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Apocalyptic Log (view source)

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See also [[Lost in Transmission]], [[Distress Call]], [[Late to The Party]], [[Action Survivor]], [[Almost Dead Guy]], [[Harbinger of Impending Doom]], [[Send in The Search Team]], [[Ignored Expert]], [[Undead Author]], [[Posthumous Character]], [[Posthumous Narration]], [[That Was the Last Entry]].
 
{{examples|Examples}}
 
== Anime & Manga ==
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== Comics ==
* [[Doctor Strange]]'s log in ''[[Marvel 1602|1602]]''.
* In ''Countdown'', when an unstoppable virus destroys an [[Alternate Universe]] (a universe that had ALREADY been destroyed and remade), we see the last days from through the journal of Buddy Blank. We watch through his eyes as the universe becomes a planet where humans and animals are transformed into violent, bloodthirsty [[Half -Human Hybrid|Half Human Hybrids]].
* Brilliantly used in ''[[Grendel]]'' to illustrate the self-doubts and conflicts within Brian Li Sung, as he slowly succumbs to the Grendel identity. {{spoiler|The brilliant part is that what at first seemed to be mere doodles in his journal's margins turn out to be the musings of the increasingly self-directing Grendel spirit, itself!}}
* Twitch's journal in ''[[Spawn]]''.
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** ''[[The Last Broadcast]]'' is a pseudodocumentary featuring found footage from a disastrous cable-access paranormal program. The film pre-dates the vastly more successful ''Blair Witch Project'' by a short time, causing many viewers to mistake it for a rip-off.
** ''[[Cloverfield]]'' is a "worm's eye view" of a [[Kaiju]] film in which a man records himself and a group of survivors struggling through New York City during a monster attack.
** ''[[REC]]'' and its American remake ''[[Quarantine (Film)|Quarantine]]'' are found footage recorded by a female reporter and her camera man while trapped inside an apartment building with zombies. There's also a subversion of the trope when they discover a dictation machine in a [[Room Full of Crazy]]. You'd assume that the machine would hold an Apocalyptic Log about the zombie virus's origins, but the batteries are dead, so [[The Un -Reveal|the message is incomprehensible]].
** ''[[Paranormal Activity]]'' is presented as footage taken by a man whose girlfriend is being terrorized by a demon. It's made pretty obvious that putting up a camera has only made the demon more active - and angry.
** ''[[Man Bites Dog]]'' is also an example that predates the ''Blair Witch Project''.
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** One of King's recent stories {{spoiler|''1922''}} turns out to be this. In somewhat Lovecraftian fashion, the writer apparently continues to write even as {{spoiler|the supernatural rats that have stalked him since he murdered his wife finally get around to devouring him}}. Of course, it's possible that he's just insane...
** King seems to like this trope. It's also in [[The Stand]], in the form of Stu and Harold's diaries.
* [[HPH.P. Lovecraft (Creator)|HP Lovecraft]] loved these. Many of his stories (including, but not limited to, the seminal ''[[Cthulhu Mythos|The Call Of Cthulhu]]'') consist almost entirely of Apocalyptic Logs, usually ending with the narrator in an asylum or clearly about to be eaten by something.
** ''Dagon'' and ''The Thing on the Doorstep'' are even better examples.
*** As referenced in the page quote, ''Dagon'' (and a number of other tales) end with the author writing something ''as the horror is entering the room''. Why he actually ''writes'' his final despairing scream is a question only Monty Python can answer.
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* In ''[[The City of Ember]]'', a journal from one of the first residents of Ember is found {{spoiler|as Lina and Doon find their way out of the city. In the prequel to ''Ember'', ''The Diamond of Darkhold'', this log is shown to be the work of the protagonist of ''Darkhold''.}}
* Hans Heinz Ewers's short story ''The Spider'' is about a hotel room whose guests always end up hanging themselves, and it mostly consists of the journal of Richard Bracquemont, a medical student who offers to investigate.
* The novel of ''[[Double Indemnity]]'' consists of entries from the main character's diary leading up to his [[Suicide Pact]] with the [[Star -Crossed Lovers|star-crossed]] love interest. In the film, the story is told from the mortally wounded protagonist's recording on his Dictaphone.
* The end of ''[[Rant]]'' by [[Chuck Palahniuk]] subtly implies a strange subversion of this. The interviews that make up the story are from a world that doesn't exist, but only because the events of the story caused it to cease existing. What's worse is that the story not only fails to tell the reader how to avert this "apocalypse" from happening again, it pretty much states that it can't be stopped, that it '''will''' happen again, and that nobody will ever notice except for the [[Complete Monster|twisted degenerates]] that figured out how to pull this trick. Basically, except for the few people who have become gods through murder and rape, the entirety of reality is one big [[Lotus Eater Machine]].
 
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Can you hear me, Major Tom?<br />
Can you.... '' }}
** The acoustic version on the ''Sound+ Vision'' album even [[Last -Note Nightmare|ends with a choked sob, and the Morse Code for S.O.S. repeating into the fade.]]
* Dr. Jekyll sings an Apocalyptic Log in the musical version of ''Jekyll and Hyde''.
* "Two Suns in the Sunset" by [[Pink Floyd]] describes the last few moments of a man's life before he is killed by a nuclear bomb.
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so my last thought is just your name<br />
and it is all that will remain...'' }}
* "30k ft" by Assemblage 23 is about a doomed airline passenger making a final phone call to his wife/lover. The song [[Killed Mid -Sentence|cuts off in mid-sentence]] at the end.
 
 
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* You find quite a few of these through the course of ''[[System Shock]]'''s [[Spiritual Successor]] ''[[Bio Shock]]''. For example, Dr. Steinman's logs detail how, thanks to [[Psycho Serum|ADAM]] abuse, he went from an ambitious plastic surgeon to a deranged, self-proclaimed "[[Mad Artist|Surgery's Picasso]]" whose motto was "Aesthetics are a moral imperative."
** And it gets the bonus points too. In one log, Dr. Suchong is reporting that the plasmid he designed intended to force the Big Daddies to bond with Little Sisters and protect them, violently for preference, is more or less a failure. At the same time, a Little Sister can be heard in the background, trying to get his attention. Fed up with her bugging him, Suchong slaps her, and then a Big Daddy's whalecry can be heard. Guess what happens next.
*** What's even better? {{spoiler|You find it on a body stuck to a desk by a [[Lightning Bruiser|Bouncer's]] [[This Is a Drill|drill]]. [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|Gee, how could that have happened?]]}}
** Both ''[[System Shock]]'' games relied on this trope thematically. The times that the player is able to make human contact are so rare as to be notable; the only communication the character typically gets is through voice logs and emails left by the dead...or those who will be dead by the time he reaches them.
*** ''[[Bio Shock]]'' maintained this trend for the most part; the few people the player makes direct face-to-face contact with don't live long after the meeting, with the exception of the eerie Little Sisters and Dr. Tenenbaum.
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** "There is something... from the window..."
* In the online game ''[[Exmortis]]'', while exploring the abandoned house you discover the journal of the most recent inhabitant, a man who found the house while hunting deer in the surrounding forest. The earliest entries report that shortly after he started exploring the house, he heard countless voices screaming at him in rage before he fell unconscious: when he awoke, he found himself unable to leave, forced to listen to the ghostly voices speaking to him- voices belonging to "The Exmortis." Over the course of the next few entries, the writing grows increasingly deranged, as the man is slowly brainwashed into a pawn of the Exmortis. The final entry claims that a party of five hikers is approaching the house, and all of them are to be sacrificed in a ceremony to release the Exmortis into the mortal realm. Later {{spoiler|it's revealed that the writer is none other than the player character, suffering from amnesia after making four out of the five sacrifices needed to release the Exmortis.}}
** ''[[Exmortis]] 2'' features the diary of a farmer who found himself unlucky enough to observe the destruction caused by the Exmortis in the months after they were released, recording the news of initial attacks on isolated communities, the first autopsy of an Exmortis creature, the [[Red Sky Take Warning|sky turning red]], the assaults on capital cities, the failed [[Nuke 'Em|nuclear retaliation]], and the [[Rage Against the Heavens|fall of major religions]] and [[The End of the World As We Know It|most of human society]]: he also kept several newspaper clippings of each event, most of which are found pinned to a cork board in one of the rooms of his home. Eventually, the farmer finds himself directly in the path of the oncoming Exmortis horde, and has no choice but [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|to kill his wife and two children, and then kill himself.]]
* In one quest in ''[[Fable II (Video Game)|Fable II]]'', you can find pages from the increasingly illegible diary of a man who escaped being sacrificed by cultists, befriended a band of hobbes, and started to think ''he'' was a hobbe too.
** The promotional site for ''Fable II'' also included one of these to explain the fall of the Heroes Guild, covering the journals of an unnamed Hero who survives the fall and then tries to escape extermination at the hands of the anti-Hero mobs. {{spoiler|He even writes a journal entry as he's dying of a gunshot wound with the mob breaking down the door to his house. What a trooper.}}
*** Another chilling example is "Terry Kotter's Army", the area behind the Wraithmarsh Demon Door. Cotter was a shy, young [[MommasMomma's Boy]] who befriends an army of silent golems called the Knights. His journal, which lies beside his corpse in a room filled with suits of armour, details his first encounter with the Knights and his ever-more frequent trips to the cave where he found them. His final entry simply repeats over and over the phrase: "They watch. They watch. They watch. They watch."
*** Also, the first cave you enter also has three pieces of paper - a journal entry, a letter and a suicide note - written by three dead treasure hunters who grew to mistrust each other and, amusingly, poisoned each other at the same time.
* Amnesia: The Dark Descent is basically built upon this trope. The main character, Daniel, wakes up in a castle with, you guessed it, Amnesia. His only clues to any backstory or objective come from diary entries he wrote to himself, on account of his amnesia being self-inflicted. These entries tend to sound more and more unhinged as the player finds them throughout the game.
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** Croc's is a close second for most unsettling... his doctor simply can't believe that he's cannibalistic like the rumor's say... well, at the end he escapes... she makes it out unscathed, but the scene she sees... [[An Arm and A Leg|isn't pretty]].
* The ''[[Fallout]]'' series is packed with these, most notably [[Evilutionary Biologist|The Master]]'s.
** Probably the best example in ''[[Fallout 3]]'' is in the [[HPH.P. Lovecraft (Creator)|Dunwitch]] [[Shout Out|Building]]. Something about the building is conducive to turning people into [[Our Ghouls Are Creepier|radiation ghouls]]. In the days after nuclear war, you can read the journals and track the progress of the building's residents as they lose higher brain functions and end up as violent, mindless [[Cannibal|cannibals]].
** The Keller Family Tapes one must collect in order to get the Experimental MIRV in ''[[Fallout]] 3'' detail how one family desperately tried to survive the coming war by finding a vault in the National Guard Depot to huddle in. One is even recorded as the bombs are falling. The last of the logs is from a member of the family who refuses to spend life inside the vault with his father. He decides to give them his part of the passcode and walk into a mushroom cloud. "Have a happy Holocaust!" There are also some holotapes in Little Lamplight that shed some light on him the city started up.
*** [http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Diary_of_Candace_Keller There's a cut tape that provides an epilogue] for the Keller family's saga that can be obtained in the PC version through the console. It was originally meant to be found in the shelter that the other tapes are about trying to get to, and indicates that at the very least Dad and Candace survived. However, Candace complains that her father keeps leaving the shelter and going out into the bombed-out DC ruins to scavenge for useless junk and that everytime he does, he lets a little more radiation in...
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* ''[[Threads of Fate]]'' has a somewhat silly example of this: Mint comes across the remains of a workshop and finds a diary. There are only a few entries, but the second to last one has the magician howling about how incredibly genius he is for hiding the item inside a monster. The final entry has his lamenting his foolishness for doing the same thing, once the monster escapes. Mint's only response the situation: "Moron."
* ''[[Unreal (Video Game)|Unreal]]'' had no movies, no dialog and no explanatory scenes. The plot (along with random facts) was relayed entirely through logs, some of which were of the "oh no we're doomed" variety.
* The ''[[Unreal Tournament 2004 (Video Game)|Unreal Tournament 2004]]'' mod "Alien Swarm" (which basically [[Poor MansMan's Substitute|lets you play out the ''Aliens'' movie in an "original" and copyright-free environment]]) has a number of these scattered around the Swarm-infested outposts and drifting space hulks. One even involves a crewmember on a colony, who was [[Late to The Party]] because he was outside when the Swarm attacked. He complains and wonders where everyone is, [[Dramatic Irony|then notices that there are a lot of lifeforms in Sub-Processing.]] He ends the log saying he's [[Genre Blind|going down there to ask them what's going on.]] {{spoiler|You can find his body later on, in two separate rooms.}}
* The recordings of doctor Grout, the LA Malkavian Primogen, in the madhouse sequence of ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines]]''. Hey, he's a Malkavian. They ''all'' go insane.
** There's also less logical examples (Grout wasn't in any direct danger when he wrote his last log) found in the Ocean House Hotel and the LA sewers, with people even writing down "aaaaah!" ''while they were being assaulted''.
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** One of them is the Book of Mazarbul from the original saga, which you actually get to write the final entry in during the "We Cannot Get Out" session play in Moria.
** In an early quest, you are tasked with recovering the journal of a dead Dwarf outside a cave filled to the brim with spiders. Piecing together the pages reveals an Apocalyptic Log that ends with the Dwarf preparing to take the battle to the spiders to keep himself from being used as bait for his cousin, a spider-slayer who has passed his prime.
* There are a quite a few of these in ''[[Skyrim]]''. One example can be found in Japhot's Folly. Japhot's journal chronicles his ill-fated attempt to start a settlement on the inhospitable hellhole of an island. Even when the rest of the settlers went [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here]], he stubbornly refused to leave. He was eventually reduced to eating ice-moss before starving to death. The journal is found in a a small locked room with Japhot's dessicated body. The final entry in the journal?
{{quote| ''OH GODS HELP ME''}}
* In the original 1992 ''[[Alone in The Dark]]'' game, one of the first things you find is the suicide letter of Jeremy Hartwood. It is literally written just after he has unwittingly released the evil of the mansion and hears the footsteps of the newly awakened abominations closing in.
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== Webcomics ==
* In Warren Ellis's ''[[Superidol]]'', a pop culture writer describes a computer-generated [[Idol Singer]]'s [[The Virus|viral]] takeover of the world.
* In ''[[Eight 8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'' issue [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/03/03/episode-522-the-descent-into-sanity/ 522: The descent into sanity], the Light Warriors end up trapped in an ice cavern: Black Mage keeps a journal over the next five days, documenting the group's growing insanity as they explore the caves and their infestation by [[Eldritch Abomination|horrors from beneath the earth]]. Subverted when it's realised that Black Mage has gone temporarily insane, and the experiences he records in the journal never happened.
*** [[Alternate Character Interpretation|Or he just made it up, writing a story in the hopes it would be published should someone find it.]] After all, what's a better way to kill time when you're trapped?
** Later, when they travel to the sunken Sea Shrine in a submarine which is ''really'' their aptly-named airship "The Deathtrap", Black Mage falls into a spoken version. After he tells you of his team's decent into madness, Red Mage tries to tell him it's only been a few hours since they started the journey. Black Mage keeps narrating with something to the effect of "I ignored the gibberish which sprouted from my former teammates misshapen lips". Apparently he really likes doing this. Or he just [[Omnicidal Maniac|wants to see them all dead. As usual.]]
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* [[Sevenshot Kid]] has gone this way not once, but twice.
* Right-wing [[You Tuber]] Nightvisionphantom made an "If Obama Wins" video during the 2008 election (needless to say, it was quietly removed afterwards), in which he claims to be the last surviving member of a resistance who fought a losing battle against the Islamofascist hordes that Obama unleashed upon the world.
* The [[ARG]] viral campaign for the Nine Inch Nails album ''Year Zero'' is a wide collection of barely decypherable websites That describe a [[Crapsack World]]. These websites are sent from the future by a team of computer programmers and quantum physicists as a warning to those of us living in the time of the events triggered their circumstances. Bonus points for one entry written by a White House aide describing the monster sent to allow the Earth to... shall we say, [[Kill 'Em All|start]] [[Reset Button|over]].
* [[Played for Laughs]](?) [http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/12/31/funny-facebook-fails-failbooks-best-of-2011-countdown-5/#more-54271 here]. Videogames can be mortal. Facebook is a great way to let friends know.
 
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* ''[[Star Trek the Animated Series (Animation)|Star Trek the Animated Series]]'' episode "Beyond the Farthest Star". 300 million years ago a member of the crew of the dead ship left a warning message telling what happened to them and why they decided to destroy their own ship.
* ''[[Adventure Time (Animation)|Adventure Time]]'' has one in the episode Holly Jolly Secrets. Finn has found an old set of VHS tapes that contains a video diary of the Ice King. {{spoiler|The last tape is the diary of a human, Simon Petrikov, as he slowly loses his mind and humanity, until finally becoming the Ice King.}} Bonus points for the apocalypse taking place in the background over the course of said log.
* In ''[[Batman: theThe Animated Series (Animation)|Batman the Animated Series]]'' episode "Heart of Ice," Batman does some sleuthing around GothCorp's facility and finds a videotape inside Viktor Fries' case file. The videotape has him documenting on a revolutionary process that he developed of cryogenesis that he is placing his terminally ill wife, Nora Fries, in until he can develop a cure for her. Suddenly, Ferris Boyle bursts in and demands that he shut down the experiment due to his stealing money from him to commit the experiment. Viktor attempts to reason with and eventually is forced to point a gun at Boyle to stop him from halting his experiment. Boyle then tries to reason with him, before promptly kicking him into some vials containing chemicals relating to the cryogenetic process, causing a biohazard, with Friez also visibly deteriorating from the accident while calling Nora's name in a lamenting manner as the tape ends.
 
 
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[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Apocalyptic Log]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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