History Main / GoldenSnitch

** It gets even more stupid; The ''only'' ring that really mattered was the sky one - when he had that he was within his rights to end the conflict and have the heroes killed as the successor. It was only because he [[NiceJobFixingItVillain sadistically wanted to see Tsuna's guardians beaten up]] that he didn't go through with that, and got to the stage where the ring rejected him during their fight. Yep, all the other 6 life and death fights where pointless, and they found this out after fight 2.

* ''Series/KamenRiderFourze'' pulls off something similar to ''Naruto''. During an astronaut qualification exam, there is a "bonus" question about describing the test papers ([[hottip:answer:when the three test papers are held up to the light, an outline of a star appears in the field for the bonus question]]). IdiotHero Gentaro and CloudCuckooLander Yuki pass the exam answering ''only'' the bonus question, meaning that regardless of score, answering that bonus question is enough of a qualification. The exam proctor mentions that the school board chairman (also the series BigBad) only put it in for "[[ItAmusedMe a little joke]]".

** Though the match with Ravenclaw in the third book [[SubvertedTrope did require some strategy for when to catch]]--since the houses that go to the House Cup are the ones with the most cumulative match points, Gryffindor would win the game but not qualify for the cup if Harry caught the snitch when they weren't far enough ahead, so he had to focus for the first part of the game on preventing the opposing Seeker from catching the Snitch, rather than hunting it himself.

** This is torn apart mercilessly in ''{{FanFic/Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality}}'' by rational!Harry, who never fails to point out how pointless the rest of the game is. Everyone he mentions this to is horrified at the thought of changing the rules. [[spoiler: He eventually uses up his "Christmas Wish" to remove the Snitch from the game.]]

** In addition, most of the Quidditch we see is played at high-school level. The professional matches played in ''Goblet of Fire'' (and in the accompanying book ''Quidditch Through The Ages'') suggest that real Quidditch matches are much more high-scoring and may last several days. Indeed, there are provisions in the rules for games that last more than twelve hours, and mention is made of some that last for weeks. The game ''cannot'' end until the Snitch is caught (or one captain concedes). After such a game, the points awarded by the Snitch would be almost negligible, and if the teams were still in a dead heat at that time, the points would be a welcome tie-breaker.\\

* In ''SetoNoHanayome'', after seeing that his beloved daughter's team is losing the school athletic competition, San's father [the P.E. coach] announces that the final race will be worth 333 points.
** This is also an IncrediblyLamePun as "san" also is a Japanese word for "three". So it's worth ''san''byaku (three hundred) ''san''ju (thirty) ''san'' (three) points.

* There's a fine example of this trope in one of CarlBarks's classic DonaldDuck comics: The Tenderfoot Trap (1957). Donald, Scrooge and Gladstone are all entrants in the Pizen Valley Contest for desert prospectors. The contest consists of five different events. The first four are worth 10 points each, and Gladstone wins them all. Then comes the final event, Wild Burro Catching, worth 50 points! In other words, the previous events were a complete waste of time...
** ... or not, as Gladstone's luck subverts the trope. Trying to find a burro, he quickly gets lost. This leaves Donald and Scrooge to fight for the prize. However, they end up tied, meaning they split the points. Final score: Gladstone 40, Donald 25, Scrooge 25. Gladstone wins!
*** Of course, remember that Gladstone's superpower is that he's ridiculously lucky.
** A similar example involved Scrooge [=McDuck=] engaged in a sporting contest with fellow millionaires. He's won every year because his opponents suck, but in the tournament appearing in the book a new, physically-fit competitor appears and seems ready to sweep the competition. What makes it fit the trope is that the character is so confident of his victory that he volunteers to concede the trophy if Scrooge can win even one event.
*** Unless Disney re-used that plot (entirely possible), it was actually Donald who starred in that story, with his competitor being one of Scrooge's relatives from "Cheapside", a fictional Scottish town full of Scrooge-like people who would never give a prize to someone who didn't earn it.

* The new ''Family Game Night'' on Hub awards one "Crazy Cash Card" to each family at the start of the show, then an additional card to the family who wins each game. Most cards are worth no more than $1500 or so (and generally only a couple hundred bucks), but one card is worth anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. Thus, a family could lose all five games and still win the grand prize if the card they chose happens to be the jackpot one.

* Spanish TV contest ''{{Gafapastas}}'' is a real-life shining example of this. It has five rounds, the first four are woth 600€ if you manage to do everything perfectly and the last one is ''1200€'' for the same. Not only that, but while the first four are individual rounds (Meaning both players can get the 600€), the last one is head-to-head answer-this-first squareoff, so a losing player can quickly CurbStompBattle their opponent and win by with a huge margin. The current champion has won many games simply because he's really good at the last round. The worst part? Until recently it was 800€ for the first 4 rounds and 800€ for the last. That's right, they changed it to make the rounds MORE unbalanced! [[SarcasmMode Makes perfect sense]].

* JayWolpert's ''Series/WaitTilYouHaveKids'' uses a "1-2-3-4x2" format, though more than one couple can score per-round. In the final round, both members of each couple answer and score score individually, allowing up to ''8'' points to be won!

* In the video game version of ''Scene It?'', the final round is completely broken. Some versions have the final round set to where getting a wrong answer takes away points from your score, and most recent versions have the point ''multiplier'', which doubles the amount of points you get ''each time'' for repeatedly answering correctly (2x, 4x, 8x, etc.)

** On the other hand, not only is Blernsball supposed to be [[CalvinBall impossible to understand]], but it's not exactly an easy shot to make.

*** Resulting in the hilarious mental image of two teams desperately trying to hide their attempts to lose the game.

* In golf tournaments the actual number of strokes is apparently irrelevant. It's what the score card says. If the golfer signs a score card with more strokes than he actually took, that's his score and if it causes him to lose - tough! I assume this doesn't count if the caddy put down less strokes than the golfer took.
** If the caddy puts down ''less'' strokes and the golfer signs for it, the golfer is '''Disqualified'''. A golfer's honesty is SeriousBusiness.

* Until recently [=GCSEs=] and A-levels came in "finals" variants (now they are generally delivered in modules). This often resulted in the uncomfortable scenario of getting high marks for a given topic but these not counting for anything, and then not being able to remember it in sufficient detail two years on.

* ''TheCollegiumChronicles'', in Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Valdemar'' universe, has a Quidditch-like game called Kirball. There are three ways to score: get the ball into the opponent's goal tower (1 point), occupy the opponent's goal tower (10 points), and capture the opponent's flag (50 points). Matches typically end with either less than 5 total points scored, or with a flag capture leading to a ridiculous disparity in score. The 10-point score is repeatedly highlighted as having never been achieved.

* The Video Challenges in ''Nickelodeon Arcade'' could be horrendously guilty of this; essentially, one teammate has to meet or beat the challenge set forth by the "video wizard" on a certain video game within a time limit, and depending on how much their partner wagers out of their score (which can be anything up to their total, or up to 25 points if they have less than that), they could effectively double or bust their score, depending on if the challenge is beaten, making or breaking the game for them.

* In the first format of ''Play the Percentages'', a couple could immediately win the game and a cash jackpot by guessing exactly how many of 100 people correctly answered a knowledge question.

* The Nickelodeon game show ''WildNCrazyKids'' was terribly guilty of this as their shows had a 3 event structure, with double points being awarded to the winners of the second event and triple points (or higher) to the winners of the third. This allowed the host to utter the line "So anybody can still win" before each event. This appeared to insult the intelligence of children about their understanding of competition.

* On ''Cheers'', They had the Best Boston Barmaid competition in which Carla won every round, including customer service, only to be informed at the end that she lost to the terrible, blonde barmaid because the winner is always the barmaid with the biggest breasts.

* An episode of ''TheNewAddamsFamily'' show had Gomez competing against Death for his life in this fashion. The last round is worth all of the points, and when asked "Then what was the point of the matches before?" The reply is just "[[LampshadeHanging better ratings]]".

* The House of the Dead 4 Special, a special edition of the original game with only 2 levels, and a chair which rotated between two screens, had this for the final boss. You have about 5 seconds to throw a grenade at him after you've weakened him. If you fail to do it, you get a bad end.

* In ''Spellcasting 301'', it doesn't really matter how well the Pharts do in the challenges. Whether they stomped the Yus, got stomped or ran a close competition, at the end of the final scheduled challenge, the Judge will declare that since the scores are so close (Which they might not be), there will be one last challenge, which will earn the frat to complete it enough points to guarantee a win. [[spoiler: This is because the Judge is secretly the series BigBad, and the whole point of the competition from his perspective is to manipulate ''somebody'' into completing this final task, which will provide him the MacGuffin he needs to enact his evil scheme]].

* In Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron, there is a skirmish mode. It consists of three rounds. The first and the second have no effect on the final victory. They just provide offensive and defensive bonuses in round 3, which decides whether or not the game is won.
* ''Banjo-Kazooie'''s "Grunty's Furnace Fun". It is a Mario Party-like game board where you work your way from the start to the finish, answering questions as you go. Get one wrong, and you lose one HP. But... there is a type of space which becomes MUCH more common the farther you go... where a wrong answer means ''instant death.'' One of these is, in fact, at the very end, so missing the final question will force you to start over, even if you performed flawlessly up to that point.

* The Nintendo World Championship 1990 was a gauntlet of three NES games: ''Super Mario Bros.'', ''Rad Racer'', and ''Tetris''. Players were given six minutes and 21 seconds to complete three objectives: get 50 coins in ''SMB'', finish a specially-made course in ''Rad Racer'', then use the remaining time to score as many points as possible in ''Tetris''. The scores were added up when time expires, but the ''Rad Racer'' score is multiplied by 10, and the ''Tetris'' score was multiplied by 25. The contest therefore was determined largely by whoever got the most time saved for ''Tetris'' as well as optimal strategy for that.

* In boxing, matches are often won on points (sometimes with some controversy). But one way to unambiguously win (and make all the points in the previous rounds meaningless) is to give your opponent a concus... er, get a knock-out.

* Good scores on ''The Machine: Bride of Pinbot'' are usually in the tens of millions of points. However, it is possible to make a shot that will spin the Big Wheel which can light a shot for ''1 billion'' points. This was viewed as such a GameBreaker that anyone who makes this shot goes on a separate high score table called the "Billionaire's Club". Ironically, there is a 50 million point award on The Big Wheel which is much more of a GameBreaker since [[DoWellButNotPerfect you will still quality for the standard high score list provided you don't make the billion point shot]].
* ''Johnny Mnemonic'' has Spinner Millions, which is worth 10 million points a spin for the rest of the ball it's activated (on default operator settings, you can only get this once per game). With only about 5-6 trips through the spinner, this can reach a billion points or more. The fact that it's part of your bonus that can be multiplied up to 4X will turn that into 4 billion. There is also a GoodBadBug with Hold Bonus which will essentially award it twice on the next ball, meaning having Hold Bonus would award you another 8 billion on the next ball, and again as long as you keep getting Hold Bonus. By comparison, the wizard mode of this game usually awards about 5 billion points.

* Parodied in ''History Of The World - Part I''. When in a tight spot during a life-size game of chess played in a castle courtyard with people wearing costumes, the King executes "Royal Privilege" and declares that he gets three moves. After getting himself out of trouble, he loses interest in the game, declares his next move to be "Gang-bang the Queen!", and rushes onto the field. [[OneLiner It's good to be the King]]!

** Triple points could also be a "tiebreaker" if both teams are just below 300. In this case, it doesn't matter what the multiplier is, whoever wins that round would win the match anyway.
**** As described, this can't happen. There's at most 300 points ''total'' available in the first three rounds; if the teams are anywhere near being tied, they'll both be around 150 at best, not "just below 300".
*** And of course, ''Family Feud'' has an actual tiebreaker in the form of Sudden Death, used only when neither team reaches 300 points at the end of the four main rounds. The Sudden Death question has only one answer and is usually extremely easy, meaning it all comes down to reflexes (whomever buzzes in first is probably going to win).
* In ''ThePriceIsRight'', a contestant that loses their pricing game still has as good a chance of making it to the Showcase as one who wins. However, turn order in the Showcase Showdown determined by previous winnings, and going last is a significant advantage, since you know exactly what you have to get to win, and you win by default if your opponents both go over before your turn.

*** The revival, ''Whammy: The All New Press Your Luck'', also had this but later versions of the show introduced the Big Bank, where all money a player loses to a Whammy goes into the Big Bank. A player that lands on the Big Bank space and then answers a question correctly would snag all the money stored. Since whammies were commonly landed on, the Big Bank usually gotten tons of money stored and this could guarantee that player a surefire win of the whole game if they don't hit a Whammy afterwards.

* On ''WheelOfFortune'', the last round involves one final spin of the wheel, after which all consonants in the puzzle are worth the value spun plus $1,000. If it comes up on a high enough value (particularly the $5,000 space), the final puzzle could allow someone who previously hadn't won at all to overtake the leader and win. To be fair, all contestants keep all winnings, so it's hard to complain about a second-place score in the $20,000 range.
** Really, the game is ''full'' of Golden Snitches, as getting such things as the Jackpot and the $10,000 Mystery Round spot gives the player that gets them a marked advantage over the competition. But by far the worst offender is the Prize Puzzle, which nets you a trip worth ''at least'' $5,000 for simply ''solving the puzzle''. Certain GenreSavvy players will immediately solve a Prize Puzzle, even if they haven't even spun the wheel yet, because they know that the prize itself is worth far more than anything they could hope to win that round and don't want to risk hitting a Lose a Turn or Bankrupt and giving the puzzle (and, by extension, the prize) to another player. In a normal game, where nobody gets a special space like the aforementioned two and they don't get an obscenely large Final Spin, the winner is more often than not the person who won the Prize Puzzle.

* In [[http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/080417 this]] ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'' non-canon parody of HarryPotter, the final event of a competition is worth four billion points. The leader after the previous events had all of ''fifteen'' points. This is lampshaded as "Standard wizard procedure of completely unbalancing all games".

* The TropeNamer comes from the [[TropeNamer Golden Snitch,]] a recurring plot device within the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series. While each goal scored in a game of Quidditch is worth 10 points, catching the Snitch scores 150 points and ends the game immediately. It's not a guaranteed win, though; if your team is more than 150 points behind, you'll still lose, and in at least one game this was done deliberately by the losing team to limit the damage. (Also, considering how hard it is to be up by 15 goals, [[CurbStompBattle you're really losing]] if you have to resort to this.)

* The TropeNamer comes from the GoldenSnitch, a recurring plot device within the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' series. While each goal scored in a game of Quidditch is worth 10 points, catching the Snitch scores 150 points and ends the game immediately. It's not a guaranteed win, though; if your team is more than 150 points behind, you'll still lose, and in at least one game this was done deliberately by the losing team to limit the damage. (Also, considering how hard it is to be up by 15 goals, [[CurbStompBattle you're really losing]] if you have to resort to this.)

* The Jack Attack segments in the YouDontKnowJack games are well-known for having lots of questions with huge payouts. Anyone who dominates in this segment is all but guaranteed to win unless the cash difference between the players is astronomical.
** There's no better example of this than in the GameGrumps LP of the 2013 game. {{Egoraptor}} utterly dominated at the Jack Attack segment, while JonTron was terrible out it. Thus, out of several games, Egoraptor won every game by a wide margin, even when JonTron was in the lead before.

** In addition, most of the Quidditch we see is played at high-school level. The professional matches played in ''Goblet of Fire'' (and in the accompanying book "Quidditch Through The Ages") suggest that real Quidditch matches are much more high-scoring and may last several days. Indeed, there are provisions in the rules for games that last more than twelve hours, and mention is made of some that last for weeks. The game ''cannot'' end until the Snitch is caught (or one captain concedes). After such a game, the points awarded by the Snitch would be almost negligible, and if the teams were still in a dead heat at that time, the points would be a welcome tie-breaker.\\

** This is torn apart mercilessly in {{Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality}} by rational!Harry, who never fails to point out how pointless the rest of the game is. Everyone he mentions this to is horrified at the thought of changing the rules. [[spoiler: He eventually uses up his "Christmas Wish" to remove the Snitch from the game.]]

* Played for humor in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/DaveTheBarbarian''. After failing the first two parts of his Rite of Pillage, Dave is able to pass the rite overall because the final test (counting for 75% of his score) is handwriting. The explanation is that the Rite is [[ProductPlacement sponsored by a pen company]].