Apocalypse How/Class Z

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
"Every atom in existence is bound by an electrical field. The Reality Bomb cancels it out, structure falls apart...Full transmission will dissolve every form of matter...Across the entire universe, never stopping, never faltering, never fading. People and planets and stars will become dust. And the dust will become atoms and the atoms will become... nothing. And the wavelength will continue, breaking through the rift at the heart of the Medusa Cascade into every dimension, every parallel, every single corner of CREATION! This is my ultimate victory Doctor! THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF!!!"
—Davros succinctly explains what his Reality Bomb does, Doctor Who, "Journey's End"

Omniversal-scale Annihilation. Can take on two forms:

The Ultimate End Of All Things: The Physical Annihilation of everything, everywhere. Period. Only counts for fictional universes that have alternate dimensions or some such that would prevent Universal Physical Annihilation from working.

Cosmic Do-Over: The Metaphysical Annihilation of everything. It is not "the end of all things", because "after" this happens, nothing ever existed. There never was anything to annihilate; you can't have an end to something if you wipe out its beginning. This is the retroactive destruction of all of everything, everywhere.

Depending on whether the work treats Meta Fiction as a type of alternate universe, this may not be a credible threat since the destruction of all things would have include our own reality. There may also be Fridge Logic if it's likely that an alternate universe exists where the heroes failed to prevent the apocalypse. Both of these issues can be Justified or Lampshaded.

Examples of Apocalypse How/Class Z include:


Anime and Manga

  • In Dragon Ball GT it's stated that Omega Shenron could have caused this.
    • Back on Dragonball Z anime. Majin Buu flew into a rage and his power began to tear the fabric of reality. Then, Vegeto stopped him by slugging him. Make that what you will.
  • In Soul Eater Death The Kid goes mad and decides at one point that the only way to create ultimate symmetry is to destroy all of existence. Luckily for everyone, Black Star manages to pretty much (literally) beat some sense into him. He's back to normal now.
  • Near the end of Futari wa Pretty Cure, the Dark King is purportedly destroying multiple planets in his spare time. His goal, as stated throughout the series, is the total destruction of all existence.


Comic Books

  • In Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, this is what will happen if the Anti-God, let free by the Cult of the Unwritten Book, is able to proceed with unmaking the universe. "Nothing. Forever and ever."
  • In Lucifer, the spin-off from The Sandman, all of Creation was nearly unmade when God left creation. Since His name is on everything in Heaven, Earth and everywhere else, and it holds it all together, everything started to slowly break down. It was averted when God left His job as supreme deity to his half-angel granddaughter. Chances are her universe -- the third at the time -- would have survived anyway, not being entangled with God's crappy handiwork.


Film

  • In Dogma, if the Word of God is to be proven wrong all of creation will cease to exist.
  • This is the goal of the Warlock, and he comes Damned close.

Literature

  • All of Spider Robinson's time-travel stories are fueled by the premise that a genuine temporal paradox will result in the complete annihilation of space-time from beginning to end, not only destroying everything, but causing it never to have existed at all.
  • In "The Keys to The Kingdom" series by Garth Nix, if the House is destroyed by Nothing, reality will cease to exist (including all the Secondary Realms). This does end up happening, but it gets better, since Arthur is able to recreate the Realms from the Atlas.
  • It's hinted that Suzumiya Haruhi has the power to do this (but not the mental sickness required to, at least not yet).
  • In Cthulhu Mythos, the demon god Azathoth is dreaming all of existence; when he wakes up, it will end.

Live-Action TV

  • Unsurprisingly, Doctor Who has a few examples of this extreme:
    • In the finale of the 2008 series, Davros comes within a hair's breadth of destroying all matter in the entire multiverse save for himself and his group of Daleks.
    • The Time Lords attempt this or Class X-4 to 5 in The End of Time, from their perspective, a last ditch attempt to survive the Time War, during its last days.
    • The TARDIS explosion from series 5 is listed under Class X-5, but comes damn close. It comes within a single planet and a few minutes of being Class Z.
    • The denial of a fixed point in history at the end of series six creates a temporal explosion threatening to collapse and kill all of reality, spreading outward from the point that was broken. This is soon approaching a Z-2.
    • It should be noted that Doctor Who has an example in every category for this trope. If there's one thing these people know, it is how to kill a lot of people/planets/etc.
    • In The Big Bang it reaches Class Z-3 - all realities never existed. Creation never existed. Nothing ever existed. The above statements ignore Earth and the moon and sun.
      • Note it's easy to miss that it's a Z-3 and not a Z-2, since its status is only confirmed in a single, blink and you miss it line of dialogue from a Cyberman in the previous episode. "All universes will be deleted."
    • It should be noted that only Doctor Who ever produced examples which can even remotely qualify for above vanilla Class Z.

Music

  • Actually happens in Food for the Gods. Satan leads an army of the damned into Heaven, and starts utterly laying waste to everything in sight. God responds by going completely insane with rage and obliterating all of creation.


Tabletop Games

  • This is the fate of Creation if the Nobilis lose their Valde Bellum. Retroactively, no less.
  • The Abyssal Exalted were created by the Neverborn with the express intent of throwing Creation into Oblivion, freeing the Neverborn from their fetters to existence by getting rid of existence.
  • This is the presumed goal of the Wyrm in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, although some speculate that It's goal is actually to make things as horrible as possible and keep it that way forever.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • This is Vecna's goal in the epic module Die Vecna Die. He threatens to consume all of reality and remake it in his own evil image.
    • Overall, this is the goal of Tharizdun, the Mad God of Destruction. He seeks to unmake reality and destroy everything, ending with himself.
  • In Planescape, two factions believe this is the ultimate fate of the multiverse, but neither seriously believes it can be accomplished in their lifetimes or even that of many descendants:
    • The Doomguard believes omniversal destruction is imminent, and they try to prevent anyone from stopping it. Some try to hurry it along.
    • The Believers of the Source believe in a concept like Nirvana, where every being (mortals and gods alike) are being tested. Pass the tests, you Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Once everyone passes every test, the multiverse will end.

Video Games

  • The fourth or fifth endings of Drakengard if not for the intervention of the heroes.
  • The second Tasty Planet game has the Goo devour progressively bigger things, eventually getting to planets, stars, entire galaxies, and eventually the fabric of space-time itself.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 comes dangerously close to Solaris (the joining of Mephiles and Iblis) devouring all of time, past, present, and future and all of existence if Sonic, Shadow and Silver hadn't stopped him.
  • Live a Live. You are the one who can end everything by simply choosing the Armageddon option. It disintegrates everything, in every place, in every time period, all at once (even though just destroying the Prehisoric chapter should have been enough), so you know it's horrible.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Kuja comes within a hairs breadth of pulling one of these off. He almost manages to destroy the crystal that holds the fabric of reality together. Luckily after he manages to beat the party to death, forcing them to fight and defeat a big blue thing who got trapped in that crystal all along and decided that since Kuja wanted to destroy everything, it was time to end the universe, he has a last minute Heel Face Turn, resurrects the party, and dies offscreen after Zidane has found him inside the now death-throeing Iifa Tree.
    • In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka manages to succeed in a severe Class 1 destruction of the world, and when he learns to his disgust about people's hopes, love, and dreams, he decides that he'll "Destroy everything and create a monument to Non-existence."
    • In Dissidia the Cloud of Darkness and Exdeath had a talk about the differences in their plans to destroy existence. Exdeath himself may have rather ruled over everything but the Void has other plans.
  • The bad ending of the Demon path in Soul Nomad has the protaganist do this after devouring Gig. Why? Cause it was fun.
  • In Super Paper Mario, this is Count Bleck's true plan. He's later backstabbed and replaced by Dimentio, who settles for a class X-5 with the intent of reconstructing it in his own image. However, after Dimentio is defeated by the heroes, he resets it back to Class-Z, since if he can't remake the world with his death, he might as well destroy all of existence with him.
  • In Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time, this is implied to happen if someone tries to use The Great Clock for time travel. Nearly happens, too, thanks to Azimuth.
  • Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. True Demon Path. All universes in the entire omniverse are obliterated with no chance of recreation by the death of God's avatar at the hands of the demonically-powered Hito-Shura. Demons and fiends are all that's left. The Final Battle between Lucifer and God's now unavoidable...
  • In Chrono Cross, the Time Devourer intends to consume every timeline, destroying everything in existence. It can only be stopped by the titular Chrono Cross, which temporarily merges the timelines and allows Serge to Ret-Gone Lavos.


Web Comics

CG: BUT SUFFICE TO SAY THERE ARE JUST SOME THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO SCREW WITH.
CG: THERE ARE OUTCOMES THAT ARE EVEN WORSE THAN THE COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF EXISTENCE ITSELF
CG: FORCES MORE DAMAGING TO THE INTEGRITY OF REALITY THAN THOSE CAPABLE OF TURNING IMAGINATION INTO PURE VOID
GC: THEY ARE FORCES WHICH IF HANDLED RECKLESSLY WILL NULLIFY THE BASIC ABILITY OF INTELLIGENT BEINGS IN ALL REAL AND HYPOTHETICAL PLANES OF EXISTENCE TO GIVE A SHIT.

  • The threat of such an event was believed to be a major plot point in The Order of the Stick, in that breaking all of the gates would presumably bring about the unraveling of the world, eventually. However, it's been revealed that this has happened before with the gods surviving, so the threat is Class X-4, not Class Z.

Web Original

  • In The Book of Stories (Original Character Tournament), the worst outcome of the Book's Unwriting could be classified as Class X-5 or even Z, though it's not as much destroying as it is making everything nonexistent.
  • In the game Ge.ne.sis, it's revealed that after too many dimensions are born, they are all destroyed at once, melting together into one. Gelyan plans to delay this by destroying all other dimensions.

Western Animation

  • In Transformers, this is Unicron's ultimate goal. Given that his overall method is to eat the entire multiverse one planet at a time, its taking him quite a while, but, impressively, he's already devoured about 22.5% of known universes that way.
  • This is the goal of Owlman in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, once he learns of the existence of the multiverse. It is quite awesome, but ultimately foiled by Batman.
  • Attempted by Spider-Carnage in Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Driven mad by the deaths of everyone he cares about, and possessed by the Carnage symbiote, an alternate universe Spider-Man attempts to, in his own words, "Destroy all reality." His plan is basic: utilise one of the Spot's vortexes to absorb the entirety of Earth, any Earth. The absorption of the planet will then trigger a bomb similar to the Davros example, destroying Earth, and amplified by the portal, the universe. It doesn't end there though. Oh no. With the portal still open, the blast will be replicated across the entirety of the multiverse, ensuring that when Spider-Carnage dies all of creation dies with him.
  • Done as a joke for an intro to The Simpsons, where aliens create a wormhole that's powerful enough to even suck God into it, leaving nothing but a blank slate.


Other

  • According to Solipsism, your mind is the only sure thing to exist. In Metaphysical solipsism, everything else is just a part of your reality. When you die, all of reality is destroyed with you.
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