History HoistByHisOwnPetard / Literature

** The villain in ''Literature/FeetOfClay'' attempted to poison the Patrician by using candles with the wicks soaked in arsenic. Vimes [[spoiler:pretends to have done]] the same trick with [[spoiler:holy water]] in the climax. The villain also used a golem to help with the plot, and it's a golem that ends up arresting him.

* In Anthony Horowitz's ''Literature/AlexRider'' books, the antagonist is occasionally killed by their own weapon. And it's very rarely a simple or clean death; if Anthony Horowitz ever loses his present career, he's got the makings of a nice NightmareFuelStationAttendant.

** Then in ''Snakehead'', an even ''more'' gruesome example: Major Yu is using a prototype bomb as powerful as a nuke to create a tsunami in order to stop a group of popular NonIdleRich people from addressing the public to help encourage eradication of poverty (Satire Alert: [[spoiler:they were commissioned for this by one of the world governments to keep the status quo in check]]). Alex infiltrates his base and detonates the bomb too early. And how does this kill Yu and not Alex, when considering that Yu was half a mile away from where he was, and the bomb was thousands of feet below sea level? Because Yu had a very acute form of osteoporosis, and the shockwave from the bomb shattered his skeleton.

** Her former partner, Briar Cudgeon, suffered a more fatal version of this. He activated the plasma cannons in Koboi Labs in order to stun the B'wa Kell crime ring after his plan to betray them was revealed. When his plan to betray Opal as well is revealed shortly thereafter, she angrily rams him with her hoverchair and he's sent flying straight into the cannons' conduits, killing him. The narrator specifically notes the irony.

** Big example in ''Literature/{{Changes}}'' on Red Court vampires who tried to curse Dresden's bloodline to death. To wit: the Red Court has the ability (through massive and incredibly difficult preparation) wipe out everyone within a certain bloodline, killing the sacrifice, all their siblings, their parents, all their siblings, their grandparents, their siblings, etc, etc. The plan was to use Harry's daughter to kill the Blackstaff, the White Council's assassin and one of the strongest wizards on the planet (who also dropped a satellite on the home of a high ranking Red Court Noble recently), who is Harry's grandfather, plus dealing with Dresden himself as a bonus. Instead, Harry sacrificed the newest Red Court Vampire [[ShootTheDog (who happened to be his lover) at her own request]] which wiped out every single Red Court Vampire that was still alive and older than her at that point.
** In ''Literature/GhostStory'', this is how the Corpsetaker is finally taken down, as Mortimer Linquist, an ectomancer who she was torturing with hundreds of wraiths, seizes control of those wraiths and uses them to destroy her for good.
** Another example occurs in ''Literature/GravePeril''. Bianca enlists the help of a few fellow sorcerers to stir up turbulence among the ghosts of Chicago, which messes with the barrier between the living and spirit worlds, allowing the ghosts to have a greater influence (i.e. cause more havoc) among the living world, for the sake of sending one particularly nasty ghost with a grudge against Harry after him. This backfires on her at the end of the book, when Harry uses that same turbulence to his advantage, empowering all the spirits of people killed by Bianca and her minions. The ghosts proceed to go wild and slaughter every member of Bianca's entourage, including Bianca herself (who was killed by the ghost of woman she killed but blamed Harry for, which is what set off her whole vengeance scheme in the first place).