Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
When Calvin Ball goes bad.

"Human, have you ever been to Hell? I think not. I'd rather not exist than go back to that... and if I have to drag down everyone else with me... so be it."

—Azrael, Dogma

For some villains, Global Domination is no good. If you take over the world, And Then What? More misery! Ditto on the universe or The Multiverse. Nope. It all has to go. Everything has to be destroyed, every speck of life killed, every mote of light extinguished. No, this isn't reshaping reality In Their Own Image, however that trick works. This is the need for oblivion and taking everyone else down first.

Possibly, the villain has a reason for this. Maybe they're some kind of Cosmic Horror Story version of Promethean Punishment, and destroying reality is the only way to end their own pain. (Or their ego is too big to just kill themselves. No, they have to be dramatic about it.)

But more often then not, they're a Nietzsche Wannabe; and just wanna show everyone who is boss. What's mystifying is when these type seem to genuinely like existing and interacting with the world. What exactly are they going to do should they succeed? And Then What? Where, as The Tick puts it, would they put all their stuff? In this case, they often exist only for the Heroes to have someone to stop.

The third variety is the final resort, they wanted to Take Over the World, but now that you've beaten (or even possibly mortally injured) them they're taking everything with them. They don't mind dying anymore. (In lesser extents, they just settle for an Earthshattering Kaboom, especially if they can breathe in space and hold out a small hope of survival.)

If any villains have Take Over the World as their goal, they logically should not want this to succeed. Can result in Evil Versus Oblivion.

Related to the Omnicidal Maniac, who does this kind of thing; many of that trope's examples plan on sticking around afterwards, however. See also: Apocalypse How, Class Z. See Also; Put Them All Out of My Misery for a likely motivation behind this kind of behaviour; Norse Mythology, for a subversion - The Nidhogg and co, who EAT (Planet Eater vibe) The World Tree, and in one Ragnarok edition, Mr.Nidhogg goes into the void at the end of the world.

As a Death Trope, Spoilers ahead may be unmarked. Beware.

Examples of Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum include:

Anime and Manga

  • In The Slayers, the ultimate goal of the Mazoku is to return all existence to Chaos, including themselves. It was most explicitly pointed out by Hellmaster Fibrizo:

Hellmaster: "I want to be destroyed. I want to be destroyed! Destruction? Yes... Destruction is the ultimate wish of any Mazoku. [...] But this destruction shall consume all things! It shall consume the entire world! [...] All the world! Let all the world be destroyed with me!"

    • In Slayers Try, this is also the goal of the otherdimensional Vorfeed and Dark Star Dugradigdu, supreme Shinzoku and Mazoku of their universe. After realizing how pointless their existence of warfare and endless, cyclic confrontation was, they merged as one entity and went on to destroy the universes created by Lord of the Nightmares as a cosmic Take That to their creator. Lucky for them, Valgaav proved the perfect conduit for them in Ceipheed/Shabranigdu's universe...
  • Folken in Vision of Escaflowne the movie. He wants to extinguish all the misery and suffering from the world by wiping everybody from existence, himself included. His nihilism very briefly appeals to the protagonist who suffers from a bad case of teenager's angst, but pretty soon common sense wins.
  • Yuca wants to stop reincarnating. The only solution he's found is to wipe out the entire human race.
  • This is the end goal of Rave Master villain Hardner, who tries to summon the Eldtritch Clock Roach Endless to wipe out his own painful memories.
  • At the end of Digimon Adventure, when Apocalymon had his claw-things and the humanoid figure we thought was actually him destroyed, he threw a hissy and decided to nuketify the Human World and Digital World in one shot. The heroes defeated him by standing around going "Oh noes!" until their Transformation Trinkets spontaneously formed a force field in a classic example of Deus Ex Machina, containing the blast.
  • Slightly more realistic example: Rau Le Creuset the Big Bad of Gundam Seed, is a dying clone of a man he hated. Sick, angry at the world, and convinced that Humans Are Bastards, he turns Death Seeker and tries to take everything with him before he goes.
  • Though most of the Big Bads of Sailor Moon simply want to take over the galaxy, Pharaoh 90 appears to want to completely obliterate the world with The Silence for no other reason than because he can.


Comic Books

  • In Kurt Busiek's Astro City, Infidel narrates that he once destroyed the universe in a "fit of pique." After discovering even that wouldn't kill Samaritan (and Samaritan realizing the same for Infidel), they collaborated to put everything back together. Once that was done, they decided to have lunch together once a year.
  • Peter David's Captain Marvel (the one with Rick Jones, the latter one) has gone full on looney tunes, mainly because he knows everything. With the assistance of the personification of Entropy (Marvel Comics loves their personifications) all of reality is ended. 'Cept Rick, Entropy and the Cap. Rick convinces Entropy to become his 'dad', Infinity and the universe is rebooted.
  • Lucifer played with this. When informed that he can either take his father's position or let every universe in reality fall apart, unable to get over his daddy issues Lucifer begins an extremely arduous quest to fix the problem some other way.
    • Fenris is pretty much made of this trope, and Lilith is getting there. She throws a temper tantrum in front of God, demanding him to destroy the universe for putting so much pain in it, while He ponders if he should do just that.
  • Final Crisis: Once Darkseid is fatally poisoned by the radion bullet, he decides to take the rest of the universe with him, hastening the decay of space-time that his rebirth had already started.
  • Several X-Men What Ifs were written between Jean Grey's death and resurrection in the '80s that showed Phoenix going Dark again and doing this, had she survived her final battle. Presumably the editors really, really wanted to keep her dead... until they didn't.
  • There was a Marvel What If comic from the late 80s or early 90s that ended with a giant Korvac sitting on Earth in a state of bottomless despair, and holding the Ultimate Nullifier. He thinks of everything that ever was, is and will be, and presses the button.
  • This was a major plot point in Marvel's Secret Wars II, where the Beyonder threatened to destroy all reality because he couldn't find a meaning to existence.


Fan Works

  • In the Ocarina of Time fanfic The Legend of Link: Lucky Number 13, Fate suffers one of these when he realises he's been outplayed, causing stars to explode and dimensional positions to shift.
  • There's an entire subtrope of Sailor Moon fan fiction as well that takes this route. Typically, someone (usually a rogue band of senshi) decides that destroying the Galaxy Cauldron (where souls are born) will end the recursive nature of war in the galaxy. This would also result in no new souls being born and old souls having no way to be reincarnated, effectively ending existence eventually. In fact, Sailor Cosmos intends to do this in the canon story, and is only persuaded not to do so by Sailor Moon's belief that the beauty of life more than makes up for eternal war.


Films

  • Azrael, the mastermind behind the plot of Dogma, fits the bill. Being trapped in Hell forever is a pretty compelling motive for wanting to undo existence. He also claims that since he didn't fight on either side during Lucifer's rebellion, he should not have to suffer the same fate as those who did fight God.


Literature

  • In Life, The Universe, And Everything, the people of the planet Krikkit live on a planet surrounded by a totally opaque dust cloud, so for centuries, they know nothing of the universe beyond their planet and the star they orbit. When a spaceship crash-lands on the planet, they use it to take an exploratory trip, curious of where it came from, and see the universe for the first time. Their immediate reaction? "It'll have to go."
    • Later revealed to be due to the influence of a supercomputer which had been commanded by it's programmers to build the ultimate weapon. It needed them to help him use it, and enhanced their war efforts.
  • In The Fionavar Tapestry, this is the motivation not so much of the Big Bad as of his Dragon. The reason? Long ago, he couldn't get the woman he considered his One True Love (she went with a mere human instead, who became Fionavar's first wizard) and swore an oath that he would end the world that had witnessed his rejection; how and whether he's planning to survive at all if and when he succeeds isn't clear, but towards the end of the trilogy he gets the chance to try. He fails, though only through the timely arrival of the one character who can stop what he's just unleashed -- and in the process learns to his own surprise that he's not yet beyond redemption himself.
  • In The Courts of Chaos (book 5 in the Book of Amber), a giant tries to convince Corwin to stop trying to save the multiverse. Corwin, of course, refuses to give up.
  • The alternate dimensional beings in Michael Swanwick's Jack Faust have the capacity and intention to survive until the heat death of their universe, but not beyond; they can observe and communicate across realities but can't physically leave. Because of the massive difference between how time flows in the two universes, their universe will end in several hundred to several thousand of our years. These beings find humanity so offensive that they assist the titular character in an effort to totally wipe out the species - the mere idea that humanity may continue to exist after they no longer do is a terrible affront to them.
  • Utuk'ku, the Norn Queen in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, is the oldest living being in the world, and wants to drag as much of the world as possible with her into death.
  • Subversion: The villain in the fifth Spellsinger novel harnesses a transcendental creature, and Clothahump assumes he intends to destroy the world with it as a grandiose form of suicide. As it turns out, though, Braglob did it For the Evulz and had no specific plans for the thing at all.
  • In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, Jadis recounts how she destroyed all other life on Charn because her sister had won their civil war.
  • This is the ultimate fate of the universe in Harlan Ellison's The Region Between, destroyed by the same insane God that made it, who kills himself in the process.


Live-Action TV

  • In a fourth season story from Doctor Who, "The Underwater Menace", Professor Zaroff, embittered because his wife died in a crash (at least in the original script), has the goal of making a hole in the seabed under the Atlantic so the erupting lava would boil away the ocean, destroying the Earth. Only the Earth would be destroyed, not the universe, but it still pretty much counts.
  • In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow goes here after Tara's death results in a Heroic BSOD, after Giles tricks her into feeling the pain of everyone in the world. It was supposed to fill her with compassion, and it did. Fortunately Xander manages to stop her.


Music

  • The final act of Fireaxe's 4-hour epic Food for the Gods revolves around one of these being thrown by literally every being in creation that didn't get into heaven.


Tabletop Games

  • Tharizdun from Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 and earlier fits this trope to a strong degree, except his exact reasons for wanting to annihilate all existence aren't ever explored.
    • He's the god of destruction. It's his job.
    • He went mad after touching a shard of Pure Evilness(tm), which may or may not be the only remains of the previous universe.
  • The Deathlords of Exalted all have the canonical aim of 'being the last person there to blow out the candle of creation', in direct service of their Neverborn Masters. This also presumably extends to any loyalist Abyssal Exalted. Mind you, for the Neverborn, this isn't so much "wiping out the world because it won't have me" as it is "someone, please just pull the plug"—they can't die because their souls are bound to Creation, so they're just caught in an endless state of agony.
  • Rovagug from Pathfinder wishes to destroy absolutely everything. He has no allies in the cosmology at all, to the point where if he were to be released, every single solitary god would stand against him.
  • The page image is a card from the game We Didn't Playtest This at All.

Video Games

  • Mu-12 from BlazBlue is almost literally this trope incarnate!
  • The destruction of the multiverse is Count Bleck's goal in Super Paper Mario, in vengeance for his lover's apparent death. He finds an Artifact of Doom and a Tome of Eldritch Lore just for this goal.
    • Dimentio falls back on this plan after his One-Winged Angel form is defeated (his original plan was remaking everything in his own image, his last resort was to leave the Chaos Heart/Void going and take everything out with him).
  • Kuja in Final Fantasy IX is a true example of the "temper tantrum" part of the trope and probably the best example from a Final Fantasy game. Upon discovering he's a mortal and is an Artificial Human who's due to expire any day now because he was only a temporary pawn, he decides if he doesn't get to live, why should anyone else? He's so selfish and arrogant he doesn't think it's fair that life will continue after he's dead.
    • Neo-Exdeath from Final Fantasy V wishes to draw everything into the Void, and then disappear himself. This isn't out of anger like Kuja; it's just what he does.
    • Sort of what Nietzsche Wannabe Kefka wanted to do in Final Fantasy VI, although it was never clear whether he intended to destroy himself afterward. Dissidia Final Fantasy implies it's because he's unable to understand the point of life, thus he wants to destroy everything because everything else is meaningless to him.
    • Implicit in Seymour's plans—he views death as a wonderful release from the suffering of life, hence everything deserves the so-called mercy of dying. However, given the weird way death works in Spira, it isn't that he wants to destroy everything for the sake of destroying it, Seymour actually thinks death is a step up from life—death didn't much slow down Auron, Yunalesca and Seymour himself when they died, and Yunalesca has been dead for 1000 years. Of course, that's not to say his plan was well thought out, because killing everyone in an apocalyptic fashion would probably cause them to become Fiends, as they would die painful, horrible deaths.
    • Also the focus behind the Twist Reveal in Final Fantasy XI with the Chains of Promathia expansion where it is revealed that all beings on Vana'diel are parts of the Twilight God Promathia, and his belief that destroying all those loose parts of himself are the only way he can die and free himself of the pain of existence.
    • Dissidia Final Fantasy, Chaos decides to tear apart the combined realities that make up the battlefield for the conflict of the Gods, and then disappear himself. Its due in part to just being sick of the endless cycles of conflict, death, and rebirth, and in part because Cosmos' death has triggered a My God, What Have I Done? moment for him when he realized they used to rule together in peace before the wars began.
    • In Crisis Core: -Final Fantasy VII-, Genesis Rhapsodos falls under this when Dr. Hollander says no one (not even Dr. Hojo) knows where the Genova cells are, which is what Genesis is looking for. But Dr. Hojo does know.
  • The 'bad' ending of the Demon Path from Soul Nomad and The World Eaters ends like this. Revya kills both Haephnes and Drazil and erases both their worlds from existence, killing everything on them and him/herself with it. Any last words as they lament the destruction of everything with their dying breaths? Oh yes:

Revya: It doesn't matter. It was fun. *Critical Existence Failure*

  • The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask. The titular mask contains a quite lunatic and uncontrollable spirit that thought it'd be a hilarious prank to destroy the world by making the moon collide with it. Even the moon doesn't like this idea!
  • Ghadius from Klonoa: Door to Phantomile attempts to destroy the world as revenge for being sealed away 3000 years ago. He doesn't care that his plan would destroy him along with the rest of Phantomile.
    • The King of Sorrow from the sequel appears to be attempting the same thing, as by linking the Kingdom of Sorrow to Lunatea is implied to cause some degree of destruction.
  • Diablo: According to the Diablo I manual, the minions of Baal, the Lord of Destruction, seek the undoing of the universe.
  • In God of War: Chains of Olympus, Big Bad Persephone hires the Titan Atlas to use the kidnapped sun god Helios' powers to destroy the pillar that holds the world up, causing it, Olympus, and the underworld to crash down on top of each other and kill everyone. It's a form of suicide-revenge; she's tired of living in a loveless marriage to Hades, and wants to get back at her husband and Zeus for trapping her in it, believing The End of the World as We Know It to be a fitting way of solving both problems. Verily, hell truly hath no fury like a woman scorned...
    • Actually, the game makes it clear that ending the entire world is literally her only way of escape; she doesn't seem terribly happy about it, but she just cannot take it anymore. It's the first hint at just what an enormous bunch of dicks Kratos is dealing with here, and unlike the rest of the series, when the Big Bad is pretty much just an enormous douche for no reason, you actually feel pretty bad for her.
  • Live a Live, the Armageddon Ending, triggered as a menu command.
  • Mother 3, (mega end of the game spoilers) As a result of his time-traveling, immortal body, and countless years of life, Porky has grown supremely impossibly, crushingly bored with all of creation. So he plans to have the Needles sealing away the Dark Dragon pulled to destroy what little there is left of the world, and live alone forever, just him and the Dragon.
  • The 'Bad Ending' of Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. Mao personally kills the last shred of truth left in his heart, unleashes his full, uncontrollable dark power as 'The Strongest Overlord'... and after Aurum kills his childhood friend Raspberyl, he proceeds to curb-stomp him (with a genuine curb!), and then explodes. Annihilating everything. Netherworld, Celestia, Human World, EVERYTHING. Leaving only himself, floating immortally in the midst of nothing...
    • This crops up repeatedly throughout the Disgaea games, usually with an emphasis on "temper tantrum". Often, it's what happens if the player decides be be a wise-ass and grind up enough to win the Hopeless Boss Fight.
  • Elvin Atombender in Impossible Mission is a Mad Scientist who plans to blow up the planet by cracking the world's nuclear launch codes.
  • Zero/Zero-Two from the Kirby series seems to be of the first type, or at least it is universally portrayed as such.
  • Antignarot of Jay's Journey resorts to this, type 2 (and more out of insanity than anything else), when Jay talks him out of trying to Take Over the World.
  • If you can untangle the Mind Screw of a plot, the Time Devourer from Chrono Cross is basically undergoing one of these. After the canon ending of the original game, the resident Eldritch Abomination absorbed Princess Schala, and the influence of a conflicted human intelligence warped Lavos's simple, mindless hunger into a desire to destroy everything to wipe the universe clean. When you fight it as the final boss, it's actually in the process of absorbing all of time and space, leaving it alone in the abyss. The only way to permanently stop it is to use the titular Chrono Cross to separate Lavos and Schala.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • In The Tick, oblivion is the goal of the entire Hey species, due to being Scary Dogmatic Aliens who literally worship nothing.
  • Parodied in Earthworm Jim. Evil the Cat wants to destroy all of creation. When someone asked him what he would do afterwards: "Gloat, I suppose."
  • In Ben 10: Alien Force, this turns out to be the plan of the Highbreed; they're going to die out within a generation due to inbreeding and subsequent genetic problems, so dammit, they're going to take every other species down with them.
  • This is what the Shredder's plan in Turtles Forever boils down to, a course of action he chooses to take after discovering the truth about the multiverse.
    • Shredder is actually torn on whether or not killing the Turtles was worth dying himself. In the end, he thought it was totally worth it.
  • Likewise, Owlman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, who desires the end of the whole multiverse.
  • Spider-Carnage in Spider-Man: The Animated Series wants to kill himself, the planet, and the entire multiverse because he cannot cope with his own pain. He ultimately just kills himself, sparing the multiverse.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Suicidal_Cosmic_Temper_Tantrum?oldid=1943147"