History Main / HeadsTailsEdge

* In ''LightNovel/NoGameNoLife'', Sora [[InvokedTrope invokes]] this during "[[MundaneMadeAwesome the world's most brutal coin toss]]" between him and Miko of the Warbeasts. He uses his foot to slide a floor tile and trap the coin on its edge just as it landed, thereby getting a draw and convincing Miko to agree to a deal where both sides get what they want.

* Happens in the first episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Gawayn}}''; the coin gets stuck in a gap in a bridge after being flipped.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheNewScoobyDooMovies'' does this in the debut episode "Ghastly Ghost Town." Shaggy and Scooby are in the amusement park ghost town [[InkSuitActor the Three Stooges]] run looking for Velma, who has gone missing. Deciding whether or not to enter a decrepit saloon, Shaggy flips a coin (a two-headed one at that). He flips, it lands on its side and rolls off into the saloon and into a coin-operated player piano.

* Hey, man. It happens. According to [[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993PhRvE..48.2547M this article,]] it happens about 1 in every 6000 nickel tosses. It works better with nickels than quarters; nickels have a flat edge, while most other coins have rounded and ridged edges. They're also thicker than the other coins. [[WeAllLiveInAmerica The jury's still out on non-American money, however]].

* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': a recurring metaphor through the series is "When a Targaryen is born, the Gods flip a coin." Due to centuries of inbreeding and dealing with otherworldly magic, there is a strong current of hereditary insanity that runs through the Targaryen bloodline. Normally there's no middle ground: a Targaryen ruler is either great or terrible, a just king or a monstrous tyrant. And then Daenerys was born. When the Gods tossed her coin, it landed on its edge. She was both great and terrible, just and monstrous, in equal measure, at the exact same time. And it would only take one final push to knock her coin over to one side or the other. [[spoiler: When that push finally came, it landed on tails, and Dany went full Mad Queen and burned King's Landing to the ground.]]

* Explicitly said never to happen to an Wiki/SCPFoundation artifact, [[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1289 SCP-1289.]]

* {{Downplayed}} and {{Justified}} in many wargames which rely on a 6-sided dice. Rolling a handful of dice on a table filled up with models and terrain pieces means that once in a while a die is going to get land on something at an angle and you won't have a clear indicator of which number faces "up". In most cases, the rules advise you to simply reroll these dice.

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* Something similar happened to LetsPlay/{{Chuggaaconroy}} in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cy3fsWchos&t=11m42s this]] episode of ''VideoGame/Pikmin2'', when deciding which dungeon to enter. It got stuck vertically in the side of his chair.
* Explicitly said never to happen to an Wiki/SCPFoundation artifact, [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1289 SCP-1289.]]
** Also, there is subject [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2599 SCP-2599]], a girl who can fulfill any request, but never fulfills it completely. When ordered to flip a coin so that it lands on heads, it landed on the edge 24 times in a row.

* In ''Film/HandsAcrossTheTable'', Fred [=MacMurray=] tells Creator/CaroleLombard that he’ll get a job (something he doesn't want) if the coin lands on the edge. They’re on a moving bus, and it falls onto oncoming traffic. They block up traffic trying to find the coin, and it's found on its edge, because it landed in a crevice of a manhole. Hilarious HijinksEnsure indeed.

** In the very first Two-Face story, after Two-Face captures Batman and Robin and releases them unharmed because the coin said so, he captures Batman again. Two-Face says that heads he would free Batman, tails he would kill, and Batman asks about the edge, and said he should agree to turn himself in and co-operate with all plastic surgery and psychotherapy needed to become normal. Two-Face agrees, and the coin does land on its edge. Afterward, Batman reveals to Robin that he had switched Two-Face's coin for one Batman had built and loaded himself. (Unfortunately, [[JokerImmunity Two-Face was too interesting a villain to have only one story]].)

** Dilbert once tries to debunk Ratbert's claim of psychic powers with [[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-01-13/ 100 coin flips.]]

* An episode of ''Series/HannahMontana'' where Miley is trying to decide which friend she sides with over a stupid argument. She then {{lampshade|Hanging}}s this by saying "Oh come on!"

* Hey, man. It happens. According to [[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993PhRvE..48.2547M this article,]] it happens about 1 in every 6000 nickel tosses. It works better with nickels than quarters; nickels have a flat edge, while most other coins have rounded and ridged edges. They're also thicker than the other coins. [[WeAllLiveInAmerica The Jury's still out on non-American money, however]].

# The coin just happens to land on its edge due to (ridiculously miniscule) chance. LawOfConservationOfDetail means this is almost never the reason in fiction.

* After a popular boy gives a Valentine to either Natella or Keisha in the ValentinesDayEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/BromwellHigh'', the two girls flip a coin to ask the boy who the card is for. Keisha, in her infinite wisdom, calls it a "trick and the coin will land on its side", much to Natella's bafflement. Guess what happens?

* One ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'' strip has Archie flip a coin to decide whether to take Betty or Veronica to the prom date, and it lands on its edge.
* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'' once had a con-man visit the village pretending to be an oracle that predicts the future. When captured and tested by Romans, they did the simple coin-flip test and the oracle, trying to prove he was ''not'' one, declared that it will be neither heads nor tails. The cartoon additionally showed the coin bouncing all over the place to finally land on edge, prompting the oracle to use IKnowYouKnowIKnow to try and get off the hook.
* In one of the early ComicBook/TwoFace stories in the ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' comics, Two-Face tosses his coin to decide whether to reform or not. It lands on its edge, caught in the gap in the floor boards. He declares it's now up to fate to decide and puts the coin away in his vest pocket. He is later saved when a policeman tries to shoot him and the bullet [[PocketProtector deflects off the coin]]. As the bullet struck the scarred side, Two-Face decides this means he was meant to be a criminal. Talk about [[NiceJobBreakingItHero nice job breaking it officer]].
** In the very first Two-Face story, after Two-Face captured Batman and Robin and released them unharmed because the coin said so, he captured Batman again. Two-Face said that heads he would free Batman, tails he would kill, and Batman asked about the edge, and said he should agree to turn himself in and co-operate with all plastic surgery and psychotherapy needed to become normal. Two-Face agrees, and the coin does land on its edge. Afterward, Batman revealed to Robin that he had switched Two-Face's coin for one Batman had built and loaded himself. (Unfortunately, [[JokerImmunity Two-Face was too interesting a villain to have only one story]].)

* In a ''ComicBook/RichieRich'' single-page story, Reggie Van Dough was about to flip his double-headed coin to determine who would pay for a meal he and Richie shared: (paraphrasing) "If the coin lands on edge, I'll pay for both of our meals!" The coin did indeed land on edge. It turned out that Richie put glue all around the coin's edge.
* In one of many attempts to choose between BettyAndVeronica, [[ComicBook/ArchieComics Archie Andrews]] flipped a coin. [[StatusQuoIsGod Naturally]], it landed on its edge.

* The King from ''ComicStrip/TheWizardOfId'' tried to decide how to execute a condemned prisoner (hanging or guillotine) with a coin toss, only to have the coin land on its edge. The prisoner is briefly overjoyed until the King tells Sir Rodney to hang him with the rope on the guillotine.

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* In an adaptation of ''WesternAnimation/{{Asterix}} and the Big Fight'' and ''Asterix and the Soothsayer'', said soothsayer is attempting to prove to a centurion that he really isn't a soothsayer. When pressed to guess the result of a coin toss, he panics and says he bets on "neither". Guess what happens?

'''Homer:''' Heads! I mean tails! I mean, on its side! ''[the coin lands on its side]''
-->'''Inspector:''' Well done. [[MundaneMadeAwesome Now, let me validate your parking.]] ''[dramatically punches a ticket, with the same sound as the cattle-gun]''

* Hey, man. It happens. According to [[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993PhRvE..48.2547M this article,]] it happens about 1 in every 6000 nickel tosses. It works better with nickels than quarters; nickels have a flat edge, while most other coins have rounded and ridged edges. They're also thicker than the other coins.
** [[WeAllLiveInAmerica The Jury's still out on non-American money, however]].

* There is an anecdote that John von Neumann and some of the boys at RAND needed to set up a three way coin flip, when one of them produced a small, specially milled cylinder shaped so that it was equally probable for the 'coin' to come up heads, tails, or edge. Von Neumann studied the cylinder for a few seconds and announced its proportions.
** The same principle is used to make a [[https://patents.google.com/patent/US6926275B1/en five-sided die]] -- a triangular prism shaped to have a 2/5 chance of landing on one of its two triangular "heads or tails" faces and a 3/5 chance of landing on one of its three rectangular "edge" faces, giving each a 1/5 chance.

* Something similar happened to LetsPlay/{{Chuggaaconroy}} in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Cy3fsWchos&t=11m42s this]] episode of ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}} 2'', when deciding which dungeon to enter. It got stuck vertically in the side of his chair.

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', this happens around Rand all the time, because he's ''ta'veren''. At one point, Mat flips a coin to try to decide if he should follow Rand or not; the coin lands on edge, but then after a minute falls down on the side that says he shouldn't. It's implied that Rand tips it over by [[FunctionalMagic channelling]]. Later on, Mat's luck powers can make ''dice'' balance on edge; when a companion questions why he thinks it's possible to roll two dice and get a sum of one, Mat provides a demonstration. One die lands on one, and the other lands in a crack between floor tiles with a corner pointing upwards.

[[quoteright:224:[[ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_rsz_coinflip.png]]]]

** In a variant, trolls (who aren't too bright, at least at room temperatures) have a gambling game where they bet on whether or not a coin will come down ''at all''. Although given how strong trolls are, this may not be as certain as it sounds.

* In ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', this happens around Rand all the time, because he's ''ta'veren''. At one point, Mat flips a coin to try to decide if he should follow Rand or not; the coin lands on edge, but then after a minute falls down on the side that says he shouldn't. It's implied that Rand tips it over by [[FunctionalMagic channelling]]. Later on, Mat's luck powers can make ''dice'' balance on edge. Which is how he manages to roll two dice and get a sum of one.

* In one of many attempts to choose between BettyAndVeronica, [[Franchise/ArchieComics Archie Andrews]] flipped a coin. [[StatusQuoIsGod Naturally]], it landed on its edge.

* The coin landing on its edge is a recurring metaphor for fate in the ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'' series; it represents Kain's SadisticChoice in the first game to either kill himself and thus doom the vampire race to extinction, or else watch the Pillars of Nosgoth that govern the land's health lower the world into decay as they're unable to be restored while he lives. Given that [[spoiler:the SealedEvilInACan the Pillars are keeping trapped will be released if either the vampires die out or the Pillars are destroyed]], Kain aptly states, "either way, the game is rigged." The "edge", in this case, is [[spoiler:the hope that Raziel will realize he possesses true free will and use it to break the {{Stable Time Loop}}s of the series and throw the timeline into chaos, and hopefully once the dust settles the two of them will be able to TakeAThirdOption and find a way to get the good bits of both choices. And by the end of the series, they ([[LeftHanging apparently]]) succeed]].