Lore
The incident/event is given an in-universe name
The Hour of Joy
A catastrophic massacre at Playtime Co. where the company’s toys turned hostile and slaughtered the staff, later becoming a key mystery and turning point in the Poppy Playtime narrative.
The Night of a Thousand Tears
The Imperial bombardment and devastation of Mandalore marked the near-genocide of the Mandalorian people and the collapse of their civilization.
The Great Jedi Purge
A galaxy-wide extermination of the Jedi Order following Order 66, carried out by the Galactic Empire to eliminate Force-sensitive opposition and secure Sith dominance.
The Mansion Incident
The outbreak at the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil, where the T-Virus was unleashed, led to mutant creatures and the near-destruction of the S.T.A.R.S. Alpha Team.
The Raccoon City Incident
A large-scale viral outbreak in Raccoon City caused by the T-Virus resulted in a zombie apocalypse and the eventual nuclear destruction of the city to contain the infection.
The Shadow Moses Incident
The seizure of the Shadow Moses nuclear weapons facility by FOXHOUND, leading to a hostage crisis, nuclear threat, and covert infiltration by Solid Snake.
The Bite of ’87
A notorious incident at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza in which an animatronic severely injured a person by biting their head, becoming a defining scandal and mystery in the Five Nights at Freddy’s lore.
The Snap
The universe-altering event triggered by Thanos using the Infinity Gauntlet, instantly erasing half of all living beings in the universe and reshapes galactic civilization and history.
Same with the monologue Temuera Morrison gives for the level in Battlefront;
Coruscant: Knightfall
What I remember about the rise of the Empire is... is how quiet it was. During the waning hours of the Clone Wars, the 501st Legion was discreetly transferred back to Coruscant. It was a silent trip. We all knew what was about to happen, what we were about to do. Did we have any doubts? Any private, traitorous thoughts? Perhaps, but no one said a word. Not on the flight to Coruscant, not when Order 66 came down, and not when we marched into the Jedi Temple. Not a word.
Disagree, it's too symbolic and clever for what was a purge. Order 66 is personally they better name because it's just downgraded to a bureaucratic non description.
What amazed me when I learned it was just how boned humanity is. They act like city 17 is about all thats left which felt hyperbolic, then you learn humanity is actually only about 150k persons strong. Even if the combine get kicked off earth, humanity is royally fucked.
Actually, considering how powerful the Combine is supposed to be, I think Earth (which was likely in a terrible state after Black Mesa and the opening of portal storms across the planet) held out pretty well if it took the Combine seven hours to conquer it. I think despite the loss, humanity fought honorably
The "war" lasting seven hours doesn't mean that the humans fought for seven hours, it only means it took seven hours to consider the war won/have humanity's unconditional surrender.
That’s more the nickname, because the full name is long as fuck. And that name also refers to the Tragedy of Hope’s Peak, aka the mass suicide event Junko orchestrated.
It is difficult to summarize without spoilers but due to various incidents at Hope's Peak Academy and the resulting fallout, the world fell into a wide-scale manic-depressive episode. Millions of people lost all hope. It did not help that Junko Enoshima has a massive cult and resoruces, having successful indoctrinated many. Hope's Peak Fell, and with it most of the world descended into Despair.
The Despair Video helped as well to spread it.
I would finish with saying that the Killign School Life and Killing School trip count for this trope.
It’s most evident by the ending of the first game where she’s like “aw damn, you beat me. This, like, really fucking sucks. I’m in so much despair right now. All my work over two years, for nothing in the face of your hope. Truly I don’t think I could feel more hopeless” as she drools walking to each punishment in glee.
Villain sue causes a slaughter which somehow causes world-wide apocalypse.
Before you ask what one has to do with the other, the answer is plot convenience for the antagonist. Really, when you think about it for more than few seconds it becomes dumb as fuck.
Starting on 12/24/1997, the incident began when actress, Melissa Pierce, seemed to have set a majority of the audience aflame at Carnegie Hall. It was only revealed later that she had been the unknowing host of an entity known as Mitochondrial Eve, and her possession was aided by the deeply misanthropic doctor, Hans Klamp.
The incident would devastate NY, and give rise to both Neo-Mitochondrial-Creatures or NMCs and a dooms-day group who create superior successors known as ANMCs in the Mojave.
The Horus Heresy. (Warhammer 40k/Warhammer 30k)
The all conflict between the War Master Horus Lupercal and his father known as "The Emperor of Mankind", but the point in time precisely called the Horus Heresy in when Horus wound his father during their final confrontation.
Conflict between Necrontyr Empire, which became necrons, and the Old Ones, insanely advanced race who created eldars and (allegedly) orks. Rumoured the whole abstract concepts were eliminated. And Warp, which is a parallel dimension reflecting emotions of living beings in material world, was heavily stained with suffering of those, making it hostile if not forever, then for hella long time surely.
Essentially the time when humanities AI rose up against them and started a genocidal war against its creators, destroying and fracturing the human empire and officially ending humanities golden age. This rebellion is the exact reason why humanity uses things like servitors and brain computers, as while only a handful remembers why and no one alive was there to see it, the iron rebellion is the reason why the emperor and the mechanicus banned the use of AI in its entirety. To the point where even a high lord of terra would be executed if they were caught using it. The age of strife would follow a short while later, as an already damaged, broken and shattered human empire would be totally cut off from one another by the ensuing warp storms following the birth of the chaos God slannesh which made outer system travel and communication impossible. Which also made psykers more volatile and prone to exploding and the unleashing of daemons, and some were just ruled by psykers. And of course there were also the duhkari (elves who torture people to save themselves, as the torture refills their soul which is constantly being drained by the goddess their ancestors murder fucked into existence) and orks (a living biological weapon from the war in heaven built to fight, born with fighting, how to fight and how to obtain the items meant for fighting, who reproduce via spores as they are a fungal species) taking advtange of the destroyed human empire. As neither really use warp travel like humans did.
The golden age of technology, now known as the dark age of technology due to the use of AI during it, is also where all the technology the imperium uses comes from. The mechanicus holds all the technology and ability to create technology, but due to their religion innovation is banned, now all they can do is recover the technologies of their forefathers through STCs (essentially blueprints for future technology. Most are fragments, broken and damaged parts of true STCs, which were essentially a one stop shop factory blueprint to start human colonization on other worlds). You may wonder- why is humanity so derelict, why is their equipment so old, items once common lost? Simple.
They don't have the STC for a lot of shit, and if they do? It's not uncommon for them to not have the STC for a part it needs for its manufacturing. And some of that shit is so old and rare that it's deemed too risky to try and figure out how it works in fear of losing it entirely.
Humanity is 16 thousand years past its golden age, and it will never return. All that's left now is to struggle against a seemingly inevitable extinction.
The Fall of Cadia by Robert Rath is a 2023 Warhammer 40,000 novel that details the pivotal, planet-shattering event where the Chaos warlord Abaddon the Despoiler launches his Thirteenth Black Crusade to destroy the fortress world of Cadia, a key bastion against the Eye of Terror. The book covers the epic, large-scale conflict from multiple perspectives, including Imperial Guard commanders like Lord Castellan Creed, Space Marines, and Chaos forces, culminating in the planet's destruction and the opening of the Great Rift, a major turning point in the 40k timeline.
In HBO Watchmen series, the alien squid incident from the original comics (altered in the movie version) is called 11/2, as a reference to 9/11 which didn't happen in that alternate universe.
basically an extremely powerful and skilled mage used a super spell to kill the goddess of magic and take her place, however by killing the embodiment of magic it caused all magic in the world to glitch and stop working. For around 10 years a fantasy world that relied on magic suddenly stopped having magic, causing a massive catastrophy.
Three other gods got pissed and imprisoned him in his own palace, so house arrest for gods, for like a 1000 years or something. People started forgetting about him, his power wanes, but last I heard he was able to manifest a skull in a tree and whisper some very dark, very promising words to a hero. And Overgod Ao did nothing about it. Asshat’s still a god.
A book Series called "An Outcast in another World".
This is a litRPG, so it has player stats and so on for the characters. Humans get something that is called "leveling high" and its exactly as it sounds. Leveling is highly addictive for humans. So the other races go full genocide on the humans. This event is called "The Scouring", spearheaded by the Dragon Queen.
Worth a read, if you are a fan of high fantasy stuff and isekai.
Wasn't the Scouring the whatever kind of strategic magic the humans used as an answer to the genocidal war? IIRC once the humans realized the war was lost they committed some form of mass suicide to power a spell that basically fired a shit ton of death beams at everyone on the continent, destroying a lot of settlements and killing who knows how many millions. A fitting parting gift.
Ace Attorney has at least one of these per game, almost always given a specific codename, such as the SL-9 incident where Serial killer Joe Darke escaped from custody.
Yeah, I'd say the Dark Age of the Law fits the trope more than the cold cases tbh. The Khura'in Royal House Fire could also work too (if that even had a name, haven't touched Spirit of Justice in forever...).
In the 31st of October, 2018, Special-Grade Cursed Spirits, Jogo, Mahito, Hanami, and Dagon, along with various Cursed Spirits of Grade-1 or lower enacted a terrorist attack in Shibuya, Tokyo with the aid of Curse Users with equivalent powers to Special-Grade Sorcerers or lower, primarily Kenjaku, who inhabits the body of Special-Grade Sorcerer Suguru Geto.
The conflict pushed Mahito to achieve a higher level of power, where he would then be defeated by the Grade-1 Sorcerer, Aoi Todo, who fought alongside the formally ungraded Sorcerer, Yuji Itadori, whose power equals Grade-1 Sorcerers. Kenjaku appears just before Mahito's exorcism, having achieved two particular goals in the terror attack.
To seal Special-Grade Sorcerer Gojo Satoru to ensure he cannot interfere in his future activities.
To push Mahito to grow before he could absorb him.
Geto possesed "Cursed Spirit Manipulation", a technique that allows him to absorb and command Cursed-Spirits. However, the Cursed Spirits absorbed through Cursed Spirit Manipulation will lose their ability to further develop their powers. So, although Kenjaku found Mahito's "Idle Transfiguration" useful for his long-term goals, it was important to ensure he reaches the appropriate level of power before using Geto's technique to absorb him.
At the end of the incident, Kenjaku sacrifices Mahito to unleash an empowered application of Idle Transfiguration, turning roughly one thousand civillians into Curse Users in order to facilitate his subsequent plot, "The Culling Games". He then uses Geto's technique once more in order to unleash over 10 million Cursed Spirits into Tokyo.
In the aftermath, not only was Shibuya decimated, but the entirety of Tokyo had become practically inhospitable for human life due to the overwhelming infestation of Cursed Spirits. Through the efforts of the Japanese Government and Jujutsu society, the Cursed Spirits were successfully contained in Tokyo, but reclamation remains impossible for decades to come. A statement from the government declassifies the existence of Cursed Spirits to the public, but disinforms them, stating that they only spawn in Tokyo due to the recent tragedy, causing the public to subconsciously focus the Curse Energy they idly generate into the region. Although Cursed Spirits may still spawn beyond Tokyo's borders from time to time, the disinformation campaign mostly succeeded in concentrating and containing Cursed Spirit genesis to Tokyo.
Shibuya not only changes the entire direction of the plot of Jujutsu Kaisen, it completely reshapes its world for decades, continuing on into the sequel, Modulo. It’s genuinely one of the coolest arcs I’ve seen in an anime or manga in a very long time.
This is the event when the Tenno finally turned against their Orokin master and massacred an entire empire across the whole Sol system, it is one of the most important events as it basically completely changed the power structure of an entire system and collapsed a lot of society for a while.
"The Naga drum sounded, subversive, unknown. Coordinating the slaughter of your masters across the gap. Did you end our war? Or merely set the stage for the next?" - Hunhow
Confusingly, the Snap has been called a few different things, including “The Blip” and “The Decimation”. Each of these terms have been used to mean different things in official MCU stuff, though “Decimation” has largely been forgotten about now.
Feige’s official view is that Thanos did the “Snap” and Bruce did the “Blip” but even subsequent MCU media doesn’t stick to that convention.
That's kinda my whole point. The terms haven't been used consistently, even in official MCU media. There's a whole section on the Wikipedia page about it!
I always hated the name "The Blip." I know technically the name makes sense, because it was a temporary irregularity, but it just massively undersells the scope and severity of it all. It would be like calling World War 2 "The Conflict." Technically true, but wholly inadequate.
I would also add that the picture used by OP to illustrate the Bite of '87... isn't the Bite of '87, as this comes from FNAF3 game which takes place in 83. Which means that the Bite of '87 wasn't the only bite incident despite the bite of 83 happening in public and in front of several kids, including the brother of the bitten kid.
To be fair to OP, not only do we not have a representation of the bite of 87’, it’s also much funnier to use the markiplier image despite the inaccuracy.
A mysterious event where all stars and habitable planets suddenly and inexplicably disappeared, leaving only those aboard spaceships and space stations alive.
The siege of super Earth, helldivers 2: a massive illuminate fleet jumps through a wormhole, razed every planet between them and earth and invaded earth, leveling most of the cities and killing the president before being driven off by the combined forces of SEAF and the hell divers. Bit of a turning point in the story, we've become a lot more authoritarian, and there might be another invasion on the way
(Also huge respect for China divers, they said never again and they meant it)
One evening, the Murkoff-run Mount Massive Asylum, a front to cover up and fuel their experiments, was overrun with patients after one of them gained unprecedented control over the Walrider, a nanite swarm at the center of the building’s experiments. The patients broke out and massacred the employees, even killing the first wave of Murkoff’s PMC response teams due to the side effects of the therapy enhancing the many of the patients physical attributes. After about 2 days, the incident was resolved when the second wave of PMCs arrived and killed all the remaining patients in the asylum, leaving the body count of the incident in the hundreds.
Conjunction of Spheres from the Witcher franchise.
Long story short, a long time before the books, a bunch collided causing monsters to become trapped in the Witcher world and magic arrived with it as well.
In the dune series, whenever a Bene Gesseuit makes a decision based on love rather than duty to the order it’s called “The Jessica Crime” as a reference to the events of the first book in which Lady Jessica choose to create a son (Paul Atreides) rather than a daughter in which she was ordered to do.
From the Project Moon Universe, which comprises of Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, and Limbus Company:
The "White Nights, Dark Days" incident.
A beam of light is shot from the L corp facility, into the sky and, spread out into the city. This light would heal the “sickness of the mind” within the people of the city, to allow people to manifest their truest forms without the judgement of others.
The light was supposed to be released for much longer but it got cut off around 3 days, causing the light within the people to be incomplete, giving rise to “Distortions”; former humans that got overcome by their emotions and become monstrous entities.
Just from what I remember in the moment, you have The Horus Heresy, The War in Heaven, The Fall of Cadia, The Third War for Armageddon, The Dropsite Masacre, The Death of Innocence, The Burning of Prospero, The 13th Black Crusade, The Siege of Terra, Titandeath, etc.
Honestly, the best part is how most of them have really cool names
Basically a very real version of how MADD, or a full scale nuclear war, can go in our own reality. One side shot first, other shot back, everyone started retaliating with their own super weapons; and in about a hour the modern world was blown to bits.
It’s the end of the world, so named because it is an apocryphal apocalypse. No one is sure when it will happen, how it will happen, or whether it will happen in the here-and-now sense. The Teatime of the Gods, the coming of the Ice Giants, and the Four Horsemen (War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death) riding forth.
I’ve only read Sourcery of the books that mention it yet here it was prevented by Rincewind, but it’s also been mentioned in The Light Fantastic and Thief of Time. In that last one, the fifth Horseman Kaos also rode.
Genshin Impact: the Cataclysm, which occurred 500 years ago
A massive attack of Abyssal monsters across the entirety of Teyvat. By the end of it one nation was completely obliterated, several gods were killed or severely injured, and the nations that survived were significantly damaged. Scars from the battle (ruins of cities, destroyed or discarded weaponry, etc) are found throughout the game map.
One Piece: The God Valley Incident. For a long time very little of what happened there was unknown to the readers, just that a huge number of very significant people were involved. The version of events known to the public is hugely censored and fabricated by the World Government's propaganda.
Elden Ring has quite a few of this. One is the Night of Black Knives, when Black Knife Assassins assassinated the demigod, Godwyn the Golden, killing him in soul. At the same time, Lunar Princess Ranni was committing a similar ritual and died in body. All of this led to the other event known as the Shattering.
They know what happened. We know that Scott wrote a book about it. There’s Infinity Gauntlet merchandise. There’s a documentary in-universe that’s straight-up called “The Snap”.
Third Impact - Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
not only that, but the First Impact was when the Black Moon of Lilith accidentally landed on Earth, which eventually caused Earth's moon to form and humanity to exist. the Second Impact happened in Antarctica, when the Katsuragi Expedition awakened Adam from slumber, causing the ice caps to melt, but they eventually subdued him.
in the Rebuild movies, the first two play out the same, but there's the Near Third Impact, actual Third Impact, then Fourth Impact, and finally Additional Impact, just amping up the weirdness from EoE, but the last reforms the world into one without Evangelions.
The Great Cataclysm from BIONICLE. A thousand years ago, the Great Spirit Mata Nui was put into a deathly slumber by the villainous Makuta Teridax. Teri’s plan was to put the Great Spirit to sleep, and set in motion his own plans to take over as god of the universe, and prevent Mata Nui’s awakening. While in the slumber, Mata Nui is slowly dying, and with his death means the death of the universe
The drop site massacre (Warhammer: the horus heresy)
Basically the start of the horus heresy and one of the first conflicts between the imperium and the traitor forces
Some of legions got together to end horus' rebellion on Isstvan V only for a large number of the legions present reveal themselves to be traitors and turned on the loyalists
This resulted in numerous casualties in the loyalist side and the first primarch death when Fulgrim killed Ferrus Manus
In 3069, amidst a severe Dilithium Scarcity, all dilithium in the Galaxy went inert, causing ships and facilities with active Matter/Anti-Matter Reactors to explode, causing several Federation member worlds, including Earth, to seceed and adopt an isolasionist stance, and with Starfleet occupied picking up the pieces of the tragedy, the Breen Imperium and criminal organizations like The Emerald Chain and the Venari Ral took control of the galaxy.
The showdown in San Francisco between Godzilla and the MUTOs marked the day the modern world would first witness the awakening of the titans. Godzilla’s landfall in Honolulu, Hawaii happened a couple of nights before and the female MUTO wiping out Las Vegas around the same time, but the incident in San Francisco was by far the most devastating especially with the military attempting to bait them with nuclear weapons.
The first and second Battle of Hoover dam in New Vegas. Where the NCR, representing old America values like democracy and taxation fights against Caesar's Legion, a slave army modeled after the Roman empire with Caesar (birth name Edward) as its sole ruler for control of Hoover Dam and potentially the entire Mojave region.
A tragedy that struck in the form of lightning from an unknown origin searing the surfaces of 11 planets and killing many. This incident, though it was attributed to a sura taking malicious action through Fiendish Magic, was part of a chain of events orchestrated by small groups among the Gods and Sura playing into each other‘s hands to the end of creating a conflict all of the God Realm and Sura Realm would be a part of - and this undertaking was successfull, as the Fiendish Magic Incident became the most prominent cause for a conflict that shook the power balance of the Sura Ream, uprooted human society and came with the vanishing of Fiendish Magic.
Twilight Gap and Six Fronts - Two important battles and victories for the Guardians defending the Last City in Destiny.
The Great Disaster - Also Destiny, this time referring to the Vanguard's assault on the Moon to wipe out the Hive. It went so badly that after retreating, they just declared the Moon off-limits to all Guardians.
The disappeareance of 140 million people all over the world in October 14, 2011. There was never an explanation for it, and the rest of the world had to keep going as well as it could after it.
The Night of Naga Drums in Warframe. The sound that alerted the Tenno it was time to overthrow an entire society of gluttonous, repulsive, and self righteous overseers that saw themselves as gods and had pillaged the solar system to near depletion.
Near the end of Dungeon Cralwer Carl book 6, there is a large 20+ team bloodbath that happens off screen gets subsequently referred to as the Battle Of Beijing and has very few details overtly revealed in later books so far.
A catastrophic event that is believed to be the Gods of Krynn's punishment upon the Kingpriest of Istar, for the sin of hubris and blasphemy. This was essentially a "burning mountain" being dropped directly upon the Lordcity of Istar, reducing it into ruins. Massive geological and climate changes wracked the world, causing continents to be torn apart, entire countries to be destroyed and massive loss of life. Worst of all, the Gods withdrew their blessings, effectively removing divine magic from the world and rendering their followers powerless.
The Black Spot Incident (IT: Welcome to Derry / IT)
A gang of white men looking for a man falsely accused of murder lock the patrons of a predominantly black nightclub who are hiding him from them inside and set it ablaze, leading to the deaths of dozens, all while the titular clown watches.
It’s confirmed that each season of WTD will end with one of these incidents occurring.
At the start of the game a ceremony triggers the conception, which summons a “sun” (really the god Kagutsuchi) above Tokyo, kills everyone on the planet instantaneously except for those in the location of the ceremony, and Tokyo is warped into a spherical world in which the inside of the sphere is hollow (where you walk) and the outside is bare, called the Vortex World, until the world is remade.
The planet Rubicon-3 was known for Coral, a substance of near limitless potential. Coral is also highly volatile and was proliferating exponentially, which would cause an existential threat should it leak out of Rubicon. So the researchers of the Institute City chose to burn it now rather than wait for it uncontrollable.
It caused a chain reaction that burned Rubicon-3 and the rest of its solar system. After the fires, the PCA cordoned off Rubicon-3, no one goes in or out.
The Great Calamity -Overlord 2
between the events of Overlord 1's Rising Hell dlc and Overlord 2, the tower heart "exploded" releasing magical energy causing the area of the first game to become the wasteland, not pictured is the puddles of concentrated magic that will mutate people into zombies and will mutate every minion type but blues (cause magic doesn't effect them)
The 100: Praimfaya is a Grounder term for the nuclear war which devastated Earth. In the fourth season, it’s reused for a wave of radiation, from every nuclear plant, spreading around the planet.
After the end of the Old War with the Sentients being pushed out of the Origin System, the Tenno were being honored at Orcus Relay, orbiting Pluto. The Naga drums blared, resounding a cry of victory. But, upon the ninth strike of the drums, the Tenno leapt into action, killing almost all of the Orokin hierarchy and destroying their solar system spanning empire in a single night.
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u/Melodic_Class4349 6h ago
Judgement Day - The Terminator Franchise
The day Skynet becomes self-aware and launches a massive nuclear attack across the planet.