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Power of the Void
aka: The Power Of The Void

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Xemnas, Kingdom Hearts II


Some characters use the Power of Darkness to show off how cool they are. Not this guy. When darkness isn't dark enough, the only thing that can properly express your morally dubious badassery is the Power of the Void—power over nothingness.

How this works can vary. How are you going to make cool fight scenes when a character's power is the ability to control nothing? In many cases, this is by giving him lasers, energy blasts, and various other powers that other characters already have, with minor cosmetic changes to show that they come from the Void. Other works are better about portraying this; erasing objects and unfortunate people from existence, manipulating black holes, and draining Life Energy. Powers over cold and darkness come up often as well — this makes sense, since they are technically defined by a lack of energy. Sometimes, this also involves partial or total Cessation of Existence as a physical trait (in the partial case, functioning much like an Absurdly Sharp Blade in that it "cuts" by removing physical matter, and in the latter case simply sucks an object or person into nothingness). And sometimes it goes in the opposite direction. Since many creation myths involve creation from nothing, some writers have the power of the void grant the power to create as well as destroy, circling back around to Frickin' Laser Beams of Pure Energy.


For obvious reasons, the Power of the Void is frequently the gimmick of Straw Nihilists, Omnicidal Maniacs and outright Eldritch Abominations. It can also be the result of a Yin-Yang Bomb, in which case it is equally likely to be found in the hands of someone more heroically inclined.

Interestingly, Void is sometimes considered the Fifth Classical Element (not to be confused with the Fifth Element), particularly in a universe that uses the Void Between the Worlds. However it's usually considered Non-Elemental because it (appropriately) lacks elemental traits. It may even be an Infinity +1 Element. Contrast with Light 'em Up.



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     Anime and Manga 
  • The Void/Nothing card in Cardcaptor Sakura has the power to make anything she hits not exist.
  • Bleach Bount arc: The Bount Sawatari's doll is Baura, a huge fish-like monster. Baura can enter and travel through a void-like dimension, allowing him to disappear and reappear through any surface. When he swallows an opponent, the victim is stored in the void dimension.
  • Havoc in Darker Than Black got the power to instantly vacuumize large volumes, with fatal results to people and some constructions in an affected area.
  • In the Slayers series, Lina's Giga Slave and Ragna blade; the first is bascially a summoning spell for the Lord of Nightmares, and the second is basically a blade made of nothingness that vaporizes anyting it touches.
    Sylphiel: "Yours is a spell that invites a void into this world. It is the power to extinguish energy and return matter to nothingness. The bringer of the void becomes its very embodiment."
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
    • Vanilla Ice, The Dragon to Dio Brando has the ability to wrap his Stand, Cream, around him and swallow up anything in the void within it. Unfortunately, he cannot see during this, so...
    • The right palm of Okuyasu's Stand, The Hand can remove anything from existence, even the space between two bodies (effectively letting him teleport). Okuyasu himself says he doesn't know where things go. This makes him one of the most powerful stand users ever and a perfect Big Guy... if he wasn't so much of an idiot that Josuke defeats him by ducking. Granted, later on he does begin managing to pull his own weight, even assisting in the main villain's downfall.
  • In Zatch Bell!, the demon; Clear Note is the villain of the last story arc of the manga. He uses this trope for his spell theme "annihilation". He is a Person of Mass Destruction, whose declared goal is to kill every single demon (himself too eventually) and obliterate the demon world. He does not "come from the void" in any sense, though, and his will to destroy comes from him being controlled by his own spell.
  • The Familiar of Zero:
    • Louise's aligned element is named "Void" and she uses it to blow things up (this is mainly because she did not master her powers properly, but it is hinted in the novels that she really does sub-atomic manipulation, hence the explosions). It also covers some Anti-Magic, which fits the "Void" theme better, and illusion magic, which doesn't.
    • Another void mage Tiffania has an oblivion spell that can wipe out short term memory.
    • Yet another one the King of Gallia has the power to accelerate.
    • The last one the Pope has the power to open dimension doors.
  • One Piece Blackbeard can use his Gravity-controlling powers he gets from the Yami Yami no Mi to absorb materials into the dark, smoke-like substance it creates, completly erasing what it absorbs off the surface of the Earth, even compared to a Black Hole. However, he can also expel the same matter, albeit crushed from the Gravity within the Void.
    • It also has the ability to completely nullify both the abilities and the physical properties of Devil Fruit users, temporarily reverting them back into normal persons, as long as he is physically touching them. So in a sense, it's also works as a Infinity +1 Element.
    • However, this comes with a Necessary Drawback. Normally, a Logia-type Devil Fruit allows the user to turn into their respective element, making it so that most attacks harmlessly phase through their body; however, the "gravity" of the Yami Yami no Mi's darkness prevents Blackbeard from doing that. Additionally, the gravity subtly attracts enemy attacks, meaning that they get harder to avoid, more damaging and more painful.
  • InuYasha
    • Miroku has this in his wind tunnel, which is a void in the palm of his hand that sucks up everything.
    • Sesshomaru in his Meido Zangetsuha technique, which can suck everything it touches directly to hell. Eventually Inuyasha gets his own version of Meido Zangetsuha, which instead can cut anything into small pieces by creating a void inside an object or person.
    • Kanna is, according to Naraku, an embodiment of nothingness. In other words, she IS the void. Because of this, she has no scent, no aura, and is immune to aura attacks of any kind. Inuyasha learned this the hard way.
  • Alive: The Final Evolution:
    • The estranged best friend who isn't the Big Bad, exactly, but still a big threat and main quest object has void-type, negation and unbeing powers that manifest primarily as the ability to put holes in things. This can be quite horrible. Later on he ditches his physical body, making him Nigh Invulnerable.
    • The completely cracked painter Yura (who started out physically repulsive and somehow through Art Evolution became rather stunning, despite poor dental care) can create bubbles that blow up and seem to operate similarly, but when the aforementioned best friend character scatters his Swiss-cheesing ability around the stuff he hits just ceases to be. A good example of the damage he can do? Throughout the course of the series, he halved a metric ton of peoples' bodies (or just made holes appear in their heads), and then even gave the same treatment to the greater part of a MOUNTAIN.
  • Saiyuki: A rather nasty villain sports this sort of power in the later arcs.
  • Naruto Shippuden's Chibaku Tensei, a Void Style technique that creates a miniature black hole strong enough to create a planetary mass from the earth, even the moon. It looks exactly like the picture on this page. Only Naruto has been able to break out of such an attack, but only because he formed eight tails.
  • Arata: The Legend's Yataka has a Hayagami that represents this power as stated by Tsukuyo.
  • In Brave10, Isanami is the Brave of Darkness. Despite the name, the power she has at her disposal is closer in function to this, rotting everything in the vicinity and turning it all to nothingness.
  • Dragon Ball
    • Dragon Ball Z: Dead Zone has Garlic Jr., whose Signature Move is to open a portal to the titular Dead Zone. The portal functions exactly like a real life black hole, drawing everything in with immense gravitational force and anything that gets sucked in is trapped there permanently. Unfortunately for him, his greatest technique is ironically his greatest weakness as both of his defeats are the result of him getting sucked into the Dead Zone by Gohan. He managed to escape the first time by drawing power from the Makyo Star, but the second time, the heroes destroyed said star to make sure he can't escape again. And it doubly sucks for him as he is one of the few Dragon Ball villains to obtain immortality, meaning he can never die and will remain trapped in the Dead Zone for eternity.
    • Dragon Ball Super
      • The Gods of Destruction all possess the "Destruction" technique, which allows them to erase anything and anyone from existence by simply pointing their hand at the target and shouting "Destruction". This ability is powerful enough to erase even intangible objects such as ghosts. Beerus first uses this ability to execute Present Zamasu after his attempted murder of his mentor Gowasu. Goku in the manga used this ability to defeat Fusion Zamasu, which only failed when the latter used Future Mai as a Human Shield. Sidra, Universe 9's God of Destruction uses this ability to destroy a city and later grants a fraction of his Energy of Destruction to the leader of a team of assassins in an attempt to assassinate Goku and a resurrected Frieza.
      • The anime later introduces us to Zen-O, the Omni-King of the Multiverse who like his fellow gods, has the power to erase anything he desires from existence. Unlike the Gods of Destruction, however, his ability is on a far more powerful scale as he has the power to erase entire universes from existence. After Fusion Zamasu's spirit attempts to merge with the universe itself, Zen-O simply erases Future Trunks' timeline to put him down. In the Universe Survival Saga, Zen-O hosts a Tournament of Power where the losing team gets their universe erased. Universe 9 was the first to lose and their universe and everything in it is promptly wiped out of existence.
  • As a result of a lot of ancient magics carried out by her family, Shiki Ryougi from Kara no Kyoukai ended up with an Anthropomorphic Personification of the Void, a.k.a. the primordial chaos, as a secret third personality inhabiting her body. Said personality almost never takes control, though, because it is literally omnipotent (at one point destroying and recreating reality several times in a row in the span it took her to utter a single sentence) and, therefore, bored out of its mind, preferring to just slumber until its current host dies of old age and it can return to its natural state.

    Collectible Card Game 
  • Legend of the Five Rings: Void is the fifth "Ring", as well as the most powerful, but amusingly, it's not this trope (it's really more like "spirit," or what have you). Instead, we have The Lying Darkness, which empowers assorted ninja and the like in their efforts to steal the names and identities of good guys and bad guys alike. The only way to destroy it was to name it via a ritual - once it had a name of its own, it could no longer be the Lying Darkness, since it now had a truth attached to it.
  • Magic: The Gathering
    • The page image is the card Damnation, but there are plenty of other spells that involve abusing the void.
    • The Null Rod, which prevents use of many artifact abilities.
    Gerrard: "But it doesn't do anything."
    Hanna: "No—it does nothing."
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG: Several monsters' effects that simply remove cards from the field evoke this, such as Caius the Shadow Monarch, which removes a card from the game (and all similar variations of this effect), and Steelswarm Girastag, which sends a card to the grave. Both cards evade effects that protect cards from destruction, which is considered very powerful in the game.
    • Of particular note is the Infernoid archetype, which not only banish opponents cards, but banish themselves to summon more. To push this even further, all of their spell and trap cards have 'Void' in the name.

    Comic Books 

  • There is a Starcraft/Star Wars crossover where Zeratul realizes that both the Light and Dark sides of the Force are the same psychic powers practiced by the Protoss (hence why Jedi are prone to falling to the Dark Side: without the Khala's discipline, they can't control it). By rejecting both, Jedi become able to use the very same powers practiced by Protoss Dark Templars, including making oneself invisible. A padawan practising this describes that while the Force feels warm, the Void feels cold and empty.
  • In the Pony POV Series,
    • This is both the Draconequi's most dangerous power and their greatest weakness. They can erase things from existence, including their own wounds, but they can't affect anything created by taking away or the absence of something. Ice is one of the only things that can actually successfully trap them for any period of time and if someone's power comes from something like this, for example, despair, they can't affect them at all. This is even true for Discord, who is extremely powerful even by his species' standards. They also have dominion over the Shadows of Existence (what's left of someone who has been erased from time). This makes them a direct contrast to their Nature's Law counterparts the Alicorns, who can use the Power of Creation but cannot erase while the Draconequi can only erase not create.
    • Entropy, the female Draconequi Elder is the one who offspring get their power from. She's the Anthropomorphic Personification of Nothingness and whereas her children need to actively touch something to erase it, she needs only a word to do so. More so, her symbol is typically depicted as a black hole. She has on several occasions shown she can command the Shadows of Existence residing in her realm of Oblivion to an even greater extent than her children, such as when she once merged a large number of them in an entity called Nightmare Legion.
  • Luna uses this in Elementals of Harmony. Faced with a physical manifestation of the element of Honesty that is damaging the universe by existing, she moves herself between it and the sun and unleashes a spell that turns her shadow into the truth of the heat death of the universe. She personally considers that spell to be Black Magic, and not in the Magic: The Gathering sense.
  • All Void Kitsune in Naruto Genkyouien use this. It can be used for erasing things from existence, creating objects and teleporting. As of the more recent chapters, it can also erase concepts such as harm from living beings.
  • In the Naruto fanfic Echoes The Madara Trio and Naruto/Kazama (who is ironically, the hero/Anti-Hero all have this, due to contact with Amatsu-Mikaboshi, unknowingly at first in Kazama's place. The Madara Trio can't erase things from existence, and while Kazama can, he has only used it once due to reflex.
  • The Dark And Omnipotent Antithesis in Crisis On Two Equestrias. Both Trixies note that technically she doesn't cast spells, she tears spell-shaped holes in the universe and magic rushes in to fill them. She can also tear open an hole and hold it open, creating anti-magic pockets where no spellcasting is possible.
  • WD (Wingding Gaster) has these in Ask Frisk and Company, but doesn't use them much, as by his own admission, they're dangerous and unpredictable, just as likely to harm as to help

  • Circleverse: Magic Steps introduces "unmagic". Mage characters are horrified by it, saying it's the absence of all else — light, magic, existence; a blight as much as magic, and it drives users to lose hope and feeling. The antagonists, who are indeed losing their sanity but not their sense of purpose, use it to get past guards and warding spells to assassinate people in plain sight. Lark says it can also be used to collapse distances and let people walk between places quickly... if they can bear it.
    "One man who jumped from Lightsbridge to Nidra through unmagic lay in a fever for a year, raving. Later he wrote that his senses all went dead; he was trapped inside his own mind."
  • In the Discworld, the metaphysical Dwarf concept of the Gingunnagap fulfils the definition of the fundamental Void of nothing, except perhaps unformed chaos-potential. The unformed Firmament which eventually gave rise to our own universe following a Big Bang is also described in The Science of Discworld.
  • In Marie Brennan's Doppelgänger series, the Void is recognized as an element in its own right; however, witches can't perform any magic associated with it (although they can use any of the four classical Elemental Powers). It eventually turns out that this is because void magic is associated with movement (e.g., dance—the other elemental powers are associated with song), which is not the domain of the witches but rather their doppelganger halves, who they've been killing off. A few witches' quest to fix this drives much of the stories' plot.
  • The villain in Dragon's Winter has command over the void. It's how he manages to bind Karadur's power.
  • In the Keys to the Kingdom series, the substance of the void is called "Nothing", and beings composed of it are called "Nithlings".
  • In a Stanisław Lem story (probably from The Cyberiad) a Mad Scientist creates a machine which eliminates from existence everything that starts with a certain letter, and it gets more void-y from there.
  • In a Michael Moorcock story, one of the heroes encounters an area of the world that's a complete white void. After wandering around for a while, he discovers a Reality Warper that for various reasons wants to be one with the perfect void. The hero grants the Reality Warper's wish by shooting him with an arrow point blank; once the Reality Warper dies, the white void becomes a normal landscape again.
  • The Nothing from The Neverending Story.
  • In The Silmarillion, the Unlight of Ungoliant, a creature that eats light, falls somewhere between Casting a Shadow and the Power of the Void.
  • The Void is one of the five elements in The Sovereign Stone trilogy, and Void mages can mimic the powers of any other element, so long as they're used for destructive purposes. However, Void magic is inherently inimical to life as we know it, so if you're not undead (or Dagnarus), using it for anything powerful will cause you to break out in lots of deeply unpleasant sores, and can kill you under some conditions. Most Void mages are consequently either sparing with their power, or totally insane.
  • Spellsinger: In Paths of the Perambulator, Clothahump uses the power of the void to find out where the titular Perambulator is. Specifically, he says that "nothing" is the shortest distance between two points and therefore by summoning nothing he'll be able to see it. He summons nothing by reading politicians' campaign speeches.
  • The true villains of the Time Quartet series by Madeleine L'Engle are the Echthroi. Beings who want to spread nothing on spiritual level, destroying not just life and matter but souls, and ruining all existence from beginning to end. Their "true" form is described as being like a gash in existence or a streak of Nothingness which is so terrible it causes 'reality' to scream, even in space.
  • In Un Lun Dun, the UnGun is especially powerful when loaded with "nothing".
  • The Witchlands: The Void is one of the six elements, the opposite of Aether. The Voidwitches seen so far have dark and unsettling powers, and most people in the titular continent don't believe Void magic exists.
  • The Void is one of the five elemental zones in the middle of Xanth.
  • N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy: Ia the Negation is the Physical God of this, which gives him the Retconjuration power to write events out of history or make people never have existed. He's not a bad fellow, but spends his time in human form on Earth because other gods can't bear the sight of his true form's absolute nothingness in the divine realms.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In the Heroes season 3 episode Angels and Monsters, Noah and Sylar are sent after Canfield, a man who has the power to create "Vortexes" into which things disappear forever. Noah tries to make Canfield eliminate Sylar (who by this time has copied Claire's regeneration power, making him extremely difficult to kill). Canfield uses it to kill himself instead, refusing to become a murderer.
  • The purple Core Medals in Kamen Rider OOO run on the desire of nothingness. Which is why it sought out The Hero Eiji, whose lack of desires allowed him to become OOO, and why Dr Maki, desiring an end to everything (i.e., making everything nothing) is a suitable vessel.
    • Furthermore, their powers work in the aforementioned way, split down the middle: Eiji's powers as Putotyra revolve around An Ice Person, while Maki's The End of the World as We Know It plans factor into his Yummies once he becomes a Greeed, as they annihilate people's desires. During the final battle, Eiji uses the purple Medals to perform a Finishing Move that creates a black hole, killing Maki and sucking in all but one of the Medals.
  • The Virgo Zodiarts in Kamen Rider Fourze flings around miniature black holes which leave perfectly smooth holes in whatever they touch.
  • In the Stargate series, the most powerful generators they use to run their advanced technology revolves around harvesting zero point energy, by using their zero point modules. Which they techno-babble explain by taking energy from space itself, they eventually run out of power somehow though... A lot of the show's pivotal plots involve finding or using these generators.
    • Zero Point Modules tap into Pocket Dimensions and drain the void-energy stuff from that Pocket Dimension. Each ZPM is connected to a different Pocket Dimension, which does eventually run dry. They also try to harvest zero point energy from the universe itself and later an alternate universe, neither of which went very well due to their tendency to cause massive explosions.
  • In the series 2 finale of the revived Doctor Who the Doctor uses the void between two universes to defeat invading Dalek and Cyberman armies as the "void residue" that clings to everything that has traveled through it is attracted by it. How a void leaves residue is left to the imagination of the viewer.

    Tabletop Game 
  • Dungeons & Dragons has several Prestige Classes that are based around the idea of using emptiness as a weapon, as well as the Binder PC class, who channel the power of entities that have been banished to nothingness, not to mention the infamous sphere of annihilation - picture a tiny singularity that runs on Rule of Cool rather than more traditional physics.
    • In the Oriental Adventures suppliment, Void is officially introduced as a type of Elementalist Magic, and there is a Prestige Class that specializes in it.
    • One of the Inner Planes in Planescape is the quasi-elemental plane of Vacuum. It isn't full of destruction or malice, however, although you wouldn't want to go there without a really good reason. In fact, it isn't full of anything. It's vacuum, after all.
  • The Neverborn in Exalted. According to some theories, Creation's version of the Void wouldn't even exist if not for them. By extension, the Deathlords and the Abyssal Exalted. Interestingly, in Exalted, the Power of the Void is closely associated with Necromancy, to the point that anyone who can use one can generally use the other to some extent.
  • Wraith: The Oblivion also has beings called Neverborn which seek to destroy reality. The force they serve is tellingly called "Oblivion."
  • The Nephandi from Mage: The Ascension employ Qlippothic magic — whereas common Sphere/Sephirothic magic is altering and manipulating parameters of reality, Qlippothic magic is active negation and destruction of reality. An Akashic martial artist might use his knowledge of Correspondencenote  to leap over a distance of seven leagues. His Qlippothic counterpart would create a similar effect by destroying the space between him and his destination with a punchnote . Sephirothic Prime is concerned with essence of existence. A Nephandus specializing in its Qlippothic counterpart can expel things from reality just as easily as a mage igniting a candlelight.
    • Mage: The Awakening has the Scelesti. The Abyss is a twisted, hateful reflection of reality created when some pretty significant magical screwups occurred and reality got some new holes torn in it. Scelesti are mages who have reshaped their souls to draw on the powers of the Abyss to corrupt spirits, negate magic (or make it go out of control), and generally make the world worse in any way they can.
  • Anima: Beyond Fantasy presents Edamiel, a Beryl -godlike entity of light- who embraced oblivion and nihilism, and the Etrien Gnosos which is this trope with Face–Monster Turn added; and played straight with Ildabaoth Veda (bonus points for being both a Creepy Child and a white haired pretty girl).
    • In the (currently in Spanish only) Arcana Exxet one of the subschools of magic (appropiately named Void) lets the player use the power of the Void.
  • The Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 have access to a weapon called the Dark Lance, in the 5th edition, they have a flyer which has a beefed up version called the Void Lance, these Voidraven Bombers also have a bomb, called the Void Mine which first creates a protected sphere, to utterly annihilate everything in it. Nobody knows for sure what the "darklight" these weapons fire actually is, altough it's theorized to form around black holes, warpstorms and other celestial phenomena of great magnitude. It is extremely volatile (pure darklight seems to behave like antimatter) and merely looking at a darklight beam can leave permanent scars on your retinae.
  • "Void" is one of the types of heroes in Ascension: their abilities focus on removing your own cards from play, which is nifty for thinning out your deck.
  • While Deceiver, Warmain and Mimic Excrucians in Nobilis mostly deal in twisting reality against itself, the Strategists are The Champion for oblivion - and their signature power, the World-Breaker's Hand, is used to simply unmake whatever it strikes, or strip qualities from those things.
  • Touched upon slightly above- in the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, there are actually two "Powers of the Void."
    • The first is the Void, which symbolizes both the presence and absence of the Elements, which players may tap into through "Void Points" (or, for certain rare shugenja, through special Void Spells). This is more of an aversion of the trope, since the Void isn't actually anti-existence; indeed, all existence emerged from the Void.
    • The second is the Nothing, AKA the Lying Darkness, which much more closely resembles this trope. Unlike the Void, the Nothing possesses neither form nor substance, and seeks to unmake all reality by eroding its laws. So, of course, the Scorpion Clan went and harnessed its power anyway, accidentally corrupting many of its most promising ninja with the Shadow magic of tejina.
  • Introduced in Book of the Dead, Geist: The Sin-Eaters have the Pit Manifestations, which work by taking an aspect of the victim away. For example, using the Cold Wind Pit robs the victim from the ability to breathe, Pyre-Flame Pit makes the victim unable to draw warmth from any heat source, Passion Pit sends the victim into a Despair Event Horizon. This is the most feared Manifestation to run afoul of, and the sheer wrongness of it makes it a Synergy 7 sin just to use.

    Video Games 
  • The Void element in AdventureQuest is different from all of the elements because monsters cannot have resistances to it. The rare ones that do are often unique and highly dangerous. Also, all monsters that do not have a resistance to it naturally take 200% of the damage dealt to them.
    • The Void Dragon is a particularly dangerous example. It uses Void element attacks against you, which is bad since there is no way for players to reduce Void damage. It can also absorb health every time you miss an attack. Void dragons even absorb Void damage to heal themselves. The only saving grace is that they take twice as much damage from standard elemental attacks. They also happen to look like Xenomorphs mixed with dragons.
    • In-universe, the Void element is actually the raw substance from which all things spring: it's somehow simultaneously aligned to all elements, hostile to all elements, and unassociated with all elements. Void energy can also be aligned with either Creation or Uncreation, the former being used to give nothingness the potential to "exist" and affect the universe, and the latter being used to remove that potential. Where it starts to get really weird is that Uncreation-aligned void can be used to create by uncreating the nonexistence of something.
    • Closely related to Void is the the element of Harm, another Non-Elemental form of damage. Unlike void it is "merely" energy without elemental alignment. Harm is also only half as powerful as Void, with virtually all monsters taking 100% base damage from Harm as opposed to the standard 200% base damage from Void.
    • The half-dragon mage Nythera from the sister game Dragonfable not only has this power, but can purify those who have been corrupted by it.
  • In Final Fantasy V, Exdeath's whole plan and eventual goals revolve around his beloved Void. When he finally gets control of it, he manifests the power in the form of generating black hole-like portals into the Void, which he uses to engulf large chunks of continents, and he might be channeling the power of things trapped within the Void. In the end, the Void engulfs him and spits him back out as an Omnicidal Maniac called Neo-Exdeath.
    • It's implied in Final Fantasy V that the Void itself is alive and has its own goals, and the remake notwithstanding, cannot be controlled by anybody, ultimately engulfing any being that tries to control it. In the original game, it's stated that this is what happened to Enuo, the warlock who first tried to control it.
    • Similarly, the Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III calls the void home and occasionally emerges from it to reduce other worlds to nothing. However, the two are very different takes on this trope: Exdeath appears to be attempting to wipe out everything, while Cloud Of Darkness seems to be a sort of mystical "immune response" created by the universe when a world has too much of either darkness or light, to balance things out and restart the cycle (admittedly, by killing everyone currently alive). When they meet up in Dissidia, each arrogantly announces that their understanding of the Void is correct. Regardless, Voidshipping is a very popular Crack Pairing.
    • Final Fantasy XI has the Emptiness, which is best explained as the death instinct of everyone and everything in the world; every living thing contains a fragment of it, and as souls return to the Mothercrystals, their Emptiness sort of pools together. It all came from Promathia, whose death wish—had it come to fruition—would've ended all of existence.
      • As with FFIII, Cloud of Darkness takes it one step further: She's the living, ravenous, nigh-unstoppable embodiment of entropy itself—the nothingness where countless worlds are born and die.
  • The primary villain Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts has the power of nothingness and repeatedly acknowledges it. He also refers to nothingness as The Void during his boss battle. He runs the gaumet from manifest as Pure Energy to energy draining. This second one is accompanied by "Can you spare a heart?" and then proceeds to start draining Sora of his HP. Considering the "Heart is the source of Power" theme in this series than something that drains is characteristic of the Void. He often claims that Void is equal, if not more powerful than Light and Darkness.
    • All the nobodies, including Xemnas, are actually manifestations of void as they are literally made up of nothing, and were not meant to exist in the first place. It is also stated that the nobodies do not really exist and are anomalies of existence itself.
    • Vanitas from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is the manifestation of emptiness and his name means "Void". His signature weapon is named the "Void Gear".
  • A recurring element of Black Isle Studios / Obsidian Entertainment RPGs:
    • Darth Nihilus from Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. If his name doesn't say it all, he's also implied to be "void" and has potentially the ability to become a "black hole" for all sentient life.
      • The Exile too, is eventually revealed to be in a similar situation. You never really gained your connection to the Force back, and instead suck it from those around you through the Force bonds you create.
    • Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer involves this as well. Akachi's soul became the spirit-eater curse after being ripped from the Wall of the Faithless, and subsequently seeks to consume everything in order to fill its own emptiness.
    • Void is also associated with The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment. Because he is stripped of his mortality and has forgotten himself, The Nameless One is a void in the planes — he cannot be found by the use of scrying magic or similar, and each time he dies another being in the multiverse dies in his place.
  • The Void in League of Legends is basically an outer space-like dimension full of planet-threatening Eldritch Abominations. The most sympathetic characters that come from there are Kha'Zix, who enjoys hunting and assimilating wild prey a little too much; Kassadin, who entered the Void and now tries as hard as possible to keep it away from Runeterra; Kai'sa, Kassadin's daughter, who was forced to wear a Void creature as a costume to survive in the incredibly harsh environment (not that it stopped her from putting on her eyeshadow and getting her eyebrows on fleek for her splash art), and Rek'Sai, who is basically a wild beast that acts on instinct. Kog'Maw, Cho'Gath, Vel'Koz are permanently hungry for something (food, fear and destruction, and knowledge and disintegration), and Malzahar was consumed by the Void and is now intent on bringing it to Runeterra.
  • Void is the Japanese name for the Non-Elemental element in The Legend of Dragoon. It's most prominently wielded by game anti-villain / anti-hero Lloyd.
  • Nin²-Jump: Namakura, the Big Bad, inserts the phrases "Emptiness is the form" and "Form is the emptiness" into his normal speech. He appears to be a Zen Buddha as well.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Ahriman introduces himself as the God of the Void.
  • The Violet Wisps from the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors can turn Sonic into a small black hole that sucks in small enemies and rings.
  • StarCraft Dark Templar / Nerazim draw psionic power from The Void (essentially, space itself), as opposed to the Khalai Protoss, who use their own Hive Mind / Assimilation link for power. Void-based abilities apparently include cloaking, trapping targets in a "Void Prison", and (for Zeratul, at least) short-range teleportation.
    • It's also worth noting that the combination of the two is very powerful and there's even a Dark Templar prophecy speaking of the "Twilight Deliverer" that signals a time of great peril for the Universe.
    • The Twilight Deliverer is bad news, but the Twilight Messiah is a mythological figure that is supposedly able to wield the powers of both Khala and Void in tandem and is a major force for good. What's more, the Messiah is supposedly cyclical, returning in a new form when it is needed. The (mostly Dark) protoss who espouse this theory are apt to hold that Tassadar (who did channel both back in StarCraft 1 to destroy the Overmind) was or is, depending on your interpretation a fulfillment of this prophecy.
  • Count Bleck and his minions in Super Paper Mario use this quite eagerly in their attempt to annihilate all of reality. This includes Luigi during his time brainwashed into being Mr. L, so it's theorized that the Power of the Void is the source of Luigi's bizarre Negative Zone Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
    • Count Bleck, meanwhile, utilizes this during his boss battle, throwing miniature black holes and creating a large void in an attempt to suck in the player close enough to damage them.
    • The results of a world that had been consumed by the black heart's void. It's a huge level with only black ground, white sky, and three small pieces of the previous world remaining. It's incredibly unsettling.
  • One of the secret Lumen characters in Long Live the Queen has this as a powerset.
    Lucille, Countess of Nix: My power isn't like your power, little princess. I control the absence of things. Sound. Light. Life.
  • In LEGO Universe, the Darkitect controls the Maelstrom, which is the embodiment of destruction itself.
  • In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, one of Dracula's new weapons is the Void Sword. It is the embodiment of the void in Dracula's own heart after he forsook his humanity. It is a 'vampiric' weapon that replenishes Dracula's health by draining his foe's. The Void Sword can also launch void projections which drain the heat from their targets, freezing them.
  • In Skies of Arcadia, elemental magic is powered by the six moons. The silver moon gives Void magic, which grants the user power over life and death.
  • Void is one of the available elements for spells in Treasure of the Rudra. It's specialty is that it is completely unaffected by Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: nothing is strong against or resists it, but nothing is weak against it either.
  • Alternate!Ner'zhul from World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor drew on the void powers of the god Dark Star so his clan would not get exterminated by the Iron Horde. Sadly, it wreaked havoc on his sanity, leaving him twisted and evil.
    • It's later expanded on in Legion that the Void is the opposite of the Holy Light. It is an all consuming nothingness that birthed the Void Lords who desire a Cessation of Existence. The Light and the Void are actually the primal base elements of existence, and it was their accidental collision that gave birth to the material universe, before they collided nothing else existed.
    • Player Shadow Priests use this power, along with Casting a Shadow
  • Void is one of the three types of elemental damage in Destiny and its sequel. The games' lore links it to dark energy (the physics concept), the vacuum between stars, and black holes.
  • The Street Fighter makes use of this, mostly in reference to Ryu and Gouken. Street Fighter IV revealed that Gouken didn't actually die as was previously said and was merely rendered comatose by Akuma's Shun Goku Satsu because he emptied his heart and mind of all thoughts just before it hit. After recovering, Gouken masters the Power of Nothingness and teaches it to Ryu to help him overcome the Satsui no Hadou within his heart. In Street Fighter V Ryu has mastered the Power of Nothingness and defeats M.Bison once and for all by hitting him with a void-powered Hadoken that destroys his evil energy from the inside out.
  • In The Elder Scrolls series, this is the realm of Sithis. Sithis is a force that represents void, change, chaos, and limitation. Sithis is sometimes anthropomorphized by various groups, including the Dark Brotherhood, which operates in direct service to their "Dread Father" Sithis and who seek to serve him "in the Void" after death, and the Hist, a race of ancient, sentient, and possibly omniscient trees native to the Black Marsh who are said to "acknowledge" Sithis as the original creator of the universe. Sithis is venerated by many other cultures throughout Tamriel as well as a force of change, though outright worship is rare.
  • Void Walker demons from Nexus Clash are shadow creatures that draw on the power of the void to remove themselves from physical existence, enabling them to ignore physical boundaries and distances, become invisible, and bypass armor. The only downside of this is that it leaves them as fragile wisps that are unprotected from physical harm.
  • In Warframe, technically every Warframe uses this, as the Warframes are conduits of power from the Void, a logic-defying alternate reality serving as a source of power and energy used by the Tenno. However, the true power of the Void is wielded by the Operator, the human half of the Tenno who remotely controls the Warframe; when the Operator activates their Transference ability, they manifest in person and can launch beams and bursts of destructive Void energy that are unique in that there is nothing in the game able to resist the damage, making them ideal for killing the highly-adaptive Sentients.
  • In the second Mega Man Star Force game, the dark purple Murian soldiers wield this "element", as Geo adresses them as "Ye born of Nothing".

  • Homestuck takes place in an RPG-Mechanics Verse where Void is one of the known elements, "the essence of lack or nothingness." Void is specifically an Aspect of destruction or obfuscation of knowledge and seems tied to the Furthest Ring. Heroes of the Void are also expected to embrace nothingness to become something. The Heroes of the Void seen so far all have used their powers for passive Psychic Block Defense against scrying and omniscience. The Page of Void had the potential to be a blank slate with no interests, which drove him to become a Renaissance Man. Unfortunately, he ended up focusing on a few specific hobbies and ultimately achieved nothing. The Rogue of Void channels her power through her Fenestrated Portals, which cuts through the timeless void outside the universe. Furthermore, her class as a Rogue allows her to steal an object's nonexistence, essentially giving her the ability to conjure objects from nothing.
  • Psi-Max, of Goblins, seems to be capable of invoking this power to create areas of pure oblivion. Interestingly, not only are the objects (and people!) that fall into these erased, ecthey are retroactively removed from time- people remember a reality where they never existed, and seem to have no awareness that anything has changed.
  • Norah of Agents of the Realm is described on the cast page as having power over the Void, although so far, she was using her sword and shield more than magic, so it remains to be seen just how it works.

    Web Original 
  • The villainous Void, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, has the power to send objects and creatures to an "endless black void" at will. He also teleports by traveling to this void and back.
  • Sailor Nothing has this as her power. It manifests as dissolving the enemies she fights into sheer nonexistence, and when she uses this power, it requires her to suppress all emotions and thought, and feel nothing.
  • The Fear Mythos features the Quiet, which is perhaps the most dangerous of all the Fears. It is a vast, sentient nothingness that devours entire universes, and one day it will arrive in ours...
  • Kingdumb Hearts mocks this. Xemnas thrusts out his hand to demonstrate "the power of nothing," and nothing happens.
  • In the Mata Nui On-Line Game, the Makuta makes himself out to be affiliated with "the Void", and being the embodiment of the power of destruction. This was all that was known about him for a while, but later story material revealed he had just been bluffing. Though this wasn't a complete lie, as his power is Shadow, which is seen as the absence of light, he did turn himself into a giant sucking vortex at one point, and he does greatly enjoy destruction.

    Western Animation 
  • In an episode of Kim Possible, Ron finds himself struck by the Villian of the Week's atom-scrambler ray, causing anything he touches to de-materialize. He is forced to live in an anti-matter hamster ball until the process is reversed.
  • King Minus from a short animated sketch on Sesame Street, had the power to make things disappear by touching them. Including himself.
  • Auntie Matter from Atomic Betty evokes this, being able to transmute her body into a black hole.

    Real Life 
  • One reason for this trope's prevalence is that some sects of Zen Buddhism emphasize emptiness and void, especially emptying the mind.
  • Black holes are popular modern icons of the Power of the Void but they are not in fact voids, nor are they really holes. However like many fictional voids they are the supreme destructive force in the universe.
  • It's often thought the Universe was born from a Quantum fluctuation in the Void.
  • In modern physics there is never truly a void. Fields that define the laws of physics permeate the universe and ripples in those fields take the form of virtual particles that seem to pop in and out of existence even in a perfect vacuum. Given enough time, however, anything could pop up in theory: from a sentient entity to an entire Universe as stated above.
  • Likely related to the former is dark energy, which can be broadly described as a the vacuum giving a negative pressure that opposes gravity causing despite its very low density that the Universe expands faster and faster. It's not known if said acceleration will continue forever, to the point of even ripping apart the Universe, will stop, or if it will become attractive causing the Universe to collapse on itself.

Alternative Title(s): The Power Of The Void


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