Inferred Holocaust: Difference between revisions

== Art ==

* The paintings of Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light^{[[Tradesnark|TM]]}, usually show homes with a bright glow coming from within. But as [http://voidmanufacturing.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/the-madness-of-thomas-kincade/ this blog post] points out:

 

 

* 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 recent ''[[World War Hulk]]'' (in which Hulk sent prior warning to the citizens of Manhattan to clear out before utterly trashing the place), and again in the ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' arc, where one of his rampages is explicitly stated to have killed 26 people and a dog, making this particular holocaust not-so-implied. To be fair, this could be applied to almost ''any'' superhero whose battles involve large-scale trashing of urban environments.

** [[Lampshade|Lampshaded]] in a ''[[Damage Control]]'' miniseries after ''[[World War Hulk]]'':

'''Robin''': [[No Endor Holocaust|No deaths]]? Incredible.<br />

'''John''': [[MST3K Mantra|I've always felt it's best not to dwell on these things.]] }}

** [[Teen Genius|Amadeus Cho]] hypothesizes that this is because, underneath it all, the Hulk still retains Banner's super-math skills, maybe even to a greater degree than Banner, and so he's able to predict the trajectory of all the debris he sends flying and make sure it never hits anybody (Cho himself has a similar ability to instantly calculate trajectories). Yeah, it's a [[Writers Cannot Do Math|preposterous explanation,]] but [[Rule of Cool|kind of cool anyway.]] In any event, Marvel's writers themselves do not all agree on this point and some [[Armed with Canon|make their cases in the comics]]. Dan Slott is the leader of the Hulk-has-never-killed faction, while [[Brian Bendis]]'s Hulk is lethal enough that even his friends decide he has to be exiled from Earth.

* [[Lampshaded]], subverted, and parodied by [[Plastic Man]] in ''[[Justice League of America|JLA]].''

** However, also played straight in the same [[Story Arc]], when [[The Flash]] saves an entire city from destruction without anyone thinking of the after-effects and homelessness of the inhabitants. Though the JLA was actually in the process of helping to rebuild the country at the end of that story. It's the reason that Plastic Man hadn't seen his son in months.

* Done deliberately in ''[[V for Vendetta]]''; it's pointed out early on that the price of freedom in the comic's post-apocalyptic world could very well be starvation.

** Clearly there was [[No Endor Holocaust]], as the [[Distant Finale]] shows us Paris sixty years later.

* In ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'', even without the [[Awful Truth]] about {{spoiler|Veidt being responsible}} coming to light (or even believed, considering that Rorschach is certifiably [[Ax Crazy]]), Dr. Manhattan tells Veidt that the world coming together and averting war due to {{spoiler|New York being destroyed by what's believed to be an alien (or Dr. Manhattan himself in [[Watchmen (film)|the movie]])}} is a stopgap solution, at best. In the graphic novel, this implication is taken to it's logical conclusion. {{spoiler|Veidt's entire plan is set to be exposed a year after its execution.}}

* 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}}.

 

** Brighten up - Pocahontas the movie was a fairytale version of the real thing, so for all we know, the British king was "Colours of the Wind"-ed and decided to leave Virginia alone from there on.

* Similar to the ''Pocahontas'' example, ''[[The Prince of Egypt]]'' (based on the [[The Bible|Bible's Book of Exodus]]) depicts Moses after his exile being welcomed and accepted by Midianites and even marrying one (indeed, the Bible states that Moses' first wife was a Midianite), however those who have read Numbers 31:17-18 will know of the massacre of Midianites perpetrated by the Hebrews and commanded by none other than Moses himself. This dialogue is especially jarring:

** He's already [[Doomed Hometown|wiped out one adopted culture-he can do it again.]]

*** We can assume that this was a different group of Midianites, as Jethro remains supportive of Moses after the Exodus. And Moses did NOT wipe out Egypt. God sent the angel of Death. Further, because they initially welcomed the Israelites into their land, Egyptians are specifically mentioned as a group allowed to naturalise within the Israelite community.

* In [[Tim Burton]]'s ''[[Batman (film)|Batman]]'', Axis Chemical ''is blown up by Batman'', destroying the source of Joker's smilex gas. While this is good, there must have been at least a hundred people, henchmen granted, inside the plant. Not to mention the resulting massive chemical fire spewing out fumes.

* ''[[The Dark Knight Saga|Batman Begins]]'':

** That's an entire section of the city, albeit isolated from the rest of Gotham, consumed by the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Including most of Gotham's available police force. The path the train took before it crashed probably wasn't too pretty either while Fox was mixing up a cure. Somehow, though, Batman and the remaining police apparently brought things back from the brink in time for ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]''.

** Parts of ''[[The Dark Knight Saga]]'s'' viral marketing campaign focused on the aftermath of the city being exposed to the toxin in ''Begins''. The results was a sudden increase of insanity in city because of the contaminated drinking water. But there's no indicator that the people infected by the toxin were permanently damaged by the toxin. Rachel was a special case, as she was given a "concentrated dose" as said by Scarecrow. Odds are, most of the people infected by the fear toxin were able to recover after a time when the water vaporizer was destroyed.

* The [[Cult Classic]] ''[[Flash Gordon (film)|Flash Gordon]]'' movie has Gordon stopping Ming from sending the [[Colony Drop|moon crashing]] into earth. Gordon tracks how long this will take, using a [[Magic Countdown]], device, stopping the collision [[Just in Time]]. Even if that's enough to save the world, the moon's orbit is now royally screwed, and the Earth should have already been subject to catastrophic tidal effects. Still, ''Flash Gordon'' is hardly a movie full of gritty realism.

** It could be argued that the moon had not actually been moved out of orbit ''yet'', and at the countdown ending, it would launch forward. But the opening sequence of the movie indicated Ming was playing with Earth's geological and meteorological events for fun, so that wouldn't be much of an improvement.

'''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]].

*** Going back to "Jedi", it gets even worse with the destruction of the Death Star II and the ''Executor''. Again, in the [[Expanded Universe]], Vader is portrayed as having hand-picked the crew of his ship, taking on the best and brightest. Many of the other best minds in the Empire were on the Death Star itself. When one crashes into the other... well, the Empire was ''really lucky'' that Thrawn was away at the time, because pretty much everybody else left in a leadership position was a power-hungry psycho, competent or not.

* In the 2002 film version of ''[[The Time Machine]]'', the leader of the Morlocks says that there are many more Morlock colonies other than the one the hero blows up in the climax. Add to this the fact that it's made clear that [[You Can't Fight Fate]] and that the hero sees a future in which the Morlocks have conquered the Eloi and the only logical conclusion is that the other Morlocks will eventually kill him and all his friends. Of course, there isn't logic anywhere else in the movie, so why start there?

** The picture gets grimmer in ''[[28 Weeks Later]]'', which ends with the infection crossing the English Channel into France.

* In ''[[X-Men (film)|X2: X-Men United]]'', the eponymous X-Men [[Enemy Mine|team with]] the Brotherhood of Mutants to stop [[General Ripper|William Stryker]] from using a [[Doomsday Device]] from causing the death of every mutant in the world. [[Magneto]], the only one outfitted with a protective helmet, stopped the device half way and turned it against humans. The film doesn't dwell on it much after the device is fully shut down, but think on this: everyone on earth suffered seizures, first a tiny minority all at once then the rest of the population all at once, within a few minutes. Commuters, pilots, swimmers, skydivers, people with heart conditions, everyone in a hospital... at least thousands of people must have died. The third movie not only ignores these events, they actually suggest that the relations between humans and mutants somehow got better! Plus, even if no one died, every mutant in the world just had painful, highly visible seizures in front of their normal human neighbors, and in turn was perfectly fine when every human had them. If Mystique's small scale [[Superpower Meltdown]] is any indication, some of them will also have very noticeably [[Broken Masquerade|blown their cover]] and taken all ambiguity out of [[The Unmasked World|existence]], and made themselves even bigger targets for hate crimes.

** 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:

** Yeah, they'll retreat back into the city before long. However, at the least, and unlike the ''[[Logan's Run]]'' example above, their city is perfectly intact and the existing power structure is mostly in place, sans a few dozen guards and [[The Starscream|Starscreams]]. Add in that Aeon and by extension [[La Résistance]] and Trevor are now in an alliance, and humanity ''will'' eventually expand out of the city. The only possible clouds in this silver lining filled ending is that if the remaining humans don't do some ''serious'' breeding (or Trevor can't recreate his findings on the cure), they might die out due to there being no more cloning and natural births not being close enough to sustaining the population levels.

* ''[[Predators]]'' ends with the two surviving main characters killing the final predator as the next 'game' begins. They mention how they're going to try and find another way off the planet they are on. Which is well and good, but if [[Large Ham|Crazy Laurence Fishburne]] is anything to go by, there will be another group of predators for that game, and they have absolutely no intention on letting them get off.

== Music ==

* One of ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'''s host segments for the episode ''[[Monster a Go-Go!]]'' involves Joel and the Bots analyzing the Rupert Holmes song "Escape", better known as "The Piña Colada Song". The song revolves around a married man answering a personals ad for a date, only to find that [[Two-Person Love Triangle|his own wife is the date]]. The finale of the debate (in which they give the song's protagonists the names of Rick and Julie for the sake of argument) is Tom's interpretation of the finale.

* Played with in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geUeWJfoLJE *Hello, Planet], by [[Vocaloid|Hatsune Miku]]. The song starts out with the {{spoiler|world coming to an end. All vegetation (or, at least, most of it) has been eliminated, the sky is red, the rain is acid, and Miku is the only one left on Earth.}} She goes all around the world, searching for her master, until she finally finds him. {{spoiler|Or, at least, his grave.}} Upon finding it, she bursts into tears and {{spoiler|her tears fall onto the little plant, which hasn't sprouted since the song started (she points that out a few times), and the plant suddenly bursts out of its pot, lifting her up into space and then Heaven, where she finds her master waiting for her. The song then cuts back to Earth, where a grayed Miku is laying on the ground, smiling and lying with her plant.}} This trope is played with when you realize that she {{spoiler|died, and had imagined the plant sprouting the way it did}}, but that her plant also {{spoiler|reseeded the whole Earth.}}

 

** Particularily ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', with its focus on political warmongering and no clearly "good" side in the conflict. No matter what side you take in the endgame, the other sides will suffer, your side will carry a burden for a long time, and many minor factions will get the short stick no matter what. The Brotherhood will either take up banditry or get blown up in their bunker. The Great Khans may evacuate en masse, or they get killed off, go out in a suicide blaze of glory, or assimilated by the Legion. The Followers of the Apocalypse, arguably the beat and brightest and most idealistic in the whole ''Fallout'' universe, have ''one'' ending where they don't get exterminated, kicked out or saddled with impossible workloads. And if you persuade the Remnants and {{spoiler|Arcade Gannon}} to pull a [[Big Damn Heroes]] and aid the battle while you side with the NCR, guess who ends up arrested as a ''war criminal''?

*** If ''Lonesome Road'' is canon, all this may be moot anyway, thanks to the new species introduced [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|(by the Courier)]] to the Divide - Tunnelers.

* ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' goes to great lengths to address this. The party realise that they have to permanently deactivate all of the world's Blastia in order to power the [[Wave Motion Gun]] that will save the world, including the Barrier Blastia that keeps the major centres of population safe. First, they go to the world's leaders and get permission. Then they discuss ways to prepare for the ensuing blackout, such as creating a new military force to guard the cities. The end result is that the world ''will'' be harder to live in, but it's not without hope.

* The first ''[[Homeworld]]'' ends with the Hiigaran Exiles defeating [[The Empire]] that [[Disproportionate Retribution|saturation-bombed their adopted home planet with thermobaric weapons, killing three hundred million people, for violating a treaty signed by members of their species from four thousand years ago]] and killing its deranged tyrant, aided and abetted by rebel Imperial Navy units. A [[Genre Savvy]] player might well wonder what was going to happen to said empire now that its [[Warhammer 40000|God-Emperor of Man]] expy was dead and buried. According to background material in ambiguously-canon midquel ''Cataclysm'', the answer is "nothing good"; {{spoiler|the resulting power vacuum kicked off a civil war that ended with the old Empire messily Balkanised and an awful lot of military hardware in the hands of Imperial loyalists, warlords or pirates. And then the flesh-eating technogenic [[Cosmic Horror]] turns up.}}

* [[Radiant Historia]] ends with [[The World Is Always Doomed|the world only saved temporarily]] from the ongoing desertification, and still reliant on (voluntary) [[Human Sacrifice]] for its continued existence. The world might be saved for good some day... or it might be destroyed the *next* time something stops the ritual from taking place.

* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'' the Dalish Warden can request to have the Hinterlands set aside to become the new Dalish homeland, as their boon for ending the Blight and slaying the Archdemon. Its vague what actually happened, but ''[[Dragon Age 2]]'' hints that this didn't go exactly that well;

'''Alistair''': It's... a long story. I intend to make it up to your people, however. I owe an old friend of mine too much to do otherwise. }}