Kill'Em All: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''"Deaths for all ages and occasions. Deaths of kings and princes ... and nobodies."''
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In a [[Prequel]], they may be [[Doomed by Canon]]: all characters who do not appear in the sequel and can not be disposed of otherwise will have to die.
In [[Tabletop Games]], this is called a [[Total Party Kill]]. [[Game Master
A short historical digression: the words "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" ([[Ominous Latin Chanting|Latin]]: "Kill them all. God will know his own," popularly rendered as, "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.") are [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Latin_proverbs#Kill_them_all attributed] to Abbot Arnold Amaury before the massacre of Béziers during the [[The Crusades|Albigensian Crusade]]
See also [[Suicide Mission]] and [[Gotta Kill Them All]]. Contrast [[Everybody Lives]].
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** And in Future Trunks' timeline, Goku dies from a virus, all of the Z-fighters are killed by the Androids, and eventually Gohan meets his maker as well. There is no [[Reset Button]] here, since Piccolo died, disabling the Dragon Balls (and finding the other set, located on planet Namek, wouldn't work because of the above-mentioned time limit, which has already expired), and altering the past only creates an [[Alternate Timeline]] (aversion of [[Temporal Paradox]]).
* The end of the second season of ''[[Monster Rancher (anime)|Monster Rancher]]'' kills all of the [[Mons]] off. There is a third season where they come [[Back From the Dead]], but it was never released in the US.
* Most of the cast of ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'' died through the course of the series. This was, however, [[Disney Death|undone]] in the [[OVA
* Staying true to the original ''[[Seven Samurai|Shichinin no Samurai]]'', by the end of ''[[Samurai 7]]'', Gorobei, Kyuzo, Kikuchyo, and Heihachi have all died in battle, leaving only three of the original seven. Naturally, this is also true of its Western remake ''The Magnificent Seven''.
* In ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' anime, every secondary heroine sacrifices her own life to allow the title character to press on toward the [[Final Showdown]]. ''Twice''. There is a subversion in the final season. While all the main cast except Usagi die, the Starlights actually live to see Sailor Moon save the day.
** The manga likes this trope even more. The guardian Senshi get killed in the first and third arcs, [[Heroic Sacrifice|Sailor Pluto]] dies in the second arc, and ''everybody'' dies in Stars. Nobody on the good side dies in the fourth arc.
* Mangaka Mohiro Kitoh may be said to be a challenger to Tomino's
** ''[[Narutaru]]''... Don't mess with the little girl who can use the ''whole world'' as a weapon. Oh, and while at the end, it resembles ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|The End of Evangelion]]'' in that there are [[Adam and Eve Plot|two people alive]], it doesn't [[Tear Jerker|feel]] that way.
** ''[[Bokurano]]'' makes a valiant attempt to out-Tomino Tomino himself. Early on, the children discover that even if they win their battles, they're guaranteed to die. Only later is it revealed that for every battle they win, ''an entire [[Alternate Universe]]'' is destroyed. Which they are, on occasion, forced to watch by their [[Robot Buddy]].
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* Baxinger ends with everyone but the team's tagalong kids dead.
* [[Toward the Terra]] introduces many characters over the decades of time and light-years of distance it spans. In the end, the only named survivors are a small handful of minor characters, one major character who's been there the whole time, and one major character who was introduced in the second half. Compare that to the dozens-strong kill count of named characters, [[The Hero Dies|including both main characters]], and it's [[Bittersweet Ending|a wonder the ending is as upbeat as it is]].
* The anime ''[[Gilgamesh]]'' killed all of the characters but one in an event that also wiped out everyone else on Earth, but gave birth to one new life, which was immediately strangled by the sole survivor. Since she would have died alone shortly after, I guess this counts as ''
* In the [[Hentai]] ''[[Spy of Darkness]]'', the protagonist Anne sacrifices herself to kill the rampaging "sex-beast" known as Dragon after it brutally rapes and murders all of her companions. In the end, it's stated that the records of Anne and her comrade's deaths will be sealed away under top level clearance, which means that very few people will even ''know what happened to them.''
* Played with in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'': Homura Akemi is stuck in a [[Groundhog Day Loop]], and in every single iteration thus far, she's been the only magical girl to finish alive and not a witch.
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** Actually, they honestly haven't gotten it nearly as bad as one might think from the way their first Dan Slott mini parodied the kill-happy nature of major comics crossovers. The only long-term member who has died and ''stayed'' dead is Dinah Soar; Doorman died but came back as an angel of death, and Big Bertha and Flatman are still alive and kicking. Aside from that, you've just got characters who were essentially created by Dan Slott ''to'' die.
* ''Ultimatum'', [[Ultimate Marvel]]'s big [[Crisis Crossover]] before the title reboot, cut a wide swath through the heroes and villains of the canon. By the time it's over, around 70% of the named characters and millions-strong chunks of international populations are dead.
** Make that 70% of named ''mutants''. Looking at the casualty list on [[The Other Wiki]], there are nearly two dozen ''[[Ultimate X-Men]]'' characters dead (including Xavier, Magneto, Cyclops, and Wolverine), compared to a handful from ''[[The Ultimates]]'' (Ant-Man and Wasp), ''[[Ultimate Fantastic Four]]'' (Dr. Doom and Dr. Storm (Sue and Johnny's dad)), and miscellaneous heroes (Daredevil and Dr. Strange). The ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'' cast got out relatively unscathed, even gaining a few [[Transplant
* The ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes (comics)|Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' storyline "End of an Era", which rebooted the Legion, ended up by killing off everyone from the old history before restarting history.
* [[Doom Patrol]] pre-dated most of this by pulling a [[Total Party Kill]] in the ''[[Older Than They Think|Sixties]].'' All four of the actual members (The Chief, Rita Farr, Cliff Steele, Larry Trainor) were nuked saving a small fishing village.
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* ''[[REC]]'': Nobody survives. Leading lady, camera man, hero firefighter, mother and daughter, Chinese family, young cop... they ALL bought it and/or [[Not Using the Z Word|came back]].
** Except probably an old couple.
* ''[[Quarantine (film)|Quarantine]]''. There's a few [[Hope Spot
* ''[[Cloverfield]]''. Although the ending is left intentionally ambiguous and divided audiences.
* ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]''. Of course, considering that the whole conceit of the movie is "Hey, we found this video camera out in the woods..." why would you expect anything else?
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** In the sequel, featuring the two main characters, everyone dies in an [[Ass Pull]] of epic proportions.
* The ''[[Final Destination]]'' series. The survivor of the first movie gets killed in the second and the survivors of the second one all survive the BBQ finale, with a [[Red Shirt]] biting the dust instead, but are said to be dead at the beginning of the third one. The third movie decides to not waste time and kills everyone in a not very ambiguous ending. The next movies turn it into outright [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]] stories: the protagonists never had any influence on their respective demises, and all their actions were for naught. Death is a sadistic cosmic entity who plans out everything just the way he intended.
* ''[[Valkyrie]]'' ends with the deaths of virtually all of the major conspirators who organized the botched July
* Very common in European war movies, especially WWII movies from Germany:
** In ''[[Das Boot]]'', just as the eponymous submarine returns home and the crew is greeted by the cheering people the air raid siren sounds and Allied aircraft attack the harbour, sinking the sub and killing everyone.
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* The credits of ''Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance'' start rolling when all characters are dead except one, who is fatally wounded. As the screen fades to black, we continue to hear his mumbling and moaning as he slowly bleeds out due to having his gut sliced to ribbons. At the end of the credits, ''he is still not dead.''
* In ''[[Stranger Than Fiction]]'', this is stated to be author Karen Eiffel's [[Signature Style]]. It becomes an issue when the main character Harold Crick becomes her new protagonist and when confronted with this she is plagued by guilt at how many actual lives she might have ended.
* The [[Akira Kurosawa]] film ''[[Ran]]''
* ''[[The Dirty Dozen]]''. 11 of the eponymous group die, and the last is badly injured. The two officers with them both survive, though.
* The 2009 film ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'' pretty much kills off everyone but Jake, Neytiri, Mo'at and a few supporting characters. The amount of main characters still alive can pretty much be counted on one hand.
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* [[King Arthur|The Arthur legend]]. At the end, a whopping ''five'' characters are left living: Lancelot and Guinevere (who join the Church and die anyway), Bedivere, Morgan, and Arthur, who [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|was carried off to Avalon with a mortal wound]], [[King in the Mountain|to wait and sleep there until England needs him again]].
* [[Crapsack World|Inevitably]], ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' literature has plenty of examples:
** In the [[Horus Heresy]] novel ''Battle for the Abyss'', every single character, named and unnamed, ends up dead. By [[Horus Heresy]] standards, this is a [[Bittersweet Ending]]: at least the loyalist Space Marines' [[Heroic Sacrifice
** In ''Daemon World'', the epilogue states that there is a ''legend'' that one of the book's characters lived. Other than that slight possibility, all the characters (named and unnamed) and the entire population of the world
** In ''Angels of Darkness'', the Dark Angels realize that they can remain in a hermetically sealed fortress, and so keep the virus released it from destroying the world, and [[Heroic Sacrifice|die themselves because their suits won't last that long]]. Fearing what they might do when dying of hunger and asphyxiation, they [[Driven to Suicide|all commit suicide together]].
** In the ''[[Grey Knights]]'' novel ''Hammer of Daemons'', Alaric himself survives. Also some low-level unnamed [[Mooks]], and two Grey Knights who weren't captured in the opening chapter. Other than that, every named character and large chunks of the unnamed masses die.
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* By the end of ''[[Les Misérables]]'', only about three of the main characters are left alive.
* At the end of ''[[The Children of Húrin|The Children of Hurin]]'', main character Turin, his sister Nienor, their mother Morwen, Turin's best friend Beleg, romantic rival Brandir, the entire kingdom of Nargothrond, a plot-significant outlaw tribe, and several important villains are all dead. About the only significant characters to make it out alive are the (immortal) [[Big Bad]], Hurin himself, Thingol and Melian, and Mablung- and the last four all have their days numbered. [[Sarcasm Mode|Fun times]]! And this story is but a mere chapter of ''[[The Silmarillion]]'', where the surviving characters can be counted on one hand.
* Alma Alexander's ''The Secrets of Jin-Shei'' features eight main characters. Four die dramatically in quick succession toward the end of the book, and one disappears. Then comes the epilogue, where the one remaining main character muses on the deaths of the
* Garth Nix's ''[[Keys to the Kingdom]]'' subverted it. Every character, named and unnamed, dies, except for the main character, who comes out of it with a [[God Job|slight change of vocation]]. He decides to [[Reset Button|fix things]], but is unable to restore everyone, including all the Denizens, a vast majority of the named characters in the series. Further, two humans are (arguably) affected: his mother and himself, though the New Architect [[I Just Want to Be Normal|buds off a new Arthur]].
* In ''[[Lolita]]'', the four main characters die off in various ways. One is hit by a car, one is murdered, one gets a heart attack, and the last one dies during childbirth.
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* ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]''. By the end of the first of three episodes every single living character, no matter how minor, is confirmed dead. That's every single one of the scientists your crew was sent to check up on, every single one of your teammates no matter what station, and the protagonist himself is killed in the episode finale to boot.
* ''[[Drakengard]]'s'' fourth ending does this to all the main characters. Hell, even all the ''supporting'' characters are gone.
* ''[[Odin Sphere]]'' ends in [[The End of the World as We Know It|Ragnarok]] - the game's five protagonists must each fight against the five harbingers of apocalypse. Fighting them in any but one order (as hinted at through a
* ''[[Call of Duty]] 4'' has one of the main characters as well as his entire squad, a pilot he just rescued, and countless other Marines, dying in a nuclear explosion. On the SAS side, the player is forced to watch as his entire squad is slowly killed off before being able to kill the [[Big Bad]] once and for all.
** In ''[[Modern Warfare]]'' 2, only three characters of the main storyline survive. The same three that surived the first game. In the Washington side plot, everyone with a name seems to survive.
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* In the bad ending of ''[[Breath of Fire]] IV'', the final boss fight is against your former party members, ending with them all dead, as it's impossible to lose. It's then implied that your character goes on to end humanity as the credits roll over a black background.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X-2]]'', losing, or taking too long, against the final boss Vegnagun will result in it [[Bad End|firing, obliterating not only your party, but all of Spira]].
* ''[[DEFCON]]'''s motto is "Everybody Dies". Appropriate as
* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]: [[Mortal Kombat Deception|Deception]]'' [[Dropped a Bridge on Him|drops a bridge]] on most of the older characters at the beginning of the game, including Cage, Sonya, Kitana, Jax, Liu Kang, and Raiden.
** Liu Kang was actually already killed [[Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance|in the previous game]]. And as for Raiden, it's not like death keeps him down for long - he's unlockable anyway (as the [[Came Back Wrong]] [[Fan Nickname|Dark Raiden]]).
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** The "best" ending, however, is not an example of this trope; as you have killed Ballos and prevented his powers from running rampant, preventing the freefall of the island to the planet's surface, which would otherwise kill everyone on the island, you also save Jenka, Balrog, Misery and a bunch of Mimigas. Basically, everyone who wasn't ''already'' dead by the point you fought the Undead Core.
* It's quite possible to end [[Heavy Rain]] with all of the four protagonists (and quite a few extras) dead.
* While few characters are shown dying in ''[[Sunset Over Imdahl]]'', the end implies that absolutely nobody within Imdahl's walls got out
* In ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', all of Noble Team dies one by one, with the exception of Jun, who gets ''[[Put on a Bus]]''.
* ''[[Radiant Silvergun]]''. The game ''opens'' with the end of all life on the Earth at the hands of the Stone-Like, with the protagonists conveniently ''not'' being on Earth. Guy dies in a [[Senseless Sacrifice|senseless]] [[Stupid Sacrifice|(and rather bone-headed)]] [[Senseless Sacrifice|sacrifice]], ramming himself into the Stone-Like in a futile attempt to destroy it. Tengai loses it immediately after and does the same thing, his suicide run buying Buster, Reana and Creator time to flee into orbit. Buster and Reana are then teleported to 100,000 BC, and are vaporized in one final flash of light emanated by the Stone-Like. Creator, the sole survivor, permanently deactivates years later. Fortunately, this is ''immediately'' after successfully completing and awakening clones of Buster and Reana - the first two human beings, in a bizarre [[Eternal Recurrence]] plot.
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** The original ''Dawn of War'' isn't much better, with the majority of the planet's population either slaughtered or corrupted, the planet itself about to be eaten by a [[Negative Space Wedgie]], and all but three characters dead.
** The Ork ending of ''Winter Assault'' has every character except Gorgutz and his unnamed [[Yes-Man]] dead.
** The Necron endings of both ''Dark Crusade'' and ''Soulstorm'' have the [[Omnicidal Maniac|omnicidal]] [[Killer Robot
* Almost every protagonist in ''[[Eternal Darkness]]: Sanity's Requiem'' is killed off. Technically there are three survivors (and Alex), as the three characters don't die on-screen, though the final character implies that even if they're still alive in the present day, they'll be hunted down for the rest of their lives.
* In the Gamecube's ''[[Resident Evil (video game)|Resident Evil]]'' (which is for all practical purposes the original ''RE''), everybody but the player could and probably would die. In the worst ending, everyone dies except for the player character. Canonically, Jill, Chris, Barry, Brad, and Rebecca all survive, although this is impossible to achieve in the game.
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== Web Original ==
* The [[Pokegirls]] were created by [[Mad Scientist|Sukebe]] and given one simple task:
* This is pretty much the premise of ''[[Happy Tree Friends]]'' usually only one character survives an episode.
* In [[Klay World]]'s movie, 95% of the cast dies at the end. Almost all of the Klaymen, Marv, Mr. Black, Smiling Gary, Vince, all the Aliens, Rick, the armless guy, a news anchor, one of the cavemen at the beginning, Dr. Brown, the ax guy, and the long arms guy, leaving Chip, Pick, and Dr. Bob as the only survivors.
* ''[[Madness Combat]]'':
** Episodes 3 and 4 are straight
** Through the series as a whole, every character except Sanford and the [[Memetic Bystander|Hot Dog Vendor]] dies at least once, with some characters dieing multiple times an episode. Basically, if you live in Nevada, you WILL die.
* Played for laughs in one of the [[Multiple Endings|alternate endings]] of the original ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' series. [[Famous Last Words|"Son of a bitch!"]]
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* According to most scientists, all life on Earth will end in about 5 billion years, as that is when the Sun is expected to leave the main sequence stage and become a red giant. The last living things expected to die out will be bacteria, which were also the first to appear on Earth.
** To reiterate an old joke: ''How'' many? Oh, one billion? Whew. [[Comically Missing the Point|I thought that said one million.]]
* After the Khwarezmian Empire killed and shaved some of [[Genghis Khan]]'s
** Genghis started the communication with: "Say ye unto the Khwarezmians that I am the soveign of the sunrise, and [he is] the soverign of the sunset. Let there be between us a firm treaty of friendship, amity, and peace, and let traders and caravans on both sides come and go."... and then they provoked him into "I am the Flail of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon You."
* As mentioned in the description, Abbot Arnold Amaury is said to have answered thus when asked by a soldier how they were supposed to tell the good Christians from the Cathar heretics.
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