Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds

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

Servo: Think so. [chuckles]

Crow: Second, uh- ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR STUPID ROTTED SKULL, YOU DUMB MAN!?!"

- Mystery Science Theater 3000, after Mike Nelson accidentally blows up a planet... with a baking soda bomb. Link to video

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: 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.

Once this is understood, you find yourself in the curious situation where the sort of fellow who goes around destroying worlds isn't actively evil. More often, he's more a sort of buffoon. A guy who just doesn't have the sense of responsibility or the ability to wrap his mind around the consequences of his actions to realize that blowing up a planet is a particularly bad idea.

Compare with the Omnicidal Maniac, the 'serious' version of this trope who can wrap his head around the concept and wants to do it anyway. If this goes to the next step and the destruction is only really caused by the character's indirect actions, then the character is a Doom Magnet (though the normal version of this also applies as well).

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

Anime and Manga

 * Memories: Nobuo Tanaka. Hilariously.
 * The Dirty Pair have accidentally blown up at least ten planets, though it's only ever an indirect result of their actions.
 * In the Sailor Moon anime, Sailor Saturn is theoretically capable of destroying the world just by bringing down the tip of her weapon. Thing is: she's a protagonist. So in the anime, she only ever starts doing this as a threat against certain Big Bads, but someone always has to stop her. In the manga, she actually does destroy the world, just once, at the end of the Death Busters arc. Since this is Sailor Moon and the main character has "reviving people and/or planets" explicitly as a power, it recovers. The manga also notes that Saturn slumbered during the Silver Millenium until the Talismans carried by Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto awoke her after the Moon Kingdom's destruction, causing her to also destroy the remnants of the Kingdom and allow a new world to be reborn (along with herself and the other Outer Senshi).
 * More of a "Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Islands", but recently in One Piece
 * Jirarudan from Pokémon 2000 nearly wipes out the world's ecosystem by tampering with some very important, very pretty elemental birds. Destruction isn't part of his plan; only the birds are, and he never comes across as evil, only greedy and blissfully unaware of what he kickstarted.
 * More of a major territory destroying incident: in Turn 18 of Code Geass R2, Suzaku.
 * In the Dragon Ball series attempting to blow up planets is a common occurrence.
 * King Piccolo states that he has enough power to destroy the world, but never demonstrates the ability. But given that the distinctly weaker Master Roshi did demonstrate his ability to blow up the moon, there's no reason to doubt Piccolo's claim.
 * Vegeta effortlessly blows up the planet Arlia and it's moon with a small beam from his finger. (Though this is Filler.)
 * Vegeta attempts to blow up Earth, this time requiring a larger charged beam, but is stopped by Goku.
 * Frieza destroys the planet Namek using a huge ball of energy that it took him time to gather. Though it took a long time before the planet actually exploded.
 * Cell attempts to destroy the Earth with a Kamahamaha attack but Goku stops him. Later when Cell is losing he attempts to destroy Earth by self-destructing but Goku teleports him to King Kai's planet causing Cell to destroy it instead.
 * Super Buu almost destroys the entire physical universe by powering up.
 * Kid Buu destroys several planets during his rampage.
 * This is also a common plot in Dragonball Movies:
 * Garlic Jr. attempts to suck the Earth into the Dead Zone.
 * Dr. Wheelo attempts to destroy the Earth when he began to lose his battle.
 * Turles plants the Tree of Might which almost sucks the Earth dry of water.
 * Lord Slug attempt to terraform Earth almost making it uninhabitable.
 * Cooler attempts to destroy the Earth with a large ball of energy.
 * Cooler (merged with the Big Gete Star) attempts to devour the planet New Namek as fuel.
 * Paragus lures the heros to a planet that is about to be destroyed by a comet.
 * Janemba messes up the universe
 * Hoi releases Hirudegarn in an attempt to destroy the Earth, only to be killed by Hirudegarn himself.
 * Dragonball Specials:
 * The alternate timeline Android 17 and Android 18 where slowly eradicating all life on Earth.
 * Frieza destroys Planet Vegeta.
 * Dr. Raichi puts a device on Earth to kill all life with poisonous gas.
 * Generally, people destroy (or attempt to destroy) planets in Dragon Ball either because it's the quickest and surest way to wipe out their enemies or (more frequently, especially for characters who do so while on the planet they're trying to destroy) because they're too pissed off to care about the consequences.
 * The title character of Haruhi Suzumiya. All the time.
 * This is basically Dewie Novak's plan in the Eureka Seven anime, but a bit more ambitious. In the show's universe there's a theory that if there are too many living organisms the universe will collapse. So he tries to wake up the Corialian collective. All of Them
 * The Great Demon King of Beelzebub. Tries to fit destroying the human world into his busy schedule between games of mahjong and poker and singing karaoke or attending demon golf tournaments. His social calendar is so full he ends up sending his 1-year-old spawn to do the deed in his stead.
 * A somewhat dramatic version of this trope can be found in Puella Magi Madoka Magica in the form of  was plotting to (indirectly) use   to destroy the human race, but its not   The Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds comes in when
 * In Tenchi Muyo!, Washu's way of showing that she is the greatest scientist, is by creating a weapon capable of destroying planets.
 * In Uchuu Senkan Yamato, the crew's attacks push the volcanic activity of  up to a point that the planet explodes. When they arrive at Iscandar, the learn that

Comics
\\On the other hand, considering that the alternative to Galactus means, it seems obvious that the universe will happily accept having to deal with Galactus if it means choosing between "systematic destroyer of worlds destroying one every couple of months (Galactus) or a monster that destroys everything in the same amount of time ". Galactus may end up eating everything, but he keeps it around several billion years more than it would otherwise. That, and Galactus will also start the next Big Bang when the current universe ends, thus giving birth to the new one.
 * Galactus, the Marvel Universe eater of worlds, is often portrayed as not exactly evil per-se, but as something of a sentient force of nature (though the question of whether it is possible to be a sentient destructive force of nature without this conferring some degree of "evil" may be a form of Carnivore Confusion). Additionally, he was just an average Joe astronaut from the previous universe before the Big Crunch forced him into his new job, so he not only never had any choice in the matter- he's just become densitized to it over the eons, and acted the trope much more in the beginning.
 * In the past, it's also been implied that, while his hunger drives him to destroy planets (and all life on them), the shattered remains left behind are freed up to form new planets and new life, staving off entropy - which means that he functions sort of like a cosmic recycler. This is one of the reasons why Reed Richards has come to the conclusion in the past that, ultimately, the universe NEEDS Galactus. It's assumed that Galactus, being nearly omnipotent, can overcome the complications of that plan.

Depending on how hungry he is and what type of world his diet is this writer week, he may even have the heralds direct him to planets either not inhabited or not inhabited by sapient life, so he definitely does all he can to minimize suffering when alternatives are available. And if he has to eat an inhabited planet, at least he's nice enough to have his heralds give a planet advanced warning to evacuate before he comes over for dinner. True, it's usually a week or two before the end rather than the decades an evacuation of such scale would take, but it's the thought that counts.
 * The one-shot starring Galacta, Galactus' daughter, runs with the more negative interpretation of Galactus. However, since Galacta suffers from daddy issues and is estranged from Galactus, Unreliable Narrator is probably a factor here. The one-shot's ending, with Galactus, implies that Galactus is capable of compassion at least.
 * A parody of Galactus can be seen in Omnipotus from The Tick -- a rather dim-witted planet eater who was talked out of destroying the earth and into taking a bite out of the moon instead.
 * Inept superhero Killcat, a recurrer in The Savage Dragon, has accidentally destroyed both Detroit and Godworld, both times by inadvertently setting off self-destruct sequences.
 * Wonder Woman once defeated Ares by simply ensnaring him in her golden lariat, forcing him to see what would happen if he successfully destroyed the world: he'd have no one to worship him or serve him.
 * The bounty hunter Lobo, of DC fame, has blown up several planets, at least one solar system, countless species, and an entire universe. All by accident though (save his own planet; he destroyed it on purpose), owing to nothing but apathy and a habit of leaving high explosive laying around. Not that he wouldn't have blown them all up anyway given the chance...
 * A variation of this trope occurs in The Authority. A past incarnation of The Doctor is given his old powers back for one hour by the current incarnation to help solve a problem. Past Doctor, of course, being an Omnicidal Maniac, doesn't plan to give the power back after an hour, instead he will become the ultimate ruler of everything. He is foiled by the plans of the current Doctor when, before the hour is up, he is
 * Speaking of which the chances are rather high that this is a new trope, a Causality Casualty. Another Doctor and David Xanatos himself have both done this; . In the case of Doctor Who, an arc of the Daleks' strange history involved an Earth where, the exact cause of the loop presumably the Daleks themselves. David actually.
 * 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. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

Newspaper Comics

 * In a very early Dilbert strip, he discovered a microscopic inhabited planet, which he accidentally crushed with his microscope while trying to focus in on it. He has accidentally caused quite a few other accidental deaths over the years, but never again on that scale.
 * The best part of the aforementioned incident, as lampshaded by Dogbert in the last panel, is that Dilbert's first words to the tiny planet are "I Come in Peace".

Film

 * Carl Denham could be considered a small-scale example of this in Peter Jackson's King Kong remake, as his reckless quest to make nature movies and display Kong to the public results in multiple deaths and maimings, chiefly among his friends and associates. This habit persists in the books King Kong: The Island Of The Skull and A Natural History Of Skull Island, and is Lampshaded by another film character, who remarks that Carl has an amazing ability to destroy whatever he loves.
 * 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'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.
 * Ice-9 gets a Shout-Out in Eight Bit Theater, where Red Mage uses it to kill Marilith by stuffing her into a BagOfHolding, then casting Ice IX on it and shattering it.
 * The Bag of Holding is important here, because Ice-9 is not, in Eight Bit Theater, a new arrangement of ice molecules -- it's a magic spell, specifically the highest possible ice spell. If cast (when outside the Bag of Holding, anyway), it would remove all heat from the universe. Fortunately, Red Mage appears to operate on Vancian Magic with the really gnarly spells.
 * 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 Stephen King's Dark Tower series, the Crimson King manages to straddle the line between this and Omnicidal Maniac--he's insane and/or senile enough that he's really not certain what he wants to do once he controls the Dark Tower, or what the results will be. But he's a vicious bastard anyway.
 * This is covered in the prequel comic series. CK wants to destroy the Tower and unmake reality because he was born in and came from the chaos that existed before Gan spun the Tower. He abhors everything about reality and wants it undone.
 * In John C. Wright's The Golden Age, in the Backstory, a simulation of the future had resulted in a virtual character burning a planet. The character, shocked, suffered a My God, What Have I Done?, which impelled him to become become an independent, self-aware mind through pondering questions of existence. This is an important factor in why people are so opposed to the hero's projects, later on.
 * 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

Live Action TV
"Mike: I just asked them to take care of a little problem!
 * 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 the simian rulers of future Earth repair and detonate an old atomic bomb.
 * The She-Creature - Mike orders the Satellite of Love's nanites to help engineer a distraction allowing Pearl and co. to escape the Observers' planet. The little robots decide blowing it up is the best solution.

Crow: And they did! Here comes Mike, Destroyer of Worlds!

Servo: Oh, god of fire and vengeance — get away from me, you knob!"

"Crow and Servo: Mike broke the Hub~ble, Mike broke the Hub~ble!"
 * Riding With Death - Beset by attacking robots, Pearl has the SoL provide air support. Mike whips up a baking soda and vinegar bomb to make a "little distraction," but ends up overfilling the thing after a bad memory leads him to mutter bitterly about past persecutions over similar pranks.
 * For a non-planetary example, while taking a break from watching This Island Earth, Mike takes the helm of the SoL and almost immediately collides with the Hubble Telescope.

"Stanley: For example, if I was to say, oh, "Lexx, blow up that planet"...
 * Professor Bobo gets an honorable mention for helping with the aforementioned A-Bomb, as well as for accidentally burning down Ancient Rome over the course of Space Mutiny.
 * Stanley Tweedle, the captain of the planet-destroying ship in Lexx had a bad habit of overreacting, mostly because, being something of an immature dolt, he never really comes to understand the enormity of blowing up a planet, or that it is not really a proportional response to being mildly annoyed with one of the planet's populace. Several times, he blows up planets entirely by accident. It doesn't help that his ship actually wants to destroy planets (and eat their debris), and often suggests this course of action to Stanley.

Lexx: As you command.

Stanley: No!!!"

"Rodney: It was uninhabited!"
 * In another episode he threatened the sole inhabitant of a planet by ordering Lexx to blow it up in one minute unless he countermanded the order before then. The inhabitant acquiesced to the threat, so Stanley told Lexx that he was cancelling the order... and then, when the one minute mark passed, Lexx blew up the planet anyway. Lexx didn't understand what the word "cancel" meant and didn't think to ask.
 * In "Eating Pattern," one of the original four-TV-movie cycle, a large alien life form is clinging to Lexx's hull and biting into it. Lexx blows up a nearby planet to produce a cloud of debris so that it can maneuver through it and scrape the offending parasite off. This was an autonomous decision on Lexx's part, not Stanley's, but the motivation was just as petty.
 * Xev (the first one) got out of paying a medical bill by destroying a planet behind the space station said medical center was on. Later, at a brothel space station, Stanley does pretty much the same thing, on Xev's advice no less.
 * Gaius Baltar, on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, didn't actually mean to give the killer robots unlimited access to the Colonial defense mainframe -- he just thought with the wrong head when confronted by a gorgeous blonde with a vaguely plausible story. (The fact that he then went on to give another Cylon a nuclear warhead as a courtship gift... well, some guys just don't learn.)
 * On Stargate Atlantis, Rodney accidentally destroys most of a solar system due to his overconfidence in handling some Lost Technology even the Precursors couldn't handle.

"Trunk: Hammer! You can't defuse that bomb!
 * Five-sixths of a solar system, to be precise, according to his argument with Weir about it. And then there was that alternate universe...
 * The script for the never-produced Ringo Starr show, written by Graham Chapman and Douglas Adams, ends with Rinog Trars unthinkingly waving Ringo goodbye and destroying the universe.
 * One memorable Kids in The Hall sketch featured Dave Foley as an alien spy on Earth. After accidentally letting slip that he is an alien, he beams out and orders the planet destroyed. Then, back on the alien planet, he is berated by his superior for blowing up Earth as well as several other planets in the past. The spy then lets slip that he is a double agent, so of course, that planet must be now destroyed.
 * Tom Baker's final episode of Doctor Who saw the Master "temporarily" halt the workings of the planet Logopolis in order to find out what the inhabitants were up to. It turned out that they'd been holding a deadly field of entropy from doing any damage, and the Master's screwing about with them accidentally unleashes it on the universe. By the time the Doctor manages to stop the entropy field half the universe has been disintegrated, meaning that the Master's single biggest atrocity (if not the biggest by anyone, ever) ended up being caused entirely by accident.
 * Oh boy, where to begin with Kamen Rider Decade? He's called the "Destroyer of Worlds" and is believed to be a (metaphorical) demon bent on wiping out the multiverse. When our hero Tsukasa is given Decade's powers and tasked with destroying the Alternate Rider Worlds by the originals, he chooses instead to help those worlds' heroes with whatever crisis is going on when he arrives. It seems to work, until the final episode, where
 * Power Rangers RPM features The Woobie, Dr. K, trying to escape unjust imprisonment by the government in a secret think-tank. She tries to wipe their computer systems out with a virus she made, but they apprehend her before she can install the firewall. The virus proceeds to escape the area she meant to keep it to, and nukes the entire planet to desert and rubble.
 * The last episode of Dinosaurs features Earl Sinclair
 * End of the first season of Sledge Hammer. The army request the aid of the police to fight against a terrorist organization, which has an atomic bomb. They defeat and capture them, but they activate the countdown to the atomic explosion. They seach and find the bomb, and...

Hammer: Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

Music
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
"Gig: Oh please! You're trying to play the victim? We can't even move on with the story because you destroyed the world! Now we have to start all over again. Seriously, thanks a lot!"
 * The only other character to rival the Dirty Pair would be Metroid's Samus Aran. A large proportion of the places she has stepped on, whether it be a mere space station to a planet, has either been vaporized, self-destruct, blown up, or all of the above! To whether or not the amount of collateral damage Samus has dealt exceeds Kei and Yuri's is anyone's guess. Although it's not always her fault: self-destruct sequences destroyed all of the space stations she was on, and a few of the planets. Still, Samus Aran has a reputation for causing Earth Shattering Kabooms everywhere she goes.
 * Metroid:
 * Zero Mission:
 * Metroid Prime: It opens with Samus causing a spaceship to blow up (she kills a monster that falls into the reactor). The planet she moves onto survives the experience...
 * Metroid Prime Hunters:
 * Metroid Prime 2: Samus manages to destroy
 * Metroid Prime 3: pretty much saving the universe in the process.
 * Metroid II: Samus visits, and instead of destroying it simply
 * While not destroying the planet, this action does.
 * Super Metroid:
 * Metroid: Other M: Samus wasn't responsible. The fans were not pleased.
 * In cutscenes flashbacky and post-gameish, she's spotted on Earth. It's only a matter of time...
 * Metroid Fusion:, taking , that place that conspicuously didn't blow up in Metroid II, with it. This time Samus was responsible, although she had help.
 * Dragon Overlord Babylon from Makai Kingdom is an extremely powerful and extremely large overlord... who just so happens to be senile and near-blind. He has a nasty habit of accidentally colliding into various celestial bodies during his wanderings through the cosmos, who usually get away from it worse than he. Also Zetta, who kicks off the game when he burns a book called the Sacred Tome in a fit of pique (it called him stupid), only to realize too late that destroying the book will also destroy his entire world.
 * Arguably Salome in the same game who, near the end, smashes her own world into Zetta's newly restored one (just to get his attention). While this is never mentioned again it can't have been a healthy act for either world.
 * She also destroyed Valvoga's netherworld... for no particular reason other than the fact that it was there.
 * Although Soul Nomad and The World Eaters is usually prime Omnicidal Maniac country, Bonus Boss Asagi fits squarely into this trope when she destroys the world as a pre-battle taunt without much forethought, just to show off her badassitude. Due to this, you get a Nonstandard Game Over even if you win:

"Charnel: Let me assure you, I do not wish to destroy the world. That's where all the best slaughter takes place, you know."
 * The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy, who took things a few step further by destroying all the stars in the sky during a drunken bender.
 * The game Dr. Muto starts off with the eponymous Mad Scientist character presenting what was to be a machine that could provide unlimited clean energy to a planet is sabotaged and ended up obliterating the planet he lived on, save for a chunk of landmass of his own planet. He then spends the game trying to repair the machine and rebuild the planet.
 * Riku sort of accidentallyonpurpose doing this to his own world triggered the plot of Kingdom Hearts. Apparently all he was trying to do was get out and see the universe.
 * True, Bowser wanted to remake the universe in his image and rule over it forever, but he didn't want to destroy it. Then Mario comes along, screws up his plans, and causes the formation of a universe-consuming black hole. It was only through the grace of Rosalina and the Star Children that said black hole created a second Big Bang that recreated the universe.
 * The Villain Protagonist of Mastermind: World Conqueror. In the end, he does succeed with Project Genesis and leaves the world, but can merely gloat and laugh at a bunch of floating rocks in space from within his one-man shuttle.
 * However, he still seems quite satisfied with the result, and states that it was worth it... except, he forgot his cheesy snacks! NOOOOOOOOOO!
 * Gehn from the Myst series (Riven and the novels, to be precise) is one of the rare outright villainous examples. He's quite smart and no Omnicidal Maniac, but his tendency to destroy worlds makes sense in context because he thinks he can just make more of them. He's convinced that the D'ni were gods and believes himself to be the same; unfortunately, his myopic insistence on copying existing work in piecemeal fashion means that all of the Ages he writes have, in Atrus' words, "a fatal instability." He believes the Ages he writes are worlds he's created, to do with as he sees fit; as Atrus comes to understand, the Books are gateways to worlds that already exist, and through the complex interplay of word and world, Gehn is not only Linking to worlds, but also changing and destroying them.
 * Shinki, the Hot as Hell Goddess of the Devil World, (I.E. Satan stand-in who happens to be Good All Along and a Designated Antagonist,) from the Touhou game Mystic Square, is capable of reshaping her world as she sees fit, and when the heroine attacks her, her self-defense accidentally destroys her entire homeworld. Oops! Worst of all, she loses to the heroine, they have tea, realize it was a misunderstanding and make up, and then Shinki's daughter, Alice, runs off after the heroines, making it all a bit of a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story. Well, that is, if you feel sorry for all the friendly demons who died, at least.
 * The entire plot was kick-started by her allowing denizens of Makai (read: monsters and demons) to conduct tourism in the human world, which naturally disturbed the protagonists enough to investigate. She just doesn't think her actions through well enough.
 * Played with in Sands of Destruction, where destruction of the world is the primary goal of the main character and friends and, in fact, the main character is.
 * Lampshaded by Card-Carrying Villain Charnel in Sacrifice when asked on his views of a prophecy that one of the five gods will go bad and try to doom everything:


 * The Ring, a spacestation in Freelancer, was originally built by the Chancellor of Rheinland to be lined with mirrors and to serve Planet New Berlin as a second sun. Somehow, it ended up accidently turned into an orbital superweapon which vaporised several colonies on the planet's surface.
 * Kratos inadvertantly causes a number of environmental catastrophes by killing the gods in God of War III. For example, killing Poseidon, god of the ocean, causes a flood which decimates Greece.
 * In Fallout 3's DLC Mothership Zeta, while exploring the eponymous spaceship, you will come across a button. When pressed, . Think of all the tribes, civilizations and potential nation states you just destroyed. You Bastard.
 * In Fallout: New Vegas, this is actually part of the Courier's backstory as detailed in the Lonesome Road DLC.
 * Over the course of the Halo games, the Master Chief has either directly or indirectly destroyed 5 planetoids: the three Halos, the Ark and High Charity.
 * The title character of Nie R just wants to save his daughter/sister. Through a series of misunderstandings and mistakes, this has the ultimate result of
 * In Star Ocean 4,
 * Possible in Star Ruler. Some time in, you will be building and facing ships more durable than planets and with the firepower needed to destroy each other. This can easily mean that you target a planet to cleanse it of enemy life and end up accidentally fragging it because you underestimated just how just firepower you have in play.

Web Comics
"Torg: "Whoa. There goes another one!""
 * A pseudo-example: in the webcomic Goats, computer programmer Phil uses completely random trial and error to try and fix a terminal flaw in the source code of the entire universe. He is casual about the process until he is informed that the simulations he is running involve the creation and destruction of sub-universes, and the amount of living creatures he wipes out with each universe destruction works out to "3.5 gigaHitlers".
 * Which works out to between 21 to 70 'quadrillion' (21*10^15 - 70*10^15), depending on which numbers you use.
 * 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 hangs a lampshade on this trope in this strip.
 * Similarly, in Order of the Stick, when Roy accuses Xykon of plotting to destroy the world, Xykon replies, "Hey, I LIKE the world. Some of my best evilness took place here." The gods alone know what he'll do if he ever figures out
 * 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.
 * In the A Miracle of Science webcomic a mad scientist fails due to the fact that "destroying the world you want to conquer" doesn't exactly count as a credible threat.
 * Despite occasionally saving the world as well, the cast of Sluggy Freelance (particularly Riff) do this from time to time. At one point (albeit in non-canon filler), Riff builds a machine that lets the gang view versions of themselves from alternate realities. A surprising number of these parallel universes involve one of the main characters causing Armageddon.

""They crashed a gas giant."
 * Bun-Bun, Riff and Torg manage to completely destroy the Punyverse in the GOFOTRON arc. By stealing a giant robot's crotch.
 * One alternate version of Riff also caused a demonic invasion of Earth, and another one turned the entire population of Earth into butterflies. And in a Bad Future he released K'Z'K the Vowelless.
 * In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob, semi-recurring antagonist Fructose Riboflavin threatens to destroy the Earth if they don't surrender and allow them to be the ruler of Earth, which is what he really wants. Bob, the main character lampshades this and buys time. It can be seen here.
 * Head Is a Dinosaur eats the world, but laments that his bike was still on it when he was eating it.
 * Schlock Mercenary

"You mean they crashed into a gas giant?"

"They did that, too.""


 * The end of Narbonic features the destruction of anonymous universes in order to acquire classic action figures.
 * Yahtzee Takes on the World, former web comic of Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame, ended with the eponymousr character holding the world ransom with a doomsday device at the center of the Earth and then forgetting the deactivation code for his own bomb. Oops.
 * 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 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
"Anubis: ...And then I'll destroy the world.
 * Played with in the Lemon Demon song "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets".
 * Lampshaded hilariously in the ending sequence of Mastermind: World Conqueror on Newgrounds:
 * Big Bad Zorc Necrophage is portrayed in this manner in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series. Oh, sure, he's constantly destroying the world, but he's also the lovably goofy protagonist of his own sitcom called "Zorc and Pals". Not to mention that we never actually see him destroying anything.
 * 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.

Yami: Why would you want to do that? What's the point of destroying the world? What do you gain from that?

Anubis: I... Don't understand the question.

Yami: Look, you must have a reason for wanting to destroy the world. Otherwise this whole movie was just pointless bickering.

Anubis: Of course I have a reason.

Yami: Oh goody, do you feel like sharing it with the class?

Anubis: No, it's a secret.

Yami: You're the most disappointing movie villain since General Grievous."

"I AM BECOME MIKE NELSON, DESTROYER OF WORLDS!"
 * In the Ed series on Things of Interest, the eponymous character.
 * Not to mention that Things of Interest also has a page explaining how to destroy the Earth
 * Referenced by name by the SI protagonist of Sleeping with the Girls.

Western Animation
"Al Gore: I'm a 12th level Vice President!"
 * Futurama Fry manages to destroy the entire universe by creating a time paradox. Not to worry, Gary Gygax will DM an eternity-long AD&D campaign to kill the un-time.

"Leela: The most humdrum activities look almost exciting through your eyes. What should we do next?"
 * Another episode had Bender incinerate the entire Earth by lighting a single cigarette.
 * In another episode, the gang helps Fry to have all his dreams come to life (except that one). One of those dreams was so trivial, just to blow a whole planet with a demolition cannon.

"Nik: That one's gonna burn reeeal good. Lots of critters. Critters burn gooood."
 * In a number of Looney Tunes shorts, Marvin the Martian wants to blow up the Earth because it blocks his view of Venus. Yes, isn't that lovely, hmm?
 * In another short, Duck Dodgers and Marvin are fighting for ownership of Planet X. Their rivalry winds up causing the planet's destruction.
 * Captain Hero from Drawn Together didn't exactly think things through (and really never does) when he single-handedly obliterated his home planet and all of its inhabitants. For attention As a temper tantrum.
 * Zim. Which is ironic, since when he's assigned to destroy the Earth he proves really bad at it.
 * On that note, had the series continued, one episode would have featured Squishy, Hugger of Worlds. Basically a lovable space buffoon who loved to hug planets until they exploded. The plot would have revolved around Zim and Dib's efforts to stop him.
 * Subverted (kind of) with the Planet Jackers. The entire race of beings throws planets into their dying sun, using planets as firewood to extend the star's life. Apparently, the sheer stubbornness and general inefficacy of this plan has yet to occur to them.

"Secret Squirrel: Yeah, you do that 'n' you'll be breakin' the law, Ahab!"
 * 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.
 * In one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes of The Simpsons, Homer manages to destroy the Earth through the negligence of not fixing the Y2K bug on a computer.
 * 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, it was all just a dream
 * Killface in Frisky Dingo wants to destroy the world. That he and his son would die as a result of this doesn't seem to occur to him. But then, nobody has any foresight in the show.
 * His mom was going to pick him up later (he's actually an alien).
 * In Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Buzz once encountered a seemingly abandoned spaceship, with no apparently functioning steering, whose rather careless occupants (they were in the deep freeze) had apparently failed to consider that high speed plus near invulnerability plus being large enough to punch through planets was a bad combination..
 * Excused somewhat as the alien owners of the ship.
 * In Agent 000: Secret Squirrel the sub stealer Captain Ahab ties up the eponymous hero and his companion so they can witness Ahab's diabolical scheme to blow up the world... just for kicks.

""He said THE planet. He didn't say which one.""
 * In his stupidity, Cosmo of The Fairly Odd Parents, sunk Atlantis nine times.
 * Not quite blowing up an entire planet, but Wanda has very strongly implied that she was the one who struck the earth with the meteor and killed all of the dinosaurs.
 * We later see said meteor completely fail to kill the dinosaurs... so Timmy calls in movie star Sylvester Calzone
 * In another episode, the evil bug that crawled up Vicky's butt escaped and started inhabiting other people. It inhabited the president of the United States, and he rigged a detonator to blow up the planet. By the end of the episode, Cosmo presses the button and blows up Pluto.


 * Pluto isn't a planet anymore, so it all worked out.
 * Let's not forget that episode alien prince Mark holds Flarg, whch ends with a world being destroyed the missile thingy ends up destroying fairy world with no casualties.
 * "We wouldn't have to blow up all these planets, if you'd just ask for directions!"
 * Tiny Toon Adventures: "Dizzy Eat World!" When the kids are assigned to animate their own cartoons, Dizzy's is a ten-second sequence of him eating the Earth. The others are all rather dumbstruck.
 * I.R. Baboon, the very literal Butt Monkey from I Am Weasel, inadvertently blows up the Earth at one point by plugging up a "ground-level volcano". With a giant inflatable cork.
 * It was also revealed that he ( and a time travelling underwear) was the reason why dinosaurs went extinct. They literally died of laughing (or more accurately, rolled off the edge of the earth - which was flat back then) after seeing his butt... Wow. Who made that up?
 * In the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, Hordak creates the 'Spell of Separation' which divides the planet of Eternia into Light and Dark hemispheres, but refuses to finish the spell when he realises it could destroy Eternia completely. Years later, Two-Bad find the spell, misinterprets it as a cure to their Biological Mashup problem, and attempt to cast it.
 * Note that Hordak could survive the destruction of Eternia (aside from flashback appearances, he spends the entirety of the series in another dimension), but he still realizes that destroying a planet that he wants to conquer wouldn't be particularly useful.
 * In a Justice League episode, the Green Lantern is put on trial for accidentally blowing up a planet with a stray shot from his ring.
 * While not on the scale of planets, a lot of characters in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic cause at least town-wide devastation through stupid, reckless, negligent, and accidental actions. Snips and Snails brought a giant star bear that could have destroyed the town, Twilight altered the Parasprites which caused them to eat all the buildings as well as caused a giant brawl just so she could have a problem she could solve, Pinkie made a musical number so bad that it turned a tense situation into a full on war, the CMC accidentally released the spirit of chaos, and a sleeping dragon almost blanketed the landscape for a century in smoke because he couldn't find a better place to snooze.


 * That Troper, Destroyer of Formatting.