Planet Eater

Good for your glutes!


Stan Lee thinks big. He came up with Galactus, a massive purple guy who eats entire planets. That's menacing! To get any more epic in scope, you'd have to have Andromedax, The Galaxy Who Shoots Other Galaxies With A Big, Galaxy-Sized Bazooka. Even better, Galactus isn't some sort of hand-chafing nefarious schemer. He's just very large, very hungry, and loves the great taste of ecospheres.
—Lore Sjoberg, The Book of Ratings, "Marvel Supervillains (Part I)"

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a nom (all apologies to T.S. Eliot).

A character that not just destroys but eats planets for nourishment. They may suck the life-force from the biosphere, feed off its gravitic potential or magnetic field, or just start taking big bites out of the crust and mantle.

Planet Looters and Alien Locusts taken to the Nth degree. Compare Omnicidal Maniac. This is an X-1 class threat in Apocalypse How. When a character eats planet-sized portions (or eats so much they're the size of a planet) that's Big Eater.

Examples of Planet Eater include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Getter Emperor from Getter Robo, before it upgraded to a galaxy eater.
  • The monstrous plant Kaiba from the anime series Kaiba consumes planets in addition to the memories of their inhabitants. At least two characters think this is a good thing, viewing it as a form of Instrumentality.
  • The High Gods of the Kurohime universe get their power from draining the Life Energy of a planet and taking the dead planet as their bodies.
  • In Junji Ito's Hellstar Remina, the titular Remina, being an Eldritch Abomination, eats the planets of the Solar System on its way to Earth. Then, it eats the Earth. Bonus points for being a planet itself.
  • In Psyren, the membrane that surrounds the planet is actually a being which reincarnates by eating planets.
  • The Big Gete Star in the Dragonball Z Movie "The Return of Cooler".


Comic Books

  • One of the two Trope Makers is Galactus, from the Marvel Universe. His appearance has varied significantly. In main universe, he's a non-abstract universal function that resembles a giant of the same species as any viewer but a hundred times bigger, in Ultimate Marvel he's a swarm of robots that both needs to eat planets and hates organic life, and in the second Fantastic Four movie he's a formless mass although if you look really closely, you can make out Galactus's helmet within the swirling clouds at its core.

"Of all the creatures in the vastness of the Universe, there is none like me. I was present at the birth of the Universe, and I shall be there at it's end. Though I ravage worlds to live, I bear no malice toward any living thing. I simply do what I must to survive. And why must Galactus survive? For, no matter how many worlds I devour ... How many civilizations I destroy ... It is my destiny to one day give back to the Universe – Infinitely more than I have ever taken from it. So speaks Galactus!"

    • Spoofed as Balactus in Minoriteam.
    • Revealed as the secret of the Celestials in the Elseworld Earth X; they reproduce this way, by parasitizing planets with their young. Galactus is their enemy.
      • Every time the Celestials succeed in this, it destroys the universe. Which doesn't bother the Celestials, since they can survive it, and this is the only way that they can make more of themselves. Galactus was revealed to have originally been a survivor of a previous universe that the Celestials destroyed, and dedicated his life to stopping them from ever succeeding again.
    • The main universe Galactus, despite being pretty omnicidal, is vital to the survival of the universe. He's a living seal keeping an Eldritch Abomination locked up, and without him, it'd destroy the universe very, very quickly. Most of the energy from his meals go towards the seal rather than his own body, which is why he's always so hungry.
    • Marvel recently introduced Galacta, Galactus' estranged daughter. She actually works as a superhero, and spends a lot of her time trying to control her insatible hunger by eating bacteria. Mostly because anything more filling and she might go on a feeding frenzy that would destroy the world.
    • There's also Hunger, who was sort of like Galactus, except it fed on universes.
    • DC has a largely-forgotten parody called Mr. Nebula, who doesn't eat planets, just re-decorates them by wiping out all life. He is placated by being given Las Vegas, which is about what he's going for.
  • Marvel also has Ego the Living Planet, who is himself eaten by cosmically powered zombified superheroes in Marvel Zombies.
  • In the Marvel cosmic miniseries "Annihilation", the extradimensional invaders fielded a gigantic, organic, living spaceborne weapon called the "Harvester of Sorrows" which destroyed entire worlds and consumed the remains. What was left of the organic life was seperated out so the crew could enjoy it.
  • The Sun-Eater from Legion of Super-Heroes, which does Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • Additionally, Legion Lost introduced the Omniphagos, which, as the name implies, ate everything, and had to be kept imprisoned or it would eat the entire universe.
  • The World Devastators from the Star Wars Expanded Universe (specifically, the Dark Empire comics) are a variation on the Planet Eater concept: nigh-invulnerable machines that tear planets apart with powerful tractor beams, thus mining raw materials to build huge automated fleets of starfighters and, potentially, more World Devastators.
  • The Original Insect from Michael Moorcock's Multiverse.
  • Jean Grey's clone when she went insane and became Dark Phoenix in X-Men proved even more dangerous than Galactus considering she got sustenance from stars, causing them to go nova, which destroyed one populated planet. The Shiar and their allies realize that while Galactus is bad enough, having a menace that destroys whole solar systems is something they have to move against at any cost.
  • The Succubi in Shakara from 2000 AD. Since Shakara borders on Pastiche half the time, the only named ship was "Galak-tus" (lost with all hands, of course).

Film

  • In The Return of Hanuman, a monster formed from a volcano named "Armageddon" is supposed to eat the contents of Earth entirely if Hanuman didn't stop him.


Literature

  • The new Borg Cube from Peter David's Star Trek Expanded Universe novel Before Dishonor. It eats Pluto. (Just before it becomes moot, it was revealed that it had been re-planetized by the time of its destruction.)
  • This was the focus of one The Stainless Steel Rat novel.
  • It's not alive, but the gigantic Green Sun from The House On The Borderland consumes every planet in the solar system, and the sun as well.
  • The Roar from The Silver Sequence is a member of a species that eats planets, or at least all the life on them.
  • The Forerunners in The History of the Galaxy series feed on all forms of matter from space dust to planets. They are not particularly large but are able to breed (through mitosis) at tremendous rate after eating. The Forerunner Crisis occurred 3 million ears ago, when a swarm of these low-intelligence creatures was moving through systems attracted by starlight and leaving only stars with no planets in their wake. They were finally stopped by a species-wide Heroic Sacrifice of a Precursor race. One of the novels reveals that the Forerunners are, in fact, creations of an Energy Being, designed as its vessels. They were created with prototype DNA molecules. Some of them died on various planets, resulting in Panspermia. They weren't designed to go crazy, though.
  • In IT by Stephen King, the titular monster claims that it is "the eater of worlds." We're only shown it eating children, but considering what almost happened in the end . . . It is female and she lays eggs. Hundreds of them. We're lucky for Ben and his cowboy boots.
  • The main character in the short story Thang eats planets.
  • In Keith Laumer's Retief story, "The Garbage Invasion", the Basurans want to take over the paradise planet of Delicia so they can eat it, the way they did their home planet.
  • The organisms in the book Moonseed by Stephen Baxter. "It eats planets. And it's here".


Live Action TV

Doctor: The Racnoss are carnivores - omnivores. They devour whole planets.

  • The titular Cool Ship from Lexx loves (and needs) to do this. The Lexx even took a few bites out of Earth.
    • In season two, Mantrid went one better by eating the entire universe. Technically, dismantling it and converting it into his drones, but they are arguably a part of his body.
    • In a twist, the Lexx actually receives less nourishment from doing exactly this, as it needs protein from organic material for sustenance; this is why the Lexx only eats Holland instead of the moon, it's just that 'accidents' happen and the rocky ("not very tasty") remains of an exploded planet are all it has to make do with.
  • Stargate SG-1 has the Replicators who, after getting access to a time-dialation device, were able to entirely cover a planet with replicator blocks. Granted, the planet is still there, but it's less of a planet now than a planet-sized mass of replicator blocks.
  • From Dengeki Sentai Changeman Star King Bazoo turned out to be this
  • One Sesame Street skit had Cookie Monster eat the Moon.


Tabletop Games

  • The Tyranids of Warhammer 40,000 intend to do this to every planet in the entire galaxy. It's hinted that they're only now encroaching on our galaxy after eating the one they came from.

Tyranids! OM NOM NOM NOM!

    • To be more specific, they don't eat the planets themselves, but they may as well have. Instead, they consume every last scrap of matter that can be converted into biomass to make more Tyranids, as well as draining any oceans and sucking up the atmosphere. Planets worked over by Tyranids still exist, but are nothing more than utterly barren chunks of rock.
  • The Eldrazi in Magic: The Gathering. Titanic cthonic entities from the Blind Eternities between the planes that ate whole universes before a trio of Planeswalkers locked them away on Zendikar. The lock...didn't hold.
  • Draedens, multi-tentacled monsters from the D&D Immortals boxed set, aren't able to literally devour planets whole, but they're entirely capable of munching a world down to bedrock.


Video Games

  • In Star Control 2, one of the Umgah's pranks is to convince the Spathi of the existence of a "Grand Master Planet Eater".
  • Byron, and by extension Polidori, from Lunar Knights.
  • Parasitis, from Abadox, digested the titular planet and assumed its shape. Parasitis obviously takes the maxim "you are what you eat" too seriously.
  • Pyron from the Capcom game Darkstalkers is similar to this in most regards, although he usually prefers wiping all life off the face of the planet and letting a new race come into power before starting it over again.
  • In Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, Lavos is gradually eating the planet's energy from the inside, having first attached itself in 65,000,000 B.C. What makes it particularly nasty is that Lavos is heavily implied to alter evolution on the planets it lands on, so that local sentients become more intelligent and advanced. Why? That makes the meal more filling.
    • Cross expounds on this to make matters more complex: Lavos enhances the DNA of the planet's native life, creating sentience, then incorporates that DNA into its offspring, killing the planet so that its evolved young can move on to other worlds, continuing the life-cycle. This is a very literal take on the Panspermia theory of life propagation, with Lavos as the sperm that penetrates and fertilizes the egg, Earth. This kind of sucks for the Earthlings in the long run, but after all you can't hatch an egg without breaking it.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Terra is a parasitic other planet gradually dining on the souls of Gaia, a planet it has been slowly trying to devour for a very long time.
  • In Wild ARMs 2, the Encroaching Parallel Universe, Kuiper Belt, is gradually devouring not only the planet Filgaia, but Filgaia's entire universe, in what is termed the "Stain Paradigm".
  • In Xenogears, the removal of the Limiters from the planet's population causes most of them to suddenly transform en masse into Wels, and it is revealed that all humanity on the planet was allowed to grow and thrive so that they could be consumed as raw materials for Deus.
  • In Xenosaga Episode II, the activation of Proto Ω on Miltia causes it to instantly devour the planet from the inside out for raw materials, and then literally hatches out of the planet like an egg, throwing off pieces of its crust like egg shells.
  • The Old Gods from Warcraft are planetary parasites that merge themselves to a planet and slowly corrupt it. Whether this would eventually destroy the planet is unknown, as the Old Gods on Azeroth were sealed away by the Titans (they could not be killed, having already corrupted the planet to such a degree that removing them would've required the destruction of Azeroth).
  • The Star Forge in Knights of the Old Republic is a variant of this - it feeds off a star to create vast swathes of technology for the Sith army. Whether it would eventually destroy the star it's using for energy and raw material is unknown (the star it's found orbiting seemed undamaged, and the math at least suggests that it's unlikely)
  • Darth Nihilus in Knights of the Old Republic II is (or was) a person who consumes the life-force of planets through the Force, leaving them barren rocks in space. It turns out this is pretty much all he does, since his hunger is all-consuming and all that motivates him.
  • Some Space Monsters from the first and second Master of Orion games will eat planets if you don't stop them, leaving behind only "a barren, radioactive husk".
  • The title of the final chapter of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. The actual event taking place during it is less about eating planets and more about crashing meteors and the moon into them, though.
  • USG Ishimura in Dead Space is a humongous scraper capable of gutting a whole planet and collecting its mineral resources. So basically it's a human-made planet eater/coal miner. Repeat that to yourself and realize the awesome.
  • Guhnash from Fossil Fighters, a gigantic space-fish-Pac-Man creature, presumably of the physical-devouring variety of planet eaters. Around 600 million years ago, it ate the dinaurians home planet. Thanks to their subsequent attempts to 'correct' the evolutionary path of Earth, it starts making its way there.
  • The Grey Goo of Tasty Planet eventually becomes one.
  • The Toronto is another example of man made Planet Eater. It's basically a giant metal colossus that settles on the planet and digs up the surface, while slowly expanding. Eventually it could reduce the entire planet into raw materials.
  • The planet Fusion is this in Cartoon Network's Fusion Fall.
  • Phaaze from Metroid Prime is, itself, a living planet however, it sends out its offspring to corrupt and devour other planets as a method of reproducing.
  • The entire game Life Force takes place inside one of these. Half the levels are organic themed, while the other half are apparently the surface of the actual planets that were consumed.


Web Comics

  • Parodied in Casey and Andy with the Planet Devourer, which can eat planets... eventually. (It's about the size of a canary, with a similar rate of digestion.) It does eat Mars at one point... except it's only a model.
  • One in the Star Trek parody arc of Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger.
  • Eight Bit Theater gives us the Cakelogical Singularity! Too bad it didn't actually work out, but even just the idea is awesome.
  • Wonderella has Ginormous, who travels the universe eating things that deserve to be eaten. She occasionally talks him out of eating the Earth.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • Unicron from Transformers is the other Trope Maker, starting with Transformers: The Movie (1986), where his first appearance doubles as his first meal and the animated film's opening scene. Apocalypse Wow! Depending on continuity, he's also more evil than Galactus: as a dark god in a crunchy robot shell, Unicron doesn't actually need to eat anything. He just considers the mere existence of life in the universe to be a personal affront against him. Incidentally, he is most definitely not to be confused with Galactus (although Marvel may have had a hand in The Transformers: The Movie, and was publishing the Transformers comic at the time).
  • Dial M for Monkey brought us the Galactus parody Barbequor, who tried to turn the entire solar system into a shishkabob.
  • Coop battles one of these in Megas XLR, after it has the gall to disrupt his wrestling show. He destroys it by feeding it a missile packed with soda and Pop Rocks. And that's by accident. His first attempt—a Macross Missile Massacre—is incredibly effective at devastating an area the size of New York City, on a creature the size of Earth. So then he tries smashing it...
  • The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders gets along by eating planets. Oddly, it's also an Implacable Man... err, planet, as it survives several is completely unfazed by ALL attempts at destruction, even eating two of the heroes' planets. The Beast also produces a near-endless supply of drones who tend to kill off anyone escaping from the Beast's feeding.
  • Spoofed as Omnipotus in The Tick (animation).

Omnipotus: Okay, I won't eat Earth now, but may I take a bite out of the moon as I go?
Tick: Sure. Go ahead.

  • In the 90s Spider-Man animated series, Dr. Strange villain Dormammu could devour entire dimensions.
  • Hungorto, in Duck Dodgers is Galactus, right down to having a cosmic-powered Herald. He is defeated when the combined forces of Earth and Mars throw all their food at him.
  • Seemingly played straight but ultimately averted with The Darkness in The Fairly OddParents three part special, it eats planets, but it's just defending itself because the denizens of the planets he's passing by freak out and attack it for looking menacing, when it's all sorted out, it spits out everything/everyone it and its termi-errr, eliminators ate.
    • And who could forget "GALACTIMUS! EATER OF ALL PLANETS!"


Real Life

  • Black holes, if they get close enough.
  • Near the end of some stars' life cycles, they will expand and envelop nearby bodies, including planets. This is the likely end of Mercury, Venus and Earth, considering what type of star we orbit.
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