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Sword of Damocles
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A weapon used as a deterrent, to sway people into acting in a certain manner. This comes from the second moral of the original story of the Sword of Damocles, where "The value of the sword is not that it falls, but rather, that it hangs." More often than not, the weapon is intended to have some type of height advantage, to more explicitly invoke this image. This can include launchable weapons that once off the ground serve that purpose. The Kill Sat may easily be an example of this. The Weapon for Intimidation is a somewhat related, smaller scale version. See also Appeal to Force and Gunboat Diplomacy. For the other moral of the Sword of Damocles story, see Prestige Peril. When two or more opposing forces have this, it's Mutually Assured Destruction. |
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Watchmen: Nite-Owl's Archimedes seemed to be intended to serve this purpose, and was used this way when there were riots in the streets — though, as it was his ship, it wasn't exactly taken seriously. This is also Ozymandias's plan — by creating fear of an extraterrestrial attack, he intends to scare the planet into world peace. It seems to work, but close examination reveals he launched his plan just as the United States and the Soviet Union were about to start peace accords anyway, meaning that he's scuttled real peace in favor of peace based on a false fear, liable to collapse if it's ever revealed... like what may be happening a few days after the last panel. |
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Referenced in The Salvation War when referring to Uriel. Considering what Uriel is capable of, even with tinfoil hats and cruise missiles to stop him, this is not surprising. | |
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In The Kang Dynasty, Kang the Conqueror decides to invade Earth (again) in an attempt to train his son Marcus. His base of operations is a gigantic spacecraft shaped like a sword called Damocles. | |
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Literal Swords hang over the Kings' heads in K, referred to In-Universe as "Swords of Damocles". They are manifestations of a King's power, and if Kings overextend their power and the Sword falls, large areas around them will be destroyed as well. When it gets close to this, the only way to prevent it is for the King to be slain - but it is difficult for one who is not a King to slay a King, and the burden of killing a King puts a huge strain on a King's sword... leading to something of a cycle that two generations of Red and Blue kings have found themselves in. Both seasons of the anime have the possibility of this situation as a plot point. | |
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Rocketship Voyager: After World War III, Spacefleet has A-bomb platforms orbiting Earth to enforce peace. Agritech Keshari (an expy of Kes from Star Trek: Voyager) is slowly dying of radiation poisoning as she was Collateral Damage when Spacefleet nuked the palace of her ruling Khan to stop his genocidal intentions. | |
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The Binding of Isaac: Antibirth features an item called Damocles. If you choose to use it upon picking it up, you get an extra item for every item that spawns. Unlike other items that spawn an extra item, which make you choose between the two, extra items spawned from Damocles' use can be taken even if the originally spawned item is picked up. Extra items that spawn in Shops and Devil Rooms can even be taken for free! The catch? Upon use, the sword dangles from a string over your head, and, upon getting hit, starts counting down an invisible timer. When this timer runs out, the sword falls off the string with no prior warning and instantly kills you. The timer is random, meaning it could kill you as soon as you get hit, or you could get hit and not have the sword fall on you for several floors, if at all. This creates an interesting dilemma - Do you use the sword and pray that it won't fall on you before you finish the run? Or do you pass up on it and miss out on the free items? Downplayed in that having extra lives or being invulnerable when the sword drops will prevent it from killing you, though you'll lose out on the extra item drops when it does. | |
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Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain creates a pair of Damocles swords on language, which would effectively prevent war and peace; Skull Face created Mini-Mecha Metal Gears that can equip nuclear missiles, which he'd sell to anyone displaying cult behavior, while remote-disabling any of their nukes if they were used by an Omnicidal Maniac. The other sword, the vocal cord parasites, can kill off anyone who tries to talk it out with their neighbors, and then spreads to kill their local friends and family. The end result would be that the entire world would fragment into independent states which are technically a united humanity, because they're unable to war against each other and are all similar by design; they would all be Cults who internationally speak Nuclear, cannot speak anything else, and cannot invade or cooperate with other cults. | |
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In the Honor Harrington novel Mission of Honor, when Honor shows up at Haven to negotiate a peace treaty, her fleet of superdreadnoughts in orbit are referred to as "an infinitely polite sword of Damocles". | |
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Between Planets: The Circum-Terra space station has hundreds of nuclear missiles, enough to destroy any military force that threatened Federation control of Earth. | |
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This was Pain's plan for the tailed-beasts powered weapon in Naruto; to create (and even use) a weapon so terrible that it would put an end to war, at least until people stopped fearing it and it would have to be used again. | |
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Dragaera: A species called the Serioli created the Soul Eating Morganti weapons — which annihilate people in a world where Death Is Cheap and Reincarnation is the default fate of souls — as a peacekeeping measure, by making the threat of war too horrific to risk. It worked... for the Serioli. Dragaerans and humans don't share their scruples. | |
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Fist of the North Star had Raoh effectively act as this: Indeed, during his first battle with Kenshiro, news of him not winning (the fight was a draw, but this was as good as outright losing to the lands Raoh conquered, and to his minions) and him hiding away to recuperate had his territories descend into chaos. It's only when he returns does he restore order to those regions. | |
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Voldemort in the Harry Potter series uses the werewolf Fenrir Greyback this way: do what he says or he'll send Greyback after your kids. As Lupin (who was himself bitten by Greyback as a child) puts it, "It's a threat that usually yields good results." | |
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The evil professor from Real Genius makes his genius students build him a laser (while his Butt-Monkey student/valet works on the tracking system) for a space-laser version of one of these he promised to the military (for a supposedly obscene amount of money). | |
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In Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F', this is why Frieza's minions have him revived — his empire has fallen apart in his absence, and they see him as the only way they'll be top dog again. It's a bit of an own goal, since he's back to killing people who disagree with him almost immediately. | |
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In Austin Powers in Goldmember, this is the intended effect of Preparation H. | |
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In Season 5 of The 100, the Eligius prisoners are revealed to have a missile retrofitted with the Hythylodium they were sent to mine for on asteroids, which is even called the Damocles. The original plan was for Colonel Diyoza to hold the Earth hostage with the Damocles and demand for the prisoners to be pardoned for their crimes and allowed to return to their lives, a plan that became useless since, in the hundred years it took for the prisoners to return home, the Earth had suffered from the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. In the season finale, Paxton McCreary spitefully fires the Damocyles after it becomes clear that his forces can't win the war for Eden destroying the last habitable place on Earth and turning the planet into an irradiated husk. | |
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In Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, the Crime Syndicate has one they intended to use to control their alternate earth. It's even named Project Damocles. | |
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The Dresden Files: Referred to overall as the "Doom of Damocles". The "Doom" is applied to those wizards the White Council believes to be just shy of irredeemable, and can summed up as "One strike and you're out", or in other words, "do any Black Magic at all whatsoever and you get beheaded by the Wardens". Note that this usage has little to do with this trope and is based on the original meaning of the term. Ghost Story reveals that Harry himself served as this for Chicago with a lot of the supernatural community. They found him so terrifying that most just didn't bother showing up. |
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In Final Fantasy XII, though not an actual weapon (unless you count living people as potential weapons), Basch Fon Ronsenburg is the Sword of Damocles Vayne put in place to Marquis Halim Ondore IV, having proclaimed him executed years ago when Vayne told him to. He even mentions the trope in dialogue upon discovering it. | |
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Tony Stark's exposition of his Jericho Missile in Iron Man might be a variation of this; a weapon that only needs to be fired once. | |
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One of the songs in The Rocky Horror Picture Show is titled "The Sword Of Damocles". In said song, Rocky sings about how he's just been born and how he can already fear that something is about to go terribly wrong. | |
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Xykon discusses this in The Order of the Stick prequel Start of Darkness; he would only have to unleash the Snarl once or twice as part of his bid for world domination, and fear of the Snarl would keep anyone from opposing him ever again. | |
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In The Irregular at Magic High School, the Yotsuba clan accidentally brought a Physical God into existence. He was too dangerous to let live, but so useful that they didn't want to murder him, so they took a third option: brainwashing him into a Morality Chain. Unfortunately, the holder of that chain is mortal, and there's no way Tatsuya will let them repeat the process. So the vast majority of Yotsuba are not happy, even though they have unimaginable wealth and power; they know that someday the Barrier Maiden will die, and all the Earth with her. Even while she's young they have no peace, because they see Tatsuya lurking in every shadow, an eternal reminder of their failure and greed. | |
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Metal Gear: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker pretty much runs on this trope; set during the Cold War, the game's villain creates a series of bi-pedal nuclear tanks that, following an initial nuclear attack to prove its capabilities, grants the closest thing to peace through Mutually Assured Destruction. It turns out that while the average human cannot bring themselves launch a nuclear weapon, an assembly can convince its members to push the button on someone else's orders, especially if the Sword of Damocles becomes actively visible. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain creates a pair of Damocles swords on language, which would effectively prevent war and peace; Skull Face created Mini-Mecha Metal Gears that can equip nuclear missiles, which he'd sell to anyone displaying cult behavior, while remote-disabling any of their nukes if they were used by an Omnicidal Maniac. The other sword, the vocal cord parasites, can kill off anyone who tries to talk it out with their neighbors, and then spreads to kill their local friends and family. The end result would be that the entire world would fragment into independent states which are technically a united humanity, because they're unable to war against each other and are all similar by design; they would all be Cults who internationally speak Nuclear, cannot speak anything else, and cannot invade or cooperate with other cults. |
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In Sonic Adventure 2, the Eclipse Cannon was intended to serve as this. This is why it was only fired as an example. No point in Dr. Eggman ruling an empty planet, is there? | |
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In Soul Eater, Arachnophobia get their hands on an Artifact of Doom named Brew, but it doesn't work (because Medusa's team stole the real one and gave them a fake). However, Arachne still realizes it to be useful because everyone thinks they have it, and thus can still threaten enemies into retreating. | |
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The infamous Spiny Shell (also known as the Blue Shell) in the Mario Kart series serves this purpose, or rather, the threat of one. It is a weapon that seeks out the racer in 1st place and slams into them, causing an explosion that stops them cold for several seconds and, with a few exceptions, cannot be avoided. Everyone who has played Mario Kart games for long enough will feel on edge whenever they're ahead in case someone obtains a Spiny Shell. And in the games where other players' items are visible, such as Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart 8, you can sometimes see people in the lead slam on the brakes and let people overtake them when they see someone get one, or spot the notification that one is barreling up the course to them. And this mechanic works very well — so well that most other kart racers have adopted similar weapons: the Ghost in Snowboard Kids, the Swarm in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, the Blue Pac-Bomb in Pac-Man World Rally, the Warp Orb in Crash Team Racing, etc. | |
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Dungeons & Dragons: The Forgotten Realms spell Blade of Doom causes a sword-like blade of force to come into existence over the target creature. When the target performs a specific act, the blade drops onto the target, damaging it. The Book of Vile Darkness has a few spells that answer the question of "why don't the commoners rebel against the evil empire?" pretty succinctly, including one that causes it to rain acid over an entire region for months. |
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In Halo 5: Guardians, it turns out this is the exact purpose of the titular Guardians, massive Forerunner war machines. A single Guardian has enough firepower to keep an entire solar system under control. At the end of the game, we see one of their weapons is an EMP burst strong enough to overwhelm an entire planet. | |
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Cradle Series: During the Uncrowned King tournament, the ascendant being Kiuran of the Abidan offers a prize: Penance, a weapon that can kill one living thing on the planet, without exception, without fail. The Monarchs are very interested in this, and note that whoever gets it will be able to do whatever they want just by the threat. When someone does win it, they are promptly informed that they have to use it immediately. Kiuran conveniently forgot to mention that earlier. | |
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The Forgotten Realms spell Blade of Doom causes a sword-like blade of force to come into existence over the target creature. When the target performs a specific act, the blade drops onto the target, damaging it. | |
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Ghost Story reveals that Harry himself served as this for Chicago with a lot of the supernatural community. They found him so terrifying that most just didn't bother showing up. | |
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In Castle in the Sky, Muska takes control of Laputa for just this reason. | |
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In Tyranny, Kyros' Empire is maintained in part by the threat posed by their Edicts. The Edict of Execution in Act I is perhaps the best example. Its entire purpose is to force the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus to get their act together or die, with an eight day time limit or a 363 day time limit, since Kyros' Edict only mentioned that they needed to be done on the Day of Swords, but not necessarily that year's Day of Swords. It's a sign of just how bad things are between the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus (the armies and their respective Archons just hate each other that much) that even the looming threat of being wiped out in a matter of days isn't enough to stop them from infighting. You have a vested interest in figuring out a solution since you're stuck in the valley too, meaning the Edict will kill you as well. | |
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Death Note: The premise is about a notebook that can kill anyone with a public identity in any physically possible way, which is used by the protagonist Light "Kira" Yagami to make criminals (and anyone opposing the Villain Protagonist) literally drop dead and/or spend the last moments of their life under the complete control of a shadow dictator. While this drops the crime rate to near-zero and ends all wars, civilization under Kira becomes shallow and hypocritical due to the constant fear of being accused by their friends, family, and neighbors of harboring criminal or rebellious thoughts and then being killed by an invisible, all-powerful entity, or being killed by the entity for no reason at all while the rest of the world villainizes them posthumously. In the Death Note Special Chapter, A-Kira decides to auction a Death Note to various First World governments, rationalizing that these countries already have nuclear weapons as swords of Damocles, and giving them yet another Artifact of Doom will just cause it to be tied up by the bureaucracynote sadly for A-Kira, he never realized there was an even greater power, the Shinigami King, holding a sword over everyone. SK orders Ryuk to kill A-Kira to send a message to the mortals; stop trading the Artifact of Doom.. He sells it to Washington DC, which wins the auction for a whopping 900 billion dollarsnote 1 quadrillion yen, but Ryuk reveals to Donald Trump that the new rule patch means if he accepts the note for United States custody he will literally drop dead. The president decides to surrender the notebook, but pretends America has a brand new magical sword of ink and paper. |
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Space Cadet (Heinlein): One of the Patrol's routine tasks is to maintain the string of satellite nuclear weapons orbiting Earth. Unlike Between Planets, which involves The War of Earthly Aggression, this is presented as Utopia Justifies the Means. The protagonist however has to address the issue of whether he might be called upon to nuke his own hometown someday. | |
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In the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Assignment: Earth", the U.S. is about to launch an orbital nuclear warhead platform. Gary Seven's mission is to make it malfunction to scare other nations into not using them. | |
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The Elder Scrolls: In the distant past, Mad God Sheogorath hurled a rogue moon at the newly built Egopolis of the Dunmeri Tribunal Deity Vivec. Vivec saved the city by freezing the moon high above it, but then invoked this trope. He told his followers that the moon was held in place by their love for him, and that if they should stop loving him, it would fall. He's not actually lying. Due in no small part to the player's actions in Morrowind, Vivec disappears early in the 4th era. Some temporary measures are enacted to keep the moon in place, including the use of a soul-burning machine. However, those attempts prove futile, and the moon falls with all of its original momentum, causing province-wrecking results. Years later, the waters where the city once stood are still boiling. | |
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One Piece: The protection or threat of one of the Three Great Powers is used to control specific locations. Whitebeard's protection kept people from attacking even the weakest of his territories, Boa Hancock's membership in the Seven Warlords of the Sea protected her home of Amazon Lily, and the threat of a Marine Admiral, Buster Call, etc., kept certain laws and policies in place for the marines. The Three Great Powers are more of a delicately balanced Cold War. The deterrent is their respective strengths. The Buster Call would fit with this trope more, though there is no one weapon in the series yet that keeps any sort of peace. On a smaller scale, things are protected using the threat of powerful individuals. The World Government and at least one other independent villain have tried and so far failed to acquire a truer version of this trope in the form of one of the three Ancient Weapons. The World Government are convinced that with an ancient weapon at their disposal, they'll be able to end the age of piracy (and any other opposition to their rule). Said independent villain was also confident that the World Government would let him get away with anything once he had attained the weapon Pluton. |
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The Forgotten City, which started life as a quest mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has this as the central premise. It takes place in a lost city populated by various people of different races and backgrounds live in relative peace... as long as they all obey the Golden Rule: "The many shall suffer the sins of one." If anybody so much as steals a single coin or lays a hand on another within the city's confines, everyone pays the price. This, however, doesn't stop people from exploiting the Golden Rule under false pretense of fairness, such as price gouging life-saving medicine or keeping someone imprisoned just because they might break the rule. | |
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Code Geass: Schneizel's ultimate plan is to scare the world into peace by hanging a Kill Sat fortress armed with the setting's equivalent of nukes over their heads. Appropriately enough, the fortress is actually named Damocles. Unfortunately, he also plans to nuke any city that is currently at war. In other words, all of civilization will go back to the dark ages. Also, his character flaw is that he gets bored easily and might do a certain something unnecessarily sadistic just to cheer himself up... Meanwhile, Lelouch and Nunnally had their own separate plans for using it. Nunnally's plan was to turn it into a target of hate for the world to unite against, resulting in peace once it gets destroyednote she never quite explains if she plans to let the resistance movements of the world unite and find a way to sabotage the fortress, or if she intends to fire a nuke within the fortress itself. Lelouch's plan turns out to be pretty much the same, except he uses himself as the target and has Suzaku as Zero kill him, which actually does result in a better peace than what Schneizel or Nunnally had in mind. This can be chalked up to punishing himself with death for all the horrible things he already did, and that humans are less capable of hating a soulless machine than a genocidal Card-Carrying Villain. |
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Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker pretty much runs on this trope; set during the Cold War, the game's villain creates a series of bi-pedal nuclear tanks that, following an initial nuclear attack to prove its capabilities, grants the closest thing to peace through Mutually Assured Destruction. It turns out that while the average human cannot bring themselves launch a nuclear weapon, an assembly can convince its members to push the button on someone else's orders, especially if the Sword of Damocles becomes actively visible. | |
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In This Bites!, Captain T-Bone reorganizes the former CP9 agents into "Jormungandr", which not only serve to assassinate the other Cipher Pol cells but also to kill a member of the New World Mason who chooses to stray from their morals and their original path of helping the world. | |
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In Planet Alcatraz, the Penal Colony planet has a space station hovering in orbit, equipped with weapons capable of wiping out anything more technologically advanced then allowed. Wanna build guns to kill each other? Go ahead. Hey, what's that down there? It looks like a spaceship. Better scorch it, to be sure. | |
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In Our Man Flint's sequel, In Like Flint, Gen. Carter schemes to load a space station with nuclear bombs instead of a weather laboratory (under the code name Project Damocles) and launch it into orbit around Earth. | |
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Blake's 7: "Countdown": When Albian legally demanded their independence, the Terran Federation placed a Doomsday Device on the planet and threatened to detonate it if they rebelled. The rebels try to seize the control room in a coup de main, but it turns out the bomb itself is hidden elsewhere, and there's a Race Against the Clock to find its location before it detonates. "Volcano": A race of pacifists threaten to detonate another Doomsday Device if any aggressor lands on their planet. The Federation decides to call their bluff. It's not a bluff. Subverted in "Death-Watch". President Servalan is serving as neutral arbiter between two systems, and has her battlefleet on 'routine maneuvers' near the border, "...a small demonstration of concern for my personal safety, which both sides understand and accept." However, Avon realizes that Servalan is plotting to have the two systems go to war, and it's actually an invasion fleet waiting to mop up the survivors. |
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Ryse: Son of Rome has this in the form of a dagger, one that's standardly issued to every Roman officer. It has the picture of the titular Damocles on it, though in contrast to the actual legend Damocles was a Roman officer who was betrayed by his commanders in the middle of a battle. He came back to life after being killed, donned black armor and a white face mask stained with blood, and killed them. Roman officers keep the daggers on them as a reminder to treat their legionaries well and to be brave in battle, should the Black Centurion come to kill them as well. | |
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In the Death Note Special Chapter, A-Kira decides to auction a Death Note to various First World governments, rationalizing that these countries already have nuclear weapons as swords of Damocles, and giving them yet another Artifact of Doom will just cause it to be tied up by the bureaucracynote sadly for A-Kira, he never realized there was an even greater power, the Shinigami King, holding a sword over everyone. SK orders Ryuk to kill A-Kira to send a message to the mortals; stop trading the Artifact of Doom.. He sells it to Washington DC, which wins the auction for a whopping 900 billion dollarsnote 1 quadrillion yen, but Ryuk reveals to Donald Trump that the new rule patch means if he accepts the note for United States custody he will literally drop dead. The president decides to surrender the notebook, but pretends America has a brand new magical sword of ink and paper. | |
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At the end of the Imperial China chapter in Live A Live, Ou Di Wan Lee reveals he always has a pair of assassins living behind his throne, with standing orders to attack him whenever they see fit. They're strong enough to kill him, and thus he must always remain on guard — this is how he stays strong enough to be a powerful martial artist. They also serve as a last line of defense when the Earthen Heart master wipes out Lee's inner circle. | |
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Soulcalibur IV features "Critical Finishes", One-Hit Kill Finishing Moves that can only be used when your opponent's Soul meter is empty and yours is full. Since the Soul meter empties through blocking, they are clearly meant to discourage excessive blocking and are not meant to be seriously used. | |
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This was taken very literally in Power Rangers Zeo, where King Mondo dug up a "powerful but unstable" weapon called the Damocles Sword which he had buried centuries ago so he wouldn't be tempted to use it. Apparently, the sword was a self-induced version of this trope, which he broke after thinking he could defy it. As it turned out, his choice was a foolish one. Trying to fight the Rangers with it only resulted in him losing the battle (and being the first Big Bad of the franchise to fall in combat to the Rangers, a very dubious honor). | |
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Star Wars: Rebellion has the Death Star act as this, as per the "Tarkin Doctrine." A Death Star's mere presence in a system causes a sector-wide boost to Imperial loyalty, and can quell uprisings just by orbiting the unruly planet in question. Actually blowing up a planet with it, however, is treated as crossing the Moral Event Horizon in-universe, costing the Empire support across the galaxy. | |
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