Civilization Destroyer - TV Tropes

"The Honkai is bent on destroying the humanity. As human civilization advanced, this force pushed back harder. Herrschers are powerful humanoid embodiments of the Will of Honkai. They can bend physical laws on a whim to wreak destruction on humanity. (...) The base kept an arsenal of 300 nuclear weapons to deal with potential Herrscher attack. She fired them all at the last 3 cities of the world. These 3 cities were gone in an instant. Nothing was left except for smoking craters. The 31022 people in the base became the only human survivors of this attack."

• Fullmetal Alchemist: Father is revealed to have been behind the destruction of Xerxes, a genocide so thorough as to leave only one survivor, and he was only spared because the culprit had a soft spot for him. Most of the plot turns out to be driven by his plan to repeat it using Amestris. Xerxes was destroyed to create two philosophers' stones: the one that empowers Father, and the one that empowers Hohenheim. The attempted Amestrian genocide, which almost works, is to empower Father enough to capture God.
• Gundam
  • Very nearly accomplished by the Principality of Zeon towards the Earth Federation in the backstory to Mobile Suit Gundam when they annihilated billions of people on Earth with a Colony Drop. The intention of the drop was to destroy the Earth Federation's underground military headquarters but it veered off course. It eventually led to both the Federation and Zeon signing the Antarctic Treaty banning WMDs and other such tactics, if only to ensure that the entirety of human civilization wasn't wiped out. It's also hinted that Gihren Zabi had something similar in mind for the end of the war, with him admitting he plans to reduce the population of Earth down to under a billion should Zeon be victorious.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack sees Char Aznable try something similar with his plan to drop the Axis asteroid base on Earth and render the entire planet uninhabitable, in order to force what's left of humanity to migrate into space.
  • The end plan of the Zanscare Empire in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam is to completely cleanse the Earth of its population so their own people can move in and claim the planet.
• Tweeny Witches: In "The Secret of Dragon House", Jestor created a computer program to destroy the Witch Realm. Although he planned to destroy the Warlock Realm as well, apparently he died before he could complete his work.

• Crossed: The Blood Men's civilization is destroyed in the Toba supervolcano eruption (if it ever existed in the first place, as the story of its destruction is told by an archeologist infected with the Crossed virus).
• Fantastic Four: As the Consumer of Worlds, Galactus naturally does this for every inhabited planet he consumes. While his mainstream counterpart sends ahead a herald to warn said planets of his approach, his Earth-1610 counterpart is shown as sending multiple heralds who form outright suicide cults worldwide in order to prepare Earth for his arrival.
• Green Lantern: Several billion years ago, the Manhunters turned on the Guardians (or were reprogrammed) and wiped out all life in Sector 666. The sole survivors of the rampage formed the Five Inversions to get back at the Guardians.
• Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005): The Sheeda (who are actually degenerated humans despite their bizarre and horrifying appearance) are Planet Looters from the very distant future of Earth, who keep their own civilization going by raiding past ones at their zenith using Time Travel, wiping the slate clean for new ones to arise and keep the cycle going. They have their sights set on 21st century Earth during the story, and are revealed to have wiped out Camelot in the distant past - not the mythical one from the Middle Ages, the actual Camelot which was a much older, utopian civilization in around 8.000 BC.
• Venom:
  • The Venom symbiote's first host used it to carry out a genocide on his homeworld, reducing it to a barren wasteland.
  • Knull, the antagonist of the fourth volume, is an ancient deity and the source of all symbiotes who traveled the cosmos for billions of years, devouring entire civilizations.

• The Bridge (MLP): The Big Bad (Bagan, the Terran God of Extinction) caused the collapse of Earth's original civilization, causing so much damage that even when they managed to seal him away, they were unable to sustain themselves and what was left fell apart.
• The Chaotic Masters: The Chaotic Masters destroyed multiple ancient kingdoms back in the day, including Camelot, Agrabah, Corona, and Arendelle, usually by corrupting the local princesses into their brides and getting their help in doing so.
• The backstory of the planet C’hou in With Strings Attached and especially The Keys Stand Alone discusses how the Pyar and Dalns pantheons, Jerkass Gods supreme, trashed much of C’hovite civilization over 500 years before the four first came to the planet in Strings. Although Ketafan civilization was ultimately spared via Durothé’s desperate bargain with the Dalns gods, the Baravadan civilizations weren’t so lucky. Especially after the Dalns gods swapped the big northern Sdyir lands for a chunk of tropical land inhabited by the reptilian Tayhil. The cold forced the Tayhil down into the warmer lands, where they proceeded to try to take over. Although the Baravadans (with Dalns help) were ultimately able to exterminate the Tayhil, there wasn’t much left of them afterwards. As of Keys, Durothé estimates that there are fewer than 100,000 Baravadans left (on a continent the size of Asia), and since they’re no longer having children, they’ll be gone in 40-50 years.
• With This Ring: The Sheeda, as mentioned under Comic Books above, appear in this story as well as one of the possible future threats Paul is aware of thanks to his meta-knowledge. He begins preparing for their arrival in earnest after Dr. Sivana, who's been missing since a fight with Captain Marvel shortly before Pauls arrival on YJ Earth, returns unexpectedly and reveals he's spent a year stranded in the distant Bad Future the Sheeda originate from — further investigation reveals that the Sheeda destroyed not just Camelot (as shown in canon), but also an advanced civilization of bipedal dinosaurs and a precursor to Atlantis, and have been planting spies and infiltrators on modern Earth for at least a century in preparation for the next Culling. Thanks to the advance warning, the Sheeda are defeated when they try to attack, albeit with heavy losses all over the world, leading to the deaths of their leadership and the destruction of Castle Revolving, which allowed them to travel in time, preventing them from ever trying again.

• In DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, the Genie explains that Pompei and Atlantis were destroyed by Merlock the Magician's wishes.
• In Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, Godzilla Earth destroys human society and comes very close to destroying all of humanity, and in Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle, he brings about the extinction of the Bilusaludo. It's later revealed that Ghidorah has destroyed countless planets, and the Exif are summoning him to destroy more.

• The Thirdspace Aliens in Babylon 5: Thirdspace have, according to the Vorlons, massacred thousands of races in their home universe and continue doing so every day because they believe only they have the right to exist.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • Wonder Woman 1984: The Stone is said to be responsible for the destruction of the Hittite, Cushite, Mayan, and Roman civilizations, among others.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League: Darkseid is said to have conquered uncountable worlds by using the three boxes to turn the planet into something similar to his own and the few survivors become Parademons. In fact, Darkseid requested for Steppenwolf to conquer 50,000 worlds just to talk to him again.
• Ghostbusters (1984): Gozer (also known as Gozer the Gozerian, Gozer the Destructor, Gozer the Traveler, Volguus Zildrohar and Lord of the Sebouillia) is an extradimensional being worshiped as a god by ancient Sumerians and modern cultists. When it enters a world, it annihilates the population; before it tried to come to Earth, it already had destroyed the Meketrex Supplicants and the Vuldronaii.
• Godzilla: King Ghidorah's Showa and anime incarnations are renowned for traveling the cosmos, destroying civilizations. In the MonsterVerse continuity, it's heavily implied in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) that the Kaiju across Earth have caused the downfalls of ancient and prehistoric civilizations, which tried to exert control over them only for it to backfire horribly, in times long past. Also, whilst the Godzilla vs. Kong movie leaves it disappointingly ambiguous, the novelization more explicitly confirms that Godzilla caused the end of the civilization that King Kong's ancestors built in the Hollow Earth, driving them to Skull Island on the surface where they were forced to eke out a more primitive lifestyle.
• Hellboy (2004): Hellboy is apparently the Beast of the Apocalypse and is fated to destroy human civilization on Earth, which is what Rasputin wants in the first movie. It is also prophesied by the Angel of Death in the sequel.
• The Planet Looters from Independence Day do not actually destroy the planets they loot, but after taking all the planet's resources nothing is left from any possible civilization to survive in it.
• Played for Laughs in Mars Attacks!, as a parody of Alien Invasion stories (including Independence Day). Martians do not want to destroy Earth itself, but they do want to Kill All Humans and vandalize their monuments. The novelizations and tie-in books clarify that this is the entire basis of Martian civilization; they have no great purpose or joy than finding other planets with intelligent life, wiping out the inhabitants, taking everything they find interesting or useful, and then moving on to the next inhabited planet to repeat the process.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thanos has quite a record of going to planets and brutally murdering half of their occupants in his mad, obsessive quest to prove himself right.
  • For an example tied to a specific civilization, Thor: Ragnarok has Surtur, a Fire Demon fated to destroy Asgard during its prophesied apocalypse, Ragnarok. He is introduced early in the movie where Thor easily defeats and aprehends him, seemingly implying that's he's not that big a threat for the titular hero. However, in a bit of a twist, Thor himself unleashes Surtur on Asgard in the climax as a last ditch effort to stop Hela from taking over the Nine Realms, and in the process, indeed destroying Asgard. Many of the Asgardians are forced to evacuate and they are seen having been given sanctuary on Earth in a later film.

• Plato's Critias says that Atlantis was destroyed in a single day and night of misfortune. Many succeeding works treat it as a historical or mythical event and try to explain how it happened, despite it only being an allegory.
• One of the basic characteristics of the Cthulhu Mythos horrors is that most of the different Eldritch Abominations would rapidly destroy human civilization if they ever awakened. The exceptions would simply want to toy with us first.
• Thunderworks brought about a Class 1 Apocalypse in the backstory of The Dreamside Road. Though they’ve been gone for years, the influence of the global Thunderworks attacks is felt in all aspects of the plot.
• Overlord (2012): Ainz runs into the Quagoa, a civilization of mole-men. As he's entered an alliance with the dwarves (their competitors for territory and ore), he tells Shalltear and Aura to reduce their numbers a little and ask them to surrender. When the Quagoa don't see why they should surrender to two little girls, their numbers are culled from 80,000 to 10,000 by Shalltear because they didn't agree quickly enough. This has the curious effect of later creating an Odd Friendship between their leader Riyuro and Jircniv, as both were leaders of mighty empires who had no reason to believe they could be curbstomped by anyone before meeting Ainz, and pledged themselves to his service to save their people.
• In the Priscilla Hutchins series, the Omega Clouds — known as the "Engines of God" in the alien legends that first put humanity on to them — are planet-sized organized clouds of unknown nature which sweep through the galaxy in waves approximately every 8,000 years, destroying obvious signs of civilization. They seem to be primarily attracted to right angles. One now-extinct race went around building fake cities with lots of right angles on various uninhabited moons to try and distract them. The next wave is expected to reach Earth in about a thousand years.
• The Remembrance of Earth's Past series reveals in The Dark Forest that the universe is populated largely by xenophobic Civilization Destroyers; as in, every single alien civilization either is one, is hiding from them, or has been destroyed by one. Death's End drives home how utterly mundane our complete destruction is to them.
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime:
  • The True Demon Lords have a reputation for doing this when they go on the war-path. Milim Nava destroyed the advanced elven nation of Soma when they made the mistake of killing her pet dragon in their attempts to control her, which is how she evolved into a True Demon Lord in the first place. What was left of Soma was then finished off when her pet returned as the Chaos Dragon and scattered the elves to the winds, forcing them into different groups that established new elven homes around the world.
  • The Primordial Demons had a habit of doing this in the past. Before he became a True Demon Lord, Guy Crimson back when he was known as the Primordial Rouge was summoned to destroy an enemy nation. He wiped it out and then wiped out his summoner's nation for kicks and to drive home how he doesn't like being told what to do. Testarossa, Ultima, and Carrera (Primordials Blanc, Violet, and Jaune respectively) in part chose to join Rimuru Tempest because they thought serving such a powerful yet interesting being would bring more entertainment than destroying random civilizations for kicks and killing time.
  • True Dragon Veldora did this plenty of times in the past before he got sealed away in order to "let off steam". No, really, if he didn't release his magicules after storing them up too long it would rush out in a massive explosion that could also birth powerful monsters like Charbydis. His sisters don't have this problem since they have much better control of their power (though Velzard deliberately lets her power leak out passively to cause a continent-wide Endless Winter). One of the nations he destroyed was one for vampires, which caused their Vampire Monarch and True Demon Lord Luminous Valentine to establish a new empire in Ruberios that lurks in the shadows.
• In There Is No Antimemetics Division, SCP-3125 is a meme from somewhere outside our reality so alien and so powerful that once it takes hold in human minds, it completely wipes out civilization as we know it. A human in control of SCP-3125 is debatably a human being any longer.

• Chouseishin Series:
  • Chouseishin Gransazer: The precursors of humanity were originally a thriving civilization until they were wiped out by the Cosmic Alliance. In actuality it was the Bosquito who destroyed them, with the Cosmic Alliance coming to Earth to help them and only resorting to Orbital Bombardment to keep the Bosquito from spreading.
  • Chousei Kantai Sazer X: Earth's Bad Future came about when the Descal obtained the Cosmo Capsules and made a wish with them to Take Over the World, wiping away human civilization and allowing them to repopulate the planet with their Space Pirates.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Prior to the events of Kamen Rider Kuuga, the Gurongi civilization was destroyed by the previous Kuuga who sealed them all away. Given how the Gurongi were a tribe of Serial Killers who preyed on humanity's ancestors, the Linto, and how the ones not defeated by Kuuga were killed by their own ruler for being too weak to participate in his killing game, it's an oddly positive example of this trope. The first episode has the remaining Gurongi being unsealed and Yusuke becoming Kuuga to finish the job.
  • Kamen Rider Kiva: The Franken, Wolfen and Mermen races were wiped out by the Fangire prior to the beginning of the series, leaving only a Sole Survivor from each.
  • Kamen Rider Gaim: The Helheim Forest will destroy human civilization eventually if its encroachment on Earth isn't stopped. Prior to coming to Earth, it targeted the Femushinmu's civilization, which led to a select number embracing its power to become Overlords and using it to genocide the weaker members of their kind. The leader of the Overlords now deeply regrets this since it reduced their civilization down to just a few violent psychopaths.
  • Kamen Rider Build: It's revealed that Mars originally had a thriving civilization until Evolto destroyed it using the powers of Pandora's Box. He planned to destroy the planet itself too, but was stopped when he and the Martian Queen dealt each other a mutual defeat.
• The Replicators in Stargate SG-1 use all alloy and technologies available in a planet to keep replicating themselves, destroying all civilization but not the planet itself, which becomes one large Replicator-like world.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: The Original Series:
    • "Operation: Annihilate!": Going back to ancient times, a number of civilizations on different planets have been destroyed by outbreaks of mass insanity. The cause of the insanity is alien creatures that attack people and inject material into their bodies that takes control of their nervous systems.
    • "What Are Little Girls Made Of?": The aliens who lived on the planet Exo 3 created android robots to serve them. When the androids developed Artificial Intelligence, the aliens became afraid of them and started to turn them off. In self-defense, the androids Turned Against Their Masters and destroyed them.
    • "The Changeling": The interstellar probe Nomad uses its alien technology-enhanced weapons to completely wipe out the population of the Malurian system, killing more than 4 billion people.
    • "I, Mudd": The aliens who created the androids originally came from the Andromeda galaxy. Their home planet's star went nova and destroyed their civilization except for a few outposts, whose inhabitants died out over time.
    • "The Immunity Syndrome": The entire population of the Gamma Seven-A system, consisting of billions of inhabitants, is killed by having their Life Energy drained by a giant space amoeba.
    • "Return to Tomorrow": A half-million years ago, a highly advanced Human Alien civilization fought an apocalyptic war that destroyed the surface of their planet, ripped away the atmosphere and killed all living creatures on it. Before the end, a few members stored their minds in advanced devices to wait rescue.
    • "The Empath": The star Minara is about to go nova, and all of its planets (several of which have populations) will be destroyed. The Humanoid Alien Vians can only save the population of one planet. They do so, but the other civilizations are doomed.
    • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield": The Humanoid Aliens of the planet Cheron completely wipe themselves out in a genocidal war.
    • "That Which Survives": Long ago, every living thing on the planet Zetar was killed. The minds and Life Energy of 100 of its Humanoid Alien inhabitants traveled into space and search for new bodies to possess.
    • "For the World Is Hollow, And I Have Touched the Sky": Several thousand years ago the Fabrini people's home sun went nova and destroyed their planets, but some of them were put on a ship resembling an asteroid and sent to another planet.
    • "Plato's Stepchildren": When the planet Sahndara is destroyed by its sun going nova, almost all of its civilization is annihilated. A small number escape to Earth, then later another planet.
    • "Wink of an Eye": On the planet Scalos, radioactive water causes the entire race to live at hyper-accelerated speeds (which tremendously shortens their lifespans) and makes the male part of the population sterile. By the time the Enterprise arrives, there are only a few Scalosians left.
    • "All Our Yesterdays": When the star Beta Niobe goes nova, its only planet, Sarpeidon, will be destroyed. However, the entire population of the planet has used time travel to journey into the planet's past. They are mentally and physically conditioned to fit in, but their civilization in the future is effectively destroyed.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The Borg don't destroy any planet they conquer (though they don't leave them in great condition), but they assimilate all sentient life forms on the planet, essentially eliminating any form of native culture and civilization.
    • "The Survivors": The supposedly human "Kevin" turns out to be a Douwd, a supremely powerful alien being. He refused to fight when the Husnock attacked the planet he was living on, but his human wife did. She got killed, and in his grief Kevin wiped out the Husnock. All of them. Everywhere. All fifty billion of them. Hearing this, Picard decides there is no punishment he can adequately think of, save for leaving Kevin alone with his grief and shame.
  • Star Trek: Picard:
    • "The Impossible Box": Picard invokes this when he furiously disputes Jurati's suggestion that the Romulan-controlled Borg on the Artifact may be different.

      Picard: [outraged] Change? The Borg? They coolly assimilate entire civilizations, entire systems! In a matter of hours! They don't change! They metastasize.

    • "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1": Sutra learns from her mind-meld with Jurati that there are extragalactic synths who can be summoned to eradicate all biological life in the Milky Way. In the next episode, there are robotic tentacles emerging from an interdimensional portal, but Soji breaks the beacon's console before they fully enter our space.
    • "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2": General Nedar's dialogue reveals that the Romulans have at least five different settings for planet-wide sterilization, and they very nearly obliterate the androids (and presumably all plant and animal life as well) on Coppelius.

• Dungeons & Dragons: The civilization of the nation of Blackmoor reached an incredibly high-tech level compared with the rest of the planet. Unfortunately, their knowledge exceeded their wisdom, and the accidental detonation of some of their machines annihilated Blackmoor, the neighboring Thonian Empire, and other populated areas. They were submerged under the ocean and their populations wiped out.
• Eberron: The daelkyr brought down most of the old hobgoblin empire, and it's implied that they've caused similarly eldritch downfalls for other empires on other worlds. The quori devoured a lot of cultures as they built Riedra. This has... worrying implications for Khorvaire given that the dwarves of the Mror Holds are now dealing with Dirrn the Corruptor, and the quori have big plans for the Five Nations.

• ANNO: Mutationem: Amok is an Humanoid Abomination capable of mass destruction with the full control of Mechanical Abominations that can unleash devastation that can wipe out all life. In the bad ending, this comes to fruition when Amok is freed from her imprisonment and brings about The End of the World as We Know It by turning the entire world into a barren hellscape.
• Crash Team Racing: A Dummied Out dialogue shows that Nitrous Oxide was the reason why there's no life on Mars: there was, until Oxide came to them, challenged them to a racing competition, and won.
• Fate/Extella has the Servant Altera, aka Attila the Hun. In reality, she isn't human, but the remnant of an intelligent alien superweapon called "Sefar" that was sent to Earth to cleanse it of all forms of civilization. Obviously, Sefar was stopped in the past, but a small piece of it lived on as Altera, adopting human form to fit in on Earth. Altera herself isn't actually an evil person; her desire to destroy civilizations is simply a built-in instinct for her. Through her experiences in life as Atilla and in the game, making friends with the protagonist, she ultimately decides that she will only destroy "bad civilization". Anything she likes she labels as "good civilization".
• Khimera: Puzzle Island: The mastermind has lived for at least a millennium, and as they say, "I have wiped entire civilizations from history!"
• In Mass Effect, the Reapers come to the galaxy every 50,000 years or so and wipe out all advanced intelligent life before leaving. The Mass Relay network they leave behind ensures that galactic civilization develops along predictable lines, making it easier for them to destroy it. The first game starts with the Reapers about to return.
• Monster Hunter: One Fatalis single-handedly obliterated the ancient kingdom of Schrade.
• In Spore, species with the Scientist ethos get access to the Gravitation Wave, a superweapon capable of destroying every structure on a planet while keeping its ecosystem intact. Using it is against the Galactic Code.
• Stellaris:
  • Colossi are planet-killer spaceships that civilizations can build in the late game, but how the planet is killed is quite variable, and need not be an Earth-Shattering Kaboom (though that is one option). They can be outfitted with the Neutron Sweep, a weapon capable of killing any intelligent life while keeping the planet colonizable. A more specialized version is the Divine Enforcer, which converts all inhabitants of a planet to spiritualism. Since robots and hive-minds can't be spiritualists, they will all be killed instead, leaving the planet empty. Yet another option is the Deluge, which simply dumps a tremendous amount of water on the planet, instantly turning it into an Ocean world (and killing anybody who happens to be on it). Diplomacy-wise, use of any Colossus-based weapon is treated about the same as using a Planet Cracker.
  • Both the Unbidden and the Prethoryn Scourge will completely cleanse a planet after bombarding it long enough, killing all bio-matter and destroying all machines. All they leave behind is a barren world. On the flip side, if the Prethoryn decide to colonize a world themselves, you'll be the one doing this to them if you want to take it back.
• Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic Adventure: Chaos wiped out most of the Echidna race and destroyed their great civilization after their leader Pachacamac tried to take the Chaos Emeralds by force and trampled some of his Chao friends in the process, pissing him off and causing him to absorb the Emeralds to become Perfect Chaos. Because the Emeralds also amplified his rage, he then tried to turn his attention to the rest of the planet with only Pachacamac's daughter Tikal stopping him by sealing them both inside the Master Emerald. After Eggman in the present-day breaks open the Master Emerald to release Chaos with the intent of using him to conquer the world, Chaos bides his time long enough to get all the Emeralds and become Perfect Chaos once more to resume world destruction, flooding Station Square and forcing Sonic to go Super Sonic in order to defeat him and pacify his rage.
  • Sonic Frontiers: The End is the reason why the Ancients are extinct as it destroyed their homeworld and chased the evacuating survivors to Earth. Some of the Ancients tried using the Titans to fight back, only managing to beat it by using the Chaos Emeralds to seal it inside one of them.

• RWBY: Subverted. Salem has been trying to divide humanity for thousands of years, co-opting the monstrous Grimm for her own ends, and pitting civilisations or Humans and Faunus against each other. Every time humanity gets too peaceful or settled, she arrives to destroy it from within. However, her goal isn't to destroy civilisations, it's to destroy the entire planet. The Big Good has spent millennia encouraging people to oppose her, thwarting her enough for "only" individual civilisations to fall, but ensuring the planet and humanity survives to rebuild. In Volume 8, Salem takes a giant step towards that goal by destroying the Kingdom of Atlas to obtain two of the four Relics she needs to destroy the planet.

• Girl Genius: The Other came very close to destroying all of Europa, and successfully destroyed the civilizations of most of the ancient immortal god queens with only two queens and their lands and people known to have survived, though Zeetha is from a people whose civilization survived the destruction of their immortal queen.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: The Seven are serial examples of this, being Dimension Lords who subdue, consume and destroy practically every civilization in every universe they touch. The 'nicer' ones, like Solomon, simply add you to their glorious empires. The less nice ones, like Mottom or Gog-Agog, strip your land clean of resources or simply consume all life on the planet for their own benefit or entertainment.

• DC Animated Universe:
  • Superman: The Animated Series: Superman discovers that Brainiac kills every sentient life form on the planets he collects knowledge from. Brainiac's reasoning is that "the fewer beings who have the knowledge, the more precious it becomes", which naturally outrages Superman.
  • Justice League: The three-part premiere episode "Secret Origins" shows that the same aliens that decimated the Martian civilization (leaving J'onn J'ozz as the Last of His Kind) are awakened on Earth.
• The Lost City of Krobos in Extreme Ghostbusters was a civilization destroyed 2000 years in the past due to its alchemists dabbling in demonology.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Played for Laughs with Cosmo, who is revealed to have been so incompetent during his days at Fairy Godparent boot camp, his magical bungling destroyed Pompeii ("I can make it warmer!"), Atlantis ("I can make it cleaner!"), and Xanadu ("I call it Pittsburgh!"). He's (very slightly) less destructive as long as he has a godchild to reign him in.
• The Legend of Vox Machina: Season 2 opens with four mysterious ancient dragons completely obliterating Emon, the capital city of an entire continent. Thordak, a fire-breathing dragon, tells the survivors their monuments should fall and their civilization erazed before destroying the Royal Palace with his shout.
• Ōban Star-Racers: Canaletto had destroyed many civilizations millennia ago, seeing them as "impure and imperfect". It's because he deemed Great Beings' view of life as "weak".
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM): Robotnik has personally ended multiple civilizations almost entirely. He roboticized 85% percent of Mobitropolis' population on day one of his rule, turning 90% of the city itself into his personal headquarters and war factory. From there, he spread his forces across Planet Mobius, encountering and destroying most of the Wolfpack, and various other civilizations left unnamed, known only by the ruins they left behind.
• One episode of X-Men: The Animated Series mentions that Apocalypse was behind the destruction of several civilizations, including the Babylonians, Sumerians, and Assyrians.