Genocide Backfire: Difference between revisions

[[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!

It often involves a prophecy, and this is the villains' attempt to "[[Screw Destiny]]". [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|For all the good it does them]].

 

 

There are two main variants:

* 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.

** 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.}}

* 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}}.

* 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]].

* 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.

* ''[[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.

== 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.

 

* [[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.

* 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...

* 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.

 

== Web Comics ==

** 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.

** 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]].