[[{{Kirby}} http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kirbysadventure-6.png]]
[[caption-width:256:Oh great, [[CosmicHorror Nightmare]]'s free. [[SealedEvilInACan Thanks for breaking the seal]], Kirby!]]

->''"It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. [[TropeNamer Nice job breaking it, hero.]]"''\\
-- '''[=GlaDOS=]''', ''{{Portal}}''

The hero has accomplished their goal; they've killed the BigBad, or defeated them forever, or at least scored a major blow against the antagonist. They've done what they set out to do...

... but NotSoFastBucko! It turns out that by the very act of success, they've unwittingly [[ItGotWorse made things worse.]] Maybe the now-dead antagonist was actually holding back an [[SealedEvilInACan even greater evil]]. Maybe the villain, having been defeated or damaged, is now [[OneWingedAngel transformed into a new, ultimate, unstoppable, invincible, angry form]], generally against the villain's will (or against their expectations, anyway). Maybe the villain, despite their villainy, was serving some other greater good -- keeping the world/universe/nature/whatever politically or literally [[BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil balanced]] -- and their demise throws things into chaos. Maybe that princess you saved is a cold-hearted tyrant at the head of an oppressive regime. Perhaps taking down the villain has resulted in an EvilPowerVacuum, and now even worse guys are fighting to fill the void that the previous villain left, without a single regard for who else gets hurt. Or perhaps the only means of foiling the villain involves [[GodzillaThreshold questionably massive "collateral damage."]] For whatever reason, the hero's victory over death and destruction directly or indirectly leads to an even greater wave of death and destruction, or at least an even greater threat of such. Oh dear.

Maybe the villain themselves will warn the hero about the possible consequences, as a last-ditch attempt to save their own skin, or as a bitter "parting shot" to ruin the hero's victory. ("You fools... do you even know what you've done?") Villains being villains, this may just be a bluff. Or maybe the villain will just lament over how the hero defeated them despite all their efforts - it wasn't some XanatosGambit sort of plan of ''theirs'' for the hero to "win" and thus make things worse. (If it was, that'd be MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning.)

If the mission was a rescue, it was an [[UnwantedRescue Unwanted Rescue]], and the former captive may bitterly inform them of the true facts.

In most cases, of course, the hero's new mission is to stop the new danger they've unleashed, preferably in a way that doesn't spawn ever greater menaces. "Darker" plotlines may end the story right there, instead, and it's always possible the villain's demise inadvertently resulted in the [[EarthShatteringKaboom irreversible destruction]] or [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt horrifying mutation]] of the world. [[DownerEnding I hate it when that happens]]. If used excessively, this trope often leaves an audience with a sense that the hero shouldn't have tried to change things for the better and indeed shouldn't have even left home, which can be a FamilyUnfriendlyAesop, but also a more literal moral about getting seriously involved in things without learning much about them.

This trope can be annoying in video games as often-times StupidityIsTheOnlyOption, particularly in the case of a {{MacGuffin Delivery Service}}... It is not particularly fair to try to make the player feel guilty about a course of action they they had no control over, and indeed, might've gotten a "Game Over" if they attempted to ''not'' fulfill the objectives in question.

The term "PyrrhicVictory" has the same connotation and originated from the Pyrrhic War fought by King Pyrrhus in 279 BC, which makes "NiceJobBreakingItHero" OlderThanFeudalism.

Compare XanatosSucker, ResuscitateTheDog, NiceJobFixingItVillain. (But note that villains are also subject to ''this'' trope -- they can do something careless that screws them over or helps out a ''worse'' villain.)

HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct is a SubTrope of this. May overlap with SelfFulfillingProphecy. NoEndorHolocaust is what happens when this is ineptly averted. And if the hero dies following the reveal and is unable to stop the new menace, you've just read a ShootTheShaggyDog story. Spoilers, of course.
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[[foldercontrol]]

!!Examples

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
* In ''TengenToppaGurrenLagann'', the first part of the story is about the struggle for humans to return to the surface by killing the evil overlord keeping them underground... [[spoiler: Sadly, the evil overlord was protecting the humans from something worse.]] Ooops.
** Turns out that the "Something worse" is [[spoiler: actually oppressing and destroying sentient races across the universe because if they become too advanced, they could cause ''existence itself'' to collapse.]]
** Some have theorized the opening takes this even farther, [[spoiler:and actually shows an alternate ending right before existence ''does'' end.]]
** And Rossiu, in an attempt to figure out how close "something worse" is to happening, [[spoiler: evacuates humans from their underground cities even when they don't want to leave-- [[WallBanger not-quite-unwittingly]] bringing disaster closer with every person living on the surface.]]
* In ''PrincessMononoke'', it's not exactly the hero who cuts off the Forest Spirit's head; Ashitaka, of course, was trying to stop it. [[spoiler: As soon as Jigo collects the head, the body turns into a protoplasmic horror destroying every living thing in sight, searching for its head.]]
* ''MagicKnightRayearth''. Save the princess, kill her kidnapper, SaveBothWorlds, right? Uh... [[spoiler: not when he was RESCUING the princess from a life as a BarrierMaiden that can't even think for herself, and, because she knew she was stuck in that role and her happiness and self-fulfillment could kill the whole kingdom, she sent the Magic Knights as unknowing {{Laser Guided Tykebomb}}s to kill HER, not him.]] After the resulting psychological trauma of TheReveal [[spoiler: and being forced to kill the both of them, that leaves the place without a BarrierMaiden, and guess who has to choose between letting the kingdom suffer and dooming one person to a life of misery? No wonder Hikaru decides to MakeABetterWorld instead.]]
** That isn't even all of it. [[spoiler:TheDragon of the second season is actually the consequence of the events of the first season; Nova is the personification of Hikaru's grief over the fact that they had to kill Emeraude. In effect, Hikaru almost ends up killing the man she loves along with thousands of innocents and destroying the world in the process.]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Nice Job Breaking It, Heroines]].
*** Arguably, this is also the result of [[spoiler:the entire ''world'' falling into despair because they've relied on Emeraude for so long that they can't imagine life without her. Which coallesces like Nova into Debonair, an immensely god-like power formed from their collective fear, anxiety, and despair. Debonair is, in turn, the one who manipulates Nova into being her Dragon, as well as brutally screwing up her perception of reality, thus causing all the deaths and pain of the second season.]] Nice job breaking it, Cephiro.
* In ''DragonBallZ'', [[FakeUltimateHero Mr. Satan/Hercule]] nobly attempts to fight TykeBomb Majin Buu in spite of being outmatched [[SaturdayNightLive eleventy billion]] times over by the monster. Through all Hercule's attempts at tricking [[PsychopathicManchild the childish villain]], he unexpectedly ''befriends'' Buu, and ends up convincing him to stop killing. The threat to Earth is all but defused, until a pair of hunters ShootTheDog -- literally, a stray puppy Buu had adopted -- and trigger Buu's transformation from friendly horror to sadistic demigod. While the hunters are obviously more to blame, had Hercule never gotten involved, Buu would eventually have been defeated by the combined forces of Gohan and Gotenks.
** Wait... Mr. Satan basically saves the day until two guys ShootTheDog, and you blame Mr. Satan? Man, that's some fierce FridgeLogic.
** Mr. Satan himself [[HeroicSacrifice gets shot]] trying to beat up the dog-shooters. It's Satan's near-death that takes Buu over the edge... so maybe it is because Satan is, well, [[TooDumbToLive basically living in his own fantasy world inside his head]].
*** You would predict Buu's evil side manifesting into being? Honestly, if I could convince somebody who didn't know better to stop killing, I would. [[EarthShatteringKaboom The later damage]] may have been quite bothersome, but the Dragon Balls fixed it all up. In the end, the heroes more than stopped the reign of destruction thanks to Mr. Satan.
** No, the MASTER OF THIS TROPE will forever be Prince Vegeta. Hear me out, now. He is, obviously, behind the Saiyan Saga, as Raditz was his soldier to give permission to go to Earth and it was his plan get the Dragonballs and wish for immortality. Then, Frieza found out, through him, about the Namekian Dragonballs, spawning the Namek Saga. When that fiasco is over, it's Vegeta's son who warns Goku about the Androids. Vegeta stops Bulma from doing the obvious, which is wish the Androids away with the Dragonballs and insists on allowing Cell to power up to his strongest level, thus pushing the Android and Cell Sagas way beyond where the heroes COULD have stopped things. Well, when all that gets Goku killed anyway, years later, Vegeta decides that marrying the richest woman in the world and being the strongest being on Earth isn't fun anymore and volunteers to be possessed by an evil wizard looking to steal energy to feed his father's pet, Majin Buu. The only way Vegeta could have been '''more responsible''' for '''every disaster''' that happened in Dragonball Z was if he held a KiBlast to a villain's head and ''ordered'' him to "kill Kakarotto". [[NiceJobBreakingItHero WTF?!...]]
*** Vegeta may be considered a master of this trope but DBZ in general has this in spades. As much as I love the series even I need to shake my head at times. Several characters either directly or indirectly wind up causing even more damage when another course of action could have avoided needless deaths and problems. Goku being.....[[IdiotHero well]] [[AdultChild Goku]] has done this many times himself and is a close second to Vegeta. This is mainly due to the fact that he tends to want to forgive everyone or have a fair fight. Prime examples are:
**** Pleading with Krillin to not kill Vegeta in the Saiyan Saga. His death alone could have avoided many if not all of the examples above.
**** [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Not killing Frieza outright at the end of Namek.]] This one is argueable so follow me on this. It's very much possible that the extra energy he gave to Frieza is what allowed Frieza to live even after his failed last ditch effort to kill Goku (let's face it.....how many times did Frieza start losing the fight to either transform again or survive what should have killed anyone else?) Granted in the main timeline we have [[FutureBadass Mirai Trunks]] kill him when he comes to Earth. In the Mirai timeline itself it's heavily suggested that Goku would have shown up in the nick of time thanks to his Instant Transmission. However if Goku didn't know that skill and if Trunks didn't show up then what kind of damage would Frieza have possibly caused?
**** Related to the issue of the Androids we have an awesome suggestion from Bulma. Three years is a ton of time to find Dr. Gero and stop him from even creating the Androids. What was Goku's reaction? [[WallBanger "But he hasn't done anything wrong yet!"]] (The ''real'' kicker, of course, being that Dr. Gero was a member of the Red Ribbon Army and therefore ''has'' already done quite a lot very wrong things. And Goku should damn well know it!)
***** Well, Goku is [[EasilyForgiven the forgiving type]] of hero, if you hadn't noticed. Keep in mind that given that sixteen years prior he ''killed'' a lot of Red Ribbon Army personnel, hunting down for one of the last ones would make him no better than Gero, in a sense. Still, he literally paid for this with his life.
**** After start of the Gohan/Cell fight we see our hero ask Krillin for a Senzu Bean. Naturally, he assumes that it's for Goku but [[WhatTheHellHero is horrifed when he GIVES IT TO CELL]]! After all Cell was also tired following the battle with Goku so it wouldn't have been fair. [[ButWaitTheresMore This one gets even better]]. Not to be outdone by his father we see Gohan get in on the act too. Upon becoming [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Super Saiyan 2]] for the first time we see Goku plead with him to finish it. Gohan looks at him and says it's too soon to end it and that he's going to let Cell suffer. Lovable, kind hearted Gohan of all people. These two acts obviously lead to Goku's death when Cell tries to [[EarthShatteringKaboom destroy the Earth]]. Obviously Goku would have lived if Gohan just ended it then. However despite being unlikely it's possible that Gohan could have potentially beaten the weakened Cell in his base Super Saiyan form had he not been given the Senzu Bean. This in turn may have allowed Android 16 to live but YMMV on if that's good or bad since he was designed with the sole purpose of killing Goku.
**** Goku even does some {{Lampshade Hanging}} on the matter. In his speech at the end of the Cell Saga he talks about how his original mission as a child was to destroy Earth for the Saiyans. Goku then proceeds to say that the last few {{Big Bad}}s were after him in paticular (Piccolo prior to his {{Heel Face Turn}}, Radditz, Frieza after Namek, Dr. Gero/the Androids). As a result he's actually been SUCCEEDING indirectly in destroying Earth! It's for this reason that he understandably tells the Z Fighters to not bring him back to life this time.
**** Not that staying dead helped, mind you. Prior to the Buu Saga we see Goku is granted one day among the living to fight in the Tenkaichi Budokai. This in itself wasn't bad but when you factor in Babidi {{It Gets Worse}}. Upon seeing his battle with Yarkon it's at this point that Vegeta finally understands that no matter what he does he'll never be able to beat Goku in battle or catch up to him in terms of power. It's at this point he hatches his plan to [[FaceHeelTurn become]] [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity Majin]]. Maybe Goku should have just stayed home and chilled with King Kai and Bubbles......then again he'd somehow find a way to screw that up as well.
**** Arguably, Piccolo can get called out on this as well. Despite literally killing two birds with one stone (or rather a "Devil Beam Ray"), he would have satisfied with the idea of killing both Raditz and Goku. However, instead of ignoring Raditz when he's mocking Goku with his dying breath, or at least deliver a cryptic response, Piccolo finds the need to gloat about the Dragon Balls and how Goku's friends would likely bring him back. Turns out that Raditz's scouter is also a communication device, which caught the attention of ''two more'' Saiyans, who came to Earth demanding them. That battle also gained the attention of Freeza through ''his'' scouter, who after listening to Vegeta's conversation, and attacked Namek for ''their'' Dragon Balls, leading to a series of battles which ended in Namek's destruction. Incidentally, Namek is Piccolo's home planet. Yeah. You know you done F***K'D UP, Piccolo!
* Occurs on a spectacular scale in ''NeonGenesisEvangelion''. While Gendo and SEELE propagate the general purpose and technically true cover story that their mission is to prevent the Angels from initiating Third Impact (which would kill the entire human race), the reason for killing the Angels is in actuality so that they don't interfere in the Human Instrumentality Project, which is a fancy name for SEELE-controlled Third Impact.
** [[spoiler:While Gendo has been preparing his own Instrumentality plan for years under the noses of his superiors, one that is arguably a little better than "genocide and hope for the best," Shinji accidentally triggers their original plan at the eleventh hour. Things get better. I guess.]]
** Played straight in Rebuild 2.0: Oh Shinji, in the short span of 90 minutes you've managed to make yourself likeable again, have reached out to other people, grown a bit of a spine, and even got to kick a gargantuan amount of ass... Too bad saving the girl results in [[spoiler: Third Impact, trapping you and her in your "GiantRobot" while your bishounen counterpart descends from the moon to lance you in the chest!]]
* In ''[=~Pokémon~=] Special'', one of the first things Yellow does is breaking up an attempt by an apparently resurfacing Team Rocket to hijack the ship S.S. Anne. [[spoiler:Said hijacking was part of a plan by [[HeelFaceTurn a reformed]] Lt. Surge to lure out the Elite Four with a rumor about finding the one they were looking for]].
* ''Digimon Adventure'' [[spoiler: Myotismon leaves the fog that he created behind after he is killed]], after which Joe hangs a lampshade on this trope.[[spoiler: Venomyotismon shows up just hours later]].
* Frequently implied to occur whenever the ''DirtyPair'' are on the job, but one OVA episode spells it out plainly. The Angels are investigating the mysterious deaths of several hundred mining employees on a planet run as a religious colony; they find that the religion's leadership has evolved into a murdering cult that, with the help of a ring of weather satellites, is capable of calling down Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style devastation down in a specific location. After they destroy the cult's station in orbit, they assume correctly that the cult's reign of terror is ended. Unfortunately, the space station was also the control for the weather satellites, and the weather satellites ''weren't'' just used for destructive purposes; the Angels look down from orbit and see about nineteen hurricanes beginning to form, with no weather-control system left to prevent them....
* The whole story of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha A's''. [[{{GottaCatchEmAll}} "Let's save our mistress by filling this Book of Darkness!"]] Well, it's not [[{{LaserGuidedAmnesia}} really their]] [[{{Xanatos Gambit}} fault anyway]], but nevertheless [[{{WeCouldHaveAvoidedAllThis}} they made quite a mess]].
* ''PrincessTutu''. In order to prevent Mytho from destroying his own emotion of love, Fakir cuts the mythical sword capable of doing so in half. It also ensured that his heart could not be shattered again. Now how could this possibly be a bad thing? [[spoiler: Well, the piece of Mytho's heart that held love was recently bathed in raven's blood, thus corrupting it -- and now it's corrupting Mytho. The only way to get the thing out? Shattering his heart by using the very sword that Fakir destroyed.]] Whoopsie...
** This type of thing happens a lot in ''PrincessTutu''. Mostly because the characters are [[spoiler: living in a tragedy ]] and Drosselmeyer gets his kicks from making a person's good intentions be catalysts for the demise of those they're trying to help. The main character frequently makes everything worse courtesy of her humble attempts to help Mytho.
* ''CodeGeass'': In the first season, facing obliteration, Lelouch/Zero geasses Suzaku to "Live!" One year later... [[spoiler:Lelouch orders his best pilot Kallen in her new SuperRobot to ''kill'' Suzaku, which results in the Geass activating, forcing Suzaku to turn to his only remaining weapon: [[SphereOfDestruction an anti-matter nuke]]. Nice job nuking Tokyo, anti-hero.]]
** And don't forget when Lelouch make a joke: [[spoiler:"Let's kill all the Japanese". And you had MindControl power. [[{{ItGotWorse}} Nice job making your sister a mass murderer.]] ]]
** Suzaku himself is a walking catalog of this trope, trying to be the hero but screwing things up due to his own masochism and that he's playing for the wrong team.
*** [[HoYay Now now, which team he plays for is never said outright]].
* In ''JigokuShojo Mitsuganae'', Mikage is able to sense when someone nearby may soon be a client of Enma Ai. In one episode, she stops one such person and urges her not to use the Hotline to Hell... which she had ''never heard of until then''. Smooth.
* In the Season 2 finale of ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh GX}}'', Kenzan tries to stop a brainwashed minion from firing the EarthShatteringKaboom by smashing the laptop computer that controls the satellite cannon. As soon as he does this, he learns the missile was just fired, and he's just destroyed the only means of stopping it!
* In ''TsubasaReservoirChronicle'', Sakura leaves one of her memory-feathers behind in Acid Tokyo to keep the reservoir pure and the inhabitants alive. [[spoiler: While this act ultimately apparently results in [[StableTimeLoop her birth]], the aging of the feather also allows the BigBad to win when he returns it to her body in the "several hundred years later" dimension.]]
** Also, [[spoiler:Syaoran]]. If only he could turn back time, everything would be okay and he could save her, right? '''''WRONG.'''''
** This is clearly becoming a theme, since it turns out that the entire frickin' plot was set into motion by [[spoiler:Clow's]] wish that [[spoiler:Yuuko]] wouldn't die, though he didn't intend for it to turn out quite that way and the BigBad just happened to be listening.
* In ''GundamWing'', the [[LaResistance Gundam pilots]] decide to attack Federation meeting, in hope to obliterate Federation leaders and ending their threat toward colony. [[spoiler:Only that meeting is about getting to peace talk with the colonist.]] Yeah, nice job. VERY nice job [[spoiler:putting [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy OZ]] and [[WarForFunAndProfit Romefeller]] into leadership, you idiots.]]
** To their defense, they went to that meeting to destroy only OZ, but [[spoiler:Treize put every pacifist on a plane with OZ's name, using that to trick the Gundam pilots into killing them and allowing OZ to take over the world, all that while making the Gundams legitimate enemies]].
* The entire plot of ''InuYasha'' is based on this. Kagome kills a demon that stole the Shikon Jewel and in the process shatters the afore mentioned MacGuffin. This kicks off an incredibly drawn-out plot where the main characters have to fix the jewel and fight evil demons who want its power for themselves. Nice job breaking it, {{Miko}}.
* ''Doki Doki Densetsu MahoujinGuruGuru'' has the characters discover Kukuri's birthplace where items for her use had been left behind. The bad news is the items had been collected by monsters called Gimu Gimu. Good news is they're tame and don't object to people taking back what's theirs. Unfortunately, they also don't object to people taking items and ''selling'' them, which is exactly what Nike, Kukuri, and Toma did prior to reaching the ruins. To make it worse, a necklace meant specifically for Kukuri was lost when Toma earlier used the item it was kept in as an impromptu rocket launcher. Poor Kukuri simply snaps at this point and regresses to a four-year old for a few moments. For the record, they ''did'' find the necklace soon after.
* Manga example from ''{{Basara}}'': when [[EvilChancellor Momonoi]] is killed and the Red King retakes his city, Tatara and his rebel army plan on using the leftovers of Momonoi's gunpowder to blow up the water supply of the palace, making the Red King suffer. Too bad it results in the whole city having no water left and the citizens, formerly happy to be freed from their king turn against the rebels. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero A desert city cut off from water, good way to get their support hero]].
* In the ''{{Berserk}}'' manga, Skull Knight manages to slash Femto from behind at the very moment of his apparent ascension, using his dimension-crossing sword to teleport and get the drop on him. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, Femto then redirects his strike towards the vortex of demonic power they are both standing on, and uses its dimension-bending to bring the unholy nature of that place closer to earth, thus bypassing the walls between Seen and Unseen by folding time and space, resulting in the energies of the Unseen manifesting physically on Earth. You've brought about ''HellOnEarth'', Skull Knight. Whoops. Guess that's what you get for bringing in [[WarpDrive sci-fi conventions]] into a MedievalFantasy world!]]
** An earlier ''Berserk'' example: when the King of Midland has Griffith jailed and tortured for deflowering his daughter Princess Charlotte, Griffith accuses ''him'' of being attracted to her, since she looks just like his dead wife. Now, if those desires did exist, they were only subconscious -- the king would probably never have realized they were there. But Griffith's accusation makes him dwell on his daughter to the point of madness, and in one horrible moment he [[ParentalIncest forces himself on her]]. She stops him and he regains his senses, but the damage is done. Charlotte is traumatized; the king sinks into despair and insanity; and the Band of the Hawk, now the king's only targets for revenge, are hunted for years by Midland's army and worse. Good one, Griff.
*** As the Godhand Void would say, [[YouCantFightFate "everything happens within the flow of causality"]].
* ''{{Gundam00}}'' gives us a Nice Job Breaking It ''Villain''. Near the end of Season 1, the BigBad's assassination of [[spoiler:the hibernating Iolia Shenberg]] triggers a DeadManSwitch which [[spoiler:unlocks the Gundams' SuperMode.]] With this advantage, the good guys have a fighting chance in what had previously been an all but impossible battle. Thus, in the first season finale, [[spoiler: They manage to kill the BigBad and fight the remainder of his forces to a bloody stalemate.]]
* In a way similar to the ''MagicKnightRayearth'' example above, [[spoiler:the ''entire first half'' of]] ''KamikazeKaitouJeanne'' was this. [[spoiler:Maron/Jeanne is helping out God by sealing demons to keep Satan at bay and her [[SlapSlapKiss boyfriend/arch enemy]] Chiaki/Sinbad is an agent of the devil, right? Bzzt, wrong! In one of the most shocking FaceHeelTurns this troper has ever seen, it is revealed that Maron's angel sidekick Finn Fish is actually working for the devil and had been lying to Maron the whole time, and Maron was actually helping the devil and Chiaki God, not the other way around. So Maron had actually been ''helping'' the devil that whole time, making him stronger than ever.]]
*How has nobody mentioned, oh, the spoiler: ''entire'' [[spoiler: Hueco Mundo arc]] in ''{{Bleach}}''? [[spoiler: Orihime left to save her friends, who went after her to save her, who were followed by half of the remaining captains (who, despite at least two of them having their own agendas, did save everyone's favorite group of idiots) and their subordinates... only to find out that that was [[BigBad Aizen's]] XanatosGambit all along when re-kidnaps the DistressedDamsel, closes the Gargantua's that the shinigami had used to get to HM (effectively trapping them all), and merrily skips off to have his way with Karakura Town. And let's not forget how not only did Aizen only find out about Orihime's powers because she tried to help her friends, but that Urahara knew he might go after her and tried to stop her from fighting afterwards (in a way that even he admitted was a mistake), only for Rukia to rebuild her confidence and take her away for training, which ends up leading her to be fantastically exposed when [[TheDragon Ulquiorra]] stops her while she was trying to return to the human world to fight alongside of her friends.]] Give yourselves a pat on the back, heroes. You really earned it.
** Of course, the BigBad of ''{{Bleach}}'' was previously established as a World-Champion Grandmaster of XanatosSpeedChess, so something like this was probably inevitable...
* ''TheGirlWhoLeaptThroughTime'' does this over and over.
* In the original MobileSuitGundam, part of the events from before the show starts involves TheFederation diverting a ColonyDrop from hitting their incredibly well armoured fortress in the middle of the mostly uninhabited Amazon rain forest. The problem is, a piece of it hit the very much inhabited Sydney Australia. Oops. To be fair, the chances of it hitting not only a continent, but a major city at that, rather then splashing down in the ocean, are probably pretty slim.
* In {{Kinnikuman}}, all the choujin were celebrating Kinnikuman's victory in the Choujin Olympics. At one point, they toss him so high into the air he goes [[FridgeLogic flying into outer space]] and bumps into a satellite. As it turned out, that satellite was a prison for the Devil Choujin and that bump hit the release button.
* The ''{{Patlabor}}'' TV series features a pretty epic one, with a simple HonorBeforeReason decision in an early throwaway episode snowballing into an increasingly deadly story arc that would dominate the later half of the show. Captain Nagumo is opposed to using the prototype Patlabor SRX-70 Saturn created by [[MegaCorp Schaft Enterprises]] because she knows they're going to use the motion data from the police's skirmishes to develop military mechs. All well & good, but because Nagumo threw the Saturn away, CorruptCorporateExecutive Utsumi decided to get the Patlabors' data another way, namely smuggling pre-production military Labors into Tokyo & causing havoc in the streets to draw the Patlabors out.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Comics]]
* Happens all the time in ''{{Hellblazer}}''; it's a fact of the protagonist's life that he never has any permanent, unequivocal victories.
* Done on a universal scale by [[ReedRichardsIsUseless Reed Richards]]. Reed learned some time ago that Galactus' existence, however problematic, is [[CosmicKeystone necessary to the universe]]. He tried to get around the problem by turning Galactus into a star. In [[MarvelUniverse mainstream continuity]], this still ends up releasing Abraxas. In ''EarthX'', it frees up the Celestials to overrun the universe (because what Galactus was really eating was their young, which gestate in planetary cores -- then ''[[EarthShatteringKaboom hatch]]'').
* In ''Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of TheAuthority'', we find out that a thirteen-years-old Jenny Sparks convinced a friend in Vienna that he was wasting his life making paintings that didn't sell and suggested that he'd find another profession.
-->'''Jenny Sparks:''' There must be something you can do. You're patriotic, well-read and an excellent communicator. Have you ever considered a career in local government?\\
'''[[AdolfHitler Do I even have to say it?]]:''' Politics? Actually, that might no be such a bad idea.
* This happens at the very beginning of the French comic book series ''[=~Les Légendaires~=]''. The FiveManBand confronts the BigBad and foils the plot that should grant him eternal youth... but in doing so, they shatter the [[AppliedPhlebotinum magic stone]] he was using, which results in a supernatural discharge that turns not only the heroes but ''all the adults on the planet into children''. (As well as the denizens of the near-by [[OurElvesAreBetter Elfin World]] parallel dimension.) Unfortunately for the protagonists as they struggle to correct their mistake, their responsibility in this mess is common knowledge. Needless to say, they aren't very much welcome anywhere after that.
* In an early ''[[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers]]'' issue, the team has come to a military base to locate the Cosmic Cube, an all-powerful wish-granting machine. They find Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner trashing the place for unrelated reasons. During the fight, [[TheBigGuy Hercules]] tells Namor they'll never let him get the Cosmic Cube. Namor promptly escapes, leaving [[TheSmartGuy Hank Pym]] fuming -- he's guessed (correctly) that Namor had never heard of the thing until Herc told him. Naturally, Subby finds the Cube and comes back to mop the floor with them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films]]
* At the end of ''{{The Ring}}'', we find out that not only has the creepy girl from the well not been defeated, she's actually been released to reign terror upon the rest of the world. Plus she never sleeps, so it's not like we'll be getting a daily eight hour break from the reign of terror. Nice job, hero.
* At the end of ''{{Hellboy}}'', the titular AntiAntiChrist kills the villain Rasputin... only for a ''very'' huge and scary tentacle monster to [[OneWingedAngel pop out of his dead body]].
* During the climax of ''{{Dogma}}'', the fallen angel Bartleby needs to become human so he can take advantage of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenary_indulgence plenary indulgence]] in order to return to Heaven. Thus proving God wrong and thereby unmaking all of creation. To do so, he needs to remove his wings... which is promptly done for him with a machine gun by a particularly clueless hero who was trying to kill him.
* In the ''StarWars'' prequels, the Republic winning the Clone War was a XanatosGambit made of a series of Nice Job Breaking It Heroes that no one even ''realized'' were such. i.e. Anakin Skywalker leading the counterattack against the Confederacy fleet and freeing the captured Chancellor Palpatine was orchestrated specifically so he could defeat Darth Tyranus and murder him. It might be seen as necessary -- even a handless Sith Lord would be able to escape all but the most secure prisons while awaiting a war crimes or treason trial -- but the fact remains that Anakin killed a badly injured and (at the time) helpless old man because someone told him to.
** Which is why, as the main article explains, this is not NiceJobBreakingItHero, but rather MyDeathIsOnlyTheBeginning due to the XanatosGambit involved. Sure, it's not Tyranus himself who lead Anakin to kill him, but the guiding hand of evil is still there.
* In ''TheDayTheEarthStoodStill'' one of the soldiers shoots some spiky AppliedPhlebotinum out of Klaatu's hand. It turns out to have been a gift for the President that would have let him study life on other planets. Well played, soldier man.
** On the other hand, coming out in a face-concealing helmet and pulling an unidentified object isn't what this troper calls good First Contact protocol!
*** Klaatu at least has the excuse of coming from a culture that hasn't had a war in generations, and thus has forgotten the part about never making sudden hand movements when confronting nervous men with guns. The soldiers, on the other hand, are being a tad irrational in believing that a [[AlienInvasion hostile alien invasion]] would start with ''one'' alien using ''one'' hand weapon.
* ''{{Serenity}}'' has a complete ''inversion'' of this; the Alliance feared any secrets River might have known, and their attempt to recover River by [[BerserkButton triggering]] her [[WaifFu innate asskickery]] so that she would draw notice to herself only resulted in the double whammy of her unlocking her [[SuperSoldier ingrained combat training]] ''and'' bringing up the very memories and knowledge they feared she possessed. Nice job breaking it, ''villain.''
* In ''TheMatrix Reloaded'', Neo encounters the Architect on his journey to destroy The Matrix. He learns that, if he proceeds, every man, woman, and child connected to The Matrix would die, which, combined with the destruction of the rebellion, would be TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt. Neo does it anyway. It got better, though.
** In Neo's defense, the Architect may have been lying and/or exaggerating in his description of the consequences.
** Except at the end of Matrix Revolutions he confirms part of it to the Oracle by stating that [[spoiler:the people who have chosen to be freed will be allowed to.]]. When she asks for his word, he replies with "what am I, human?" Implying that he (and indeed all programs/machines) cannot/don't lie.
** The statement was that if he didn't go through with the rebuilding of Zion after selecting Option 1 (take 16 females and 7 males to repopulate Zion after the machines destroy it), everyone would die. According to the Architect, if he took Option 2, Zion would be destroyed without him being able to rebuild it. Selecting Option 2 would seemingly lead to the destruction of the free human race, but the current Zion was seemingly doomed either way.
* In ''{{Frequency}}'', John manages to use the [[AppliedPhlebotinum time-travel radio]] to keep his father, Frank, from dying in the burning building that had claimed his life thirty years ago. And so doing began a chain of events that caused a serial killer to live instead of die who then goes on to murder many more women including John's mother. Oh, and did I mention Frank still dies from lung cancer because he smokes?
** The rest of the movie is spent trying to stop the serial killer from killing his other victims, including Frank's wife. [[spoiler:In the end, the killer, who is still at large in the present, breaks into John's house and attacks him while John's talking to his father on the radio. Right as it looks like he's going to win, in walks a thirty-year-older Frank with a shotgun. [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome He'd heard the fight on the radio, and thus knew exactly where the killer was going to be thirty years from now]]]]. Nice job ''fixing'' it, hero!
* Basically the whole plot of ''TheButterflyEffect'' is a series of these.
* ''TheDarkKnight''. Batman's destruction of the Falcone family's dominance of Gotham City leads to not only a myriad of gangs attempting to fill the gap, but also the Joker and other imitation criminals who create far more chaos and destruction. There are obvious real life parallels in international politics (collapse of the Soviet Union leading to rise of nationalism and fundamentalism) and law enforcement (the weakening of the Mafia clearing the way for Chinese, Russian, Columbian, etc, gangs).
** To be fair, the presence of the Joker, while in many ways a portrayed as a response to Batman's presence, and the general surge in violent crimes (and in later movies, I'm sure, costumed criminals) probably has more to do with [[spoiler:the League of Shadows]] throwing wide the gates of Arkham during BatmanBegins.
* ''PlanetOfTheApes''. The original had an astronaut landing in the future from a freak accident. The remake has the hero CAUSING the freak accident that launches his ship even further back in time and giving his mutant lab apes free reign over a primitive world. Changes things considerably.
* [[BeeMovie Layton: "This is an unholy perversion of the balance of nature, Benson! You'll regret this.]] Needless to say, the defense attorney was absolutely right, as Benson's victory did upset the balance of nature. Fortunately, Benson did fix it before it became irreversible.
* At a fairly early point in ''ReturnToOz,'' Dorothy mentions that the [[McGuffin Ruby Slippers]] fell off her feet during her flight back to Kansas, and apparently thought nothing more of them after that. During the climax, the Nome King takes [[KickTheDog great delight in telling Dorothy what happened because of this]]:
-->'''Dorothy:''' My ruby slippers--\\
'''The Nome King:''' No, no, no... ''My'' ruby slippers. They just fell out of the sky one day -- you were so anxious to get home! They're very powerful: they made it possible for me to conquer the Emerald City... thank you.
* In ''{{Sunshine}}'', one of the crew members forgets to adjust the heat shield... causing the [[PropheticNames Icarus II]] to have a catastrophic fire. Nice job breaking the ship that was supposed to save Earth, hero.
** Actually the misalignment just causes damage to the hydralics. It is the fact that the communication towers are vaporized in the sunlight that causes the fire [[spoiler: and causes the first death.]]
** Actually, this isn't even an example of this trope. The trope isn't about mistakes or failures at all, it's about a successful action whose by-product is a failure on a larger scale.
* Near the end of ''{{The Haunting in Connecticut}}'', the reverend manages to exorcise the ghost from the house. [[spoiler: Too bad he's a benevolent spirit who was preventing the dozens of malicious ghosts from wreaking havoc.]]
* In ''TheMonitors'', after the heroes drive off the dictatorial machines that enslaved mankind and stopped all human conflict, wars start breaking out all over the place.
* In the first ''Film/FantasticFour'' movie the team is cheered on for their heroic efforts to save people on the Brooklyn Bridge from a major accident... which they caused. Also, the major supervillain of the film exists because Reed screwed up his calculations when predicting the approach of a cosmic storm. The disaster gave Doom his powers and ruined his company, providing him with the motivation to attack. So the whole movie is about the Fantastic Four cleaning up their own messes.
* [[MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail Sir Galahad]] wasn't so keen on being rescued from Castle Anthrax, what with the peril of spankings and oral sex and all.
--> '''Lancelot:''' No, it's far too perilous.
--> '''Galahad:''' Well, can't you let me have just a little bit of peril?
* Although her mother did most of the damage beforehand, [[{{Carrie}} Carrie White]] would never have had her murderous breakdown if Miss Collins hadn't gone overboard in punishing her tormentors, causing them to publicly humiliate Carrie at the prom. As if that weren't enough, Miss Collins then ''throws out the person who tried to stop it from happening.'' Way to kill everyone, Miss Collins.
* In ''9'', the title character's newfound friends [[spoiler: take out the mechanical beast who had been threatening them,]] only for 9 to realize that [[spoiler:the MacGuffin he'd woken up with fit perfectly inside a larger machine nearby. Said machine proceeds to kill 2 immediately, followed by 8, 5, 6, and 1 before it's all done.]] To add insult to idiocy, [[spoiler:the beast from the beginning was visibly and obviously about to do just what 9 ended up doing shortly before it was destroyed.]]
* From the {{James Bond}} film ''Diamonds Are Forever'':
--->'''Tiffany''': I did it, I switched the tape in the machine.
--->'''Bond''': You stupid twit, you put the real one back in!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* Happens quite often in HarryPotter, but you have to look at the whole series to see any of the examples.
** Let's start with my favorite: [[spoiler: Dumbledore tells Snape to kill him because 1) a curse is killing him slowly and 2) he doesn't want to subject Draco to murder. Well, this little stunt guaranteed Wizarding Wars galore ''and'' Draco was probably forced to kill on Voldemort's orders anyway.]]
** Then of course, Order of the Pheonix has a tragic example of this. Harry runs to his godfather's rescue only to be the cause of Sirius's demise. [[FamousLastWords "Nice one, James."]]
** In the seventh book, [[spoiler: Voldemort destroys his last remaining Horcrux by killing Harry. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain "Nice job breaking it, villain"]] ]].
* In the SF novel ''{{Legacy of Heorot}}'', human colonists on an alien planet manage to eliminate the "grendels", a native, komodo-dragon like species, that threatened their existence. They find out too late that the grendels were the mature (female) form of these tasty (male) "fish" that are just about ''everywhere''. (Think frogs and tadpoles. Only the frogs are a lot bigger. And have big, pointy teeth. And decide that people taste good.) The mature grendels kept the population down through cannibalism. Now that there are no more mature grendels all of the immature grendels start to grow up and undergo metamorphosis, and they're ''hungry''. Even worse, all of them can move almost faster than the eye can see. Guess what they decide to snack on...
** Nice job breaking the food chain, heroes.
* This is more or less how the ''[[SwordOfTruth The Sword Of Truth]]'' series moves from one book to another: Resolving the conflict of one book leads directly to the problems in the next, at least in the beginning.
* Happens not once but twice in the Eoin Colfer novel ''TheSupernaturalists''.
* Done twice in Brandon Sanderson's ''{{Mistborn}}'' trilogy.
** First, at the end of the first book when Vin kills the Lord Ruler he warns her that she has no idea what he does for mankind and that she has doomed the world. In the second book, the protagonists discover that the mists that have covered the world for the past thousand years are are growing thicker and destroying crops. In addition, the mists are killing a small fraction of the people that go out in them.
** To stop this, Vin finds the Well of Ascension, which is rumored to have the power to stop the mists. When she finds the well, she releases the power in it as described in the prophecies. Rather than saving the world, this releases the [[SealedEvilInACan Sealed Evil in a Can]]. Oh, and the mists are still getting thicker, but that's the least of their problems from this point on. [[spoiler:It turns out that the mists were not created by the sealed evil but his now-defunct opponent. He just made them stronger in order to distract the heroes from his true goals. He also perverted the prophecies to play out his [[XanatosGambit Xanatos Gamit]]. Luckily, it turns out his opponent had anticipated him breaking free and planned for it. It was still a close call.]]
* In the backstory of the ''WheelOfTime'' series, Lews Therin comes up with a badass plan to [[SealedEvilInACan re-imprison the Dark One]]. Unfortunately, something goes terribly wrong, and from then on [[FunctionalMagic all male channelers]] are doomed to [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity go mad]], wreak havoc with their immense powers, [[BodyHorror and then die horribly]]. The world gets [[AfterTheEnd Broken]].
** Though in his defense, it's technically better than it ''could have been'' had the Dark One won.
** This was also his last resort. His original plan involved both men and women going to fight and seal the Dark One, but the women refused in favour of another plan. One which fell further and further out of reach as the war raged on. The women weren't changing their minds, even after several years, so he had no choice but to go with men only. To be fair, it's possible that if the women went as well, they would of gone insane to, but no-one knows for sure.
* In the final volume of Tad William's ''[=~Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn~=]'' trilogy it is revealed that the swords the hero had been trying to bring together to defeat the Big Bad were in fact the only things which would release the Big Bad from his prison. Whoops.
* In the StarWarsExpandedUniverse ''NewJediOrder'' series, it is [[RetCon implied (or outright stated, whichever)]] that Palpatine formed TheEmpire and ordered the construction of weapons such as the Death Star to prepare for the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong, a species whose sole purpose is taking evil to a level that Palpatine could only ''dream'' of, making the original movies a Nice Job Breaking It Trilogy. However, it has also been commented that since The Empire lost to the Rebels, they might not have done as well against the Vong as they would have liked to think.
** Not only that but the death of Palpatine created a vacuum of power. It caused a fracture of the Empire into multiple smaller dominions led by psychotic warlords, who, to solidify their positions, hold even ''worse'' weapons, like the [[JediAcademyTrilogy Sun Crusher]]. It caused Admirals (and the last Grand Admiral) to start ploys to resurrect the Empire, raising the specter of a new round of Clone Wars, a working prototype Death Star, and various Super Star Destroyers. It allowed for a cloned Emperor, if possible even more insane than the original, to unleash Devastators on Coruscant. It allowed for criminal organizations to flourish and get into the superweapon race themselves, like the Hutt's ''Darksaber''. It opened the way for genocidal races to use left-over Imperial ships. The New Republic isn't even stable and threatens to collapse many times. SoYeah.
***I'd like to point out that the Galaxy with Palpatine in control of all those weapons would've been just as bad if not worse than what the Yuuzhan Vong did when they invaded. Sure they took out a great number planets and killed countless numbers of sentients, but Palpatine would've destroyed any and all planets/systems that would've shown resistance or too much free thinking and dissent. So I'd call this a push, though the galaxy did go through the horrors of the Yuuzhan Vong, they didn't have to go through anymore horrors created by Palpatine's Empire.
**This troper hasn't read much of NJO, but does remember something about "Grand Admiral Thrawn would have been prepared for the Yuuzhan Vong" being thrown in at one point (he's a badass tactician), and Timothy Zahn's TheThrawnTrilogy basically set him up as a relatively benevolent dictator (he was a ''non-human'', for crying out loud, which the Empire purported to hate, and was just trying to unify the galaxy). So this trope comes around again, this time applying to Rukh, his bodyguard, who assassinated him for keeping his people in slavery.
* In the ''First ChroniclesOfThomasCovenant'' Covenant's breaking the Staff of Law in self-defense has only good consequences. Then in the ''Second Chronicles'' the act turns out to have enabled continuing and rather imaginative evil and suffering on a massive scale. Cue a lengthy quest to repair the damage.
** The ''Last Chronicles'' seem to be heading down the same path; with Linden Avery pulling Covenant [[NotQuiteDead out of the Arc Of Time]]; an act that apparently awoke [[EldritchAbomination The Wyrm At World's End]].
* In the third book of AlastairReynolds' ''RevelationSpace'' trilogy, [[spoiler:the Inhibitors are finally wiped out; however, it is implied that their absence is what allows a swarm of von Neumann machines to eventually consume literally the entire universe]]. As such this also counts as an Inferred Holocaust.
* Ian Irvine, and the conclusion to the ''{{Well of Echoes}}'' series. The MagnificentBastard has gained two artifacts of unsurpassed magic power and is taking over the world. Tiaan tries to stop him by destroying the power sources of all magic, thus preventing anybody from using it. Except then it turns out that said artifacts are the only significant exception, and what she actually did was destroy every single source of power that would have given the heroes a chance. Dang.
* ''{{The Gun Seller}}'', by Hugh Laurie. The whole plot is preventing arms manufacturers from pulling off a terrorist attack in order to jack up prices for their new attack helicopters... that made a lot more sense when I was reading it. But anyway, the last page states flat out that the sales of the very weapon he used to beat them skyrocketed. ''Awkward''.
* In ''{{Sailor on the Seas of Fate}}'', Elric helps the Creature-Doomed-to-Live to die... And inadvertently sets in motion events leading to the end of the world. Oops.
* In Kevin O'Donnell's novel ''[=~ORA:CLE~=]'', set in a universe where [[ScienceMarchesOn all computers run unprotected operating systems like DOS and all news are shown in Bulletin Board Systems]], the news is censored by a viral software implanted by [[TheGovernment the global Coalition]]. This is a perfect excuse for a ''coup'' by a group of erudites, who then keep the ''status quo'' and keep the censors; as the protagonist is an erudite but does not agree with the methods of the new group in power, he arranges to hack the several levels of censor programs, each more seriously defended, until immediately before deactivating the last one, he's warned by the leader of the group in power about not deactivating the last censor. The protagonist does anyway and [[spoiler:the leader kills herself while communicating with the protagonist]]. Later is discovered that the censor programs [[spoiler:were implanted to prevent extraterrestrial avian invaders, who use Earth as their hunting grounds, from finding out about a plan to transform Jupiter into a star in order to blind their sensors and allow Earth to launch everything against them in a last ditch effort to get rid of the invaders.]]
* In the final arc of ''DeltoraQuest'', Leif and friends have to destroy the Four Sisters who are killing their land slowly by singing evil spells. No one hears their songs, as they are so quiet and have been in place for so many hundreds of thousands of years that everyone just thought of their songs as the sound of silence. When they finally manage to kill the last one, [[spoiler:it turns out that the singing that was making the land barren actually also kept an even worse monster locked down: basically a bubbling pot of poisonous goo that will keep expanding until the entire land--the mountains, streams, forests, cities, and everything alive--is buried under a thick, hard crust of grey stuff. Essentially, it is unbeatable: swords cannot cut it, there is nowhere to throw it away and it expands too fast to curb it in any manner]]. The [[BigBad Shadowlord]] thought he had them beat there: die slowly or die quickly were the only options. [[spoiler: Thankfully, the goo is not flame retardant, and they did have six gargantuan fire-breathing dragons on demand]].
* From the Bible (making this trope OlderThanDirt):
** Adam and Eve manage to achieve this for the entire human race. Having been given the paradise of Eden in which to live they are told that there is one rule: they must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One talking snake later and... yeah, nice job.
** Joseph's eleven brothers plotted to kill him out of jealousy. The eldest son, Reuben, suggests that instead of killing him outright they throw him in a pit in the desert and leave him to die. Reuben leaves momentarily and Judah, another one of them, convinces the rest to lift Joseph out of the pit and sell him to slavery instead of letting him die. Then Reuben returns and majorly freaks out - he was trying to save Joseph all along, and planned to return later to the pit and rescue him. Nice job breaking it, Judah.
* In the regular ''{{Animorphs}}'' series, [[SacrificialLamb Elfangor]] tends to come across as noble and wonderful, a cross between TheObiWan and TheMinnesotaFats, willing to break his people's laws, yes, but only to serve the greater good. In ''[[{{Prequel}} The Andalite Chronicles]]'', however, we see that Visser Three's capture of Alloran is a direct result of Elfangor refusing to kill a mass amount of unhosted Yeerks. This capture also led to Visser Three's eventual promotion. While he originally gained prominence by being the Yeerks' authority on Andalites, his brutish ways and lack of subtlety wouldn't have let him progress much further. Thanks to Elfangor, who opened the door for him to do what no other Yeerk could, Visser One's agenda is the only thing keeping Visser Three from declaring an all-out space war on Earth!
** To those who see Visser One as a NobleDemon, she might be guilty of this as well. In the AlternateReality where the kids never found Elfangor and the Yeerks ''did'' declare all-out war on Earth, the humans won [[WeHaveReserves through sheer numbers]].
* In the original novels of ''TheRing'', the Asakawa delves into the mystery of the [[ArtifactOfDoom Cursed Tape]] not only because it's a good story, but to save himself, his family, and his friend from the killing curse. In doing so, he chronicles his investigation in the Asakawa Report, which details every little incident of the quest. By the end of ''Spiral'', the second novel, [[spoiler:Sadako reveals that the curse has mutated and taken on the Asakawa Report as its new vector, as well as any of its adaptations --movies, television, radio, and any other form of media where the tale is recounted. Eventually, all of mankind will have been destroyed as she replicates within each individual, infected human]]. At least the Cursed Video was contained...
** Even in the original concept, it is only the protagonist who realizes that the only way to escape is by [[spoiler:copying the Tape and showing it to someone else]], as every previous instance stopped at the victim's death. However, by each film adaptation's sequel, the public at large is aware of this method: [[FridgeLogic it doesn't take long for one to realize]] that this means the Curse will spread like wildfire throughout the world, especially with the advent of [[http://www.youtube.com new media]].
*** Which creates the interesting mental image of Cursed Tape Rickrolls...
*** Four words, not in this order: 'cup','girls','one','two'...just wait until the effect suddenly shows up.
* In the second book of ''{{Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles}}'', our young heroes succeed in luring the rampaging fire breathing giants into the ocean using a recorded mermaid song. As it turns out though, the giants were awakening so they could fight off an even bigger threat: a group of evil dragons that would be even more destructive.
* In the third book of ''TheDarkswordTrilogy'', Joram destroys the capstone of the Well of Life. While it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, the [[TrilogyCreep fourth book]] describes a lot of the unpleasant consequences.
* In Isaac Asimov's short story ''{{The Dead Past}}'', the main character's research into time travel reveals that the government has been conspiring to hide the fact that [[spoiler:it is easy to build a time telescope that can see perfectly anywhere in the world anytime in the last several centuries. The release of this information dooms humanity to existence with no privacy whatsoever, because you can just as easily set the time telescope to see 1/100th of a second ago as 100 years ago]]. Sometimes the government keeps secrets for good reasons, geniuses.
** Were they [[spoiler:protecting people's privacy]] or [[spoiler:maintaining their monopoly on unbeatable undetectable SinisterSurveillance?]] Asimov should have written a follow-up detailing how [[spoiler:ubiquitous time telescopes revealed ''all'' government corruption and solved ''all'' unsoved crimes]].
* In another Asimov story, ''{{The Life And Times Of Multivac}}'', humans chafe under the generally benevolent but definite [[MasterComputer control of Multivac]]. One of them [[spoiler:figures out a way to maneuver Multivac into making itself vulnerable, then crashes it. The protagonist declares that humanity is now free... and realizes that it's not at all clear that freedom -- including responsibility for running the world without Multivac -- is what humanity really wants.]]
* ''{{Metro 2033}}''' has an extremely cruel version of this. To bottom line it, [[spoiler: the protagonist ends up unwittingly eradicating a sentient and very humanoid species. Turns out it was trying to make peace with humanity all along and help it to survive. Oh, and it also kept a SealedEvilInACan in check, guarded the titular Metro from the worst hazards and was literally humanity's only and last chance to ever regain the planet... or even survive for a few more generations.]] Nice job indeed, Artjom.
* Early in the first ''[[TheHollows Hollows]]'' novel Ivy Tamwood is gifted with a wish. Rather than use it selfishly for herself she gives it to a Mia, a banshee who once gave her life altering advice. Banshees in the Hollows are the life draining apex predators of a world already filled with powerful monsters. Through various means Ivy's wish allows Mia to gain a human mate as murderous as she is, deceive people long enough to drain them of life before they can defend themselves and conceive a child more powerful than any banshee before her. NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished indeed.
* In ''TheCompanyNovels'' by Kage Baker, [[spoiler: Dr. Zeus the AI relies on the threat of this to preserve himself after his period of omniscience comes to an end. It doesn't work.]]
* In the ''{{Ravnica}}'' novel ''Dissension'', Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (leader of the [[ObstructiveBureaucrat Azorius Senate]]) explains to our heros that [[BigBad House Dimir]] isn't the reason why [[TheWorldIsAlwaysDoomed the plane/city of Ravnica has had a significant increase in existence-ending disasters]]: it's because our heros arrested/killed the leader of House Dimir in the first book. Since Ravnica is a world where [[JokerImmunity every Guild and its leader are legally required to exist, even if they are legally required to attempt to kill everyone]], arresting/killing the leader of House Dimir had doomed the plane/city to obliteration.
** However, as the RogueCop Agrus Kos points out, that makes the first book into a KobayashiMaru: [[spoiler: The first book culminated in Szadek draining the leader of the Selesnya guild - the power sustaining the legal and magical obligation for all the guilds to exist. If Kos hadn't incapacitated Szadek, the power sustaining the civilization would have been destroyed, because he did, the resulting magical imbalance destroyed the civilization anyway.]]
* In NeilGaiman's ''{{Neverwhere}}'' [[spoiler: this is basically the entire plot. All Richard has to do is help Door bring the key to The Angel, Islington, so It can return to Heaven and Door can be reunited with her family. Oh, Islington didn't mention that It isn't in Heaven right now because It had been banished to Earth by God? And Its return would lead to God's will being subverted and war in Heaven, possibly leading to Heaven's destruction as well as humanity's? Oops.]]
* A recent short story featured an American sniper recruited to test a prototype portable time machine. His mission? Go back some years before the 9/11 attacks and kill Osama bin Ladin. Which he does, only to return to an America suffering a severe depression due to terrorist attacks using nuclear weapons, which he realizes happened because there was no bin Ladin to desire to do something showy, but strategically minor. So he tries again, going back a little further. And again. And again. The end featured him one of Pontius Pilate's dungeons awaiting execution due to a failed attempt on the Roman's life.
* In Mitchell Scalon's {{Warhammer 40000}} HorusHeresy novel ''Descent of Angels'', Lion (with Luther's help) unites Caliban to exterminate its horrific monsters, despite warnings that this might ruin Caliban. In Mike Lee's ''Fallen Angels'', it is revealed that the monsters stemmed from Chaos taint, and so kept the people untainted, since they would avoid the monsters; killing them [[SealedEvilInACan unleashed the taint]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* Subverted slightly on ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', in the season four episode "Fear Itself." Observe:
-->'''Giles:''' ''(flipping pages)'' I have it, I have it. Uhm, "The summoning spell for Gachnar can be shut down in one of two ways. Destroying the mark of Gachnar..." ''(Buffy walks over to the mark and puts her fist through it, ripping up the floorboards. Gets up and looks over at Giles with a proud smile)'' "...is ''not'' one of them and will in fact immediately bring forth the fear demon itself."
** [[spoiler:Good thing the fear demon itself is only four inches tall.]]
** This troper has to point out that Giles is far more at fault than Buffy. There was absolutely no reason for him to take such a long pause at that point in the sentence.
**He was translating from Gaelic by memory. He probably got stuck on a word or two mid-sentence.
** Played straight - somewhat - with the demon Balthazar in Season Three. Balthazar was Mayor Wilkins' rival - had he regained his power, he would have killed the Mayor. By killing Balthazar, Buffy eliminated one of the two major threats to the Mayor. Of course, the other major threat was herself...
** And, of course, when Buffy was [[spoiler:brought back from the dead, thereby ripping her out of heaven.]] From Buffy's point of view, at least, nice job breaking me, Scoobies.
** Well, a more straight example would be the fact it kinda broke the slayer line. And the [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt chaos that followed.]] Nice job breaking it, heroes. They defeated the {{Big Bad}} to make it stop and [[spoiler:Sunnydale become a crater.]] Nice job breaking it, heroes. Then in Season Eight... Uh, let me see... [[spoiler:Buffy needed funds, stole from a bank... which resulted in a rogue Slayer and a very unhappy military. Giles sent Faith undercover to assassinate a dangerous Slayer. Buffy misunderstood. Faith didn't react well. Willow's flaying of Warren comes back to haunt her. And everyone else. That was just the beginning.]][[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment Nice job- oh never mind]]
**And of course there is the fact that the Big Bad in season 7 came around because [[spoiler:the Scoobies resurrected Buffy, messing up the slayer line and creating an imbalance of power,]] so the way they decide to fix this mistake is to [[spoiler:create a whole bunch more slayers]].
* In ''{{Angel}}'', the crew defeat the fallen power Jasmine, who took over the world through mind control and was eating people on a daily basis... and are later rewarded by the demonic law firm Wolfram and Hart for "destroying peace on earth and good will toward men" because during the short time Jasmine was in control, there was no war or fighting or hatred anywhere within her influence.
** Of course, it is meant to be ambiguous whether the gang did a good or a bad thing. "We stopped an insidious global domination scheme, not 'world peace'. ...Right?"
** [[spoiler:After Angel and his team assassinate all members of the Circle of Black Thorns,]] the evil forces of the world decide to pull out all the stops and unleash every available evil creature on LA. Of course the results of this apocalyptic battle are left to the imagination.
* In the ''DoctorWho'' episode "The Long Game", the Doctor thinks he's saving the world by shutting down a space station that controls an Earth-spanning propaganda regime. In the season finale, however, he returns to Satellite 5, a century later - and learns that as a result of the shutdown, Earth has become technologically and socially stagnant, and the station itself has become a clearinghouse for reality shows, secretly run by the Daleks.
** It's also been suggested (including in a [[WordOfGod column by Russell Davies]]) that the Doctor's self-righteous overthrowing of Prime Minister Harriet Jones after her actions in "The Christmas Invasion" directly allowed the Master to take her place, conquer the world, and rule in an unequalled reign of terror and genocide for an entire year until things managed to get sorted out. By contrast Harriet's truncated term, according to the Doctor himself, would have been "a Golden Age". Nice going, Doc.
*** Originally, this was going to pointed out by the Master in "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords." However, it was decided that this sort of gloating -- in addition to the abuse the Master had ''already'' heaped upon the Doctor -- would be [[EvenEvilHasStandards an overkill.]]
*** It also allowed the Prime Minister seen in ''Torchwood: Children of Earth'' to come to power. Perhaps Harriet Jones would have had stricter morals about dealing with the 456.
**** And to go more Old School (or DVD-school): Did you know it was The Doctor who gave Nero the idea to burn Rome?
** To be completely fair, DoctorWho isn't unfamiliar with this trope. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep Such as the time the Doctor basically killed off both sides of a conflict by accident]] while trying to negotiate a truce. Or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E5BlackOrchid accidentally killing a damaged man who was only trying to find the woman he loved]]. Not to mention [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock causing the extinction of the dinosaurs.]] The Fifth Doctor had a lot of those...
* ''{{Torchwood}}'': Owen Harper's opening of the rift rescued his boss and his best friend from being trapped in the wrong decade forever, but it also caused a wave of anachronisms including ancient soldiers in the streets and an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Wales. This despite Ianto practically begging Owen not to open the rift, and even shooting him to try to prevent it. Instead of learning from this colossal mistake, the rest of the team eventually side with Owen and do the exact same thing, again. Predictably, things get worse before they get better.
** In the second episode, Gwen broke the Sex Gas' space rock "ship".
** Jack's [[spoiler: resurrecting Owen]] led him to a [[AndIMustScream much worse fate]] in "Exit Wounds."
** More recently, Jack and Ianto have gone storming into the alien's base guns blazing in order to, erm..... [[spoiler:shoot at the bulletproof glass protecting it, pissing it off enough to release a deadly virus, killing everyone in the building, including Ianto.]] To make things worse, the entire plot of that episode was Torchwood checkmating the government into letting them into the alien's room, so you'd think they'd have come up with a better plan with all the time they had.
*** [[spoiler:The plan was to manipulate the aliens into starting a shooting war, forcing humanity to fight back rather than accept the loss of their children; probably figuring that if the 456 had the firepower to just take what they wanted, they wouldn't have tried extortion first. They didn't anticipate the fight being so overwhelmingly one-sided.]]
**** Still rather stupid of them, if you consider that [[spoiler:Jack only agreed to hand over twelve children originally because they threatened humanity with a deadly virus. He apparently remembered that all perfectly, so why wouldn't he consider the option that they might do the same again?]]
* ''StargateAtlantis'', as a whole:
** Our heroes woke up the Wraith, inflicting them upon the galaxy and angry because of the lack of "food" (humans). The Wraith were always bad news, but their newly accelerated schedule has resulted in many worlds wiped off the map, and everyone working on a way to stop them finding out they have a few decades less than they thought.
** ''Then'' they turn a Wraith into an amnesiac human. He starts to turn back, but not all the way, and so once he remembers who he really is and escapes, he finds his people no longer want him now that he's half-human. By now, he's out to overthrow humans and Wraith and have the other human-Wraith hybrids he's created rule. He didn't hate humans ''that'' much, though, until our {{Designated Hero}}es betrayed him further, though.
** ''Then'' they turn the Replicators against the Wraith... and the Replicators decide that the best way to fight the Wraith was to attack their food supply. (Of course, they ''may'' have chosen this tactic because they ''already'' hated humans and Ancients.)
*** In short, all three major threats to humans in the Pegasus Galaxy were ''created by the Atlantis team.'' They really, ''really'' should have just stayed at home.
*** It was even [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] when the combined peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy put Sheppard's team (and, by extension, the Atlantis expedition as a whole) on trial for doing all of this, and call them out on every single mistake mentioned above.
** Not to count the Genii. One major enemy in season 1 and 2. All because they were trying to trade C4 as "farming tools"...
*** The Ancients also did a good NeglectfulPrecursors work, as they accidentally created the Wraith, then developed the Replicators as a weapons against them.
* Then there is ''{{Stargate}}'' and ''{{Stargate SG-1}}''. Every time they defeated a Goa'uld, another, even more ambitious one rose to take his place in the resulting EvilPowerVacuum. This only stopped when the Goa'uld were overthrown as a whole.
** Unfortunately, the SG-1 team wasn't content to rest on their laurels. Instead, they hunt down some old Ancient technology, get transported to another galaxy (sort of), thus allowing the Ori (evil ascended beings) to move in. In effect, after killing off the evil false Gods, the SG-1 team invited evil ''real'' "[[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence gods]]" to move in.
** The basis for the franchise really. Movie - Unburied the gate, went to Abydos, unintentionally informed the Goa'uld that the gate on Earth had been unburied and thus Earth was within easy access for them. Killed Ra, everything is good. Tv Series - Oh shit, you created a power vacuum. The goa'uld are fighting and they know the Earth stargate is unburied. And you've proved yourself to be a viable threat to their power and therefore put Earth in danger. Nice job.
* ''StarTrek:'' Kirk and company go to the MirrorUniverse, and Kirk gets Mirror Spock to try reforming TheEmpire. So he does. When next we visit it, it turns out that the reforms made weakened the empire to the point of being unable to defend against the Klingon/Cardassian LegionOfDoom. Humans and Vulcans are now slaves. Way to go, Jim.
* The episode "Coyote Piper" of ''{{Charmed}}'' revolves around a spirit escaping from her demonic scientist creator. She eventually posseses Piper, and uses Piper's body to get her sisters to kill the demonic scientist when he comes to look for his creation...making it significantly harder to deal with the spirit. The demon's final words "You fools! She will destroy you!", as somewhat apt.
* In ''{{Supernatural}}'', Dean's obsessive need to keep Sam alive led to the Devil's Gate being opened and a demon army being unleashed and it also led to Sam becoming more of an Anti-Hero, being pissed enough to brutally murder Jake and to slightly slide down the humanity scale. Way to protect both the world and your brother, ''Dean''.
** As Dean is TheChewToy of the ''{{Supernatural}}'' world, this happens to him far too often. When he was nine and tired of babysitting Sam for three days, he went out to play videogames and didn't kill the MonsterOfTheWeek when he should have done, thus leading to lots of other kids dying. The ''Devil's Trap'' example (the demon getting away) can be blamed on both Sam and Dean, seeing as how a dying Dean was begging Sam not to kill their demon-possessed Dad and Sam listened to him. And in ''In The Beginning'', he tells Samuel everything that's going to happen, not realising that he's being possessed by the same demon that will eventually fuck up his family and ruin his life. You've actually got to wonder why he hasn't put a bullet in his brain yet, considering that he even feels guilty for still being alive.
*** To be fair to Dean, Jake would still have opened the Devil's Gate even if Sam had stayed dead. However, without Sam -- the only other person on Earth immune to Jake's mind control powers -- available for the fight at the Devil's Gate, Dean and Bobby and Ellen would never have been able to ''close'' it again. So nice job saving the world, hero.
*** Congratulations, Sam! [[spoiler:You finally killed Lilith... which was the final seal that needed to be broken to free Lucifer from hell. Oops.]]
* ''Series/{{Heroes}}'' had ''two'' in a single episode now (though one got started a few episodes prior): [[spoiler:BigBad Arthur Petrelli is able to get off life support by stealing Adam's healing power -- which he had easy access to because Angela sent Hiro and Ando off to release Adam in a bid to stop Arthur's schemes. Later on, Peter storms Pinehearst on his own, finds Arthur there, and subsequently gets ''his'' powers stolen.]]
** It must be said: Nice job breaking it, [[IncrediblyLamePun Hiro]].
** According to Angela Petrelli, Future Peter was responsible for [[spoiler:Sylar acquiring Claire's healing power. As Angela put it, "She had a very bad day."]]
** The season 1 episode where Isaac tries to shoot Peter, in an attempt to prevent him from [[spoiler:becoming the human nuclear bomb]] seen in the future paintings. When Peter becomes invisible, Isaac shoots at a noise behind him...and accidentally kills [[spoiler:Simone]], who wanted to help Peter.
** When Sylar tries to kill [[VeronicaMars Elle]], she renders him unconscious with a massive blast of electricity. Unfortunately, she also overloads the Level Five power grid, allowing all of the super-powered prisoners to escape.
*** In her defense, it had been discussed in another episode that their powers were activated by adrenaline. How would you do pinned on the floor while your head was being sliced open?
** Nathan Petrelli intiates a government program to round up persons with superhuman abilities in order to protect regular citizens. But he [[spoiler:is forced to flee when he is revealed to have an ability. As a result, CompleteMonster Emil Danko takes over the operation; unlike Nathan, he wants to kill all so-called evolved humans (Danko calls them "animals"). Not only does Danko murder Daphne Millbrook and Traci Strauss, he then enlists Sylar to help him carry out his nefarious plans!]]
** Then there's the Charlie issue. Hiro decides he can't save her life as she's already dying, so forgets about her, as do the writers. But at the very least hecould have saved her from being killed by Sylar instead of ''allowing'' Sylar to take her ability. At least the writers' inconsistency with abilities has prevented Super Memory from cropping up again.
*** The issue has been addressed in the newest episodes... but, in typical ''Heroes'' fashion, clumsily.
** How did Samuel Sullivan find out about the nature and true extent of his powers? Because Mohinder opened a box with research that his father expressly wanted never to surface ''and'' traveled all the way to his carnival of horrors to blab about it, of course. It's almost as if the writers hate his character too and wanted to give even newcomers a reason to hate his ass.
* [[TheSarahConnorChronicles Nice job figuring out Cromartie's plan, Sarah.]] Go ahead, [[XanatosGambit call John and warn him Cromartie is after him.]] [[OhCrap Wait, is that a phone tap... into the local cellular tower... oops.]]
* [[BattlestarGalactica Nice job taking the tougher, advanced battlestar capable of building Vipers and ramming it into a Cylon Basestar to save the aged, more obsolete battlestar, Lee.]] Especially since [[spoiler: the Galactica is now falling to bits entirely]].
** Nice job [[spoiler:creating an army's worth of [[CompleteMonster Cavil]]s and their war machine and letting them box you, Saul, Ellen, Sam, Galen, and Tory.]]
** [[spoiler:Nice job killing Tory on the spot and losing any chance of peace with the enemy Cylons, Galen]].
* ''{{Dollhouse}}'' has a rare villainous example. In "Omega", Alpha achieves his goal of causing Echo to have a composite event. [[spoiler:However, as most of Echo's imprints were good guys, Composite!Echo attacks Alpha]].'
* In PowerRangersRPM, Dr. K was being imprisoned unjustly by the government so they could use her as a researcher. She uploads a computer virus into their systems, and is apprehended by secret agents before she can install the firewall. The virus goes on to nuke the planet, wiping out pretty much all ecosystems, and either killing or enslaving every human not in the DomedHometown of Corinth. Doctor K manages to escape thanks to some friends bailing her out. Nice job getting your freedom, doctor. Nice job protecting America, secret agents.
* In TouchedByAnAngel, a man wakes up from a twelve-year coma. He got in a car accident because he used his wife's car instead of his own. He got in his wife's car because he couldn't find the key for his own. [[spoiler:He couldn't find the key for his car because Monica was holding it so she could look at the angel keychain...]]
* Nice job [[spoiler: turning your back on Management in one finale and shooting Strickler in another]], [[BurnNotice Michael]]. You now have even less of a clue about what's going on, and you almost got yourself into even hotter water.
* In {{Bones}}, FBI Agent Seely Booth allowed a man convicted of killing a teenage girl and was less than 30 hours away from being executed for the crime convince him to reinvestigate the case by providing crocodile tears in prison. [[spoiler: He did eventually learn that he was right about the man being the killer all along but said investigation turned up even more bodies which prevented the man from being executed before the investigations could be completed (which would likely take years). Even worse, the killer eventually escaped from prison and killed another woman and ended up stalking his potential love interest, [[InsufferableGenius Dr. Temperance Brennan]]]]. Seriously, nice job breaking it, hero.
* Nice job stabbing Brainiac with the knife from the Fortress of Solitude, [[{{Smallville}} Clark]]. [[spoiler: You gave Brainiac a way to interface with the Fortress and release General Zod from the Phantom Zone]].
* In about 8:23 of [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNejcj9DNd8&feature=related this clip]] from the 60s-era WorldWarTwo series, ''Combat!''. One of the characters says "Nice going, hero" after another is forced to shoot a German sentry they were supposed to take alive, not only depriving the unit of a prisoner to interrogate but also attracting the unwanted attention of even more enemy troops.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology]]
* Nice Job Opening the Box, Pandora.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Radio]]
* ''{{Halo}}'' tie-in ''{{I Love Bees}}'' ends with the gang taking out a covenant artifact and uncovering an evil plot by a power hungry man in the Earth Navy, only to [[spoiler: inadvertantly call the covenant to Earth, triggering the invasion at the beginning of ''{{Halo}} 2'' (and alerting the covenant to earth's location, making it possible for later invasions.)]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* In a ''[[DungeonsAndDragons Dungeons & Dragons]]'' adventure featured in ''Dungeon'' magazine, an evil giant living in a flying castle waged a terrible campaign of vengeance upon human towns and villages, murdering scores of innocents in the process. If the heroes killed him instead of making some sort of agreement with him, however, [[LoadBearingBoss castle dissolved]]... and [[SealedEvilInACan released an unspeakably powerful god-spawned monstrosity from its centuries-old prison.]] The monstrosity would then begin methodically and efficiently killing everything in the area, followed by everything else on the planet. Whoops.
* Urza from ''{{Magic the Gathering}}'' pretty much lives for this trope, between the sylex blast, the soul bombs and the tolarion academy he probably killed as many people as Yawgmoth did in the invasion!
** Urza's, and by extension, Mishra's, ultimate example of this page's topic was actually their shattering of the Powerstone that held closed the original portal to Phyrexia, allowing the entire next decade (or, in-world, 2,000 years) of storylines to happen, and ultimately tore down reality enough to cause a ContinuityReboot ''inside the continuity''.
* Years ago, a French tabletop RPG magazine had released a two seasons campaign for a generic {{Dystopia}} TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture setting. Season one had the players going against a NightmareFuel PsychoForHire known as ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast the Butcher]]'', who was trying to initiate [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt the biblical apocalypse]]. They were helped in their quest by a mysterious cube (no, not [[CompanionCube that kind]] of cube... OrIsIt?), which, between fast-paced action sequences in the present, allowed them to [[QuantumLeap time travel via mind-transfer]] to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. Then in season 2, it is revealed that ''The Butcher'' was really acting this way to prevent a BadFuture to occure ([[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism effectively willing to sacrifice millions of people to save billions later]]), and the players have been manipulated into opposing him all allong, the cube actually being a gift from some CosmicHorror, with which they really were setting ''worse'' what once went wrong -- and now of course they have to clean their mess, by time traveling again, this time with a cube given by ''The Butcher'', all while fighting BigBad 2 ''[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Plague]]'', a HighOctaneNightmareFuel CompleteMonster sweating BodyHorror and borderline EldritchAbomination, who is actually one of the secondary antagonists of season 1, LeftForDead by the players and "[[WasOnceAMan reconstructed]]" later -- oh, the {{Irony}}! (for extra irony, the second cube, with which the characters are supposed to fix what they spoiled, is actually much less user-friendly than the first one).
* In {{Scion}}, the titans that the titular heroes have to fight against are innately tied to nature itself, and their deaths have dramatic effects on the planet. For instance, when Odin killed the titan Ymir, it ended the ice age. One can only imagine what would happen if Gaia or Kamimusuhi, titans of birth, were to be killed.
* Among the many, [[CrapsackWorld many]] potential elements of ParanoiaFuel in the WorldOfDarkness is the potential for [[HunterTheVigil members of the Vigil]] to do this, due to the fact that most people are either genuinely ignorant of the [[BlackAndGreyMorality subtle shades of darkness]] of the supernatural, too closeminded to accept that things aren't black and white, or both. That [[WerewolfTheForsaken pack of savage shapechangers]]? They're the descendents of a long line of half-mortal half-spirits whose purpose is to keep alien totemic spirits from ripping through the fabric of reality and turning humans into puppets and food. Those [[MageTheAwakening crazed self-proclaimed mystics]]? They're actual wizards trying to restore a golden age of humanity, as well as fight off invasions from a kind of 'anti-reality'. The [[VampireTheRequiem vampires running a trendy nightclub and secretly bleeding the human clientele]]? Now the civilised vampires are gonna start being a ''lot'' more brutal in their feeding habits as they struggle to find their own prey... to say nothing of the band of [[CompleteMonster sociopathic-even-by-their-standards vampires]] who are going to take advantage of that opening to start butchering humans for the hell of it.
** Then there was ''WerewolfTheApocalypse'' from the old line, where it was made clear that the main reason [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Garou]] were doing so badly against [[CosmicHorror the Wyrm]] was because [[WellIntentionedExtremist they slew first, asked questions later]]. Their millennia-long righteous campaign of purity resulted in the extinction of three races of Changing Breeds (and one of their own tribes), the surviving Changing Breeds severely distrusting them, and a general species-wide feeling of, "Great, ''now'' what?"
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theatre]]
* ''{{Urinetown}}'' ends with the heroes triumphantly toppling the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive evil toilet monopoly]] and launching a new era of free urination. Only, as it turns out, the monopoly was right about the water shortage, the newly unrestricted flushing makes the town run dry, and almost everyone dies of thirst.
-->'''Little Sally''': What kind of a musical is this?! The good guys finally take over and then everything starts falling apart?!\\
'''Lockstock''': Like I said, Little Sally, this isn't a happy musical.\\
'''Little Sally''': [[SoundtrackDissonance But the music's so happy!]]\\
'''Lockstock''': Yes, Little Sally. Yes, it is.
** Hail Malthus!
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Toys]]
* The whole goal of the heroes in ''{{BIONICLE}}'' is to awaken the sleeping Great Spirit Mata Nui. Unfortunately, BigBad Makuta (who put Mata Nui to sleep in the first place) plays them all for {{Xanatos Sucker}}s: he allows the heroes to succeed and during a window of opportunity in the revival commits GrandTheftMe, taking control of the body of a PhysicalGod and therefore also the world's very laws of nature. Nice Job Waking It, Heroes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGames/NiceJobBreakingItHero Video Game examples can be found here]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In ''SluggyFreelance'', when Torg [[http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=990228 exorcises the demon K'Z'K out of Gwynn]], he sets K'Z'K free upon the world. Subverted in that this was actually intentional: they needed the Demon out of Gwynn so that they could use their plan on it directly and not harm her. However...
** Done again almost immediately afterwards, [[spoiler: when Riff's attempt to freeze the demon in time actually sends it ''back'' in time, creating all sorts of havoc during the middle ages]].
* In the process of defeating the big bad guy they've been chasing after, ''{{The Order of the Stick}}'' destroys a powerful interplanar Gate that he'd been trying to master. Turns out [[spoiler:that the Gate is one of a set of portals sealing away a deity-level chaos monster intent on destroying the world, and each one that gets broken brings it closer to freedom.]] However, several characters argue that letting the villain control it is worse than destroying it, hence why the second one was rigged with a self-destruct rune.
** In an example later in the comic, [[spoiler:BunnyEarsLawyer Celia manages to make a settlement with the local Thieves' Guild. While this settlement fixes a lot of their problems, part of the agreement was that LovableRogue Haley (who betrayed the Guild in the past) donates 50% of her loot to the Guild as apology. Since all this loot is part of her "get her father out of jail" fund, she is... upset, to say the least.]]
*** [[spoiler: Haley doesn't even ''have'' the loot [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0245.html anymore.]] To pay off the Guild at all she'll need to steal twice that much over again, giving 50% of the new thefts to the Guild outright and paying off the balance with the other 50%; just to end up back at zero as regards getting her father out of jail.]]
**** [[spoiler:Haley gets out of this by killing Crystal and leaving when they meet up with the rest of the group]].
** In an example earlier then the above one, [[spoiler:Miko Miyazaki chooses precisely the wrong moment to destroy the Gate of Azure City - if she had been stalled for even a few more rounds, Xykon ''and'' Redclock would be dead and Azure City wouldn't have had its highly competent leader and incredibly powerful Sorcerer to consolidate their conquest of Azure City.]]
* In the first chapter of ''GunnerkriggCourt'', Antimony helps a lost [[LivingShadow Shadow-Man]] return to his [[TheLostWoods forest home]], by assembling a Robot to escort him there (since the rules prohibited Annie from going herself). She also tells Robot that he only has to return to the Court afterwards if he wants to, so he decides to go exploring the woods. Several chapters later, Robot returns, [[DemonicPossession possessed]] by another, violent and malicious shadow-creature, and the process of stopping the shadow results in Robot getting impaled on a {{BFS}} and deactivated. A few chapters later, Annie finds out that the people of the forest have not been on good terms with the Court for the past decade, and that they [[MagicVersusScience hate technology on principle]]. Nice job completely screwing over your friend ''and'' causing a diplomatic crisis, hero.
* ''[[EightBitTheater 8-Bit Theater]]'' has a nice scene where Muffin [[spoiler:Dragoon's pet parrot (dragon)]] reveals to the light warriors that Bahamut, [[spoiler:who they had previously awakened, would only awaken when the world is about to be destroyed.]] Only Red Mage seems to care, though in retrospect any acts of "good" the Light Warriors do usually makes everything worse for someone else.
* During the "Sin City" (no, [[SinCity not that one]]) [[StoryArc arc]] of ''DominicDeegan'', Dominic reveals to The Infernomancer that the demon lord he was supposedly bound to serve didn't have control over him, meaning he didn't have to follow any orders. The Infernomancer's response? "Now I get to kill you the way I've always wanted to -- ''slowly!''"
** Not to mention the "War In Hell" arc, where Dominic helps out Karnak the whole time only to realize he probably shouldn't have been helping Karnak this whole time.
*** In his defense, Karnak's death would have also killed Szark Sturtz, since he and Karnak will linked by a wound Karnak had inflicted on Szark when the latter was a child. You really can't blame Dominic for trying to keep his best friend alive. Plus, as pointed out by Dejah, there was really no way for the war to end positively for humanity.
** And then there's Klo Tark, who started a prison break to (rather circuitously) save Dominic's life.
* In ''{{Starslip}}'', the crew (mainly Quine, though Vanderbeam initiated it) have done a Nice Job Ruining The Quel's Utopia.
** And again with the Anthelerix. Both cases were such collossal screwups that Vanderbeam has since repeatedly suggested that Quine would do a better job of doing his job if he were to just sit quietly on the Paradigm someplace where no one has to look at him.
* The party of ''DarthsAndDroids'' pretty much does this all the time, one of the most obvious being completely ruining Darth Maul's attempt to retrieve the [[{{Macguffin}} Lost Orb]]. However, if the course of the strip is in accordance with the movies sufficiently, then they also inadvertently created Darth Vader and ensured the destruction of the Jedi...to win a pod race. But in their defense, they ''did win''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In ''JackieChanAdventures'', the defeat of the first season's BigBad allows the antagonists of the second season back into the world. And [[SortingAlgorithmOfEvil he was much weaker than they were]]. Way to go, [[TheScrappy Jade]]... At the beginning of the third season Jackie himself destroys the talismans while trying to keep them away from two opposing forces, the very act of doing this causes the arc for that season.
** Although in Jade's defense, [[ItSeemedLikeAGoodIdeaAtTheTime killing Shendu seemed like a good idea at the time.]] Neither her nor Jackie knew about the SortingAlgorithmOfEvil until after the fact.
* In an episode of ''ThePowerpuffGirls'', where the three girls and Professor Utonium move to a much larger city than The City of Townsville, which is reversely named the Town of Citysville, The Powerpuff Girls think it's a good idea to continue fighting crime in their new location. After stopping a couple of robbers by destroying the bridge they were trying to get away on, the mayor of Citysville complains to them. "At what point did you think it would be a good idea to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge? Those robbers stole $4000 in cash. But it's going to cost TWO MILLIONS dollars to replace the bridge!!!" This catches the girls off guard because, in every single episode prior, plenty of buildings get destroyed Godzilla-style and nobody seems to care a thing about it, as long as the monster is gone. Moral: There is a significant difference between destroying a few buildings in the process of preventing a giant monster from razing the entire town, and stopping a pair of petty crooks.
** This is also a major part of the premise of TheMovie, where Mojo tricks the girls into helping him build his volcanoe observatory and a machine that he claims will "help the town and make it a better place" but actually helps him take over.
--->'''Bubbles:''' This isn't making the town a better place!
--->'''Mojo Jojo:''' Yes, it is... ''[[FalseReassurance for me!]]''
* ''TheSimpsons'' has a send-up of the David vs. Goliath legend, in which King David (Bart) fights Goliath Jr. (Nelson) and loses, with Goliath Jr. taking over as king. After some TrainingFromHell, he comes back and does a Nice Job of slaying the giant. The Breaking It part comes when he's told that Goliath Jr. was the best king the city had ever had, building roads, libraries, and hospitals, and David is arrested for megacide. Whoops!
** Arguably parodied in the episode ''You Only Move Twice'', when Homer takes a job in another city working for [[AxCrazy Hank]] [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Scorpio]]. Homer turns out to actually be pretty good at his job, successfully setting up the nuclear reactor Scorpio needed for his plan to succeed, and unwittingly preventing Scorpio's plans from being derailed when "[[LawyerFriendlyCameo James]] [[JamesBond Bont]]" tries to stop him. When the family moves back to Springfield, Scorpio sends Homer a thank-you note, stating that he couldn't have taken control of the East Coast without Homer's help.
* ''TransformersAnimated'' has a WhackAMole episode in which the wrong Autobot was arrested. Wasp goes on to become insane and vengeful in solitarily confinement until he finally breaks out to get revenge on Bumblebee. [[spoiler: Longarm, who's really the Decepticon ''Shockwave'', goes on to become a Prime and the head of Autobot intelligence.]] Well, [[UnusualEuphemism slag.]]
** There's also the first SeasonFinale, where Prime decides the [=AllSpark=] key isn't safe with Sari and has Ratchet hold onto it... who them loses it a couple scenes later as he was alone when trying to defend it.
* At the very end of ''BeastWars'', Optimus and the Maximals stop Megatron from destroying the Ark and the Autobots on it, preventing a time storm that would destroy the Maximals and made the Predacons dominant. They then tie Megatron to the bottom of the shuttle and bring him back to Cybertron to stand trial. All seems well until Megatron manages to break free from his shackles in a time warp, landing on Cybertron long before the Maximals, becoming a dictator and extracting the sparks of every Cybertronian on the planet, leading to the events in ''BeastMachines''.
** From the villainous perspective: according to the Beast Wars: Transmetals game, had Megatron's plan to kill Optimus Prime succeeded, there would have been no Autobot Matrix of Leadership to stop Unicron from destroying Cybertron, dooming both races.
** Silverbolt pulls this off twice in the second season. In "Bad Spark", he unthinkingly detonates the energon crystals on which Protoform X's stasis pod has crashed, heavily damaging himself and his comrades Cheetor and Optimus Primal as well as releasing the monster that would become Rampage- in fact, it's possible that the energon storm he created might have actually jolted Rampage back to life in the first place. And then, in "The Agenda", he helps Blackarachnia open the blasted-shut tunnel leading to the Ark, thus giving Megatron direct access to the Autobots and Decepticons contained within and giving him the opportunity to attempt his "destroy Optimus Prime to change reality" gambit. LoveMakesYouDumb indeed.
* Occurs twice in the second ''[[Westernanimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' series: first when the turtles "kill" the Shredder in the "Return to New York" which sparks a gang war between different factions trying to [[EvilPowerVacuum fill the power vacuum]]; the second when they steal the Heart of Tengu from The Foot to trade for a cure for the mutated Donatello. Unbeknownst to them, the Heart was the only thing binding a quintet of elemental mystics to the Foot's will; with its theft and subsequent destruction, the mystics were free to resurrect their master, the original (and demonic) Shredder.
* In an episode of ''SouthPark'', people have been spontaneously combusting. Scientist Randy Marsh discovers that this was caused by people holding in their farts, so he tells people not to hold it in. Unfortunately, the constant release of flatulence begins to cause global warming.
** Speaking of ''SouthPark''... who knew that Peruvian Pan Flute Bands were the only thing holding back the hordes of Mutant Guinea Creatures intent on destroying the Earth? [[spoiler: The Secretary of Homeland Security]], that's who.
** And who would have known that hybrid vehicles while emiting less smog, they tend to make the people who drive them emit a more obnoxious gas called ''smug''?
** The Imaginationland episodes begin with Cartman and his friends trying to capture a leprechaun (with Kyle agreeing to suck his balls if Cartman proves his claims, as per the DeadBabyComedy nature of the show), but once they capture it, the leprechaun proclaims, "I was sent to warn of a terrorist attack, but you boys have made me late. Now the terrorists will prevail! The end is near!"
* ''{{Stroker and Hoop}}'' pretty much abide by this trope, as no sooner they they think they've fixed things. It only proceeds to get worse due to their blundering.
* How could all of you missed ''JimmyNeutron''? This trope is used in EVERY EPISODE. And all of the movies. He has even came within inches of cancelling Christmas!
* In the ''JusticeLeague'' episode "The Terror Beyond", Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl find Dr. Fate and Aquaman seemingly torturing Solomon Grundy. Fate [[PoorCommunicationKills doesn't even try to explain what he's doing]], so [[LetsYouAndHimFight the Leaguers stop him by roundly kicking his and his friends' butts]]. At which point [[EldritchAbomination Ichthultu]] rips a hole between dimensions and starts wiggling its tentacles at the League. Quoth Dr. Fate: "I was trying to prevent ''that''."
** Who do the Major League Baseball official scorekeepers credit with the "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero" on that one? At first, it seems obvious that Supes, Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl get it but if Dr. Fate had simply said, "Wait, I can explain!" the whole episode probably wouldn't have happened. Stupid grey areas.
*** They both take credit, Fate for his silence and the league for jumping to conclusions.
** Justice League has a few other moments. There's the fight between Superman and Captain Marvel in "Clash" which destroys Lex's shiny new city, though [[spoiler:Lex [[BatmanGambit was expecting Superman to jump to conclusions]]. The city being destroyed was a bonus]]. Then there's the episode where their KillSat gets jacked by Luthor, fired at a populated city, and they get blamed for it. Not exactly their fault, but they did make the thing without consulting anyone.
* ''DannyPhantom'' has been [[XanatosSucker manipulated]] into doing this doing this a number of times. It usually turns out alright, but the one time it ''didn't'', someone hit the reset button.
** Sam also does this once in "Memory Blank".
* ''XavierRenegadeAngel'' is pretty much the poster boy for this trope. As Xavier's attempts to "help" people invariably lead to the deaths of hundreds.
* In the ''{{Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends}}'' movie, Frankie manages to reason with the clingy godlike friend World. And it looks like everything is solved. Until Heriman bursts into the room, takes Frankie off, and scolds World.....Who turns into a TykeBomb. Nice going, Mr H.
* ''AvatarTheLastAirbender'', season 2. Politically destabilizing [[GovernmentConspiracy Ba Sing Se]] may have felt right, but it was a very, very, bad idea.
* In ''{{X Men Evolution}}'', Magneto destroys a GiantSpider that he thinks is the second key to releasing Apocalypse. Turns out the spider was actually a guardian ''preventing'' Apocalypse from escaping. Destroying it opened the second door. Oops.
* In ''BrotherBear'', the central point of the story is that Kenai pursues and kills a bear he blames for his brother's death. Later on, he realizes to his horror [[spoiler:that was Koda's mother]].
* Coop is very good at it. In one episode of MegasXLR he finds a planet, when giant robots are enslaved by mysterious alien, and help them regain freedom. At the end of the episode it's revealed, that [[spoiler: this was a prison and he just break free to most ruthless criminals in the Universe]]. In other episode attack he used agains a villain was so strong, that [[spoiler: he ripped hole in reality and almost caused the end of the Universe]].
* In Season 4 of ''WinxClub'', [[spoiler:Bloom, Roxy and their friends finally manage to reach the forgotten island of Tir Nan Og, where all of the Earth's fairies are imprisoned, and set them free.]] Yay, awesome! Except that [[spoiler:Morganna, the Queen of Fairies, has decided that HumansAreBastards and that they deserve to be destroyed for ruining the Earth and for not believing in magic any more. And all the other fairies agree with her, and have now declared the Winx girls to be their enemies for not going along.]] Oops.
**Don't forget the CGI movie. [[spoiler:In the end Bloom and Sky destroy the Omega Dimension in order to destroy the spirits of the Three Ancient Witches and free the King and Queen of Sparx (as well as restore said planet to normal). However unknown to our heroines this also frees the spirits of the Tree Ancient Witches to seek out and possess (or simply team up with) their descendants the Trix.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Real Life]]
[[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/RealLife/NiceJobBreakingItHero Examples can be found here.]]
[[/folder]]

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