Omnicidal Maniac/Playing With
Basic Trope: A villain whose main plan is to destroy the world, and has the means to do so.
- Straight: Doctor Destructo plans on using his newly created Reality Bomb to destroy reality as we know it.
- Exaggerated: Doctor Destructo plans on using a triple-level fail-safed This Will Really Destroy Reality Bomb to destroy reality, then recreating a new universe with a big bang to sterilize away whatever might have survived in some corners the bomb missed, before collapsing the new universe onto itself and decaying all matter to a state where no planets, stars or any other celestial bodies will emerge, ensuring nothing will ever exist ever again except for some stray particles.
- Doctor Destructo wants to prevent reality from ever coming into being.
- Justified: Doctor Destructo is a Nietzsche Wannabe who lives in a Crapsack World and suffered from a severe Freudian Excuse, and is using the Reality Bomb to subject the world to euthanasia or create a better one In His Own Image. Or maybe it's all a philosophical experiment to find out if there's an afterlife or the world is All Just a Dream; he'll kill himself as well.
- Doctor Destructo is the absolute personification of nothingness or some other Eldritch Abomination, and wants to wipe out reality because it's who he is.
- Doctor Destructo suffers from a god complex, and believes destroying it all will prove this.
- Absolute Xenophobe taken to its logical extreme.
- Inverted: Doctor Destructo's sole motivation is to keep the world from being destroyed.
- Subverted: Doctor Destructo's plan to destroy reality is a Red Herring meant to obfuscate his real plan, or simply a blackmail attempt: He has no plan of following through whether he gets what he wants or no.
- Double Subverted: ...But once his last desire has been fulfilled, he throws the switch anyway.
- Parodied: Doctor Destructo has no concept of the scale of destruction he is about to unleash. When the hero asks him 'why would you want to destroy the world?', he gets flummoxed.
- The method to destroy the world turns out to be either much less dangerous than initially thought, or just completely bizarre: Destructo's device turns out to drown the Earth in lukewarm custard.
- Zig Zagged: Doctor Destructo is about to destroy the world, but suddenly realizes just what an awful thing that would be to do, and stops. After attempting to come to terms with his own horridness and failing, he realizes that the only way to keep people from trying to follow his example would be to destroy himself, and the sinful world that spawned him, with his Reality Bomb.
- Averted: Doctor Destructo doesn't want to destroy reality, or obviously has no way to do so.
- Enforced: "Enough with the Take Over the World plots. Can we have something else that's an adequate threat for our God Mode Sue protagonist?"
- Lampshaded: "How does a plan involving killing all life everywhere make any sense?"
- Invoked: The villain is out to get the attention of the really really powerful beings, and only presenting a genuine threat to the world will do.
- Defied: "Oh please, why would I ever want to destroy the world? That's where I keep all my stuff!".
- Discussed: "In every story I've heard, the bad guys were content to rule. I think we're dealing with something bigger."
- Conversed: "You'd think the villains of this show could think of something to do with the world besides blow it up."
- Played For Laughs: See Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds.
- Played For Drama: This trope, practically by definition, is Played for Drama. It's very hard to conceive of a situation where destruction of the world would not entail drama.
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