History Main / SacrificialPlanet

** As with the movie example above, the planet-eating {{Galactus}} came to Earth a few times to devour it after spending centuries feeding on other planets without much trouble.

* The famed Creator/AlanMoore and Alan Davis run of ''CaptainBritain'' introduced the vastly powerful RealityWarper James Jaspers by having a weaker alternate counterpart so damage his home reality that it had to be destroyed to contain the threat. However, the character who makes this claim is an UnreliableExpositor at best and has ulterior motives for ordering the parallel reality's destruction.

A special dramatic mention should be made for plots that use Mars in the place of the planet that was previously destroyed. Since Mars is Real Life is well-understood to be barren and lifeless, it already gives a very chilling demonstration of what the threat is capable of, as well as additional chills because it happened so close to us.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]]", the titular weapon has already annihilated a solar system and all but two planets of another by the time the Enterprise gets on the scene. It's set on a course through the most densely populated section of the galaxy to sustain itself.

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'', episode "Klingon War", mission "The Doomsday Device", which is for all intents and purposes an expanded repeat of the TOS episode set 150 years later. Another planet killer half-destroys a small moon ahead of it before the player attacks to prevent Ambassador B'vat from siccing it on the Federation.

!!Examples

* As with the movie example above, in ''Comicbook/FantasticFour'', the planet-eating {{Galactus}} came to Earth a few times to devour it after spending centuries feeding on other planets without much trouble.

** Similarly, in the lead-up to ''[[Comicbook/AvengersVsXMen Avengers Vs. X-Men]]'' the Phoenix Force destroys all sentient life on several inhabited worlds while headed towards Earth.
* The origin story of minor ''[[Comicbook/LegionOfSuperHeroes Legion of Super-Heroes]]'' villain Mano features him using his disintegrator power to destroy his entire homeworld and everyone on it. Given that he was never even remotely that powerful in any of his actual appearances, it almost reads as an example of CutscenePowerToTheMax.
* The famed Creator/AlanMoore and Alan Davis run of ''Captain Britain'' introduced the vastly powerful RealityWarper James Jaspers by having a weaker alternate counterpart so damage his home reality that it had to be destroyed to contain the threat. However, the character who makes this claim is an UnreliableExpositor at best and has ulterior motives for ordering the parallel reality's destruction.
* The final arc of Creator/JohnByrne's ''Comicbook/Superman'' run involves Kryptonian villains from a "pocket reality" stripping its Earth bare of all life and even destroying its atmosphere as a show of power and then threatening to come to the "real" Earth and do the same.
* [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in a ''ComicbookDoctorStrange'' StoryArc from the 1970s, wherein the villain Nightmare manages to destroy the Earth at the beginning and the story is about trying to bring it back, or at least get Earth recreated anew.

** The various ''[[Comicbook/JusticeLeague Justice League]]'' "Crisis" team-ups with the Justice Society occasionally used Earth-2 as a Sacrificial Planet in much the same way; at least two of the crossovers involved the temporary destruction of Earth-2 by some cosmic menace. Luckily, though, StatusQuoIsGod and the ResetButton kicked in by the end.

* The

* In ''CrashTeamRacing'', it's revealed that [[BigBad Nitros Oxide]] is the cause of the barren wasteland on Mars: the inhabitants on the planet failed to defeat him at racing and thus get decimated. He threatens to do the same on Earth (by making the planet a parking lot and slaving all its inhabitants) if they failed to defeat him at racing, too - setting up the story.

* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'', the Vermicious Knids are said to have eaten the former inhabitants of Venus and the Moon. The only reason why they haven't devoured Earth yet is because they can't survive the friction heat from plummeting through the atmosphere.

* At the start of the ''Literature/StarCarrier'' series the Sh'daar Empire's vassal races have already destroyed several of Earth's extrasolar colonies. By the middle of the first book their latest victims are most of the inhabitants of Eta Boötis IV, killed by a multi-AU kinetic strike from a Turusch warfleet. [[spoiler:This foreshadows the Turusch attack against Sol late in the novel, which is only barely driven off at the cost of half a billion lives.]]

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekOnline'', episode "Klingon War", mission "The Doomsday Device", which is for all intents and purposes a expanded repeat of the TOS episode set 150 years later. Another planet killer half-destroys a small moon ahead of it before the player attacks to prevent Ambassador B'vat from siccing it on the Federation.

-->-- '''Jonas Smart''', '''''[[Literature/JackBlank Jack Blank: The Accidental Hero]]'''''

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* ''DragonBallZ'':
** Frieza single-handedly destroyed the planet Vegeta some years prior to the startof the series.

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* Alderaan from ''Film/StarWars: Film/ANewHope'' is destroyed to demonstrate how evil the Empire is and the powers granted to them by the Death Star.

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-->And so my quest has brought me to this timid little planet you call Earth, so, terrestrial heroes, can one of you quench my thirst for the divine conflict, the supreme struggle? Or will your planet be doomed to the same fate, that has befallen so many.

* Alderaan from Film/StarWars is destroyed to demonstrate how evil the Empire is and the powers granted to them by the Death Star.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode [[Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine The Doomsday Machine]], the titular weapon has already annihilated a solar system and all but two planets of another by the time the Enterprise gets on the scene. It's set on a course through the most densely populated section of the galaxy to sustain itself.

* ''VideoGame/TheClueFinders: Mystery of the Missing Amulet.'' The games eponymous MacGuffin, the Amulet of Life, was responsible for completely reducing the planet Millenia into a dying wasteland. At the end of the game, the evil sorceress Malicia says that once she finishes off Millenia with the Amulet, she's going to drain life from the Cluefinders' home planet, Earth, next.

** Inverted in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime 3: Corruption''. The planet Norion is doomed from the start from a looming Phazon leviathan impact, but Samus manages to save it at the last minute. Later on it's revealed that the other planets in the system suffered a Phazon leviathan impact while she was in a coma and are already showing signs of corruption, so Samus goes to those planets to stem it.

* In CrashTeamRacing, it's revealed that [[BigBad Nitros Oxide]] is the cause of the barren wasteland on Mars: the inhabitants on the planet failed to defeat him at racing and thus get decimated. He threatens to do the same on Earth (by making the planet a parking lot and slaving all its inhabitants) if they failed to defeat him at racing, too - setting up the story.

* When the Brains go on a rampage in ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', Hermes points to each destroyed planet on a ''flat'' star map and notes that each planet forms a ''straight line'' that points directly toward the Earth; precisely the planet that the Brains attack next.

* ''WesternAmination/InvaderZim'' has an alien race from the [[StealthPun planet Jackers]] that captures other planets in a giant transportation sphere and throws them into the dying sun that orbits their world in order to stave off their own destruction, [[TooDumbToLive even though they could easily just move to a different, more stable planet instead.]]

* ''WesternAmination/InvaderZim'' has an alien race from the [[Pun planet Jackers]] that captures other planets in a giant transportation sphere and throws them into the dying sun that orbits their world in order to stave off their own destruction, [[TooDumbToLive even though they could easily just move to a different, more stable planet instead.]]

* In ''Literature/CharlieAndTheGreatGlassElevator'', the Vermicious Knids are said to have eaten the former inhabitants of Venus and the Moon. The only reason why they haven't devoured Earth yet is because they can't survive the friction heat of plummeting through the atmosphere.

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