History Main / UnwittingInstigatorofDoom

* During a game between the New York Jets and New England Patriots in 2001, Jets linebacker Mo Lewis ''crushed'' scrambling QB Drew Bledsoe (So hard was the hit that Bledsoe nearly died from internal injuries). And with Bledsoe done for the day, in came a 6th round picked named Creator/TomBrady. The man widely considered these days as one of the best to ever toss a pigskin and nightmare for all non-Patriots fans. All thanks to Mo Lewis.

** Madusa leaving the WWF with the Women's championship and dumping the belt on an episode of ''Wrestling/WCWMondayNITRO''. This made Wrestling/VinceMcMahon so paranoid that, in order to prevent [[HistoryRepeats history repeating itself]] with Wrestling/BretHart leaving with the WWE Championship, he engineered the Screwjob.

* ''Machinima/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4's Mario Bloopers'': In "Mario Saves Anime", [[spoiler:Fishy Boopkins explains to Francis that Axol's inkweaver uses inkling ink to bring anime drawings to life. This would soon result in Francis kidnapping most of the population of Inkopolis, including Meggy so that he could have his own island of waifus. This also results in the death of Desti after False Sephiroth impales her.]]

* ''Machinima/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers SMG4's Mario Bloopers'': In "Mario Saves Anime", [[spoiler:Fishy Boopkins explains to Francis that Axol's inkweaver uses inkling ink to bring anime drawings to life. This would soon result in Francis kidnapping most of the population of Inkopolis, including Meggy so that he could have his own island of waifus. This also results in the death of Desti after False Sephiroth impales her.]]

* ''WebAnimation/SMG4sMarioBloopers'': In "Mario Saves Anime", [[spoiler:Fishy Boopkins explains to Francis that Axol's inkweaver uses inkling ink to bring anime drawings to life. This would soon result in Francis kidnapping most of the population of Inkopolis, including Meggy so that he could have his own island of waifus. This also results in the death of Desti after False Sephiroth impales her.]]

** It's revealed in season 10 that [[spoiler: Carolina]] is the unintentional cause for multiple problems the cast faces in the Recollection trilogy, thanks to several ill-considered decisions regarding AI. [[spoiler: Sigma was her original AI partner, but she felt guilty for Maine being rendered mute and gave Sigma to him to compensate. She then proceeded to demand the next ''two'' AI, Eta and Iota, to compensate (and because she was jealous of Tex for getting Omega, the strongest one). Eta and Iota were to be Wash and South Dakota's AI; when they were given to Carolina, Wash ended up getting Epsilon instead, leading to his mental breakdown, and South's envy of Wash and her brother (who had Theta) boiled over and ended with her leaving both of them for dead later (which would in turn lead to Wash killing her). Meanwhile, Sigma quickly gained complete control over Maine and used him to further his goals of metastability as the Meta.]]

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Flashbacks reveal that [[TheHeavy Cinder]] lived in an [[CinderellaPlot abusive environment]] where she works as a slave for the hotelier who is her [[WickedStepmother legal guardian]]. When she steals a customer's sword to kill her abusive family, he decides to give her a legal escape by training her to become a [[HunterOfMonsters Huntress]]. [[spoiler:When [[MoralityChain Rhodes]] gifts Cinder with a twin of the weapon she once stole, her [[BigSisterBully step-sisters]] finding it triggers a confrontation that snaps Cinder. Thanks to years of training and torture, she kills both her family and Rhodes, beginning her journey of killing others to steal power for herself; this leads her right into [[BigBad Salem]]'s arms, earning her a major role in the SecretWar with [[BigGood Professor Ozpin]] for the fate of humanity. To this day, she handles Salem's abusive manipulations, and mistreats her own subordinates, with the behaviours her WickedStepmother drilled into her, and fights with magical swords that always manifest as Rhodes' swords.]]

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Flashbacks reveal that [[TheHeavy Cinder]] lived in an [[CinderellaPlot abusive environment]] where she works as a slave for the hotelier who is her [[WickedStepmother legal guardian]]. When she steals a customer's sword to kill her abusive family, he decides to give her a legal escape by training her to become a [[HunterOfMonsters Huntress]]. When [[MoralityChain Rhodes]] gifts Cinder with a twin of the weapon she once stole, her [[BigSisterBully step-sisters]] finding it triggers a confrontation that snaps Cinder. Thanks to years of training and torture, she kills both her family and Rhodes, beginning her journey of killing others to steal power for herself; this leads her right into [[BigBad Salem]]'s arms, earning her a major role in the SecretWar with [[BigGood Professor Ozpin]] for the fate of humanity. To this day, she handles Salem's abusive manipulations, and mistreats her own subordinates, with the behaviours her WickedStepmother drilled into her, and fights with magical swords that always manifest as Rhodes' swords.

* {{WebAnimation/RWBY}} has Robyn Hill, who has a well-meaning intention to support of Mantle with materials she steals from Ironwood. Problem being that those materials were needed to construct and launch a satellite that would re-enable mass communications and thus unify the world after it had been divided in Volume 3. Without those materials, the satellite's completion had been delayed. By the time she finds out what they were needed for, it's too late as hours later, [[BigBad Salem]] announces to Ironwood that she's invading Atlas and he doesn't have enough time to complete the satellite in time to call for help, and thus he has no choice but to make [[TheElitesJumpShip a decision that]] causes the endgame of Volume 7 and the plot of Volume 8. All because of some stolen materials. She also ends up being this ''during'' the end game, where her decision to pick a fight in the middle of an airship causes a SerialKiller they had as the prisoner break out, crash the plane, and lead to a battle that led to someone's death and another person to be arrested. [[RuleOfThree On top of all that]], Ironwood's distrust of RWBY (leading to the fight mentioned prior) kicked off when Robyn revealed to Ironwood that she knew about the plans for the satelitte, tipping him off that someone had told her about it.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Creator/SamuelTaylorColeridge had a vivid dream, got up and started writing it down as the epic poem ''Kubla Khan'', [[http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/the-person-from-porlock/ but then there was a knock at the door]], and a man from the nearby town of Porlock kept him talking just long enough to forget all about the dream and he never finished it. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_from_Porlock Person from Porlock]] is now literary shorthand for an unwanted visitor.
** Though some have theorized that Coleridge never intended to finish the poem (or that it was finished already), and he made up the story of the visitor just to mess with people. It doesn't help that Coleridge was a heavy opiate user, and the "dream" could have been something more of a "drug-induced vision," and the man from Porlock may or may not have actually been there. (Cue images of a poet standing on his doorstep talking to nobody while hazy visions of Kublai Khan's utopia dissipate into the aether.)
* UsefulNotes/ChristopherColumbus's voyages opened up the Americas to the Old World, bringing over disease which wiped out 90% of the Native Americans.
* Andy Dick. At a 1997 Christmas party, he reintroduced Brynn Omdahl, wife of Creator/PhilHartman, to cocaine, leading to his death. Which led to Andy Dick [[KickTheDog making some tasteless jokes about his role in Hartman's death,]] which resulted in Hartman's friend Creator/JonLovitz kicking his ass. It appears that Dick lives up to his name.
* Floyd Wells. He told fellow cons Perry Smith and Richard Hickock that a farmer he worked for named Herb Clutter kept a safe hidden with plenty of cash inside. As it turned out, there was no safe. It was this false info that led Smith and Hickock to massacre Mr. Clutter and his family, the basis for Creator/TrumanCapote's ''Literature/InColdBlood''.
* A rare inversion in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov Stanislav Petrov]]. While monitoring a satellite for the Soviet early warning system of a nuclear attack, he received a report of five inbound [=ICBMs=]. He decided it didn't make sense for a US first strike to be composed of only five nukes, he logged it as a technical error and overrode the command to launch a massive retaliation strike. Had he not been so cautious, WorldWarIII surely would have erupted.
* The failure of the Jay Leno Show on primetime had this effect on Creator/ConanOBrien's tenure as host of ''Series/TheTonightShow'', as it damaged local 11pm newscast ratings, as well as Conan himself, leading NBC to move Jay and his show back to his old 11:35 spot, and pushing Conan just past midnight. Conan, [[JudgmentOfSolomon not wanting to tarnish the legacy of the Tonight Show]], wanted no part of the agreement, and was subsequently evicted from the show, with Jay back as host.
* Senator Stephen Douglas, the man responsible for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Originally, his intentions had simply been to get a railroad to California built, which would start in Chicago, Illinois (his home state). To do this, he proposed splitting the remaining unorganized chunk of the Louisiana Territory into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Pro-slavery Southerners slipped in a part saying that the legality of slavery in each territory would be decided by the voters there. But then pro-slavery advocates from Missouri flooded into Kansas to support slavery, resulting in "Bleeding Kansas", the prequel to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. Douglas himself has been branded pro-slavery for many years afterward following the fallout, with historians often leaving out that it was the South that suggested the decision of slavery by popular sovereignty and that Douglas himself simply wanted to build a railroad to California, obviously having no idea that the first planned transcontinental railroad would cause [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the biggest schism ever to hit the United States]] over completely unrelated circumstances.
* In 2007, Creator/AdultSwim launched a guerrilla marketing campaign for the ''WesternAnimation/AquaTeenHungerForce'' [[TheMovie movie]] featuring battery-powered LED placards resembling the Mooninite characters being placed in numerous places around the US. However in Boston, police officials mistakenly thought that the [=LEDs=] were bombs, and treated the whole event as such. This event would turn out to known as the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_bomb_scare Boston Bomb Scare]], which led to legal implications being placed on Turner Broadcasting and their contractors, the internet to make mock [[MemeticMutation "Never Forget" memes]], and forced then-current Creator/CartoonNetwork head Jim Samples to step down. It wouldn’t be long after until fans began to realize that Creator/CartoonNetwork would not be the same since the incident. Not because of any legal incidents, but because Sample’s replacement, Stuart Snyder, became the instigator of the channel’s infamous NetworkDecay, and an increase in poorly-received live-action and sitcom-style shows.
* Franz von Papen, ex-Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, who in 1933 convinced President Hindenburg to make UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler chancellor in order to save his own political hide. By this point, the Nazis (forced by previous chancellors to fight repeated elections which sapped their funds) were rapidly losing support and were scraping the bottom of their piggy bank.
* Marinus van der Lubbe, the guy who started the Reichstag fire. He was a raving madman who was quickly captured that same night. It gave the Nazis the perfect opportunity to seize power, as the aforementioned repeated elections would eventually end in a loss of NSDAP seats.
* In the mid-'80s bribery scandal linked to R. Budd Dwyer (the inspiration behind "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Music/{{Filter}}), William Smith, an attorney linked to the case, gave dubious testimony in order to accept a plea bargain, which made a guilty verdict for the former practically inevitable. As a result, Dwyer himself [[AteHisGun publicly committed suicide]] the day before the sentencing was to have taken place.
* In the night of April 14, 1912 Jack Phillips, radio operator of the ''RMS Titanic'', received a message alerting of an ice field ahead from the radio operator of the ''SS Californian'', Cyril Evans. The message interrupted an information directed to a first class passenger from Cape Race, Newfoundland, and Phillips radioed "Shut up, shut up! I am busy; I am working Cape Race!" back to Evans. Annoyed, Evans turned off the radio and went to sleep... ten minutes before the ''Titanic'' struck an iceberg. This prevented the ''Californian'' (who was the closest ship to the ''Titanic'') from hearing the ''Titanic'''s repeated distress calls and rescuing her passage before the ship went down.
* David Blair was originally slated to be Second Officer of the ''Titanic'' during her maiden voyage. However, in the last moment White Star reassigned the more experienced Henry Wilde, Chief Officer of the ''Olympic'' (at the time in drydock) to the ''Titanic'', and the knock-off effect was Blair being given another post out of the ship. By accident, Blair left with a key from the ''Titanic'', that turned out to be the only key to a safe in the Crow's Nest keeping the lookouts' binoculars. Without binoculars, the lookouts failed to see the iceberg in time.
* Jamie Gorelick, during her tenure as Deputy US Attorney General, was responsible for strengthening the restrictions on information sharing between domestic and foreign intelligence services. [[RightHandVersusLeftHand The lack of coordination]] this caused lead directly to the US government's failure to prevent the September 11th attacks, despite ample evidence of the plot, up to and including one of the terrorists being (briefly) taken into custody not long before it happened.
* Creator/SethRogen has become this with regards to the now-notorious consequences from ''Film/TheInterview'' and the cost it left Sony with. He knew that the film would piss off North Korea, and went ahead with it, presumably figuring that the DPRK would once again fail to follow up on its threats. However, he probably couldn't have seen his move as coming at the cost of the financial stability of the company he was working for, or The Guardians of Peace outright threatening terrorist attacks in theatres where it was due to play.
* On April 20, 2007, Davon Boddie was arrested for cannabis dealing outside of the Royal Suite nightclub in Roanoke, Virginia. Boddie was the cousin of [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball Atlanta Falcons quarterback]] Michael Vick, and gave Vick's home address as his own. Five days later, police searched the home and discovered a massive [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Newz_Kennels_dog_fighting_investigation dog-fighting ring]], leading to the arrest and conviction of Vick and four others.
* Gavrilo Princip and his co-conspirators in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. All they wanted was a re-arrangement of some political borders in one part of the Balkans. What they got was a world-spanning war which was the deadliest in history, which led to the fall of the European colonial powers and the rise of communism, ''another'' world-spanning war 20 years later which became the new most deadliest war in history as a result of the mess the previous one left, and a subsequent cold war due to the results of the previous war that kept the world on the brink of destruction for fifty years. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Oh, and that Balkan situation never was properly sorted out.]]
** To take it a step further, Ferdinand's driver, who was supposed to be taking him visit some people in the hospital, got lost, tried to reverse, and stalled the car almost exactly where Princip happened to be at that exact moment. Probably the most consequential wrong turn in human history.
* The TGWTG ''WebVideo/ToBoldlyFlee'' movie had a lot of effort and a lot of time put into it, but it was also a big TroubledProduction with many producers having bad memories of filming. As shown in the behind the scenes feature, things were apparently running smoothly until Rob Walker had the bright idea to lie about running fifteen minutes late. You can see Doug's face fall when he's told this, and according to [[WebVideo/TheNostalgiaChick Lindsay]] and [[WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows Todd]], that's when things started to break down.
* Best Buy's acquisition of Musicland in 2001 and their subsequent gross negligence, including making it ''[[EpicFail hemorrhage $80 million]]'' '''''[[EpicFail in one year]]''''' before selling it the following year, ultimately drove it to bankrupcy, leading to a mass closing of stores before being brought by Trans World Entertainment (owner of competitor FYE) in 2006. The mass closing of stores caused unsold stock to be taken back to the warehouses. While this has affected all home video companies, anime companies (who were 100% reliant on home video sales due to the lack of digital distribution rights at the time because [[ExecutiveMeddling the Japanese licensors refused to give them those rights]] as [[InsaneTrollLogic they equated legal digital distribution with piracy]]) were particularly severely affected, leading to the crash of the North American anime industry by the end of the 2000s, including the closures of Creator/{{ADV Films}}, Creator/{{Geneon}} and Creator/CentralParkMedia, and the downsizing and eventual closure of Creator/BandaiEntertainment. On the general side, the mass closing of the stores led to a decline of home video sales, which was further exacerbated by the growing ubiquity of streaming services such as Creator/{{Hulu}} and Creator/{{Netflix}}.
* Robert Campbeau's expansion into the United States resulted in the demise of the regional department store in the United States. To wit, Campbeau purchased Allied Stores and Federated Stores in the 1980s through junk bond [=LBOs=] but Campbeau was unable to pay it off. This, combined with a downturn in the retail industry at the time, has resulted in what many called the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. This bankruptcy ultimately caused Macy's to start cannibalizing off stores that it inherited from both corporations beginning in the 1990s, and later on the May Department Stores company when that was merged into Macy's in 2005-2006.
* [[WesternTerrorists Dylann Storm Roof]], a white supremacist who took pictures of himself with Confederate memorabilia some time prior, shot up a church in Charleston with the hopes of dividing the nation. Not only did he [[EpicFail fail spectacularly]], he also caused collateral damage when his actions, which turned the general public (even in the South) against the Confederate flag, managed to TARFU ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard''[='=]s reputation, if not outright FUBAR it.
* Roof's actions helped precipitate the rise of the alt-right, and subsequently the "Unite the Right" white supremacist rally at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Unfortunately for the alt-right, the rally caused a national crisis after one of the rallygoers mowed down a group of counterprotesters with his car, killing a young woman and injuring nineteen other people. The fallout from the attacks crippled the movement's momentum, with members losing jobs and being blacklisted from the Internet. A nationwide sea change in attitudes about racism occurred, and the public began to turn against Confederate imagery (as the Charlottesville protest was against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue). The reputations of President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump and the Republican Party took a massive blow due to Trump's widely-panned response to the protest, in which he was widely accused of failing to condemn white supremacists. The right's fight against antifa, the anti-fascist anarchist group who joined more peaceful counterprotesters to fight the white supremacists, was severely harpooned by the left's growing sympathy to the movement, as it was increasingly difficult to criticize a group, no matter how misguided, who fought on the same side as those killed in a terrorist attack. Most ironically, despite being called the "Unite the Right" rally, the aftermath rally ultimately divided the right and united the ''left''. Other organizations who got blamed for the rally include the ACLU, who defended the rights of the protesters, and the Charlottesville police, who did little to stop clashes between the two groups and thus failed to prevent the terrorist attack from occuring.
* The UsefulNotes/PunicWars was started by a band of mercenaries called the Mamertines who took over the city of Messana, and the Romans and the Carthaginians turn their attention away from them and then against each other over control of Sicily. What followed was years of bloody wars between the two empires, which finally ended with the destruction of Carthage.
* Faida Hamdi was a Tunisian government worker. In late 2010, she had a confrontation with a street vendor and confiscated the vendor's cart. The vendor [[SelfImmolation set himself in fire]] as a protest in front of a government building. His death [[UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring led to protests across the Middle East]] and the protests soon turned to devastating wars that would go on to shake the whole world. Today, Hamdi [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/12054657/I-started-the-Arab-Spring.-Now-death-is-everywhere-and-extremism-blooming.html wonders]] WhatCouldHaveBeen if she did not have that initial confrontation.
* Michael Dukakis authorized weekend passes for prisoners while Governor of Massachusetts. One recipient of these weekend passes, Willie Horton, kidnapped, murdered, and raped one weekend. This ended up costing Dukakis the 1988 Presidential election after vice president George H.W. Bush's campaign pushed this heavily in an advertising campaign, and made politicians wary of being honest about their stances on crime, which led to the sudden toughening of criminal laws under Bill Clinton.
* Portuguese missionaries who threatened to conquer Japan through the forced spread of Christianity were directly responsible for centuries of de jure xenophobia in the country, which only started to be loosened (key word: started, only in 2017 did discrimination against foreigners living in the country start to significantly fade in earnest) when Matthew Perry opened trade routes between the United States and Japan in the middle of the 19th century via GunboatDiplomacy.
* The good people of Spain probably had no idea they were making world history beyond the scope of their own country when they toppled Isabel II in 1868. As even many of the revolutionaries did not even think of a Republic as a possible solution, they searched Europe for a potential King (or perhaps Queen). In the course of this search, they contacted [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold,_Prince_of_Hohenzollern Leopold of Hohenzollern]], a good Catholic, a family man in his mid thirties who seemed altogether a good candidate for the Spanish throne by the standards of the time. There was only one problem: as you might have guessed from his name, he was a (distant) relative of the Hohenzollern dynasty in Prussia and French emperor Napoleon III feared having German speaking kings in his east and south, so Leopold ultimately declined. This could have been the end of it, and indeed in most cases it would have, but Napoleon III being Napoleon III, he was not content with Leopold himself refusing, he wanted the Prussian king to renounce any claim of any Hohenzollern to the Spanish throne now and in the future. In 1870 the French ambassador bothered the Prussian King Wilhelm at a health spa in Bad Ems where the emperor was enjoying a ''Kur''[[note]]Basically a holiday that is supposed to cure ailments, still popular with Germans today[[/note]] and while the French ambassador was rude, the king was cordial and polite but basically told him "We've talked about this before, Leopold has already rejected, I am not him and I can't give promises for what my heirs might do". Unsatisfied, the French ambassador tried to bother the Prussian King again but the Prussian King in essence had a high ranking nobleman (sending anybody less would have been an affront) tell the French ambassador essentially the same thing again and that further discussing the issue was obviously pointless, the facts being what they were. Wilhelm then sent a report about those events in a telegram to his Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck saw an opportunity there and had the telegram shortened so that it could be read as the Prussian King rudely refusing to even meet with the ambassador (which would be diplomacy talk for "shove it up your ***") and to add insult to injury having that message delivered through some page. While Bismarck did ''not'' as he was often accused of QuoteMine the telegram, the French press published the shortened version and the reaction Bismarck intended occurred. France was furious, the emperor wanted to secure his domestic position threatened by previous foreign policy blunders[[labelnote:examples]]Like supporting Austria in the Austro-Prussian war but not actually intervening, which resulted in military loss for Austria, being outmaneuvered in the Italian wars of independence which France won for the Italians in large part but had nothing to show for except Nice or the disaster that was the Mexican Expedition which installed the brother of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph as emperor only to have the Mexican Emperor turn rogue and end in front of a Mexican firing squad[[/labelnote]] as well as increasing demands for political liberalization and thus an ill-prepared France launched a war over what was seen by virtually everybody in Europe as a nothing-burger. France had hoped to beat Prussia and maybe call some allies to their side if the fight took longer. Not only did nobody ally with France, but all German states except Austria (which stayed neutral) rallied to the Prussian cause to fulfill secret defensive treaties. And then Napoleon III was captured near Sedan. While the newly declared Third Republic fought on, Prussia utterly wiped the floor with the French Army and ultimately France had to accept a humiliating peace treaty, that cost her five billion Francs in gold, Alsace and Lorraine and an immensurable sum in clout, credibility and respect around the world. To add insult to injury, a new German Empire was declared ''in Versailles''. This slight of course caused desire on the French part for revenge, which became one of the ultimate causes for UsefulNotes/WorldWarI which the Germans lost, causing desire for revenge in them, ultimately leading to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. Thanks for asking about that Royal Succession thing, Spain.
* On July 1st, 2002, Swiss air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, overworked and under-equipped, spotted two planes on a collision course and ordered one of them to descend. Unfortunately, due to his workload and the fact that key pieces of his system were offline, he failed to realize that the other plane was already descending in compliance with an automated collision avoidance system, and that instead of moving the first plane ''out'' of the second plane's path, he was instead ensuring they remained ''in'' it. Predictably, the two planes collided, killing everyone on board both flights. ([[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Nielsen himself was later murdered in an act of vengeance by a man whose entire family had died in the disaster.]])
* One fateful day in 1921, a random black man in Tulsa stepped into an elevator operated by a white girl. To this day, the events of what really happened remain unknown, but regardless, the incident set off a chain reaction leading to the destruction of Greenwood Avenue.
* A barbecue held by Bruce Pearl, then-head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers basketball team, only fueled the fire of Fulmer's Revenge and ensured that it could not only not be put out on the football side, where it had originated, as soon as then-head coach Derek Dooley would've liked, it also cost Dooley his job, spread to the rest of UT athletics, and became a major wildfire, as it were. What's worse is that [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Pearl's successor, Cuonzo Martin, never really got to show off his true potential as a UT basketball coach in the three seasons he was with UT before he resigned to coach the California Golden Bears]]. Read all the sordid details [[https://allfortennessee.com/2018/07/13/tennessee-vols-13-unlucky/5/ here]], [[https://allfortennessee.com/2018/07/13/tennessee-vols-13-unlucky/6/ here]], and [[https://allfortennessee.com/2018/07/13/tennessee-vols-13-unlucky/10/ here]].
* A random nurse at a hospital where Creator/OsamuTezuka was working on ''Manga/{{Phoenix}}'' unwittingly ensured that the series would never be completed.
* As chronicled in ''9/11: The 102 Minutes that Changed America'', there were several 911 operators during the attack on the World Trade Center that occurred on September 11, 2001 that told victims of the fires to stay where they were, block the smoke coming through the doors, and wait for the firefighters to arrive. The Twin Towers would eventually collapse, killing thousands of people who were trapped inside. The 911 operators were clearly trying to help save as many people as they could, and such advice is relatively standard for fires in office buildings. They also had no way of knowing that the towers were going to fall.
* Possibly the case with UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar. Supposedly he attacked the city of Alexandria and [[KillItWithFire lit the ships in the harbor on fire]], unfortunately the fire spread to the Great Library of Alexandria and burned it down, destroying the biggest repository of knowledge in the world at the time and setting us back by centuries. That said, historians are unsure whether that's really what happened or if the library burning down was really that devastating to human progress.
* Were it not for Kermit Roosevelt Jr.'s efforts to keep the Shah of Iran in power back in UsefulNotes/TheFifties, US-Iran relations might not have taken the dark turn they did in 1979, and certainly might not have been as strained as they are today.
* American missionary Edwin Stevens innocently handed over a religious pamphlet to console a failed Chinese applicant in civil services. This [[FromNobodyToNightmare applicant turned out to be none other]] than [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Xiuquan Hong Xiuqian]], who became a dangerous cult leader who believed himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ and aimed to bring down the Qing dynasty and completely convert China to his own heterodox form of Christianity. The end result was the Taiping Rebellion, which ended in 20-30 million dead and resulted in lasting damage to Christianity in China.
[[/folder]]

Administrivia/NoRealLifeExamplesPlease Aside from being prone to misuse, it is likely to invite {{Flame War}}s.

* The signing of Wrestling/KurtAngle can be pointed to as an indirect source to all of [[Wrestling/ImpactWrestling TNA]]'s current issues thanks to two things it caused. The most direct one was bringing in his then-wife Karen into the promotion. After she filed for divorce and they separated, she started dating Wrestling/JeffJarrett -- Dixie Carter found out, freaked, stripped Jarrett of all booking power, and sent him home. Since most wrestlers saw Jarrett as the real boss, this allowed her to insert herself into a position of power backstage (she was only supposed to write the checks). The other one is the precedent it set; despite being by far and away the best signing TNA has ever made (with Wrestling/{{Christian}} and Wrestling/{{Sting}} being relative close seconds), Kurt's arrival allowed a floodgate of older wrestlers that entered the promotion and soaked up the spotlight from the younger talent people wanted to see. Eventually, this led to bringing in Wrestling/HulkHogan and Wrestling/EricBischoff, who took that same problem along with all the other ones that made TNA Wrestling/{{WCW}}-lite, and dialed them UpToEleven, ushering in the DorkAge that the company is ''still'' trying to recover from to this day.

* Similarly, Bill Buckner's epic error in 1986. History notes that the Red Sox had the Mets down to their final out, and three times down to a final ''strike'' that would have brought Boston a long-awaited championship. Buckner's famous gaffe was made possible only by three consecutive singles, a wild pitch, and pitcher Bob Stanley failing to recognize that baserunner Ray Knight had strayed so far from second base he could have been picked off easily. And, like the above example, this loss only tied the series at 3-3; the stunned team could have regrouped and won the next day, but did not. Furthermore, the game was tied (due to the wild pitch mentioned above) when Buckner made the game-ending error. Had he made the play, the game would have continued another inning, making this another case of MisBlamed.

** ''VisualNovel/DanganronpaV3KillingHarmony'': When the cast try out a virtual reality program, Himiko has to remind herself that her right hand is the one she holds her chopsticks in when inserting two wires into the headset. [[spoiler:Gonta turns out to be left-handed, so after hearing her, he gets the wires mixed up and is unable to remember anything that happened in the simulation, including his murdering Miu.]]

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': The Toughs accept a contract to deliver some food to what is referred to, in-story, as an 'UNS charity project'... Credomar. Due to the ship's AI interfering with a fuel delivery (which, in its defence, could have looked like an attack on the station if you squint right), unrest in the station boils up quickly and leads to the station having several new holes in the side. [[CaptainObvious It's a space station floating in the vacuum of space]]. Of course the fact that one of their own 'build-a-bot' projects takes the opportunity to take charge, save everyone it could, become King, and inadvertently throwing a wrench in the UNS's plans to take over through other means (mainly by influencing the rebellion had it happened ''when expected'', along with using the Toughs to "prop up a pro-annexation group" without actually telling them this) was the icing on the cake.

** Still later, its Beetle's ill-advised plot against Klaus Wulfenbach that ultimately attracts the Baron's attention to Agatha, thus kicking off the plot.

* In ''WebAnimation/DeathBattle'', [[WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983 He-Man]] ended up as this during his fight against [[WesternAnimation/ThunderCats Lion-O]]. He just wanted to fend off Lion-O, but in doing so, [[spoiler:he crushed the Eye of Thundera, which kept the Thunderan race alive.]]

** Her actions would cause another FaceHeelTurn when she, as General Manager of Smackdown Live, booked Wrestling/{{Carmella}} in a match against Wrestling/{{Charlotte}} in which if the latter won she would be added to the former's championship match against her friend Wrestling/BeckyLynch in retaliation to [[KickTheDog Carmella taunting her about never being able to win the Smackdown Women's Championship due to her]] CareerEndingInjury. This would lead to Charlotte winning the Women's Championship and Becky, feeling that Charlotte stole her spotlight, [[FaceHeelTurn turning heel by attacking Charlotte]] thus destroying their friendship.

* {{UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom/Film}}

* In an interview, Wrestling/JimCornette said he was the first one in a booking meeting to suggest (jokingly) a double cross on Wrestling/BretHart in [[Wrestling/MontrealScrewjob Montreal]]. However in his version, Bret would have faced Wrestling/KenShamrock instead.

* The ''LetsPlay/DreamSMP'' has Quackity, who - after being told they'd be the only party running - decided to run against Wilbur and Tommy in the L'Manburg Presidential Election. This opened the gates for other people to form political parties to run against Wilbur and Tommy... Including [[ArcVillain Jschlatt]], who wound up pooling his votes with Quackity's in order to win. Immediately after becoming President, Schlatt declares himself Emperor, exiles Wilbur and Tommy, tears down major landmarks, and starts crushing any dissenting voices ''hard''.

* The ''LetsPlay/DreamSMP'' has Quackity, who - after being told they'd be the only party running - decided to run against Wilbur and Tommy in the L'Manburg Presidential Election. This opened the gates for other people to form political parties to run against Wilbur and Tommy... Including [[ArcVillain Jschlatt]], who wound up pooling his votes with Quackity's in order to win. Immediately after becoming President, Schlatt declares himself [[AGodAmI Emperor]], exiles Wilbur and Tommy, tears down major landmarks, and starts crushing any dissenting voices ''hard''.

* [[spoiler:Virtually everyone]] in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''. Turns out [[spoiler:pretty much the entire universe (or at least, the correct timeline) and everyone's actions in it were a specially orchestrated sequence of events in time designed to bring [[BigBad Lord English]] into existence, and vice versa: any timeline deviating from the main one doesn't fulfill these requirements and resultantly becomes a [[BadFuture doomed timeline]], so it can't really be considered their fault.]] Naturally, in keeping with the messed-up time shenanigans ingrained into the comic, [[spoiler:English]] set this up himself beforehand/afterward. The ''single'' good character who doesn't manage this is Nepeta[[note]]largely because she's never shown actually ''doing'' much of anything; the one time she tries to do something significant she's hopelessly outclassed and dies pointlessly and almost immediately[[/note]].

* Virtually everyone in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}''; the ''single'' good character who doesn't manage this is Nepeta[[note]]largely because she's never shown actually ''doing'' much of anything; the one time she tries to do something significant she's hopelessly outclassed and dies pointlessly and almost immediately[[/note]].

* {{WebAnimation/RWBY}} has Robyn Hill, who has a well-meaning intention to support of Mantle with materials she steals from Ironwood. Problem being that those materials were needed to construct and launch a satellite that would re-enable mass communications and thus unify the world after it had been divided in Volume 3. Without those materials, the satelite's completion had been delayed. By the time she finds out what they were needed for, it's too late as hours later, [[BigBad Salem]] announces to Ironwood that she's invading Atlas and he doesn't have enough time to complete the satellite in time to call for help, and thus he has no choice but to make [[TheElitesJumpShip a decision that]] causes the endgame of Volume 7 and the plot of Volume 8. All because of some stolen materials. She also ends up being this ''during'' the end game, where her decision to pick a fight in the middle of an airship causes a SerialKiller they had as the prisoner break out, crash the plane, and lead to a battle that led to someone's death and another person to be arrested.