Cataclysmic villains, also called omnicidal maniacs, aspire to bring about the end of the world, universe or multiverse they are in. To apply, said characters must be trying to destroy the entirety of the universe where each of their stories take place, so destroying planets when the story occurs in a whole galaxy like Star Wars does not count. Cataclysms have vast power and are similar to Dark Lords. Sometimes they can be Dark Gods or Godlike Figures. Cataclysmic villains may also be ones that previously caused massive destruction without completely destroying anything. Most of the time, they may be seeking to destroy their universe in order to (if possible) build a new one in their image where they control everything.

In extreme cases, they can also be reality-butchers as they have successfully destroyed or ruined entire universes, dimensions or realities. They are the worst of the Destroyers and Genocidal, usually having no redeeming qualities. Most of them are also nihilists, seeing creation as meaningless and causing destruction because of it (e.g. Mephiles the Dark, Chaos, Invictus, The End, Thanos, many version of Unicron, Anti-Monitor, Agent Smith, Amon, Diablo, Cursa, Fecto Elfilis, AM, Johan Liebert, Junko Enoshima and The Lich). As such, villains of this archetype are almost guaranteed to cross the Moral Event Horizon and become Pure Evil due to their ambitions alone involving the near or complete extinction of all life on any given world. However, some of them can still have redeeming traits, even to the point of being genuinely affable (e.g. Count Bleck, the Dark Lord, Gloomius Maximus, Bartleby, Shiroko Terror, Yuno Gasai, Light Hope, Galactus, Jobu Tupaki, Beerus, Sailor Galaxia, and White Woz).

A subcategory of these are Harbingers for Rebirth who want to destroy a universe AND replace it with something else.

It is also the opposite of Cosmic Protection.