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[[Screw Destiny|Screw that!]] You're the villain! You're keeping your position and no brat is going to take that from you. [[A Million Is a Statistic|If it means killing every last]] [[Throwaway Country|Insert-Name-Here-istanian]] and [[Moral Event Horizon|putting their heads on a pike]], so be it!
Goddammit!
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It often involves a prophecy, and this is the villains' attempt to "[[Screw Destiny]]". [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|For all the good it does them]].
This typically means murdering hundreds of people to kill a single child, who will inevitably
There are two main variants:
# The first is that [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|a prophecy says]] that someone from the time/place will overthrow them.
# The second is that [[Genocide Dilemma|the victimized people pose a threat]] and this is a means to deal with said threat.
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* [[Dragon Ball|Frieza]] exterminated the Saiyan race in an attempt to prevent any from potentially becoming the legendary Super Saiyan. He missed four. Two of them, Radditz and Nappa, worked for Frieza alongside Vegeta, the prince of the Saiyans, but Goku, the fourth, would eventually take Frieza down by becoming the very thing Frieza feared. What's more, after getting turned into a cyborg and coming to Earth to take revenge, both he and his father King Cold are taken down for good by Future Trunks, who turns out to be the son of Vegeta, the other major Saiyan to survive.
** DBZ, the manga (Goku was last) and anime (Broly was last) canons, qualifies through Goku. Goku was only there due to a plot by Vegeta to overthrow Frieza due to this trope.
** Vegeta even [[
{{quote|'''Vegeta:''' So, you tried to eliminate the Saiyans, yet you left the strongest one alive! [[Sarcasm Mode|Smooth move!]]}}
* In ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', this seems to be creeping up on the Phantom Troupe, who murdered the entire Kurta clan, maimed their corpses by removing their pretty eyes to sell them, and treat it as [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|no big deal]], which further angers the last surviving Kurta, Kurapica. Kurapica has already killed two of their members, and is quite intent on finishing what he started.
** On top of that, if it weren't for some timely intervention from their leader, Kurapica would've killed 6--half of the entire group by the time he killed the second. That's how big of an enemy they've made.
* Bafflingly [[Averted Trope]] twice in ''[[Naruto]]''. [[Evil Overlord
** It helps that Salamander Hanzo was a complete monster himself, so the Rain Country sees Pain as a hero, and they know nothing of the Akatsuki or the abduction of Jinchuriki and fatal extraction of their Biju that Pain is partaking in, or of what he plans to use them for. As for Orochimaru, as stated above, there isn't much information about the Rice Pattie land's politics, and he probably started the Sound Village.
** Also deliberately invoked by {{spoiler|Itachi with the Uchiha Massacre. He leaves Sasuke alive because he ''wants'' to die by his hand.}} It still falls through, though; {{spoiler|by this time, Sasuke has abandoned the Leaf Village, and afterward, he decides to actively destroy it.}}
* The Ishvalan Genocide from ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'' is an interesting case. The purpose of the extermination was not to prevent a prophecy from being fulfilled or to dispose of a threatening ethnic group ''per se'', but to simply kill as many people as possible - their aim was to kill every Ishvalan, but as you would expect, there were some survivors. Now, one of those survivors was Scar, whose brother was killed in the extermination and who was determined to revenge his death to the State Alchemists... that is, in the beginning. {{spoiler|Later, he does a [[Heel Face Turn]] and starts helping the Elric brothers. In the end, he plays a crucial role in causing the [[Big Bad]]'s [[Evil Plan]] to fail and kills Bradley, the man who ordered the genocide - which he would not have done, if the genocide had not existed in the first place.}}
** And in the first anime, the purpose was {{spoiler|to make the Istvalans desperate enough to attempt to create a Philosopher's Stone}}
* In [[Yu-Gi-Oh!]] Millenium World Arc, the Millenium Items were a result of an alchemical ritual that involved sacrificing an entire village through genocide. Unfortunately for the priests of the pharaoh and the civilians 3000 years later, they forgot to kill the young {{spoiler|Bakura}}.
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', there was a disagreement among the Soul Reapers and the Quincies about how to handle wayward and malevolent spirits called Hollows, which ended in the Soul Reapers killing off every Quincy they could find. Fast forward to the present, and the revenge-filled Quincies who survived the massacre {{spoiler|have formed the Vandenreich. Suffice to say that they've turned the series from total heroic [[Plot Armor]] into [[Anyone Can Die]], extinguishing established characters left and right}}.
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* In ''[[The Scorpion King]]'', the titular protagonist was one of the few survivors of Memnon's genocide of the Akkadian people. Shortly after the beginning of the film, he ends up being the sole remaining member of his people. Turns out, he is the one who was prophesized to take Memnon down.
** It's never explicitly stated that the Akkadians were wiped out by Memnon's forces. Given the fact that they were mercenaries, it wouldn't make much sense for him to get rid of such warriors, when all he had to do was pay them.
*** Memnon is a control freak; he won't hire them because they could potentially be hired by his enemies with a competing bid and he insists on absolute loyalty, and he won't leave them alone because if he doesn't hire them then his enemies ''definitely'' will.
== Literature ==
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* It's implied that Garoth Ursuul of [[The Night Angel Trilogy]] commits genocide often enough that he actually has a ''list of rules'', among them is "You will always miss one." This is never shown to actually come back to haunt any Ursuuls in the book, however.
* Happens lots of times in [[David Weber|David Weber's]] [[Empire From the Ashes]], as the [[Omnicidal Maniac|omnicidal]] Achuultani, themselves a last remnant from a campaign of genocide by a hostile power in their own galaxy, have ''nearly'' wiped out humanity several times. We now have [[That's No Moon|planetoid dreadnoughts]] whose ''[[Misapplied Phlebotinum|star drives]]'' can [[Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?|cause supernovae]] when used too close to a star, and each has combat capability equivalent to [[Zerg Rush|hundreds of thousands]] of Achuultani ships. Oh yes, and [[Shame If Something Happened|we know where they live]].
* Implied at the end of [[Out of the Dark]], again by [[David Weber]]. The Shongairi announced themselves to Earth with a series of [[Colony Drop
* A small-scale version of this is the core plot of [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s first [[Heralds of Valdemar|Vows & Honor]] short story ''Sword-Sworn''. A large force of bandits, with the aid of a wizard to strike down the sentries, ambushed the Shin'a'in clan Tale'sedrin on the way back from a horse fair and killed every one of them... save the skinny teenager they did [[Not Quite Dead|not bother making sure of]] after strangling and gang-raping her.
** Subverted in that the other Shin'a'in clans would still have sent Sword-Sworn of their own to avenge the deaths of Tale'sedrin (both because they are relatives and because of the pragmatic reason that letting the genocide go unpunished increases their own clans' risk factor from bandits exponentially). Tarma's survival affects the course of events only to the extent that, as the party who was by far the most personally wronged by the event, it is her right by Shin'a'in custom to be given the chance to attempt vengeance before anyone else is.
* ''[[Last Legionary]]'': The [[Big Bad]] deciding the Legions of Moros were the major obstacle to him conquering the galaxy and that eliminating was the best course of action? Doesn't work out so well. The Legions weren't even aware of the Warlord's existence prior to the attack that left Keill the only survivor of his race.
== Live Action TV ==
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* In ''[[Stargate: Continuum]]'', Baal is [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that trying to exterminate the Tau'ri will only cause eternal resentment among the survivors who will try and take revenge. Instead, he tries to woo humanity to his side peacefully with the intention of turning them into the next generation of Jaffa. Unfortunately for him, his wife didn't quite see it that way, and decided to do a bombardment of the planet after murdering him.
** In a first season episode where Daniel lands in an alternate grimmer dimension where the Goa'uld have invaded Earth, an cold-hearted O'Neill sends a nuke to the Jaffa homeworld upon learning the location from Daniel who wanted. This bites him in the ass when he pleas Teal'c to think of his son, who has been killed by the attack.
* Tried by Darken Rahl in ''[[Legend of the Seeker]]''. He got wind of a prophecy that the True Seeker would be born in a certain town, so he had his troops, led by his most trusted lieutenant, to kill all the first born sons in the town. Sure enough, Richard was spirited away, and when Rahl finds out 20 years later, [[You Have Failed Me...|he executes the lieutenant]].
* A very longterm example occurs in the ''[[Babylon 5]]'' universe. The Hyach once shared their planet with another sentient species, the Hyach-do. The two races coexisted peacefully for thousands of years, and even intermarried, until the Hyach exterminated the Hyach-do in a frenzy of religious fervor. Centuries later, it was discovered that the declining birth rate of the Hyach is because interbreeding with the Hyach-do was necessary to sustain the Hyach genome. Thus, in wiping out the Hyach-do, the Hyach have doomed themselves to extinction as well.
* In ''[[Lexx]]'' His Divine Shadow was very thorough in wiping out the Brunnen-G, but he made the mistake of reanimating the last one.
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== Mythology and Folklore ==
* [[King Arthur]] learned that he would be destroyed by a child born in a certain month, he had all the babies from that month gathered together, put on a ship and sent to die. The ship crashes and kills every one of them... except for one: Mordred. This is one of the newer versions of the much-revised legend, however. Earlier versions of the story have Mordred as his nephew, there is no such genocide, and Lancelot is nonexistent.
** In one more recent version, a [[Genre Savvy]] [[King Arthur]] knows how a
* [[The Kalevala]] has this: Untamo kills his brother Kalervo and his clan over petty neighborhood squabbles, leaving only a pregnant woman alive. The woman in time gives birth to Kullervo, who later kills Untamo - and wipes out his clan, for good measure.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In Rokugan, the setting of ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'', the Scorpion Clan serve as the Emperor's Underhand. They protect the Empire from hidden or subversive threats, the sort that can't be met with force of arms. Rokugan's CIA, basically. Sounds good, right? Well, the leader of the Scorpion Clan, Bayushi Shoju, discovers some hidden prophecies that foretell the return of [[Sealed Evil in a Can|the dark god Fu Leng]] ... at the hands of the last of the imperial Hantei line. So, Shoju does what any well-meaning defender of his homeland would do. He unseals the [[Artifact of Doom|Bloodsword "Ambition"]] and uses it to kill the Emperor and his family, while his army seizes the Imperial City in what would later be known as the Scorpion Clan Coup. Of course, the Emperor's weak, borderline-retarded son manages to survive, and when the Coup is inevitably foiled he is installed on the throne with Shoju's widow as his wife, where she proceeds to poison and corrupt him for years until he's so weak that [[Demonic Possession|bad things start to happen]].
** Of course, with the rise of {{spoiler|Daigotsu}}, we see that even if he
*** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: Clearly someone knew about his own prophecy and was damn well determined to make sure it happened even if he had to cheat.
* In the Battletech universe, during the Clan invasion, Clan Smoke Jaguar [[War Ships]] power up their weapons and glass a Draconis Combine colony world in an attempt to break the back of the stubborn Combine resistance. Not only did this serve to alienate their allies, drive the Combine to even greater heights of stubborn defense, but, when a defector revealed the Exodus road, the closely guarded secret route to the Clan homeworlds, the battle cry (and mission) of the armada of the Restored Star League Defense Force was "Clan Smoke Jaguar Must Die!"
* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' features Garruk, who was forced to join the army as a child. His father hid him instead, and he came back and killed the lord.
* Inverted in ''[[
== Theatre ==
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* [[The Old Republic]], introduces a heroic version as part of the backstory; A large part of the Sith Empire's motivation is revenge after the Republic [[It Would Be Rude To Say Genocide|exterminated]] the rest of their society.
** And in [[Knights of the Old Republic]], One of the only people who escape the bombardment of Taris is the exact person Malak intended it to kill.
* The [[Player Character]] in ''[[Jade Empire]]'' is the last surviving Spirit Monk, an order who were slaughtered so that the Emperor could steal the power of their goddess, the Water Dragon, to defy the Heavens and end a severe drought. Subverted in that {{spoiler|you only survive as part of the mother of all [[Xanatos Roulette
* A bit of a stretch, but in ''[[Nethack]]'', it is possible to get scrolls of genocide. So it is possible to use it to, say, wipe out all dwarves in the dungeon. Which kinda bites you in the ass if you happen to ''be'' a dwarf. With a little imagination and WMG you could play both the dastardly villain who wipes out the victim population, and the hero who valiantly gives his life to put an end to the monster who destroyed his people.
** Not to mention what happens when you read a ''cursed'' scroll of genocide: Instead of wiping out the desired species, it summons a number of them instead. Genocide backfire indeed.
* In ''[[Guild Wars]]: Prophecies'', the White Mantle ritually identifies the Chosen and then [[Human Sacrifice|sacrifices them to their gods]]; discovering this is what drives the [[Player Character]] to turn on the Mantle. Then the [[Player Character]] is revealed to also be Chosen...
* The Lombaxes and Cragamites in ''[[Ratchet and Clank]] Future: Tools of Destruction''. The Lombaxes sealed the [[
* Played with in the ''[[Metroid]]'' series. ''Metroid 2: Return of Samus'' has Samus tasked with exterminating the Metroids on their home planet of SR388; the game ends with Samus sparing a single hatchling, which has imprinted on her. ''Super Metroid'' starts off with scientists studying the larval Metroid making the discovery that the Metroids have abilities that could be used for the good of galactic civilization, right before the Space Pirates massacre the researchers and abduct the larva so they can build another Metroid army; the next time Samus encounters the larva, it's grown to horrendous proportions and almost kills Samus before it recognizes her. Then, during the final battle, it performs a [[Tear Jerker|truly heartbreaking]] [[Heroic Sacrifice]], saving Samus from Mother Brain's onslaught and giving her the unstoppable Hyper Beam weapon. (Then ''Metroid Fusion'' reveals that the Metroids on SR388 were keeping an even more dangerous threat in check, which is [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|another trope entirely...]])
** Samus herself is portrayed as the sole survivor of a Space Pirate attack on the mining colony of K-2L. Who would have thought that cute, 3-year-old girl would come back to bite them in the ass so hard.
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** The big backfire was when they tried to genocide the Elites after they found out the truth about the rings. The Elites thus joined forces with the humans.
** The new ''Forerunner Saga'' novels reveal that the Forerunners and the ancient human interstellar empire fought a devastating war, with the Forerunners winning and literally blasting humanity back to the Stone Age. Unfortunately for them, the humans had plenty of research and experience with the Flood, which was destroyed when Earth fell. Then the Forerunners themselves get wiped out by the Flood.
* In [[Mass Effect]], The Quarians try to do this to the Geth to [[Defied Trope|defy]] [[
* The third variant occurs in the ''[[Age of Empires III]]: The Warchiefs''. Chayton Black has some moral reservations about killing women and children just to help the gold rush along, so he defects to the Sioux he was ordered to kill. This ends badly for Billy Holme.
* A fairly straightforward case in ''[[Bayonetta]]'': the [[Big Bad]] {{spoiler|Father Balder}}, the last Lumen Sage, began the Witch Hunts against the Umbra Witches (in which the titular heroine is a member of) more or less [[For the Evulz]]. Naturally, Bayonetta stops this plot.
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* In the first ''[[Homeworld]]'' game, this is how the Taiidan Empire meets its end. After the main race perfect hyperspace technology, the Emperor (who is indisputably insane) decides to invoke a long forgotten, thousands-of-years-old treaty that the race had forgotten, which was that they were not allowed to develop any hyperspace technology. This results in the near-genocide of said race, and in addition to causing the survivors to get royally pissed off and begin a war against them, also results in a massive rebellion popping up due to public outrage of an essentially unprovoked attack on a fledgling race that had just started interstellar travel. By the end of the game, the main race is assaulting the Taiidan homeworld with the aid of the rebels, and destroys the defense fleet as well as the Emperor's flagship, then goes down and destroys the cloning facilities that housed replacements, destroying the Empire entirely except for a few remnants with little power.
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'', during the Human Noble origin, Arl Howe attempts to wipe out the entire Cousland linewhen the main army leaves Castle Highever to fight the darkspawn. However, thanks to the Grey Warden Duncan, the player survives, becomes a Warden, gains armies of support and powerful allies, and eventually returns to Howe's manor to express your disapproval of his ambitions by rearranging his face.
** Arl Howe also missed the Human Noble's older brother, who was ironically safe from Howe's murder attempt because he was amongst a scouting party that had gotten stranded behind enemy lines in the war vs. the darkspawn. However, if the Warden-Commander hadn't defeated the darkspawn, Fergus Cousland almost certainly have died anyway.
* [[Double Subverted]] in ''[[Mega Man ZX]]'' and its sequel, ''[[Mega Man ZX]] Advent''. In a similar manner to the [[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty|S3 Plan]], Serpent (and ultimately Albert) were heavily implied to have deliberately spared only a handful of people during Maverick Raids in order to get them to become Mega Men and thus participate in the Game of Destiny to become the Mega Man King. However, by the end of the game, regardless of the deliberate attempt to spare them or not, it still put an end to their plans and presumably the Game of Destiny.
* Genocide attempts has happened quite often in the history of the [[World of Warcraft]], though only a few have backfired.
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[The Order of the Stick|Start of Darkness]]'', [[Light Is Not Good|crusading paladins]] go and wipe out multiple villages of [[
** And in comic 842, boy does Darth V's Familicide coming back to bite him/her in the ass. {{spoiler|The Draketooth family were all part dragon.}}
* {{spoiler|[[Gambit Pileup|Linda, brainwashed by the government, actually the Britjas under a false flag]]}}, all from ''[[Walkyverse|It's Walky!]]'', killed all the so-called "Martians" in [[The Seventies]]. "So-called" because {{spoiler|Mars was just an outpost of an intergalactic empire}}. Of [[Cthulhu Mythos]]-like creatures who'd been leaving around all that [[Magic From Technology|sufficiently advanced]] [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] that drove half the comic's plots. This goes about as well as you'd expect.
** Admittedly not a perfect example since (other than {{spoiler|a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] [[Deus Ex Machina|stepping in on the humans' behalf]]}}) it went [[Xanatos Roulette|exactly as planned]] for the [[Omnicidal Maniac|small subset of humanity that ultimately engineered it]].
* Sometime during the Dominion War in [[Terinu]]'s past, the human rebels attempted to destroy the Varn Dominion's main power source. Said source consisting of childlike sentient beings known as the Ferin. The Terran Federation trying to both finish the job and keeping the secret from their allied races is a major plot point.
* A few centuries into the back story of ''[[Errant Story]]'', the Elves discovered that some Half-Elves may go crazy and spontaneously develop inexplicable talent in destructive magic. The Elves forbade cross-breeding with Humans and organized a branch of the military to hunt down Half-Elves. They haven't been
** Even better: The reason that there's just one Elven city left? They were so [[Can't Argue with Elves|smugly arrogant, callous and intractable]] in their attempted genocide that basically every other power group (including their erstwhile allies and pawns) basically [[Screw You, Elves|told them where they could shove it. Violently]].
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[[Category:Villain Ball]]
[[Category:Index Backfire]]
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[[Category:Plots]]
[[Category:Genocide Backfire]]
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