History Main / StartXToStopX

** Ethan Hunt is '''''always''''' doing this. Sometimes it’s deliberate but others (such as in the aforementioned ''Ghost Protocol'') his hand is forced and he has to fall back to it. Typically this means whatever he’s hoping to avert ends up being narrowly avoided (the worst of which happening ''Ghost Protocol'' and ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleFallout Fallout]]'', where a nuclear attack is averted only by mere seconds).

** Ethan Hunt is '''''always''''' doing this. Sometimes it’s deliberate but others (such as in the aforementioned ''Ghost Protocol'') his hand is forced and he has to fall back to it. Typically this means whatever he’s hoping to avert ends up being narrowly avoided (the worst of which end up being ''Ghost Protocol'' and ''[[Film/MissionImpossibleFallout Fallout]]'', where a nuclear attack is averted only by mere seconds).

* In ''VisualNovel/SuperDanganRonpa2'', Nagito Komaeda is obsessed with hope, but also believes that any despair is followed by an even greater hope. To that end, he's willing to allow the killing game to continue, and even sets himself up to be murdered in the first chapter.

* Some vaccines, such as the oral polio vaccine, inject a weakened form of a virus. Some others, such as the smallpox vaccine, inject a different but "close enough" pathogen. Thus, a small number of vaccines work to prevent illness by giving a weakened illness. Note: these are the exceptions today. Most, like the common flu vaccine today, inject something incapable of causing disease (though soreness is common, as the immune system is supposed to react to the substance and the soreness is caused by that reaction.)

* Vaccines, such as the common flu shot, inject a weakened or dead form of a virus which has the human body adapt in combating it. With the body knowing what it's up against, it can quickly and easily counter the same disease should it pop up in the future. Ergo, to prevent getting sick from an illness, you have to get the (weakened) illness.

* The main goal of ''Webcomic/{{Misfile}}'' is to find a way for Rumisiel to return to Heaven to correct the titular mistake in the CelestialBureaucracy which turned Ash [[GenderBender into a girl]] and deleted two years of Emily's life. Near the end, they finally get the chance to, but by that time things have happened that caused them to change their mind. Emily easily decides [[spoiler: to destroy the files about her missing years since she's decided that her life post-misfile is miles better than before]], but while Ash wants his proper body back, he also realizes that being a girl did alot of good for both himself and others, both retroactively and during the year and half of the plot, and fixing the misfile will also erase his memories of what happened, which means that among other things he might not be together with Emily. Rumisiel manages to find a compromise [[spoiler: by making more misfiles, first by creating a copy of Ash's file, marking out all the references to gender, and filing it in the female cabinet, creating a twin sister who did everything Ash did in the altered timeline as well as durring the comic's plot, while Ash's file gets re-filed into the proper male cabinet, only covered in post-it notes, confusing the system enough to let Ash keep his memories (albeit also setting up the plot of the sequel).]]

* In the ''VideoGame/RType'' series, the iconic Force device is made using embryonic Bydo flesh, creating a nigh-impenetrable shield and multi-functional weapon that is highly effective in destroying Bydo.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'', of course, features the master plan to prevent [[spoiler: Ultimecia from compressing time]]: Let her [[spoiler: compress time]] and jump her ass while she does that.

* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'', one of Altair's Codex pages lists what he considers the three ironies at the heart of the Assassins - They seek peace, which they try to obtain through murder. They seek to free the minds of men, but require obedience to a leader and a set of rules. They seek to expose the dangers of faith, but use it themselves. He goes on to say that he is trying to find a way to resolve the contradiction but fears that no solution exists.

* In ''Film/{{Paycheck}}'', the machine lets politicians see there's going to be a war against a foreign nation... so they start a pre-emptive war to defeat that same nation, in order to prevent it. Somehow.

** Can be invoked by the player in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'''s expansion Shadowbringers. Nothing stops the player from fighting [[AngelicAbomination Sin Eaters]] in the First as the light/holy-based Paladin or White Mage. That said, the promo materials ''do'' feature the Dark Knight job for a reason.

* Lloyd and co from VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia, after discovering where [[PoweredByAForsakenChild Exspheres come from]], resolve to stop the Desians [[spoiler: and Cruxis]] and stop the manufacture of Exspheres. However, they quickly realize afterwards that, in order to even stand a chance against them, they have to keep using their own Exspheres anyway. [[spoiler: The party continues to use theirs after the game, while planning to give them up after Lloyd finishes his quest to gather every Exsphere on the planet.]]

* ''Film/WonderWoman2017'': Ares's plan to end war and bring about permanent peace is to create a humanity-exterminating war.

* Subverted in ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'', where Vetinari sees the Klatchian empire is remarkably well prepared for a conflict that supposedly flared up only a few days ago, noting: "If you want war, prepare for war." When Leonard corrects him with the page quote, Vetinari thinks about it and says he doesn't see it.

* In ''JustForFun/PokemonVietnameseCrystal'', a TranslationTrainWreck of ''Pokémon Crystal Version'', you apparently have to pull the power supply out to start up the PC.

* UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar's General Sherman had an idea decades early during the conflict and said he wanted to make [[WarIsHell war so frightening for the South]] that they'd never want to take up arms ever again. By all appearances he succeeded, since there has not been another American Civil War in the century-and-a-half since then[[note]]although see the entry under WonTheWarLostThePeace for another explanation[[/note]].

[[folder:Web Original]]
* Parodied in ''WebVideo/ToBoldlyFlee'' when [[Film/SupermanII General Zod]] takes control of [[Film/BattlefieldEarth Terl's]] operation to kill WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic (who's turned his house into a spaceship). He quickly decides that the best way to fight the Critic is to turn Terl's own CoolShip into a house.
* ''WebVideo/ScottTheWoz'' has a video about smoking, where he tries to start smoking so he can later stop smoking.
[[/folder]]

* Mao Zedong's defining phase, "political power grows out the barrel of a gun" came from this passage: (''Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. II'', pp. 224-225)

* Cromwell's English republic had this as its motto - ''Pax Quaeritur Bello'', or "Peace is sought through war".

** And in a general sense this trope is the principle behind vaccines. The body is either infected with, or merely exposed to a milder relative of the microbe responsible for a disease. Sometimes, this even leads to a brief illness in itself, but because the immune system is trained to fight the microbe, the body can't be infected again.

-->bBe stirring as the time; be fire with fire;\\

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;
Threaten the threatener and outface the brow

* ''ComicBook/DCOneMillion'': in order to stop [[spoiler:Solaris's]] plot to destroy the past, the heroes have to [[spoiler:build him]].