No Endor Holocaust: Difference between revisions

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[[Stuff Blowing Up|Explosions are cool]]. So are giant objects. Therefore, giant objects exploding are [[Rule of Cool|extremely cool]].

[[Fridge Logic|But let's think about this for a moment]]. Halt the [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever]] in a major city by blowing it up. Or just kill it and let it fall over, for that matter. That's going to do some monstrous damage to the city. Yet any collateral damage or casualties are depicted as minimal. Either we cut to credits before we see any aftermath, or (more blatantly) we actually see that there was no collateral effect at all. If there are, they are just [[Conveniently Empty Building|Conveniently Empty Buildings]].

[[Fridge Logic|But let's think about this for a moment]]. Halt the [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever]] in a major city by blowing it up. Or just kill it and let it fall over, for that matter. That's going to do some monstrous damage to the city. Yet any collateral damage or casualties are depicted as minimal. Either we cut to credits before we see any aftermath, or (more blatantly) we actually see that there was no collateral effect at all. If there are, they are just [[Conveniently Empty Building|Conveniently Empty Buildings]].

Why? Well, you can't have the heroes take down the alien spacecraft [[For Great Justice]] and the American way, only to look sheepish when the [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|flaming debris flattens the city]]. Not in any show on [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|the idealism end of the scale]], anyway. Maybe they have a brilliant plan to lure it somewhere uninhabited before they blow it to rubble, but surprisingly often, it's just not something the writers concern themselves with, leading viewers to notice the [[Inferred Holocaust]].

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** In addition, the opening sequence to ''DBZ Budokai 2'' has Goku slice the moon in half with a Kamehamaha. ''Dragon Ball'' just seems to have it in for the moon.

** The series also generally falls under this when it comes to [[Earthshattering Kaboom|especially destructive]] [[Ki Attacks]]. Apparently something that is strong enough to blow a planet apart is no danger as long as it's not pointing down, even though that kind of thing should have sucked the atmosphere right off of Earth. An especially bad case was Vegeta's "Final Flash" attack against Perfect Cell, which made it into space despite being fired ''horizontally'' and apparently taking a ''continent's'' worth of land with it.

* In the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime, there's one episode where a coastal city is [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever|attacked by a giant Tentacruel]]. The place is flooded within seconds and several large buildings are destroyed, yet there's never any mention of injuries or deaths. That's to be expected, though, considering the show's place on the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]].

* In the ''[[Pokémon (anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime, there's one episode where a coastal city is [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|attacked by a giant Tentacruel]]. The place is flooded within seconds and several large buildings are destroyed, yet there's never any mention of injuries or deaths. That's to be expected, though, considering the show's place on the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]].

* ''[[UFO Princess Valkyrie]]'' has a huge UFO crash-landing in the middle of a bathhouse, still filled with visitors, with exactly one casualty - which is [[First-Episode Resurrection|instantly rectified]]. Somewhat later, a destructive fight between a crazy [[Catgirl]] [[Girl with Psycho Weapon|With Psycho Weapons]] and a [[Kamehame Hadoken]]-throwing space-princess leaves several large chasms blasted through the entirety of the cityscape. Neither the potentially-astronomical casualties, nor the damage to the city, is mentioned again. But the catgirl apologized, so it's cool...

* ''[[Slayers]]'' usually avoids it - the very first episode ended with Lina nuking a dragon, which ruined most of the village she "protected", was commented by the happy employer with "Like hell it's 'all right'!" and got her chased out with [[Torches and Pitchforks]]. But it's played straight when Lina {{spoiler|uses a Dragon Slave to blow up an enormous rock that threatened to fall on Seyruun. The spell accidentally destroyed a sizable chunk of the city, and presumably killed hundreds of people.}}

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** Given that {{spoiler|most of these turn out to be people who are known to be dead}}, it's possible that there really wasn't anyone near the building.

* After test audiences left ''[[WALL-E]]'' thinking that the ending of the movie left [[Inferred Holocaust|humanity doomed]], the credits sequence was specifically designed to let people know they survived quite handily.

* The [[Ghostbusters]] movies play this trope both ways. It's averted between the two films:The death of [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever|the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man]] rained splodge over most of the city (and its inhabitants, and cars) and resulted in the devastation and demolition of several buildings; by the beginning of the second film, the Ghostbusters had been bankrupted by the subsequent lawsuits. But then it's played straight elsewhere in the films - at no point in either of the films (or the 2009 video game) is it confirmed that ''anyone'' has died from an encounter with a ghost. Considering some of the things we've seen the ghosts do (such as ghost driving vehicles - poorly), human causalities were a very real possibility.

* The [[Ghostbusters]] movies play this trope both ways. It's averted between the two films:The death of [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|the giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man]] rained splodge over most of the city (and its inhabitants, and cars) and resulted in the devastation and demolition of several buildings; by the beginning of the second film, the Ghostbusters had been bankrupted by the subsequent lawsuits. But then it's played straight elsewhere in the films - at no point in either of the films (or the 2009 video game) is it confirmed that ''anyone'' has died from an encounter with a ghost. Considering some of the things we've seen the ghosts do (such as ghost driving vehicles - poorly), human causalities were a very real possibility.

* In the ''~Ocean's Eleven~'' remake, Danny's crew uses an electromagnetic device to shut off all electricity in Las Vegas for 30 seconds. Realistically, we should be looking at pacemakers going haywire, car crashes in the thousands, hospital equipment failing, and god help them if any planes were flying low over the city when it happened. Yet the sequels still only refer to them as thieves, not as the most successful and high-tech terrorists of all time.

* Turned [[Up to Eleven]] in the ''[[Cutie Honey]]'' movie: Panther Claw have this giant drill-like tower underneath ''Tokyo Tower''. Meaning: If you work in the area, don't bother coming in. Then, Scarlet Claw blows up three buildings. They all remain largely intact, save for a giant hole in the middle. One of them, hilariously, is Cutie Honey's former office, and the only reaction this gets is a dazed "what the...?" from the boss. And finally, the tower ''explodes''. If you're in Tokyo when this kind of thing is happening, ''get out of the city''. The only things we see? A traffic jam and other people not caring.

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*** Actually, before the beam strikes the Sycoraxi ship, we see it pass by the Earth's moon. So, we should be able to assume the ship is more than 300,000km away from the planet. Earth's atmosphere stops at around 10,000km for all practical purposes, and then, there aren't many particles in the exosphere. Yes, parts of the ship reach the Mesosphere, burning like meteors into ash. Really, the [[Rule of Cool|explosion shouldn't have been that large on screen]].

** In ''[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E5 The Poison Sky|The Poison Sky]]'', the Doctor sets the ENTIRE ATMOSPHERE of earth ablaze to eliminate all the poisonous gas the Sontarans have released, and nothing even gets SINGED.

** Defied in ''[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E14 The Next Doctor|The Next Doctor]]'', where after defeating the local [[Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever|50 Foot Whatever]], the Doctor makes sure to teleport it away before it falls over and crushes London. [[Double Subverted|Its initial rampage probably still did some damage, though]].

** Defied in ''[[Doctor Who/NS/Recap/S4 E14 The Next Doctor|The Next Doctor]]'', where after defeating the local [[Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever|50 Foot Whatever]], the Doctor makes sure to teleport it away before it falls over and crushes London. [[Double Subverted|Its initial rampage probably still did some damage, though]].

* ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' is subject to this, notably when the Moon had a closer orbit to Earth, an asteroid was within probably a few hundred kilometres of the surface, and all power everywhere was removed for a few minutes. No widespread damage or visible deaths. In series 4, after almost all humans were briefly taken away, Clyde and Rani noticed that the streets were surprisingly clean and un-wrecked.

* [[Babylon 5]] seems to have left little psychological damage in proportion to the death and destruction implied. While there are [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]] s, and enmity, there seem to be no where near as many as there would be after, the Minbari trying to destroy the humans, the Narn threatening to destroy the Centauri, the Centauri actually trying to destroy the Narn, the Shadows and Vorlons trying to destroy ''everybody'', the Minbari warrior caste trying to destroy the religious caste and on and on. There are emotional scars shown but you would think that almost everyone would be a helpless puddle of trauma after all that.

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* The second act of ''Warzone2100'''s singleplayer campaign appears to dodge this one at first, as it takes place in the ruins of a city that had a nuclear warhead dropped on it. Then comes a mission where you have to prevent the opposing faction flying a large number of civilians out of the area. The realisation that those half-wrecked apartment buildings (which some players had probably shot at just to see the rather cool collapse animation) might have had people inside them made this mission something of a [[Wham! Episode]].

* Occurs in the ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'' demo. {{spoiler|[[Physical God]] Wyzen assumes a form that is apparently larger than the planet the game is set on and attempts to crush Asura with a mountain-sized index finger, but he is destroyed. The following cutscene shows even ''larger'' explosion that should have shattered the planet as well. The gravitational effects of having such a vast entity suddenly materialize just outside the atmosphere are also absent.}}

* Certain developments in ''[[Final Fantasy IV ~~the~~ After Years]]'' lead many players to assume that the planets on which the ''other'' ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games take place were blown up as "failed experiments" by [[God]], {{spoiler|who is actually a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] [[Evilutionary Biologist]]}}. [[Word of God]] assures us this did not happen.

* Certain developments in ''[[Final Fantasy IV: The After Years]]'' lead many players to assume that the planets on which the ''other'' ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games take place were blown up as "failed experiments" by [[God]], {{spoiler|who is actually a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]] [[Evilutionary Biologist]]}}. [[Word of God]] assures us this did not happen.

* Occurs in ''[[Saints Row]] 3'' when the military brings in a giant {{spoiler|flying aircraft carrier}} to bomb Steelport. It eventually gets blown up, but the city miraculously does not get flattened by the falling debris.

* The last act of ''[[Xenoblade]]'' has players witness no less than {{spoiler|The Bionis and Mechonis, the [[Humongous Mecha]]/continents the game's characters live on, '''coming to life and engaging in mortal combat.''' ''No one'' on either continent is concerned about this happening (besides the High Entia, who have [[Body Horror|other problems]] to deal with), and no one is shown dying or being injured, even though the simple act of the Bionis moving its leg should have ended at least 3 civilizations.}}