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{{trope}}
{{quote|<poem>Steps were needed to remove the little curse.
The old man knew [[Rock Bottom|it couldn't get any worse]].</poem>|''[[The Cat Came Back (film)]]''}}
There is wisdom in facing a threat with a proportionate response. Sure, [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]], but it'll likely cause a lot of [[Destructive Saviour|avoidable collateral damage]], ''and'' it'll guarantee that tomorrow [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil|the next threat is stronger]]. But there are times when
Things are at the point where even summoning [[Godzilla]], king of monsters and patron saint of collateral damage, could not possibly make the crisis any worse. The situation has crossed the
▲There is wisdom in facing a threat with a proportionate response. Sure, [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]], but it'll likely cause a lot of [[Destructive Saviour|avoidable collateral damage]], ''and'' it'll guarantee that tomorrow [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil|the next threat is stronger]]. But there are times when [[Outside Context Villain|the threat is so great]] and things have [[Gone Horribly Wrong|gone so horribly wrong]] that there is ''no'' appropriate response. The situation is so dire that it justifies the use of any and every thing that might solve it, no matter how crazy, nonsensical, or horrific, regardless of cost or collateral damage.
Once the Threshold is crossed,
▲Things are at the point where even summoning [[Godzilla]], king of monsters and patron saint of collateral damage, could not possibly make the crisis any worse. The situation has crossed the [[Title Drop|Godzilla Threshold]].
▲Once the Threshold is crossed, ANY [[Plan]], with even the smallest possibility of success, no matter how ludicrous, impossible, dangerous or abhorrent, suddenly becomes a valid option. This serves both narrative and authorial purposes. Suppose the heroes have an awesome weapon that nonetheless causes a lot of property damage, like a [[Kill Sat]], or a [[Sealed Evil in a Can|captured]] or [[Evil Is Not a Toy|dormant]] monster. Or one knows a [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]] that will put his life at risk. They [[Chekhov's Gun|have to use it]], but [[I Thought It Was Forbidden|it can't be done lightly without portraying them as either]] [[Moral Event Horizon|careless or cruel]]. So the author contrives to make the situation call for its use in such clear terms the audience understands this was done as a last resort -- and, if it's handled properly, the audience doesn't even notice.
Often, the threshold is engineered. If done wrong, it can cause some serious [[Fridge Logic]]. This is usually the case when the [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|heroes' actions]] or failures to act cause the situation to cross the threshold. Usually, there's an [[Idiot Ball]] (or [[Idiot Plot]]), a [[General Ripper]], or [[Poor Communication Kills]] to thank for that.
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Some plots center around ''avoiding'' the Godzilla Threshold and keeping the trigger happy person in charge of the "[[Failsafe Failure|failsafe]]" from pushing the button. Sometimes, they even ''succeed.''
The Godzilla Threshold is what happens just before the [[Willfully Weak]] character gives the [[World of Cardboard Speech]] and turns the [[Power Limiter]] off, uses the [[Forbidden Chekhov's Gun]], [[Lethal Harmless Powers|uses lethal powers]], turns to the [[Nuclear Option]], or casts [[Summon Bigger Fish]]. When begged, the [[All
Contrast [[The Unfettered]], who lives and acts as though the situation is always past the Threshold, even when there's no good reason to do so. Compare
Named for the old ''[[Godzilla]]'' cartoons of the 1970s-1980s where Godzilla would conveniently emerge from a nearby body of water to combat whatever threat had bested the characters.▼
▲Named for the old [[Godzilla]] cartoons of the 1970s-1980s where Godzilla would conveniently emerge from a nearby body of water to combat whatever threat had bested the characters.
{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* Anything that justifies unleashing the ''[[Dirty Pair]]'' on a situation.
** Lampshaded in ''Biohazard'': "If the terrorists do release experimental bioweapons, this planet will become a sterile desert. Whereas, with the involvement of the Dirty Pair, there is a chance -- a '''remote possiblity''' -- that some people may be left alive. We have to play the odds, gentlemen... God help us." They do indeed stop anyone from deliberately releasing a bioweapon {{spoiler|and then drop it accidentally in the last panel.}}
** Those two probably count as a bioweapon by themselves.
* In ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]] In Love'', this happens when the characters are discussing using a particular superweapon that is designed to destroy '''galaxies and galactic clusters''' on a being that is maybe 30
* ''[[Slayers]]'' crosses the threshold in three [[Big Bad]] situations, just before Lina lets fly with a [[Fantastic Nuke|Giga Slave]]. Said spell carries a significant risk of ENDING THE UNIVERSE should Lina Inverse lose control of it.
** Arguably, given Lina's tendency towards collateral damage, anyone asking for Lina's aid in a populated area also likely qualifies.
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** {{spoiler|And summons his own army of bloody undead, comprised of everyone he's ever killed. Given who he is, that's not a small number.}}
* ''[[Diebuster]]'' {{spoiler|With Nono (Buster Machine No.7) gone, the only hope humanity had to defeat the last Space Monster was to use the Earth itself as a weapon.}}
* It's said on several occasions in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' that the Angel attacks had pushed humanity's situation past the
** For the JSSDF, the situation can be summed up pretty nicely with this trope: they only authorized the deployment of the Evas when Sachiel took an [[Nuke'Em|N2 mine]] to the face and survived. After the first three Angels, they even funded the construction of their own nuclear-powered [[Humongous Mecha]].
** NERV seems to have the power to requisition ''anything'' they want: top-secret prototype superweapon and the use of Japan's entire power grid? Yep, given a few hours NERV has all of that at its disposal, on the recommendation of a ''Captain'' (or a Lieutenant Colonel in ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]''). Said Captain is later seen ordering around an Admiral of the Pacific Fleet. Of course, NERV's mission is explicitly to prevent the entire human race from going extinct, so...
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** This also occurs in the Impel Down arc. By the time the arc is in full swing, two groups of people are on the attack while trying to break out of the prison and another group is trying to break ''in''. With two of those groups containing people only Magellan himself is capable of stopping and one being a [[Zerg Rush]], Magellan gambles and releases Shiryu, a former Warden that was put on death row due to being severely [[Ax Crazy]], thinking that Shiryu might stop some of the prisoners. {{spoiler|This [[Hoist by His Own Petard|severely bites Magellan in the ass later]], as Shiryu later saves Blackbeard from being poisoned and joins Blackbeard's crew, which leads to Magellan receiving a [[Curb Stomp Battle|massive beating at their hands offscreen]]. [[All for Nothing|It didn't even do anything to help stop the jailbreaks.]]}}
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', it turns out that {{spoiler|this is why Yamamoto sat out most of the "final battle".}}
** Also theorized by fans to be the reason that {{spoiler|even then, Yamamoto never tried to use his as yet unrevealed bankai. Given how massive the collateral damage of the shikai attack he was about to attempt would've been (had Aizen not prepared a counter for it), and the fact that every bankai is supposed to be at least 5 times more powerful than the shikai, even letting Aizen win would've been a better option than using it}}.
*** Had Yamamoto used it, it would have killed all the Shinigami in the area, and fried a good chunk of Soul Society. AND remember that Aizen has an entire army of lesser hollows and Arrancar waiting. If all the Shinigami are fried, nothing would have been powerful enough to stop the Arrancar from going hog-wild on the human world and devouring everyone. And then they probably would have moved onto Soul Society.
* In ''[[Giant Robo]]: The Day the Earth Stood Still'', Chief Chujo is a walking example of this trope; the mere suggestion of him breaking out his powers to use in the fight is enough to send fear and panic through his own allies, most of whom remember [[Noodle Incident|"The last time"]] he used them.
** And of course, when he does, we see that they are justified in their fears.
* In ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', the [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique|Athena Exclamation]] is taboo. It is a technique performed by three Gold Saints of Athena, who focus their [[Battle Aura|Cosmo]] into a burst of power as powerful as the ''Big Bang'' and deliver it on a single opponent. But by the "Hades" arc, {{spoiler|Saga, Shura, and Camus}} perform it because they figure they are already damned by their [[Reverse Mole|alliance with Hades]].
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** Now that the primary issue at hand is that {{spoiler|the Magic World is collapsing}}, the heroes are pretty much entitled to do anything short of {{spoiler|blowing the world up themselves}} to solve the problem.
* ''[[GaoGaiGar]]'' example: in FINAL, we get {{spoiler|1=the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-6TDhVCg18 Goldion Crusher], a weapon designed to destroy ''planets''. It is a hammer made out of a matter/energy conversion field that, going by the scale, is probably several ''hundred kilometers'' across. It gets used on a ''sun'' that is also an infinite regeneration machine keeping alive an ''evil solar system'' that is actually a security program gone insane, which has trapped the heroes and slowly bringing about apocalypse on our entire universe}}. And it is '''awesome'''.
* The {{spoiler|rise of the Saint's Cradle}} during the JS Incident in ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S]]'' is, so far, the only occasion when all five [[Person of Mass Destruction|Aces]]' [[Power Limiter
** The presence of the Book of Darkness prompts the Bureau to equip the ''Athra'' with the [[Wave Motion Gun|Arc-En-Ciel]], [[Fantastic Nuke|a weapon capable of wiping a significant chunk of Japan]] off the map. This was considered preferable to allowing the Book of Darkness to go berserk.
* The entire Fourth Shinobi World War in ''[[Naruto]]''. {{spoiler|From the time [[Super-Powered Evil Side|Kinkaku goes Kyubi]], to [[Big Bad|Madara Uchiha]] using the [[Attack of the 50
** The battle with {{spoiler|Tobi and Madara blow all the rest of this in the dust. Lets see, Madara [[Colony Drop|drops two asteroids]] onto Gaara's division and the only counter is for ''all'' five Kages to fight Madara. And Naruto, Bee, and later Kakashi and Gai face down Tobi...with his Jinchuriki Six Paths. Now...Tobi has forcefully transformed ''four'' of them into their full beast form. The only counter? Naruto and Kurama ([[My Name Is Not Durwood|Kyubi]]) ''team up ''finally.}}
** Naruto forms the [[Super-Powered Evil Side|4th]] tail, the [[Oh Crap|6th]] tail, the [[Darkest Hour|8th]] tail, then proceeds to {{spoiler|(almost)}} ''willfully tear off the seal keeping the Kyubi in'' in order to defeat Pain. Why? Because he simply [[Berserk Button|killed Jiraiya and (albeit indirectly) Kakashi, destroyed the village, and mortally harmed Hinata.]] Oh, and Naruto hates the Kyubi to the point that he would rather die than be healed by the evil chakra (due to Sakura and Jiraiya being harmed by said chakra).
* Invoked with constantly increasing severity throughout ''[[Dragon Ball]]'' / ''[[Dragonball Z]]'. One proposed gambit near the end of the series involved convincing every person on Earth to sacrifice their life in order to power up a final attack against the big bad.
* Although a little drawn out, this is used in a minor way in ''[[The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya]] (2009)'' at the end of the "Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya" arc. After Haruhi spends a few days royally screwing with reality during the filming of the culture festival video, Kyon {{spoiler|restores reality by making Haruhi read a disclaimer, thus distancing the movie from reality}}. In the epilogue, Kyon tries to make future events easier by flat-out telling Haruhi the identities of the SOS members(Which was theorized to possibly cause her to rewrite reality on a conscious level), only to be be completely ignored.
* A recurring element in the ''[[Gundam]]'' franchise is how circumstances, individuals and so on prompt the need to cross such thresholds. Whether it's the development of mobile suits in the first place or even the use of nukes. In the Universal Century in particular, the Principality of Zeon goes as far as to pull off a [[Colony Drop]] that ''erased a chunk of Australia off the map'' (even if it wasn't the intended target) if it meant the possibility of dealing a decisive blow on the Earth Federation.
* In ''[[Code Geass]]'', more than a few figures eventually invoke this in order to achieve their goals or stop others from achieving theirs.
==
* In ''[[The Ultimates]]'' [[Nick Fury]] gives "[[Bullying a Dragon|Permission to traumatize]] [[Incredible Hulk|Banner]]" when things have gotten that bad during a Skrull invasion.
* In another Hulk related example, during ''[[World War Hulk]]'' Tony Stark gives his second in command the authority to send the whole of Manhattan into the Negative Zone if things with the Hulk get out of hand. Also from that plot line, they repeatedly attempt to bring in the Sentry to fight the Hulk, and Dr. Strange sees fit to drink in the essence of a universe destroying demon. Contrary to their plans, both of these options do in fact make the situation worse.
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== Fan
* Daemon from the ''[[Tamers Forever Series]]'' is considered to be such an unbeatable opponent that the Tamers' only hope is for
*
* ''[[
* ''[[Kimi no Na Iowa]]'': After the initial abyssal attacks on China out of the Yellow Sea penetrated deeply enough inland to do damage to Beijing, fatally wounding none less than the then-president, the dying man told the PLA to do whatever it took to defend the people. They turned to the [[Nuclear Option]] and succeeded. The idea of a LAMP RUB<ref>As in to summon a [[wikipedia:AIR-2 Genie|Genie]]</ref> comes up a few times later as a kind of [[Black Comedy]] [[Running Gag]], only to be used for real in Chapter 36. {{spoiler|With a massive abyssal air attack underway that a human armada has been forced to retreat from, the PLARF CO is brought to the realization that nukes are the only way to drive off the attackers before they sink the armada and turn their attention to Chinese cities once again.}}
== Film ==
* Most
** So did Ang Lee's ''Hulk''. They bombed a lake, though, and so there were no collateral casualties. But it was certainly the last available option once Hulk and Banner Dad had unleashed all their rage.
* The teenagers in ''[[Freddy vs. Jason]]'' wanted Jason, the guy that killed 20 of their friends, to win the fight against
** These kids also save Jason from drowning in a dream. He kills the black girl later.
* Perhaps the best example comes from the original ''[[Godzilla]]'' itself, where the Japanese government decides to deploy Dr. Serizawa's Oxygen Destroyer in Tokyo Bay to kill the monster. The Oxygen Destroyer also kills all other marine life in the bay, but the government considers this an acceptable loss in exchange for killing a monster that's just devastated the city. [[The Professor|Serizawa]] himself is reluctant to even let anyone know about the Oxygen Destroyer's existence, even while Godzilla's rampaging, because he's afraid of how horrible a weapon it might be. He crosses his own Godzilla threshold after a montage of the destruction the monster caused shows him what's at
* Fittingly enough, ''[[Godzilla]]: Final Wars'' reaches the Godzilla Threshold about halfway through. Civilization is in ruins and the alien monsters are running rampant, so how could one more make things worse? [[Summon Bigger Fish|Godzilla turns out to be fiercely territorial when near other monsters...]]
** In ''Godzilla vs King Ghidorah'', King Ghidorah causes Japan to reach this Threshold. They bring back Godzilla and juice him with radiation. Of course {{spoiler|After King G is defeated, he starts rampaging too}}, but if you think about it, the situation didn't really get any worse
*** At which point they {{spoiler|bring King Ghidorah back to fight Godzilla}}. Oddly enough, that actually works.
* In Michael Bay's first ''[[Transformers (film)|Transformers]]'' film; when the Deceptions are closing in on the Allspark, the preferred military solution is to hide the Allspark in the middle of a city - where the Decepticons will have trouble getting to it until large-scale military assistance could be attained and keep them busy while the Allspark was moved to another location (of course, the real reason is Michael Bay's wish to have a massive battle downtown).
* In ''[[Independence Day]]'', the revelation that the aliens' only interest is the complete and total destruction of earth serves as the
** Based on a similar scene in the 1954 ''[[War of the Worlds]]'', although note that the ID4 example has the key difference that the WOTW use of Nukes was in a desert while the ID4 attack was in Houston.
* Early on in ''[[Ghostbusters]]'' Egon goes into some detail as to how important it is to never [[Forbidden Chekhov's Gun|cross the streams]]. There is apparently a very good chance of [[Techno Babble|total protonic reversal]]. Once [[Eldritch Abomination|Gozer]] manifests as a 100 foot marshmallow man and tramples downtown New York as a warm-up to
* ''[[Cloverfield]]'': the Hammerdown protocol. Though not explained in the movie, it appears to involve either nuking New York or "merely" dropping multiple superheavy conventional bombs on it. To quote the radio operator, "If you can hear the [air raid] sirens, you're inside the blast zone."
* The climax of ''[[Galaxy Quest]]''
* ''[[Monsters vs. Aliens]].'' Mind you, it's a really fuzzy kaiju that's released.
* In ''[[The Core]]'', the heroes reach the outer core of the Earth and discover that the nuclear weapons they've brought along won't be enough to restart it. In response, the general decides to fire up Project DESTINI to restart the
** It takes quite an extreme situation for the detonation of nuclear weapons to be the ''less'' dangerous option.
* The movie ''[[Alien (franchise)|Aliens]]''. The space marines, with Ellen Ripley in tow, arrive at the colony they are supposed to investigate only to find that said colony has been overrun and the colonists are all monster chow. In the process of evaluating the situation, most of the marines also become monster chow. With the mission screwed and the colony beyond help, Corporal Hicks (now the ranking soldier) declares that they will return to their frigate and "nuke the site from orbit". A fairly straight up example of resorting to overkill in response to a terminally screwed up situation; after all, how could things get worse?
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* In ''[[The Chronicles of Riddick]]'', the Necromonger threat has grown so great that some people decide to track down a [[Chaotic Neutral]] (at best) [[Serial Killer]] who may be the [[Last of His Kind|only surviving member]] of a [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|race of warriors]] to combat them. As the opening monologue puts it: "In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil."
* ''[[The Dark Knight]]'' has several scenes musing about how much power is appropriate to stop a threat, citing things like Ancient Rome's ability to grant emergency powers to one man. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that Batman himself has become the threshold for Gotham's criminal underworld. Their response is [[The Joker]].
{{quote|
'''Alfred Pennyworth''': You crossed the line first, sir. You squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of desperation. And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand. }}
** Towards the end of the film, {{spoiler|Batman hacks every cell phone in Gotham into a listening device/sonar array. Lucius Fox says it's unethical, and that he's quitting after he uses it. Batman tells him to type in his name when they find the Joker, which turns out to activate the self-destruct option. The earlier comparison to the Romans is implied, not stated.}}
* The science facility in ''[[The Andromeda Strain]]'' is set up to nuke itself if anything gets past the containment seals. {{spoiler|The scientists later learn that the energy would only fuel the strain's reproduction, wiping out life on Earth in short order.}}
* ''[[Tremors|Tremors 2]]'': Earl is completely surrounded by Shriekers and is standing in the back of Burt's truck. His response: Set a timed explosive to go off and toss it down in the truck. That 4.5 tons of Burt Gummer approved high explosives, parked in an oil refinery.
{{quote|
'''Earl (worried):''' "Is that not going to be enough?! Please, Burt! Don't tell me that's not going to be enough!"
'''Burt:''' "Not enough?! It's... Nevermind! RUN!!! It's goinna be BIIIIIG!!!" }}
** Burt does this with his first remote control Graboid kill.
{{quote|
** ''Tremors 3'' has this when Burt blows up his entire bunker to kill a single Ass Blaster, [[Rule of Funny|only to learn that they go into a coma when they eat too much]].
* In ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]'' this happens twice. The first is when the army fails to capture Bruce in Brazil, motivating Ross to use experimental super soldier drugs on Emil Blonsky. The second time is when Blonsky becomes the Abomination and starts terrorizing New York, forcing Ross to allow the recently captured Banner to Hulk out and take down the Abomination.
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* The ''[[Worldwar]]'' series about Alien Lizards invading Earth during WWII: Allying with Nazis. Nuking your own cities. Pulling all those Chemical and Biological weapons out. You do horrible things when you are being invaded by Alien Lizards.
* In ''[[World War Z]]'', the government is so stumped as to how to fight the zombie hordes that they are forced to implement the "Redeker Plan", using large parts of the population as zombie bait to give the government a chance to regroup and plan. {{spoiler|[[And It Worked]].}}
* ''[[The Laundry Series|The Laundry]]'' has one of these lined up for when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN (a.k.a, the stars coming right)
* Robert Jordan's ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series: in the War of Power, the good guys constructed the Choedan Kal, two devices (one for use by a male, one for use by a female) that could draw astronomical amounts of the One Power in order to seal the Dark One away in his prison. Later used to {{spoiler|cleanse the poisoned male half of the Power during the climax of book 9, Winter's Heart (during which the female Choedan Kal is destroyed).}} In The Gathering Storm, {{spoiler|Rand at first thinks that the male Choedan Kal is the key to defeating the Dark One, but eventually realizes that it won't work. At the end of the book, he destroys it, knowing there may well be another (and better) way to defeat the Dark One this time around.}}
* In [[David Weber]]'s ''Out of the Darkness'', the alien commander of the forces invading Earth eventually concedes the use of {{spoiler|genocidal bioweapons}} as the only option against a planetful of humans who refuse to submit, and are rapidly depleting the invader's reserves.
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* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''[[The End of Eternity]]'', there is a time traveling group that safeguards humanity over a period of billions of years. {{spoiler|The problem is that humanity never leaves the Solar System, maybe because that's an inherently risky endeavor and the time travelers block risky activities. After a long time (at least millions, maybe billions of years) humanity dies out. The protagonist goes back in time further than anyone has gone before, to the twentieth century, and there manipulates the timeline so that time travel never arises, thus wiping out millions of years of human existence and destroying everyone and everything he ever knew. However the new timeline is in some sense better - it's the world of the majority of Asimov's novels.}}
* In [[Neverwhere]], the Marquis de Carabas can be called into one's service for the cost of "A really big favor". Take this warning in just case you should happen to find yourself in London Below: ''Don't do that''.
* In the ''[[Star Trek]]: Destiny'' trilogy, the Federation president gives Captain Picard permission to do anything necessary, regardless of Starfleet regulations or Federation law, to defeat a massive Borg invasion, up to and including re-creating [[Star Trek: Nemesis|Shinzon's thalaron weapon]]. Subverted in that Picard is ready to do this, until Geordi flatly refuses to carry out Picard's order and [[What the Hell, Hero?|tells him]] that rebuilding the very device that Data sacrificed his life to stop would be an insult to their friend's memory. He then rescinds the order and [[Take a Third Option|finds another way]].
* In ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', the arrival of the Others is considered this for people on both sides of the Wall. Mance Rayder, the King Beyond The Wall, is willing to march the Free Folk south of the Wall to find shelter in the despotic Seven Kingdoms. Jon Snow, for his part, is willing to allow "Wildlings" to settle on the Night Watch's lands and even join the Night Watch to bolster their ranks against the Others. Both plans are considered pretty shocking, and not everyone agrees with them.
* In Timothy Zahn's ''[[The Conquerors Trilogy]]'', the arrival of a dangerous alien threat starts everyone talking about dusting off a superweapon the humans used once and never used again. {{spoiler|Subverted- the weapon doesn't actually exist, it was actually a freak accident where a solar flare wiped out a fleet.}}
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** The Imass came to a racial consensus that after the latest in a long string of Jaghut Tyrants, the Threshold had been crossed. They transformed themselves into nigh-immortal undead and proceeded to hunt down every Jaghut they could, killing or binding them.
** High King Kallor was so hated by a cabal of wizards that they chose to summon forth and bind a god to be used as a [[Fantastic Nuke]] against him. It destroyed an entire ''continent'', created the [[Big Bad|Crippled God]], and Kallor ''survived''.
* ''[[The Three-Body Problem (novel)|The Three-Body Problem]]'': Faced with the [[Impossible Task]] of securing the former oil tanker that [[Les Collaborateurs]] are using as a base in seconds before said traitors can delete critical data, the multinational coalition considers the use of neutron bombs and nerve gas, and rejects those as insufficient. The final plan involves using experimental [[Razo Floss|nanofilament]] to slice through the whole ship.
== Live-Action TV ==
* When things get really desperate in ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' and ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'', the higher-ups are usually willing to give the green light to plans that involve ridiculous things like blowing up suns.
** One experiment of Rodney's kills a co-worker and blows up most of a solar system. They try it again. This time they almost destroy ''two galaxies'', and completely drain their ZPM (an excessively rare and valuable super-battery).
** After the Replicator invasion of Asgard space crosses the threshold, one episode follows Thor as he seeks Carter's advice on the grounds that the Asgard lack the stupidity necessary to devise a plan that crosses that
** One of the best examples would be the Season 6 finale. Anubis hovering with his finger on the trigger of an Ancient superweapon ready to [[Earthshattering Kaboom|blow up Abydos]] causes {{spoiler|Daniel to break the non-interference rules of the Ascended beings and try to destroy Anubis using his godlike powers. He only fails because the other Ascended beings stop him.}}
*** {{spoiler|And because, as it's later revealed, Anubis can't be killed, not even by other Ascended beings. He can, however, be engaged by them in eternal battle, which is how he is ultimately defeated by Oma Desala.}}
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* ''[[Power Rangers]]'' usually reaches this point at least twice per season. At some point, the villain's plans will be so destructive, or a [[Monster of the Week]] so powerful that the old code of "match force with proportionate force" just stops applying. It's usually at this point that [[Storming the Castle|all out assaults]], [[Gondor Calls for Aid|calling in old favors]], and even [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifices]] become valid options.
* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Journey's End", it's revealed that UNIT {{spoiler|strung a series of nuclear warheads beneath the Earth's crust, the stated aim of which is to destroy the entire freaking planet. It is only to be used when death is considered a preferable alternative to whatever shitstorm has enveloped the human race.}}
** In ''[[Doctor Who
** In a reference to [[Winston Churchill]]'s real world invocation of this trope in defense of allying with [[Josef Stalin|Stalin]] (see below), he uses this same logic to justify using Dalek technology against the Nazis in "Victory of the Daleks." The Doctor tries and fails to convince Churchill that the Daleks are a bigger threat than the Nazis, {{spoiler|but it turns out that the Daleks had out-gambitted the Doctor all along, and the entire point of the exercise was just to get the Doctor to admit that they were Daleks so that the Dalek race could be revived.}}
* Several times in ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'', varied characters think they've hit this point:
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* ''[[Farscape]]'' {{spoiler|At the end of season 4 John does this with a home-made nuke in order to try to pull a fast one on the Scarrans and Peacekeepers. And he wasn't bluffing (mostly). Done again on a ''much'' bigger scale in ''Peacekeeper Wars'' John - sick and tired of trying to reason and figure things out with the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans - holds the entire ''galaxy'' to ransom with the wormhole weapon. This time, he ''really'' wasn't bluffing.}}
** Also played with in season 3 when {{spoiler|John gets stuck at the wormhole nexus centre and he finds out - courtesy of the ancient's pregenitors - that playing with wormholes isn't just fiddling around in space, it's ''fucking about with the entire fabric of reality''. He gets a little scared at this point, and the only reason he reenters the system is that he has no choice. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|He still messes up though]].}}
* ''[[Angel]]'': Series 4. The world is on the verge of an unexpected Apocalypse when the Beast blocks out the sun over LA to create a 24-hour demon playground. The only thing that can stop it is Angel's [[Super-Powered Evil Side]], [[Complete Monster|Angelus]], the greatest mass
* In ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' episode "The Last Sontaran", despite the fact that Sarah Jane [[Doesn't Like Guns]] and distrusts the military, the presence of a Sontaran ship on Earth prompts her to immediately make plans to call in UNIT.
* In the ''[[Star Trek]]'' universe, the Godzilla Threshold is instantly crossed whenever a single omega particle is detected. Omega protocol authorizes the captain of the vessel to use any means (even breaking the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]]) to destroy it.
** The original ''[[Star Trek: The
** Kodos the Executioner/Anton Karidian in ''[[Star Trek: The
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Warhammer
** [[The Corruption|Chaos]]. A cult uprising is one thing, but if daemons are actually rampaging around at will, the world may be past saving. Even if the Imperium managed to cleanse the planet, the taint of Chaos would remain, like lingering radiation [[Dissimile|that's also sentient and teaches people how to build dirty bombs]]. Of course, the problem with destroying a planet in the grip of Chaos is that past a certain point the world isn't quite physically ''there'' anymore, so the best you can do is try to quarantine it.
*** A ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]'' novel notes dryly that once daemons have control over a planet and it passes beyond that 'certain point', Exterminatus, at best, will do nothing. In a worst-case scenario, it might end up giving the new inhabitants ideas.
** [[Horde of Alien Locusts|Tyranids]]. If a Hive Fleet conquers a planet, even at a staggering cost, it will just add the world's bio-mass to the swarm and recycle the corpses of its dead, emerging only stronger. A controversial but effective tactic is to bait the Tyranids into committing most of a swarm to taking a world, only to blow it up before they can set about harvesting it, with any friendly casualties being acceptable losses. Unfortunately, the ever-evolving Tyranids have bred burrowing organisms capable of riding out such an orbital apocalypse.
*** Inquisitor Kryptman devised a "scorched earth" strategy against Hivefleet Leviathan, exterminating not just worlds undergoing Tyranid attack but those in the fleet's path. While his gambit arguably succeeded in slowing the Tyranid advance, battlezone morale plummeted, billions died in the largest act of genocide since the [[Horus Heresy]], and Kryptman himself was excommunicated. Though the Imperium is [[We Have Reserves|perfectly wiling to sacrifice millions of men to win a war]], [[Pragmatic Villainy|humans are a renewable resource, worlds are not]].
** A third, and less used threat is Xenos: some planets have a lot of things on them that the Xenos can use against humanity, and sometimes losing the planet is better than letting the Xenos get it. For example, in the video game Space Marine, Exterminatus is considered as an option during the intro since, if the invading Orks gain possession of just one of the Titans manufactured there, they could use the components to keep their invasion going for years, and completely capturing the planet and making use of all the Titans there would give the Orks a shot at wiping out humanity once and for all. The only reason the planet isn't glassed immediately is because the loss of the Titans, and the manufactorum housed there, would be a crippling blow to humanity as well.
* As the [[Old World of Darkness]] drew to a close, the Antediluvian vampire Zapathasura (sire of the [[Vampire: The Masquerade|Ravnos clan]]) rose in India and began wrecking things. The [[Mage: The Ascension|Technocracy]] responded with a Code Ragnarok, their contingency plan for 'if we don't win this, the world ends today' events. It involved solar mirrors (to direct the equivalent of five suns at the super-vampire), Prime-enhanced spirit-shredding nuclear weapons, weather control machines, and more. In fact, Ragnarok authorized the use of the entire Technocratic arsenal, a 100% civilian casualty rate and a 100% operative casualty
** This being the World of Darkness, though, things did indeed [[It Got Worse|get worse]] thanks to Code Ragnarok. The [[Wraith: The Oblivion|Shadowlands]] were destroyed, the [[Demon: The Fallen|Fallen]] escaped from the Abyss, and the [[The End of the World as We Know It|Time of Judgement]] began. Of course, since the alternative was the world ending ''that afternoon'' it still qualifies as this trope.
* In ''[[Exalted]]'', we have the Kukla. Elementals in ''Exalted'' take on increasingly draconic forms as they grow in power, culminating in a transformation into a Greater Elemental Dragon. The Kukla is a Greater Elemental Dragon of Earth, whose mere presence is so destructive that he's been [[Sealed Badass in a Can|sealed away]] until the Unconquered Sun, ruler of Heaven and arbiter of justice, decides that the situation in Creation is so far past the
** On the other hand, the scales shed by the Kukla as it moves completely cleanse and restore the area around where they land of any taint of the Underworld, Wyld or Yozi.
*** The Kukla who is the Greater Elemental Dragon of Earth is distinct from the Kukla who is known only as [[Apocalypse How|the Apocalypse Dragon]]. What would warrent the Unconquered Sun releasing the latter is unclear, although it is apparently supposed to function as bringing some kind of end to Creation when the Sun judges it is time to do so.
** Glories of the Most High revealed that the Unconquered Sun also has the authority to temporarily (if lucky) release a Yozi from Malfeas/Hell. Do mind that the Yozis are insane, world-making, ''world-sized'' Titans that have been seeping in divine amount of hatred and misery for several millennia. One of the Yozis, before being defeated by the Exalted, destroyed 90% of
** Beyond all of those is the Eschaton Key. When Malfeas created the Unconquered Sun, he granted him the power to utterly annihilate Creation in the event that any of its worst enemies should gain control over it. It's been used only once; to destroy the rival Creation that an enemy Primordial attempted to supplant the original with. After that, the Unconquered Sun sealed his world destroying power within a broken device that is beyond the ability of anyone less than the most powerful Solars to repair and operate.
** ''Return of the Scarlet Empress'' revealed that if things get really, really, Ebon-Dragon-just-signed-his-name-on-the-Moon bad, there are certain world-shaking Astrology charms that can be unlocked for the Sidereals. These allow them to do things like give gods or Exalts battlefield promotions - to ''Celestial Incarnae''.
* Any situation in which you would consider casting Vengeful Gaze of God in ''[[Dungeons
** Or, in 3e/3.5e, anything in the Elder Evils rulebook. By the end of the plot arc involving (insert featured superboss here), a spell that obliterates your section of the Multiverse would probably be deemed an acceptable course of action to stop those creatures, especially in Atropus's case.
** 3.5e's Wu Jen spell, Transcend Mortality. When you cast the spell, you become nigh indestructible for the duration. The cost? You burn out the rest of your life force to cast the spell, and when the effect ends, turn into a small pile of ash.
** It is generally known that if someone tries to put one extradimensional storage device (e.g., a Bag of Holding) inside another (e.g., a Portable Hole), the result is a catastrophic rending of the fabric of the universe. The extent of this rip depends on the GM's whim, but by and large the result is usually miles in diameter, cannot be done from range, and kills everyone and everything within the "blast" zone. (Okay, there's a ''slim'' chance of being cast into another plane instead.) Adventurers have been known to do this anyway, if the situation is dire enough.
** The artifact called the Bringer of Doom opens a massive cross-rip into Hades and releases thousands of hordlings over a radius of several miles. The user ''never'' survives.
*** A mage with a ''staff of power'' or ''staff of the Magi'' can perform what is euphemistically called a "retributive strike"
**** It is in situations like this where the above "Transcend Mortality" is useful. Lets you survive the retributive strike just long enough to throw a [[Divide by Zero|portable hole into the bag of holding you have under the enemy's feet.]] Or pull out your OTHER staff of power/magi and do it AGAIN.
* Players in ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' with a bent towards magic can summon Azathoth to Earth. Azathoth, FYI, is the boss of bosses of the Lovecraft Mythos, the blind idiot god that sits at the center of reality and is best described as a cross between an titanic amoeba and an ever-expanding nuclear explosion. Presumably, a sane player would only do this if the stars have become so right that Cthulhu and his pals are tap-dancing down Main Street.
** Keeping the mechanics of the game in mind, any situation where summoning Azathoth wouldn't make the situation significantly worse will almost certainly already have rendered all the player characters irretrievably insane.
* In ''Duel Terminal'', the background fluff behind the ''Hidden Arsenal'' series of [[Yu-Gi-Oh (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh!]] [[Yu-Gi-Oh! (
* ''[[New World of Darkness]]'':
** ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]'': Changelings who think themselves in serious enough trouble can use a Goblin Contract called "[[The Wild Hunt|Call the Hunt]]" to summon [[The Fair Folk]] to their location. A critical failure lets the newcomers know who summoned them, while a critical success [[Gone Horribly Right|greatly speeds up the arrival]]. Unlike other Goblin Contracts, this has no inherent [[Necessary Drawback]], because a Changeling calling in its mortal enemies is enough drawback by itself.
** ''[[Demon: The Descent]]'':
*** An Unchained can sacrifice its Cover to "go loud" and assume the Demonic Form in which all damage is healed, its technomystical stats and stores are maxed out, and it gain access to all Embeds and Exploits available to its Incarnation. However, doing this draws the attention of the God-Machine - something Unchained usually don't want - with a host of hunting Angels soon to follow, so the situation has to be plenty dire first to be worth it.
*** For most Unchained, their ideal is to carve out a slice of Hell on Earth where they can live free of the constant fear of being destroyed or reclaimed by the God-Machine. This usually entails doing enough damage and counterpunching that the God-Machine considers further pursuit of such a Demon more wasteful or disruptive than just leaving it be, but not pushing things far enough that the GM considers the threshold crossed and it so dangerous as to become something to be destroyed no matter the cost or consequence.
== Video Games ==
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** In ''Halo 3'', {{spoiler|when a flood infected ship crashes in New Mombasa}}, Commander Keys proposes to overload a slipstream engine inside the city and wiping out everything in the area. Though usually rather timid in his decisions, Lord Hood only replies with ''"Do it!".''
** The Flood evoke this reaction in more than just humans: again in ''Halo 3'', when there's a relatively small Flood outbreak in Africa, the Elites who show up in a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment torch the continent to get rid of it. When Lord Hood protests this action, the Elite Shipmaster responds that he fully intended to burn all of Earth, and only the Arbiter's arguing against it stopped him from doing so.
** The Halos themselves were built (and activated) due to the Threshold being crossed: wiping out all intelligent life in the galaxy was an acceptable alternative compared to the Flood, as far as the Forerunners were concerned. Fittingly, the first Halo ring was found orbiting a planet called "Threshold".
** Postwar lore states that the UNSC developed the CORRUPTER protocol for when a SPARTAN gets infected by the Flood. It directs all UNSC warships nearby to bombard the infectee's last known location with nuclear weapons and MAC rounds, and not inform any nearby friendly ground troops lest the infectee intercept warning transmissions.
** In ''[[Halo: Reach]]'':
** Again in ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', Kat comes up with an insane plan after the Covenant super-carrier arrives at Reach, to which Cater replies he'll ask, but they'll never get a green light for it. One [[Gilligan Cut]] later...▼
*** One sign of how bad the Covenant invasion is getting is that the suggestion of using MAC rounds in atmosphere is raised. Given that even those fired from a lowly frigate release energies on par with nuclear weapons, the idea shocks those who hear it.
* For many ''[[Armored Core]]'' players, the appearance of [[Bonus Boss|AC Nine Ball]] is an instant [[Godzilla Threshold]] scenario.▼
▲**
** It's a relatively minor and easy to miss one, but in [[AC 4]]: For Answer you can become one, {{spoiler|if you team up with Old King and kill hundreds of millions of people by bringing down the cradle, Otsdarva will be one of the 5 NEXT teaming up to take you down as payback, despite him previously faking his death in order to side with ORCA under a different name, apparenty abandoning his plan to avert the extinction of the human race.}} ▼
▲* For many ''[[Armored Core]]'' players, the appearance of [[Bonus Boss|AC Nine Ball]] is an instant
* The [[Big Bad|Big Bads]] of ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' are ready to [[Nuke'Em|nuke Manhattan]] to stop the spread of Redlight. This is supposed to be the chocolate syrup on their villainy sundae. The problem is, Redlight is so apocalyptically dangerous -- it ''has'' to be far past the Godzilla threshold, or [[Villain Protagonist|Alex]] could never be the "hero" -- [[Designated Evil|that to the player this can seem like]] [[Nuclear Option|a reasonable, if grim, last ditch effort to save the rest of the world.]]▼
▲** It's a relatively minor and easy to miss one, but in
** {{spoiler|Debatable, because after Elizabeth Greene was killed, the military started pushing the virus back - just look at the percentage of the population infected and ratio of military deaths to infected deaths after the mission where you kill Greene. If anything, it would've made more sense to nuke Manhattan as soon as the skyscraper-sized monster burst out of the ground beneath Times Square.}} ▼
▲* The [[Big Bad
▲** {{spoiler|Debatable, because after Elizabeth Greene was killed, the military started pushing the virus back - just look at the percentage of the population infected and ratio of military deaths to infected deaths after the mission where you kill Greene. If anything, it would've made more sense to nuke Manhattan as soon as the skyscraper-sized monster burst out of the ground beneath Times Square.}}
** {{spoiler|On the other hand, the nuke was deployed right after the third self-aware, ridiculously powerful virus carrier revealed himself, on a boat too far offshore for any previously known infected to be able to reach. Not only does it look like the threat is escalating again, but they appear to be losing containment.}}
*** {{spoiler|Randall activated the nuke BEFORE Cross revealed himself to be the Supreme Hunter, though. So at that point, all he knew about was Alex.}}
** {{spoiler|On the third hand, by killing Greene, Alex revealed how powerful he really was. ''He'' may have been what convinced Randall to use a nuke. Come to think of it, Randall seemed to think of Alex as a bigger threat from the beginning}}.
* [[Genius Loci|The Planet itself]] in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' responds to the threat of [[Eldritch Abomination|Jenova]] by creating the [[Eldritch Abomination|WEAPONs]] from [[The Lifestream]] itself, whose mission is to destroy whatever is threatening the planet. Since they can't ''reach'' Jenova, they go for the next biggest threat to the planet: [[Humans Are
* ''[[World in Conflict]]:'' {{spoiler|Nuking Cascade Falls}} to prevent the Soviets from finding about SDI (the only thing stopping the Soviets from using nuclear weapons...and a fake reassurance, since it's completely non-functional), and at the end of the game, {{spoiler|nearly nuking Seattle to prevent the Chinese, coming to reinforce the failing Soviet invasion, from landing there.}}
* In ''[[
* At one point in ''[[Tales of the Abyss]]'', Jade suggest that the only way to save the world is to {{spoiler|sacrifice the lives of 10,000 replicas, which in game basically boils down to sacrificing 10,000 babies. A few hours later you really don't get a choice otherwise.}}
* Villainous example occurs in [[Star Fox 64]]. Facing down a battalion of Andross's ships, the general is throwing everything on hand at you, save for a prototype the scientists insist is too dangerous. At the end of the level, he yells "Deploy it now!" and the prototype serves as the boss - a biomechanical dimension hopping battlecruiser with free will.
* The second disk of ''[[Wild
* In ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]: [[Devil Survivor]]'', the government has a 'final option' that it will unleash on the Yamamote Line if they can't take control of the situation taking place inside. This is why nobody inside has more than six days to live. {{spoiler|A side-story leads to Atsuro finding out about the 'final option' and how it works. It's [[Paranoia Fuel|a chip installed in all japanese electronics]] that lets the government control them remotely. They can use it to overload them and create enormous amounts of EM radiation, which would effectively turn Tokyo into a giant microwave oven and fry every electric circuit and every living being inside.}}
** This is the smallest of three Thresholds in the game, incidentally. It takes a third place to {{spoiler|the [[Council of Angels]] being willing to rob humanity of free will and seize control of Earth if humanity doesn't stop associating with demons}}, and {{spoiler|the main character willingly becoming the [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|King of Bel]] and letting demons loose on earth just to keep the angels from ever bothering humanity again.}}
* ''[[
** Arcturus Mengsk sees the Confederacy's corruption as having crossed the threshold to justify using a psi emitter to lure the Zerg to their capital world, then lets the Protoss burn the Zerg and Confederates both. However, its only Mengsk who sees it this way, the others see it as a [[Moral Event Horizon]] for him.
* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', the
* The Enclave in the ''[[Fallout]]'' series sees the proliferation of mutants in the wasteland as their threshold. Unfortunately for everyone, to the Enclave "mutant" doesn't just mean the super mutants and deformed ghouls, it includes any human who has been exposed to radiation for an extended period of time, in other words ''everyone'' not a member of the Enclave or living in a Vault. Their solution is to use a modified strand of the FEV virus and release it into the air currents and later water supply to kill them all.
** In ''[[Fallout 3]]'', the East Coast Brotherhood of Steel goes as far as to reactivate Liberty Prime, [[Humongous Mecha]] buried in the Pentagon, in order to stop the Enclave's latest schemes. {{spoiler|In the ''Broken Steel'' DLC, the Enclave respond in kind by resorting to using [[Kill Sat]] nukes to defeat Liberty Prime.}}
* Capcom loves this trope, from the total destructions of Raccoon City in ''[[Resident Evil 3 Nemesis]]'' and {{spoiler|Fortune City}} to the massacres at Santa Cabeza and Willamette in ''[[Dead Rising]]''.▼
** In ''[[Fallout New Vegas]]'', certain characters resort to extreme and genocidal lengths {{spoiler|most especially Ulysses}} to justify wiping the slate clean and "begin again."
** By ''[[Fallout 4]]'', the East Coast Brotherhood considers the Institute so much of a threat {{spoiler|that an almost fully rebuilt Liberty Prime is brought along to the Commonwealth}}.
▲* Capcom loves this trope, from the total destructions of Raccoon City in ''[[Resident Evil 3: Nemesis]]'' and {{spoiler|Fortune City}} to the massacres at Santa Cabeza and Willamette in ''[[Dead Rising]]''.
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'', the Templars believe the threshold has been crossed after the Circle Tower is overrun by abominations. Their Knight Commander has already sent word to the Chantry in Denerim requesting permission to invoke the Rite of Annulment which would allow him to use the full might of the Templars to completely purge the Tower. This happens at the worst possible time since you really need the support of the mages against the Blight. You do have a couple options though: 1) kill the abominations yourself and save the mages, or 2) kill ''everything'' in the Tower and have the Templars now free of their responsibilities of mage babysitting join you.
* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', many failed, incomplete, or patently insane [[Doomsday Device|DoomsdayDevices]] get activated as a last ditch effort to hold off invaders when all other methods have failed; a common version is [[Dug Too Deep|digging straight down through adamantine veins]] as a final "screw you" to the would-be conquerors.
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** Failed miserably in one fortress that was being attacked by [[Demonic Spiders|h]][[Our Zombies Are Different|u]][[The Virus|s]][[Unwinnable by Design|k]][[Darker and Edgier|s]], and decided to Breach the Circus; it turns out that {{spoiler|DEMONS}} are insufficiently Godzillaesque to defeat husks.
* In ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2'', {{spoiler|Captain Price's plan to fire a Russian nuclear missile at the US Eastern Seaboard}} in order to {{spoiler|use the EMP to stop the Russian invasion}}:
{{quote|
** Also in the sequel, when the team has to take Makarov's bomber, Volk, out of Paris alive so he can be interrogated. When they get to the bridge over the Seine, they meet a Russian barricade which won't let them through. The air support manages to wipe them out, but in the process {{spoiler|they end up bringing the ''Eiffel Tower'' down.}} This is because the President gave them a clear order to do what they have to do to bring Volk alive.
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Mortal Kombat 9]]'', after an effort to change timeline causes {{spoiler|Sindel to brutally murder the majority of the heroes}}, Raiden sees it fit that {{spoiler|the only option left is to ''ally'' with [[Obviously Evil|Quan Chi]] to stand a chance against Shao Kahn, with the souls of the dead heroes as the wager. The bad news, Shao Kahn already sold the soul of the heroes to Quan Chi. The good news, only by fighting the dead heroes would Raiden get an [[Eureka Moment]] on how exactly to beat Shao Kahn.}}
* In the ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' DLC ''Arrival'', this is invoked, as {{spoiler|the Reapers are set to arrive at the Alpha Relay in mere hours}}. There is only one viable solution to stop it from happening: {{spoiler|destroying the Relay, and thus setting off a supernova-level explosion that wipes out a nearby colony world with 300,000 batarians.}} Needless to say, it isn't pretty, but it ''has'' to be done.
** As a result, ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' is gearing up to be an ''[[Serial Escalation|entire game]]'' with the
*** One of the earliest main story missions is to {{spoiler|earn Krogan support by creating a cure for the Genophage}}. Just a few years earlier you might have sacrificed a squadmember to prevent this.
*** During said mission you even deal with the continuity's equivalent of Godzilla: {{spoiler|The literal mother of all Thresher Maws. You summon it and it proceeds to ''eat a Reaper''}}.
** Admiral Hackett even points out that there is no way in hell that a superweapon as powerful as the Crucible would ever be seriously considered under normal circumstances, but the Reapers have forced humanity's hand.
** The Codex entry "Desperate Measures" discusses different ways that are being considered to stop the Reapers that would never be considered in normal warfare, such as destroying mass relays to strand them in distant systems (they'd just go the long way) or ramming them with starships traveling at FTL speeds (integral safety protocols make it impractical at best).
* Has happened at least once in ''[[Touhou]]''. At some point in recent history, humankind's disbelief of anything supernatural had grown enough to threaten the very existence of supernatural beings. Seeing this situation, the [[Youkai]] sages decided to erect the Hakurei barrier to rip Gensokyo from real world, so that the land become the final haven of everything supernatural (that effort was likely to be spearheaded by Yukari Yakumo). They knew that they were going to offend the Dragon of Gensokyo, and the Dragon did appear in all his/her/its catastrophic glory, covering the sky from one horizon to the opposite, while downpouring from the Dragon's body threatened to drown the land. [[Reasonable Authority Figure|Amazingly, the Dragon was willing to listen to the sages, and s/he agreed to their plan]]. Then s/he disappeared, and (thankfully) never seen again since then. One of the more popular WMG is that
* A possible result in [[The Elder Scrolls]] Skyrim. Your character may be the leader of the thieves guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and have completed each Daedric quest (even the ones that involve murder, betrayal, torture, and cannibalism), and have murdered hundreds of innocent people before you ever meet the Graybeards to learn the power of the voice. And they'll still teach your character, despite being a complete monster that will doubtless abuse this power, to use the voice, since you'll still be the only hope the world has against the dragons.
* In ''[[Saints Row the Third]]'' in one possible ending, after a beloved monument is destroyed, Senator Monica Hughes allows STAG to deploy the much hinted-at Daedalus, {{spoiler|an [[Airborne Aircraft Carrier]] that begins indiscriminately attacking Steelport in a desperate effort to wipe out the Saints}}.
* Emphatically ''not'' crossed in ''[[Command
* In ''[[Itadaki Street|Fortune Street]]'', when you play against both [[Super Mario Bros.|Peach and Bowser]] and reach the monetary value necessary to win, Peach will sometimes directly order Bowser to destroy you. [[OOC Is Serious Business|This surprises even him]], but he admits that he likes it.
* ''[[Gears of War]]'': In the backstory, the Locust invasion was so devastating that the Hammer of Dawn [[Kill Sat]] was used to destroy all the major cities to slow the advance. In ''3'', you deal with the aftermath of this when you visit [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Char]], a city that was leveled by the attack.
*
* In ''[[Dark Souls]]'' the Darkwraiths sealed under the flooded city of New Londo caused a
* In the ''[[X-COM]]'' games in general, the [[Alien Invasion]] and all the threats associated with it mean that there's a ''lot'' of leeway in terms of the destruction that ensues in taking the fight to the aliens. Not to mention the lengths gone to level the playing field and stop said threats once and for all. Given that the alternatives are much worse like the slavery or extinction of mankind, blowing up a whole city block or having your soldiers turned into enhanced cyborgs and [[Super Soldier]]s is more than justified.
== Western Animation ==
* One episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'' had the heroes use the [[Kill Sat]] integrated into their orbital base when facing a geometrically reproducing [[Grey Goo]] swarm of replicating robots. Interestingly [[What the Hell, Hero?|they were called on it]] by the government, and this later spawned a great deal of mistrust and a hijacking of said [[Kill Sat]].
** They were called on it because nowhere was it ever mentioned that they had [[Kill Sat]] capacity before that time. It was more of fact that they'd kept the [[Kill Sat]] a secret than the fact that they had it in the fist place.
*** It wasn't until it was hacked that the mistrust became a real issue.
** When Darkseid shows up, Superman fights him without restraint while giving the trope-naming [[World of Cardboard Speech]]. The damage to the city is immense.
** Along with the the [[World of Cardboard Speech]] moment, the Legion of Doom and Justice League work together to protect Earth from Darkseid's minions.
* The ''[[DuckTales (1987)]]'' episode "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" revolves around [[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck|Uncle Scrooge]] and his new airship. His sidekick and perennial crasher of aircraft Launchpad desperatly wants to fly it but is told that Scrooge actually wants to keep the airship in one piece. When the events of the episode conspire against this Scrooge eventually relents & tells Lauchpad to take the wheel. They crash, but Launchpad accidentally takes out the opposition while saving the passengers.
** "If we are going to crash anyway, we may as well crash with style."
* In one of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' Halloween episodes, giant advertisements are taking over the town. The solution: just don't look. A ridiculous solution, but as nothing else has worked, everyone does so without hesitation (except Homer, being tempted by Lard Lad's giant donut; Marge eventually pulls him away).
* In the ''[[Danny Phantom]]'' episode "The Ultimate Enemy" Clockwork actually alters
** Ironically, the events that happen as a result of his alterations are probably what caused Dark Danny to exist in the first place. {{spoiler|At first. At the end, he manages to fix everything.}}
* In the last few minutes of the ''[[Ben 10: Ultimate Alien]]'' episode "Forge of Creation", {{spoiler|Aggregor defeats the heroes and is moments away from acquiring [[Reality Warper]] abilities that will grant him eternal power over the universe. Kevin then absorbs energy from the Ultimatrix to go [[One-Winged Angel]] to stop him, knowing that this will make him insanely evil again. Thankfully, young!Ben is able to guilt-trip Kevin out of trying to steal the [[Reality Warper]] powers for himself.}}
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* In ''[[Hot Wheels Battle Force 5]]'', [[Big Good|Sage]] was forced to freeze the entire Red Sentient race to stop her [[Evil Twin]] brother Krytus from leading them on a multiversal conquest. When Krytus and her have their final confrontation, she tells him she did it because he was a threat to not only her entire race but the multiverse and she had to. Krytus' response? "You were right!" It says a lot when the guy she used it on is well aware that she was justifed for doing so and doesn't care.
* In the [[Grand Finale]] of ''[[Jackie Chan Adventures]]'', [[Big Bad|Drago]] has gone [[One-Winged Angel]], destroyed [[Hero Secret Service|Section 13]], devastated San Francisco, and is preparing to release [[The End of the World as We Know It|the demon world unto Earth]]. To stop him, the heroes have to free his father [[Bigger Bad|Shendu]] from his [[Sealed Evil in a Can|imprisonment]] to fight him. Fortunately for them, Shendu is more angry at his son for trying to take over "his" world than at the heroes for his previous defeats at their hands, and he keeps Drago busy long enough for them to figure out how to banish both of them.
* Happens in the ''Beast Wars'' finale
* ''[[Justice League Dark]]: Apokolips War'' has two:
** In order to fight Darkseid, Constantine offers himself to a newly-freed Trigon as a [[Willing Channeler]]. This immediately backfires as Trigon decides to kill him, even if it doesn't stick, and possess Superman instead. Fortunately, Trigon finds fighting Darkseid enjoyable enough that when Raven and a revived Constantine free him from captivity after the first loss and conjure a new physical body for him, he goes back to fighting Darkseid without harming anyone else.
** At the end, despite victory over Darkseid, the villain's machines have done so much damage to Earth that Batman forecasts a billion will continue to die before the situation can be brought under control, if it even can at all. The Flash is convinced by Constantine to deliberately cause a [[Cosmic Retcon]] in the hope that whatever new timeline is created will be preferable to the ruined state of the current one.
== Web Comics ==
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* This is how ''[[Kickassia]]'' regards [[Evil Is Not a Toy|convincing]] [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]] to become [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Dr.]] [[Super-Powered Evil Side|Insano]].
* The Director of ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' ''creates'' Godzillas just so he can be ready for this:
{{quote|
* Pretty much every plan to deal with [[Person of Mass Destruction|Tennyo]] in the [[Whateley Universe]]. One we saw in a holographic simulation ''destroyed the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. and plunged the planet into nuclear winter''. And they considered it a reasonable alternative.
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* Any scenario that could lead to a [[World War III|Global Thermonuclear War]]. Thank [[God]] it hasn't come to that yet.
** To a lesser degree, anything that causes extensive use of [[Pandemic|biological weapons]].
** And let's not forget the scenario that ''did'' lead to nuclear war. That invading the islands of Japan would be incredibly difficult and bloody was the primary argument for the two bombs dropped in 1945. Emphasis on "argument"
* [[World War
* The Midwives of the Birth of Nazism. Fearing the [[Dirty Communists]] of [[Josef Stalin]]'s USSR, many in the West looked favorably on the rise of [[Adolf Hitler]] and [[Those Wacky Nazis]], because their blatantly anti-Communist rhetoric made them seem like a good buffer zone between the Soviets and the West. Further, many in the West thought Nazi Germany was spiffy: to some, after the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, Nazi Germany was a Socialist power allied to the Mother Revolution in Soviet Russia. Others thought Nazism was the [[One-Winged Angel]] form of Capitalism and were delighted to "see the death throes." Still others thought any Socialist revolution was better than Capitalism/classical liberalism.
** Of course, this trope was also played even straighter in the USSR, as paradoxically the Soviets saw a rearmed Germany as a valuable buffer between themselves and the West dating back to Seeckt's proposals for joint defense, and the USSR played a leading role in recreating the German military. Even after Hitler rose to power, he and Stalin hashed out several agreements designed to expand to their mutual benefit at the expense of Eastern Europe's independent states. This, of course, led immediately and directly to...
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* In a modern conventional firefight (at least amongst the US military), the call of "broken arrow" is this trope. A "broken arrow" scenario means that a battle has effectively gone much worse than anticipated and a unit is on the verge of being overrun. What the call entails is to direct all available attack aircraft and artillery fire on the area being attacked. Because of the close distance nature and general disorganization happening during a "broken arrow" call, friendly fire (also known as Blue On Blue) from airstrikes and artillery is basically expected rather than actively avoided. A realistic demonstration of this was used in the movie ''[[We Were Soldiers]]''.
** This is also seen near the end of the climactic battle in Oliver Stone's ''[[Platoon]]'', as the company commander calls in an airstrike on his own position, which is in the process of being completely overrun by NVA regulars.
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* Aside from allying with Stalin as noted above (which aside from logistics mainly involved fighting the same enemy independently at the same time), the Western Allies engaged in nearly unrestricted commerce raiding, dumping of [[Death From Above|tons and tons]], of [[More Dakka|dakka]], on military and civilian targets, sabotage, assassination, sponsoring of local civil wars, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|mocking Hitler's mustache.]] Not to mention building and setting off [[Sealed Evil in a Can|nuclear weapons]]. Almost anything was felt better than losing.
* Singapore's reserve funds are, proportionate to her market size, one of the world's largest, largely thanks to their usage being handled this way. The one time they have (publicly) been known to be used since independence was during the 2009 credit crunch, which is currently the worst recession since the Great Depression.
** Singapore has to get almost all of its drinkable water from Malaysia. If Malaysia ever cuts the water off, Singapore will, almost without a doubt, immediately declare war.
* This is seen (at least in terms of damage to property) when it comes to dealing with emergency situations. Factory burning and the only way to get access to one side is through a full car dealership parking lot? Bulldoze the brand new cars out of the way. Sea water bad in the long term for the precision materials and equipment inside the nuclear reactor and will undoubtedly make it unable to be used in the future? Fuck it, we need to cool it down ''now''.
* How bad is the AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa? The King of Swaziland declared a ''five-year moratorium on sex''.
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** Since after [[World War II]], the new German constitution includes an article that makes it the ''duty'' of all German citizens to use any means neccessary to prevent any government from overthrowing the constitution and establishing another totalitarian regime, which includes the use of armed resistance.
* Many governments have provisions in law stating that, in a sufficiently serious emergency, most or all rights will be suspended. As far as we know, no government can summon Godzilla, but if they could, this would make it legal.
** Related to this: nuclear weapons policy. At least in the UK the military maintains a tradition of [[wikipedia:Letters of last resort|letters of last resort]]. In effect these are the "final orders" to the Captains of the four nuclear-equipped Vanguard-class submarines to be opened in the event of a complete breakdown in command and control as a result of nuclear attack and which nobody knows except the Prime Minister himself/herself. Technically ANYTHING can be ordered, but in general the possibilities fall into four categories. One of which is to accept that deterrence has failed and not retaliate and one is to place the submarine under the command of an allied nation. The last two basically amount to the Godzilla threshold in that either a full nuclear retaliation is ordered or, perhaps most horrifyingly, for the Captain to simply "use their best judgement" which in effect amounts to a freedom to do anything he deems necessary.
* In the Thai flooding crisis they dug up Bangkok's roads to try and channel away the floodwaters despite the cost in future rebuilding.
* [[Ancient Rome]] had provisions for this during the Republic: when an enemy appeared invincible and on the verge of overrunning Rome, the Senate chose the man best suited to deal with that enemy and made him a dictator, giving him absolute power for six months and with no legal way to make him pay for anything he did during his term. It usually went well, as they would follow the example of [[Cincinnatus]], who, upon defeating an enemy coalition that had surrounded the Roman army (thus prompting him being named dictator) within the first half of his term, resigned and returned to his farm, and, after being named dictator AGAIN to deal with a coup, he defeated the coup in one day and immediately resigned AGAIN.
** On the other hand, you had [[Gaius Julius Caesar|Julius Caesar]], who realized that "absolute power" meant that he had the authority to remove that little six-month limitation on his absolute power.
*** Caesar already had absolute power. His dictatorship was a way to justify it.
* Locusts. Old school but still pretty much
** Methods used to combat locust swarms are usually using enough poison to kill every living thing in the area except the locust whose numbers will take a dent but is a hive being several miles wide and thus, can move around, over, or through the poisoned areas.
** Fire, where you will have to burn every ounce of vegetable matter in their path for miles (this includes lawns, gardens, trees, etc) in the hopes of starving them down.
*** Fortunately, locusts don't go to the Nuclear range when it comes to Godzilla thresholds, but any expected harvest for the season is pretty much bust.
**** Worse, it was only in 2009 that scientists even figured out what causes locust swarms to appear. Locusts are grasshoppers - the same grasshoppers that are living in the area already. But if their numbers grow too large, this causes them to literally morph into locusts, swarm, and start eating ''everything in sight.''
* Fire. A sufficiently big fire like the Chicago Fire, forest fires, etc., will pretty much turn anything in its path into a smouldering ruin and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Fires can get so bad, that perhaps the only way to deal with it is to set your OWN fire, the Godzilla Threshold, in the hope that your fire will consume enough fuel/air to fight the original fire. Of course, things CAN go wrong where the fire just merges into one Super Fire and it goes [[
** During the Chicago Fire, dynamite was used to demolish entire blocks of buildings in an attempt to create fire breaks. It was partially successful in some areas, but ultimately they couldn't work fast enough and the fire outflanked the demolition crews. In most modernized countries, building or house fires rarely get to the city-destroying stage anymore, but lighting backfires (which burn towards the original fire, consuming all the fuel) is still a technique in use for fighting forest or brushfires. Setting backfires is reportedly as much art as science, and as previously mentioned is in no way guaranteed to work, making it a controversial tactic at best.
** As a number of countries have learned the hard way (the US included) the absolute worst forest fire management policy is to stamp them all out as fast as possible. This leads to build up of fuel until it reaches the stage where it is no longer possible to suppress further fires, resulting in a titanic wildfire, such as the 1988 Yellowstone fire. The better option is to allow natural fires of limited scale to burn, suppressing only fires of large size or human origin. This allows a safe burn-off of the naturally accumulating fuel.
* Culling. As stupid as
** This also applies to crops to a lesser degree.
* The Crusades started when the Patriarch of Constantinople asked the Pope for help to fight off the Turks. However, at that point the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity was in living memory, and the Pope and the Patriarch had mutually excommunicated each other, each sect considering the other to be heretical. For a religious leader to even consider the help of people he considered heretics, you know it's trope. The aftermath was [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|exactly how you'd expect this trope to go]].
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