Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,893
edits
Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: Difference between revisions
Fixed a redlink, did other minor copyedits. Oh, and removed the spoiler template from the blatantly obvious fact that an example involves dinosaurs.
(Fixed a redlink, did other minor copyedits. Oh, and removed the spoiler template from the blatantly obvious fact that an example involves dinosaurs.) |
|||
Line 3:
{{quote|'''Fry:''' Uh, what really killed the dinosaurs?
'''Big Brain:''' [[Large Ham|MEEEEEEEEEE!]]
|''[[Futurama]]''}}
While writing a story, an author needs a way to show [[The End of the World as We Know It|how bad things would get if the]] [[Big Bad]] [[The End of the World as We Know It|took control or the]] [[Applied Phlebotinum]] [[Made of Explodium|blew up]]. So the author attributes some historical disaster to their plot. And what's the biggest disaster one can imagine?
Line 26 ⟶ 27:
** The first movie contradicts this however, by showing murals of ancient Keronian weapon Kiruru of being responsible.
* The Manga version of [[S-Cry-ed]] shows that Kazuma accidentally killed the dinosaurs with one of his punches (that broke through the walls of space and time).
== Comic Books ==
Line 39:
* In [[Planetary]] giant multi-dimensional ship (similiar a little to [[The Authority|The Carrier]])crashed on Earth, killing the dinosaurs.
* An old New Yorker cartoon has a mother disciplining her daughter in a natural history museum, telling her "They got extinct because they didn't listen to their mommies."
== Fan Works ==
* In the [[Dark Fic]] [http://de.jihad.net/lib/bull-dotb.txt Day of the Barney], [[Barney and Friends|Barney and Baby Bop]] summoned the meteor that caused the K-T extinction. Which, believe it or not, isn't the most heinous thing they did.
== Film ==
Line 56 ⟶ 54:
* In ''[[Super Mario Bros. (film)|Super Mario Bros]]: [[The Movie]],'' it turns out that the dinosaurs were less 'wiped out' and more 'sent to another dimension when the meteor impact split the worlds.' As seen below, a certain [[Super Sentai]] series either borrowed a plot point from the oddest of sources, or stumbled onto a hilarious coincidence.
* [[Fantasia]] goes for a more realistic option, where the dinosaurs died out because of droughts, causing mass starvation as well. It's notable that Fantasia was made before it was discovered that an asteroid impact caused mass extinction.
== Literature ==
Line 71 ⟶ 68:
* Good ol' [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] actually subverts this trope. Apparently Cthulhu and his minions were the cause of the ''Permian'' extinction.
** Some fanon sources claim Cthulhu was also responsible for wiping out the Dinosaurs, cause that would be [[Rule of Cool|awesome]]
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''Day of the Hunters'' kills off the dinosaurs due to overhunting by intelligent dinosaurs...with [[Frickin'
** According to a note by the author, he was somewhat embarrassed by the story because it was one of his early ones and had an exceedingly [[Anvilicious]] ending, rather than let the reader draw their own conclusions.
* Another example of "sentient dinosaurs end up causing the K-T" occurs in the story ''Hermes of the Ages'' by Frederick D. Gottfried. Sapient coelurosaurs develop biological warfare, which they THOUGHT the effects of their bioweapons would be limited to their own species...it goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Line 77 ⟶ 74:
* [[David Drake]]'s ''Time Safari''. Human beings travel back in time to hunt dinosaurs, and of course most of these trips go back to the Late Cretaceous because everybody wants to bag a [[Tyrannosaurus Rex|T.rex]]. You may think you know where this was going, but its subverted ''hard''—what actually does in the dinosaurs is a captive tyrannosaur that was re-released into the Cretaceous wild. Seems it was carrying a bird infection that it picked up while it was in the 20th century...
** Which makes [http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007288 this] [[Hilarious in Hindsight]].
* Played with in Michael Crichton's ''[[Jurassic Park|The Lost World]]'', in which Ian Malcolm makes a study on extinction and begins to debunk the theory of the dinosaurs being wiped out by a meteor. {{spoiler|Towards the end, they establish that any mistake or miscalculation in an ecosystem, no matter how small, can compromise the survival of an entire species.}}
* [[David Weber]]'s ''[[Empire From the Ashes]]'' trilogy has the Achuultani, genocidal [[Horde of Alien Locusts|aliens]] who have been wiping out all complex life in the galaxy (besides themselves) for over seventy million years. While they were destroying a defensive base of the alien "First Imperium" on [[Earthshattering Kaboom|the planet that the asteroid belt used to be]], they whacked Earth with a much smaller asteroid, causing the extinction.
* [[Fanon]] of ''[[The Bible]]'' holds that Noah's Flood did in the dinosaurs - most from the flood itself (along with every other species), and the few left that were on the ark couldn't handle the resulting climate changes.
** Another theory would be that whatever killed the dinosaurs took place somewhere during the seven "days" (which are interpreted by some as quite long periods of time rather than days by the human sense).
** There are two other answers held by some Young-Earth Creationist groups:
*** Dinosaurs were creatures corrupted by the
*** [[Earth Is Young|Dinosaurs never existed]] and [[Jerkass Gods|their remains were placed by either God or Satan]] to test the faith of the less
* In ''[[Discworld/The Science
* In Kage Baker's [[The Company Novels]], a defective Immortal claims to have wiped out the dinosaurs through his abuse of time travel. However, he's also quite clearly insane, so it isn't certain if he's telling the truth.
* In the [[Star Trek: The Lost Era]] novel ''The Buried Age'', the Permian extinction event is chosen instead - it was a consequence of an artificially-induced galaxy-wide disaster. The [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] known as Manraloth accidentally caused the entire galactic population to [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence]], releasing terrible amounts of energy which irradiated planets. In the aftermath, the
* In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'', obviously dinosaurs conflict with the Earth's true ten million year age. In the novels it's mentioned by Slartibartfast that fake fossils were installed during the planet's construction. This could either have some vital purpose to the intended function of the planet, or the Magratheans could just be [[Doing It for the Art]].
* In ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'', it's not the dinosaurs whose extinction is blamed on phlebotinum, but that of the dodo. A time-traveler indirectly caused it to be wiped out because he'd meddled with prehistory to save the coelacanth.
Line 97 ⟶ 94:
* The Steve Alten novel ''Domain'', the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was in fact {{spoiler|a spaceship of an evil multi-dimensional entity that was shot down by the good aliens, who then land on the planet (Earth), genetically mess with the local fauna to eventually create Humanity, create the Mayan civilization, and use its prophecies to foretell the end of the world which will happen when the bad alien's ship gains enough power to reactivate, on December 21, 2012}}.
* In [[Poul Anderson]]'s "Lord of a Thousand Suns," the main character claims that a [[Human Alien]] species, [[Precursors|now extinct themselves]], "killed off Earth's dinosaurs in a day, millions of years ago, and only used one ship to do it." (The exact method of killing isn't specified.) He backtracks almost immediately, saying he doesn't know '''for sure''' that the aliens did the job, but it '''was''' their regular policy to exterminate big reptiloids on potential colony worlds, and they'd explored as far as Earth, so logically....
== Live-Action TV ==
Line 111 ⟶ 107:
* ''[[The X-Files]]'' two-parter "The Sixth Extinction" briefly skirts the topic of what killed the dinosaurs, suggesting that [[Ancient Astronauts]] visited Earth five times before, destroying its dominant species and introducing new ones. The mammals (including us humans) are the latest masters of earth, introduced after the "fifth extinction"—a.k.a. the Dinosaur Extinction Event. And our own time to go is [[Just Before the End|nearing fast]].
* In ''[[Dinosaurs]],'' the last episode revealed that the dinosaurs were wiped out by {{spoiler|Earl Sinclair. No, this wasn't one of the funny 'paleontologist in the present' episodes; we end with the family shivering as the ice piles up, Earl having to explain to his family why they are all about to die.}}
== Music ==
* ''[[Ayreon]]'': "We vanquished the dinosaurs with the trajectory of a child's lost meteorite."
== Tabletop Games ==
* In [[D20 Modern]]'s Dark•Matter setting, while not specifically mentioning the dinosaurs, numerous historical disasters, and also times of prosperity, are tied to the ebb and flow of dark matter, used as the setting's [[Applied Phlebotinum]].
* One of three alien races who commonly interact with Earth humans in [[Conspiracy X]] are the "Saurians", mysterious reptilian aliens with many forms who want to take over.
== Video Games ==
Line 130 ⟶ 123:
* One of the missions in Super [[Scribblenauts]] is to cause the dinosaurs to go extinct without asteroids or weapons. You have many options: plague, flooding, drought, a black hole, [[God]], [[Cthulhu Mythos|Cthulhu]]...
== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'', the dragons developed an "iridium bomb," which ended up nearly wrecking the planet. The remaining survivors reverted to a pastoral existence until [[Humans Are the Real Monsters|those wacky knights showed up]].
* [http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF055-Dinosaur_Meteors.jpg This] [[Perry Bible Fellowship]].
{{quote|'''Dinosaur #2''': Indeed, summon the meteors.}}
* In ''[[8-
* One ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]'' [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=997 guest comic] has God throwing a meteor at the Earth after one too many complaints by a certain T. rex.
* According to ''[[Raven's Dojo]]'', Jesusaurus absolved them of their sins and they were all taken into heaven by the Rapture. Except for the sinful T-Rexes, doomed to burn eternally in engines built by primates.
* According to ''[[Happle Tea]]'', [http://www.happletea.com/comics/patently-false/ Joseph Smith killed the dinosaurs].
* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' the dinosaurs were killed due to a comet colliding with Earth indeed… but that comet got here because a relativistic artificial planet disturbed the orbits. One of the hidden habitats (which tend to crop up at the extinction stage of galactic civilization cycle) [//www.schlockmercenary.com/2018-07-25 plowed] at about 1/40 c right through a cometary halo of [[Insignificant Little Blue Planet|the system QX-251-890.54]] 73 millions of years (of the 3rd planet there) ago or so, because they were afraid the acceleration necessary to avoid it could expose themselves. And someone dropped a probe, perhaps just because interstellar space is vast and boring. About 8 million years later this got [//www.schlockmercenary.com/2018-12-09 very, very awkward].
{{quote|'''Green alien''': ...The impactor is one of the objects ''we'' displaced during our passage through their cometary halo.
== Web Original ==
Line 146 ⟶ 138:
* It wasn't a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, it was [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Tristan Timothy Taylor]]...
* ...or maybe it was Red from ''[[Dick Figures]]''.
* ''[[Freeman's Mind
== Western Animation ==
* One episode of ''[[The Emperor's
* In ''[[Samurai Jack]]'', Aku falls to Earth in the form of a meteorite. Guess who happens to be in the blast radius when Aku hits.
* Fry finds out what ''really'' killed the dinosaurs in one episode of ''[[Futurama]]'', when he encounters a giant brain that knows ''everything''.
Line 161 ⟶ 152:
* In ''[[Bionic Six]]'', the protagonists are sent back to find out what killed the dinosaurs. Naturally, they end up getting involved with it in some way...
* ''[[Family Guy]]'''s answer...I don't know, but they died [[A Date with Rosie Palms|because you touch yourself at night]].
* ''[[American Dad
** Another episode has Stan die and force his way into Heaven, where he finds God playing with some toy dinosaurs in His office.
{{quote|'''God:''' These guys are awesome. Why'd I ever send them to Mars?}}
*
** To be fair, that ''was'' the meteor. The [[Big Bad]] simply time-shifted an unreliable henchman to ground zero, a few seconds before impact.
* In ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures
* There was a ''[[Ren and Stimpy]]'' episode where an old man told the titular characters several ridiculous theories on how the dinosaurs died, one of which was that "they thought they were [[Superman]], and jumped off the roof."
== Real Life ==
| |||