Genocide Backfire: Difference between revisions

This typically means murdering hundreds of people to kill a single child, who will inevitably escape—see [[Nice Job Breaking It, Herod]]. Sometimes, the evil overlord might [[Karma Houdini|live out his life successfully]], but his descendants [[Sins of Our Fathers|pay the price]].

 

# 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.

* [[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.

{{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.

* 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.

* 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.

== 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.

* [[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.

 

* 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.

 

== Theatre ==

** 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* [[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.

[[Category:Villain Ball]]

[[Category:Index Backfire]]

[[Category:Plots]]

[[Category:Genocide Backfire]]