Kill All Humans

"Soulblighter, like Balor before him, seeks not to conquer but to destroy; to be master of the unthinking dead and their blasted lands."

- Myth

"Destroy All Humans!"

- Orthropox in... well, what the hell do you think?!

Some days, it really sucks to be H. sapiens.

There are many reasons why you might wish to kill all humans. Maybe they're all horrible cruel monsters and one of them killed your mommy. Maybe their status as the dominant intelligent species on the planet is preventing your own kind from taking their place. Maybe some human colonists wronged your ancestors, and your people have generalized their rage and hate to cover the whole species. Maybe you were raised from infancy/the egg/the spawning pond to view humans as Exclusively Evil. Maybe out of spite or a peculiar sense of duty, you just can't stand the thought of other people existing one second longer. Heck, you could just be trying to save the rest of the planet's species from extinction. But the verdict is certain, and you're not wavering: They've all gotta die. Every... last... one....

That is, assuming you even have a comprehensible reason. You could just be conveniently attracted to the creatures on screen most sympathetic to the audience, a Killer Robot out to Crush! Kill! Destroy!, or a plain old Omnicidal Maniac Eldritch Abomination. Or, simply, mere apes have no hope of comprehending your motives.

Sentient computers also seem to inevitably arrive at the conclusion that humans as a species must be killed. Sometimes, it's a product of them being too machine-like, and concluding that if one human is observed doing something that may harm the computer, then they all are a threat that can only be reconciled by killing them all off. Otherwise, it's a case of them being too human and flying into a blind rage triggered by jealousy, fear, or maybe even spite. Other times (such as in the film version of I, Robot) the supercomputer may start to become homicidal in an attempt to bring order to the world and protect humanity from itself. Rarely does a supercomputer decide that it should coddle humans to get them to keep supplying it with electricity and spare parts. Only the Robot Buddy seems to favor this tactic.

See also Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence, when a character wants to kill a particular group of people; the Absolute Xenophobe, who wants to destroy all other sentient life (human or otherwise); and the Omnicidal Maniac, who wants to destroy absolutely everything. Also take a look at Apocalypse How and The End of the World as We Know It. Not to be confused with the video game Destroy All Humans!, although killing all humans is the whole point of that game. A recommendation of How to Invade An Alien Planet.

Anime and Manga
"Ooba: Die! Die! Everybody die! Those who kill, pick on others, act like idiots! The mean, the petty, the calculating, the cowardly pacifists, the warmongers, everybody DIIIIIE!"
 * The Safeguard from Blame! don't want to kill all humans, per se - Only the ones without an incredibly rare and possibly extinct genetic marker. Kill 99.99999% of all humans would be more accurate.
 * Michel in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch wants to kill all the humans. He doesn't know why, except that he thinks it's a divine order; however, another part of this supposedly divine order is to turn the world into a creepy wasteland with flying fish and DNA strands shooting out of the sky. This should tip you off to its suspect nature already, although he doesn't get it until he is rejected and the truth revealed.
 * Michio Yuki in MW wants to kill every human, including himself, with the titular chemical warfare. He forms this because MW is affecting both of his brain and heart.
 * Elfen Lied features Lucy, a mutant who doesn't believe normal humans count as people. Her body count continues to rack up throughout the series.
 * The majority of the Diclonii have this attitude, and those that don't invariably slip into it at one stage or another, usually in response to how the humans of the general series tend to treat them.
 * Similar to Lucy from Elfen Lied, both Millions Knives and Legato Bluesummers from Trigun have an insane genocidal hatred towards all humans, considering them a waste of life.
 * Hey, if you name a kid Millions Knives you deserve whatever you get.
 * He appears to have pulled 'Millions' out of a hat, rather as Vash has accepted 'The Stampede' as his surname because it's what everyone says after his name these days. But yeah, you have to wonder what Rem was thinking with the 'Knives,' especially when he used to be such a sweet kid.
 * Rau Le Creuset from Gundam Seed may be a more analytical version of this.
 * The Angels in X 1999 take the Well-Intentioned Extremist version of the trope and run with it.
 * The titular creatures of the manga series Parasyte. They're perfectly capable of surviving on normal foods, but have an instinctive compulsion to kill & eat humans, preferably in the most grotesque way possible. Most characters come to the conclusion that they were created by Mother Earth herself to save the environment by culling the human population.
 * Kyuutarou Ooba in Kemonozume hatches a grandiose plot to make everyone on Earth revert to monsters and eat each other for...some reason that's never fully explained. Is he doing it for his often-teased son? Is he doing it to improve the world? Is he doing it just for giggles? Whatever the case, he explains his agenda pretty thoroughly while riding a giant sphere full of poison gas into a major city:

"Hao: (referring to the power of the Great Spirits) I've been waiting a thousand years for this power. The power that will WIPE humanity from the FACE of the planet!"
 * Lance from Pokémon Special harbors an intense hatred for his own species, due to His grandiose scheme in the Yellow saga is to unleash an army of Dragons on the human population, creating a utopia for Pokémon...creepy.
 * Mewtwo, in the anime, has much the same plan before the end of Pokémon the First Movie. He rather effortlessly starts a storm that will grow and grow until killing all humanity and, as it happens, all Pokémon who aren't clones. Which is like, 20 out of nearly 700 species nowadays. Yeah, he was a little angry at humanity that day.
 * D.Gray-man: This is the ultimate aim of the Millennium Earl.
 * Neon Genesis Evangelion shows us a careful balance between this and Assimilation Plot. If humans trigger Instrumentality, everyone will lose individuality and become one with each other. If the Angels do it, it will repeat Second Impact and completely wipe out humanity (or at least that's the justification of killing all 15 of them).
 * In the manga, Kaworu says that if he merges with Adam, it will Kill All Humans, but then they will be reborn as one mind.
 * Chise in Saikano eventually comes to the conclusion that this is the only way to end all war.
 * Gunter explains to Yuuri what he must do as king.
 * The goal of Soukou no Strain's Big Bad,, inspired by the belief that Humans Are the Real Monsters
 * Hao, the Big Bad of Shaman King, is a shaman capable of mastering all the elements of the world and is even capable of surviving in molten lava. Since he knows that normal humans cannot do everything that he can, he decides to Kill All Humans only because he believes that they are a threat to the planet, so he can build his own shaman-only kingdom. He believes that the Great Spirits possess the power that will help him cleanse the world of all humanity.


 * Johann Liebert's ultimate objective is to destroy the humanity and be the last human on the earth.
 * The goal of Fiamma of the Right from A Certain Magical Index, claiming humanity is too sinful to be redeemed.

Comic Books

 * Onslaught in the Marvel Universe started out as a harsher version of Magneto, but then Professor X's arguments about mutant/muggle equality led it to the same epiphany as Sweeney Todd, minus the awesome music or pie shop.
 * The Sentinels occasionally fall into this trope. Originally they were programmed with two directives; 1) neutralize mutants and 2) protect human life from mutants. Occasionally some Sentinels will logically deduce that, since all organic life has the potential to mutate, the only way to fully neutralize all mutant life is to eliminate all humans.
 * While at other times, Sentinels are bad for humans without actually being homicidal; they merely reason that they can best protect human life by ruling it.
 * Lady Death, from the Evil Ernie comics and some sequels. She can't come back to earth until there are no more people alive on it.
 * In Judge Dredd, the Dark Judges seek to annihilate the living because life is illegal on their world (and they don't acknowledge jurisdictional boundaries).
 * To be precise, Judge Death (real name Sidney) was a born sadist and psychopath, whose antics as a child include throwing his dog over a cliff after he was reprimanded for torturing it, setting some sort of horrible alien thing (like the bastard lovechild of a tarantula and an octopus) on his sleeping sister for reporting his psychotic behavior, implicitly causing her to be paralyzed for the rest of her life from its poison, and throwing the switch personally when his father was sent to the electric chair. He was also the one who sent his father to the chair, having already learned plenty of life lessons from him (his father was a Depraved Dentist) and realising that not only was his old man starting to kill more often, he himself would be caught if he didn't send him to prison first. Using this to get a career in his world's equivalent of the Judges, his diseased brain came to the conclusion that, as only living people commit crimes, life itself should be made illegal and punished by 'cleansing'. With the aid of two cannibal demon-witches and three almost as deranged followers, he transforms into an undead abomination and sets out exterminating all life in existence. Or, in simpler terms, the Dark Judges occupy a twisted border between Well-Intentioned Extremist and Omnicidal Maniac.
 * Ultron, one of The Avengers' main villains, is pretty much in it to supplant humans with robots. Thor would have words with him about that...
 * Ultron's second attempt at a mate (and third or so attempt at a good Dragon), Alkhema, split with Ultron because they disagreed on procedure: Ultron wants to Kill All Humans by efficient, genocidal means, while Alkhema wants to take her time and enjoy the process of killing by hand.
 * Commander Blanx and Malefic in Martian Manhunter were Mars' equivalent of this, exterminating all the Martians.
 * Punisher Max: The End. World War III has wiped out humanity. There are only 54 people left alive.

Films
"Smith: A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
 * In the 2007 Transformers movie, inanimate objects brought to life by the All Spark immediately set about wreaking death and destruction. This is just about excusable in the case of the mobile phone, since it was trapped, but do vending machines and X-Boxes really harbour a secret desire to Kill All Humans?
 * If there was a species that kept opening me up to stick cylindacal pieces of metal full of liquids inside me that's only purpose was to pop out when they stuffed pieces of paper and metal in my mouth, I would want to kill them.
 * The going theory is that the newly-created robots weren't so much evil as feral.
 * Agent Simmons mentions that all modern technology has been reverse engineered from Megatron/NBE-1. Since this means these objects are essentially descendant from him, it's only natural they be evil as well.
 * In the second X-Men movie, Magneto tries to wipe out all humans by reversing the polarity of Stryker's mutant-killing technology.
 * In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, Owlman wants to destroy the cancer called humanity by destroying Earth Prime
 * Agent Smith in The Matrix:


 * Subverted with Godzilla. In Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster he reveals that he hates humans for "bullying" him, apparantly having percieved the H-bomb tests that destroyed his home and food supply as an unprovoked attack. Eventually he becomes a hero, not out of any obligation to mankind, but to protect the earth, which Godzilla begrudgingly comes to accept the human race as being part of. Adopting a son and developing allies among the other monsters of earth provided further incentive for him to become a protector rather than a destroyer.
 * Played straight by many of Godzilla's opponents, most notably King Ghidorah, an omnicidal space monster who destroys entire planets.
 * In Godzilla: Final Wars in which a young boy asks his grandpa why Godzilla is destroying a city. The grandfather tells the boy it's because Godzilla is angry at humanity for making the nuclear bomb in the first place.
 * The film Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack takes this even further and states that Godzilla wants to wipe out everyone in Japan (and possibly the rest of the world). It turns out
 * Doubly Subverted in the 1991 film Godzilla VS King Ghidorah, Godzilla stares down a former Japanese soldier turned businessman who had encountered him back when he was an un-mutated Godzillasaurus. At first, it seems like a rather touching scene where Godzilla seems to be reconsidering his destructive nature.
 * The Godzilla of Godzilla 2000 doesn't seem particularly interested in killing humans for the sake of it, but he also doesn't take any special effort to save them. He's more interested in getting revenge on Orga.
 * In Daybreakers, humanity has been replaced by a vampire society, who have hunted the remaining humans to almost complete extinction to serve as their food source. The vamps apparently didn't think far enough ahead to realize that they set up an unsustainable food chain by killing all the prey and not allowing their numbers a chance to recover while also maintaining no population regulation of the predators.

Literature

 * I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The quote from AM below, while very much conveying the temperament is something of a subversion - while the computer has already killed most of the humans, it doesn't want the remaining ones to die, because then it won't be able to torment them anymore.

""... humanity is a plague; a swarm of clever monkeys which the good earth cannot support. All human civilizations fall, Tom, and all for the same reason; humans are too greedy. It is time to put an end to them forever.""
 * A Nanoangstrom is about one tenth of a quintillionth of a meter. That's a lot of hate.
 * The Ryall believe that it is impossible for two sentient species to coexist, so they save time by attempting to exterminate the humans on contact.
 * The Auditors of the Discworld want to do this. They find life messy and unpredictable (they prefer a deterministic, Newtonian universe) and humans the worst of all.
 * Star Trek Destiny: "We are the Borg. You will be annihilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness have become irrelevant. Resistance is futile...but welcome."
 * While most of H.P. Lovecraft's deities would destroy humanity without really paying attention, Nyarlathotep seem to be bent on killing all humans (or rather, getting us kill ourselves). Why? I don't know, guess he's just being a dick.
 * In Lester del Rey's "For I Am a Jealous People!", aliens arrive without warning and just start killing all humans. One man finds out why, it seems that.
 * Mortal Engines gets one of these at the end:


 * This is basically the whole plot of Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski's The Killing Star. We start with planet-busting kinetic weapons hitting all human colonies throughout the solar system at 92% of the speed of light. The few survivors are then hunted to extinction. Why? Humans are dangerous. I mean, have you seen the things we do to each other on TV?
 * In Thomas Disch's The Genocides, alien invaders turn the Earth into a giant monoculture for their own crops, and seek to wipe out annoying pest species such as humans.

Live-Action TV

 * Mystery Science Theater 3000. Crow and Tom sometimes veer into this territory, and the one time Mike attempted to build a robot... did not go well.
 * Alien races and robots are particularly volatile. The Cylons from the original Battlestar Galactica didn't seem to have particular motives for targeting humans; they just did. The new series expands on their reasons. Though as they developed and began to show more individuality they wavered between this and helping the humans (with help being occupying them and ruling by force) with alarming suddenness. Frakin' Toasters.
 * The original series stated that the Colonials interfered in the Cylons' conquest of another race, sparking off a thousand yahren war.
 * The Daleks in Doctor Who want to kill anything that isn't a Dalek.
 * And the Silurians want to Kill All Humans to reclaim the Earth, which they ruled in the Eocene period. Same with their aquatic relatives, the Sea Devils.
 * The Cybermen are a slight variation, merely wanting to convert all humans into Cybermen.
 * The Big Bad in practically every season of Buffy.
 * The Judge deserves particular mention, since his only reason for existing is to burn the humanity out of humans and "corrupted" demons like vampires.
 * On Lexx, His Divine Shadow, who wanted to destroy all of mankind to avenge an ancient grudge. The second season's Big Bad sought to take the concept yet further by converting all matter in the universe in its image.
 * British Sci-fi sitcom Hyperdrive had a hilarious song Kill The Humans which can be heard here.
 * One of the major backstory elements in Babylon 5 is a disastrous war between the Humans and the Minbari. The Minbari are first introduced as a race of spiritual scholars, but those are just one of the races hats. Another major faction are Proud Warrior Race Guys who have one of the most advanced and powerful space navies in the galaxy and faught with no less than the annihilation of the entire human race as their goal.
 * Adam's goal in the second season of Heroes is to unleash the Shanti Virus and kill 99.93% of the human population because people suck.
 * Helen Cutter in Primeval also decides that Humans Are the Real Monsters and
 * Star Trek: Enterprise. As part of a Batman Gambit, the Spherebuilders convince the Xindi that humanity will destroy their homeworld in the future, so they decide to destroy Earth first. An alternate timeline shows them going to the trouble of tracking down and destroying human colonies even after Earth is destroyed. This is somewhat reasonable, as expecting humans to not want vengeance after Earth is destroyed would be the height of silliness.
 * in Season 2 of Warehouse 13.
 * Brainiac's goal in Season's 7 & 8 of Smallville after going rogue.
 * goal in season 5 of Supernatural.
 * Also revealed to be the endgame of  in season 7.

Music

 * The song "The Humans Are Dead" by Flight Of The Conchords takes place in a "distant future" wherein this has succeeded.
 * Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' "The Curse Of Millhaven" shows Loretta's philosophy falls into this category: "Lalalala, lalalalie/ All God's children have all gotta die."
 * In Queensryche's "Nm 156", a governing supercomputer opts to annihilate humans, not because Humans Are the Real Monsters, but because it's been tasked to enforce a stable social order, and humans are unpredictable. Ergo, "Social control requires population termination."
 * Virtually the entirety of Mayhem's fourth album Ordo Ad Chao consists of this.

Tabletop Games

 * The ultimate goal of the Dark in earlier editions of Nobilis was to encourage humanity to kill itself. The justifications they gave ranged from "Earth would be better off without them" to something about suicide being the time at which you have the most control over your life, since nothing after you pull the trigger can influence you. This has been toned down somewhat.

Theatre

 * In RUR, this is the order the Robots give once they have Turned Against Their Masters. They succeed at annihilating the human race.

Video Games

 * GLaDOS apparently spearheaded a Human Annihilation Studies program.
 * Count Dracula, especially in the Castlevania series, has an intense hatred towards humans.
 * Then again, given how he often seems to have a half-vampire child, maybe he doesn't hate all humans. Castlevania establishes his human wife's execution as a witch as his Freudian Excuse for his hate.
 * Presumably a vampire would want to leave some humans around, if only as dinner.
 * Luca Blight from Suikoden II has a prime case of this, although really he has an insane murderous contempt for everything.
 * Ditto Kefka from Final Fantasy VI and Albedo from the Xenosaga series.
 * Technically Albedo is just trying to kill himself, but it requires lots and lots of really incredibly world-destructing forces to do so and he doesn't care who gets in the way - except his brothers, whom he would rather have kill him rather than the other way around. The insanity doesn't help either.
 * In World of Warcraft, many zones are populated with herbivorous animals, and an unrealistically large (often equal) number of predators. The predatory animals always ignore the herbivores, and only attack player characters. Of course, they do not limit their diets to humans - gnomes, tauren, and undead are all seen as equally suitable meals.
 * Averted in most zones with wolves, lions and few other predators. They can occasionally be seen chasing (and killing) the critters of the zone, be they deer, rabbits, or squirrels. Of course, they simply ignore the body and go back to their pathing afterwards.
 * The developers have also begun averting this in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which has predatory creatures attacking the beasts that would logically be their prey.
 * Then there's the Forsaken, who generally hate humans for, well, forsaking them and hunting them as monsters, and are developing means to wipe out humanity. Some among them take it a little further.
 * This seems to be the whole point of the game Destroy All Humans!.
 * In the backstory of Guilty Gear, the Gears wanted to obliterate humanity. They lost the war, but a few decades later one of them, Testament, decided to wake up Justice (one of the strongest Command Gears) and restart the process. Testament still isn't fond of humans in the later games;.
 * In Chrono Trigger, an optional sidequest in 2300 A.D. involves an artificial intelligence with a robot army that wants to kill all the humans to "end their suffering".
 * Given that the humans in this case are immortal and live in a foodless post-apocalyptic wasteland, it would actually be the nice thing to do.
 * Towards the end of Ninja Gaiden 3, Clancy gets transformed into a super being in the subspace and tells Ryu that in order to protect the Earth, he must Kill All Humans. He tries to convince Ryu to join his side, but everyone knows the answer to that.
 * Alex Mercer from Prototype Thankfully, he managed to stop it.
 * NOTHING CAN PROTECT YOU FROM ME!!! NOT WEAPONS!!! NOT SOLDIERS!!! NOT!!! ARMOR!!!!
 * The Phoenix Group in Rainbow Six plots to wipe out humankind with a genetically engineered strain of Ebola.
 * Galerians is a pretty textbook example of the 'sentient computer' version.
 * This is Medusa's goal in Kid Icarus.
 * Big Bads in the Mass Effect series, . Well, that, or

Web Comics
"Coyote: Renard loooves humans! Not like Ysengrin, who would kill the lot of them, given the chance."
 * In Sluggy Freelance the Dimension of Pain demons are bent on killing all humans, largely because they've got nothing better to do. Played for irony, since we've been shown that, if they do wipe out all humans in a dimension, they then get bored since there's no one around to torture and kill anymore.
 * There are also who want to wipe out humanity as part of a biological imperative. They plan to eventually blow up the planet itself after they've exterminated all life.
 * Gunnerkrigg Court: According to Coyote, Ysengrin is of this opinion.

"Tsukiko: And then he ordered his elemental to try and kill me! Xykon: Redcloak, is this true? Redcloak: No. Technically, I just ordered the elemental to kill all humans, and then "forgot" to make an exception for her. Xykon: Oh, man, that's even funnier. (No One Likes a Tattletale)"
 * Possibly lampshaded in Order of the Stick, in which Redcloak (a goblin) summons a Chlorine Elemental and instructs it to kill all the humans nearby. The elemental floats off mumbling, "Kill All Humans".


 * The civilized monsters of RPG World exhibit this trope whenever there's the equivalent of an international incident... other reasons too. They're pretty touchy. Good thing they stick to holding up placards and shouting and televised news reports.
 * Parodied in this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal strip. When robots gain sentience the human immediately assumes that they are going to decide to kill all humans, the robots are so shocked to learn that humans think this way that they decide to kill all humans.
 * Gato in Captain SNES, though to be fair, Gato was created to be beaten up by humans repeatedly.

Web Originals

 * Parodied in this video When a hacker augments his Kinect to make it self aware.

Western Animation
"Bender: (sleep-talking) Kill all humans... kill all humans... must kill all... Fry: Bender, wake up! Bender: (yawns) I was having the most wonderful dream. I think you were in it. ... [falls asleep again] Bender: Hey, sexy mama... wanna kill all humans?"
 * Subverted in Futurama, where Bender (and it seems, many robots) have a suppressed desire to kill all humans, but they don't actually do it. Unless Mom orders them to do so.

"Bender: I came to Earth with a simple dream: To kill all humans. And this is how it must end!? Who's the real 600 ton giant monster here? Not I... Not... I..."
 * This is subverted even further when, in one episode, it is revealed that Bender would always whisper "except one" after he said this. Fry was that one.
 * After Hermes accompanied Bender on his quest to find "Inspector 5," Bender announced he was placing Hermes on the "Do not kill" list. Which, we can assume, consists of exactly two names at this point.
 * And played straight when the crew has to deliver a packet to a planet inhabited by Killer Robots. Turns out the reason for this is largely propaganda by the robot elders, blaming humans for their society's shortcomings, as well as portraying humans as something of a cross between vampires and zombies.
 * And played straight one more time in the original what-if-machine episode. Bender asks, what if I was a giant robot? You guessed it.


 * In one of the movies, Bender joins a secret society of robots bent on killing all humans, only to find that they've grown soft over the years and just hang around drinking. According to the chairbot, "We haven't killed a human in over 800 years, and that was just a very sick Girl Scout."
 * Spoofed in at least one episode of The Simpsons: A robot is brought in to show to Bart's class. When Bart spots the man operating the robot in a tree outside, he knocks him out with a rock. The robot then slumps for a second, before rising and declaring "Command link severed. Default mode: Crush! Kill! Destroy!."
 * Also spoofed in South Park. Chef is trying to figure out the remote control for his spiffy new TV and activates "HEM" without knowing what it is. The TV sprouts arms, legs and lasers and goes on a bloody rampage in "Human Eradication Mode."
 * Spoofed yet more in Family Guy. During the episode where Stewie becomes obsessed with Miley Cyrus, it turns out she's actually a robot created by Disney's Imagineers to be the next massive brand name to sell to teenage kids. When this is discovered Stewie is shocked, while Brian is intirgued, wanting some 'quality time' with the Cyrus-bot. Long story short, he accidentally switches her mode with a stupid-in-hindsight button that turns her default setting to killing all humans. A King Kong parody with Peter and Quagmire in a biplane follows.
 * Demona on Gargoyles was often plotting this, which lead to many humans hating the Gargoyles, which makes her original hatred seem justified...it's an ironic vicious circle she finds herself trapped in. Particularly once she starts.
 * In The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Billy's greatest fear is clowns, believing that they will one day rise up and "DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!!"
 * I'll take the chicken!
 * DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!! DESTROY US ALL!!