Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Crow''': Few things, Mike. First, uh, well ya blew up another planet, obviously. What's that, three for you now?

'''Servo''': Think so. [chuckles]

 

Plotting to destroy the planet is a good source of conflict for your standard [[Evil Overlord]], but, when it comes right down to it, destroying the world isn't really a very effective [[Evil Plan]]—especially if it's the world the [[Evil Overlord]] is living on: [[The Tick (animation)|it's where he keeps his stuff]]. Basically, plotting to destroy the planet is a good way to demonstrate that you're evil, but there are hardly any situations in which this sort of destruction is going to have any sort of value for the villain.

Not to be confused with [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]], who wants to destroy everything because of past mistreatment.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** Speaking of which the chances are rather high that this is a new trope, a [[Causality Casualty]]. [[Doctor Who|Another Doctor]] and [[The Chessmaster|David Xanatos himself]] have both done this; {{spoiler|The Past Doctor was likely prepared for his future self ''becoming'' Earth's Shaman in this action}}. In the case of Doctor Who, an arc of the Daleks' strange history involved an Earth where {{spoiler|desperate future rebels seeking to undo the conquest of earth by the Daleks instead ''caused'' it until the Doctor intervened}}, the exact cause of the loop presumably the Daleks themselves. David actually {{spoiler|used his wedding to Fox in the 900s to slip a message to a past agent of the Illuminati and ensure his own fortune and recruitment into that august body}}.

* ''[[X-Men]]'': Jean Grey, impersonated by the Phoenix Force, caused a sun to go nova in order to feed off the energy. A planet of sentient broccoli-looking people was destroyed in the process. [[Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy|This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.]]

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[The Mole People]]'' (featured on the [[Trope Namer]]), the protagonists accidentally discover a subterranean civilization descended from the ancient Sumerians and end up destroying them by unintentionally inspiring their [[Servant Race]] of mole-men to violently rebel.

* ''[[Dark Star]]'' has this trope as a background: a bunch of kids just doing their job, which happens to be blowing up planets.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In [[Kurt Vonnegut|Kurt Vonnegut's]] ''[[Cat's Cradle]]'', Dr. Felix Hoenikker invents Ice-9 to help U.S. Marines turn mud into something they can walk on. The world-destroying potential seems never to have occurred to him. Simply, Ice-9 is virtually unmeltable, unbreakable ice thanks to its super-high melting point that lets it remains frozen even at tropical temperatures (although several scenes show folks cooking Ice-9 over a flame to melt it into drinkable water). And it turns all water it touches-into Ice-9. {{spoiler|And then it falls in the ocean.}}

** Scientists recently created ''actual'' Ice IX—which is to say a ninth possible arrangement of molecules within the ice crystal—but it has no special properties, and in fact can't exist outside a narrow band of pressure and temperature (around -200 degrees F).

*** Given that those properties are almost the diametric opposite of Vonnegut's Ice IX, the stuff the science geeks have created is more Ice Point-Nine...

* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s Robots and [[Foundation]] universe, whoever programmed the original Three-Laws Robots is guilty of this. The First Law is "No robot may harm a human, or through inaction, allow a human to come to harm." Because of the definition of 'human', this led to {{spoiler|massive fleets of robot-controlled ships sweeping through the Galaxy, destroying ''all'' sapient non-human life, leading to a humans-only Galaxy. The robots removed themselves (mostly), so the humans didn't know what had happened. Essentially we accidentally made a version of [[Berserker (Literature)|Berserkers]].}}

 

* This trope is named for the human lead of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'', a basically lovable buffoon who, over the course of one season, destroyed three planets, always by accident:

** ''[[The Deadly Mantis]]'' - Mike helps [[Planet of the Apes|the simian rulers of future Earth]] repair and detonate an old atomic bomb.

The [[Lemon Demon]] song "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Worlds"

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Mister Darke, an archvillan from ''[[Shadowrun]]'', spent decades working to unleash The Horrors upon Earth. The fact that when they finally broke loose, their ravenous hordes trampled him into paste may have alerted him that he was playing out this trope all along.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* In ''[[Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth]]'', Flintlocke attempts to find a device called the Ultimate Goblin-Engineered Weapon. On one occasion, when asked what he intends to do with said device, he yells out "We're going to save and/or destroy the world!" This is a particularly interesting example because Flintlocke is not evil per se, although he has incredibly poor judgment when it comes to explosives.

* ''[[The Wotch]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade]] on this trope in [http://thewotch.com/?epDate=2007-05-21 this strip].

** Xykon says he won't destroy the world unless he's really really bored. ''Half of the time we see him in the comic, he is bored.''

* ''[[A Miracle of Science]]'' had a [[Mad Scientist]] who failed due to the fact that "destroying the world you want to conquer" doesn't exactly count as a credible threat.

* The Stickles from ''[[Zap]]'' are a race of mad scientists from Sticklebat 7. The reason they are from Sticklebat 7 is because the first 6 were too [http://www.zapcomic.com/2003/12/20040625/ flammable.]

* ''[[Minus]]'' has the power to alter reality in any way she pleases, frequently leading to mass destruction and catastrophe because she doesn't really comprehend the consequences of her actions. At one point, she unintentionally killed everything on Earth (except Larry) by bringing back to life everything that had ever died.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Played with in the [http://www.lemondemon.com/ Lemon Demon] song "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets".

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] hilariously in the ending sequence of Mastermind: World Conqueror on [http://www.newgrounds.com/ Newgrounds]: {{spoiler|You can click buttons to make the Mastermind gloat and revel in his success, then realize he's got nowhere else to go now that earth is destroyed.}}

** To be fair, he ''did'' destroy Euro-Disneyland... So he can't be ''all'' bad.

** Also, in the Abridged Movie, Yami lampshades this by questioning Anubis, the movie's [[Big Bad]], about why he wants to destroy the world.

* Referenced by name by the SI protagonist of [[Sleeping with the Girls]].

{{quote|I AM BECOME MIKE NELSON, DESTROYER OF WORLDS!}}

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* At the end of the Mahri Nui arc in ''[[Bionicle]]'', the heroes have to destroy The Cord tethering the city to the surface island of Voya Nui as part of the process in waking Mata Nui, which would destroy the underwater city and possibly drown those on the surface. The Toa do get the Matoran on both areas to safety before destroying The Cord.

* Coop from ''[[Megas XLR]]'' has destroyed three planets, two of which were accidental. For the third one he had good intentions, but a lot of aliens were still pretty upset about it.

** Another episode had Homer wipe out the dinosaurs because of a single sneeze.

* There is an episode of ''[[Rugrats]]'' where the babies and Angelica are abducted by aliens (that look suspiciously like their parents) who are testing a TV-remote shaped ray gun that can destroy planets. The alien that invented it (based on Tommy's dad) wants to use it for knocking out walls to redecorate. Eventually Angelica and a fish alien steal it and go around blowing up random planets. Of course, in the end, [[All Just a Dream|''it was all just a dream'']]