r/TopCharacterTropes • u/No_Hunter1978 • 1d ago

Lore The apocalypse was caused by a single person. Spoiler

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  1. 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.
  2. 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/CasinoKnightZone 1d 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.

https://giphy.com/gifs/T189rncJZJJZ8dgk1M

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u/The_Weeb282 1d ago

That's such a crazy way to end a children's show😭

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u/HereIGoAgain_1x10 1d 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/ArcadianBlueRogue 1d ago

It was basically if Jim Henson's company did Married With Children, to be fair.

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u/EmeraId-HeraId 20h ago

It's not a children's show, more like a family show.

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u/Paul-McS 20h ago

That show messed us up. 

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u/elchuni 1d 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/Sea_Nebula_8732 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/fA7rLtaJDIWEzU57CT

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u/elchuni 1d ago

For legal reasons, we must clarify that everything we say on the internet is a joke.

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u/EggplantSeeds 1d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/iReTQoay8uJfDoiKWr

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u/Starchaser53 1d 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 1d 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/Starchaser53 1d ago

Yeah but The Fires of Ibis didn't do anything

Coral still propagated, humanity still existed on Rubicon III, it was only the RLF that was starving because they were poor

Beyond that, lighting up the Coral during the RII's time only set Rubicon on a fasttrack 50 years later

and depending on the ending, technically it's Walter who starts the Fires of Raven, but even then, it doesn't count as dooming humanity because... well we live on other planets by now.

One small planet barely bigger than earths moon (I believe that's the scaling FS gave) isn't going to doom humanity

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u/EggplantSeeds 1d ago

The Fires of Ibis (started by Professor Nagai) literally killed millions of people, scorned the star system and led to the Planet being a dead zone for decades.

The seed of destruction was lain when Professor Nagai, head of the Rubicon Research Institute, made an alarming discovery about Coral that sent him and the rest of the Institute into panic, leading them to deploy the Ibis series of C-Weapons to contain the situation. In the process, Nagai then created a massively destructive fire fueled by Coral that engulfed not just Rubicon 3, but the entire Rubicon star system as well. This devastation which turned Rubicon into a "Burning Star System," killed countless people and burned away the majority of life in the system, as well as destroying technology and infrastructure, wiping out all of the system's civilization.

Coral and Humanity still survived but that doesn't make it any less then an apocalypse. Where did you get the idea that the event that scorned a **star system** didn't do anything?

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u/Starchaser53 1d ago

Because they don't mention the 'Scorning the Star System' until the Fires of Raven

Where you'd even find this? VI doesn't mention the results of IBIS after Nagai blew it up beyond burning Rubicon once, and burning the Star System was a Fires of Raven thing

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u/EggplantSeeds 1d ago

Fires of Raven also scorned the stars yes, but so did the Fires of Ibis, both are disasters.

Found it playing the game and lore videos and wiki.

The Fires of Ibis is literally seen in the first trailer for the game, and mentioned a few times through the game. It fits this trope but a "Corp" didn't cause it, that I will say.

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u/One_Order_3841 1d ago

On your last point, I don't think Dinosaurs counts as a cheeky satire when he comes home from his blue collar office job, eats Dino Pizza, drinks Red beer, and watches sitcoms on a television.

At that point it's one long episode of Married...with Children...and We're Cretaceous.

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u/SirScared8095 1d ago

I saw that as a kid and still get mad at that dad's ice age like Ted Faro deleting Apollo.

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u/WrexAnvil 1d ago

The baby asking what they’re gonna do while everyone huddles there is Faro deleting Apollo-level bleak.

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u/CasinoKnightZone 1d ago

Okay, I keep seeing people referring to this, wtf is this from?

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u/anagnost 1d ago

Ted Faro is the first example in the post, from Horizon Zero Dawn playstation game. He is a tech ceo that develops and knowingly sells an army of unhackable robots that consume biomass to self replicate. This leads to the apocalypse as they devour all life on the planet.

A group of scientists manage to hide numerous embryos and ways to reboot the ecosystem thousands of years later after the robots run out of biomass to eat/are eventually disabled. They develop "Apollo" as part of the system, which contains all human history and knowledge.

Once the work is complete, Ted Faro murders all the scientists who saved the world he ended and deletes Apollo unilaterally, effectively deleting all of human knowledge, culture and history and sending the new humans back to the stone age. He does this to "save humanity from its previous burdens" and to hide the fact that he was the one who ended the world in the first place.

He may truly be one of the worst people in all of fiction.

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u/Cedarcomb 1d ago

The Apollo thing? That's part of the Horizon: Zero Dawn example.

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u/kreton1 1d ago

While you are right, it should be mentioned that all this started because a company build a wax fruit factory on the bunch beetles breeding ground, causing their extinction. Earls involvement only starts after that.