universe.


    • The Doctor Who New Series "perfected trope" can be found in Fourth Season episode "Journey's End", where Old Series villain Davros has taken Dalek xenophobia to its extreme by creating a "Reality Bomb" which will annihilate reality.
    • In the old series, Davros never quite attempted this, but conversations between him and the Doctor suggested he would if he had the power - simply because he could. Which pretty much sums up why he'd want to destroy all of reality in Series 4 - because he can. Should be noted that though the Daleks will survive, he takes it for granted that they eventually will kill him too once the bomb has done it's job.
      • More than just suggested; in the episode where Davros was introduced, the Doctor asked him, "If you created a virus that, if released, would destroy all other life in the universe, would you release it?" After talking a bit about the incredible power he would hold, Davros concluded that if he created such a virus, yes, he would release it.
      • Arguably, Davros was motivated all along by a subconscious death wish...and his ego is big enough to want to take all the rest of us with him.
    • And Fenric, don't forget him.
    • Or the Daleks, Davros' omnicidal mutant creations and the Doctor's collective archenemy. Their entire purpose of being is to eliminate everything in the universe, and on occasion the multiverse, that is "non-Dalek" on the basis of their own supposed genetic superiority. Davros learnt the hard way that this logically includes him as well.
    • Or Omega, especially after his Villainous Breakdown in "The Three Doctors".
    • The latest of these appears to be the religion known as the Silence, who not only wanted to kill everything, but make it so that nothing had ever existed. Why is currently unknown.
      • The season finale suggested that they may have the opposite motive, attempting to kill the Doctor in the hope of averting a prophecy rather than bringing it about. Then again, they may be attempting to kill everyone, believing the prophecy to be worse than that.

Dorium Maldovar: When no living creature may speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked. A question that must never, EVER, be answered.

  • Anubis in Stargate SG-1. While most Goa'uld we meet are Evil Overlords, this guy stands out. He doesn't want to conquer the entire galaxy, he wants to wipe out all life in it. And then repopulate it with lifeforms of his design, but that's an academic distinction to anyone that's not Anubis.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Angelus and Drusilla in the season two finale. This actually forces Spike (who was years away from his chip, and even further away from turning good for real) to work with Buffy to stop them.
    • Willow in the series six finale, once she decides the world's just not worth living in.
  • In Angel, there's The Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart. While the Partners have grown powerful by feeding on humanity's potential for evil, they ultimately want to bring about the Apocalypse. They keep Angel around because he is destined to help make it happen.
  • The Cylon Cavil in Battlestar Galactica is practically one of these. He's tried to kill off all of humanity (with an over 99.9% success rate) and most of his own race (five out of eight models, succeeding with at least one of them).
  • The Bio-Vizier Mantrid in Lexx went from a garden-variety psychopath to a complete nihilist who managed to destroy the 'Light' Universe with his Drone Arms, which would obliterate a planet and use the materials to make new Drone Arms. They were capable of moving faster than light (considerably so), and he was eventually tricked (AFTER they had consumed the 'Light' universe) into bringing them too close together, where their collective gravity ended up collapsing into a 'Big Crunch', the opposite of a Big Bang. Of course, the so-called "Heroes" were shunted into the 'Dark' universe by the forces of the collapse.
  • In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dukat, as the avatar of the Pah Wraiths in the series' Grand Finale, gloatingly announces his long-term plans to Sisko: he and the Pah Wraiths intend to create a universe of fire, purging all life and destroying everything. He thankfully doesn't get any further than bragging about it.
    • In the Star Trek: Millennium novels, Weyoun becomes host to a Pah-Wraith after the creation of the red wormhole. The Pah-Wraiths' eventual goal is to have the blue and the red wormholes open in immediate proximity to one another, resulting in an epic battle between the Prophets and the Pah-Wraiths. However, the merging of the wormholes will result in a Warp 10 shockwave that will obliterate everything in its path. Given that Warp 10 means "simultaneously everywhere in the universe", the shockwave will result in the end of everything. Luckily, the Prophets win the battle and restore everything to the way it was.
  • Brainiac in Smallville is a Misanthrope Supreme who believes that Humans Are Bastards and thusly, need to die. Originally created to serve as The Dragon to General Zod, Brainiac goes rogue after the General's defeat and sets out to kill everybody on earth through any means necessary. He implies that once earth is dead he intends to repeat the process on the next planet he arrives on.
  • The Thirdspace Aliens from Babylon 5, evil, psychotic, telepathic creatures powerful enough to frighten the damn Vorlons, are described as "anti-life itself" hellbent on destroying everything in both their universe AND our universe.

Mythology and Religion.[edit | hide]

  • Egyptian Mythology had two examples. One was Sekhmet, a Blood Knight who may be Hathor's Super-Powered Evil Side, that is known to regard everything as an enemy. The other was Big Bad Apep/Apophis, the Anthropomorphic Personification of chaos, darkness and all the world's ills. Prior to the demonisation of Set/Sutekh, this was the God of Evil, who constantly tried to devour Ra(aka the sun), which would end the world. People prayed against this being.
  • Norse Mythology has most of the frost giants, as well as Jormungandr and Fenrir head in this direction during Ragnarok. Skoll and Hati, the wolves who seek to devour the sun and the moon are also examples. The two worst however, are Surtr, King of the Fire Giants and Lord of Muspelheim, and Nidhoggr. Surtr will lead the sons of Muspel against the Aesir at Ragnarok, slay Frey (who by this point is one of the few gods still standing), slaughter the remaining Aesir, and then set the world itself ablaze. Nidhoggr, in the meantime, is a massive and utterly evil dragon who sits at the roots of Yggdrasil and tries to bring the entirety of creation down into oblivion.
  • The Nuckelavee of Orcadian mythology is a truly monstrous example of The Fair Folk. Resembling a skinless rider fused to the back of his monstrous horse, it rises from the sea to spread disease among crops, livestock and people.

Tabletop Games[edit | hide]

  • In Magic: The Gathering, there are the Wrath effect spells, which pretty much destroy everyone, allies included. Most of these are White, and some White aligned antagonists in the storyline have exhibited this type of tendencies.
  • In Gamma World, the Cryptic Alliance (Basically a massive semi-secret organization) known as the Red Death wants to do this. In earlier editions it was implied that the organization was formed by hideously evil aliens to further divide the inhabitants of Earth so that they could come in and take over. In later editions, it is implied that it formed because of people snapping due to the crapsack nature of the post-apocalyptic Earth. Oh, and as a final note, in all editions it's said to be nigh impossible to wipe out. For, no matter how many of their cells you destroy, a new one will always spring up
  • The Excrucians in Nobilis, for reasons best known to themselves.
  • The Deathlords and their servants, the Abyssal Exalted, from Exalted fit this trope to a T. The Deathlords seek revenge on a world that betrayed them by feeding it to Oblivion, and many of the Abyssals believe that they're delivering the blessed perfection of the grave to a suffering world. This has been backed up mechanically by Second Edition rules; every Abyssal Charm (magic power) is rooted at destroying something, be it a life or a loyalty.
    • The Neverborn are the ghosts of fundamental entities who cannot be separated from existence, whose death messed up the cycle of reincarnation and created the Underworld and who want to destroy the universe, apparently so that they can finally finish dying.
    • Large factions of The Fair Folk want to destroy the universe, either because the mere existence of a world with rules and logic limits and disgusts them, or because it is dramatically appropriate for a scary monster and they like looking like scary monsters (or rapturously beautiful Whore-Madonnas or both).
  • The demons of the Abyss from the Dungeons & Dragons settings. They are believed to be the will of the Abyss itself, which is of course endless raw chaos, distilled into sentient and individual form, with the ultimate goal of eradicating everything other than themselves. Assuming they succeed, as Chaotic Evil they'll then turn on each other, and when they are all destroyed, the multiverse will be silent once again. The exception is Graz'zt, who as befitting the Dark Prince of Deception, prefers that the world remain around for him to rule.
    • While in 3rd and earlier editions this might be an example of Chaotic Stupid, in 4th it's their defining characteristic.
      • And then there's Tharizdun from the Greyhawk setting whose goal is the destruction of all existence finishing with himself. It took the combined efforts of all the other gods, good and evil, just to imprison him. His credentials grew in 4th Edition, where he actually created the Abyss by throwing a shard of pure Black Magic into the Elemental Chaos.
      • Thanatos, supreme Immortal of Entropy, supposedly has similar plans for the Mystara cosmology, although given his egotism and cowardice, it's questionable whether he'd ultimately include himself on the To-Be-Annihilated list.
    • The book Elder Evils is full of Eldritch Abominations who would very much like to destroy the world/worlds/universe/multiverse.
    • Demons are played differently in Pathfinder—while they love wanton murder and destruction, they don't want to destroy everything because then they'd have no more fun. Instead, the cessation of all life is the goal of the Neutral Evil daemons, who know nothing but hatred for everything, themselves included, and derive pleasure from nothing. To compare the two, whereas a demon would rape you to death for its own enjoyment, a daemon would quickly and efficiently kill you just to snuff you out.
      • The Asuras are a minor type of Lawful Evil fiends who want to destroy all of divine creation as they are "errors" of the gods, while the Qlippoth want to eradicate all sentient live so no sinful souls arrive in the Abyss to form Demons, so the Qlippoth can reclaim it for them again.
      • Then there is Rovagug, who is very similar to Thuriszdun above, but imprisoned in the core of Golarion (the setting's main planet) insted of outside the universe and is still capable of releasing devasting monsters known as Spawns of Rovagug, the most well known being the Tarrasque.
      • And finally, there are the not actually evil Proteans, who want to destroy everything so they can build it anew.
  • In the New World of Darkness, while many beings are malevolent and highly destructive, the most noteworthy are from Mage: The Awakening: the Scelesti (mages who serve the abhorrent Abyss, and seek to allow its anti-reality to seep into this world in order to bring it to an end) and the Cult of the Doomsday Clock (a group of mages who believe that the best way to free the souls of humanity is to destroy all of time and history, using their evil clocks, and by becoming living time paradoxes. They also (unknowingly) serve the Abyss).
    • From the old WoD, there's the Wyrm, the cosmic principle of Destruction, which has found itself trapped in the web of reality, and seeks to destroy everything so it will be free. Also of note are the Underworld's Spectres, who want to drag everything down with them into Oblivion. And the Mages have the Nephandi, who want to either destroy our world, period, or destroy our world so that creatures from beyond can replace it.
  • One Paranoia mission involves a NPC who's decided that pretty much everyone else is a traitor (okay, he's right about this part) and needs to be killed, to the point that he would consider destroying all of Alpha Complex (minus him and a hundred-odd loyalists in a bunker) a viable option. Naturally, the PCs encounter an Old Reckoning bomb capable of doing exactly that, and have to figure out a way to keep it away from him.
  • Mr. LeThuy from Over the Edge. He's a nihilist secretly amassing a cult using his charisma. Over time, the members turn into perfect clones of Mr. LeThuy, body, mind and soul. They want a universe where everyone is either dead or another clone, at which point they will destroy the universe.
  • In the third edition of Warhammer 40,000, the Necrons were driven by an insatiable need to destroy everything alive and/or sentient (it was an academic difference since nobody could ask them which of the two it was), rendering the universe quiet and uninhabited except for themselves. As of their latest codex this has shifted into turning them into Tomb Kings In Space, making them no longer an example.

Necron Pariah: There is an alternative (to life). There exists a state in which all conflict is resolved and all is cold and silent. There are no wants, no wars, no squabbles. You may call this state death if you wish, but that is a misnomer. Death is but the ending of life, and that is only a means to an end. That end is purity, the time when all is still and unchanging.

  • This is the true nature of the Army of the Expeditionary Force, from the aptly named 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars.

Video Games[edit | hide]

  • In what may very well be the only JRPG example of a hero deconstructing this trope, Tales of Graces sees [[spoiler:Lambda attempt to invoke this because Humans Are Bastards. What he doesn't count on, however, is Asbel being smarter than he looks. Asbel annihilates the cliche by pointing out how the destruction of all life accomplishes nothing, doesn't solve any of the issues that people have and doesn't even benefit the one who enacts it in any way (as they will literally be the only being left alive... and even then, not all the time). This complete obliteration of Lambda's goal is what inspires him to accept Asbel's offer of letting the world live and allowing Asbel to show him that Humans Are Special.
  • Armored Core: for Answer has Old King. And you when siding with him.
  • The main villains of Bayonetta are this, as they all want to ressurect Jubileus, who wants to end the current state of existence.
  • Ancient Domains of Mystery: The goal of the Chaos beings, who invade the realm from another dimension. Also, it is possible for the player to defeat the Chaos God, take his place, and do it by himself.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Clearly, any demon trapped inside a mask who wants to completely destroy the world by crashing the moon into the earth can't be sane.
    • "I...I shall consume. Consume... Consume everything."
    • In the Oracle games, Ganon was resurrected into this instead of his usual intelligent self due to an improper sacrifice of his evil surrogate mothers.
  • Final Fantasy is big into this. In order:
    • Chaos, who came into existence thanks to the Fiends, who were already destroying the world to begin with.
    • Xande is pissed about being made mortal and wants to put everything into suspended animation, forever. Cloud of Darkness, a personification of the Void wants to reduce everything in both worlds to nothingness.
    • Zemus wants to exterminate all human life on Earth so that he (and the other Lunarians, maybe) can rule. Zeromus is just evil. Or something.
    • Exdeath is an arbormorphic personification of evil. Neo Exdeath, a personification of the Void wants to reduce everything (including itself) to nothing... wait...
      • It should be noted that this was touched upon (vaguely) in Dissidia Final Fantasy. Cloud of Darkness's "Void" is the destruction of everything, leaving nothing. Exdeath's "Void" is the return of everything to its original state, the realm of the Void. Cloud = Empty universes (AH Class X5), Exdeath = No universes (AH Class Z).
    • Kefka, who is already quite insane but just got worse due to his acquired power from the Statues, and when the Heroes reveal that despite the fact that he has caused The End of the World as We Know It, they still harbour hopes for the future, he decides to destroy reality and "create a monument to nonexistence."
      • His pre-fight quote against Exdeath in Dissidia: "Destruction without death? BORING!"
    • Final Fantasy VII has one, and surprisingly, its not the Big Bad Sephiroth, but rather, his father, Professor Hojo. Aside from the fact that he was the one who created Sephiroth in the first place (both naturally, and artifically, due to being his birth father and injecting him with Jenova's cells while he was still a fetus, respectively), he also was heavily implied, if not outright stated, to have manipulated Sephiroth into doing this course of action, both before and during the events of the game, and if the novellas are anything to go by, he even possessed Sephiroth afterwards, all for the sake of seeing his research prove successful, which is implied to be the total destruction of the planet, or at least severely damage it. It's not even the last time he attempts to do this, either, as Dirge of Cerberus revealed that he also ended up possessing Weiss the Immaculate's body with the intention of tricking the Omega WEAPON, a WEAPON that activates when the end of the world arrives and leaves the planet, into awakening, and it is heavily implied that destroying the world was indeed his intention that time as well.
    • Ultimecia wants to compress time into a Timey-Wimey Ball so she can recreate the entire universe because she's pissed off about centuries of oppression against her kind.
      • Even though she has a Freudian Excuse it is hardly valid, since these centuries of oppression were really set off when she went back to the time of the story, and pissed everyone off.
    • Kuja doesn't like the idea of the universe outliving him.
    • Seymour thinks that life is nothing but suffering, and that the only way of escaping Sin, the cause of it is that everyone should die.
    • Shuyin was subjected to Mind Rape for a thousand years, so he really doesn't know why he's trying to kill the world, only that it makes him feel better.
    • Kam'lanaut and Eald'narche trying to "Open the Gates to Paradise". Which would just have the side effect of killing every non-avatar and non-Zilart on Vana'diel. Promathia wants to release the Emptiness on Vana'diel killing everything so he can finally die.
    • Galeth wants to destroy all life on Cocoon and Orphan, the fal'Cie who rules over it. Orphan himself just wants to destroy everything.
    • Chaos (again) chooses to destroy the world and himself, after finding that a world without Cosmos was a much emptier existence than he thought it would be.
      • Now that we think about it, does Square Enix actually know any other kind of villain?
      • The Emperor just wants to rule everything, not destroy it—a motivation shared with pre-Disc 4 Kuja and those poor, outclassed schmucks Emperor Gestahl and the Shinra Corporation execs.
      • Sephiroth didn't want to destroy the world, only to become a god. He clearly does not fit the onmicidal maniac. (Contrast to, say, Zemus, who wanted to mass genocide so his own people could take a world for their own.)
        • Dissidia actually has the "take over the world" villains conspiring against the "destroy the world" villains on their team.
      • Well, Vayne Solidor wanted to rule the world as the next Dynast-King with the power of artificial Nethicite. Cid pretty much did it all For Science!. Venat wanted to free mortals from the yoke of her fellow Occuria, a goal shared by the other two. The games set in Ivalice in general tend to have villains with goals other than killing everything.
      • The Shadowlord doesn't want to destroy the world, just kill all of the human races. Razfahd just wants to bring about Ragnarok, it won't kill everyone on the planet, just the continent not that he knows it. Lady Lilith doesn't want to destroy the world, she just wants to prevent history from changing so that her timeline will stay a Crapsack World Grand Vizier Rhazfhad is also a glaring aversion, being tired of the constant war the Aht Urgan find themselves involved in and wanting to unleash Alexander to help bring a definitive end to the Forever War. It's really too bad that Light Is Not Good is very much in effect with Alexander...
      • The Enix side of the marriage has mostly villains that want to cause prolonged suffering For the Evulz, rather than active destruction. Sometimes they even have a hell dimension of their own that they want to engulf the land of men and keep existing after!
  • Another Squeenix example: the Big Bad of the first Kingdom Hearts game wants The Heartless to destroy everything, since he believes darkness is the natural state of things. He first tries to accomplish this by gathering the seven Princesses and opening the Final Keyhole, and then by opening the Door to Darkness and unleashing hordes of them.
  • Deathborn of F-Zero wants to become a galaxy destroying god.Why? For the Evulz
  • Utsuho Reiuji from Touhou became one after gaining her powers (whether this is because she was tricked into godmodding or simply curious of what god-flesh tastes like is up for discussion). Thankfully, the heroines were able to confront her before she had a strong handle of her new powers.
  • Id from Xenogears wants to basically kill everyone and everything, for rather vague reasons. Granted, he IS the embodiment of all hatred and suffering that Fei had mentally suppressed, but it doesn't change the fact that he finds little reason behind his slaughter other than it being fun.
  • The Destroyer from Romancing SaGa 3.
  • According to Kessler, The Beast from In Famous.
  • The Burning Legion in the Warcraft games has, as its goal, nothing less than the complete eradication of all life in the universe—and, according to the Backstory, has already destroyed several thousand planets by the time it reaches Azeroth.
    • Occasionally overlapping with the Burning Legion are the Voidwalkers, who are creatures of pure entropy who exist only to devour the physical world. One of their leaders, Dimensius, is responsible for destroying the Ethereals' homeworld. Players naturally get to punch him out.
    • Apparently the Twilight's Hammer cult is composed entirely of such maniacs. The ultimate goal of the cult is to bring about the end of Azeroth by any means necessary.
  • The Time Devourer from Chrono Cross is apparently Lavos (or one of his spawn) after being removed from time and getting pissed about how unfair life is. After all, he was just doing what he was meant to do. What right do cattle have to persecute or kill the farmer? So it's now going to eat all of time.
  • Marduk the plane-consuming demon from Sacrifice, whose mere presence on a plane of existence leads to its eventual decay and, ultimately, its complete destruction.

"Now open your eyes and see! I am no mere Marduk. My names are countless. My age beyond reckoning. I am the embodiment of all creation's ills, and my purpose is but a simple one: To annihilate all that is unworthy. All that is a reflection of myself."

  • Marvel vs. Capcom has the final bosses Onslaught, Abyss and Galactus
  • In Super Paper Mario, Big Bad Count Bleck doesn't just want to destroy the world, he wants to destroy the multiverse.
    • Dimentio, at least to a very narrowly smaller degree, qualifes as well, as he wanted to usurp Bleck and take the Chaos Heart to destroy most of the universe and then remake it. However, he then decides to go back to destroying existence after he was vanquished, even going as far as to leave a shadow of his power behind with the Chaos Heart so that it can last long enough to destroy everything.
  • The Shivans from the Descent: Freespace series are an entire race of Omnicidal Maniacs. They've managed to destroy The Ancients, a civilization that was way bigger and more advanced than the Terran and Vasudan races combined. In fact, they've been named after Shiva, "The Destroyer", because they never attempted to communicate and only seems to be interested in blowing up stuff that isn't Shivan. The first game had cutscenes which chronicle the rise and fall of the Ancients from the Ancients' perspective (complete with Ominous Latin Chanting), and they call them "The Destroyers". The cutscenes reveal that the Ancients figured out a way to defeat the Shivan menace, but it was too late. This Ancient information was later discovered by Vasudan scientists giving the Terrans and Vasudans just enough time to save their collective arses. But not before the Vasudan homeworld was completely leveled, killing four billion of them, and just right before the Shivans got to Earth. That's right, not one but TWO (!!) of the most advanced, space-faring races this side of the galaxy would have been wiped out by the Shivans, if it weren't for artifacts left from a very advanced civilization that they did wipe out.
    • Thirty-two years later in Freespace 2, the Shivans even manage to cause a star to supernova, in a system with billions of civilians in it. Granted, that time around killing non-Shivan stuff didn't seem to be their primary objective. They just killed everyone who got in their way. And to heck with collateral damage from the supernova.
    • In both games, there are speculations from all sides as to why the Shivans seem so hell-bent on killing everyone. The Ancients thought they deserved their fate, for subduing "lesser" civilizations in their conquest of the galaxy. A Terran voice at the end of the first game mentions Shivans as a protector, sort of immune system of the galaxy, wiping out any civilizations that discover subspace to prevent them from being a threat to the younger, less advanced ones. The rogue Admiral Bosch from Freespace 2 thinks humanity has no future with the Vasudans, we're talking about an alliance with the Shivans, man! Admiral Petrarch, your FS2 boss, thinks Shivans are like the Terrans, wandering the galaxy for a way back home (the subspace link to Earth was cut off when the SD Lucifer blew up in subspace in the first game). Nobody really knows though, and the Shivans are unique in that they're a mystery race that actually becomes more mysterious as the series progressed. Nobody will ever know, either, space sims are dead and the original publisher is bankrupt.
  • Gig from Soul Nomad and The World Eaters fits this trope to a T... And he's on your side.
    • There's also Revya him/herself in the Demon Path, who ends up unmaking existence in the 'bad' ending.
  • Star Control 2: "We are the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah. We cleanse our destiny. You will soon die. Make whatever rituals are necessary for your species."
    • The Kohr-Ah are an interesting take on the concept: they do not, believe it or not, hate other species, no do they find other species disgusting. No, their whole motivation for being Omnicidal Maniacs is they're terrified of other species... or, more specifically, terrified of another species growing powerful enough to enslave them. This stems from the horrific mind-controlled enslavement their race suffered at the hands of the Dnyarri. They see wiping out all other forms of life as the safest way to ensure this never happens again. Indeed, if you can get them to talk to you for a while instead of attacking, they're remarkably pleasant and polite... as pleasant a conversationalist as a giant black centipede in a death-dealing war machine can be, anyway.
  • Prince Luca Blight from Suikoden II is a combination of this trope and Ax Crazy. Needless to say, he's not a very pleasant guy...
  • Dorian General Grants, the Big Bad of Tales of the Abyss, sought to annihilate the entire surface of the planet the game's set in, down to the last molecule, and build a new world upon it from scratch.
  • After Galcian dies in Skies of Arcadia, Ramirez goes insane and shoots for the destruction of the entire world, stating that it is no longer worthy of living. He even gives up his life to fuse with the Ancient Superweapon for Unlimited Power to destroy. In doing so, he mirrors the words of the Silvite Elders, who had the same goal but lacked the means.
  • The Big Bad of Live a Live, Demon King Odio, is a great example. This holds true to various degrees in all of the chapters of the game, especially the medieval chapter, which doubles as his Start of Darkness.
  • Mortimer McMire from the Commander Keen games. In the first game trilogy he attempts to destroy Earth because he considers the human race Too Dumb to Live. After that fails he decides to blow up the whole galaxy instead. And then it turns out that the galaxy destroying scheme was there to distract the hero, and his true goal is nothing less than the destruction of the entire universe! Sadly the next game was never made.
  • The Void from the EverQuest universe and Big Bad of EverQuest II are a whole dimension's worth of these, by virtue of being the anthropomorphic embodiment of nothingness from before the dawn of creation. They are credited with the destruction of at least five other worlds prior to targeting Norrath and one alternate future shown in the bad ending of a mini-game scenario shows that they are more than capable of wiping Norrath from existence too should its denizens falter in their defense.
  • Mastermind World Conqueror puts you in the role of The Mastermind, whose goal is to destroy the earth. He borders along Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds due to the fact that he equates destroying as conquering.
  • The Covenant in the Halo series are a doomsday cult led by omnicidal maniacs, the Prophets. They glass every planet they take after plundering it for Forerunner artifacts, and try to activate the eponymous Doomsday Devices to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, believing it will lead them to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
    • Turns out the prophets knew the halo array's true purpose; though whether they accepted the truth (Mercy), denied it (regret), or used it to their own purposes (truth) varied from prophet from prophet, and it's still debated among the portion of the fanbase that reads the books.
  • Impossible Mission: Professor Elvin Atombender, a Mad Scientist who is attempting to hack the world's nuclear missile codes and destroy the planet.
  • The Cosmic Horror that is the W'rkncacnter in the Marathon series.
  • In Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, Team Galactic Boss Cyrus wants to use the time-and-space bending powers of Dialga and Palkia to destroy the current world and build a new one in his image.
    • Of course, "in his image" here means "without any emotion whatsoever". All things considered, such a world would be effectively destroyed. After all, without emotion, who would care enough about the world to successfully maintain it?
      • Emotion and Willpower are two different things, and DPPt establishes this as well. One would assume that his prospective population would simply see it as a duty without attachment.
    • Pokémon Red and Blue has Gyarados, a flying sea serpent that once it is enraged, it will burn everything down in sight until the city's destroyed.
    • Pokémon Black and White gives us Hydreigon, a Dark/Dragon hydra that destroys and devours everything in sight.
  • Darkrai from the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games.
  • The planet Meteo from Meteos is a gargantuan malevolent eye that wants to destroy everything in the universe via the endless hordes of meteors he spawns.
  • In House of the Dead, final boss Magician's first words are "Who are you? Nobody gives me instructions. I shall destroy everything." In House of the Dead 3, final boss Wheel of Fate opens the fight with "I will destroy everything. And resurrect everything." They sound the same for good reason, as the Wheel of Fate is none other than Dr. Curien, Magician's creator.
  • Lord Ghadius of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. His quote on the quote page is rather chilling.
  • Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedra Prince of Destruction of The Elder Scrolls verse.
    • The long-term plan of the Thalmor is to erase Talos, then the idea of Men, then the Mundus itself from existence in some plot to return to pre-creation "divinity".
  • Porky in Mother 3. He wants to destroy the entire world, because he's gone even more insane as a result of the Time Abyss he went through, and that still nobody loves him. Slightly different from the usual in that the world HAS already been destroyed - perhaps even by Porky - and that these people are the last remaining survivors.
  • Requiem from City of Heroes plans to turn Earth into a homeworld for the Nictus. While that may not be enough to qualify him as an Omnicidal Maniac, you discover an alternate dimension where Requiem's plans have succeeded, and he's gone insane from being the only human left and is trying to destroy the entire multiverse.
  • You know you're living in what amounts to a crapsack universe when these are the kinds of guys in charge. Such is the cosmos in Lunar Knights, with the Immortals running around with their Planet Eaters, taking over all sorts of worlds and/or destroying them to impose eternity upon the universe. Granted, Lucian and Aaron make life much easier for their world by completely erasing Polidori (he's an Immortal, in case you lost track), but if what Dumas said has any weight to it, there are going to be a lot more on their way...
  • The first Jak and Daxter game gave us Gol and Maia, who wanted to unleash Dark Eco upon the world. The third game's Big Bad also fits this trope, teaming up with the Dark Makers to wipe out the universe.
  • Dr. Weil/Dr. Vile of the Mega Man Zero series. This is the only kind of Big Bad you could find in the darkest period in Mega Man history. He starts off as an ambitious scientist, who sees Reploids as mere tools instead of actual sentient beings, and was getting tired of the constant Robot Wars that they wage against humankind. When a cure was finally made (the Mother Elf) to rid the world of The Virus that started the war in the first place, Weil Brainwashed it to become his tool for destruction, and initiated the Elf Wars, where, in the span of only 4 years, a large portion of the human and Reploid populations (60 and 90%, respectively) were wiped out. After that war, he is sentenced to immortality, where his consciousness was transferred to a self-regenerating armor, and then sent to forever exile on the barren wasteland that he created. When he comes back (which his "executioners" didn't count on) he makes sure that the humans suffer the same way he did, or worse. And when humans start to rebel and flee from his reign of terror, and his general turns on him, he becomes much worse, setting a Colony Drop to Area Zero, the very last hope of restoring the dying Earth, along with the human refugees settling there! Only through Zero's efforts was he stopped in time, and even then, Zero makes his last hurrah, and Weil, whilst defeated, remained alive thanks to his curse. And he still continues to plague the world over and over...
  • From Persona 3, both Shuji Ikutsuki and Takaya express an interest in destroying all life. The former seems to be under the impression that he will be spared and given the chance to remake the world in his image after Nyx destroys it, while the latter is already dying and just wants to see everything else go first.
  • Zone of the Enders has Nohman, who fancies himself as an agent of the universe's natural will towards its own destruction. Although he does seem to enjoy it just a little too much.
  • Dwarf Fortress-At the moment, pretty much all you can do in Adventure mode is wipe out all the world's sentient life (The only reason its not all life is because animals seem to respawn). For extra fun, people often try to kill everyone with a Self-Imposed Challenge or two.
  • Dark Star/Dark Bowser in the final stages of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story. He doesn't have a reason, he just wants to destroy the Mushroom Kingdom and likely universe because he's Made of Evil.
  • Both the Primagen and Oblivion in the Turok series.
  • The Darkspawn in Dragon Age were pretty much born to destroy the world of Thedas and everybody on it. The only reason they haven't is because they are also perfectly fine with attacking each other if there are no other victims. They are also compelled to seek out the Old Gods, an endeavor that usually takes centuries. Sadly, the Old Gods become tainted by the Darkspawn and become insane Archdemons that are also Omnicidal. The Archdemons are able to unite the Darkspawn and launch campaigns to wipe out Thedas known as Blights.
  • Kerghan from Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura combines this with Well-Intentioned Extremist, seeing death as the natural state of existence, life as an abomination, and his plan to bring about the extinction of all beings as an act of mercy.
    • The scary part? Kerghan is right.
  • Darth Nihilus of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. At some point in the past, he began consuming the lives of others for his nourishment by draining them through the Force. By the time the player character encounters him, he has become, essentially, the Anthropomorphic Personification of hunger, has already consumed all life on several inhabited planets, and, if left unchecked, will soon do the same to the entire galaxy...and beyond.
    • His master, Darth Traya, sought to kill the Force itself. In defiance of the trope, it turned out, once she realized that the Force does not equal life and that people would do just as well without it and the Jedi/Sith that depended on it.
  • Shadow from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise was this when he first appeared in Sonic Adventure 2. So was Gerald Robotnik.
  • Hot Coldman from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker pretty much turned into one when he activated Peace Walker to not only launch a nuke at Cuba [originally Mother Base, but it was changed by one of his men], but also to transmit the false data to NORAD, and made it quite clear that, even though he hopes that they don't launch due to his feeling that this will prove that humanity is weak willed, he did not care either way.
  • Big Bad Heiss from Radiant Historia. After seeing history full of warfare, suffering, and sacrifices (which only seem to delay the inevitable destruction) through the Black Chronicle, he decides that people do not deserve to exist and tries to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Blood Ravens Chapter Master and Big Bad Azariah Kyras in Dawn of War plans to slaughter ALL life in the galaxy in the name of Khorne.
  • Nemo becomes one after Artina's death in Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten.
  • In Sands of Destruction, there is a Committee whose goal it is to Destroy the World.
  • The Negativitron from Little Big Planet 2
  • Ledgermayne from Adventure Quest Worlds counts as both an Omnicidal Maniac and a Complete Monster, precisely, because it wants to end all life on Lore by sealing off all magic from it, knows said motivation of its own, and doesn't care if all life dies off if it succeeds.
    • Noxus also counts as one in the same game as well. The fact that he created Vordred with Sally's help was his first step towards turning all life on Lore undead. And that's not all - his attack on Shadowfall was also part of his plan to cause the end of the world by turning everyone undead.
  • In the opening of Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne Hikawa succeeds in bringing about the Conception that destroys the world (although the one who does the actual destruction is YHWH, who intends to have the world recreated afterwards through a Reason). He further intends to turn this new world into a World of Silence through the Reason of Shijima. In the True Demon ending the Demi-Fiend destroys all of Creation on Lucifer's orders.
  • After breaking his way out of Hell during the events of Sengoku Basara 3, this becomes Oda Nobunaga's new shtick. It should be noted that this is only a slight step-up in nastiness from how he was when alive.
  • In Fate/stay night, Angra Mainyu is a perfect Omnicidal Maniac, who took on the Servant form of Avenger in the third war. What's that, Avenger died and got absorbed into the omnipotent, wish-granting holy grail, giving him access to an unlimited source of miracles and magic, and the ability to swallow the planet in Black Mud whenever the Grail is used to perform a miracle? Well...fuck.
  • Overlord Zenon from Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories used to be an Omnicidal Maniac in his past, but has settled down with merely being an Evil Overlord ruling Veldime in his old age. Only he turns out to be a fake. When Laharl ends up unwittingly unleashing the true Zenon from her can, she immediately tries to go on an all-killing rampage until Adell and Rozalin manage to trap her again.
  • StarCraft II the Dark Voice plans to use the Zerg and the hybrids to wipe out the Terrans and the Protoss, and once they're done with that, the hybrids will kill all the Zerg so they can reshape the galaxy themselves.
  • Regulos in Rift is...well, imagine the bastard child of Unicron and 682 on steroids: He'd basically like nothing better than to grind the universe to dust and lap it up. In Terminus, he's strongly implied to succeed, although some Defiant Ascended go back in time and prevent it.
  • The Fallout series has a few notable examples, but the most obvious one has to be the Toaster in New Vegas, who also happens to be a Harmless Villain due to being, well, a toaster (which he himself claims is also his excuse for becoming so murderously insane in the first place). A far more serious example, and far more lethal, is Father Elijah.
  • The Reapers from Mass Effect. Every 50,000 years they wipe out all space-faring sentient life in the galaxy. They've done this countless times before the events of the first game. No clear motive for this has been established yet, but the most popular theory is that they need the genetic material and resources of sentient civilizations to build more of themselves. The third and final game may yet reveal more.
    • The third and final game has been released since the above Troper's paragraph. It turns out the Reapers' cycle is because the Catalyst, who controls the Reapers, believes that every time organics advance to a certain point, they will create a synthetic race, and the synthetic race will then always wipe out their creators. So the Reapers were invented as a solution; the Reapers harvest the organics in advance every time they create a synthetic race, so the organics can be "preserved" as Reapers themselves and give the next cycle of organics a chance to advance, hence the reason why organics are melted into paste to make Reapers. Once Shepard comes along with the Crucible, the Catalyst is given three more options instead of the Reapers' cycle: destroying the Reapers, controlling the Reapers, or fusing organics and synthetics into a single race making the cycle unnecessary.
  • Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat: Wants to merge all realms into Outworld and bring about Armageddon.
    • Onaga and Shinnok also follow this trope.
  • The Thalmor in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are attempting to kill off everyone else in Tamriel because they believe it will allow them to become gods.
  • The Xenon in the X-Universe started out as terraforming drones. After a badly coded software update, they went haywire and now attempt to terraform all biological life out of existence.
  • In Hyperdimension Neptunia, Arfoire seeks to destroy the entire world by spreading piracy throughout the entire world. From there, she can get her godhood back.

Web Comics[edit | hide]

  • In Kid Radd, the Pixel Art Comic masquerading as a Sprite Comic, a character attempts to destroy the entire Internet and the video game escapee characters that inhabit it after realizing that their kind was created entirely for killing—which is, you know, accurate—and losing hope of change when attempts at organized societies fall into war.
    • He also intended to destroy every computer hooked up to the internet, believing that it would destroy society (Not being sure whether humans were directly dependant on computers, or indirectly. However, what really takes the cake is The Seer who doesn't just want to destroy Earth, but realizes that with all the stars and planets out there, there HAS to be life on some of them. So that when he's done with Earth he will travel to one of those and kill everything there.
  • The Snarl from Order of the Stick.
    • Though recent events have opened up all kinds of questions about this.
    • Also, Xykon freely admits he might fall into this himself if he gets bored enough, though at the moment he's just a particularly Evil Overlord.
  • Eight Bit Theater's Black Mage. These days, every other strip at least mentions to his desire to kill everything in existence just for the heck of it. He may be slightly justified, as Word of God says the universe exists to make Black Mage's life a living hell. Then again, considering his intentions, the universe's tendency to blow up, smash, and/or inconvenience Black Mage at every opportunity may well simply be self-preservation. A real chicken-and-egg scenario...
  • Sluggy Freelance
    • Zorgon Gola from "A Very Big Bang" appears to be an Omnicidal Maniac, but this is actually part of a Batman Gambit to make himself a mere Galactic Conqueror. Unfortunately, Gola didn't count on the actions of three Spanners In The Works (our heroes) causing his Gambit to actually destroy the Punyverse.
    • Aylee's species are a Horde of Alien Locusts, but they take it so far as to destroy entire planets after consuming everything on them and before spreading out further on the remains, and at least one of their leaders, Leono, sees it as their species' religious duty (as opposed to just a way of feeding and multiplying) to do so. In his belief, the universe has spiralled out of the control of its Creator from the start, and She has sent this species to consume it.
  • The Pa'anuri from Schlock Mercenary... Possibly. 'Attempted destruction of all baryonic matter in the Milky Way' certainly qualifies them for the trope, motivated by baryonic matter people using transportation lethal to them.
  • As of the most recent updates, Homestuck has three of these. The Big Bad Jack Noir is thanks to the prototyping of Becquerel the First Guardian of Earth a Physical God who has already wiped out several worlds including two versions of his own homeworld and shows no signs of stopping. Eridan Ampora is a former Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who harbors dreams of genocide according to Word of God and he wants to join Jack. Finally there's Gamzee Makara, a sweetheart stoner turned Ax Crazy psychopath who wants to kill everyone for the sheer hell of it and is apparently more than powerful enough to do it.
  • A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe has the personified SINGULARITY, which has, in fact, already destroyed the entire universe--except that the Physical God protagonist has unconsciously created a house, light and air for himself in the resulting void, thus stymieing the natural cycle of destruction, leading the SINGULARITY to send minions to kill him in hopes of eventually destroying the impudent remains of reality.
  • Misty Snow/Mother Hydra in the Cthulhu Mythos saga Shadowgirls is a power-hungry sadist who doesn't care that raising her consort Dagon will unleash the imprisoned Old Ones and destroy all reality.
  • In Endstone, the God of the Eternity Spire wants to reboot reality.

Web Original[edit | hide]

  • SCP-682 is a strange, seemingly-reptilian "creature"—the term creature can be used only loosely, as it doesn't seem to be alive in the sense we usually think of it—that considers all living things disgusting sub-beings that must be destroyed. Well, all of them except Creepy Child SCP-053, which it was discovered to be oddly fond of. No-one's quite sure why it reacts differently to SCP-053—and they're too scared to take advantage of it, as keeping an Omnicidal Maniac prone to fits of Unstoppable Rage and a toddler that induces Unstoppable Rage, then instantly kills anyone that hurts it in the same room seems like a bad idea. His reasons for this hatred for all life aren't directly stated, but implied to be out of a really extreme version of Humans Through Alien Eyes. This has become sort of a running gag as the SCP Foundation are so afraid of 682 that they're constantly trying to find some way to kill him, no matter how insane.
    • Hmm... It might be because SCP-682 knows, somehow, that 053 can kill him, and thus resists her abilities to avoid death. He is Dangerously Genre Savvy, and has survived countless assassination attempts because of his knowledge of their abilities.
    • It could also mean that 053 is somehow vastly different from other living things in our universe. Enough so that 682 doesn't feel homicidal towards her. Humans, on the other hand, do feel that way.
    • That, or 053 is to us as we are to 682. Except we don't have the "Aura of Retribution" thing working for us. That might almost turn 682 into some sort of extreme Jerkass Woobie.
    • SCP-1370 has the attitude of an Omnicidal Maniac. Its ability to do anything about it, however...
  • The Blood Red King would quite willingly kill every living thing in the universe in horribly bloody and disgusting ways if he had a chance to do so, as long as he got a chance to scare them all first. Because that's what an Anthropomorphic Personification of Terror likes to do on the weekend.
  • O'Malley, the Big Bad of Red vs. Blue, is an over-the-top parody of this trope. His goal is to take over the universe and "crush every living soul into dust. Um, except for you Vic. You can be assistant crusher."
    • Alternatively... "I will eat their hearts and crap out their souls! They will taste oblivion! Which tastes like Red Bull. Which is disgusting!"
  • The Big Bad of Fine Structure, Oul, is an example.

Western Animation[edit | hide]

  • Unicron from Transformers, particularly in Energon. He wants to eat the multiverse, one planet at a time, one timeline at a time, one universe at a time. Not because he's hungry, like Galactus whom he resembles, but because existence is somehow offensive to him. Megatron/Galvatron may be considered an accessory to the crime(s).
    • Anyone who willingly works with Unicron also counts. This list includes:
    • This is Megatron's actual goal when the last part of Transformers Cybertron rolls around. He wants to use the black hole and the Cyber Planet Keys to destroy the universe so he can rebuild it in his own image. Somehow.
    • Unicron, curiously, actually succeeded on at least on occasion. Then slept through the Big Bang that recreated it. He was not amused. He has also stepped up his game of late - said black hole is apparently replicating across realities and growing.
  • Daemon from ReBoot initially seemed to just be a supervirus corrupting countless programs to The Way, which turned them into her loyal slaves. However, the climax revealed that she intended to connect herself to everything, before initiating a program that would destroy herself and everything connected to her, ending all strife and conflict in the peace of oblivion. Of course, this is what she is programmed to do; so whether or not she's truly a maniac or just following her programming is up for debate.
  • The Brains from Futurama. These unbelievably powerful, mindraping giant brains appeared in this universe milliseconds after it came into being. Their one goal is to gather all of the information in the universe, then destroy it so that no new information will ever appear. The only real opposition against them comes from the Precursors, the Nibblonians. Unlike typical Planet Looters, the Brains actually enjoy their omnicidal campaign. The Brains are basically Brainiac from the DCAU but they're an entire race, not just one evil AI. Thanks to there being no Superman to fight them, the Brains come damn close to succeeding.
    • Lucky for humanity, Fry was immune to their mind powers. Then he made them leave the Earth for no good raisin!!
    • Later on, the Brains build the Infosphere to store all the information in the universe. Naturally, they plan on destroying the universe once they finish learning everything. Fortunately, Fry and the Nibblonians manage to stop them again.
  • Danny Phantom becomes this in an alternate future, pretty much. Most fans certainly see it that way. Fortunately, this is averted... hopefully. It's made pretty clear that even though the exact circumstances of the change were averted, it's still possible.
  • Spider-Man: The Animated Series: an alternate-universe Peter Parker, already unbalanced due to questioning his identity and losing his Aunt May in that world's version of The Clone Saga, is possessed by a world-hopping Carnage symbiote. Spider-Carnage decides that life is meaningless and attempts to wipe out the multiverse, forcing Madame Web and the Beyonder to assemble an entire team of alternate Spideys to stop him.
  • The Heys from The Tick (animation). Played with the usual tongue-in-cheekness of the series, but their motivations are purely omnicidal.
  • Darkseid from the DCAU has the ultimate goal of obtaining the anti-life equation and using it to undo the current existence, so he can rebuild it in a manner more to his liking. Unfortunately it tends to be overshadowed by his 'torment Superman' schemes.
    • Brainiac, also from the DCAU, acts to destroy all of creation, but this is due to his programming rather than any genuine malicious wish to do so.
  • Owlman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths wants to kill "Everyone who ever existed or will ever exist" and destroy all reality because he feels it is the only "real choice" one could make, as for every choice one made, all other possibilities played out in another universe.
  • The Fairly OddParents has two. First, Dark Laser really wants to blow up the Earth because...well, it's there. A more serious example is The Darkness, a powerful and ancient entity who has destroyed countless worlds, including Wonder World and Yugopotamia.
    • The Darkness is more a person (well, consciousness) of mass destruction. It just wants somebody to love it, but everyone keeps attacking it, so it defends itself, and is better at defending itself than the planet it was trying to defend itself from is at hurting it
  • Dr. Blight from Captain Planet and the Planeteers talks about wanting to actively destroy the planet in some episodes but her goals change from episode to episode.
    • It was fairly heavily implied that, unlike the rest of the show's villains (who were merely greedy for power or wealth), Blight was actually completely insane - she was certainly the only one pursuing pollution for its own sake.
    • Or For Science! for that matter.
  • Trigon of Teen Titans had the explicit goal of destroying "the world of mortals", though he did plan on remaking it in his own image afterwards. As this would mean a literal Hell on Earth, it doesn't make him any less evil than the others on this list.
  • The Real Ghostbusters episode "Ragnarok and Roll" had one guy who wanted to destroy the world because he felt it was a bad place. Fot that, he summoned a magical Artifact of Doom - using The Ring Inscription.
  • In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover movie Turtles Forever, the 2k3 Shredder, after being freed from his confinement in an asteroid, decides that in order to destroy all the turtles in the universe, he must destroy reality itself, and sets out to do just that.
    • Utrom Shredder wasn't so into the destruction of reality at first. He just realized that the Ninja Turtles would persist in every reality so winning in one really meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. What he wanted to do was eliminate the TMNTs from existence, by destroying them on Turtle Prime (the original Mirage comic). Reality was shattering but only after he had left the 2003 dimension (which he didn't know was happening). Once he saw that the destruction of the 1984 Turtles would in fact break reality fully, that's when he threw down the gauntlet and decided reality would have to end if it meant he could win.
  • US President Evil Lex Luthor goes this route in Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, after injecting himself with a Kryptonite/steroid cocktail that increases his strength but at the same time causes him to go insane. When the US Military is unable to stop the Kryptonite meteor, Lex chooses to allow the meteor to collide, believing that he will be heralded the savior of the few survivors remaining.
  • Killface of Frisky Dingo begins the first episode filming his statement to the world that he intends to use the Anihilatrix, a giant engine, to fly the Earth directly into the sun. No motive is given. Fortunately for the Earth, he used all his money building the machine, and does not have enough money to actually broadcast his message or get the Anihilatrix working.
    • And when he did get it working it only moved the earth a few feet. And cured global warming.
  • In the Earthworm Jim cartoon, Evil the Cat aspires to destroy the universe.

Genie: Even the good parts?
Evil: Especially the good parts!.

NegaDuck: Crimes?! Who cares about crimes?! I'm into mindless wanton destruction!

Real life[edit | hide]

  • Terrifyingly, Zhang Xianzhong may have been a real life example, back in the 1640s. He amassed a rebellion to conquer the Sichuan region of China, and proceeded to order his soldiers to kill everyone who objected to his rule. Then, kill the inhabitants of the outlying villages. Then kill the wives of officers who had objected to the previous order. Then large groups of random civilians. Finally, he just ordered them to kill each other in front of his throne made of the severed ears and feet of his enemies, while a few of his last loyal servants carved a massive stone which "explained" his actions:

Heaven brings forth endless things to benefit man.
Man has nothing with which to repay Heaven.

    • It came to be called the Seven Kill Stele, and even after the Manchus put Zhang to death, everyone was so terrified of it, they refused to touch it, even to destroy it, until the 1970s.
  • "Kill them all, God will recognize his own" ("Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt emus." in the original latin) Arnaud Amaury, Papal Legate. He gave this order to his troops when facing the Cathar (a Christian religious movement the Pope considered heretical) held city of Béziers.
  • While they don't want to wipe out humanity right away (well, hopefully at least most of them don't), the Church of Euthanasia is a religious organization founded in 1995 who believe the Earth will be much better off without humans living on it, and push for some way for mankind to dramatically reduce its own population. The only rule members have is "thou shalt not procreate" (as in, remain celibate), and they also encourage suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy. Oddly enough, the U.S. government does indeed recognize them as a non-profit and tax exempt organization.
  1. like Australia dropping on him