[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Business]]
* In the early 1990s Amway Corporation began expansion into the newly-opened markets of the former Eastern Bloc countries, among others Poland. They began building a brand name and training the local cadres into their selling practices. Two local documentary filmmakers made a TV doc "Welcome To Life", describing Amway's training practices and selling techniques, something completely new and unheard of in post-communist countries. The company instantly demanded (and was granted) a court ban on any distribution and showing of "Welcome To Life". It did not work, as the film (with the makers' silent approval) [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes was widely available on pirated videotapes]]. As the newspapers and television made a news of the ban, [[StreisandEffect the film which likely would be seen by a small group of people and completely disappear under the radar was now widely seen and commented on]] - and people started asking what the fuss was all about, since the techniques shown, while certainly new, was not illegal or particularly amoral. Combined with the fact that people who just got out of 45 years of strict Communist censorship did not take any forms of ban at all kindly, the whole affair severely damaged the Amway's image in Poland. As of 2019, while it remains a very popular brand in Russia and Ukraine, Amway is a practically nonexistent brand in Poland.
* Iconic Japanese used car dealership BIGMOTOR was brought down by a leaked cellphone video, taking down quite a few other companies in the process, as detailed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENl3eh1o-SM&ab_channel=Japanalysis in this video]].
** The video, which was apparently meant for self-study purposes, showed them popping a customer's tire to get them to replace the entire thing under the claims that it was worn and they needed new ones. Not only did this lead to ex-employees revealing their horror stories, but the depths of their corruption: under the iron-fisted leadership of founder Kaneshigi Hiroyuki's son and vice-president Kouichi, it was revealed that numerous dealerships had poisoned trees and bushes, harassed and insulted managers, placed insanely high goals for customer spending that pitted managers against employees, and underhanded techniques such as pretending to be customers and calling rival stores to cancel their appointments and forcing employees to buy their own cars. The video was what really did them in as it revealed they were committing insurance fraud, damaging just the right thing and the right way to milk the insurance companies.
** This is where things get interesting: a whistleblower went to Japan's three biggest insurance companies -- Tokyo Marine, Mitsui Sumitomo and Sompo Japan -- and revealed what BIGMOTOR was doing. BIGMOTOR "investigated" themselves and claimed no wrongdoing... which Sompo agreed with. As it turned out, Kouichi worked for Sompo prior to joining BIGMOTOR and he brought over a number of former Sompo employees to help with the money laundering. Tokyo Marine and Mitsui Sumitomo investigated for themselves and revealed heavy levels of corruption, which they tried to reveal in 2022 but didn't come into light until July 2023. Not only was BIGMOTOR heavily damaged by this, but two other used car dealership franchises were also rocked with scandals of their own.
* In the early 70s, the golden rule of jets was that all long-distance flights (two hours or more, both over land and open water) must be flown on an aircraft that has more than two engines. This rule was challenged by Boeing, whose engineers were already working on an ultramodern wide-body long-distance jet airliner that not only had only two engines, but also a cockpit crew of two, with advanced electronics performing the job of a flight engineer and a highly economic performance. The introduction of such a hi-tech aircraft would essentially guarantee Boeing would curbstomp its rivals, so the company's bosses challenged the FAA to revise its rules and allow twinjets to fly long distances. Such a rule, known as ETOPS (Extended Twin-engine Operations), was quickly introduced (the first such flights were allowed over land; from the mid-80s, transoceanic flights were also included). Work on the new Boeing model commenced swiftly and in 1982, the first 767 was flown. However... years earlier, a newly-established company, trying to take advantage of the air travel boom of the late 60s, designed and launched a short- to medium-range twin-engined wide-body jet aircraft, utilizing several techniques pioneered by the Concorde. It was initially a flop - short-distance air travel was popular, but not enough for a 300-person wide-body jet to be profitable. The sales were below expectations, and the company was on its way to bankruptcy when the introduction of the ETOPS was announced and somebody in the company noticed that their aircraft actually could fly long-range routes. When the ETOPS was introduced, the Boeing engineers, still finishing their marvel, were shocked to find out that there was a long-range twin-engine hi-tech wide-body jet airliner already in service - the Airbus A300. Unknowingly, aiming for an absolute domination on the market, Boeing saved its now-biggest rival from bankruptcy and helped it to thrive[[note]]this example is even better when one considers Airbus was created as a consortium of European aviation companies in order to compete with US ones such as Boeing[[/note]].
* At some point prior to August 2014, the Broadway Hotel in the UK beach town of Blackpool adopted a policy that anyone who gave a negative review of the hotel on [=TripAdvisor=] or any other major website would be fined £100 for damaging the hotel's reputation. A couple were understandably angry that said fine was immediately charged to their credit card, and went to the press; the story quickly made the national news and did far more damage to the hotel's reputation than any online review could ever hope to achieve. It is now permanently closed.
* Back in 2005, Creator/DCComics unveiled its new logo, the DC Spin, in time for ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis''. Around that time, they sued shoe manufacturer DC Shoes for copyright infringement as their logo uses the letters "DC" and a star, and both were used on apparel. However, the courts found out that DC Comics never registered the logo and threw the case out. DC Shoes (which ''had'' registered its logo) turned around and sued DC Comics for the same thing and won. DC Comics was forced to pay DC Shoes an undisclosed amount for every year they used the logo until they dumped it in 2012 for the DC Flip.
* In the late 60s, the aviation giant Douglas was heavily struggling: the company got a bit too late to the jet boom, their aircraft - the DC-8 and the smaller DC-9 - were selling fine, but in significantly smaller numbers than their rival Boeing's 707 and 727, and there was a significant backlog on the production line, incurring penalties from the airlines. In 1967 Douglas merged with [=McDonnell=], whose leaders got the company back on track. Still, they needed something new for a major breakthrough - and they got it. Several major airlines made a request for a long-range wide-body jet up to 400 passengers that would be smaller than the giant 747 and could use regular airports and runways. [=McDonnell=] Douglas quickly designed such an aircraft, the DC-10 (they were in a hurry to get to the skies before their rival, Lockheed's [=TriStar=]). It got a large number of orders, entered service in 1971 and all looked fine... then on June 12, 1972 an improperly locked cargo door opened in mid-flight, the resulting ExplosiveDecompression damaged most flight controls and a disaster was barely averted [[AcePilot thanks to the flight crew.]] The investigation found out that cargo door design was faulty (it could be improperly locked and prone to open mid-flight without any signals of such condition). Normally an Airworthiness Directive would be issued and the planes grounded until necessary changes were made, but [=McDonnell=] Douglas, fearing that it would hurt the sales, made a gentlemen's agreement with the FAA bosses to skip the AD, as the company would voluntarily made the necessary changes. The NTSB was aghast, but could not do a thing (it was at the time not an independent unit as it is today). Then on March 3, 1974 another DC-10 suffered exactly the same thing, but [[FromBadToWorse far more catastrophic]] (this time all flight controls were severed and the plane was completely uncontrollable). Turkish Airlines Flight 981 ended with a death toll of 346, then the deadliest accident of all time, severely damaging the opinion of the aircraft. During the subsequent investigation it was revealed not only that [=McDonnell=] Douglas knew their solutions are insufficient (Dan Applegate from Convair - the company that manufactured the cargo door - made a written memorandum that the changes to the door design are marginal and that he expects that the major disaster is unavoidable), they knew the cargo door design was seriously flawed even before the first DC-10 took to the skies (a door blew out during the pressurization test, but the company [[NeverMyFault chalked it up to a technician's error,]] ignoring the fact that [[CaptainObvious the door shouldn't blow out in any circumstances, human error or not).]] The company never recovered from the THY 981 debacle: not only they had to made the biggest aviation-related settlement at the time after a flurry of lawsuits (close to 550 million dollars as of 2022 money), but also lost a lot of orders for the DC-10, altogether making a blow much bigger and far more devastating that any AD could ever incur.[[note]]If resulting from a non-fatal accident, the Airworthiness Directives and resulting groundings tend to be brief and quickly forgotten by the flying public - in 2022 hardly anyone remembers the Dreamliner groundings after less than a decade...[[/note]] The MD-80 (the DC-9's successor) and especially the MD-11 (the DC-10's successor) suffered from underdevelopment due to financial issues and the company, collapsing more and more, was eventually bought out by Boeing in 1997.
* In January 2021, hedge fund investors attempted to short sell stocks in the company [=GameStop=], hoping to cash in on the company's declining profits. However, they did this to such an absurd degree that Reddit took notice, specifically seeing that there was more stock being sold than ''even existed''. In response, Redditors bought stock in the company en masse, and when the investors attempted another round of short selling to attempt to lower the price back down, ''even more'' people bought stock and just held it, and by the end of the surge, stock in [=GameStop=] had gone up 1,700% and the previous investors were billions of dollars in debt. Unlike a "bet" on rising stock prices, where all you can lose is your initial investment (if you buy 100 € worth of stock hoping it'll be worth 200 € some day, the worst that can happen is that those 100 € are reduced to zero), a "short" (in essence, a bet on ''falling'' stock prices in which you 1) pay to "borrow" a certain number of shares from someone, agreeing to give back the same number of shares of the same stock at a specified time; 2) sell the borrowed shares on the market; 3) buy back the same stock later, hopefully after the price has dropped; and 4) give the specified shares back to the original owner while keeping any profit you made from buying them back at a cheaper price than you sold them) has no upper limit on the amount of possible loss; you ''have to'' buy the "borrowed" stock back at ''whichever price the market demands'' at that time - or else pay the owner whose stock you "borrowed" to extend the borrowing. If enough existing investors just hold their stock, refusing to sell, the shorters are out billions and can't do a thing about it.
** Related to this: Online stock brokerage Robinhood restricted trading of [=GameStop=] stock while this was going on, only allowing its customers to sell stock and not buy it (which would help the shorting hedge funds). Despite claiming (plausibly) that they were required to because of federal rules about cash-on-hand, this led to Congressional hearings and an SEC investigation into their business practices.
* In March 2019, Kylie Jenner was declared a billionaire by Forbes magazine after they saw the tax returns for her cosmetics company, Kylie Cosmetics. She claimed that she owned 100% of the business and was netting about $100 million a year off of it alone. Since the company was privately owned there was no way to see any other information, but Forbes took her at her word since they were presented with authentic-seeming tax returns. Later that year, she sold half of her company to beauty conglomerate Coty. She made an estimated $340 million pre-tax on the sale, but since Coty is a publicly traded company, they had to release information that Jenner and her mother didn't. Forbes used the information from Coty to figure out that they had likely been lying and forging documents to inflate both the company's value and Kylie’s personal wealth. The following May, they officially revoked her billionaire status and estimated her wealth at about $900 million. Had she not sold half of her company to a publicly traded company, no one would have ever figured it out.
* Kodak was an early pioneer in digital camera technology, but was only interested in selling the tech to the military. They explicitly reasoned that digital cameras would render their lucrative film development divisions obsolete. The end result though was that Kodak's rivals just leap-frogged them in digital cameras and made film obsolete anyway, while Kodak struggled to catch up.
* A router company called Mediabridge tried to sue someone for a libelous negative review posted on Amazon... who promptly proceeded to 86 Mediabridge for TOS violations.
* Rax Roast Beef, a food chain whose heyday was during the mid-80s, was ruined by a one-two punch of an identity crisis and a poor marketing campaign. The restaurant, which once focused on roast beef sandwiches attempted to sell other foods indoors, trying to make itself fancier than before with various bars such as salad bars, pasta bars and taco bars. Then came "Mr. Delicious", a dreary, monotonic, nihilistic cartoon man who drones on about how much his life sucks before trying to convince people to eat at Rax. It didn't work and the company soon filed for bankrupcy.
* Tom Peters, the management guru famous for his bestsellers ''In Search of Excellence'' and ''Thriving on Chaos'', has actually invoked this trope as something businesses should do on purpose: "''[[BetterToDieThanBeKilled Destroy your company before someone else does!]]''"
* In December 2021, Creator/ToeiAnimation attacked WebVideo/TotallyNotMark’s Website/YouTube channel due to the various ''Manga/DragonBall''- related videos, attempting to take down his entire channel claiming stolen content, a problem many English-speaking content makers had with Toei and their properties like ''Manga/OnePiece'', ''Franchise/SailorMoon'' and ''Anime/PrettyCure'' as many of them were usually doing so in reviews and commentary under Fair Use. In January 2022, [=YouTube=] declared that it was Toei who was in the wrong, abusing their content removal system because Japan didn’t have a Fair Use system. Mark got his channel back and now the best companies can do in this situation is just have the content blocked in their country.
* In 2022, the newly merged Creator/WarnerBrosDiscovery made the decision to cancel a number of finished or nearly finished films, including a WesternAnimation/BugsBunny film, a sequel to ''WesternAnimation/{{SCOOB}}'' and a film starring ComicBook/{{Batgirl}}, for tax breaks. While fans were upset, it was generally accepted that they were doing this to get money following the merger. However, when WBD tried to cancel ''Coyote vs. ACME''[[note]]Which was not only completely finished, but also actually did extremely well with test audiences[[/note]], not only were fans and crews livid, but a number of filmmakers called their reps and told them to cancel any meetings they had with the company, suggesting that they now understood that WBD could string you along and, if they felt you didn’t deserve the time, could have your hard work sealed away for a tax break. In a panic, WBD reversed their decision and decided to shop the film to other streaming services instead.
* Wrestling/{{WCW}} was done in by its own short-sightedness. While WCW was beating Wrestling/{{WWE}} (then known as WWF) in the Wrestling/MondayNightWars, WWF would turn around with its Wrestling/AttitudeEra and bringing about new faces such as Wrestling/StoneColdSteveAustin, Wrestling/MickFoley, [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] and more. However, WCW floundered as it kept pushing its Wrestling/NewWorldOrder story far too long, leaving the franchise in the control of RingOldies such as Wrestling/HulkHogan and Wrestling/RicFlair while snubbing new faces. Equally damaging was that many of the big card matches that ''should'' have been big pay-per-view draws were instead turned into matches on ''Nitro'' to beat (or try to beat) ''Raw'' in the ratings, leading to many analysts to believe that head writer Eric Bischoff was more concerned about ratings over cash flow. The company bleeding money at the same time Time Warner made the [[SarcasmMode absolutely brilliant]] move to buy AOL lead to the company being bought by its rival for a measly $4.2 million.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Crime]]
* Behold the hilarity of a FourOneNineScam gone terribly awry... for the scammer "Success K Andrew". [[http://imgur.com/Ej8wpJH He initially tries to scam a savvy individual]] and is immediately tricked into giving his intended victim $20 in the exact same way that 419 scammers themselves operate -- the scammer is lured by the promise of a potential $500 profit and sends $20 for fees to his victim. The scammer's would-be victim sent the funds to a food bank to feed needy families and reported the 419 scammer to authorities. When the scammer attempted to get his money back by threatening to kill his would-be victim, [[http://imgur.com/xs11Six the unimpressed target]] revealed the scammer's location, right down to the exact name of the establishment he was in. A hilarious response ensued when the scammer thought that he just ran afoul of ''a US government agent'' and got nothing but a $20 loss and a short but lovely TheReasonYouSuckSpeech for his efforts.
* While in prison in 1835, French thief Victor Avril made a deal with police, telling them that his one time accomplice Pierre Lacenaire was the author of an unrelated, unsolved double murder during a botched robbery. To Avril's probable horror, Lacenaire never denied his involvement and instead made a ''more'' detailed confession that implicated [[TakingYouWithMe both himself and Avril]] (Avril held the first victim while Lacenaire stabbed him, then Avril finished him with a hatchet). This resulted in both men being executed.
* Terry Blair, a serial killer in Kansas City who was featured on ''Series/TheFirst48'' which was filming in the city at the time, called 911 to report the location of some of the bodies of his victims, which was their first indication they actually had a serial killer, and [[CriminalMindGames taunt the police]]. Detectives were able to use the cell tower data to identify the area he was calling from and then the background sounds on the call to narrow it down to the street, which allowed them to home in on Blair as a suspect.
* In 2002, Louis Dethy, a 79-year-old Belgian, who apparently hated his [[ProdigalFamily estranged family]], rigged his house with 20 deadly booby traps, from tripwire shotguns to an exploding beer crate (set to detonate when a certain number of bottles were removed). Apparently, he was smart enough to realize that his memory was going to Hell in a hand-basket, so he wrote a list of 20 enigmatic clues to remind him where the traps were. Too bad the list didn't help at all, and he ended up being shot by one of his own traps. Thankfully, the police that were used to solve the clues weren't as dumb and, when they could only solve 19 of the 20, opted to just bulldoze the house down.
* Before they broke into the Spencer family home to carry out the Hollandsburg massacre, gang leader Roger Drollinger ordered his accomplices to not wear any masks, as he deliberately planned on murdering everyone inside [[ForTheEvulz for the thrill of killing]]. He and his gang rounded up the residents, which consisted of teenage brothers, 17 year old Raymond, 16 year old Reeve, and 14 year old Ralph, and the boys' adult stepbrother, 22 year old Gregory Brooks, and executed them with shotgun blasts to the head. They also shot Betty, the boys' stepmother and Brooks' mother, but she managed to survive after the gang mistook her wig blown off as her skull fragments. With her seeing their completely uncovered faces, Betty was able to give descriptions of the shooters that enabled law enforcement to track one of them down, and he sold out Drollinger and the other gang members in hopes of a plea bargain.
* Bill Erpenbeck:
** He had ran a scam in which he had pocketed money from homebuyers meant to pay off contractors for their fancy new condominiums. When it seemed that his scam would put him in jail for thirty years once people caught on, he attempted to throw his sister, Lori, under the bus, but when that failed, he gave information of others who worked for him and got a reduced sentence. However, before Bill's sentencing, Lori's lawyer contacted law enforcement to reveal that their father, Tony, was pressuring her to take the fall and [[TheDogBitesBack she had enough]] as she was the only girl in her family and was single, thus a target for their harassment. Lori was wired and father and son continued their pressuring, the FBI hearing enough and arresting them both, with Bill getting the full thirty years and Tony getting six (Lori got a year and some change as she had a very minor role in it).
** For further jawdropping hoisting, Tony was so furious over this, he attempted to solicit a hitman to kill the judge, lawyer and FBI officer behind his imprisonment and brutally torture the officer's children. The "hitman" ratted him out and had fourteen years added to his sentence.
* In March 1884, San Antonio crooks Joe Foster and Jacob Coy plotted to ambush and kill local lawmen Ben Thompson and King Fisher after a lengthy feud. However, poor planning was their undoing; they planned to have their hired guns ambush Thompson and Fisher in their theatre box after luring them there under the guise of a peace meeting. The problem was, they decided to ''[[TooDumbToLive actually meet them in the box]]''. They failed to get out the way in time and were accidentally shot when their men opened fire on the box. Thompson and Fisher both died, but so did Foster (it didn't help that he stupidly left the safety off his gun and ended up shooting himself when he drew his weapon) while Coy was crippled for life.
* [[SerialKiller John Wayne Gacy]] abducted his last victim Robert Piest in front of several witnesses (including Piest’s mother) well acquainted with him from a drugstore he was contracted to work on. Being the person last seen with Piest by all eyewitness accounts and finding a record of several sexual misconduct convictions and accusations in background checks, Gacy was immediately on the investigators’ radar. He was arrested after a 10 day long surveillance, and given several death and life sentences for the murders of Piest and the 32 other victims found in his crawlspace and the Des Plaines river.
* American religious fanatic and child abuser Robert Allen Hale isolated his family from the rest of the world by forcing them to live out in the wilderness with only the bare minimum of contact with modern society in order to make it easier for him to abuse them, justifying it by claiming that it was the only way to avoid being corrupted by the sinfulness of modern society. After his conviction, it was discovered that he had contracted a number of terminal illnesses living out in the wilderness which, due to his refusal to interact with the outside world, had gone undetected and untreated to the point that he only had a few months to live.
* Former US Representative Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was convicted and sent to prison for Structuring (a method of repeatedly withdrawing funds in small amounts to avoid Federal financial reporting requirements of large withdrawals) in order to pay off a person accusing him of [[PaedoHunt child sexual abuse]] when he was a teacher and high school wrestling coach. Structuring was codified as a crime by [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror the controversial PATRIOT Act]], which Hastert himself oversaw passing into law when he was Speaker of the House. Also an example of JusticeByOtherLegalMeans, as the [[KarmaHoudini statute of limitations had run out]] on the original abuse allegations.
* Linda Hazzard was an American swindler and quack doctor whose claim to fame was a fasting diet she promoted as {{Panacea}} to rid the body of toxins and impurities. She set up shop in a sanatorium whose "patients" were starved to the point of severe malnutrition, claiming the lives of more than a dozen who fell for the scam. While she was able to avoid a manslaughter conviction, having not only served two of her twenty-year sentence but was even [[KarmaHoudini pardoned]] by then-Washington governor Ernest Lister and was able to continue with her practice, she was somehow more than convinced by her own medical nonsense that she tried the very same quack treatment that resulted in the deaths of her "patients", ''herself included''.
* British-Australian actor and paedophile Robert Hughes, after being imprisoned in Australia for indecent assault of several minors, renounced his Australian citizenship so the Australian government would be forced to send him to Britain after he was granted parole and he could remain unsupervised. The parole board picked up on this and used it to justify denying him parole as he posed a threat if left unsupervised.
* In Creator/DavidSimon's ''[[https://www.amazon.com/Homicide-Killing-Streets-David-Simon/dp/0805080759?asin=0805080759&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets]]'', Simon relates the story of detectives who were called to investigate the death of Ray Johnson who was shot thirty-five times and the wounding of Carrington Brown who was shot four times. It was ultimately revealed that Johnson and his muscle Stanley Gwynn had gone to meet with Brown. When an argument occurred, Johnson ordered Gwynn to open up on Brown with a [[MoreDakka MAC-11]]. Thinking fast, Brown grabbed Johnson as [[BulletproofHumanShield a human shield]], and Gwynn ended up riddling Johnson with bullets. Only four passed through to wound Brown, who survived the ordeal.
* In January 1998, in San Diego, a man named Rodney Johnson impersonated [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFootball NFL player]] Tyrone Braxton. amidst the festivities preceding Super Bowl XXXII (In which Braxton's Denver Broncos were playing the Green Bay Packers). He ran up a $3,000 credit card bill (using a stolen card - not Braxton's) and picked up a young lady, under the impression that he was the NFL star. Johnson was caught within a couple of days of this, because the young lady had such a nice time, she ended up calling the real Braxton to thank him. Braxton (who was observing team curfew in the same hotel and had no idea who the woman was) immediately called league security, who worked with the San Diego police to catch the impostor.
* SerialKiller Israel Keyes, did this twice.
** He got caught by going against his usual very careful method of picking his victims and randomly kidnapped a young woman, Samantha Koeing, while she was working alone at a gas station with it all being caught on the security camera.
** While capture he tried to make a deal with law enforcement by claiming he would give up the location of his other victims, plead guilty, and request a rushed death sentence, if they keep his capture out of the media, so his family and friends, but mainly his daughter doesn't find out he was a serial killer until after he's dead. But he ruined that by trying to escape while the negotiations were still taking place. Afterwards, he lost all goodwill with law enforcement, his capture is leaked to the media, and he soon commits suicide, once he realized law enforcement had no intention of dealing anymore and was just stalling the whole time hoping to trick him into still give up the victims locations.
* After being charged with the murder of state senate rival Tommy Burks, Byron "Low Tax" Looper tried to stave off the date of his trial for as long as possible by repeatedly firing his lawyers, before eventually deciding on a "dream team" of two highly-paid lawyers, one from California and one from Georgia. Before the trial, Looper got three members of his family to provide him an alibi for the time that Burks died, but when his lawyers tried to present them at the trial the judge pointed out that under Tennessee law, any alibis must be registered within a certain amount of time after the initial charge is made. Looper had been so busy firing and replacing his lawyers that the date came and went without anyone noticing, and the two he had with him in court were from out-of-state and so weren't familiar with that requirement. Between that and the prosecutor asking the obvious question of why they hadn't come forward sooner, the alibis were rejected and Looper was eventually convicted.
* The province of Aceh in UsefulNotes/{{Indonesia}} enforces Sharia law: the strict Islamic legal code that [[MoralGuardians forbids immoral behavior]] including drinking alcohol, homosexuality, and adultery. Mukhlis is a member of the Aceh Ulema Council advising on religious laws, and among other things called for those who committed adultery to be publicly caned. [[https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/01/asia/indonesia-adultery-caning-scli-intl/index.html The headline writes itself.]]
* After he shot and killed his landlady, Geneva Roling, at her home, Emmett Clifton Nave drove to a nearby hospital and abducted 6 nurses. He forced the captive nurses to inject him with Demoral and Valium at gunpoint. Nave then overdosed and went unconscious with the amount of drugs his hostages administered to him. This enabled the responding officers to easily arrest him, and he was sentenced to death and executed by the state of Missouri for Roling’s murder.
* On Christmas Eve of 2008, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covina_massacre Bruce Jeffrey Pardo]] went to a party held by his relatives dressed in a Santa suit, opened fire on them and killed eight, and then set fire to the house with a homemade flamethrower. His original plan was to establish an alibi and flee the country; however, the homemade flamethrower [[ClingyCostume burned part of the Santa suit into his flesh]], sabotaging his plans and [[DrivenToSuicide driving him to commit suicide.]]
* The infamous Campden Wonder in England, in which three people were hanged for murdering a man who later turned up alive, came about because John Perry gave false witness implicating his mother Joan and brother Richard in the murder only to end up charged alongside them because his testimony implicated him as an accomplice.
* KillerCop Drew Peterson:
** In October of 2007, young mother Stacy Peterson disappeared. Suspicion immediately fell on her husband Drew, who was known to be controlling and abusive and who she had been planning to leave. Unfortunately, with no evidence of foul play, the cops could do nothing. So instead they took a second look at the mysterious death of Drew's previous wife Kathleen, previously ruled as an accidental drowning, but now looking more ominous. A second autopsy determined that indeed, the woman had been murdered, and Drew was tried and convicted. Although Stacy has never been found, it is unanimously believed that had she not disappeared, the police would never have become suspicious about Kathleen's death.
** Peterson further "hoisted" himself by trying to hire a hit man to kill the prosecutor in his case, resulting in him being sentenced to ''another'' 40 years in prison and effectively ending his lame protests of innocence in either case.
* Christopher Porco had broken into his parent's house in Delmar, New York and attacked them with an ax, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Peter_Porco killing his father]]. He then returned to University of Rochester to claim he had been been sleeping during the time of the attack; nonetheless, flaws were found in his alibi:
** Christopher had staged a couple of break ins at his parent's house on November 2002 and July 2003[[note]]Christopher had staged a similar burglary at his workplace[[/note]], stealing laptops to sell on Ebay, resulting in his parents buying a burglar alarm. During the attack, Christopher had deactivated the alarm, meaning that whoever broke into the house knew the code. The only other person who knew the code was Christopher's brother, Jonathan, who had a stronger alibi of being on a Navy Base in South Carolina.
** The inciting incident for the attack on his parents was Christopher asking for his father's personal and financial information to secure a $2,000 loan, but instead took out a $31,000 loan for tuition and a $16,450 loan for a distinct yellow Jeep Wrangler, resulting in his father Peter threatening legal action. When Christopher drove from college to his parent's house, said Jeep Wrangler was spotted by his parents' neighbors, multiple toll booths, and security cameras at the college. This showed that Christopher had driven throughout the night and returned the following morning, disproving his alibi of being at the University asleep.
* In a newspaper interview in 2011, British economist Vicky Pryce revealed that her former husband, Chris Huhne (who by that point was the UK government's Energy Secretary) had pressured someone into falsely admitting to a speeding offence that he had committed, which would have caused him to be banned from driving. This kicked off an ugly political scandal that led to Huhne resigning from the government, and he eventually pled guilty to the offence in court, fulfilling Pryce's self-confessed goal of destroying his political career [[WomanScorned as revenge for breaking up with her]]. However, the police were naturally interested in who had taken the rap for the speeding offence, and as it turned out, Pryce ''herself'' was the person who did that, leading to her being hauled up in front of court on the same charge (perverting the course of justice), and eventually being convicted.
* After being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Mary Bales, Wesley Purkey, not wishing to remain in a Kansas prison because his fellow prisoners hated him and believing federal prison would be more comfortable, confessed to the abduction, rape and murder of Jennifer Long, a federal crime that would get him sent to a federal penitentiary. What he didn't expect was for federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty, which was what he ended up getting.
* SerialKiller Dennis "BTK" Radar was caught after a floppy disk he sent was traced to a computer registered by a local church (after being assured by investigators in a previous communication that wouldn't be able to trace a floppy disk in any way).
* Happened to former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted of molesting several children:
** Aaron Fisher, the first victim to come forward, admits that he might have not spoken up. Fisher had finally become fed up with the abuse and begun avoiding him, and Sandusky begun stalking him in an attempt to either force him to continue the "relationship" or to intimidate him into keeping his mouth shut. Furthermore, the boy's mother might not have wised up had she not become alarmed by Sandusky's behavior.
** He demanded that his adopted son Matthew attend his trial in a show of solidarity with the family. However, hearing the victims' testimony triggered Matthew's repressed memories of the abuse he had suffered at Sandusky's hands, and their bravery in coming forward gave him the strength to break from Sandusky's manipulative hold over him. Whereas he had once been prepared to testify as a character witness on Sandusky's behalf (and basically perjure himself as he had before the grand jury, where he claimed that Sandusky had not abused him), he was now willing to testify that he'd been a victim as well. Matthew's plan to refute Sandusky's claims of innocence effectively derailed whatever defense had been planned and sealed his fate.
* [[https://aadl.org/aa_news_19930210-police_say_man_shot_to_death_by_own_booby_trap_in_garage Kenneth Sutherland, a drug suspect]] set up a shotgun booby trap to prevent theft, and accidentally tripped the trigger getting shot dead.
* Macedonian serial killer Vlado Taneski was caught because, as a journalist reporting on his own killings, [[INeverSaidItWasPoison he gave clues]] to the authorities that led them to link him with his murders.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Military and Warfare]]
* As mentioned in the main page, the trope is named ([[JustForFun/TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples by]] [[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare]]) for the Petard, a primitive breaching charge invented in the 1500s. Petards were notoriously unstable due to both the volatility of the gunpowder and the crude fusing. The petard was even more dangerous because in order to use it, the petardiers would have to advance under heavy enemy gunfire to get close enough to place the bomb, and then run as fast as they could (again under enemy gunfire) to escape the bomb before it exploded. It's theorized that Shakespeare intended this phrase as a joke, which really shows how dangerous petards were if even common people knew about problems with them and thought it was funny.
* The potential for this trope is the reason that militaries ''strongly'' discourage the practice of "cooking" grenades (i.e. holding onto them for a couple seconds after pulling the pin, to give the targets less time to react). In theory (and in most video games) it works, but real life grenades do not have consistent fuse times, so if the one you're "cooking" is on the shorter end of the spectrum, you're likely to [[ExplosiveStupidity blow yourself up]].
* In the course of UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, Confederates developed the first attack submarine, the ''Hunley,'' out of an old boiler vessel. [[{{Foreshadowing}} It sank twice before ever going on a mission and killed 13 crew, including its creator]]. The intent was for the ''Hunley'' to attack Union blockade vessels with towed mines, though problems with this plan led to the use of a spar torpedo instead: not much more than a contact-fuzed bomb on a stick. The ''Hunley'' managed to maneuver to the USS ''Housatonic'' and detonate the torpedo successfully, sinking the ''Housatonic''... and inadvertently depth-charging themselves, sinking the ''Hunley'' and killing her entire crew ''again'', this time for good. Though they'd sunk a ship, the Union had only lost five crewmen in the attack. The Confederates had lost 21 men, their submarine, and its inventor. Unable to keep losing naval crew at a rate of four to one, the already-weak Confederate navy shelved the attack submarine idea altogether.
* In UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the Soviets strapped bombs to dogs as a living [[ActionBomb anti-tank mine]]. The dogs did just as they were trained, when released in battle, heading under the Soviet tanks they trained with instead of the German tanks.[[labelnote: Although...]]It is commonly rumored that this was because that Soviet tanks at the time ran on diesel fuel, whereas their German counterparts ran on gasoline; and that the dogs mostly memorized the tanks by scent. However, the dogs were trained on old Soviet tanks with also ran on gasoline (this also meant that Soviet tanks that the Red Army actually was fielding were unfamiliar to the dogs). The real reason the dogs ran back was simply because they were scared. The training tracks, at best, had controlled gunfire and explosions. Real tanks tended to shoot back along with all the other random explosions and what not. Its telling that more Soviet infantry were blown up than tanks, because the dogs associated the soldiers with safety. The Japanese had similar program, an early on they determined that dogs could only be released during lulls in the fighting.[[/labelnote]]
* When the Greeks invaded the city of Koritza in 1940, they bombarded the Italians with their own artillery they had abandoned on their retreat.
* In a notable move to avoid a situation like the above, the Soviets used and 82mm mortar in WWII. This meant that they could fire, in a pinch, captured German 81mm mortar rounds, but their mortar rounds would be too big to use in German mortars if captured.
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarI was famous for the use of large-scale gas attacks, but the initial uses of them proved to be unreliable due to them being delivered by sealed cylinders of them by the frontlines to waft in the wind toward the enemy's trenches, wind which could and at times did change so that the gas would just blew back into the unleasher's own trenches. Probably because of this likely drawback, launching gas via artillery shells was a later innovation that became popular.
* On one occasion, late in his life, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, considered by many to be the "inventor of radar," was reportedly pulled over in Canada for speeding by a radar-gun toting policeman. He remarked, "Had I known what you were going to do with it, I would never have invented it!"
* King James II of Scotland was a big supporter of the use of then-modern artillery in warfare. He was killed when one of his own cannons exploded.
* The German Empire's Type UC II minelaying U-boat was the most successful submarine in history if judged purely by number of enemy vessels sunk, but a few of them were unfortunate enough to destroy themselves with their own mines. The most interesting for our purposes was UC-44, which during the summer of 1917 had been frustrating the Royal Navy's attempts to keep the approaches to Waterford Harbor on the southern coast of Ireland free of mines. Since the Germans had cracked the codes used by the Royal Navy minesweepers, the UC-44 was able to lay mines near the harbor; wait for the minesweepers to remove them and transmit the "field cleared" message; and then stealthily return to replace the mines after the sweepers were gone. On the night of August 4th the UC-44 came to re-lay the minefield as usual, but as the last mine was being layed it accidentally detonated; the U-boat boat sank in 25 meters of water and its commander Kurt Tebbenjohanns was the sole survivor. Tebbenjohanns was questioned by the British after they picked him up, which is how they found out their codes had probably been broken. Apparently he believed that the British minesweepers had done a bad job clearing the previous minefield, and that as a result his U-boat ran into one of the mines it had laid during the previous mission. Because of where it sank, the British divers were able to inspect the wreck and discover the actual cause of the explosion; they also recovered logbooks which revealed that the British anti-submarine defences around Dover were completely ineffective against the Germans. Some of the Royal Navy officers in charge of the minesweeping would later claim that they had created a deliberate trap, involving a dummy operation where the sweepers pretended to remove the minefield and sent a fake "field cleared" message to trick UC-44 into coming back and hitting one of its own mines, but they probably fabricated this explanation after the fact in an attempt to save face and/or as part of a deliberate act of military deception. In reality the whole episode revealed the extent to which the British weren't as on top of the U-boat threat as they thought, and this valuable intelligence only fell into their laps through sheer dumb luck.
* During the Second Battle of Galveston, the Union flagship USS Westfield ran aground and the crew abandoned the ship. During a ceasefire and negotiations, the Union commander, William B Renshaw decided to blow the ship up rather than let it fall to Confederate hands, despite technically not being allowed to do so during a ceasefire. After setting the explosives and a fuse he and the demolition team rowed away... and watched as the Westfield failed to detonate. Worried that he wouldn't have time to properly set another demolition charge but waiting out any potential fires, Renshaw ordered his team to row back and try again. It turned out that the fuse was just burning slowly and the USS Westfield exploded taking Renshaw and his team with it. In the resulting chaos the Union ground forces surrendered [[note]]they were convinced that the Navy was surrendering[[/note]] and the Navy retreated despite the Union not being at any clear tactical disadvantage. The Union was unable to recapture Galveston for the rest of the war.
* The French puppet emperor of Mexico, Maximillian II, attempted to dissuade the Mexicans from rebelling against him by enacting a law that sentenced every rebel captured in battle to death by firing squad. When he himself was captured by the rebels in 1867, the same law was applied to him and he was executed by firing squad.
* The seeker heads on early heat seeker missiles were notorious for switching targets in flight (often from the enemy plane to the ''ground'' in Vietnam; especially troubling for those planes that were forced to ditch guns entirely for heat-seeking [=AAMs=]), and had another inconvenient property: the top speed of the missile was ''slower'' than the top combat speed of some planes. A number of inattentive pilots attempted to fire heat seekers at enemy aircraft while flying too fast, the missile falling behind and locking onto the engine of the plane that fired it. This was not always fatal, as the type of warheads used in heat-seeking missiles are not particularly effective on larger aircraft.
* Two from Italy's colonial history:
** During the war between ''Ras'' Mengesha Yohannes of Tigray and king Menelik of Shewa for the Ethiopian imperial throne, the latter received Italian help in modern weapons that allowed him to defeat his enemy and claim the throne, after which he signed an alliance treaty with Italy that granted him some economic help. Upon finding out the internationally-recognized Italian language version of the treaty made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate, emperor Menelik II used that money to buy more modern weapons from France and Italy itself before declaring war, using those very modern weapons to decisively defeat the Italians and win the war (and a new alliance treaty that was basically the Ethiopian-language version of the old treaty, plus some of Tigray given away to the Italians). The pretext of the war? Italy invading and conquering Tigray, thus prompting Mengasha to finally submit to Menelik and give him effective control on Tigray, at least for some time.
** In 1914 the ''Senussi'' started a rebellion against the Italian occupation of Fezzan (south-west region of modern-day Libya). When the rebellion grew and started threatening the coastal region of Tripolitania (firmly in Italian hands), Miani was sent back to crush them but, having been saddled with local conscripts, he lost at Gasr Bu Hadi when these revolted against the Italians mid-battle. The rebellion could have ''still'' being defeated easily by the reinforcements being assembled at Tripoli and Misrata (intended to retake Fezzan) had Miani not grabbed the IdiotBall and brought with him a large supply convoy with 5,000 reserve rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, six machine guns, six sections of artillery with abundant ammunition, and even the fund of the column, that were captured by the rebels and gave them the firepower to occupy the whole of Libya aside for a few coastal cities (it would take until 1922 before the Italians were ready to fight back, and resistance would end only in 1932).
* During World War II, at least two vessels torpedoed themselves with torpedoes that malfunctioned and made circular runs: the cruiser [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Trinidad_(46) HMS Trinidad]] survived its mishap, but the submarine [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tang_(SS-306) USS Tang (SS-306)]] did not.
* Speaking of torpedoes, there are at least two instances of German submarines being caught in the explosion of a ship they torpedoed. On 10 June 1942, the ''U-68'' torpedoed the British freighter ''Surrey'', which was carrying 5,000 tons of dynamite. It exploded underwater, causing a shock wave that lifted ''U-68'' out of the water and disabled the gyrocompass and the diesel engines. Similarly, German submarines attacked Convoy SC 107 on the night of 3/4 November 1942, sinking the British freighter ''Hatimura'' and the Dutch freighter ''Hobbema''. Both ships were loaded with munitions, and one of them exploded underwater, destroying ''U-132''.
* While the original Soviet-made rockets produced for the RPG-7 launcher had a fuze arming system that reduced the risk of accidental detonation, a common type of post-Soviet copy has a rather unsafe type of impact fuze located on the tip of the rocket which will cause the warhead to explode as soon as it strikes something. This fuze has a 4.5 second time delay at most, and no minimum range at which it will detonate. The rocket sticks out from the front of the weapon, and the only safety against premature detonation from accidentally bumping it into something is a threaded plastic cap that covers the fuze while it’s screwed on. Since the warhead is basically disarmed until you remove the cap, and it takes a couple of precious seconds to get it off, users who want to be ready to fire it in case of a surprise attack are known to unscrew the cap and walk around with their warhead sticking out armed, which is just begging for an accident to happen. An American soldier told Ian [=McCollum=] of ''WebVideo/ForgottenWeapons'' that he saw an Iraqi insurgent trip as he was running across a street with the cap off on his RPG, so that he fell on his face and the tip of his rocket hit the side of the curb, blowing him to bits.
* Rifle grenades are grenades that sit on a special mounting of an infantry rifle and are propelled by the gasses of a blank cartridge. These were popular during both world wars and well into the Cold War because they essentially give a soldier a grenade launcher without having to have him lug around two weapons. However several soldiers have mistakenly loaded normal bullets into the system, which almost invariably cause the grenade to explode feet from soldier's face.
* The original manned torpedo was developed privately by a Royal Navy officer before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, but during the war the Royal Navy rejected it as impracticable and unsafe, and he went on offering it to the then-allied Italy, that successfully tested it in the final days of the war... And, during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, went on using a perfected version against the Royal Navy [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Alexandria_(1941) to devastating effect]].
* One would expect that Hitler would have had a strong reaction to the news that the Allies were invading Normandy beach on D-Day - and he might have, had he been awake to hear about it. He had been to a party the previous night and didn't retire until about 3:00 AM, meaning he didn't wake up the next day until about noon. Most militaries would have woken their leaders up with news of the invasion force, but Hitler's histrionics were legendary among his forces, so no-one wanted to wake him up until they were certain that they were dealing with the full invasion force; by the time they knew for certain, it was already far too late, and the Allies had officially entered France.
* The late Sir John Keegan called it ''"the crowning mercy"'' of World War II that UsefulNotes/NaziGermany failed to develop the atomic bomb before its defeat; of the several factors explaining why the American Manhattan Project succeeded in doing so first, one was that some of Europe's most brilliant scientists, including UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein, Enrico Fermi, and Niels Bohr, all lived in Axis or Axis-occupied countries but decided to leave rather than be persecuted (Einstein was Jewish, Fermi's wife was Jewish, and Bohr fled his native Denmark rather than be forcibly recruited to work on the Germans' atom bomb project) and several of these scientists went to work for the United States.
* This is one interpretation of the Six Day War between Egypt, Syria (and later Jordan) on the one side and Israel on the other. Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, riding high on his perceived victory during the Suez crisis (The Israeli-French-British offensive had achieved its military goals but those were reversed due to Soviet and American diplomatic pressure - this is widely seen as the definitive end of French and British claims to being major world powers) played increasingly risky games of brinkmanship. He ordered the UN forces which had been guarding the Egyptian-Israeli armistice lines removed (meaning there'd be no warning time if either side amassed troops for an invasion and a much more increased likeliness to perceive intentions of the other side near the armistice line as belligerent) and gave increasingly aggressive speeches on Egyptian radio while moving his own troops in a manner that Israel considered to be hostile. Israel meanwhile issued several warnings that certain actions [[ThisMeansWar would be seen as a casus belli]] - such as closing the Straits of Tiran, Israel's only access to the Red Sea. Then Nasser ordered the Straits of Tiran closed. And Israel [[CurbStompBattle annihilated the Egyptian Air Force on the ground]] achieving a decisive advantage that would translate into a remarkably fast and easy advance of Israeli ground troops on the subsequent days. A common interpretation of what the hell Nasser was doing and thinking is that he thought Israel was bluffing and due to Arab forces much outnumbering Israeli forces, Israel would not dare actually launch a war without allies (Israel at the time did not have any ally willing to go to war for it in such a situation) and he would win a diplomatic and prestige victory through bluster. And then after the Egyptian Air Force had already been defeated, Nasser got on the radio and [[BlatantLies told the world]] ''[[BlatantLies the Israeli Air Force]]'' had been destroyed which prompted Jordan to enter the war on the Egyptian side - only for Jordan to get easily Curb Stomped as well. King Hussein of Jordan (who had already undertaken secret bilateral talks with Israel from time to time despite the official line being an Arab boycott of even acknowledging the existence of Israel) was understandably pissed and Nasser's reputation was ruined for the rest of his life. Turns out if all your moves indicate war, you better have a war-plan handy.
* The monarchies of both France and Spain poured a lot of money and resources into backing the Americans in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution, intending to get a leg up on rival power Great Britain. Mere decades later, the success of American independence and the liberal political ideology behind it became a major inspiration to both UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution and the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWarsOfIndependence, overthrowing the French regime entirely and crippling Spain as a global power.
* This played a part in the defeat of Pyrrhus and his Epirotes in the Pyrrhic War. During the Battle of Asculum ([[TropeNamer the original]] PyrrhicVictory) the Romans came very close to winning and even threatened the Epirote camp before being pushed back by the elephants, but as part of the attack on the camp they managed to grab some of the molossoid dogs Pyrrhus had brought as guard dogs. Four years later, after Pyrrhus had temporarily moved to Sicily, Romans and Epirotes met again at Maleventum for the decisive battle, and Pyrrhus, knowing how hard the previous battles had been and that the Romans had learned from their defeats, tried a night attack to surprise them... Only for his vanguard to be discovered and attacked by the guard dogs the Romans had bred from the molossoids stolen at Asculum, forcing the Epirotes to fight the full force of the Romans by day and sleep deprived.
* Colt saw the adaptation of its AR-15 rifle by the US Military delayed by five years. In 1959, when its predecessor, the AR-10 (which was basically a bigger AR-15) was passed over for the inferior M-14 (an upgraded version of the WWII-stalwart M-1 Garand) by a more conservative military leadership, who preferred higher-firepower the M-14's bigger rounds than the greater rate of fire the 15 could provide. [[note]]And allegedly by more than a few dollars changing hands to ensure the M-14s victory[[/note]]. Later, when the M-14 proved to be no match for [[UsefulNotes/VietnamWar the Viet Cong's]] AK-47s, Secretary of Defense Robert [=McNamara=] arranged a side-by-side test of the AR-15, the M-14 and the AK-47 in 1961. When Colt was caught trying to rig the contest via biased judges ([[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat despite having the clearly superior weapon]]), [=McNamara=] was so offended, he dropped any talk of adopting the AR-15 for another two years, until August 1963, where it was quickly modified into the M-16, to adjust to the harsher conditions of jungle combat. The AR-15 itself only lasted two years in deployment. And by the time a civilian version (sans full-auto fire) was offered for civilian sale, imitators took a chunk out of the AR-15's potential market.
* A group of Israeli soldiers in Khan Younis during the war in Gaza planted demolition mines on two buildings they had been ordered to demolish due to suspected use by Hamas. Then Hamas ambushed them and in the fighting a grenade blast set off the explosives prematurely, bringing the buildings down on top of the Israeli soldiers and killing around 21 of them in the deadliest single incident for Israeli forces since the conflict began.
* [[UsefulNotes/CharlesI Charles I of England]] was hit by a series of these in the lead-up to the English Civil Wars, which would end in his overthrow and eventual execution.
** Charles dissolved Parliament in 1625 after they tried to assert their sovereignty over him and ruled alone for over a decade, becoming increasingly dictatorial over the course of his reign. Then in 1639 the people of Scotland got tired of his attempts to impose religious laws on them and mounted a rebellion known as the Bishop's War. Charles decided to send an army up to Scotland to reassert his authority, only to find that with Parliament not around to levy taxes on his behalf he couldn't raise enough money for a full invasion and had to pay out of his own pocket, which wasn't enough to raise anywhere near enough men for a full invasion of Scotland. Sure enough, Charles suffered a humiliating defeat which then allowed the Scottish Parliament to pass laws severely limiting his authority in Scotland.
** Charles then decided to mount another invasion and, realizing he would need Parliament this time, allowed them to re-open...only to immediately suspend them again after they demanded that he address their grievances about his dictatorial actions, forcing him to use his own money ''again''. As before, this wasn't enough to raise a full army and Charles suffered an ''even more'' humiliating defeat which ended in a sizable chunk of Northern England being occupied by Scotland and Charles being forced to ''pay the Scots'' a sizable daily stipend to maintain the occupation.
** This finally showed Charles that he needed to re-call Parliament permanently, but in the meantime the Irish had been inspired by the Scot's success to rise up and Charles's prior abuses of power meant that Parliament didn't trust him enough to give him command of the army to suppress the revolt, rendering him unable to stop the rebels from taking over Ulster.
** Angered, Charles attempted to unlawfully arrest a group of five [=MP=]s who he accused of plotting against him, which backfired horribly because he decided to make the arrest inside the House of Commons itself, violating Parliamentary sovereignty in such a way as to completely destroy his supporter's claims that he was upholding the rule of law and giving Parliament ''casus belli'' to mount a revolution.
** After being defeated and captured the first time, Charles's life was initially going to be spared, as Parliament didn't think it had the authority to put the king or those who followed him on trial. However, he got sick of sitting through useless negotiations and escaped custody before instigating an uprising against Parliament and convincing the Scots to invade in support of him. This was rather quickly suppressed, and Charles and his fellow Royalist leaders had now made themselves guilty of fomenting a foreign invasion of England, which could not simply be swept under the rug and led to Charles and many of his followers being tried for high treason, which only had one punishment: death.
** Even then, many of the Parliamentarians were not seriously willing to execute Charles and favoured exiling him or simply removing him from power. It was his belief in the divine right of kings that did him in: he refused to plead, as he would not accept that any court could have jurisdiction over God's representative on Earth, thus demonstrating that he would never accept Parliamentary sovereignty and enabling the more radical anti-Royalists to get him sentenced to death.
* At the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Milvian_Bridge Battle of the Milvian Bridge]] between Pagan Roman Emperor Maxentius and Christian Emperor Constantine the Great, Maxentius had the bridge torn down in order to prevent Constantine from crossing the Tiber, setting up a smaller temporary bridge for his troops to cross. Later in the battle Constantine began to push the Maxentian forces back and Maxentius ordered a retreat so he could make another stand at Rome, but with the main bridge torn down there wasn't enough space for all his men to cross and they were forced into the river, where they were weighted down by their armour. Meanwhile, the much weaker bridge Maxentius had erected couldn't hold the weight of all the soldiers trying to cross and soon collapsed, which likely wouldn't have happened had the main bridge still been standing. The end result was that most of the Maxentian army, including Maxentius himself, drowned in the Tiber and a large portion of the survivors were stranded on the northern bank where they were killed or taken prisoner, leaving nobody to resist Constantine's takeover of the Western Empire.
* The crucial UsefulNotes/BattleOfLepanto, which saw the defeat of the Ottoman Empire at sea by the Christian powers and ended Ottoman incursions into Europe, saw the Ottoman commander, Ali Pasha, give weapons to the enslaved Christians he was using as rowers on his galley with the promise of freedom if he won. However, the rowers, knowing they would be free if the Holy League won, mutinied against Ali as soon as they were given weapons and joined the battle on the side of the Christians, seizing control of Ali's flagship and turning the tide against the Ottomans.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Politics]]
* The "Barschel affair" (or [[{{Scandalgate}} Waterkantgate]] for the North German term "Waterkant" [[note]]literally "water's edge"[[/note]] for "coast" of which the state has a lot) had this in scores and even when people thought it could not possibly have more of that, it did.
** [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Barschel Uwe Barschel]] was heading into a contentious election campaign and it was unclear whether he would beat his rival SPD-politician Björn Engholm. Enter a man named Reiner Pfeiffer offering to "get dirt on Engholm". However, as with the Watergate scandal a decade earlier, it all came to light, this time ''before'' the election. Barschel, instead of washing himself clean of Pfeiffer gave an infamous press conference including the sentence "Ich gebe ihnen mein Ehrenwort! Ich wiederhole, mein Ehrenwort!"[[labelnote:translation]]"I give you my word of honor! I repeat: My word of honor![[/labelnote]] about the accusations against him being wrong. Voters by and large did not believe him, and the CDU placed second behind the SPD in the following elections, albeit with neither party able to form a majority coalition (the FDP was unwilling to vote for the SPD candidate and the Party of the Danish and Frisian minority, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association SSW]], was unwilling to vote for the CDU candidate, in sum ensuring new elections had to be held). Barschel resigned and was found dead - it was ruled a suicide at the time, but there are still doubts as to that explanation. Had Barschel never started the smear campaign, he would not have had to resign. Had he not given his "word of honor", his name would not now be indelibly linked to how "a politician that gives his word of honor is giving nothing".
** Engholm, meanwhile, won the ensuing new elections in a landslide in part due to sympathy with him having been smeared by Barschel's campaign and was seen as the new up-and-comer of the SPD (even being given the party chairmanship). A few years later it came to light that Engholm had known more about the scandal than he had previously let on, and had only reveal the truth on the weekend of the election knowing it would make a bigger splash. He had to resign, ending his political career. Had Engholm been frank from the get-go, he would not have his political career destroyed.
* The infamous UsefulNotes/PopeAlexanderVI, a.k.a. Rodrigo Borgia, died in suspicious circumstances. While many historians attribute his death to a plague, a popular rumor claims that he accidentally drank poisoned wine intended for one of his political rivals.
* The Regent of Scotland, James Douglas, introduced the Maiden, a sort of prototype guillotine, to Scotland in the 16th Century, only to be executed in it.
* The Chinese philosopher, Han Fei Zi, was imprisoned by the leader of the Chinese state of Qin due to a policy of imprisoning and/or killing scholars and intellectuals. Said policy was proposed by none other than Han Fei Zi himself.
* When the Free State Movement all but took over the town of Grafton, New Hampshire, they had thought to establish a libertarian town to show that a town with libertarian principles could not only work, but flourish. No regulations also meant that people could happily live in tents or yurts. It sounded like a nice idea... until the crime rate spiked when scam artists, political malcontents, sex offenders, and other such criminals were attracted to the town. The single police officer and police chief couldn't stop the crimes when asked to because they had no funding to even fix the single cruiser. The "Non traditional housing" as well as the lack of any kind of sanitation department caused [[BearsAreBadNews aggressive black bears]] to suddenly take up residence in the town. Resulting in people having to ask the state government for help, who promptly declined because after all, they wanted to ''not'' have any government support!
* UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution:
** King Louis XVI introduced the guillotine to France as a more humane method of executing prisoners, and ended up being executed on it himself after the revolution.
** UsefulNotes/MaximilienRobespierre, who was behind much of the Reign Of Terror that followed, was ultimately himself executed by the guillotine which he so adored. Along with quite a few others. (Another irony is that several people who participated in Thermidor actually were against the guillotine, as it was too slow-- and were more in favour of shooting their victims randomly with a cannon from a distance and throwing them into a mass grave to die, as for Fouché.)
** Georges Danton, who had voted for the creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, ended up among those sentenced to death by this court, as he bitterly and remorsefully noted.
--->''It was just a year ago that I was the means of instituting the Revolutionary Tribunal; may God and man forgive me for what I did then; but it was not that it might become the scourge of humanity.''
** Another was Charles-Nicolas Osselin, who voted for the death penalty for ''émigrés'' returning in France and those hiding them before being beheaded for hiding an emigrated noblewoman he fell in love with.
** Phillip Duke [=d'Orleans=] (male line descendant of a brother of Louis XIV) or, if we go by the name he was using then, Phillip Egalité, voted ''for'' the execution of his relative, King Louis XVI. Guess how he died?
* A BatmanGambit gone wrong helped Barry Goldwater secure the Republican nomination in 1964. Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton decided to mount a last-ditch establishment bid when it looked like his conservative Arizona colleague would win the nomination and lead it to a rout at Lyndon Johnson's hands in the November general election. His plan was to persuade delegates at the convention in San Francisco to change their votes to him, based on polls he had had done that showed lots of Republicans prepared to vote for Johnson if Goldwater was the Republican nominee. So... he[[note]]or possibly an overzealous staffer[[/note]] wrote a confrontational open letter to Goldwater about his positions and temperament, and had it printed up and placed on every delegate's chair. His hope was that Goldwater would [[IResembleThatRemark respond to it in such a way that would prove Scranton's point]] and make the delegates nervous enough to support him instead. But not only did this not work, it may even have cost Scranton much of the little support that he already had, and Goldwater went on to indeed get [[CurbStompBattle creamed in November]].
* Rudy Giuliani is one of several people credited with helping to pioneer the use of the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act as a means of prosecuting criminal entities and high-level government corruption; during his time as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, he famously indicted 11 high-profile members of [[UsefulNotes/TheMafia the American Mafia]] (in particular, the Mafia Commission, which serves as the mob's governing body) for labor racketeering and extortion. Nearly three decades later, Giuliani would be indicted under the RICO Act himself after being accused of attempting to help former President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump illegally overturn the results of the 2020 US presidential election in the state of Georgia.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapua_Movement Lapua Movement]] was a radical right, anti-communist political movement in Finland in the early 1930s. By pressuring the Finnish government through kidnappings and assaults, the Movement managed to pass several anti-communist laws, including the Protection of the Republic Act, nominally meant to ban "anti-government entities". After the Movement [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mäntsälä_rebellion attempted to overthrow the government,]] the Lapua Movement was banned under the Protection of the Republic Act, the very legislation the Movement helped to enact.
* The Mandate of Heaven is a Chinese political theory according to which the ruler of China is chosen by Heaven through a mandate that can be revoked any moment if the ruler proves unworthy, and the shift is easily proven by a successful rebellion - if a rebellion succeeds and overthrow the ruler, it's clear ''they'' have the Mandate now. The Zhou Dynasty came up with it to justify their takeover from the Shang in spite of the divine power of the ruler. It worked... And then, centuries later, it was used by the Qin Dynasty to justify ''their'' takeover.
* Being a very paranoid man, UsefulNotes/RichardNixon had an elaborate taping system installed in the White House so he could record every conversation. When his connection to the Watergate break-in was leaked, Congress subpoenaed the tapes and discovered Nixon had prior knowledge of the event. Nixon resigned four days later. Even worse; the Watergate break-in occurred so Nixon could get dirt on the [=McGovern=] campaign and the DNC, [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat despite the fact the [=McGovern=] campaign was a total disaster behind the scenes and Nixon safely won the election fairly anyway]].
* In early 2010, Democrats lost their 60-vote filibuster-proof supermajority in the U.S. Senate eleven months early due to a law they had passed years earlier to ''prevent'' such an incident. In 2004, Massachusetts Democrats changed the state's U.S. Senate appointment law, fearing that Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican to the Senate if UsefulNotes/JohnKerry won the presidential election, which mandated that appointees could only serve up to 160 days instead of the entire remainder of the term. In August 2009, Sen. UsefulNotes/TedKennedy died, creating a vacancy that Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick filled with Paul G. Kirk. However, due to the law, a special election was called in February 2010 that was won by Republican Scott Brown in an upset.
* In the 2010 midterms, Republicans took both chambers of the North Carolina state legislature for the first time since the 1890s. They used that to draw heavily gerrymandered maps, both for state and federal elections. The governor at the time was a Democrat but the state had changed the law in the 1990s under Democratic control to have the maps redrawn without insight from the governor. She chose not to run again in 2012 when her seat was up and Republican Pat [=McCrory=] won the open seat. The state jammed through many laws like strict voter ID laws (ones that disproportionately disenfranchised voters from demographics that generally lean Democratic, such as African-Americans) to entrench themselves but the straw that broke the camel's back was a law that overturned a Charlotte city ordinance that allowed trans people to use the bathroom they want. The economic backlash against the state was enormous and it cost [=McCrory=] his seat to Democrat Roy Cooper in 2016. By sheer coincidence, Cooper got to appoint three SC judges within only his first two years in office, giving the Democrats a 6-1 majority on the court who've since overturned pretty much every disenfranchisement law that had passed under [=McCrory=] and forced the state to draw new maps. Had they not pushed through such an unpopular bill with an artificial majority, the Republicans would have been able to entrench their power further, not lose it.
* This is a tricky needle to thread for groups with a single major interest or issue in general: If they achieve their objective, then they can basically find themselves out of a job because of their success.
* [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny North Korea]] broadcasts videos of mass protests against then president Park Geun-hye's to show how corrupt the South Korea's government was. Needless to say, [[EpicFail it backfired spectacularly]] when North Koreans were actually delighted to learn that commoners could defy government officials (and a president no less) and lead to criminally charge them. The North Koreans authorities quickly put an end to the broadcast and by the end of the day, every North Koreans have a much better opinion of the South than their own government.
* In order to prevent his deceased brother Louis' daughter from being crowned queen (and because there was a solid case for MamasBabyPapasMaybe involved), Phillip V of France dug up an old law from the Sales region of Frankish territory and interpreted it to ensure no woman could ever claim the throne of France (the ''loi salique''), leaving him to take the throne as closest male relative of the previous king. And then his only son died at a few weeks old, leaving the throne to fall to his other brother Charles on Phillip's death. When Charles died, the new king was another Philippe (a cousin of the first three)... and then their sister Isabelle (the queen of England) declared her son had a better claim on the throne of France, starting a conflict known as UsefulNotes/TheHundredYearsWar.
* Back in 1994, after then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Dan Rostenkowski was indicted for financial improprieties but nevertheless remained the chair, Tom [=DeLay=] of the minority Republican Party (at that time) led a successful fight in his caucus for a rule that no member under indictment could serve in a leadership position or as a committee chair. Ten years later, with [=DeLay=] having become the very powerful majority leader of the House, he was ''himself'' indicted, which would have under that rule required him to resign. His response? He strongarmed most of the caucus into ''repealing'' the rule, a move which itself was rescinded after public outrage two weeks later, basically doubling down on this trope.
* Duke Shang Yang, author of ''Literature/TheBookOfLordShang'' and notorious in ancient China for his draconian punishments, met his end under a punishment that he himself formulated into Qin law when he was convicted of treason against King Huiwen of Qin (translation: Huiwen wanted revenge against Shang Yang for when the duke had the then-crown prince publicly humiliated as punishment for an offense committed). The punishment, which was reserved for law enforcers who broke the law themselves, called for not only the offender's execution, but that of his family as well. Ouch. In addition, when he tried to hide out in a hotel in an attempt to escape the above fate, he was refused, as the strict laws he had enacted in Qin while in power made it illegal for a hotel owner to admit a guest without proper identification.
* In 1964 US President UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson's administration started a bill that would end legal discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. A southern congressman, Howard Smith (D-VA), not liking the "race" part[[note]]He was himself noted to be an ''"apologist for slavery"''[[/note]], added "ending legal discrimination on the basis of sex" hoping that people would decide not to vote for it due to this (this is called a "Poison Pill" Amendment). [[SpringtimeForHitler As a result, several female members of the House took up the bill, and the bill was passed]]... protecting race, color, religion, national origin, ''and'' sex. Smith later claimed that he genuinely supported women's rights (those of ''white'' women, mind you) and thus he would've been ''very'' happy to see the Civil Rights Act defeated over his amendment and still quite happy to at least get women's rights out of it. Your Mileage May Vary as to whether you believe his after-the-fact IMeantToDoThat.
** Interestingly that same ''sex'' provision was later used by the Supreme Court in a decision regarding discrimination against same-sex-attracted people who argued - a bit strained but not unreasonably - that firing someone for being in a same-sex relationship is discriminating ''based on sex'', because a man who is in a relationship with a woman is not fired but a woman is - and then that woman is being treated differently for the same act (having a relationship with a woman) and thus being discriminated against ''based on sex''. When right wingers made the argument to Neil Gorsuch (considered a conservative on the Court) that "this wasn't how the bill was intended or read at the time" (debatable, same-sex attraction was a known phenomenon at the time), he pointed out that the ExactWords of the bill allow for the interpretation and the right-wing judicial philosophy in the U.S. claims to ''love'' the most verbatim reading of legal texts possible.
* In 2011, a combination of higher abstention and protest voting due to the ongoing economic crisis resulted in the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) losing the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha, for the first time since the region got autonomy in 1982, to the conservative People's Party (PP) of María Dolores de Cospedal... by one seat. Not believing this result could be replicated, Cospedal used her narrow majority to change the electoral law twice and make her reelection more likely, first by increasing the seats of the more conservative provinces, then by shaving 20 seats off from the total. The reason for this second reform was that polls at the time were predicting that PSOE would still not recover its previous strength in the following election, but that traditional third party United Left (IU) would gain enough seats to allow a PSOE-led government. By slashing those seats, Cospedal was ensuring that IU got no representation and her reelection was given, because PP would still get more seats than PSOE. Her plans were derailed when Spanish politics suffered its most drastic and unprecedented revolution in recent memory, the ascent of two new protest parties, Podemos (left-wing) and Ciudadanos (right-wing). In the following 2015 elections, Podemos punched just above the numbers that had been predicted for IU and gained two seats, which combined with PSOE's, were one more seat than those won by PP, while Ciudadanos, which most pundits predicted to form a coalition with PP and ensure Cospedal's reelection, fell too short and got no representation. This EpicFail became hysterical when it was revealed that under the former electoral law that had been overturned, PP+C's would have obtained ''one seat more'' than PSOE+P's. As a result of meddling to make her reelection more likely, Cospedal had instead destroyed the only way it could have happened.
* Many, ''many'' perpetrators of the Stalin-era purges.
** Genrikh Yagoda, the chief of NKVD from 1934 to 1936, was one of the architects of the First Moscow Trial, at which several prominent Bolshevik revolutionaries were sentenced to death; their relatives were also executed or imprisoned. Naturally, he was then arrested and sentenced to death himself, and so was his wife.
** His successor Nikolai Yezhov, second only to Stalin himself, was eventually arrested and through torture confessed to have been plotting against the Great Leader. In the end he was imprisoned and executed by the very system he helped create.
** Yezhov's successor, Lavrentiy Beria, was much more fortunate - he outlived Stalin himself, and it was suspected by many that he actually killed Stalin, or at least prevented him from getting help. During the ensuing power struggle he was defeated by Khrushchev and, of course, sentenced to death.
** Mikhail Ryumin, a Chekist official, tried to oust his boss Victor Abakumov and take his place. To do so, he wrote a letter to Stalin complaining that Abakumov was not harsh enough in persecuting "Zionist spies". He succeeded, and later was himself arrested for the same thing. Eventually both Ryumin and Abakumov were executed.
* British Prime Minister UsefulNotes/TonyBlair's position was permanently damaged in 2006 when it was found that several men he had nominated for the House of Lords had previously donated large amounts to his re-election campaign the previous year. This led to a police investigation into Blair's government which likely contributed to Blair resigning the following year. Ironically the impetus for the scandal was the sketchy nominations being uncovered and rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Committee, which Blair himself had established to monitor such appointments.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Science and Technology]]
* This will be the ultimate fate of black holes, according to Creator/StephenHawking, in the form of the same inescapable gravity that allows them to exist also being the very thing that rips them apart piece by piece. To give the [[LiesToChildren common visualization and highly simplified summary]][[note]]A more thorough explanation by WebVideo/TheScienceAsylum can be viewed [[https://youtu.be/rrUvLlrvgxQ here]], but despite being also aimed towards laymen, it ''is'' still considerably more advanced.[[/note]], the fabric of spacetime is constantly fluctuating and bubbling in the form of virtual particles and [[{{Antimatter}} antiparticles]], but in almost every instance, they annihilate each other almost the moment they appear[[note]]See Also: [[UsefulNotes/QuantumPhysics Useful Notes: Quantum Physics]][[/note]]. Hawking predicts that when this happens right at the edge of a black hole's event horizon, this process will be disrupted. One of the pair, being ''just'' inside the black hole's range, will fall in and be imprisoned forever before it can annihate, while the other, being just ''outside'' of the black hole's range, will float away in the form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_Radiation Hawking Radiation]], carrying with it a tiny portion of the black hole's mass, because the law of conservation of mass dictates that new mass cannot be created, therefore the lost particle's mass has to come from ''somewhere.'' So while it will take [[TimeAbyss such a long time that "unfathomable" doesn't even begin to describe it]] since the black hole's mass would dwarf that of anything else combined with the fact that this happens on a sub-sub-subatomic scale, ''eventually'' the last of the black hole's mass will be carried off into the aether, and the singularity will decompress, killing the black hole.
* Creator/CoffeeStainStudios decided to implement several pranks in their early access game VideoGame/{{Satisfactory}} for AprilFoolsDay 2021. This came back to bite them hard when their feedback site got absolutely ''swamped'' with what many players thought were genuine bugs.
* Creator/ElectronicArts was so terrified that people were going to illegally pirate ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' that they loaded it with [=SecuRom=] UsefulNotes/{{DRM}} that limited you to three installs of the game ever and forced you to play the game with an internet connection. That is, a ''constant'' internet connection: the game checked a server near constantly and, if at any time it failed a check, the game would shut down. Since this was in 2008 when it was still rather common for folks to not have internet at all, let alone one reliable enough for this DRM, the game ended up getting utterly slammed in reviews for its utterly draconian DRM which scared people into thinking the DRM-version was unplayable. Since the only way to get a DRM-free version was piracy, not to mention the game was cracked 24 hours before it even released, it caused a domino effect. Within the month ''Spore'' had become the most pirated game of the year, and went on to become ''the most pirated game of all time'', which finally pushed EA to admit defeat and release a DRM-free version of the game later that year.
* The original Platform/GameBoy succeeded at least in part because its competitors had much better hardware. The tiny handheld had four major competitors -- the Platform/GameGear, the [[Platform/OtherSegaSystems Sega Nomad]], the Platform/AtariLynx and the Platform/TurboExpress. All of these systems boasted a full RGB-colored backlit screen, amazing graphics (the Turbo Express was actually a handheld Turbografx-16, a few years before Sega's Nomad) and a plethora of impressive gadgets[[note]]The Game Gear and [=TurboExpress=] in particular could double as portable televisions thanks to their respective [[https://segaretro.org/TV_Tuner TV Tuner]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TurboExpress#TurboVision TurboVision]] accessories[[/note]] that could hook up to it. However, [[AwesomeButImpractical the graphics and the backlit color screens used up more power]], leading to shorter battery lifespans (anywhere from 2-6 hours depending on the system) and using up expensive disposable batteries at a crazy rate. The aforementioned hardware and batteries on the more powerful devices required much bigger and heavier profiles to accommodate them[[note]]Or alternatively, needing to plug them into the mains or use bulky third-party battery packs to play them for longer[[/note]], which also ''really'' hampered their intended portability. They were also hobbled by their prices, as the humble Game Boy was released at $90 USD[[note]]With a multiplayer Game Link Cable, a set of stereo headphones and a copy of ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' bundled with it.[[/note]] while its competitors ran 2 to 3 times more expensive alone, making the Game Boy much more accessible than the large black bricks of its competitors.
* Microsoft used their monopoly to dominate the web browsing scene with ''Internet Explorer'', driving out competitors like Netscape. The company sat on its laurels and made little effort in upgrading IE, fixing its bugs and plugging its security holes. After all, why bother fixing the thing if everyone is still using it anyway? This led to a huge amount of dissatisfaction and resenting over IE. When popular alternate browsers like ''Google Chrome'' came around the corner, people adopted them quickly. When new upgrades to Internet Explorer were still being made, Microsoft pleaded people to stop using its old versions. Even after finally pulling the plug on IE in favor of their new [[{{Irony}} Google Chromium]] based browser, Microsoft Edge, they still struggle to convince people to switch to Edge, having lost both the monopoly and the trust of the people.
* Thomas Midgley was response for creating both of tetraethyl leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons, two air pollutants with high death tolls. Ultimately though he was killed by neither of those inventions, but a third invention of his, a contraption he designed to help him move when partially paralyzed that ended up strangling him.
* A Greek brass worker named Perilaus invented the brazen bull, a particularly gruesome brand of execution. The victim would be placed inside a hollow brass statue of a bull, and a fire would be lit underneath. The screams of the victim were turned by the bull's inner workings into the roars of an angry bull. Perilaus presented it as a gift to Phalaris, a ruler of a local city-state. Phalaris ordered Perialaus to be the Bull's first victim, even going as far as releasing him from it only to have him tossed off a cliff. Irony would soon claim Phalaris when he was later overthrown by Telemachus, and he too became a victim of the Bull. [[note]] Like many inventions of this period of history, it’s debatable whether it existed at all. The letter below, as all the others attributed to Phalaris, was exposed as a forgery centuries ago.[[/note]]
-->''His words revolted me. I loathed the thought of such ingenious cruelty, and resolved to punish the artificer in kind. "If this is anything more than an empty boast, Perilaus," I said to him, "if your art can really produce this effect, get inside yourself, and pretend to roar; and we will see whether the pipes will make such music as you describe." He consented; and when he was inside I closed the aperture, and ordered a fire to be kindled. "Receive," I cried, "the due reward of your wondrous art: let the music-master be the first to play."''
* While Creator/{{Sega}} had a number of mistakes that hobbled them, the thing that lead to their near-CreatorKiller event and changed them into a third-party game maker was a terrible decision for the Platform/SegaDreamcast. During the creation of the Dreamcast, they created a new type of CD format known as MIL-CD or Music Interactive Live-CD. MIL-CD was meant to have special functions that the Dreamcast would be able to access and Sega hoped it would be a major selling point. However, this never happened and few products actually used this. Instead, MIL-CD proved to be the ultimate ''pirating format'' as all people needed to do is make sure their CD Burners was set to this format when they made their [=CDs=] and viola! This would massively cut into Sega's sales and lead to their downfall.
* In the eight generation of the handheld MediaNotes/ConsoleWars, between the Platform/Nintendo3DS and Sony's Platform/PlayStationVita, it's believed that some of the Vita's best features also ended up being its undoing.
** The Vita's main selling point was its extremely powerful hardware, which eclipsed every other portable game console available at the time: a handheld game could have graphics and gameplay comparable to those of home consoles (one great example of this is ''VideoGame/{{Killzone}}: Mercenary'', which looks and feels just like that series' mainline installments). Unfortunately, these console-quality specs also meant that games would need a console-size budget if developers wanted to take full advantage of the Vita's power. Add in the fact that handheld games retail for less than home console games, meaning a smaller return on investment, and developers had very little interest in making Vita games. This led to a Catch22Dilemma when gamers lost interest in the Vita due to the lack of titles showing off its capabilities, leading to poor sales and even lower interest from developers.
** The Vita had a strong focus on digital purchases, and offered a plethora of download-only titles. This meant that, [[ScrewedByTheNetwork Sony of America and Europe's actions aside]], retailers had very few boxes to put on store shelves, diminishing the console's visibility in physical stores. Making this worse is that in the early part of TheNewTens, many people did not have reliable internet and thus would be uninterested in download-only titles.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Terrorism]]
* [[http://www.snopes.com/humor/lists/fakenews.asp Joke/urban legend]]: A terrorist once sent a mail bomb which had insufficient postage. It was returned to him, and he, forgetting what was in it, opened the envelope.
* From Snopes: Two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany, by freeing a captive herd. Suddenly all two thousand pigs stampeded through the gate they were opening, and trampled the hapless protesters to death.
* In a very literal example of this trope, in 1970 a cell of the left-wing Weather Underground was building a bomb in the basement of a Greenwich Village townhouse. They were novices, and on the day of their planned attack, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Village_townhouse_explosion three were killed when it exploded in their basement while they were working on it]].
** The same thing happened to three anarchists who were constructing a dynamite bomb with which to assassinate John D. Rockefeller when it [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexington_Avenue_explosion prematurely detonated]] and killed all three, along with one other person.
* A man in Mexico tried to [[http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/20/world/fg-bomb20 bomb government offices]] and accidentally set off the bomb.
* An Indonesian militant was trying to bomb a police station with a homemade bomb. [[https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/bicycle-bomber-injured-in-indonesia-blast/story-KEt8jEu8TYJA3TsD8olxSN.html But on his way in his bicycle it blew up before he got there.]]
* An attempted suicide bomber in Moscow during a New Years celebration was killed when her own bomb (triggered by her cell phone) went off prematurely because the cell carrier wanted to congratulate all of their customers with a spammed text message (and the bomber was too stupid to keep the phone off until just before).
* Happened to four ETA members while they were driving a would-be car bomb in 2000. In a twofer example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnaldo_Otegi Arnaldo Otegi]]'s tearful speech at their funeral where he described them as "four Basque patriots" probably was the straw that broke the camel's back and led to the passing of a new law of political parties that outlawed his pro-ETA formation, Batasuna, in 2003. As ETA was financed in no small part by Batasuna (who in turn, and as every other party with parliamentary representation, received most of its money from ''the Spanish government and tax payers themselves''), this badly hurt the group's finances and capacity to operate, leading straight to its announced "cessation of armed activity" in 2011.
* In 2016, a man apparently attempted to perform a suicide bombing on a jet leaving from the Somali capital of Mogadishu. The resulting explosion blew a hole in the fuselage and sucked the bomber out to his death. ''Only'' the bomber. He was the only fatality of the attack.
* Security forces in [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles Northern Ireland]] coined the football-derived phrase "own goals" to describe those times when inept Irish terrorists managed to [[ExplosiveStupidity prematurely blow themselves up with their own bombs]].
* A ''literal'' example in the case of the Gunpowder Plot. When the other plotters heard that Guy Fawkes had been arrested, they fled London for the Midlands. While staying at a house in Staffordshire, they tried to dry out the gunpowder in front of a fire. The results were predictable, badly injuring several of the conspirators, including Robert Catesby, the guy who masterminded the plot in the first place.
* The November 2015 Paris attacks were motivated in part because ISIS didn't want France to bomb them. The attacks caused France to [[BullyingADragon immediately retaliate]] by bombing and commit themselves to war on ISIS.
* Literal example: [[https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/02/16/30-taliban-die-explosion-bomb-making-class/ Taliban instructors and students blow themselves up during bomb-making class]].
* A terrorist bragged in social media about joining ISIS in Syria. He posted messages of himself along with his whereabouts along with his home address and invited other would-be terrorists to join him. Less than 48 hours later, [[AttackDrone a drone launched a missile]] at his house and turned him into a dirty smear on the pavement. Wasn't he surprised or what?
* The terrorists responsible for the [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing 1993 World Trade Center bombing]] were caught when the one who had rented the van used in the attack reported it stolen and filed an insurance claim.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Other]]
* Aïcha, a French woman [[https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Covid-patient-dies-in-French-hospital-after-showing-fake-vaccine-pass managed to obtain a fake vaccination certificate]], claiming that she had been vaccinated when she hadn't. She later caught Covid, and thanks to the false vaccination certificate, her doctors didn't know that she had not been vaccinated until they performed an antibody test. By then, her health had deteriorated so much that it was too late to change her treatment plan, and she died. [[note]]Had the doctors known that she had not been vaccinated, they could've given her neutralising antibodies - however, these work best near the start of a course of disease, and work to prevent more severe forms of Covid.[[/note]]
* Craig Cobb is a white supremacist who hoped to turn his small hometown of Leith, North Dakota into a white supremacist community and drive out a local interracial couple. But when it was revealed that [[BoomerangBigot he had 14% sub-Saharan African DNA]], his home was [[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/20/home-of-north-dakota-white-supremacist-defaced-by-racist-graffiti-after-revelations-about-his-african-dna/ vandalized]] by the very same racists he invited to his town in the first place. Whoops.
* The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York in 1947. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him and crush him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
* The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) is a brood parasite which relies on [[KillAndReplace killing and replacing]] other birds' young for its reproduction; it succeeds in doing this flawlessly mainly because the bird mimics the sparrowhawk's appearance (which is a feared predator for small birds, including the cuckoo). This has the obvious side effect of attracting a real sparrowhawk, which will proceed to kill the "rival sparrowhawk" for invading its territory.
* A truly OlderThanDirt example dating back to the Neolithic period, there used to be (for its time) a massive city in what is now ʿAin Ghazal (or Ayn Ghazal/Ain Ghazal) in Jordan. The city existed from about 9,250 years ago to 7,000 years ago, and had several thousand people living there. Apart from its size, the city's also notable because its citizens created one of the earliest known synthetic materials--lime plaster, created by burning limestone. It was used for everything, from creating plaster floors for homes to [[https://web.archive.org/web/20151018143147/http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/me/l/lime_plaster_statues.aspx the famous statues]] recovered from excavation. However, burning enough limestone for hot enough periods of time takes quite a bit of wood. Archaeologist Gary O. Rollefson's team [[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gary-Rollefson/publication/288253056_The_uses_of_plaster_at_Neolithic_%27Ain_Ghazal_Jordan/links/5aaaeb44aca272d39cd7a700/The-uses-of-plaster-at-Neolithic-Ain-Ghazal-Jordan.pdf estimated that it took around ten trees]] to make enough plaster for a floor, though he said six in the documentary ''Stories from the Stone Age''. Though normally trees would grow back, the people of ʿAin Ghazal kept goats as livestock. Goats love to eat saplings, and the combined demand for wood led to a deforestation that eventually starved the city of resources and led to its abandonment. ʿAin Ghazal stands as a cautionary tale of what happens when too many people live in one place, as environmental impacts build upon each other.
* When "Greg_ValveOLS" decided it would be funny to pose as an employee of Valve and try and fool "br0kenrabbit" into handing over his Steam Account password, br0kenrabbit ''immediately'' jacked Greg's account and locked him out... by using the exact same tactic. You can read the legendary conversation in its entirety [[http://slashdot.org/story/06/10/31/1655259/ here]].
* Creator/AndyKaufman came up with an idea to have the home viewers of ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' vote on whether or not he should be banned from the show. On November 20, 1982, the final tally was read live: "Dump Andy" won by over 26,000 votes. Though this left him devastated, Kaufman accepted the results and never appeared on ''SNL'' again. This turned out to be a bit of a case [[Main/RightForTheWrongReasons Right For The Wrong Reasons]]. There was a deal between Kaufman and producer Dick Ebersol. Kaufman knew that he would get voted off and he was excited about it because Kaufman would come back as a surprise guest, which, whether or the audience loved or hated him, would surprise them. However, because Ebersol never invited him back, leaving Kaufman's prank to go unfinished, which was the actual reason for his devastation.
* After Creator/ConanOBrien made a sincere farewell to Creator/DavidLetterman upon the latter's retirement from ''Series/{{The Late Show|With David Letterman}}'', Letterman decided it would be fun to lighten the mood by sending Conan a gag gift in thanks. The gift took the form of a ''very'' expensive horse, which Letterman purchased thinking that Conan would decline the gift and then he'd return the horse for a refund. What he didn't expect was that Conan would keep the horse thinking Letterman would be offended if he rejected the gift[[note]]and end up spending vast sums of his own money to house and feed what turned out to be a dangerous animal that needed indemnification documents because people genuinely thought it'd severely injure someone[[/note]], leaving Dave with a huge bill that he now had to pay in full.
* A jokester named Randy Liedtke decided it would be a funny idea to bake some [=iPhone-shaped cookies=] and drive around pretending to talk on them, so he could "eat it right in the cop's face and then ask if cookies were illegal" when he got pulled over for distracted driving. When he ''did'' get pulled over he still got hauled to the station and ticketed... because it turned out he had a warrant for unpaid parking tickets. Oops.
--> '''Randy:''' Wasn't worth it. I'm an idiot. No more [=iPhone cookies=].
* Creator/AdultSwim asked the production staff of ''WesternAnimation/MoralOrel'' to make the third season ''DarkerAndEdgier'' than the previous two. The show had a ''massive'' tonal shift - and produced "Alone" which is considered to be one of the ''darkest'' things to ''ever'' air on Adult Swim. [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor Adult Swim was so shocked]] the show was CutShort.
* [[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/sunwing-cancun-flight-1.6304854 A band of social media influencers from Quebec posted photos of themselves partying, smoking, heavy drinking during a private flight to Cancun. Things were so out of hand, that the flight crew locked themselves in the back of the plane.]] [[UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic They also ignored COVID safety rules during one of the worst increase hikes of the pandemic.]] It didn't took long for the local media to catch on and the news spread like wildfire to the rest of the planet. The influencers quickly deleted their posts, [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong while speaking openly on social media on how they can subvert positive COVID testing to avoid fines and jail time.]]
* Roskomnadzor[[note]][[CensorshipBureau Russian censorship]][[/note]] have blocked Comodo. Funny part is that they themselves use SSL digital certificates provided by Comodo. Because of that, they have blocked some of government sites and themselves. They did it again in March 2021, disabling part of Twitter within the country to control the spread of "harmful content" i.e. protests in support of anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny. This shut down some web functions of the Russian Parliament and other government agencies.
* During various lawsuits, the Church of Scientology tried to have various documents that had leaked taken out of circulation through copyright claims. However to prove that the documents were the same, Scientology had to provide copies of their own secret documents, which would then be summarized on public record. In this fashion many of Scientology's wackier beliefs were made public, including the infamous Xenu myth. The church has experienced a ''huge'' decline in new membership since these revelations.
* Overlapping with BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor, Bill Watterson petitioned to be allowed to have a much more flexible format for Sunday comics rather than the usual standard. While this new layout allowed for some more dynamic panels and even single-panel shots of SceneryPorn, the new panel resulted in Sunday Comics taking way ''way'' longer to draw than before.
* When Stoke City arrived in the UsefulNotes/EnglishPremierLeague, midfielder Rory Delap soon gained a reputation for his [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman deadly throw-ins]], able to launch the ball all the way into the penalty area. When West Ham hosted a match against Stoke in March 2010, they tried to counter this by moving their advertisement hoardings closer to the pitch, so that Delap wouldn't have enough space for his usual run-up. This backfired when West Ham's Julian Foubert went to take a throw-in; ''he'' didn't have enough space for a proper run-up either, his poor throw-in went straight to a Stoke player, and Stoke proceeded to score the only goal of the game in a 1-0 win.
* Actors and athletes at the top of their fields can and will negotiate multi-million-dollar deals to reflect their star power. However, these huge salaries can whip around and hurt them. For instance, Creator/SeanConnery earned a record-high salary for ''Film/DiamondsAreForever'' and managed to make himself unhireable by major productions for years because no one could afford to match it[[note]]he salvaged his career by working in smaller productions for low pay to rebuild his career as a serious actor rather than a movie star[[/note]]. Athletes playing in the world's top leagues[=/=]series will often find it hard to find new contracts and[=/=]or teams after coming to the end of eight-and-nine-figure contracts, especially if they're reaching the end of their peak playing years. This will either result in unwanted retirement or moving to playing in upstart organizations (often in countries with repressive reputations) far below their levels of skill.
* A human body has evolved a way of eliminating possibly dangerous xenobiotics (substances coming from the outside and not produced by body itself) efficiently to minimize exposure - first a series of changes to make the molecule more polar and thus water-soluble, then conjugation with other compounds to increase solubility even more. Sometimes it is used beneficially (many medicines are actually pro-drugs that are converted into active forms into the body), but sometimes it is sadly this trope. For example, relatively harmless benzene (it would mess with the cellular membranes due to its lipophilic properties, but that's another matter) is first oxidized - and the result is a highly unstable and very reactive compound that directly destroys the DNA, leading to development of cancers. Similarly, methanol is oxidized to formic acid - a fairly strong acid that destabilizes the natural acid-base balance of bodily fluids (which is lethal if not controlled), and also tends to concentrate in the parts of the body that are rich in water, most notably [[EyeScream eyes]], irrecoverably destroying the optic nerves.
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