Inferred Holocaust: Difference between revisions
Relevant trope?
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Even if the movie runs with the above scenarios and makes it about characters from a [[Terminally Dependent Society]] surviving [[After the End]], the author may end up seriously overestimating their and civilizations' chances of survival.
Cue the [[Moral Dissonance]] if [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|the heroes are primarily responsible]] for this near genocide. The subversion of this trope is if the heroes
Note that, despite the name, the "holocaust" doesn't have to involve massive death; it could be as simple as a criminal getting away because the writers [[Conviction by Contradiction|didn't give the good guys enough evidence to convict]].
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Understandably, this can get depressing and completely overshadow the intended ending, prompting fans (and authors) to say there was [[No Endor Holocaust]].
Contrast [[Inferred Survival]]. For more general plot points that are chilling when contemplated at length, see [[Fridge Horror]]. A common cause of happy ending becoming [[Esoteric Happy Ending]].
Finally, keep in mind that this is an ''inferred'' holocaust. If the work explicitly states that there's a horrible aftermath or if it ends on a cliffhanger (for example, depicting an undetected bomb about to explode), then it isn't an example of this trope.
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* Unless it specifically addresses the issue (such as ''[[Charlotte's Web]]'' or ''[[Babe]]''), any talking-animal story that takes place on a farm, and one of the characters is a pig. Why? Because unlike horses, cows, sheep, goats and poultry, you only raise a pig for one thing...
** [[Comically Missing the Point|Truffle hunting?]]
* Any work that has kids and adults getting separated or adults disappearing in any way will have at least one person calling out the [[Adult Fear|potential]] [[Fridge Horror|disasters]] that could occur, whether or not the audience was even supposed to think about it.
== Anime and Manga ==
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* A lot of Lolicon and Shotacon Hentai can end up this way if you know how damaging incest and pedophilia can be to little kids.
* [[Defied Trope|Defied]] in ''[[Princess Mononoke]]''. It turns out to be a [[Bittersweet Ending]] at best, {{spoiler|especially with the Forest Spirit gone, the war killing so many humans and animals, and San openly asking [["What Now?" Ending|where do they go from here]],}} but Ashitaka openly admits the world can start to rebuild. Even the people at Irontown, specifically Lady Eboshi, decide to make amends.
* This is one of the reasons for the controversy surrounding ''[[Weathering with You]]''. {{spoiler|Hodaka saves Hina from becoming a sacrifice to the weather gods. Cue heavy rain returning, which we are told went on for 3 years, and the sight of Tokyo mostly flooded. We are told that the people adapted to it, being shown increased use of water transportation and children playing in the rain, and assured that this is merely Tokyo going back to how it used to be in the old days. However, there's a lot to take issue with when subject to scrutiny, even when being charitable and assuming that the majority of damage was limited to the 23 special wards. How many people got injured or died because of the flooding? Millions are displaced. Billions of Yen in direct property and infrastructural damage and losses has been caused, plus billions more lost from businesses that closed down because their premises got flooded. Major cultural and educational facilities are lost. Then there's the long-term effects of living with constant rainfall and minimal direct sunlight, like what might be experienced by asthmatics or those susceptible to depression. The effects also radiate outwards into the rest of the Greater Tokyo Area; millions from Western Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures who previously commuted into central Tokyo for work would have to find new jobs, which they now need to compete with all the refugees for, and the loss of routes that cut through central Tokyo previously would have deleterious effects on the logistics and transportation situation. The loss of such a major metropolis should realistically have massive consequences reverberating years to decades down the line.}} Almost all of this is glossed over.
* ''[[The Place Promised in Our Early Days]]'' ends apparently happily as Hiroki is reunited with a reawakened Sayuri, and the future-set opening with an adult Hiroki {{spoiler|not needing to walk through an irradiated postapocalyptic hellhole suggests that World War Three managed to end without going nuclear, but who knows how many people were seemingly irreversibly taken to the alternate universe by the Tower's out-of-control effect or killed before the war ended?}}
== Art ==
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== Comic Books ==
* ''[[Astro City]]'' has a beauty of a discussion of this trope—an aging superhero, who spent his youth as some hybrid of [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] Superman and [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] Batman, is called back into service again against a generic giant robot. Instead of [[MacGyvering]]—and he actually tells the audience the kinds of things he'd have thought of back in the day—he simply beats it to death, ploughing through six residential city blocks in the process. Afterward, he shouts at the policeman who thanks him for his help, telling him to look at the destruction and claim that he ([[The Hero]]) actually helped anything.
* One
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] and parodied in Scott McCloud's one-shot, over-sized comic ''Destroy!'': Two super-powerful heroes fight in New York City (and the surface of the Moon), destroying a good many buildings in the process. Until the very end, the only dialogue is '''Destroy!''' quickly met with '''Shut up!!'''; at the end, a bystander (police?) opines, 'Good thing no-one was hurt.'
* Although the [[Incredible Hulk]] is ostensibly a hero, many of his [[Unstoppable Rage]] rampages have caused enormous and widespread destruction, which raises the question of exactly how many innocents have lost their lives as collateral damage. This was partially addressed in the
** [[Lampshade]]d in a ''[[Damage Control]]'' miniseries after ''[[World War Hulk]]'':
{{quote|'''John''': We've never found a casualty at a Hulk site before, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised.
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{{quote|'''Dr. Manhattan:''' Nothing ever ends.}}
* This trope can be found in more or less any issue of ''[[The Authority]]''. Sure, they always save the world in the end, but not without L.A. being destroyed. {{spoiler|Twice}}.
== Fan Works ==
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* ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]'': The tropes of [[Straw Man Has a Point]] and Inferred Holocaust overlap.
** Pottersville has more excitement and a superior economic infrastructure. Bedford Falls only has a moderate manufacturing economy and no obvious places to find excitement. Once the factory closes down Bedford Falls will suffer depression and unemployment. Pottersville has backup industries, such as the nightclubs, that can encourage outside investment.
** George makes it clear that he wants to leave Bedford Falls, go to college, and travel the world. All of his dreams are destroyed and he feels he must commit suicide to regain hope. Potter is correct that George’s life has not resulted in personal happiness. [https://web.archive.org/web/20160328052504/http://www.agonybooth.com/movies/Its_a_Wonderful_Life_1946.aspx Agony Booth], [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/movies/19wond.html The New York Times], [https://web.archive.org/web/20110306003808/http://www.salon.com/entertainment/feature/2001/12/22/pottersville/index.html Salon], [https://web.archive.org/web/20110305151932/http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/12/24/its_wonderful_life_terrifying_movie_ever/index.html Salon again], [[wikipedia:It's a Wonderful Life#Reception|Wikipedia]], and apparently Cracked.com
* ''[[Soylent Green]]'': Okay, so maybe for sake of argument, the secret does successfully get out, and the Soylent Corporation is shut down. But what are the common masses going to do? The Earth, for the most part is screwed ecologically, the only way to get a [[Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap|decent meal]] without paying for it is to steal or kill for it. The world is headed for anarchy, if it isn't already. Most likely though, the company's influence will keep the secret suppressed, only allowing it to survive in small rumors and urban legends amongst the people.
* In the [[Steven Spielberg]] film ''[[A.I.: Artificial Intelligence]]'', David is finally reunited with his adopted mother in a simulation of their home. However, humanity has been extinct for hundreds or thousands of years, David was only given one day with his mother before she died, and David's batteries probably ran down for good in the closing shot. However, depending on your point of view, this may actually have been a happy ending..
* In [[The Andromeda Strain (2008 miniseries)|the miniseries remake of ''
* Although not a "Holocaust" exactly, in ''[[Con Air]]'', Garland Greene manages to survive the events of the film, and is last seen happily engaged in casino gaming. As we all know, demented, crazed serial killers, ''don't just "get better".'' Had the movie run just a bit longer, we might have gotten to see him convert Casino patrons into headgear.
* ''[[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Dawn of the Dead]]'' and ''[[Land of the Dead]]'' have the remnants of humanity holed up and later get eaten, save for a handful of survivors. At least in the case of ''Land of the Dead'' the zombies were growing smarter, so maybe they'll evolve back to a human intelligence and live happy but smelly lives themselves.
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** Not to mention the astronauts fail to consider ''who'' exactly is going to rescue ''[[But What About the Astronauts?|them?]]''
*** The ISS has a Soyuz docked at all times for use as an escape pod.
* At the end of
** In the original a general says "as far as we can tell, all power's been cut off everywhere -- with a few exceptions: hospitals, planes in flight -- that sort of thing..." Maybe things work the same here.
*** Well as we see that all the power sources are stopped that still means they're only running on emergency back-up power which won't last long.
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'''Ming''': Let's say they'll be satisfied with less. }}
* In ''[[Killer Klowns From Outer Space]]'', the eponymous [[To Serve Man|man-eating]] clown-like aliens kill everyone in the town with the exception of five characters, three of whom only make it due to cases of [[Disney Death]].
* ''[[Hellboy (film)|Hellboy II: The Golden Army]]'' has the fairies forced underground by humanity's expansion into their rightful territory. With the entire royal family dead and the Golden Army unusable, their civilisation will most likely be split by rival claimants to the throne, and the BPRD has lost its heroic members, so there's nothing standing in humanity's way to continue expanding, driving the fairies to extinction. And this is without taking into account that in the films, [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]], to the point that when the forest god dies it creates a forest compared in the novelisation to Eden - which humans then pollute and destroy.
** Averted in the comics, the whole world is slowly decaying, not because [[Humans Are the Real Monsters]] (in fact they're one of the nicest groups), but because it's the [[End of an Age]].
* In ''[[I Am Legend]]'', a cure is found and delivered to a walled city housing some survivors. But considering the infectees' physical capabilities, how is that city wall going to stop them? And what good will the cure be if it requires that the infectees be captured alive, restrained, and packed in ice while it's administered?
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* The fact that the workers and the capitalists reconcile at the end of ''[[Metropolis]]'' doesn't change the fact that the city is in ruins and all the machines it depended on were destroyed. Sure, Joh Fredersen knows how to build the city, but the man who took care of all the tech details just [[Disney Villain Death|fell off the cathedral roof]]. Besides, where are all the workers supposed to live after their homes flooded out?
* In ''[[Plan 9 from Outer Space]]'' the alien Eros claims that the human race must be destroyed to prevent it developing the solaronite bomb, a weapon that will [[Critical Research Failure|explode the at]][[Nuclear Physics Goof|oms of sunlight]], thereby destroying the entire universe. Since the aliens are defeated at the end, we must assume that either a) more of the aliens will arrive to complete the destruction of the Earth, or b) humans ''will'' develop the solaronite and destroy the universe. Either way we're screwed. Alternatively, that's not so much a research and logic failure as it is Eros not actually having any better understanding of what he's talking about than the movie's writers.
* ''[[Resident Evil:
** The last movie also implies that the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Umbrella Corporation]] is still active and functional, and could potentially save humanity [[Too Dumb to Live|if they would just pull their head out.]]
* In ''[[Rise of the Planet of the Apes]]'', {{spoiler|the virus that was meant to be the second version of the Alzheimer's cure was lethal for humans, airborne, and was spreading across the world.}}
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* ''[[28 Days Later]]'' closes with the revelation that the Rage virus didn't spread beyond Great Britain and the rest of the world is OK, but one is left wondering what effect the gruesome death of tens of millions of people, plus the full abandonment of one of the world's greatest economic and military powers (and a nuclear state to boot), would have on the global economy and political-military status quo.
** The picture gets grimmer in ''[[28 Weeks Later]]'', which ends with the infection crossing the English Channel into France.
* In ''[[
** From the same movie, [[Storm]] calls down four tornadoes to do away with some pursuing jet fighters tailing the Blackbird. It was a cool scene, but she could have caused quite a bit of damage to the New England countryside in the event that she was not careful and did not keep them in the air.
** It's not totally ignored; there's the Professor's line that "there have been casualties; losses on both sides". It's just swept under since there's only ten-ish minutes of the film left, and there are other plot points to wrap up.
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* ''[[Spaceballs]]''. Unless they somehow get decent leaders and some humanitarian aid, everyone on Planet Spaceball is apparently going to die of hypoxia. They're [[Surrounded by Idiots|all]] [[Asshole Victim|assholes]] anyway.
* ''[[Blindness]]''. How people survived the movie at all is a miracle in and of itself, several weeks without food or running water for at least the majority of the populace (in the novel, the female lead is the ONLY person to retain their sight). There are... [[I'm a Humanitarian|surprisingly few corpses]], considering how food production must have stopped entirely.
* Famously, ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' ends with the von Trapps heading off on foot to Switzerland, which they claim is "just over the mountains" from Salzburg. The problem is, [[Hollywood Atlas|it's not]]. ''Germany'' is though. Specifically Berchtesgaden, the closest thing [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] had to a "home". That is of course considering whether or not they make it over the Alps in the first place, with no protection or supplies. ''Also'', the heroic Nurses who [[Crowning Moment of Funny|sabotaged the Nazi's vehicles]]... were probably treated to more than a slap on the wrist. Nazis, eh? Bastards.
** Which is why the real von Trapp family escaped to Italy, then got to Switzerland from there. But that would've been too complicated for a Rodgers
** This was parodied in the book ''Loads More Lies to Tell Children'', which has one of the lies being that there was an "alternate" ending to ''The Sound of Music''. The accompanying stick figure picture has the family walking in on a Nazi rally while one of them says "I told you Switzerland was the other way!"
** Also something unpleasant to think about is the fate of the nuns who tampered with the Nazis vehicles, and thus helped the von Trapp family escape.
* ''[[Surrogates (film)|Surrogates]]'': Somebody sets up a plot to destroy all the surrogates and kill the humans linked into them in the process. The hero manually engages the safety overrides on all the pods but at the last minute decides to have the weapon go off anyway, destroying the surrogates while leaving human beings intact. So one billion surrogates conducting business, operating machines, driving cars, etc., suddenly shut down and one billion atrophied shut-ins must now emerge to try to deal with the ensuing mayhem.
** The graphic novel at least plays the ending for ambiguity -- {{spoiler|sure, all the shut-ins are back out in the real world, but it's only a matter of time until someone redevelops the Surrogate technology. And the main character's wife kills herself because she can't stand the idea of being seen as-is.}}
* The Rifftrax for ''[[Aeon Flux]]'' hangs a lampshade on the "back to nature" ending:
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* Military-history experts agree that none of ''[[Kelly's Heroes]]'' would have had much chance to spend any of the gold they stole. Kelly's group would have been shot at and/or arrested when they tried to move back across the American lines in a German truck, and Oddball's crew would've almost certainly gotten killed, leaving the scene in a defective Tiger while the General's forces are securing the area.
* ''[[Drive (film)|Drive]]'': The main character [[Riding Into the Sunset|drives off into the sunset]] after getting everyone who might go after Irene and Benicio. But, he's just been stabbed in the gut by a guy who killed his last target with a single quick slash. And now that the leaders of much of the LA mob are dead there's going to be a mad power struggle and, maybe, a war with the East Coast mob at the same time.
* The 1935 [[Errol Flynn]] movie ''[[Captain Blood]]'' ends with Flynn's character appointed the new governor of the English colony on Jamaica, based out Port Royal, by the new king, William III. The revolution that brought William to the throne took place in 1688. Port Royal was [[wikipedia:Port Royal#Earthquake of 1692 and its aftermath|completely destroyed by an earthquake]] in 1692.
* ''[[Bullet Train (film)|Bullet Train]]'': The train violently derails at the end, smashing through several buildings. The likelihood of all of them being [[Conveniently Empty Building|Conveniently Empty]] is very low.
== Literature ==
* In Dennis Lehane's novel ''[[The Given Day]]'', Luther Laurence, a black man in 1919, [[Earn Your Happy Ending|goes through a lot of crap just so he can be reunited with his wife and a child he's never seen]] in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the most properous black community in America at the time. The problem the novel doesn't address? [[wikipedia:Tulsa race riot|Tulsa's prosperity only lasts another couple years.]] [[It Got Worse|Then shit really hits the fan.]]
* In the Chinese science-fiction story [[Translation Train Wreck|''Barrage Jamming''/''Universal Jamming''/''Full-Band Interception'']] by Liu Cixin, The Russians/Chinese ([[
* Later, Liu Cixin remade parts of the story into ''[[Ball Lightning]]'', to avoid the sun-ramming part.
* ''[[World War Z]]'': although the book ends on a hopeful note, it's also set up in such a way that one person not being careful enough could start the whole thing over again. But it's also set up in such a way as to indicate humanity has learned much from the experiences chronicled in the book, so it might not be such a horrible fight the next time.
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== Live Action TV ==
*
** In the [[Darker and Grittier]] (and how!) [[Battlestar Galactica
** And then there's the ''ending'' of the series, {{spoiler|where the survivors (humans and friendly Cylons) end up on our Earth in the past and throw away all available technology and start over on a peaceful world free of war where man can live in harmony with nature. The idea that this means plowing fields by hand, building houses by chopping down trees with stone axes, dying in childbirth, being killed by starvation and disease and wild animals, and losing all of their culture, while being completely unable to warn anyone about the cycle of history seems not to occur to anyone.}} Given that the finale implies {{spoiler|the Colonials will be introducing language (presumably with writing) and farming but such things didn't show up for another 100,000 years, there is even more support for the idea that things didn't go very well. The fossils found in the [[Distant Finale]] indicate that even Hera died young.}}
* Every episode of ''[[Power Rangers]]'' becomes disturbing to watch when you see how many buildings are toppled by megazords and giant monsters. To be fair, the writers sometimes [[Hand Wave]] this by putting in abandoned places or quarries. Also, one has to wonder what the casualties were in such episodes like "Countdown to Destruction", where all of the [[Big Bad]]s from the first six seasons decided to conquer Earth and some other planets. The whole city gets raided. Even a [[Humongous Mecha|megazord]] gets toppled by a bunch of [[Mooks]].
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** In the pilot, Michael heads off a bad guy by hijacking a stranger's car and crashing it into the bad guy's, with no air bags and with the stranger still inside. He walks away afterward and leaves the stranger to deal with the damage even if does take the bad guy's rolex and wallet, assuring the stranger that they should cover the damages. Seriously, was there ''no'' other way to protect the kid?
** Never showed? What do you call what happens to Series Regular Jesse? Michael gets him burned.
** Averted when Michael needs to steal Jaws of Life. Michael's narration explicitly mentions he's stealing them from a fire training center ([[Bavarian Fire Drill|in a manner that makes it clear to their owners they will need to be replaced]]) instead of a set currently issued to firefighters, precisely to avoid the chance the set he stole will be needed in an emergency.
* Everytime [[Stargate SG-1|the SG-1 team]] kills a System Lord, they are killing a sentient, innocent human being who never asked to be taken over by a [[Puppeteer Parasite|slimy body-controlling snake]]. This is addressed a few times throughout the show; and eventually the Tok'ra find a way to extract the Go'auld without killing the host.
** To be fair to the Tau'ri here, said humans have usually been host to their Goa'uld for hundreds to thousands of years and during that time would have witnessed all of the atrocities committed before them (thanks to the genetic memory) and have committed horrendous crimes themselves. Not only that, such unnaturally long life often leaves them incapable of surviving without the symbiote anyway. Apophis' host, when captured by the Tau'ri, would have died within days and even begged for death after all the suffering he had been through. Chances are, most long time hosts would feel similarly.
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* The ''[[Super Mario Bros Super Show]]'' episode "Koop-zilla" apparently takes place in a fictional Japanese city called Sayonara. [[Freak Lab Accident|Because of a lab experiment gone wrong]], [[Big Bad|Bowser]] actually transforms into the titular Koop-zilla and starts destroying the city, and as a result Mario also becomes a giant just so he can stop Bowser, causing the city to be destroyed even more. Also, a later episode called "Karate Koopa" also takes place in Sayonara, except that instead of a large, technologically-advanced metropolis, it's now a small Japanese fishing village, and Bowser is now a samurai. And by the way, Sayonara means "goodbye" in Japanese.
* The two first episodes of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' begin with Twilight Sparkle reading the story of the two princesses. The book merely says that the younger sister rebelled and threatened to bring eternal night, so the older sister banished her to the moon a thousand years ago. When Nightmare Moon returns, the ponies need to find the "Elements of Harmony" to defeat her. The last known location of the Elements is the castle of the Royal Pony Sisters - now a ruin - in middle of the Everfree Forest - where many strange creatures live, some of them [[Kaiju|gigantic]], and nature follows different rules than in the rest of Equestria...
** Averted in the Cutie Re-mark two parter. But for a while, fans were worried about the fate of Equestria under Nightmare Moon's rule since a lot of things (including the ponies themselves) need sunlight specifically to function.
* In the ''[[Young Justice]]'' episode "Misplaced", five supervillains split reality into two parts: one with only children and one with only adults. ''[[Cracked.com]]'''s "[http://www.cracked.com/blog/everyone-died-in-despicable-me-and-4-other-famous-cartoons/ 5 Mass Deaths You Never Noticed Happened In Cartoons]" calls the sudden disappearance of drivers, surgeons, parents holding their babies, etc. from the children's reality a thousand times as bad as the ''Gargoyles'' example.
* Happens a few time ''[[Miraculous Ladybug]]''. [[Word of God]] has confirmed Ladybug's [[World-Healing Wave]] does include bringing people [[Back from the Dead]].
** One episode, "Syren", had the titular villainess flood the majority of Paris to the point that only tall buildings are safe spaces. We don't see any dead bodies, but it's not impossible to think [[Fridge Horror|that not everyone]] [[Drowning Pool|was able to get out in time.]]
== Real Life ==
* [[It Was His Sled|You die.]]
** [[Screw Destiny|Not me and maybe not you.]]
*** [[Star Trek: Generations|I plan to live forever.]]
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:
[[Category:Ending Tropes]]
[[Category:This Index Happened Offscreen]]
[[Category:Unexpected Reactions to This Index]]
▲[[Category:Inferred Holocaust]]
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