Enemy to All Living Things

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Wonderella has a Green Thumb.

"Beasts balk at the critters -- hosses wuss'n mules -- but when they got autos that was all right."

—Zadok Allen, The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

This is the Pure Is Not Good version of the Friend to All Living Things. While a Friend To All Living Things causes animals to flock to him/her because of their sweetness and innocence, the evil energies of an Enemy To All Living Things causes animals to flee from them or, if they're powerful enough, die. In that case, their energies can also cause plants to rot and decay; the heroes are sometimes (but not always) exempted from this. Expect them to suffer as if under a slow-acting poison, mana drain, or to have their stats lowered.

Contrast Fisher King, where they have to rule first, but cause destruction on a much vaster scale. See also Animals Hate Him for when the creatures don't run away.

Compare with Omnicidal Maniac and, to a certain degree, Eldritch Abomination. See Walking Wasteland for a more powerful form of this. See Poisonous Person for a toxic touch variant. This is also why the Evil-Detecting Dog is man's best friend.

Examples of Enemy to All Living Things include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Princess Mononoke, the slime coating the demons kills every living thing they come in contact with and vice-versa.
  • Hyatt in Excel Saga drains the life from a good portion of a city park just by sitting under a tree. In a different episode, her blood kills passing birds that happen to fly through its evaporation fumes, and Excel finds her by following the dead-bird trail. Basically, Hyatt is such an Ill Girl that she can kill anything by being in close proximity.
  • In Busou Renkin, Victor's (and later Kazuki's) energy drain ability causes him to constantly absorb the life force of everyone and everything around him and can never be shut off.
    • Victor relates it to breathing, implying that to be denied their energy sustenance would kill them. Which explains the so-called "logic" behind Kazuki's big plan to stop Victor. So, now that we know WHY he did it, we just have to figure how its freakin possible. And what made him think he'd be able to do it.
  • In an aversion, Lina Inverse from Slayers is called "The Enemy of All Who Live" due to her... rather destructive temper. She displays none of the signs of this trope apart from everyone running away when she starts to cast a spell, and given that many spells in Slayers-world tend to be highly destructive and usually explosive this is probably a good idea no matter who's casting them.
  • Black Mage Zeref of Fairy Tail, though he's only like this if he doesn't want to kill anybody. He can only control his power if he's a murderous sociopath.
  • In Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, Groudon is more like an Unwitting Instigator of Doom, its powers threatening the world due to Team Magma's meddling. In the anime movie Pokémon: Jirachi Wishmaker, however, the thing that Butler creates is an evil imposter of Groudon that despises all life and attempts to do it on purpose.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX:
    • The Sacred Beasts are like this, but only to Duel Spirits. Summoning causes Duel Spirits to weaken (and presumably, eventually die) their life energy strengthening both the demons and whoever is using them. This is powerful enough to effect the whole world, apparently, and even seems to affect Spirits which would not technically be considered "living things" (like Machine-Type monsters, seeing as it happens to the cards in Sho and Chronos' decks). Fortunately, defeating them causes the victims to recover.
    • The Light of Ruin is a Cosmic Entity that despises all life. Pegasus believes that its influence has caused wars, famines, plagues, and all sorts of bad things throughout history when its vile light was brightest. This is emphasized by the Final Battle with its Unwitting Pawn Saiou, where a Field Spell he uses not only negates the effects of Judai's monsters, but causes the Duel Spirits (including the Neo-Spacians) visible pain.
  • In One Piece, Dr. Vegepunk has theorized that anyone who consumes a Devil Fruit is loathed by the sea itself (which is regarded as this world's equivalent of Mother Nature) and that the inability to swim is a curse inflicted as a punishment. This might make Luffy a Friendly Enemy, as he is known to befriend animals quickly, and understand them via the Voice of All Things.

Comic Books

  • Marvel Comics:
    • Avengers villain Decay. Cursed with Rapid Aging for unknown reasons, he can only prevent it by absorbing the life force of others.
    • Also Wither. But that's more of a case of his mutant power, and less that he's that terrifying - he's really just an Emo Teen. Before his Face Heel Turn, anyway.
    • Styx, an enemy of Spider-Man. A recipient of an experiment on whether it was possible to develop immunity to cancer through controlled exposure (orchestrated by his now-partner, Stone) it went horribly wrong, and in addition to developing an immunity, he became a living cancer, killing and rotting any organic matter he touched. It's not clear whether this means he's Blessed with Suck or not, since he very much enjoys what he does, though it also drove him hopelessly insane.
    • Another Spider-Man villain, Carrion. Created by a virus developed by Miles Warren (the identity assumed by three individuals) he rots and decays organic matter with his touch and exists only to kill. Even the living Earth itself repels him, causing him to "drift" over the ground rather that walk.
    • Pestilence, one of Apocalypse's horsemen, is probably one of the most obvious examples of the trope. Given she was made to be an enemy to all living things.
  • DC Comics examples:
    • Creepy necrophile Black Hand in Green Lantern. Particularly in the Crisis Crossover Blackest Night, where he became the champion of the Black Lanterns, who are essentially zombies and the personification of death itself.
    • Nekron, the Lord of the Black Lantern Corps, is actually worse. He's not out to kill all life, but destroy life as a metaphysical concept.
    • Superman villain Doomsday, who considers even the smallest and most harmless creatures as threats to kill instantly.
    • Darkseid is this in some continuities, depending on what the Anti-Life Equation (something he tries to use in all continuities) does. It is either capable of enslaving all life in the universe or destroying it, meaning Darkseid qualifies in the latter cases.
  • Unicron. In one Transformers comic book adaptation, he is stated to be a primordial being of Pure Evil, occupying the body of a planet-sized robot, and is an enemy of all life. Which makes perfect sense even if you've seen the movie. Come on, he's got claws, and horns, and wings, he makes bargains with other evil Transformers, he's the Devil, for pete's sake!

Film

  • In Constantine, Mammon makes cows drop dead one by one by simply walking through a pasture in the body he possesses.
  • Godzilla: Destoroyah and Desighidorah. The former was mutated from anaerobic life forms by the substance that killed the 1954 Godzilla and can destroy oxygen itself, the latter is a three-headed dragon that sucks the life from plants, leaving entire worlds brown and dead.

Literature

  • Dream Catcher: The aliens in the Stephen King book and film. They caused even the wolves and bears to run for their lives.
  • The Stand: Randall Flagg has been known to cause fatal brain embolisms in various animals. An withers the grass where he walks.
  • The Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings novels; dogs and other domestic animals howl and/or scatter whenever one comes near. It's explicitly noted at one point that the Nazguls' horses have to be specially raised and trained.
    • This was carried over into the movie adaptations: In Fellowship a Nazgul draws near to where Frodo and his friends are hiding, searching for them, and its presence causes every bug and creature nearby to run off in a panic.
  • The most ancient and evil vampires, such as Dracula, tend to fall into this trope, with only the "children of the night" (bats, wolves and other animals seen as evil back in the day) able to abide them.
  • In the seventh book of the Sword of Truth series, Oba listens to the whispers of The Keeper of the Underworld and animals start fearing him. Later, Jennsen realizes she has been corrupted as well when her goat runs away from her.
  • Wizards from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles have a variation on this. The ability only works on magical creatures and plants, because what they're actually doing is stealing the magic from them. It mostly shows in the destruction of the titular forest wherever they go, and on dragons. That doesn't work very well because a side-effect makes the dragons start sneezing fireballs all over.
  • In the Magic: The Gathering novels, Phage the Untouchable is this trope cranked into overdrive. She destroys every living and once-living thing that comes in contact with her, including things like cotton Among other things, this means she can only sleep on bare rock and wear silk, and has to eat with a special fork that keeps food from touching her lips and thus rotting before she can taste it.
  • The Shining Ones of David Eddings' The Tamuli can cause the immediate decomposition of any organic matter they touch... most notably, living humans. This is the result of a very literal case of Cursed with Awesome, and since they're mostly rather gentle, they Wangst a lot whenever they actually have to use it. Fortunately, they've learned to control it, so it only activates when they want it to... while it's not stated outright, it's likely that when the curse was originally inflicted on them, it killed anyone they came in touch with, other Shining Ones being the sole exception.
  • A short story in Upon My Word was about a young boy who loved animals and wanted to be a vet, but in typical irony animals hated him. (mentioning that the author is a Friend to All Living Things but doesn't really care about animals)
  • The Cancer Cowboy Rides: Buddy Carson, the villain of John Connolly's short story has a very serious case of this: he has the ability to transmit a deadly form of cancer to anyone he touches with bare flesh, the severity of the disease depending on how long they were in contact. Initially, Buddy only used this power to avoid suffering the symptoms of his own disease, but now occasionally uses it out of sheer sadism. Quite naturally, animals and intuitive humans are agitated by his presence, and generally avoid shaking hands with him.
  • The story version of Shrek (yes the movie was based from a children's book) was so ugly that trees and plants bend away from him - conveniently forming trails for him to walk on.
  • Eragon of the Inheritance Cycle. Plants and animals die around him at certain times, because he draws their Life Energy into himself to make his magic stronger.
    • Not just Eragon but the majority of high-end magic users like Murtagh and presumably Galbatorix. It is described as incredibly unpleasant due to the fact that you must mentally link with the creature/plant in question for it to work. As such you feel yourself die every time. The only mages who use this without regret or disgust are the antagonists.
    • Note that this only applies to magic used by Dragon Riders, other magic users command spirits to do their work, though Shades (magic-users who lose control and are possessed by the spirits) qualify, they have no loyalty towards anything and are likely to indiscriminately murder nearly anyone the come across.
  • The classic Nathaniel Hawthorne short story Young Goodman Brown features a nameless individual who is strongly hinted to be The Devil. He picks himself a walking stick, and the story describes how the leaves wither as his fingers approach them.
  • In The Bible as part of his punishment for being the first murderer, God makes Cain into one (as his primary talent beforehand was farming). And Jesus (of all people) caused a fig tree to wither out of pique (or possibly to provide a visual metaphor).
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, this is a common expression of Sith evil, for example in The Jedi Academy Trilogy when Kyp Durron at first uses an 'unpleasantness field' to drive away annoying flies, and later in full-on evil mode the very plants wither where he steps.
  • Harry Potter: The Dementors are portrayed as this in the setting, particularly in the films where they kill plants simply by being in the vicinity.

Live-Action TV

  • In Kamen Rider Faiz, Kitazaki turns living creatures to ash by touching them - whether he wants to or not.
  • Power Rangers:
  • Cady from Reaper occasionally makes things around her wither and die.
  • Linda Tarvara of the Heroes Graphic Novels essentially has a power similar to Rogue of the X-Men, being able to suck the life (Indeed, it's implied the very essence or "Soul") out of someone. The difference between her and Rogue? She really, REALLY likes doing it. Yeah, she's a sick puppy.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the First Evil's minions, the nightmarish Harbingers, have the ability to render their surroundings sterile, such as trees and animals.
  • Mr. Mathew Chinnery, on The League of Gentlemen, is a completely accidental version of this. He's not evil; he's just incredibly accident-prone, due to an ancestral curse.

Oral Tradition, Folklore, Myths and Legends

  • As Surtur leads his Fire Giants to the final battle in Ragnarök, his mere presence causes humans to collapse lifeless and even rocks to dissolve.
  • Even though he mostly targets humans, Satan is sometimes described this way.
  • Older Than Feudalism: In Classical Mythology, Medusa makes every living thing that has the misfortune of seeing her turn into stone—it was actually involuntary on her part, and only her sisters, totally blind creatures, and (probably) the gods were immune. Unlike most adaptations/shout-outs, her victims remain stone even after she dies, and her severed head has the same effect.
  • King Midas probably applies as a subversion, since his ability to transform objects he comes in contact with into gold soon turns on himself as well. The man was foolish enough to wish for such a thing in the first place.

Tabletop Games

  • In the Dungeons & Dragons Dark Sun setting, every single wizard is an example of this trope; they drain life from the world around them to fuel their magic. Some learn to limit their destruction so as not to cause permanent damage. Most... don't. The most powerful example of the latter are Dragons (not to be confused with the trope of the same name), "ascended" wizards who consume animal as well as plant life and whose depredations are largely responsible for the ravaged state of the Dark Sun world.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • Undead in general. Most Compendiums detailing monsters emphasize that they do not belong in any true ecology and only exist to disrupt them.
    • The Blighter Prestige Class, which is basically the anti-Druid. One of the first powers they gain is the ability to cause deforestation, and they are required to do this every single day to gain their daily spell allotment. They also have stunted casting and need to have a number of Druid levels that can't do anything. The class is quite infamous for being very poor.
    • The Cancer Mage is of a similar bent, being a walking plague-rat that can inflict all kinds of horrific diseases onto living things.
    • The Greater Consumptive Field spell also counts, especially with DMM/Persist munchkinry. In essence, anything with less than 10 hit points that comes within 30 feet of you dies. This includes birds, kittens, wounded enemies and small children. And everything killed in this way makes you stronger.
      • Casting this and looking for an anthill is a sure way to annoy a DM, and most will enact rule 0: every colony is one creature.
    • Bullywugs, at least in 4th Edition, are creatures who are so intent on wrecking the local ecosystem - by overhunting, polluting, and destroying or befouling anything they encounter - that the spirit of Nature itself does indeed consider them an enemy. Heroes who slay these wretched humanoids will sometimes actually receive a small buff, which is a gift of gratitude from the living world.
    • Elder Evils, as detailed in the Splat book of the same name. Unlike gods, who need worshippers to survive, Elder Evils hate all life and exist only to destroy it.
  • Elven vampires in the Ravenloft setting are hated and feared by woodland animals, who flee from them in terror, a cruel fate for someone who was so loved by them in life. Even worse, they are cursed with the Black Thumb, which kills plants on contact. However, while small plants die instantly, larger ones take a few hours, and trees take about a week, the vampire feeling the pain they suffer as they die. Unfortunately, touching a tree is a requirement for their tree-stepping ability, which they must use to avoid death if reduced to zero hit points.
  • The Harrowed in Deadlands. Usually animals just detect their undead state by smell and fear them, but they also have Harrowed Edges that let them embrace the trope fully. They also have troubles riding horses.
  • Exalted: The Abyssal Exalted can have this happen to them, depending on how much Resonance they have accumulated. Effects range from merely killing nearby insects to causing miscarriages to spawning a Shadowland.
  • In GURPS the disadvantages Frightens Animals and Lifebane.
  • The daemons and mortal champions of Nurgle, the Chaos God of entropy and decay, in Warhammer 40,000 have this effect, as they spread disease wherever they walk. The most powerful of Nurgle's daemons make plants turn to mulch, metal rust and ferrocete crumple to dust by their mere presence.
    • Ironically, Nurgle himself and all his followers are actually pretty nice (Still evil though). Despite his corrupting and destructive nature, Nurgle sees himself as a creative force in the universe. Kind of hard to imagine since he is the god of disease and corruption.
      • It's pretty easy. Nurgle loves life. All life. Bacteria are alive.
    • The Necrons are also a good example of this. Their aim is to destroy all organic life in the universe.
  • Phage the Untouchable, from Magic: The Gathering.
  • In Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Chaos god Tzeentch's chosen, Aekold Helbrass, is a subversion. No doubt his alignment, Aekold is cursed with the "gift" of life. The mutating powers of Chaos have granted him the ability to create life wherever he goes. Wherever he stands, flowers and plants spring into life, and doorframes sprout new life, growing leaves and branches spontaneously. Even the wounds of himself and those around him will stitch themselves back together, no matter the severity.

Video Games

  • The Grox from Spore are hated by all living things. In fact, habitable planets cause them to die.
  • In Warcraft III, the Scourge structures create Blight, which rots the soil and trees it comes in contact with. In the campaign, its shown that Archimonde can create it wherever he walks.
    • Similarly, in World of Warcraft, even though they don't have the ability in the game, a Warlock is shown to have a similar ability in the opening cinematic.
    • Said Blight is persistent enough that in World of Warcraft, several zones are permanently in that state, and the Blood Elf zones have a line of it, called the Dead Scar, marking the main attack line where Arthas and his army forced their way to the Sunwell, source of the Elven magic.
    • Sargeras is the ultimate Enemy to All Living Things as the leader of the Burning Legion. "Lesser beings quake and flee in his presence".
    • In Battle for Azeroth, King Anduin claims Sylvanus is waging war against "life itself", an opinion shared by most Alliance - and even some Horde - leaders.
  • Estelle from Tales of Vesperia is causing the world to slowly die simply by existing.
  • Knights of the Old Republic 2 : One of the Sith lords was something like this.
  • The Reapers in Mass Effect.
  • Age of Wonders (and sequels) has a couple versions of this. A unit with the "Path of Decay" ability will kill tiles in its path, turning them to wasteland, while the spell "Darkland" will gradually produce the same effect on all tiles within your spellcasting range. This can have in-game impact, as certain races get economic and morale bonuses or penalties on certain terrain types.
  • Dr. Vile/Weil of the Mega Man Zero series, who is better describe as everyone's enemy. He's responsible for a war that wiped out over half the human and Reploids (sentient robots), and when he aims to make the existence of all of them a living hell due to want of revenge for the punishment he received for his war crimes. Taken to even further in 4, where he planned to destroy the only place fit for human habitation outside of his rule, even after the city he ruled was destroyed.

Web Comics

  • Secret of Keychain of Creation is a nice enough girl, despite being one of the Abyssal Exalted. However, when she wants to hold a baby orphan (or at least, baby whose parents were kidnapped), a bird spontaneously dies and lands on her head. They take it as a sign letting her do so is a bad idea.
    • This is a reflection of Resonance, the nasty side effect for rebellious Abyssal Exalted who regret the fact that they made a deal with a Cosmic Horror and just want to be normal. The more they try to act human (refer to themselves by their old name, have sex with humans, etc.), the nastier things get around them.
  • Death in Sinfest, sometimes when he just walks by something (Buddha can sometimes restore), sometimes [[https://web.archive.org/web/20140209170200/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4241 more actively. (He's also been revolted by the sight of a pregnant woman, or a leaf still hanging from a tree late in autumn.)

Web Original

Western Animation

Timmy's Dad: Oh, Dinkleberg, come here and give my wife a congratulatory handtouch!

  • Elmyra in Tiny Toon Adventures utterly terrifies any Funny Animal that she encounters, as her attempts to "love" cute critters tend to cause extreme pain.
  • Death in Family Guy has a longstanding crush on a girl who works in a pet shop. Trouble is, he can't go in to ask her out as all the animals start thrashing and yowling.
    • When Death finally gets the chance to date her, she is so annoyingly pro-eco that he uses his touch of death to kill her.
    • Peter gets to take over death's duties for one episode and has to constantly remind himself not to touch plants or people. Sadly he remembers this after killing the airplane pilot.
  • Spoofed in The Simpsons episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner." Homer's shouting "D'oh!" makes the zoo animals panic.
    • Also, the opening theme on one of the Halloween specials has Death sitting on the couch when the family rushes in. When they all drop dead in front of him, he uses the pile of corpses for a footrest.
  • Sushi Pack: The very presence of Sir Darkly causes everyone in the vicinity to instantly burst into tears. On top of that, wherever he goes flowers wilt, ice cream scoops fall off of cones, and water even freezes.
  • Most versions of Megatron in Transformers display this in some shape or form. In the original cartoon, he at one point found a MacGuffin that turned machines into transformers, and when used on anything else would turn into metal, giving him the idea of using it to make Earth into a world like Cybertron.
    • The Beast Era Megatron, especially during Beast Machines where he hates organic life to the point where he loathes even having a beast mode and desires to remove any trace of it.
    • Transformers Prime Megatron has a hate for organics, but where he really displays being an Enemy to All Living Things is that fact that series implies that the war he started left Cybertron unfit even for Transformers to inhabit. Recap, he left a planet unfit to support MACHINES.
      • More so than Megatron, Unicron has this, his only goal in any version of him being to destroy planet after planet until there is nothing left in the universe.

Real Life

  • In Roman law pirates were considered "enemies of all mankind". They still are in fact, along with slavers and torturers.
  • According to a Brazilian soccer aphorism, goalkeeper is such an accursed occupation that, wherever one steps, the grass stops growing.
  • Some diseases may count. Consider lung tuberculosis. In some cases the bearer may be unaware of his condition and live with it for years, spreading deadly spores. And some people and animals are so vulnerable to this disease, they may die in months. And this is a horrible death. Check yourself and you neighbors with chest photofluorography at least once per year to get medical care in time, when the condition is reversible.
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