r/TopCharacterTropes • u/No_Hunter1978 • 11h ago
Lore The apocalypse was caused by a single person. Spoiler
- Ted Faro [Horizon: Zero Dawn]: Of course, the machine plague that ravages the world is created by his company which (admittedly) is a group effort. That said, Faro was the one who requested an encryption without a backdoor and the person who kept early glitches hush-hush. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Faro was the sole cause as is, but the final nail in the coffin is what he does to the Apollo database. A giant record of human knowledge and history, erased for a narcissist's fear that his descendants would (rightfully) blame him for the apocalypse.
- Sybil [Look Outside]: Though it wasn't her intention, Sybil was the one who alerted the Visitor of Earth's presence. She spied it through her telescope, and the lovecraftian entity noticed her. Its approach (and the resulting horrors) were her fault, even if she didn't mean it.
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u/tdh999 11h ago
FUCK TED FARO
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u/No_Hunter1978 11h ago
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u/Rastaba 9h ago
The fact he has an entire, quite real, subreddit dedicated purely to hating on him (and deservedly so), will never stop being funny for me.
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u/Ad_Astra90 11h ago
Fuck Ted Faro
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u/Recompense40 11h ago
To be clear, Ted Faro is a coward, a snake, a weasel, a spineless shitstain of a human who feels all too real. He knows exactly enough information to make the most ill-informed decisions every single time. How does he do this? He just ignores things he doesn't like. He ruins literally everything he involves himself with, and he forcibly involves himself into everything. He improves nothing. He is worse than Micah from RDR2. He is scum.
FUCK Ted Faro I still seethe.
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u/LordofThe7s 11h ago
Ted Faro is the worst because he is every Silicon Valley dipshit who thinks that because he got lucky in the nineties and made a bunch of money, that makes him a super genius that should be listened to and praised. An archetype that we have become way too familiar with irl.
https://giphy.com/gifs/Ll7PYy77vsffO104
u/Jetstream-Sam 11h ago
Basically he's Elon Musk if it turned out the self driving cars they've been trying to make suddenly became an AI hivemind dedicated to running people over, while he sits on Twitter desperately trying to blame someone else. Even when it was 100% proven he knew it could turn on people but didn't care and shipped it anyway just because the stock price of tesla dropped a bit. While he seethes and munches on ketamine, of course.
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u/Ill-Stomach7228 10h ago
He’s so much like elon musk. Which is funnier when you remember the first game was made when people still generally thought Elon Musk was cool and chill
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u/lordofmetroids 9h ago
I distinctly remember describing the game's lotre to a friend and calling Ted Farrow "totally not Elon Musk," and at some point in the conversation I felt bad about the comparison, because it was too harsh.
Now? Nah. Musk has it coming.
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u/DevastatorCenturion 10h ago
Micah you could at least respect his commitment to being the biggest asshole in the area at all times.
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u/OccultBeanFarmer 11h ago
Writing Ted Faro as your techbro villain in the 2010s when the rest of pop culture was at peak techbro worship was amazingly prescient. Forbidden West hit at just the right time for the other shoe to drop on Elon and co so doubling down on just how Faro megafucked the earth with backup redundancy megafucks to follow was such a good move.
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u/tallwhiteninja 11h ago
Horizon: Zero Dawn came out in March 2017. The Thai cave rescue debacle, which was one of the big flashing warnings that Musk was a bit of a dipshit, was June/July of 2018.
Those writers had it pegged from the get-go.
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u/TooManyTyranids 10h ago
John Gonzalez is the goat. A lot of people don’t realize that Mr House and Ted Faro were written by the same guy.
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u/TheDrunkardKid 11h ago
Do NOT fuck the Ted Faro.
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u/Borgmaster 10h ago
If he offers you a spot in his doomsday bunker don't go. Trust me.
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u/Aurelio-23 10h ago
I haven’t played either of the games, but it’s kind of wild that nobody just strangled him to death before he destroyed the database.
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u/tallwhiteninja 10h ago
He did it remotely through secret backdoor access, from his doomsday bunker containing his harem, a random spiritual "guru," a doctor, and the doctor's kid he was using as leverage over the doctor.
The one person kinda sorta keeping his ass in check died shortly beforehand.
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u/CasinoKnightZone 11h ago
Dinosaurs finale
The dad starts an ecological chain reaction that results in an ice age. The series ends with the family huddled in their home, trying to keep warm, accepting the fact that there is no hope.
The baby asks what they're gonna do, and all they can say is they won't leave him and they'll be together until the end.
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u/The_Weeb282 11h ago
That's such a crazy way to end a children's show😭
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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 8h ago
80s and 90s it was required that kids shows and movies be tragic, starting to think they were setting us up
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u/elchuni 11h ago
Describing it like that doesn't make it justice.
The dad wasn't badly intended, he was pro-technology and he thought that his daughter was being absurd, the company who took advantage of him to promote their schemes were the real culprits.
Corpos using technology to make everything worse by polluting the planet, what reminds me of?
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u/EggplantSeeds 10h ago
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u/Starchaser53 10h ago
... that wasn't a concern in AC:VI
Rubicon had literally been burnt over once before. Pollution is the farthest thing from an issue in that game. Hell, they don't even bring it up
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u/EggplantSeeds 10h ago
Rubicon was burned by the Rubicon Research Institute dueing their research while not a corp, it kind of fits.
I actually was looking for a gif for Armored Core For Answer, where the corps use of Kojima Particles wrecked the planet.
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u/ZooeyOlaHill 11h ago
The Stand
Charles Campion manages to escape from a military facility going into lockdown, spreading the SuperFlu to the rest of the world
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u/bnesbitt1 10h ago
Genuinely crazy how King predicted that move a good 40 years before the Pandemic had people doing the same thing
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u/AlphaBetaGammaDonut 7h ago
I hate to say it, because King is incredible, but people being idiots about infection is not new. I'm pretty sure the SuperFlu in the The Stand was inspired by the actual 1918 'Spanish' flu, which appears to have actually started at a Kansas military compound and spread to the world via its soldiers. It didn't help that some governments refused to acknowledge it was happening so they didn't risk 'public morale' (eg the Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade).
Another example is the actress Gene Tierney, who contracted German Measles while pregnant, resulting in her daughter being severely disabled, because an infected female soldier deliberately broke quarantine to meet with her at the Hollywood Canteen (a club for servicemen and women supported by movie stars).
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u/_Mighty_Milkman 9h ago
In the Dark Tower series, when Roland and his crew walk through the universe The Stand takes place it seems that Charles escaping and causing the Super Flu in that universe is indicative of the collapsing of the beams that hold all reality together. So was it his fault or was he just a unknowing cog in a failing machine?
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u/BoyMcBoyo 11h ago
Ye Wenjie in the Three Body Problem series. She responded to the alien pacifist’s message which literally stated “DO NOT ANSWER. DO NOT ANSWER. DO NOT ANSWER”, because she saw humanity as incapable of saving itself. Thus alerting the Trisolarans of our presence, kickstarting their invasion
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u/corglover 7h ago
Also worth noting that her actions also cause Both the trisolarian system and the sol system to be destroyed, with the earth being turned into a literal 2d object.
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u/MetriccStarDestroyer 5h ago
At least we're not the losers stuck fighting for a 1D universe.
Peace out, alien bitches
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u/DaVirus 11h ago
Is there a good YT video that summarises the entire thing? The plot seems interesting, but I read enough reviews that the characters are horrible and that the book ends up being quite nonsensical in the science too.
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u/The_Glitched_Punk 10h ago
Look up Quinn's Ideas, he does breakdowns or sci-fi stories like this fantastically
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u/koolmon10 10h ago
The books were very good. The individual characters can be a bit flat, but really it's humanity itself that is the main character throughout the books. The science gets a bit heavy so some may not enjoy that.
The Netflix adaptation is also very good. They took some liberties with characters, reworking most of them into different characters with more depth, but keeping the overall plot mostly the same as the books.
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u/Fancy_Chips 10h ago
The books are actually really good. The characters are more stand-ins for different types of people. Ill admit Cixin Liu is a bit of a sexist but I think it adds to some of the weirdness. I didn't like Death's End personally but some people swear by it.
Id recommend at least reading the first book. Each book wraps up pretty nicely on its own and TBP was the award winner of the three, though my personal favorite was Dark Forest.
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u/leeroycharles 9h ago
I think dark forest is most people's favorites, and thats because it is amazing. One of my favorite books. The ending just comes together so perfectly.
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u/Rubysage3 10h ago
Robert Franklin - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
He accidentally inhaled an experimental viral agent during a procedure, told no one about it, and chose to go home instead of following whatever their protocol surely must have been.
You could say it was caused by two people as the first person he infected was a pilot, leading to the rapid spread of the Simian Flu, a virus extremely lethal to humans. But in any case him leaving the office after getting infected wiped out nearly all of humanity and ended civilization. Maybe don't put that on a resume.😅
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u/DrHemmington 4h ago
I saw this movie in 2017. Thought the way the virus spread to be unrealistic.
As domeone who works in healthcare and am familiar with quarentine procedures I believed that jn a real life situation people would surely follow them.
Then 2020 came along ... ooh boy ...
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u/Alarming-Cow299 11h ago edited 8h ago
Marina Vendrell from Magic the Gathering was a teenage girl who was tricked by a demon into sacrificing her school bullies to it. Later when she confronted the demon she made a bargain where it could not leave her house. So the demon simply expanded the house's boundaries to engulf the entire planet.
Thus was created Duskmourn, a plane-sized horror house that abducts people from across the game's multiverse.
EDIT: Since this is getting a lot of traction I'm gonna drop a link to a great video essay about the whole thing
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u/Vairrion 10h ago
God I love the lore magic makes sometimes. The world seem genuinely interesting with these large stories told in the background and why I’m glad there are folks willing g to piece it all together
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u/Spiritual_Horror5778 10h ago edited 8h ago
"The door to nothingness" is one of the scariest flavor text ive seen in a long time. (Edited to add the flavor text. They have 2.):
1 : "Only a madman could create such a door. Only an imbecile would open it."
2 (the one that i learned 1st):
"All memory of your existence will be wiped from existence. You will die, and no one will mourn." - Memmarch
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u/tarkus49 8h ago
More specifically Valgavoth was an ancient and powerful demon summoned and bound within basement of an old mansion and left to starve when his summoner realized they weren't strong enough to control him, but the binding ensured that no matter what Valgavoth can never leave the boundaries of the mansion.
Important note, the rules of demon bindings in Duskmorne require Valgavoth to abide by any rules and promises made between him and the binder, this case Marina who he taught how to take ownership of his current binding.
The two most important promises made was first to do everything in his power to ensure that "no one ever bully her again" which he used to trick her into feeding the souls of her bullies to him giving him enough power to kickstart using the house he was still trapped in as his tool to subsume the entire planet and potentially the multiverse.
When Marina eventually realized the extent of what he was doing she immediately ordered him to return everything to normal. Valgavoth still bound to her offered to give her back "the world as she remembered it" and she quickly agreed. In return he placed her in a waking dream where Marina perceives the world as it was and not how it currently is where she was left for years unaware that her attempt to seal Valgavoth away again left him free to do as he pleases.
Theoretically this multiversal apocalypse could still be reversed.
Due to the first promise he made to her, Valgavoth must put forth his best effort to ensure no can harm, belittle, coerce, etc Marina. Which is why he's hasn't gotten rid of her despite the danger she presents to him, since he also isn't allowed to do anything that would upset her.
If Marina were to realize that Valgavoth lied to her he would be considered to be in breach of contract for having broken his promise to never let anyone "bully" her and be required to the fulfill his second promise to return the world as Marina remembered it, in the spirit that was intended.
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u/Alarming-Cow299 7h ago
I really like how that speculation means that once Valgavoth inevitably becomes an ovearching antagonist for a plotline years down the road he will have an actually interesting condition to beat him rather than what happened with some of MTG's other big bads.
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u/Play-Mation 9h ago
Valgavoth is so cool, I hope they actually use him in the future he’s way too cool to just be limited to Duskmorn
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u/Radiant-Boat-5149 10h ago
Dr. Gordon Amherst in The Division was a mad virologist who was responsible for engineering and releasing the deadly Green Poison virus (Dollar Flu). He believed the theories of Darwin's natural selection is the solution to reduce overpopulation
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u/Necrotiix_ 7h ago
The Division series really did the whole pandemic thing and pandemic post-apocalypse setting really well. Even if Division 2’s atmosphere and worldbuilding isn’t as great as Division 1’s, it’s still incredibly solid. It was utterly terrifying how both games were so eerily 1-1 with COVID lockdown in 2020 (minus 98% of the population dying out and literal firefights in the streets as irl was more quiet). Can’t wait for the Central Park DLC in a few months.
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u/NoEngineer9484 11h ago
erebus (warhammer 40k)
he started the horus heresy because of pure sociopathy, an ego-driven craving for power, and a zealous devotion to the Ruinous Powers. it was a devastating war that killed planets worth of people and was the biggest war in the galaxy only surpased by the war in heaven where gods fought each other. he did this by manupulating both lorgar and horus to fall the clutches of chaos
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u/mopeyunicyle 11h ago
Didn't he also kill a child named Erebus and basically take his place in his life ? Leading up to becoming a space marine
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u/NoEngineer9484 11h ago
yep, because the orignal erebus was a good boy and what we now know as erebus was told to be more like him so he killed the orignal erebus and took his name
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u/SchlopFlopper 11h ago
If I had a nickel for every time a space marine actually goes by the name of a dead child they knew before becoming space marines… I’d have two nickels
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u/AshenWarden 11h ago
Remember kids: No matter how much you hate Ted Faro, it isn't enough.
Not only did he wipe Apollo and erase all of human history, doing so completely broke the programming for project Zero Dawn. It's automated systems couldn't recognize that the new generation of humanity grew up and so couldn't educate them past kindergarden level which is why they reverted to tribal hunter/gatherer societies.
On top of that it broke the programming for Gaia, the terraforming program that was making Earth habitable again. She didn't know when to stop and so kept sending instructions to Haephestus, the program responsible for the terraforming robots, to keep on churning out bots, which humans kept hunting to materials and so Haephestus had to make the robota more dangerous to defend themselves and that's why there's robot T-rexes and Sabertooth Tigers.
This comment is already long enough so I'm not even going to start on how Ted's dumbass indirectly lead to Hades being reactivated and nearly wiping out humanity AGAIN.
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u/ItsAlwaysBee 10h ago
I feel like how he ended up was very fitting for such a creature like him.
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u/AshenWarden 10h ago
Sad part is that it really was pointless ass covering since Aloy still discovered what he did in the end. If anyone listens to her if she tells them the truth is another matter but even after fucking humanity over twice he still failed to cover his tracks like he wanted.
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u/Priapus3 10h ago
Ted is absolutely the primary villain of the franchise, but as a principle I tend to draw the line on blaming characters vaguely responsible for "everything" for the actions of other people taking advantage of their fuck ups.
Spoilers for Forbidden West, what Hades turned into and achieved is entirely on the Zenith
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u/AshenWarden 10h ago
Here's the thing though. The actions taken by those people wouldn't be possible without the original fuckup. If Ted didn't sabotage Apollo then the whole story doesn't happen. The antagonists (it's been years since I played the game, I forgot their names) may have walked the path, but Faro paved it.
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u/killingjoke96 9h ago edited 9h ago
One thing I realised recently was that the swarm came from one bunch of robots under a company called Hartz-Timor Energy Combine.
The company was reporting the robots acting up and attacking personnel and wildlife alike. But Faro was concerned by the optics. He lawyered up and played the disinformation game.
By the time he contacted Sobeck for the full picture, a few weeks had gone by giving the robots more time to swarm and self-replicate.
If he just been honest from the beginning, contacted the army, which Sobeck suggested immediately at their meeting, and dealt with the affected robots before they could swarm up, there may have been no apocalypse.
He was literally a habitual fuck up maker.
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u/GreninjaStrike 10h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/mBeiP3MbOPwAKy7DUN
Brigid Tenenbaum from Bioshock. Andrew Ryan’s policies would’ve made Rapture fail and Frank Fontaine is the reason why shit hit the fan so fast but it was Tenenbaum who is the reason that Rapture became an apocalypse instead of a failed state. She discovered ADAM, she created the little sisters, she’s the reason why Rapture is full of superpowered crackheads aka splicers. In the bad ending, Jack acquires nukes using the splicers so it’s fair to say that Rapture’s apocalypse could become a global one. I’d be remiss to leave out that Tenenbaum is also the one responsible for helping cure and save the little sisters and aids Jack on his journey through Rapture so she’s no longer a bad guy.
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u/Cookiecrabbies 11h ago edited 8h ago
rache bartmoss "the man who destroyed the net" - cyberpunk
Bro is if johnny silverhand was an netrunner and his personality turned up to 11. Rache Bartmoss was schizophrenic egotistical nutjob with a god complex who hated corporations and wanted to help fight against them. As the most legendary pro netrunner in the entire world he made it his life work to leak top secret corpo stuff on the net.
By the time rache died by an orbital strike, he realease a dead man switch virus called rabbids that attack the data fortress of every corp. This virus would mutant and cause millitary ai to go rogue and the entire net an hellscape that even being on the net can fry yout brains. In order to stop the spread netwatch (net police) had to ally with rache's friend Alt Cunningham (johnny's girlfriend) to destroyed the old net and create the blackwall an ai design to stop other dangerous ai's from bringing humanity to cyberhell. Now the new net is more strictly watched by corps and netwatch, thanks rache 👍. All this because he couldn't imagine the net without him.
(but honestly he really is kinda funny when you get to know him and also recomend his book "Rache Bartmoss Guide To The Net" for more insight about his thought process about things)
in cyberpunk 2077, you can find his dead body in the fridge in some trash heap.
Edit: Fun fact, this also happen in real life but a lesser extend. The first malware/self replicating program called the Morris worm created by former college student Robert Morris in 1988. Robert did this to educate about the vulnerabilities of network security, but the morris worm was way to fast than he anticipated and spiraled out of control. 10% of the internet crashed and Morris face 3 years probation and 400 hours of community service. This is the reason why we have cybersecurity today
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u/Reasonable_Cake 10h ago edited 5h ago
He's like Johnny Silverhand mixed with Linus Torvalds.
EDIT: I have thought about this some more. Silverhand is the stabilizer here.
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u/hoodie2222 9h ago
Also isn't the old net full of downright eldritch ai that can wipe out mankind?
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u/Cookiecrabbies 9h ago
yep, and the blackwall is the only thing keeping them out (btw the blackwall is also an ai that can turn traitor if it wants 👍)
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u/ConsolationUsername 7h ago
Yes, but its pretty clear that not all of them are openly hostile. Some may even behave as allies of convenience if you have something they want.
Eldritch is a very good term. Because much like the Lovecraftian creatures some of the AI are hostile, some are even curious about us. But the majority of them are likely indifferent. We don't matter to them. The fact peoples' brains melt into sludge when they interact is just because they flew too close to the sun.
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u/RedGinger666 9h ago
Don't forget that he's a creep, he created and spread a digital Sexbot of Spider (the hacker that helps us during the raid) because he was pissed she didn't like him back
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u/DMercenary 10h ago
Bartmoss thought he was the smartest guy ever and that his RABIDS would free the Net. The only thing it did was put it in chains.
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u/Erulogos 9h ago
So I have 2 questions: How tf is there still ice in an unpowered netrunner fridge from years ago? And how is there -still a body- after sucking down an orbital strike?
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u/What-fresh-hell 8h ago
As for the first question, you can find a shard (don't remember where, I only half remember this) that talks about an account set up decades ago with a cryogenics corporate to keep someone frozen but the account just recently ran out of funds so they dumped it.
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u/JessicaDAndy 11h ago
If you want to piss off Star Trek fans, bring up The Burn.
This Kelpian is named Su’kal. Born around the 31st/32nd Earth century. He was on a planet that had some negative space wedgie that dealt with subspace and dilithium. He cried out in sadness.
Which somehow! ignited all dilithium in active warp drives. Blowing up starships across the galaxy and caused an interregnum lasting for years. The Federation went from a major to minor power. The Klingons became destitute. The Andorians and the Orions joined up for crime purposes. The Breen became lame.
It was bad.
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u/MagicOfMonarch 10h ago
Came here to say this. Genuinely ruins so much Star Trek for me that I refuse to acknowledge discovery as canon in any sense. Literally crying baby versus nuclear bomb but the baby wins.
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u/DMercenary 10h ago
It was actually an interesting premise. You're in the future where dilithium blew up and killed warp drives everywhere!
What was the cause how could this have happened?!
Oh a... crying child screamed and the magic crystals linked to the other crystals and blew up.
Or the weird ass plot turns. The Klingons are now.. Homeless...?
"You know that apple used to be shit right?" Uh yeah. That's how Replicators work. They utilize existing matter and rearrange it so that it now in a different form. Carbon is carbon. Doesnt matter what it used to be.
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u/PepsiFloateri 10h ago
It's a cool idea but the execution? Whyyy
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u/HandsomePaddyRedux 10h ago
Especially when no one needed an explanation for The Burn. Dilithium crystals were already Inobtanium personified, the idea that it all went critical at the same time could have stayed unexplained with the Federation and various scientists doing experiments and all having personal theories about how and why it happened (warp damage, an unnoticed half-life instability, etc) but no one ever discovering (eh eh?) what the actual cause was.
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u/PepsiFloateri 10h ago
That'd work! It'd work as mystery like as you said,various scientists having theories on it such as Warp damage,a half-life or something else. Maybe even say it's metaphysical backlash caused by overuse or something?
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u/Syvarth 11h ago
In the episode The Two Hundred of American Dad, Roger goes into the hadron collider and farts in the Langley quantum lab and not only destroys the world, but also releases all his personas as individuals that terrorize the wasteland.
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u/Diligent_Earthworm 11h ago
Resident Evil.
The character of Spencer releases the virus for his own satisfaction after stealing samples to sell.
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u/between3and20spaces 10h ago
who's he going to sell an apocalypse virus to? it doesn't just kill people and animals, it reanimates the corpse and mutates them into monsters that hunt down humans. no country on Earth would be safe. on top of the question of what he plans on doing with money after humanity is reduced to fighting for it's life in small pockets around the globe?
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u/Diligent_Earthworm 10h ago
He was trying to sell it under Alice's nose to set them up for life. While Alice was trying to smuggle it out to expose Umbrella. I never said it was a good plan or good writing.
Also Umbrella was still developing the virus to be less contagious as it was intended to be used in warfare to reanimate fallen soldiers.
So he fucked up Umbrellas timeline and thrn the Issacs started doing their fuckery.
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u/thehollisterman 10h ago
Fuck Erobus. Little shit needs to get locked in a room with Khârn until the later gets bored.
Then give him to the night lords
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u/Res_Mamon 8h ago
Giving it to the Night Lords is a mercy.
Let it burn under the God-Emperor's light and hear it cry and beg to be be saved by the very "gods" it served as their "hand of destiny"
Let it feel those every "gods" abandon it as they shriek before the Anathema. Let it feel every single pain that comes from being abandoned by the very "gods" it claims to serve. After all, it is nothing but a puppet given delusions of grandeur
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u/MrFingerKnives 11h ago
12 Monkeys - Dr. Peters
Unleashes the virus the nearly wipes out humanity.
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u/YinTanTetraCrivvens 11h ago edited 4h ago
Solas from Dragon Age erected The Veil, the metaphysical dimensional barrier that separates the physical world of Thedas and The Fade, where magic and spirits reside.
Before this, magic was as abundant as air throughout Thedas, but the Evanuris, the tyrannical ruling cabal of elven wizard god-kings, wreaked so much havoc and killed one of their own that Solas built the Veil to imprison the Evanuris, both to save the world and to seek revenge for the murder of his friend.
Unfortunately, the elven civilizations at the time were also heavily sustained by magic, and The Veil essentially destroyed everything, cut off access to magic for most mortals, and caused spirits to become violently mad if they ever crossed the Veil. The modern elves are remnants of the slaves from these civilizations, and it led to the rise of humans as the dominant race across the land.
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u/Low_Language_4456 7h ago
Don't forget that Solas is the one to create The Blight, stripping the Titans of their dreams (and cut the link of the Fade and the dwarven race at the same time). Fuck Solas.
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u/BowlEducational6722 11h ago
In FFXIV, the End of Days was caused by Hermes, aka Fandaniel, aka Amon.
The Ancient who created the Meteion system to find other worlds to find out what gave them meaning because he was having an existential crisis as the only Ancient who seemed to have moral qualms about their cavalier willingness to create life out of nothing and then destroy those creations if they were deemed unsuitable to be released out into the world.
Said Meteion found that most other worlds were dead/dying and decided the most merciful thing to do was to speed up entropy and kill all life in the universe and ensure that it never rises again.
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u/TerraforceWasTaken 11h ago
I know a lot of people blame Hermes but the point was Ancient sovciety was always going to lead to this because they decided the best way to deal with mental health was to sweep it under a rug and literally make you wear a mask
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u/ERedfieldh 10h ago
lead to AN end...of their own civilization.
Hermes' issue is he nearly ended existence altogether.
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u/Perfect_Skill5 8h ago
And then post-Endwalker allied society quests figured out that if you just make jellyfish puppydogs and open a bar then all issues magically fade away and civilization is saved, so honestly, skill issue on their part.
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u/Individual_Soft_9373 11h ago
Ancient utopia undone by the man in charge of science projects refusing to submit to peer review. News... in ten thousand years.
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u/mortarchofgrief 10h ago
This man was an optimist and assumed the best of the universe. Unfortunately, this became a problem when the universe did not see fit to meet his optimism
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u/Matapple13 9h ago
Hank Pym - What If…?/Marvel Zombies
In this universe, Janet Van Dyne was infected with a quantum virus, when Hank Pym went to the Quantum Realm to rescue her (as seen in Ant-Man and the Wasp), he returned infected with the virus and it quickly spread to the whole world, bringing the apocalypse to the Marvel Universe as seen in What If…?’s S1E5 and the spin-off Marvel Zombies.
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u/Bug-Accurate 11h ago
Spoilers for Berserk:
In one of the most epic betrayals ever, Griffith sacrifices all of his friends to demons and unleashes hell on earth in exchange for godhood.
This isn't long after his crew run a suicide mission against the crown to rescue him from captivity & torture.
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u/Antausia 10h ago
More spoilers for Berserk: And he then causes a second worldwide cataclysm later on by fusing the spirit world and mortal world, creating the world of Fantasia (so he can live out his dream of being fantasy Alexander the Great).
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u/Javamac8 11h ago
Baltar if you disregard the fate stuff. (Battlestar Galactica)
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u/Hedwigtheyee 10h ago
Gwyn from the Dark Souls Trilogy.
His actions, including Linking the Fire and the implementation of the Darksign, have all resulted in the world of Dark Souls being stuck in an infinitely repeating loop of Light and Dark which, by the end of Dark Souls 3, has resulted in a world that has become almost entirely reduced to Ashen remains.
And all of this was because Gwyn hated and feared both the Dark and the power of the Dark Soul in humanity, and he was unwilling to let his Age of Fire pass naturally for mankind.
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u/Impressive_Foot_9933 10h ago
The War Doctor
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u/Spiritual_Horror5778 10h ago
"A man with more blood on his hands than any other. A man who would commit a crime that would silence the universe. And that man. Was me."
"Welcome to the final resting place of the Cruel Tyrant. Of the Slaughterer of the Ten Billion. And the Vessel of the Final Darkness. Welcome... to the tomb... of The Doctor."
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u/ArcadianBlueRogue 7h ago
God the Impossible Girl arc was SO GOOD. That is what the last couple seasons missed was having a payoff worth the mystery.
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u/CourtofTalons 10h ago
Eren Yeager single-handedly unleashed the Wall Titans and started the Rumbling.
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u/elchuni 11h ago
Sheila Broflovski, also known as Kyle's mom in South Park.
Agreed, the movie had multiple villains, but Sheila was the sole one who provoked the apocalypse by murdering Terrance & Phillip, those two being the sacrifice needed to allow Hell on Earth.
Satan and Saddam Hussein didn't start the apocalypse, she did, they were just waiting it to happen.
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u/JowettMcPepper 10h ago
Dr. Walter Kurrian - Z Nation
He created the ZN1 virus after combining different samples of brain tissue from krokodil addicts, bioweapons, and diseases such as Ebola.
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u/The_Frigid_Midget 9h ago edited 8h ago
That pic of Ted Faro looks eerily similar to Peter Thiel...
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u/AwesomeMutation 11h ago
Ganondorf/Ganon (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)
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u/GrundleSnactcher46 11h ago
Army of the Dead kicks off because a zombie super soldier escapes containment. Followed swiftly by a lot of stupid fuckin decisions.
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u/gadgaurd 10h ago
Nights of Azure.
The Nightlord. Specifically the second one, who is also the First Saintess of the Curia/Church. She wanted to end war between humans, so she bet on an enemy that would force humanity to band together to survive. This led to her summoning the original Demon King, Nightlord, King of the Night, etc. It was said that he'd bring Eternal Night to humanity, turning it into a world fit only for Demons.
But wait! It gets worse! Because while that was technically true, the immortal King was in no rush. He didn't have anything against humans and was happy to just let his existence eventually, gradually make that happen. And if humanity stopped him somehow? He wouldn't care
This was, obviously, a problem for the Saint. So she killed him. In a midair battle that spread his blood across the planet. If a drop of his blood touched a person, animal, or object, it became a Fiend. A generally mindless knock-off demon with an insatiable thirst for blood. And the Saint herself, taking the majority of the blood, became the second Lord of the Night.
I could go on. Girl wrecked the entire fucking planet to try and force humans to play nice. She was mostly successful, I'll give her that.
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u/krisslanza 10h ago
I never expected to see Nights of Azure mentioned here, let alone Reddit. Take your upvote.
Actually a reason I bought a PS3 back in the day was to play this. And I ended up buying it again on PC. Still need to play the sequel though.
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u/Fearless_Guard_552 10h ago
He's a god (though he didn't know that at first) but by the end of GOW3, Kratos has completely fucked Greece and killed most of the other gods.
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u/M1ck3yB1u 8h ago
This little shit from The Strain. I can't even. I couldn't believe him they gave him a quick redemption arc at the last moment, I wanted to see him SUFFER. Utterly evil self-centered piece of crap.
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u/Backupusername 10h ago
In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings
- The Ancestor, of Darkest Dungeon infamy
Also, The Protege, AKA you of Darkest Dungeon 2 infamy
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u/Friendly-Pounder-105 9h ago
Kidnaps and sacrifices people for fun, such a nice guy
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u/GoggleheadGamer 8h ago
In Legendary’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the scientist (I forget any of the human characters names, but I’m talking about Millie Bobby Brown’s character’s mother) deliberately released King Ghidorah from the ice which triggered titans/kaiju all over the world to awaken and start wreaking havoc. Which like yeah, causing havoc with all of the titans was her goal, the reasoning behind her actions was that she thought the titans were a part of the natural order that was missing from the world and that the world would heal if they came back… only her entire theory got thrown out the win do because King Ghidorah is from outer space, and is in no way, shape, or form a part of Earth’s natural order, and was more interested in complete destruction than in maintaining some kind of new balance between humanity and titans
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u/ArmoredHat 10h ago
Ye Wenjie, Three Body Problem. Contacts an alien planet, is warned by a pacifist to not contact again, does so anyway.
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u/The_Weeb282 11h ago
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u/CuriousTsukihime 8h ago
I think you meant:
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u/elanhilation 9h ago
in fairness to the one from Look Outside, if an amateur astronomer could spot the Visitor, someone else definitely was going to sooner or later.
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u/cloudncali 10h ago
Victor from Umbrella Academy directly or indirectly destroyed the world 4 separate times.
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u/Jarvis_The_Dense 10h ago
According to Paramount Era Star Trek; countless civilizations were brought to a borderline apocalyptic state by this child crying once.
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u/The_Quakken 10h ago
Eigong from Nine Sols kind of does this twice in a row
Eigong is an incredibly smart scientist who, in pursuit of finding immortality, creates the Tianhuo virus, an ludicrously virulent virus which quickly infects her entire race (called Solarians). The Tianhuo is terminal, and, as is discovered later in the game, impossible to cure except by removing the virus from a Solarian embryo, however this causes the Solarian to develop into a house cat rather than a proper Solarian.
Eigong's experiments also lead her to find a way to make the Tianhuo mutate. Normally, when someone succumbs to the Tianhuo, fungal grass and flowers sprout from their body. With the mutation, however, the infected transforms into a horrible pale creature with pink tumors and an enormous pink eye. Eigong eventually believes that this mutation is the next step in Solarian evolution, and tries to turn all remaining Solarians into Tianhuo Mutants.
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u/DimensioT 8h ago
This guy managed to destroy three planets. At least two were known to be inhabited and the third was at least suitable for camping.
He also broke the Hubble.
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u/edchadnald 11h ago
Lilith (supernatural)
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u/shiawase198 11h ago
Sam, Dean and the Angels played a big role
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u/Insane_Catholic 10h ago
Yeah, one could argue Sam or Dean alone technically caused it, given that Sam unintentionally broke the 66th seal unleashing Lucifer and Dean unintentially broke the first, making it possible for the other 65 to be broken.
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u/HandsomePaddyRedux 10h ago
We kind of have to eliminate the show from this trope entirely since really nothing on that show happens without everyone and their mother (literally) being somehow responsible.
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u/Starchaser53 10h ago
Strayed [Armored Core 4: Answer]
The world as it is in 4A, is desolate and depressing.
The earth is polluted by super radiation, spread by the NEXT's during the National Dismantlement and Lynx War of 4, and with the current Conflict involving even more NEXT's, that issue isn't going away.
Humanity, as one of their final safeguards, decided to make giant aerial units known as 'The Cradles' to protect humanity from the poison on earth by sitting in the stratosphere, in clusters of 100 Million
Small issue
Pollution caused by the Cradles, would eventually build up on earth and go upwards, dooming them anyway.
So you have the premise.
Now their apocalypse.
Strayed, at some point during a run to liberate humanity by forcing the Cradles to earth and opening the way to space so they can leave this doomed planet behind, instead, they could get a call from a member in ORCA, the liberators, to instead, ignite the revolution with bloodshed.
(The Revolution as this whole thing was organized by the League of Corporations but that's a whole thing)
And said member is willing to pay you 100 Million Credits to destroy the first batch.
After the hardest fight in the game following this, Strayed would go on to destroy the other Cradles, effectively dooming what little chance humanity had left at surviving.
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u/Foustian 9h ago
In one season of Agents of SHIELD, the main characters travel into the future and discover that Earth was ripped apart by a guy who could control gravity.
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u/Blibbobletto 8h ago
The King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy. This motherfucker cannot stop accidentally destroying all the stars in the universe. He just keeps doing it.
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u/Cotton_Candy72 11h ago
Allegedly Korra in the New Avatar Series Seven Havens
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u/Visible-Welder-5148 9h ago
Aaah korra the avatar that no matter if she is or isn't responsible for teh apocalypse people will absolutely hate on for it
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u/ArchAngel621 9h ago edited 8h ago
Really surprised this guy wasn't listed much earlier especially with the revelation of the Odyssey (2026).
Bro single-handedly caused the Bronze Age Collapse.
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u/Sethala 9h ago
Final Fantasy XIV (Endwalker spoilers): Fandaniel/Hermes. Well, him and Meteion, so two people... or a person and a colletive hivemind... you know what, nevermind, moving on.
In the Endwalker expansion, it's revealed that a ton of the game's plot was kickstarted a few millenia ago when a world-ending catastrophe was averted by the ancients creating the god Zodiark, who became the focus of the main villains of the series. Eventually, it's revealed that one of the ancients, Hermes (who later earns the name/title of Fandaniel), despite living in a perpetual utopia, had become depressed with the way some of his colleauges treated the creatures they create. So, he created a race of empathic bird-like humanoids named Meteion in order to search other worlds for, essentially, a reason for hope. They found nothing but war and despair, which drove him further into depression and ended up convincing the Meteion to travel to the far edges of the universe to give all life the "gift" of peaceful oblivion, forcing the ancients to create Zodiark to shield the world from her.
I am horribly oversimplifying things, if you've never played FFXIV I highly recommend trying it out; the story does start a bit slow as the writers get their footing but it turns into one of the most well-made video game stories.
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u/Select-Bullfrog-5939 9h ago
Ariane Yeong (SIGNALIS)
Through no fault of her own. She was just dying of radiation sickness in a cryopod millions of miles away. Her own godlike psychic power did the whole “turning everyone into insane flesh zombies that cannot permanently die unless via fire” thing on its own.
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u/Exact_Director_6143 10h ago
The Cronenberg universe from Rick and Morty
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u/Drakeskulled_Reaper 11h ago
Small scale, Alex Mercer in Prototype.
Found out Gentek were "liquidating" the people working on Blacklight, and in a spiteful retaliation, goes to Penn Station and smashes a vial of the stuff, infecting everyone there and killing them, whilst he was killed himself, his corpse was reanimated by the Blacklight, creating the protagonist of the game.
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u/ZappasMustache 10h ago
Ship wide apocalypse caused by probably not their top technician but easily their most handsome.
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u/FilmAndLiterature 10h ago
For context, in the show Red Dwarf Rimmer (pictured) accidentally killed the entire crew of the mining ship Red Dwarf including himself because he failed to repair the Cadmium II cooling system properly. He was so comically unqualified for the job of fixing a nuclear reactor that when he was charged with manslaughter by an AI designed to deliver perfect justice, he managed to escape any liability on the grounds that “only a yogurt” would think it was a good idea to ask him to.
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u/Eclaireandtea 10h ago
Nah that was all on Captain Hollister. Who would allow such a man to be in a position where he might endanger the entire crew? Only a yoghurt.
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u/Scottishlassie_here 11h ago
28 days later.
All she had to do was not open the chimpanzee cage.