I Hope it Ends with a Monster

Maybe I do fear the banana.

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Creators Featured:

Doomsday would probably be a huge bummer... you and everyone you know annihilated — every human achievement, every memory, every cone of gelato erased. But if we’re choosing apocalypses out of a lineup, if the world is going to end, I think a monster might be our kindest method of exit.

Nearly every mythology has a creature whose job it is to wipe things clean come Armageddon — it’s strangely universal. And I’d argue that’s because, ironically, it’s the gentlest ending we can imagine.

0:00 I Hope it Ends with a Monster
0:54 Size of Doom
3:49 Beasts of Humanity
6:36 Carol is Afraid
8:49 Waiting for the End
10:51 A Worse Sort of Monster…
12:46 When the Wind Blows
15:34 Chernobyl
17:51 Forgotten Terrors
20:09 The Doomsday Instinct
23:46 Creatures of the End Times
26:40 End(s) of Evangelion
30:26 I Hope it Doesn’t End at All

Media Shown: Pacific Rim, Banana Simulation, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Carol and the End of the World, Melancholia, The Atomic Café, Chernobyl, When the Wind Blows, Monsters, Cloverfield, Godzilla (2014), Godzilla vs. Hedora, Shin Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra, Final Fantasy XV, God of War, God of War Ragnarök, Asura’s Wrath, War of the Worlds, Fantastic Four (Various), Galactus First Appearance, Deep Impact, 2012, Transformers: The Movie, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, The Avengers, Thor Ragnarok, Eternals, Doom, Hellboy, Wrath of the Titans, Gods of Egypt, Jormungandr Smite, This is the End Beasts of the End Time, Beasts of the Fog, Independence Day Resurgence, Chasing the Unseen, Neon Genesis Evangelion, End of Evangelion

♫ Music Used: Air on the G String (J. S. Bach), The Path (The Last of Us), The Timefall (Death Stranding), Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven), Vanishing Grace (The Last of Us), The Red Gate (Signalis), The Choice (The Last of Us), The Path to the Door (Dredge), The Restless Town (Dredge), Die Toteninsel Emptiness (Signalis), All Gone (The Last of Us), Your Body Betrays Your Degeneracy (Disco Elysium), Main Theme (Little Nightmares II), Burning Man (World of Goo), Turned Around (Signalis), The Quarantine Zone (The Last of Us), Prologue (Shadow of the Colossus), Resurrection (Shadow of the Colossus), Ariane's Theme (Signalis)

♫ Additional music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio:
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

Copyright Disclaimer: Under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. All video/image content is edited under fair use rights for reasons of commentary.

Additional Sources:
The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats (1919)
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid by Thor Hanson (2021)
Don’t Even Think About it by George Marshall (2015)
Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich (1997)

[hovaneeeseotse]

Once when I was first challenged to write a fictional horror story. (This was when highschool was kinda shit) And in a class of about thirty kids, seven wrote about a 'giant monster'. Three of those were about monsters who were larger than your average city high rise. Two who wrote a monster that was big, but big like 'average giant'. For whatever reason only two of us wrote a monster bug on a cosmic scale. Both were so large that they couldn't be seen in its entirety by humans. The difference was that in her story the monster ate the earth. A long paragraph describing the chewing of the planet and how the building the MC was in getting crushed as the view out of the window shown the end.
In my story, the 'monster' never touched the earth. Never even entered the solar system. However the scale was so large and the people of earth only saw it getting closer. Some prayer, some checked out early, some partied, while some just began to kill anyone and everyone around. Only for the monster to just, walk past. As it does, it glances at the earth. Just a glance, before it continues. The destruction of the world completely self inflicted. It ends with the description of two people standing in the ashes of a fallen city, get into an argument. Last sentence was the act of a killing. I was given a B-.... Fackin highschool man.

[Anton-devu]

As a transformers fan, unicron is even more terrifying if you know more about him as a character.
In most continuities, he is the embodiment of entropy. And will not rest until there is literally nothing left in the entire universe to consume. Most who learn of his existence do not survive to warn others, and those who do are either brushed off as crazy, or it takes so long for unicron to actually arrive that the civilizations that do prepare end up doubting his existence and lower their guard.

[justsomejerseydevilwithint]

"I'd like to prove this with a banana"

-Curious Archive

[SCG]

This was the BEST analysis of Evangelion I have ever heard and I have watched hours of videos explaining it.

[LonganNguyen]

"Doomsday would probably be a big bummer."

*Yes... Yes it would.*

[HardNameGuy]

The fact that this man manages to post a video every time i think "hey, the archive hasn't posted a video in a while" is disturbing and impressive

[z-beeblebrox]

17:44 The elephant's foot effectively buried itself. "Just leave it there" is actually the most responsible action in this case. Remember, radiation isn't some magic area of effect spell, it's a physical thing that needs open air to propagate. Additionally, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor site is itself covered in one of the world's largest single story structures ever built, so that we can monitor it safely.

[TnMiDGET]

Now that I am thinking about it, Fallout is actually a really good example of an Apocalypse. The Enclave, the prewar government who the people who are responsible for saving the people, meet the survivors with miniguns. Those who did survive in the vaults were met with fates worse then dying with the blast. And despite all the chaos and violence in postwar America, almost all the wastelanders we meet just want to farm and trade like nothing is wrong.

[marcoasturias]

Congratulations, you "dog that ate your homework" evolved into "wolf that ate the sun"!

[DTylerFultzVA]

Another “End of the World” scenario I find interesting comes from Dark Souls 3.
After three games of surviving the world of Dark Souls, you are presented with a choice…
1. Link your soul to the First Flame, which holds together the world and all of its balances, and continue its existence for another thousand years.
2. Let the First Flame extinguish and allow the world to fall into darkness with only a faint hope that it will be reborn again.
In any other game, you would continue the world’s existence b/c a world can’t be rebuilt or reborn if it’s destroyed. But after spending three games slaying monsters, toppling warriors driven to madness, and continually resurrecting every time you die, all while losing a fraction of yourself every time… You genuinely start to see that this particular age of humanity is long-over—that everyone and everything wants nothing more than to lay down and die, but couldn’t for thousands of years.
In a sense, then, you become the monster who brings about the end of the world. If unimaginable monsters, mighty warriors, and even the gods of the realm cannot conquer you…are you not a monster yourself? Not as an act of malice, but as an act of mercy. The world and all of its people are already dead or dying. In a sense, it is like a loved one saying “I am ready to go” when they are at death’s door.
And so the world of Dark Souls ends, not in a fiery, planet-spanning cataclysm, but a slow and quiet descent into darkness.

[NoESanity]

14:30 fun fact, fallout isn't really an issue anymore. most modern nuclear reactors (and thus any modern bombs) don't have a fall out issue. it's part of the reason why nuclear is the best form of clean energy available, because we have literally found a way to solve every negative it presented.

[michaelwoodby]

The other reason we spend so much time worrying about monsters is that they've always been a threat. Grampa Mouse's primary concerns were eating grubs and avoiding being eaten by dinosaurs. His offspring had to worry about saber tooth tigers, lions, and any other huge predators they weren't equipped to deal with. Anyone who wasn't cautious enough got eaten, so we've got millions of years of lineage warning us to keep an eye out.

[santerisuuri]

"But if like a wolf eats the sun, I mean that's just bad luck" haha a great quote.

[ButterToastPotado]

_"Maybe that's my punishment. No burning bush, no smiting. No anything. Nothing. Just that I have to look into the eyes of the people I've wronged. See their tortured souls."_

*Mickey’s Descent Into Madness*

[chaoticallyliving]

I had to pause halfway through, lie in bed for a moment and check the outside sky through my window. Perfectly sky blue, quiet neighborhood as always.
I don’t know why I had to remind myself there wasn’t an apocalypse happening right now. But I still don’t have the answer to “what happens tomorrow” besides “what happened today happens tomorrow”.

[CMAKdaSILLY]

At first I agreed. But then you started talking about a banana and now I feel like that's the way to go

[Jolfgard]

The kindest methods of exit are the ones that are so quick that your nervous system is basically evaporated before it can recognize what's even going on.

[GenericProtagonist]

The reason everyone views themselves as that lone, intrepid survivor because the alternative is "I died when shit hit the fan", and when you're thinking about what you would do in an apocalypse your first thought shouldn't be "Die" unless you want that to happen.

[manassepfeiffer]

i love the use of the Disco Elysium music at 11:14, as in this world everyone is going to die one day because of the ever expanding Pale, which makes you cracy, dizzy and hallucinating over time (the world ends in nuclear disaster but still, the knowledge of the expiring of land ist there)

[a-warthog]

I have to say this is one of the best videos on YouTube I’ve seen… maybe ever.
It stands out to me because it’s deeply compelling, in a provocative way. Something about the way you go back and forth between these fictional depictions of people imagining with the unimaginable, and the real humanity of it, is immensely compelling to me, and invites me to consider many new perspectives I hadn’t before.
Because this video invites so much perspective, it’s large, very large, but much like the banana, its largeness is less scary than I feel it should be.
I take great joy in thinking; but I often find myself wondering through familiar territory, and thus not reaching anything tangible.
This video is unfamiliar territory for me, presented in such an enticing way; it feels so personal while not closed off. Engaging with this video causes me to fly out of the barriers in which I could ever think on my own.
Isn’t that the point of art?
If so, then this video is excellent art.