History Main / DeusExitMachina

** Nonetheless this is an inversion- the reason said-supervillain was out in the first place was because Amazing ''let'' him out, the reason being Amazing is a stupid egomaniac who wanted a decent villain to fight; the reason for ''that'' being he made a fortune out of selling out to advertising (eg. he has a Pespsi logo on his suit) and he needs such fights to maintain his stardom. Casanova Frankenstein beats him horribly easily and it would be fair to say that if he actually busted out of prison he would have ate Amazing for breakfast. Doubly inverted then too as Frankenstein counts as a case of DiabolusExistMachina.

* This troper recalls at least one episode of ''XenaWarriorPrincess'' in which this happens: Gabrielle gets a scroll which causes anything written upon it to come true, what do you think the first thing written upon it is? "Xena had gone fishing". HilarityEnsues, including the depowering of ''two'' Olympian gods (Ares and Aphrodite). When the characters realise that they ''need'' Xena later, and wrote that she had returned, she does so pulling a giant cartload piled high with fish, after spending several days fishing with no idea why.

* In the series finale of ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'', ObiWan Iroh refuses to fight Fire Lord Ozai because--even assuming he won--it would not bring true peace, being ultimately nothing more than "a brother killing a brother for power." This leaves it up to our plucky hero Aang to face the Fire Lord himself.
** Earlier, Ozai's son Zuko refused to attack him on Aang's behalf because [[ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimself it is the Avatar's destiny]].
*** [[FridgeLogic Why couldn't either one just kill him, then tell the world that it was Aang?]]

* Howard Taylor of ''SchlockMercenary'' has mentioned this as a problem for writing when [[spoiler:Petey]] has [[AGodAmI ascended to a higher state of being]] but stuck around with virtually omnipotent powers.

** Did you just call The Flash a less powerful hero? He's in the top 5 when the extent of his powers is underplayed.

** In "The Desert" episode, Katara has to lead the group because Aang's too upset over Appa, [[LemonWackyHello Sokka is high]], and Toph can't see (she's blind and senses vibrations) because of the loose sand they're walking on.

** ''Order of the Phoenix'': Dumbledore is [[TheUmbridge replaced by Dolores Umbridge]] thanks to a GovernmentConspiracy.

* The entire premise of ''MysteryMen'' was that Captain Amazing, the only hero The City would ever need, was captured by a BigBad just slightly more GenreSavvy than himself. When the rag-tag second-stringers finally get their opportunity to free him and save the day, they accidentally disintegrate him, and he stays Deus Exit Machina'd forever, leaving them to it.

Well, [[SidekickGlassCeiling obviously we can't have that]], and if the character in question is any kind of good guy it would strain belief to have them just sit out the fight for no reason. Sure, you could [[ThePlotReaper kill them off]] or write them out of the story completely, but they doesn't have to leave ''forever'', just long enough for the hero to have to face the menace du jour on his or her own. The solution: take the bruiser and [[PutOnABus put them on a bus]] for a while. Maybe some other responsibility came up, maybe there's another villain rampaging around somewhere else, maybe they had the bad luck to break a leg and got stuck in the hospital. However it's done, the DeusExMachina is temporarily out of commission, and the weaker heroes have to win the fight on their own.

*** [[spoiler:Or maybe fortunately. If they had come just a split second earlier but after Pain discovered he wasn't there ([[IWantThemAlive thus he didn't need to fear accidentally killing who he needed to take alive]]) they would have been killed by the attacked that leveled the village.]]

** This is usually carried over from ''SuperSentai'', whose fans refer to the trope as "Sixth Ranger Syndrome." Prominent examples are Genta/[=ShinkenGold=] in ''SamuraiSentaiShinkenger'', who would either be running his sushi stand during important battles or sent off on completely separate missions from the rest of the team; and Yuusaku/[=MegaSilver=] in ''DenjiSentaiMegranger'', deliberately written so that at the start of the show the character could not transform for more than a few minutes at a time.