Disaster Dominoes in Live-Action TV.
- Air Crash Investigation: It's basically one long sequence of these. For example, Crash of the Century (the story of the Tenerife disaster of 1977; see Real Life section for details) has the dominoes from lack of ground radar, an overloaded airport, bad communication, foggy weather and a captain too eager to take off.
- On the episode "Arrhythmia" of Almost Human, a former police DRN unit riding with Kennex and Dorian jumps out of Kennex's car to arrest a man he thinks is a fugitive. This results in an SUV rolling forward down a hill and smashing into a parked car which hits a fire hydrant which is blown into the air and hits a police drone which is damaged and thrown out of control, ricocheting off a building and smashing into a police android who is stopped nearby writing a ticket and carrying him through the door of a third vehicle. Kennex and Dorian watch the entire thing unable to say anything.
- In Alphas, Marcus is able to deliberately engineer these situations, thanks to his ability to intuitively understand how everything around him will act and react. He throws a single quarter and causes a four-car pileup in the opening scene, and that's just for starters.
- Breaking Bad: the Twist Ending of Season 2 goes something like this: protagonist Walter White dislikes his partner Jesse's girlfriend, Jane Margolis, who has gotten him addicted to heroin; Jane blackmails Walter with the threat of revealing his drug dealing to his family and the police; Walter visits Jesse's flat to try to make amends, and finds both of them asleep; while trying to wake Jesse, Walter accidentally rolls Jane over onto her back, whereupon she starts choking on her own vomit; Walter deliberately fails to intervene, allowing her to die; Jane's father Don is distraught and takes some time off work; he returns to his job as an air traffic controller several weeks later; he becomes distracted at work due to his grief over Jane's death, as a result of which he accidentally issues incorrect directions to two planes, resulting in a mid-air collision which kills 167 people. Viewers are generally in agreement that Walter's actions indirectly led to the plane crash, but opinions are sharply divided on whether it's appropriate to actually blame him for the crash (which the show appears to).
- In the fourth season of Castle, it's the entire plot of a Double Episode where a CIA mathematician found a small, almost insignificant action that will trigger World War III. After the Detectives manage to prevent the thing that starts it (the assassination of a child), Castle asks Beckett if she thinks the Disaster Dominoes was real. She concludes that they saved a child, and that's good enough.
- Every second or third episode of CASUAL+Y is based around this idea. In the first episode of 2012 for example, a dog escapes from a back garden, this leads to a major traffic accident taking out 5 or 6 cars, which leads to one man being delayed in stopping a suicide attempt, in trying to save the suicide victim and dealing with the traffic caused by an accident, a gas main is accidentally destroyed causing an explosion which rips apart a housing estate. This in turn causes some nearby chemical drums to burst, creating a huge cloud of Hydrogen chloride, which ends up getting into the drain system causing part of the town to be evacuated. We end up seeing several hundred people affected by various burns. All this happens on the same morning that the A&E department first reopens after a major fire so all the equipment is new and most of it untested. And this is just one episode.
- Community: In The Darkest Timeline in "Remedial Chaos Theory", Troy hurriedly leaves the apartment for the pizza delivery — he dislodges the rolling boulder from the "Raiders" set model which lands on the floor — Annie trips on it and falls into the coffee table, smashing Pierce's bottle of overproof rum — Pierce jumps up from the game table and Annie's purse hits the floor — a gun inside it fires, shooting Pierce in the thigh and hitting an artery — as the others frantically try to stop the bleeding Britta steps out of the bathroom, and as she gapes in alarm the marijuana cigarette she's smoking falls and ignites the rum. Eventually, one is dead, one is driven mad from guilt, one lapses into chronic drunkenness, one's larynx is destroyed, one loses an arm in the fire, one thinks they should invade the Prime Timeline, and one dyes a strand of her hair blue.
- In the Corner Gas episode "Telescope Trouble," Hank borrows Wanda's TV. As he's walking down the porch steps with it, he bumps into her birdbath and breaks it. This causes the TV to fly out of his arms... right through the window of Wanda's car. And this cycle only repeats itself. Hank decides to get Wanda a new birdbath. He leaves it outside the gas station, where Wanda promptly bumps into it while trying to carry her large telescope. The birdbath breaks and the telescope flies through Brent's car window.
- In the CSI episode "Loco Motives", an ordinary man begins by dropping a bowl of Jell-O and ends up accidentally killing his wife and neighbor and is caught when he gets stuck in quick-set concrete trying to bury his wife's body. After his crime, his pocket is picked and he loses a bet with Brass (and confesses) when his neighbor's daughter accidentally identifies him as he is being released.
- The Day Britain Stopped, a 2003 BBC Mockumentary, presents a scenario where a chain reaction of events envelops the UK's transportation system. Specifically:
- A deadly train accident in Edinburgh causes the rail unions to go on strike just as the Christmas travel rush is starting, forcing the country's commuters to travel by road instead of rail.
- On the day the strike begins, an accident on the M25 motorway forces its closure in both directions, leading to massive congestion which soon affects the M23 as well. Attempts at relieving the gridlock are hampered by a lack of coordination amongst police forces.
- A second accident on the M25, this time near Heathrow Airport, causes a pile-up and even further gridlock, leading to the total closure of the motorway and all major arterial roads to and within London grinding to a halt. Thousands are stranded on the M6 and M40, making Manchester and Birmingham unreachable.
- The first fatality of the evening is a patient who dies after their ambulance fails to reach the hospital through the stalled traffic. Many stranded motorists begin to suffer from hypothermia, leading to five deaths. The authorities are forced to set up triage centers next to the motorways.
- The heavy traffic delays force air traffic controllers, already barely coping with the Christmas rush, to work double and triple shifts. One of these overworked controllers accidentally causes a midair collision which results in 87 deaths and extensive damage to the residential area beneath the flight path.
- Disasters at Sea: One example being the sinking of the MV Derbyshire, where water entering a ventilation shaft pulled the bow downward, resulting in water being able to enter Hatch #1, which dipped the bow enough for waves to reach Hatch #2, then Hatch #3, then Hatch #4…
- The Doctor in the House franchise featured numerous examples over the years, but perhaps the most noteworthy happens in the climax of "Honeymoon Special" from Doctor in Charge. Drs. Stuart-Clark and Collier put Dr. Bingham's leg in plaster as a prank before he leaves on his honeymoon, and Dr. Waring is forced to drive Bingham and his wife to their honeymoon hotel in a hired car and then stay the night; when the prank is revealed, he forces Collier to come to the hotel with a set of plaster cutters. Collier nearly misses the turn for the hotel, and reverses his car into a ditch as he tries to correct his mistake. As he forgets the plaster cutters in the car, the other doctors try to pull it out with Bingham driving the hired car, but his plastered foot gets stuck on the accelerator, dragging both cars on a wild ride down country roads and stopping on a level crossing — just as the barriers lower for an oncoming train. A mad scramble ensues to get the cars off the crossing in time, but then the still plaster-encased Bingham gets his foot stuck under the rails... fortunately, the train is going in the other direction and he is unharmed. (Collier's car gets front-ended by the other car, however, and his leg really does get broken in the impact.)
- Doctor Who: The favorite technique of the Eighth Doctor across every medium he's portrayed in, who's stories put him somewhere on a sliding scale between this trope and the Rube Goldberg device in direct contrast to the Fourth Doctor who was more of a Spanner in the Works and the Seventh, who was portrayed as The Chessmaster.
- "Vampire Science" for example has him inciting a faction war between moderate and extremist vampires while investigating a murder, facing a showdown where death is certain, and then killing off all the vampires without lifting a finger and saving the only sympathetic figure whilst his companion wonders if he just got everything he wanted accidentally or if it was an intricate plan.
- "Seasons of Fear" has him undermining an invincible roman for thousands of years while he slowly goes insane from having the Doctor show up at his every moment of triumph to stop him until at the end, he is accidentally thrown back in time and his younger self is horrified and the entire story is rendered moot, the disaster dominoes coming from this being the distortion in time that allows beings made up of the erased possibilities and distortions of the timeline to invade the normal timeline and eventually breaks the universe that started with the first story in the series. Oops.
- In "Night of the Doctor", this trait came back to bite him when ignoring the universal war throughout time and space in the background that he caused by visiting a planet accidentally 7 lives ago ends up indirectly killing him and leaving him distraught, depressed and alone.
- In the second season Ever Decreasing Circles episode "Housework", Schedule Fanatic Martin concocts an ambitious plan to give his house a complete spring clean from top to bottom while his wife is in hospital recovering from surgery. He meticulously schedules both the cleaning and his usual Sunday "to do" list of planning the neighbourhood's group social activities, but his lack of housework experience means things soon go wrong: He overloads the washing machine, and when he hears it jolting across the kitchen floor, he takes his eyes off a carpet shampooer for just long enough for it to swamp the entire hallway with foam. As he tries feebly to clean up the foam with a dustpan and brush, he stops paying attention to the absurdly large amount of rice he is boiling for his lunch, which soon covers half the top of the cooker. His attempts to vacuum up the rice lead to the vacuum cleaner breaking, and when he tries putting the remaining rice down the kitchen sink, it quickly becomes clogged. Finally, his nerves completely frayed thanks to both the housework chaos and a neighbour who won't stop calling him with questions about forthcoming social activities, he throws a porkchop into a plastic tub and puts it in the oven to cook for dinner; the melting plastic soon fills the entire kitchen with smoke, and the oven is ruined.
- Everybody Loves Raymond: The Season 6 episode 'Tissues'. Ray complains that his wife won't allow him to make household decisions, like the style of kitchen curtains to buy, and she gives him more freedom. His decisions are all criticized by the family: the garden hose is too short, the tissues he buys are oily, etc. Later, he is alone in the kitchen and distracted by a phone call, when every decision he made contributes to the chaos. The oily tissues catch fire, which spreads quickly because of a flammable bug spray he purchased. Ray scrambles for his hose, which doesn't reach the kitchen. Finally, Debra stops the domino rally by grabbing a fire extinguisher she purchased and putting out the flames.
- Family Matters:
- This is pretty much guaranteed to happen any time Steve walks into a room.
- When Steve introduces his aunt Una to the Winslows they ask her how she's doing, prompting her to tell them about an unfortunate disaster. When asked how the disaster happened, she explains that it was the result of a previous disaster. This repeats until eventually Steve stops the questions by saying: "Don't bother. It's quicksand."
- Father Ted attempts to bang out a minor dent in a new car with a hammer. After a cut, all four windows are now smashed and bits of metal are hanging off it. Dougal comments that he almost had it for a while there.
- Happens to Basil Fawlty in every episode of Fawlty Towers.
- In The Flash (2014), Becky Sharpe (a.k.a. Hazard) can do it, both intentionally and unintentionally, thanks to her luck manipulation ability. During her second appearance, a trio of other metas are about to attack her. She tells them "good luck with that" and activates her power. Here's the sequence: a rat runs across a prison yard control panel, activating a spotlight; the light blinds Mina, causing her to lose control of the metal eagle she's sending at Becky; the eagle smashes into Rundine, who is send flying at a bench press; the overturned weights knock out Ramsey Deacon. Just then, Amunet shows up. Becky starts another chain: Amunet lowers the rifle of a guard; the guard accidentally fires a gas grenade at her feet; Amunet starts feeling the effects of the gas and falls, while spinning and accidentally firing her metal shards, killing all of the guards.
- Although a pretty frequent occurrence on Frasier, one notable example involves Niles preparing for a date. It begins with Niles noticing a tiny crease in his trousers. It ends with Niles unconscious without pants and Frasier's apartment on fire.
- Subverted in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air when Carlton says they're falling into "the domino effect", and foresees a chain of events that will end with (paraphrasing) "Dad getting fired and all of us having to work at Domino's to make a living".
- Fringe:
- In the episode "The Plateau", a man puts a pen on a mailbox. Another man eating nearby leans over to examine the pen as it falls a few moments later. A bike messenger swerves to avoid him, and crashes into a fruit stand. Meanwhile, a woman walks out of a florist's shop next to the incident. A hobo tries to grab some of the fallen fruit and gets in an argument with the vendor, which distracts a bus driver coming down the street. He does not see the woman as she steps out into the street and collides with her, killing her instantly. The man who left the pen in the first place actually planned all of it.
- Another such chain is narrowly subverted only because Olivia does something very stupid and thus actually avoids the final danger that would have killed her. This Olivia is from an alternate universe and does not know all the proper safety protocols.
- This is the plot of the How I Met Your Mother "Lucky Penny":
- Ted finds a 60s penny in the subway.
- He invites Robin for hot dogs using the penny and they come across a Bridal Boutique store on the way home.
- Lily decides to camp out next to the store with Robin in order to be first when it opens.
- After being tired of waiting outside, Robin goes to Ted's apartment and accidentally scares Marshall who is training for the marathon, causing him to fall down and break his toe.
- Marshall's toe injury leads to a bet with Barney that he will take Marshall's place in the marathon. Despite having done no training, Barney completes the marathon and gets a free subway ride, only to become paralyzed and physically incapable of leaving the subway.
- Ted, trying to rescue him, accidentally jumps off the subway turnstile and is sent to court causing him to miss the flight for his dream job in Chicago.
- Joan of Arcadia had one at the end of the first season episode "Jump".
- Kamen Rider Den-O's Ryotaro Nogami has this sort of thing happen to him on a regular basis. His very first appearance in the series has him stuck on his bike at the top of a tree; a flashback shows that he lost control of the bike just as a sign fell over, launching him skyward. When someone comes by with a ladder to help, he replies that he's used to this sort of thing.
- London's Burning often used this trope to lead up to the moment when the Fire Brigade were called. One especially memorable episode took place at a school fete: A man goes to refuel a petrol generator without turning it off, spills some on the hot engine components and causes a huge fireball, setting himself and a nearby canvas marquee alight in the process. In the ensuing blind panic a man tries to move his Range Rover away from the fire, failing to notice that a guy-rope has become snagged on its towing hitch until he brings another marquee tent down on top of several people, including a couple of volunteers who were cooking hotdogs on a gas barbecue inside. Said barbecue then causes that tent to catch on fire as well.
- German comedian Vicco von Bülow, better known as Loriot, did a classic sketch
that starts with him trying to straighten a picture hanging askew and ends in the destruction of every item of furniture in the room. - Lucifer (2016): The angel Uriel has the ability to see all possible futures. At the start of one episode, he's shown rearranging the position of a skateboard slightly. A mother trips on the skateboard, goes to yell at her son about it, causing their dog to run out of the house, causing a car to swerve and impact the car driven by Detective Chloe Decker.
- In a sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus, a man is waiting in a room for someone, and a piece of furniture inexplicably falls apart. By the end, a butler, a maid, the man he's waiting for, and a policeman are all dead, and then the house inexplicably collapses, and he's left standing in the middle of the rubble, saying, "Sorry!"
- Ms. Marvel (2022): After her powers activate at AvengerCon, Kamala Khan accidentally knocks the head off of a Gi-Ant Man statue. It proceeds to roll across the convention floor, wreaking havoc, until it causes a giant Mjolnir to break free of the wall and come swinging down, smacking right into Zoe Zimmer.
- This happens in one sketch on the One-Episode Wonder sketch show Out of the Trees written by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman. A young couple pick a flower from a peony shrub, and this sets in motion a chain of events that ends with the world blowing up.
- The Game Show Play the Percentages had an odd form of this, relating to format changes it went through — after the first week, part of the display in the Bonus Round stopped working, but rather than fix it, the producers (Barry & Enright) decided to change the rules instead — in turn, more and more of the rules were changed, until the whole format was overhauled into essentially a clone of B&E's infamous 21; the show ended after only one season (popular consensus amongst game show fans is that the second format is a downgrade from the first, and the show would've lasted longer had they just fixed the bonus round display and left the format alone).
- Psych: Gus finds his boss's corpse clutching an angry resignation letter that Gus wrote earlier that day. He panics and pries open the man's fist to eat the note, making himself look even guiltier in the process. This is followed by accidentally trashing the entire office and roping Shawn into the mess. By the time they leave the office, many of the boss's belongings have been ruined and the corpse has fallen onto the floor (now without socks because Shawn got blood on them).
- Red Dwarf:
- The accident which caused the deaths of 99.9% of the crew of was described in the novels as happening this way. In the show, the accident is simply Rimmer screwing up fixing the drive plate. In the novels, Rimmer's not involved at all. Instead, a technician on the ship's bridge fails to notice the warning lights going off because he spilled his coffee on the console, and doesn't bother to check. As a result, massive radiation leak spreads through damn near the whole ship and kills everyone but Lister.
- The way Lister accidentally causes the death of Cassandra (a computer that predicts future) is a hilarious example of this trope. Lister tries to defy Cassandra (who has a 100% accuracy rating on prediction) saying he'll kill her. As he leaves the room, he puts a piece of gum on the wall. It fails to stick, and lands on a switch which turns on a fan which knocks over a glass of water, which falls onto some cables which are connected to Cassanda and then... BOOM. Cassandra's only act before dying is to give Lister an exasperated look of "told you."
Lister: ... smeg. - Used frequently on Seinfeld. In one episode George accidentally got his coworker fired and then got his position. Kramer promised a little kid a Yankees baseball player would catch a fly ball in his hat, Elaine ruined her friendship with her cousin, several New-Yorkers missed their wake-up calls, and Seinfeld broke up with the aforementioned cousin due to her bad cooking. The trigger event was Jerry eating a grapefruit.
- The series finale is another prime example. If only Kramer didn't go to the beach and get water stuck in his ear...
- Sister, Sister: Lisa causes one of these to happen when she picks an apple at the supermarket at the end of one episode. The apples roll and cause some shoppers to trip, and one employee on a ladder is forced to cling to a banner during the disaster that ensues.
- Frank Spencer (Michael Crawford) of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em is one of British television's great Walking Disaster Areas, and had a flair for setting off disaster dominoes. Perhaps the crowning example is the 1973 episode "Have a Break, Take a Husband", in which he starts by tearing a hole in the cheap linoleum of the hotel room in which he and his wife Betty are staying for their second honeymoon. By the end of the episode, through a combination of his own ineptitude and the room's shoddy construction, he has torn a floor mat in half, broken several drawers apart, broken the door off the wardrobe, smashed a hole through the floor in the middle of the room, convinced a nervous fellow guest that his dead grandfather is trying to contact him, put two more holes in the floor under the bed, ripped the washbasin from the wall, and demolished the hotel bar.
- In Squid Game, in the first game "Red Light Green Light", Player 324 getting "eliminated" from the game has everyone realizing that being eliminated means being fatally shot. Most of the deaths in this game are the result of everyone panicking and attempting to escape, setting off the motion detectors more and getting themselves shot.
- Happens multiple times in The Worst Year of My Life, Again, as Alex seems to have a talent for causing this kind of event. In the final episode, a pair of bathers hit Parker in the face and get flung away, causing a chain of events that knocks multiple people into the pool.
- An interesting variation from an episode of The X-Files titled "The Goldberg Variation": a man unconsciously causes improbable chains of events to happen around him. However, the results are always good for him — for example, knocking out the mobsters who are after his wife and freeing him from the closet they'd locked him in. He can't control this ability, and usually doesn't even begin the specific chain of events. However, his good fortune means that in order to balance the cosmic scales, almost anyone around him is just as likely to suffer from something horrible happening to them as a direct consequence.
