"Little one, it's a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its resources finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction."
Malthusianism is a theory developed by English economist Thomas Robert Malthus that, loosely summarized, claims population growth tends to surpass the resource supply, leading to an Overpopulation Crisis, unless the population is checked or reduced. The Evil Malthusian is a particular kind of villain who wants to avert such a crisis, by any means necessary.
At their most relatively benign, they may simply institute oppressive Population Control laws that heavily restrict reproduction. Perhaps they may also try to create an artificial Sterility Plague. Usually, though, their go-to solution is to "reduce" the population altogether via a Depopulation Bomb. Particularly hateful and scummy ones may engage in what some have called Eco-Fascism, where one specific ethnic or religious group is scapegoated as the primary source of the population problem and targeted for the culling. Other particularly evil sorts might set out to Kill the Poor. In any case, these characters never seem to be willing to cull themselves, but are all too happy to let others pay the price for them. If the character is willing to cull themselves as well, they probably believe that there is No Place for Me There.
Compare Eco-Terrorist (which such a villain may be), The Needs of the Many, Politically Incorrect Villain, Utopia Justifies the Means, A Million Is a Statistic, Totalitarian Utilitarian, and Broken-System Dogmatist. Prone to graduating into an Omnicidal Maniac if they decide their ideal population is somewhere around "zero." Sister Trope to The Social Darwinist, who similarly may use dubiously moral means to promote the survival of the "fittest" humans.
As a Morality Trope, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Franken Fran: Inverted, as an evil organization is aiming to cause overpopulation and so accelerate mankind's downfall by opening hospitals, increasing hygiene in developing countries, etc.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The Beastmen's leader Lordgenome has a valid reason to exterminate humans: If races with Spiral power are allowed to grow unchecked, the Anti-Spirals fear that the universe will come to an end with the awakening of the Spiral Nemesis. The Anti-Spirals have no problem with just wiping out races that can use Spiral power, but Lordgenome made a Deal with the Devil with the Anti-Spirals to keep the human population under 1 million so that the Anti-Spirals wouldn't have to wipe out the race entirely if their collective Spiral power grew too large. Lordgenome ensures that at least the human race will be allowed to exist, even if they'd never be able to fully thrive.
Comic Books
- Batman: This is recurring villain Ra's al Ghul's main motivation. He's been around for centuries thanks to the life-restoring power of chemical baths called Lazarus Pits; in that time, he's come to view humanity as a pestilence (in one notable moment, he calls the human race "six billion short-sighted parasites") that's destroying all of Earth's resources. Many of his schemes involve a mass culling of the population to restore balance to the world, and it's clear that he doesn't care how many people have to die for that goal to be achieved: "If nine hundred and ninety-nine must perish for everyone who lives, so be it!"
- The Infinity Gauntlet: Thanos uses the titular artifact to wipe out half of the population of the universe, on behalf of Mistress Death, who used this kind of reasoning to advocate for said course of action.
- The Mighty: Series antagonist Alpha One is revealed to be one. When his homeworld was suffering from an overpopulation problem, he suggested to his planet's congress the neat idea of wiping out 10% of the planet's population (with said genocide being implicitly biased against minorities and the poor) to make living conditions better for the remaining survivors. Out of disgust, his species banished him to Earth, which he then attempted to conquer and rule with an iron fist.
Films — Animated
- Fantastic Planet: The Draags routinely cull the population of humans, called Oms by them, to prevent them from breeding too much and causing overpopulation.
Films — Live-Action
- Kingsman: The Secret Service: Big Bad Richmond Valentine aims to solve the world's resource and climate change issues by culling its population through the use of a Hate Plague caused by special SIM cards that broadcast at a certain frequency; only those who have a special chip embedded in them would be immune.
- Logan's Run: The central computer that runs the Domed Hometown closely monitors the entire population, and keeps the headcount stable by sending anyone who turns 30 to Carousel. Carousel is a public disintegration chamber, but the people are told it only removes the body; the person's self is "renewed" in the city's nursery. A renegade few disbelieve this lie, and seek to escape the city's death-at-30 system, for which social assassins called Sandmen are dispatched to eliminate them. Main character Logan 5 is one of these Sandmen.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thanos, the Big Bad of the Infinity Saga. In his backstory, his homeworld, Titan, faced an overpopulation crisis, with the leaders desperately seeking a solution. Thanos proposed that half of the planet's population be killed off, with who lived and who died being determined strictly by random chance. Understandably, the leaders of Titan were aghast with Thanos's solution and adamantly refused to implement it; however, no effective alternative was found, and the crisis continued to grow in severity, which probably wasn't helped by Titan's axial tilt somehow being thrown out of whack, resulting in devastation and ecological disaster far beyond the scope of merely growing population. This tragedy fuels Thanos's relentless desire to "balance the universe" by killing half of all lifeforms on all worlds — no more, no less, selected randomly — allegedly in order to spare the universe as a whole from suffering the apocalyptic fate his home faced and succumbed to, and he seeks the Infinity Stones simply because they are the most efficient means of accomplishing his goal. However, according to Word of God, he was more concerned with proving himself right than actually helping the universe, which is why he doesn't just take the simpler solution of doubling the resources and goes ballistic when the Avengers try to undo it. In fact, his plan affected plant and animal life too, effectively halving the resources he claimed he was trying to preserve and causing massive ecological damage. He's called the Mad Titan for a reason.
- The Purge Universe: The titular Purge is an annual event instituted by the ruling class supposedly to let American citizens work through their violent and deviant urges in the space of a single night but was actually designed as a Kill the Poor population control scheme.
- The Rookies: The villains of the 2019 spy film are an eco-terrorist group who intends to cleanse the earth of overpopulation. Getting their hands on a green virus which can transform humans into plants, the Big Bad intends to unleash the virus on major cities worldwide to replace human life with plants, and in fact managed to release a sample of the virus in New York.
- The Thinning: Due to a shortage of natural resources, the UN has ordered all countries to reduce their population by 5% every year. The US does this by administering a yearly test called the Thinning to children in every grade, with those who fail the test being taken away to who knows where.
- What Happened to Monday: Due to a population explosion, Nicolette Cayman has instituted a policy that each family is only allowed to have one child, with any siblings being taken away to be cryo-frozen until the population returns to a more sustainable level. The central characters are septuplet sisters named after the days of the week, assuming the collective identity of a single person named Karen Settman, and only allowed to leave their grandfather’s apartment on the day of the week they are named after.
- Z.P.G. (Zero Population Growth): The World Federation controls the future Crapsack World where no children are allowed to be born at all to reduce the population for 30 years, and kills any families that defy them.
Literature
- A Christmas Carol: While not a major aspect of Ebenezer Scrooge's character, one early Kick the Dog moment from him comes when he tells a solicitor that the poor should just die "and decrease the surplus population".
- Rainbow Six: Malthusian logic is mixed with an Animal Wrongs Group to form the Horizon Corporation conspiracy, which plots to spread a modified Ebola Virus and kill nearly all of the human race, while a "chosen few" get to enjoy the fruits of a recovering nature. Naturally, they're all just a bunch of egotistical wealthy Hypocrites who, in their hearts, just want to drive their gas-guzzling Humvees and hunt rhinos without worrying about the long-term consequences — there'll still be fewer running cars and endangered species, see?
- Shadow Children: In the future, it is illegal for families to have more than two children, allegedly to prevent overpopulation. The Population Police are employed to hunt down and kill any illegal third children.
- Tourist Season: In Carl Hiaasen's novel, the Big Bad is committing terrorist acts (kidnapping people and feeding them to crocodiles, setting bombs off) because he feels too many tourists are coming to Florida and destroying the environment, so he's trying to stop that from happening. Brian Keyes, the hero and a former colleague, calls him "the last of the Malthusians, to which the Big Bad replies, "Hell, Malthus only dreamed a nightmare like Interstate 95. He never had to drive the fucking thing"
- The Winnowing: Isaac Asimov's Short Story describes a global food shortage that the World Food Council intends to remedy by poisoning the most famine-struck areas — all of them comfortably distant from their own homes — with a biological agent that would kill 70% of the population at random. Their high-minded platitudes about "the finger of God" selecting the victims evaporate when the scientist they coerced into assisting reveals that he added the agent to the sandwiches they've just eaten.note
- In Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus in Flight, the United World makes it so their citizens can have a maximum of two children, after which one must be sterilized. If one avoids getting the operation, any excess children are not euthanized but must be sterilized and are prioritized in conscription to work on the Padrugoi Space Station. These rules were relaxed and later removed at the end of the trilogy after the space program spearheaded by the construction of Padrugoi made extrastellar colonization practical, which resolved the resource crunch justifying it.
Live-Action TV
- Alex Rider (2020): Dr. Grief, while primarily a white supremacist out to Take Over the World and bring back Apartheid, also gives a lecture advocating for solving overpopulation via mass-culling. He claims it's just a thought experiment, but Alex himself is sure Grief is legitimately plotting to put this into action.
- General Hospital: A 2023 storyline had Victor Cassadine (brother of Mad Scientist Mikkos Cassadine, who tried to freeze the world in 1981) argue that overpopulation was threatening the planet, so he traveled to his family's secret lair in Greenland to retrieve a special toxin stored there that, if released, would kill the majority of the world's population (and basically leave his family in charge). He was foiled when a team of the show's regulars (including Laura, who'd previously helped stop Mikkos) went to Greenland on a rescue mission to save several people that Victor had taken with him against their will, with Victor dying in an airstrike on his anchored yacht.
- Heroes Reborn: The Big Bad Erica Kravid is a woman who wants to prevent the heroes from stopping an extinction-level event so that her chosen few can survive. At one point she quotes Thomas Malthus as part of a Motive Rant.
- Star Trek: The Original Series: "The Conscience of the King" gives us Kodos, Governor of Tarsus, also known as Kodos the Executioner. He killed half the population of the planet when a famine was threatening starvation, little knowing that relief ships were en route. James Kirk was one of a handful of people who saw Kodos in person and could identify him.
- Utopia: The bad guys are trying to do exactly this, with an artificial disease and a fake vaccine that will cause sterility.
Theatre
- Urinetown: In a dystopian future where everyone has to pay to go to the bathroom due to a worldwide water shortage (with the penalty for breaking the laws being banishment to Urinetown a.k.a. Released to Elsewhere), Caldwell B. Cladwell, CEO of the company that controls said bathrooms, gleefully institutes draconian laws that exploit the most needy. Cladwell insists the laws are Necessarily Evil to prevent the drought from getting worse, though his way of enforcement lines the pockets of his rich and powerful friends and kills multiple poor, desperate citizens for just trying to pee, weakening this argument. Despite this, the ending actually paints Cladwell as The Extremist Is Right — after his daughter and the rebellion assassinate Cladwell and loosen the restrictions, the water supply gets polluted and dries up, slowly killing all of the surviving characters. The Narrator even leads the cast in a chant of "Hail, Malthus!" to end the show, just to drive the point home.
Video Games
- Criminal Case: World Edition: This is revealed to be the motive for the killer in the 21st case, Plagued by Death. The killer, sociology professor Ayush Patil steals a sample of a virus created by a colleague with assistance from O.M. Medilab, a subsidiary of the game's antagonist, the criminal organization known as SOMBRA. Ayush then infected the case's victim, Sunil Dhudwar, hoping the virus would spread and wipe out the excess population of Earth, as the virus spreads far enough that thousands die. When caught, Ayush shows no remorse, with the clear implication of having gained a God complex.
- House of the Dead II: Caleb Goldman believes that the best way to combat overpopulation and protect the Earth is to cause a Zombie Apocalypse. Unfortunately, by the events of the third game, the creatures that Goldman unleashed to perform a culling of humans ended up turning the earth into a barren wasteland.
- Hydrophobia: The terrorist villains actually call themselves the Malthusians and engage in mass murder to supposedly cull the population. Their slogan, "Save the world. Kill yourself" summarizes their logic. To make things extra ironic, Hydrophobia Prophecy shows them trying to turn water-purifying nanomachines into a Depopulation Bomb because if they didn't double down on their philosophy, humanity would have succeeded in supporting its current numbers.
- Metro Exodus: The Invisible Watchers are The Remnant of the prewar Russian government, using their influence and power over the population of the Post-Apocalyptic Metro System to wage conflicts that would prevent overpopulation and keep those living in the station settlements under their influence. While a benevolent motive in the long run especially when considering what happened to the inhabitants of Novosibirsk, it also involves covering up the fact that there are other surviving population centers outside of Moscow, and the Watchers, via Hanza, suppress anyone who knows too much.
- Pokémon X and Y: Lysandre, the leader of Team Flare, is a Wealthy Philanthropist who has become a misanthrope convinced that he must wipe out the "unproductive fools" that are "consuming our future" to preserve the world's resources, and so wants to use an ancient superweapon to kill every human and Pokémon not within Team Flare.
- Stellaris: Played for Laughs with a common 'tip' given to people struggling with low framerate as the game progresses, encouraging them to become this. Why? Well, the game takes place in a galaxy, and as the game progresses, that galaxy fills with more and more people, each of which requires a tiny bit of processing power. But a tiny bit times a lot of people means the game eventually slows to a crawl on lower-end PCs or with large galaxies. How to solve this? Well, if the population is causing problems, simply reduce the population of the galaxy... by any means necessary.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: The game gives us the aptly-named Praetor Amalthus, who takes this trope one step further by actively causing a Malthusian trap situation by preventing Blades from becoming Titans, depriving Alrest of landmass needed to sustain its population.
Web Animation
- In a review of A Christmas Carol (Pony version), Silver Quill explains Malthus' theories by framing it as a boxing match between Thomas Malthus and Reality, which has so far proven his theories wrong.
Webcomics
- White Dark Life: In the role plays, Malthus and his organization, the Light Demons, fit this trope to a T, as they seek to kill off most of the sapient population in order to halt sapient-induced ecological damage (and, as their leader’s name would imply, they also believe that they are acting as a bulwark against an otherwise-inevitable Malthusian Catastrophe). However, in practice, they spend much of their time trying to kill off the Heroes' League, particularly Legault Dawn, Arthur Calibur, and their girlfriends/wives, siblings, parents, and cousins, due to Legault and Arthur having humiliated him and crippled the Light Demons several years ago; Malthus continues to hold a fierce grudge and is determined to utterly ruin their lives in addition to killing them. Malthus is also notable for himself and his direct subordinates, the Chi Trinity — Persephone, Lamarck, and Teresa — being among the only evil characters in the setting with Holy Hand Grenade abilities (though in their case, they channel Mako rather than holy power); as a result, they are an extreme threat to Lily Natchralli, Legault's Love Interest.
Web Original
- SCP Foundation: In the End of Death canon, the Foundation's attempt to contain an anomaly that manifests as a torturous afterlife, where people feel their own bodies decaying as their soul remains trapped in their corpus, results in The Death of Death and all creatures with a brain attaining Complete Immortality. In an attempt to prevent the global population of humans and animals from exploding, they use SCP-3287
, a gaseous agent that renders any animal that it comes into contact with completely infertile. Despite this, another tale in the canon describes the sky as '90% bugs', calling its effectiveness into question.
Western Animation
- Hazbin Hotel: Subverted with Adam and the Exorcists. Hell is suffering an overpopulation crisis, so every year Heaven sends down an army of exorcist angels to slaughter a chunk of the sinners dwelling there. Charlie, Princess of Hell, comes up with an alternative plan to build a hotel at which sinners can be rehabilitated and sent to Heaven. But when she tries to discuss the plan with Adam, leader of the Exorcists, not only does he shoot it down, but he quashes any suggestion that the Exorcists have good intentions in mind by revealing that they enjoy killing sinners, implying the exterminations are less about population control and more of an excuse for him to sadistically kill as many “bad people” as he wants without consequences. Needless to say, Charlie has to find a way to stop Adam's evil agenda.
