Trope Talk: Ancient Superweapons

If you think this is just an excuse for me to talk about my favorite Ghibli movies, you're right! What's your favorite ancient superweapon? Argue in the comments!

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[ThatGreyGentleman]

Legit the “Fantasy world is just a post-apocalyptic version of a Sci-Fi Society” trope is possibly my favorite trope ever

[hunterkiller]

"If the ancient superweapon is so powerful, why is your civilization destroyed?"
"It destroyed my ancestors' civilization."
"Oh."

[GooTheMighty]

A pleasant surprise when I read the Lord or the Rings books recently was that Saruman wasn’t a minion of Sauron so much as he intended to supplant him by claiming the Ring for himself, and that was something that Sauron actually feared. Sauron was constantly watching for which character would become a dark lord strong enough to overthrow him, which is why he totally missed the hobbits and never expected anyone to DESTROY the Ring. Neat.

[AgentofChaos]

Here's an idea: The villain finds out about the ancient superweapon from this lost civilization that was destroyed thousands of years ago, finds it, only for it to be steel swords. Thousands of years ago steel weaponry would've dominated all iron of bronze weapons, bit is useless nowadays.

[Barianus]

Ancient civilization: "Hey, I know. We should make a weapon that can destroy the world. You know, just in case."
Ancient civilization, a bit later: "Wait a second, we live there..."

[A_Random_Wb]

Villain: "I will unleash this ancient weapon to destroy people"
*ancient weapon activates*
Villain: "Oh wait, a minute, I'm people"
*surprised pikachu face*

[CivilWarMan]

My favorite twist on the ancient superweapon story is when it turns out that the villain is not seeking it out in order to use it, but to destroy it themselves. Sometimes it's because the villain turns out to actually be a member or descendant of the ancient lost civilization that was destroyed by it, sometimes it's because the heroes were completely misinterpreting the villain's motivations and the villain was not as bad as they thought, and sometimes it's because the villain knows that the superweapon is an even bigger villain and they want to destroy it in order to neutralize any potential rivals to their power.

[hedgehog]

It's also very important to remember that if it's in an anime then it is 100% meant as an allegory for nuclear weapons.

[shibuyaneko]

my thought for "if the ancient superweapon is so powerful, why isn't the civilization around anymore?" is "because dumping all your money into military spending does not have a solid through-line to long-term prosperity"

[connorwalters]

This is why I love Halo so much. The Halo rings on the surface seem like a very formulaic ancient super weapon trope, but it’s actually subverts the trope in several ways. For example, the series bad guys, The Covenant, aren’t trying to take control of the Halo rings to use as a weapon against humanity. They want to control the rings because they’re basically a cargo cult that worships the technology of the ancient Forerunner civilization and think that activating the rings will start “The Great Journey” (basically The Covenant’s version of The Rapture). Not only that, but the ancient civilization that created the rings wasn’t brought to collapse by creating the weapon. They activated the ring in an act of mass suicide to destroy the horrifying Flood parasite and punish themselves for failing to stop the Flood. And even the trope of the heroes trying to deactivate the weapon is initially subverted, as Master Chief initially tries to ask the AIs Cortana and 343 Guilty Spark how he can use the ring to destroy the Covenant before learning why he can’t. Halo may not be the most complex story, but there’s a lot of really neat stuff in it.

[sayvionwashington]

Now I'm imagining the villain unleashes the ancient "evil", only for said evil to be just a guy who speaks in a dead language no one understands. And to save face, the villain on the fly says they "understand" what they're saying and accidentally creates a death cult.

[Flamefish]

I'm a big fan of the "This ancient civilization was so advanced, that the basic stuff they had is basically considered a superweapon by modern standards." It's a surprisingly rare trope, I think, but it can be part of a surprising piece of environmental storytelling.
In my DnD campaign, the "ancient superweapon" is an ancient powerplant whose reactor is a portal to the Realm of Fire; the wards have long since failed, and now it's doing an oopsie, and the players will have to restart the wards, and close the reactor. But that's a long ways away.

[DragonKnight]

“For thousands of years i lay dormant”

“Who disturbs my sl- oh it’s you lot”

[Crazyivan]

Fun reversal of expectations on this one in the book 'Roadmarks' by Zelazny: The BBEG finds the ancient, species-destroying robot and sends it after the protag. The protag sees it and welcomes it, asking how things have been. When BBEG commands robot to kill protag, it admits that it can't: The whole reason its ancient builders left it on earth was because it was hopelessly broken beyond repair, and could no longer destroy even a single individual, much less an entire species.

[woodrobin]

Doctor Who has an interesting take on the Ancient Superweapon: one where the ancient civilization (the Timelords of Gallifrey) still exist, but are utterly terrified to actually use the superweapon, even when they're facing extinction if they don't. The reason: The Moment (the superweapon) is not only sentient and able to see the past of the user, it has a conscience. It's not clear if this was a deliberate design decision (like the moral version of a safety lock) or a necessary side-effect of the creation of the weapon.

There's something quintessentially post-colonial British about being afraid of a weapon that can pass judgement on your past transgressions if you try to use it.

[freedomsflame]

Stellaris has a really great approach to the sentient superweapon. The nanite plague superweapon that was created attained sentience, causing its creators to panic and try to destroy it. In self-defense, the nanites destroyed their creators then sealed themselves away out of guilt. While in exile, they disguised themselves as their creators so that when an empire inevitably unseals their system they won't be attacked for being sentient machines.

[Hallows]

“The villain wants the ancient super weapon because they’re clinging to an idealized version of the past and ignoring the lessons of history due to being blinded by powerlust. The heroes don’t want it because they’re looking towards the future and they understand that some mistakes are too dangerous to be repeated, no matter how appealing they might seem on the surface.”

Never thought about the dynamics quite in that context, but it really makes sense.

[GusCraft]

To answer the question of “if it’s so bad, then why did they make it” I would suggest looking into the Manhattan project that produced the first atomic bombs. The scientists who designed it were horrified when it was first tested. It was way more powerful than they had anticipated. The test explosion destroyed almost all the sensors and equipment set up to record data because they were way too close to the bomb.

[farkasmactavish]

10:10 The Dark One of The Wheel of Time is a fantastic example of the "ancient villain sealed away" done well. Each time he's unsealed, it's because so much time has passed that it's literally looped around on itself, and people HAVE forgotten, simply because all the stories about him have been dismissed as myth.

[CrownofMischief]

This kinda has me thinking, Captain America: Civil War had an interesting subversion, where the heroes are racing to stop the villain from getting the superweapon(in this case, the supersoldiers in stasis), but the villain destroys them himself and was just using everyone's assumptions as a means of getting the heroes in one place to turn them against each other