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Preserver: There is one other being I need for my collection. The last Czarnian.
Lobo: Hah! That's rich. I'm the last Czarnian. [aside] I fragged the rest of the planet for my high school science project. Gave myself an A.

Hometown isn't doomed? Doom it yourself! Whether it's an accident, revenge or just plain anger, heroes sometimes display disturbing tendencies toward destroying their own hometowns, countries, planets or even universes. Bonus point if they simultaneously kill their parents.

It doesn't count if only the house is destroyed, in attempts to kill the hero or just to spite them. It also doesn't count if a broader war is involved, unless the character's actions directly created that war.

This is more frequent with villains, especially the more vile and over-the-top ones. Sometimes it's to demonstrate how disturbed they are, other times it's a Start of Darkness event for them. Or maybe they just really liked the sound of being the Last of His Kind.

This trope sometimes overlaps with Destroy the Abusive Home, though the character is generally portrayed sympathetically if this is the case.

See also The End of the World as We Know It, Genocide from the Inside, Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds, With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Compare Let the Past Burn.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • In AKIRA, a mutated Tetsuo destroys most of his home city of Neo-Tokyo.
  • This was the beginning of Sara's Disproportionate Retribution in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. At least her own home was an accident. Others were not.
  • Mostly inverted in Saikano, as Chise protects her and Shuji's home town from complete destruction until the very end of the story, when she exterminates all of humanity.
  • Alice in King of Thorn burnt her house down when she was a child after her family had died of the Medusa virus, along with the creature that the virus had spawned from her in the process.
  • In Chrono Crusade, Joshua goes insane when Aion gives him Chrono's horns, which allows him to hear the thoughts of everyone around him. He "stops the noise" by freezing everyone in the orphanage he lives in to stone. Also doubles as a Doomed Hometown for Chrono and Rosette—their goal is both to save Joshua, and unfreeze the children in the orphanage.
    • Also, in the manga Aion's plans are reveal to be a plot to destroy Pandaemonium (the demon's home) and "remake" the world. He succeeds in destroying Pandy and killing all of the demons but himself, Chrono and Shader, but Chrono and Rosette stop him before he destroys all of humanity.
  • Pokémon: The Series:
    • A flashback shows Saffron City Gym Leader Sabrina destroying her house with her psychic powers as a child.
    • Practically every animated adaptation of Mewtwo's backstory includes the image of it wreathed in flames in the remains of the Pokémon Mansion/whatever lab is used to create it, and possibly atop the corpses of those who'd been working there. There's a reason this guy is The Dreaded.
  • One Piece: Skypiea Antagonist, Enel, destroyed his home sky island of Birka before traveling to Skypeia and using his army of followers and his powerful lightning Logia Devil Fruit to overthrow Gan Fall and take over as "God". In Skypiea, "God" is merely the title given to the ruler of the land and doesn't mean they are an actual Deity. Despite this, Enel does refer to himself as a God thanks to his Devil fruit, which is so powerful it has given him delusions of Godhood.
  • Gundam:
    • Mobile Suit Gundam's Amuro Ray accidentally blows a hole in the wall of Side 7 shortly after he gets on the Gundam.
    • The same effect (technically) happens to Kamille. The same also, being something of a remake, happens to Kira (again being a remake, having done the same thing as Amuro among other things to damage his colony beyond repair) and Shinn , through in Shinn's case it has a lot more to do with being bitter at ORB (for the death of his familly) than anything.
  • Fullmetal Alchemist:
    • Ed and Al burn down their house to symbolize how they'd never look back during their quest to regain their bodies. However, their father guesses that the true reason was to try to forget the shame of their failings.
    • Speaking of Hohenheim, he absorbed half the population of the empire of Xerxes when he became a living Philosopher's Stone. The other half went to Father.
  • Monster:
    • Eva Heinemann does this to the Heinemann family mansion after realizing that she cannot enjoy the life of a normal human being; then again, she isn't normal anyway.
    • Johan is another example
  • When Diva was finally "freed" in Blood+, she drank everyone's blood and set the whole mansion on fire. Though, given how she had lived her entire life up to that point locked up and used as a science experiment, this type of retribution is fairly justified.
  • Naruto: Itachi Uchiha massacred his entire family and clan in their private section of the village of Konoha. Zigzagged; while Itachi did kill his clan, it was actually a mission assigned to him by the village. The clan was planning a coup and Itachi wiping them out seemingly on his own let the village save face.
    • Sasuke Uchiha briefly intended to invoke this trope after learning the truth about the above situation.
  • In Macross Frontier Ranka's song lured Vajra to the 117th fleet where she lived with her family, leading to the destruction of said fleet, the death of her mother and the disappearance of her brother.
    • Later on Grace lured the Vajra to Galaxy to get rid of those not involved in conspiracy
    • And Ranka's song also inadvertently lured the Vajra to Frontier, her new home.
  • Trigun:
    • Knives blew up the ship where he was born and brought up as part of his first attempt to kill off the human race; in the anime, he manipulates and kills off the entire crew beforehand.
    • Legato Bluesummers seems to have almost gotten himself killed as a child out of his determination to do this, instead of using his nascent mind-control powers to get the fuck away and run like hell. That Knives appears to have turned up and killed the whole town for kicks at the last moment is icing on the cake of rape-stopping and life-saving and electing-not-to-murder and tacit-acceptance-of-lifelong-fealty.
  • In YuYu Hakusho, Hiei was a male fire demon that was born among a female race of ice demons. Males can only be born to ice demons if they were sired by an outside male, which is forbidden. According to the ice demons' beliefs, males bring destruction, so the elders had him thrown off a cliff. This is what caused him to want to destroy the ice demons, but it was subverted in the end. Why? Because when he finally found them, he realized that the ice demons had very pitiful lives, so decided that leaving them alive was a worse punishment. No wonder Hiei has a lot of social problems.
    • Yukina of all people is searching for her brother in an attempt to invoke the trope, believing he'll raze the place to the ground, and once asked Hiei to find him and give him the message not knowing that Hiei is said brother and had already opted for Cruel Mercy.
  • Hell Girl: Ai Enma does this to her village after the events which led to her death.
  • The universe of From the New World centers around the development of psychic powers, particularly telekinetic, in humans. This power, called PK, is capable of doing many things, some of which we aren't even aware of yet. There's one thing most know for certain, however; that it is very dangerous. Those that contract a certain mental disease, called Hashimoto-Appelbaum Syndrome, have difficulty relating to their fellow humans and can lose control of their power. As you can imagine, this could lead to some pretty horrific circumstances. Shun, one of the main characters of the series, contracts the syndrome. His family is the first to die, before he completely annihilates his entire village and warps the rest of the landscape. Then, he strands himself in the middle of nowhere in some creepy, nightmare inducing, PK-altered landscape to record his experience before the Earth swallows him whole. Oh, and he was only fourteen.
    • And that's not even the worst of it. Boy K, a boy that lived long before Shun, had sociopathic thoughts and ideas, but behaved normally enough, so the community overlooked it. As it turns out, that was a terrible thing to do, because eventually something in him snapped. After brutally TEARING his teacher apart in the middle of a class lesson, he goes on a PK rampage, nearly wiping out the entire village, including his classmates, mere children, in scenes that were too graphic to show.
  • Happens in Fushigi Yuugi: Byakko Ibun, when Neiran snaps as the Break the Cutie process she's been subjected to all her life gets to her, uses her Shapeshifter powers for the first time, and after murdering her abusive family she destroys her village.
  • Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen: Elisabeth Le Fanu was fed demon flesh as a child by her Evil Uncle, which cured her Incurable Cough of Death but caused her to be wracked with pain that she could only address by torturing people—which in turn generated mana for her due to the demon flesh. She went on to brutally slaughter her entire hometown, transforming her into a partly demonic being capable of conjuring torture and execution implements, the eponymous "Torture Princess".

    Comic Books 

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In Carrie, the main character kills everyone at her prom, the two kids who had humiliated her, and her mother after prom night goes horribly, horribly wrong for her. They wanted to have her destroy the town, but didn't have the budget. In the remake, the damage is more severe.
  • At the end of Addams Family Values, Debbie reveals this is what she did to her parents, because they didn't buy her the right Barbie doll for Christmas. The Addams, naturally, are quite understanding.
  • The prequel comics and novel to 2007's Transformers movie all reveal, despite otherwise being separate continuities, that it was Optimus Prime, of all people, who launched the AllSpark into space to keep it from Megatron's hands, dooming Cybertron to a slow, lingering death. In the movie itself, Optimus states that he's willing to sacrifice his own life to destroy the AllSpark, if need be. Some characters think it's noble. Others think it's disturbing...
    • In the third film, Bumblebee is the one who destroys the Space Bridge control, resulting in Cybertron's destruction.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Thor: When Loki finds out that he is in fact a Frost Giant, he decides to destroy Jotunheim, the world where he was born. He also personally kills his biological father, the Jotun king, after tricking him into trying to kill the sleeping Odin.
    • Thor: Ragnarok: Upon running out of solutions to stop Hela, Thor decides to unleash Ragnarok on his own world, by ordering Loki to revive the fire demon Surtur. Surtur grows giant, fights Hela in an epic battle and shatters Asgard, rendering Asgardians homeless.
  • Deliberately defied in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The celebration of Emperor's death includes Gungans and humans celebrating at Naboo to show that the Emperor didn't destroy it like Alderaan (as many speculated).
    • The comics revealed that he did plan on doing it. Before his death he created Operation: Cinder, in which the imperials would activate Weather Control Machines that would create storms all over Naboo.
  • In the backstory of Left for Dead, Mary and her gang of whores went on a killing spree in which they murdered every man, woman and child in the town of Amnesty. Some of this is seen in flashback.

    Literature 
  • A Court of Thorns and Roses: A Court of Frost and Starlight reveals that Cassian burned down the Illyrian village where he grew up to avenge his mother.
  • Elric of Melnibone destroyed his own empire after his cousin carried out a coup while Elric was traveling overseas. He then destroyed the entire world, eventually, although it was pretty terminally afflicted by Chaos already.
  • Carrie. Unlike the movie adaptation, which didn't have the budget for the full ending, Carrie moves into the town itself after killing her classmates and leaving the survivors to burn to death inside the school. She destroys fire hydrants to prevent anyone from putting out the fires she started, blows up gas stations, and kills several adult citizens who come outside to see what's going on, and by the time she dies, the death toll is well over 400. This also results in Chamberlain becoming a Dying Town as the death of most of their teenage children leads to many citizens just drifting away.
  • The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia is revealed, in the prequel The Magician's Nephew, to have originally been Jadis, Queen of the world of Charn. When her sister rebelled against her, and came a bit too close to succeeding, Jadis used the ultimate magic spell, 'The Deplorable Word', to extinguish all other life on the planet. ALL of it. Then she petrified herself, awaiting a time when visitors from another world would intrude on her crumbling sanctuary...
  • The Pyromaniac and her girlfriend in Monstrous Regiment go back to the orphanage that abused them in order to Kill It with Fire. And watch.
  • In the short story "Basilisk" in the collection Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison, a former POW returns home with damage to his eyes and is condemned by almost the entire populace for having cracked under torture. Then the god Ares decides to heal his injuries. Penance ensues.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: Theon Greyjoy spent a good chunk of his life as a glorified hostage in Winterfell. He would later conquer it in the name of his birth family though Ramsay Bolton was the one who actually razed it to the ground. He eventually regrets it after realizing that he truly thought of the Starks as his real family.
  • In the Annals of the Black Company, the man known as "Erin NoFather, an unlanded priest of the god Vancer from Slinger, in the kingdom of Vye" eventually became the Dominator. Of course, by that time he'd made sure to wipe the town of Slinger off the face of the earth, and kill everyone who had lived there while he was growing up, to prevent any of his enemies learning his true name. Later he laid waste to all of Vye.
  • Trapped on Draconica: Pre-story Zarracka summoned an emperor class fire ghoul in a desperate bid for hero-style praise and attention that almost trashed Britannia's capital. In the main narrative she is vital in Baalaria's victory over said capital.
  • Randall Flagg, Stephen King's oft reappearing villain, apparently hates his home country of Delain so much, he goes back every few hundred years and destroys it again.
  • In the Malazan Book of the Fallen, High King Kallor first built an empire on the continent of Jacuruku, then razed it to the ground so thoroughly, the remaining earth had to be put into a parallel realm and given thousands of years time so it could heal. And all of that just to spite those people who hated him and called a god from another dimension to drop on his head.
  • In Poster Girl Alexander, after becoming a rebel and helping them to overthrow the tyrannical Delegation, helped the rebels burn down his family home, to further distance himself from his regime supporting family.
  • In Son of the Black Sword, this is revealed to have happened to Ashok's real mother. And the casteless quarter where he grew up. And all the house servants who might have seen him. And the household guards. He goes into an Unstoppable Rage when he finds out.
  • In The Witchlands, Esme was exiled from her tribe because she was unable to use her magic to make Threadstones. Years later, after finding out that her power is different (and much more sinister) than she'd thought, she returned to her tribe and killed every single one of them. Now, she keeps them all as her puppets.
  • In The Annals of the Chosen the Chosen learn that the Wizard Lord of the Galbek Hills had grown up in an isolated village called Stoneslope where he was often mocked and belittled. When they finally make their way to its location, they discover the Wizard Lord had used his powers to wipe out the village.
  • In The Fifth Season, Essun attacks her hometown after she's nearly killed while trying to leave it, killing a few people before controlling herself but also dooming the town by destroying their underground water supply, which really isn't good during a Season.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel, soon after becoming a vampire, killed everyone in his village, including his parents and sister.
  • Arrow. When the League of Assassins gets a new Ras Al Ghul, he has to destroy his city or hometown of provenance in a symbolic casting off of ties. This is problematic for Oliver Queen when he's offered the position in Season 4, given that he's been trying to save his city since start of the series.
  • In a heroic example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has, over the years, destroyed her high school gym (it was filled with vampires), her next high school (blown up stopping a giant demon-snake made of Mayor), and finally, her home town of Sunnydale (built on a gateway to Hell, caved in when the good guys destroyed it).
  • Doctor Who:
    • Davros arranged the apparent extermination of his own species for the sake of the Daleks. They turned on him about five minutes later.
    • As of the revival, the Doctor was only able to end the Last Great Time War by destroying both sides — including the other Time Lords and his home planet Gallifrey. Despite this, the Daleks, The Master, and Davros have managed to survive.
    • He also destroyed Gallifrey in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell, and, to be fair, it was for a good reason and they were being assholes anyway. He developed Trauma-Induced Amnesia as a result. Then it turned out that the amnesia was in part due to the fact Gallifrey had been kind of stored in his head. How's that for a "brain the size of a planet"?
    • "The Day of the Doctor" depicts the last day of the Time War when the Doctor destroyed Gallifrey. After meeting the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, the three decide to embark on a radical plan to change their own personal timeline, faking the destruction of Gallifrey by shunting the planet into another universe.
    • In "Spyfall", Gallifrey is destroyed again. This time, for a change, it's the Master who claims the credit.
  • The first Volume of Heroes was about a Petrelli family plot to have Peter nuke New York City, their home. In an alternate future, Sylar nukes Costa Verde, his new town, in a rage after his son is killed.
  • In a minor example, Parker from Leverage blew up her foster parents' house after they hit her and took away her favorite toy. No word yet on whether they were in it at the time.
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Waldreg is an inn keeper from Tirharad, native to the Southlands. All of his life, he secretly hoped that Sauron would return to lift up the Southlanders from muck and filth and hid a secret Artifact of Doom belonging to Sauron. When the occasion comes in the form of Adar, he joins forces with him and is secretly charged with carrying on Adar's plan of provoking Orodruin's eruption. Waldreg obeys without question and uses the Artifact of Doom to unlock an ancient mechanism that triggers the destruction of a series of dams, which sends a vast torrent of water streaming down into the Southlands and ultimately deep into Mount Orodruin itself, destroying in the process his own home.
  • Ben Linus from Lost told the main characters that he had lived on the island his entire life. In reality, he was brought there as a young boy by his father, who worked for the Dharma Initiative. He began consorting with the Hostiles and eventually participated in gassing the Initiative members.
  • In Power Rangers RPM, Dr. K. is revealed to have created Venjix, just to keep her government 'caretakers' busy so she and her friends could escape. She didn't mean to, but...Doc K ended the world.
  • In Red Dwarf, the ship suffers its accident because Rimmer hasn't fixed the drive-plate properly.

    Music 
  • Tobacco Road, written by John Loudermilk, and first performed by The Nashville Teens. It has been covered by The Animals, Jefferson Airplane, The Lovin' Spoonful, the Blues Magoos and David Lee Roth, among others.
    Gonna leave, get a job
    with the help and the grace from above.
    Save some money, get rich and old,
    Bring it back to Tobacco Road.
    Bring dynamite and a crane,
    Blow it up, start all over again.
    Build a town, be proud to show.
    Give it the name Tobacco Road.
    But it's home, the only life I ever known.
    Only you know how I loathe Tobacco Road.
  • My Little Town by Simon & Garfunkel is a poignant memoir, but if you squint and look sideways at the final verse, it can take on some unintended meaning:
    In my little town
    I never meant nothing, I was just my father's son
    Saving my money, dreaming of glory
    Twitching like a finger on the trigger of a gun
    Leaving nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town...
  • The Curse Of Millhaven by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - admittedly, she only razes part of it, but in the other verses the protagonist kills enough people to populate a small town.
    And the fire of '91 that razed the Bella Vista slum
    That was the biggest shit-fight this country's ever seen
    Insurance companies ruined, land lords getting sued
    All cause of wee little girl with a can of gasoline
    Those flames really roared when the wind started blowing
    La la la la La la la lie
    Well the rich man, and the poor man, they all got to die
  • Wildfire by Sonata Arctica, a power metal band from Finland, is about a young man who does this.
    Burn, honey burn, let the fire eat away
    I never liked the look of this town
    Burn it down now
    I'll run, they'll know what I've done
    I'll fetch my gear and take my leave from this mountain
  • In the Voltaire song "Bomb New Jersey", the singer is trying to arrange the nuclear destruction of his home state.
  • The song "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" by Coldplay:
    You said, I'm gonna buy this place and burn it down
    I'm gonna put it six feet underground
    You said, I'm gonna buy this place and watch it fall
    Stand here beside my baby and the crumbling walls
    Oh I'm gonna buy this place and start a fire
    Stand here until I fill all your heart's desires
    Because I'm gonna buy this place and see it burn
    And do back the things it did to you in return
  • Nirvana imagine a blacklisted actress doing this in "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle".
  • In the Sound Horizon album Elysion's song Sacrifice, the singer of the song burns her village after her younger sister who was raped by the villagers and had gotten pregnant was burnt to death.

    Radio 
  • In the Big Finish Doctor Who adventure "Orbis", The Doctor manages to destroy the world that has been his adopted home for the past six hundred years, and its inhabitants whom he was trying to protect. Whoops.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In the Mutants & Masterminds Meta-4 universe, Neutronik's cloning of himself eventually caused a world war and a nuclear apocalypse.
  • Warhammer 40,000 has several examples of the "planetary destruction" variety:
    • Perturabo, primarch of the Iron Warriors, vented centuries of bitterness and frustration on his home planet Olympia after an uprising, almost wiping out the civilian population. Later, he had all life on the surface wiped out after a two-year siege by loyalist Space Marines
    • The Night Haunter, the primarch of the Night Lords, spend his youth as a bloody-handed vigilante cleaning up the streets of his adopted home planet Nostramo by fear. On his eventual return, and seeing how the populace has slipped back into depravity, he uses his fleet to annihilate the entire planet.
    • Angron, primarch of the World Eaters, suffered as a gladiator-slave on the planet Nuceria. When he returned during the Horus Heresy, he and the Word Bearers took revenge by killing the entire population.

    Toys 
  • BIONICLE
    • Nocturn, the warlord Ehlek's lieutenant, got sent to The Pit for "breaking" his island in a fit of rage. When the author Greg Farshtey got asked why he did this, he answered: "People break things when they get angry. Nocturn happened to break his island."
    • The Shadowed One, the leader of the Dark Hunters, is heavily implied to have caused a civil war in his homeland alongside his co-founder Ancient due to the two hiring themselves out as incredibly effective (and traitorous) mercenaries to the main powers. Said civil war was apparently so bad it more or less wiped said homeland out, which caused them to go off and find a new base of operations. They found one on Odina, where they enslaved and killed the native population after forcing them to build the Dark Hunter fortress.
    • The island of Zakaz, which is where the Piraka come from, was once a beautiful and lush place before the tampering of the Brotherhood of Makuta gave the native Skakdi a bunch of dangerous superpowers and the ill-temperament to use them, upon which a Civil War broke out that reduced it to a barely-livable quarantine zone. One of the Piraka, Reidak, notably lived in one of the few settlements that avoided the war, only to end up in an argument with a local officer that escalated into a full-on conflict that wiped the settlement out.

    Video Games 
  • The player character of the PlayStation 2 game Summoner. Arguably, twice. Before the game, when he was still a young boy, the player character used his summoning powers to defend his hometown, which was swiftly destroyed when the demon he summoned broke free of his control. The second time involves the "tutorial" level of the game, where the character's new hometown is destroyed by the invading forces of the enemy nation, in a war touched off because the emperor of said enemy nation received a prophecy that the Summoner would come and slay him, so the emperor decided to kill the Summoner first. This, of course, turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the emperor turns out to only be a mid-game boss.
  • Final Fantasy
    • In Final Fantasy II, the returned-from-Hell Emperor Mateus raises the castle of Pandemonium where Castle Palamecia stood, utterly destroying his former seat of power.
    • In Final Fantasy IV, after Cecil and Kain are tricked into burning down the village of Mist, young Rydia summons Titan in an attempt at a Roaring Rampage of Revenge but mainly succeeds only in finishing the job.
    • It doesn't end there, interestingly—at least in the DS version. Scenes from much, much later in the game strongly imply that orphan Cecil was himself born in Mist, meaning his first action in the game is to unwittingly and unwillingly destroy the place of his birth—at the command of Cagnazzo, who is himself at the command of Golbez/Theodor, Cecil's older brother, who spent his childhood in Mist as well.
      • At least in the SNES version(not the Bowlderized FFII, though maybe even there), Mist wasn't actually destroyed: you can return via airship.
      • You can return to Mist in every single version of FFIV. Problem is, the only version that shows any damage to the town after the traumatic event is the DS version, where you can see the damage to some of the houses.
      • If you talk with the inhabitants there, they will reference the horrible disaster that killed all of the summoners. Maybe Mist had two significant populations: the world's only summoners, and the world's best carpenters.
    • Final Fantasy VII has a creative variant in the Nibelheim burning. Sephiroth was born (and experimented on by his very own Father) in the Village of Nibelheim (which coincidentally happens to be the Protagonist's Doomed Hometown), but later taken to and raised at the resident MegaCorp's HQ. When he returns to his birthplace many years later, he has no idea about his connection to Nibelheim, but once he finds it out, he doesn't take the news too well...
    • In Final Fantasy XIII Fang and Vanille do this to their hometown of Oerba, when they turned into Ragnarok at the orders of the fal'Cie; and all the other Pulse societies went with it.
      • The fal'Cie's plot is for the heroes to do this to Cocoon, killing everyone within. The heroes go through with it...and then avert the "killing everyone within" part.
  • Jak and co. do this to their homeworld by accident at the start of Jak II: Renegade by opening portal and releasing a horde of Metal Heads including their leader into the world. That is enough to turn relatively lively locales into deadly wasteland where only toughest survive, with the rest living in citadels ruled either by tyrants, mafia, or at the very least living by the 'survival of the fittest' mantra.
  • In Steambot Chronicles, if you opt to follow the villain storyline and join the Bloody Mantis, Vanilla can drop a massive firebomb on Happy Garland, the largest city in the game world, and burn it to the ground.
  • Metal Gear
  • From the backstory of The King of Fighters, Leona went loopy and murdered her entire village when The Dragon awakened her Orochi powers.
  • In the original Secret of Mana, the hero is ostracized by his fellow villagers after his retrieval of the magical sword causes their town to become vulnerable to monster attacks. Oops.
  • In Xenogears, Fei's alternate personality "Id" is responsible for the destruction of Lahan.
  • Bishop from Neverwinter Nights 2 will admit to burning down his hometown if the player's influence score with him is high enough. He actually tried to warn them ahead of time (it was a trap for his Luskan 'allies'), but they didn't take him seriously enough to do anything about it.
  • Van Grants from Tales of the Abyss. Granted, he didn't mean to.
  • In Overlord II, the titular Overlord's hometown of Nordberg is the first town you conquer; you'll either wind up enslaving them all or leaving the entire village as a smouldering heap of wreckage. Players aren't likely to feel sympathy for them, as the Nordberg residents were A.) idiots, B.) treated the young overlord as a pariah and C.) the only sympathetic villager and the Player's childhood friend Kelda joins you because she wants to watch Nordberg burn for what they did.
  • Fallout 3: The Lone Wanderer can sabotage Vault 101 to make it uninhabitable, forcing all the residents outside. Or nuke Megaton, the first major town visited after leaving the Vault, and where James and his infant child stopped by on their way to the Vault. Also, he/she can sabotage Project Purity, located in the building that he/she was born in, effectively turning it from the waters of life to the waters of death.
  • Fallout: New Vegas. An early sidequest allows you to side with the Powder Gangers and massacre everyone in Goodsprings. Technically, Goodsprings isn't the Courier's hometown, but it's close enough.
    • The Lonesome Road DLC reveals the Courier was unintentionally responsible for destroying The Divide. Twice. With nukes.
    • Dead Money DLC allows you to join the forces with Father Elijah and dooming entire Mojave by releasing The Cloud from Sierra Madre into it. This gives you Non-Standard Game Over.
    • In the bad ending of Fallout, the Vault Dweller is converted into a Super Mutant, who joins the other Mutants in massacreing Vault 13.
  • Breath of Fire: Cerl, one of the Dark Dragon Generals, uses the Time Key to freeze her old hometown. When she was younger, they kicked her out due to Fantastic Racism; the only person she spares is her childhood friend Alan, who never agreed to the exile but was powerless to stop it.
  • Dawn of War, in the back story Gabriel ordered the Exterminatus on his own homeworld Cyrene when he discovered corruption among the recruits.
  • Should you choose to follow the Demon Path in Soul Nomad & the World Eaters your first act of evil is to, of course, kill everyone in your village.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, this happens to the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado through slightly different flavors in both the Chaos and Neutral paths. In Chaos, by destroying the angels who have replaced the kingdom's rulers and blasting Naraku open, Mikado descends into anarchy. In Neutral, you have to order the entire kingdom's evacuation for events to unfold. Let's just say that the original settlers could have chosen the site for their castle much better.
  • In Mass Effect 2, Jack's loyalty mission is to help her find some small amount of closure on her traumatic childhood, by destroying the abandoned Cerberus facility on Pragia where she was tortured and experimented on.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2: Bishop the Chaotic Evil Social Darwinist ranger grew up in an poor swamp village much like the Player Character's. He later burned it to the ground, along with his Luskan kidnappers and handlers, in an attempt to burn his past and those that bound him in one fell swoop.
  • Depending on your choices, it's very possible for your heroes to wind up destroying part of their hometown before The YAWHG ever arrives.
  • Sands of Destruction begins with Kyrie suddenly getting a massive case of Power Incontinence (for powers that he didn't even know he had - or even knew could exist) and turning his home village to sand. You can later revisit it and find his uncle's apron, the only thing not sandified.
  • In StarCraft II, Vorazun is the one to voice the option to destroy her homeplanet, Shakuras, rather than let it fall to the Zerg. Artanis initially wanted to refuse the idea, but he went along with it, and they detonated the planet with over a billion Zerg on top.
  • In World of Warcraft, Gul'dan was cast out of his village for being weak and deformed. When he discovered and embraced Fel magic, he returned to his village and killed everyone in it.
    Gul'dan: No one living has heard of the village of my birth... and no one... ever... will...
  • In RuneScape, Bandos slew the god Jododu Otoku in order to ascend to godhood himself. Since Jododu was protecting his planet from spacial debris, his untimely death resulted in it being destroyed and all life on it being exterminated save for Bandos, to his satisfaction.
  • Super Paper Mario has Count Bleck, who is implied to have destroyed his entire home dimension and race after his father’s Parental Marriage Veto.

    Webcomics 
  • One (and a half) villain in The Wotch was ostracized by his village of reindeer because he was a were. No, not a werewolf, a harmless were-girl. When he/they came back from a quest for an artifact allowing him/them to control the change, the townsfolk reacted even more violently, leading to an inevitable, but deserved, massacre.
    • The Uricarn Demon killed all the other members of his species. He comments that he probably should have thought it through a bit more, since he didn't discriminate by gender. Cue daydreaming about the time Anne fought him after transforming into a very accurate and very female Uricarn demon.
  • In The Order of the Stick:
    • Resident Heroic Comedic Sociopath Belkar Bitterleaf claims he intends to do this to his Halfling village in order to earn roleplaying XP.
    • Durkon might do it by accident, given a prophecy that he knows nothing about. Since he's become a vampire possessed by an evil spirit who is infiltrating the Dwarven homeland to try to bring about the end of the world, this has become a much more immediate threat.
  • Kirkman's Peak, the Sokolov Academy, and the van Kolyma family compound in Bad Moon Rising suffer this fate.
  • In Darths & Droids, Darth Vader's destruction of the planet Naboo is revealed to be this when Vader tells Luke that "he" is actually Padme, Luke's mother and the former queen of Naboo.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 


 
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Gul'dan

After accepting the powers offered by Kil'Jaeden, Gul'dan returns to the village that he was cast out of.

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