Hoist By His Own Petard / Web Original

Often a Death Trope, so expect to see unmarked spoilers ahead.

Internet creators don't have all the time and money professionals have, so the same plan the villains devise often doubles as their own demise.

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• In one episode of Achievement Hunter's Things to Do in Minecraft, Geoff and Gavin create the Hop Till You Drop maze and takes glee in watching the other Achievement Hunters falling into the lava pit below. Flash forward to Let's Play Minecraft episode 44 and Geoff is the first one to find and mine the Tower of Pimps. A bad step causes Geoff to throw an Ender Pearl wildly. Where does it land? The lava pit, taking him out AND losing the Tower, forcing them to redo it over again.
  • In an episode of GO!, Geoff turns Ray's perfectionism against him as the latter is forced to choose a game using his primary Xbox Live account ("BrownMan" instead of his secondary "FluttershySucks"). The problem is is that Ray doesn't like having games left uncompleted on his account and thus he's left in an conundrum as he can't choose a game that he can't easily complete.
    • Another episode of GO! had Gavin win around because everyone else chose South Park: The Stick of Truth and were hit with a major update patch, allowing Gavin to coast to victory.
  • While the members of Achievement Hunter were playing a game of Uno on the Xbox One, Gavin Free suggests that they play the game to 500 points, the maximum. This is the result.
• The Adventure Zone: Balance:
  • Taako possesses a weapon called the Umbra Staff, a wand disguised as an umbrella which eats the magical essence of a defeated enemy spellcaster. This usually just involves the staff eating the target's wand. Lup, Taako's sister and the creator of the staff, is a lich, a creature formed when a magic user fuses their soul with their magical essence, leaving them immortal beings made of raw arcane energy. But since the staff eats arcane energy, when she's killed with it in her possession, it devours her lich-form and traps her inside.
  • A meta-example occurs when Griffin decides to add the Flaming Raging Poisoning Sword of Doom to the game as a shout-out to an eight year-old fan, but ensures the party would never be able to obtain it by pricing it at a whopping 60.000 gold pieces. He severely underestimated Taako, however, who manages to con Garfield into giving it to them for a fraction of the price. It's used liberally in the final battle, and is a Game-Breaker unlike any other.
• Afterlife SMP: Lizzie's attempts to trick and lure her server-mates into traps have never seemed to end well.
  • In an attempt to conquer the End-dimension, Raccoon Lizzie tricks a bunch of people into jumping into the End-portal with her, by dropping them all down a chute into the portal. However, she didn't take into account the fact that nine people, including one Giant, wouldn't all fit on the tiny 3×3 spawn platform, and she winds up getting pushed into the Void, leading to the server's first death.
  • In an attempt to create an "inescapable" escape room to trap several unsuspecting victims inside, Enigma Lizzie creates a "boat race" for them while pretending to be a pirate captain, and while her trap succeeds briefly, the moment she phases through the walls of the room with her Enigma powers, a shoal of Guardians ambush and kill her.
• Season 6 of Arby 'n' the Chief introduces the character, Justin. Revealed to be the mastermind behind the console banning hacks that Arbiter, Master Chief, Chaos Theosis and Trent Donnovich have been using in seasons 5 and 6. When Justin presents Trent with network crippling software, guess who Arbiter takes out first?
• ATTACK on MIKA: Gozumi runs off when Iketa catches her squeezing Saki's broken leg and shows her the CCTV recordings of her abuse. However, as Gozumi threatened to ruin them both, she slipped down the stairs and broke her legs.
• DSBT InsaniT: If anyone gets a hold of Stephanie's mic, they can use her brainwashing music to their advantage.
• Etra chan saw it!: Azami discriminates against Yuzuriha because she grew up in Southeast Asia, even using offensive slurs like "pig woman" and "illegal resident." Yuzuriha feigns ignorance of her harmful words, as she relearned Japanese when she returned to Japan, and she rewrites Azami's slurs in a calligraphy club at the annual festival to show people how her mother-in-law treated her. This results in Azami becoming despised by the neighborhood and her entire family cutting ties with her.
• In the Dwarf Fortress Let's Play, Boatmurdered, the players create a Doomsday Device that floods the area around the fortress with lava (and frequently use it against elephants and other enemies). In the end, they accidentally (?) burn an incoming trade caravan with it, set the fortress on fire, and as a result the inhabitants go mad and start killing each other (and/or just walk into the fire).
• In the College Humor spoof of Inglourious Basterds, Nazi colonel Hans Landa is an extreme stickler for grammar who becomes increasingly frustrated with Monsieur La Padite's grammatical errors and unwillingness to cooperate with him. Triumphant with his discovery that there are Jews hiding under La Padite's floorboards, Landa mistakenly utters a dangling participle and chooses to commit suicide out of shame.
• Critical Role: In the Mighty Nein's first fight against Lorenzo, Molly attempted to use his Blood Maledict to give Lorenzo disadvantage, but because of an unluckily high damage roll, accidentally knocked himself out in the process. It then looped around to Lorenzo's turn, who took the opportunity to stab Molly through the chest, killing him instantly.
• DarkMatter2525 has this YouTube video where Jeffrey, God's assistant, asks him to stop teasing the atheists before he sentences them to hell, just because they didn't believe in him. God mocks this, by saying "they should have known" that an intelligent being such as themselves, had to have a creator. Jeffrey asks God who created him. He denies He has a creator. Jeffrey asks God if He is intelligent, and when He admits it, Jeffrey points out God is making the logical fallacy of "Special pleading," and hypocrisy, condemning those who did not believe the very thing he doesn't, either. This starts an argument so upsetting, that both kill each other. Hilarity Ensues when they appear before God's God to have God answer for His sins, including not believing in His creator!
• When Jace of Deagle Nation plays The Sims 3, he builds a 20 foot high wall around his "gamer mansion" in order to keep the "Team Gamerfood terrorists" out. This comes back to bite him in the ass when, after the house catches on fire, the wall prevents the firemen from coming into the house.
• This has happened in DEATH BATTLE! several times:
  • Taizo Hori kills White Bomberman with his own bomb.
  • Similarly, Rainbow Dash defeats Starscream by tricking his own guided missiles into hitting him instead of her.
  • A double dose in Dr. Wily vs. Dr. Eggman. Eggman uses Metal Sonic against his opponent, and Wily unleashes the Roboenza virus as a counter, which leads to Metal Sonic going on an indiscriminate rampage and both their demises.
  • Toph crushes Gaara to death with his own sand armor.
  • Scrooge McDuck kills Shovel Knight with his own shovel.
  • While it did take some set up, King Dedede kills Wario via his own Waft by plugging a Gordo up his butt.
  • Blake kills Mikasa with Mikasa's own Thunder Spear.
  • Silver the Hedgehog does this constantly against Xeno Trunks during their fight via repeatedly redirecting his attacks back. This includes the killing blow, where Silver warps Trunk's Keysword behind his foe and lets him get impaled and temporally erased by his own intended finisher. The hosts note in the aftermath the former's ability to effectively invoke this at will was a major advantage in his favor.
  • The Doctor vs Rick Sanchez: While the Doctor is the one who introduces the D-Mat Gun into the fight, Rick is ultimately the one who fires it, and it's Rick's portals that allow the Doctor to redirect the shot and erase Rick from time for the victory.
  • The Spin-off, Death Race, has two linked ones happen in quick succession in the final episode: Mario offs himself by accident with a Bob-omb, which in turn causes Sonic to inadvertently off himself with his own Blue Shell, as it locked onto him when Mario died. Notably, these two are the ONLY Death Race combatants to, accidentally or otherwise, kill themselves during a race (Optimus Prime killed himself at the end of episode 2, but that was AFTER he had won the race).
• In the Dingo Doodles "Fool's Gold" campaign the ancient Foreclaimer empire created legions of soul-powered mechanical constructs to serve as an army and Xanu, an artificial god meant to be a Perfect Being. For years they experimented on Xanu to ensure he was truly perfect until he decided to wipe out the entire race. Using his mastery over souls, Xanu simultaneously took control of the constructs located in every Foreclaimer settlement and would have exterminated them in a single night if the survivors hadn't fled through a portal.
• The Mosasaurus in Dinosaurs Battle World Championship sends the Spinosaurus flying towards some giant stalactites, but the Spinosaurus manages to break some and they all drop onto the Mosasaurus, with the biggest one impaling it to death.
• Dream: At the end of the first Death Swap, George goes to the Nether, intending to jump into a lava lake at the last second before the next swap and leave Dream to burn. Dream, however, has an enchanted golden apple, which he uses to survive the lava. He then spends five minutes sitting in the lava, intending to just have George die in the very lava he tried to kill Dream with. Dream even lampshades it.
  Dream: I'm just gonna throw you back into your own lava!
• Fat, French and Fabulous describes the fate of William J. A Bailey, a Harvard dropout who claimed to be a doctor and got rich selling quack radiation therapies, including the radioendocrinator, a dangerous radiation source worn directly against the body (specifically the abdomen or the scrotum) and supposedly treated the endocrine system. Bailey himself was a passionate user of the radioendocrinator and eventually died of bladder cancer.
• In Fear, Loathing and Gumbo on the Campaign Trail '72, this happens to President Rumsfield when he is accused of being mentally unfit, having a "nervous breakdown", during his impeachment proceedings and is dragged away to one of the same mental hospitals that he himself locked many of his political opponents in.
• Game Grumps: Jon insists when playing the first Donkey Kong Country that he isn't going to go after secrets for a few reasons. The playthrough of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest ends with a shitload of tension because Jon neglected to hunt for lives, forcing them to scrape for 1-Ups at the last minute.
• Goodbye Kitty: Black Kitty's deaths are often caused by this.
• Homestar Runner: In "Kick-A-Ball!", Homestar ends up winning the kickball game because, thanks to a "double side-mouth whisper draft", Strong Sad was actually on his team the whole time. Strong Bad brags that this means Homestar cheated, but it turns out Strong Bad edited the rulebook back in 1989 so that double side-mouth whisper drafts were "quite legal".
  Strong Bad: Aw, the ding and the dang! The Cheat! I told you to check our Cheaters' Almanac to make sure we didn't step on any of our own cheat-toes!
• How to Hero features a villain from the 60s named Lady Richter who could create earthquakes. Some historical reports claim that she met her demise when one of her earthquakes destroyed her hideout while she was still inside it.
• Played for Laughs in If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device where The Emperor of Mankind challenges his right-hand man Little Kitten to a children's card game and forces him to win lest he and his fellow Custodes be banished... to Ultramar. The Emperor gives Little Kitten a deck based on his personality and typecasting (read: a deck of weak, cutesy monsters) so The Emperor's own powerful deck would beat Little Kitten in with a deck out if he survived a single turn with his powerful monster. It just so happens that Little Kitten's deck is the "Weenie Beasts" deck, a deck that uses the effects of weak monsters and cards to make them extremely strong and clears out the opponent's field for a one-turn-kill... the same thing the Emperor attempted. Once again, The Emperor's arrogance has caused trouble for him.
• Ink City: Trevor plotted to paralyze Yakko and Rigby so he could experiment on them. Instead, he wound up trapped within his own paralyzing fluid. Rigby then broadcast a video of this latest kidnapping attempt to the City at large as proof of Trevor's nature; Trevor had previously used a video of Rigby attacking him to damage his friendship with Phoenix and paint himself as the victim.
• Kickassia has Benzaie try to use Beary as a grenade launcher, but spends too much time saying farewell, that the grenades explodes in his face.
• Kitboga is a scambaiter popular on Twitch and YouTube. One of the standard tactics of refund scammers is to claim that they will lose their job unless the target gives them back the excess money that they refunded, typically via gift cards. So, in this video, Kitboga claims that he is Kelly from a company's Human Resources department. Then, when the scammer asks "Kelly" to go get gift cards, she tells him that if he wants her to do this, then he needs to do her job, which involves calling up various employees and getting their responses to a survey regarding their job satisfaction. Although he does some of this, when he fails to fill out and submit the form properly over multiple calls, she tells him that she has lost her job. At this point, he calls a number which he thinks goes to Kelly's boss, but which is actually Kitboga himself using his own voice, admitting that he's a scammer and telling the boss that he was the one doing the surveys and that he was taking advantage of Kelly and not to fire her. He then calls "Kelly" back and tells her that he's saved her job, only to say that he was lying to the boss about being a scammer and he still needs gift cards from her. Kitboga, unamused, eventually tells him as Kelly that not only has she lost her job, but now she's in legal trouble for giving a criminal company information and access to a company computer system.
• Marble Hornets has the Big Bad of the series, Alex, being dragged off by the Operator after being defeated by Tim, just like how he sacrificed people to the Operator to save himself.
• Meta Runner:
  • Lucks had spent nearly two years covering up the fate of Lucinia, even willing to threaten and lie to the media and even his own Meta Runners just to keep it secret. Not only do his misdeeds eventually get exposed, but he ends up getting killed when Dr. Sheridan, the man who Lucks allowed to run his dangerous experiments unchecked and start this whole dilemma in the first place, takes control of Masa’s Meta Runner arm and shoots him point blank in the head. And for extra irony, Sheridan uses the exact same gun Lucks did to shoot off Masa’s original arm.
  • Dr. Sheridan himself is subject to this too. It’s stated that Sheridan had been anonymously selling Meta Bugs, computer chips capable of causing technology to malfunction, with him using one to make Masa kill Lucks. Among the people he sold the Meta Bugs to was Masa, who used one to cheat in a competition against Marco so he could get a replacement Meta Runner arm. In the Grand Finale, Marco gets hold of Sheridan and uses a box of Meta Bugs to electrocute Sheridan to death until all that remains is his charred corpse.
• In MSF High, for the first female-to-male TG in the comic.
• In chapter 5 of the Neopian Times story Revenge, during a Yooyuball game, Alex uses her sling to hurl a potion at Naqasa that will turn her into a hideous mutant Usul. However, Naqasa's brother Q'tai is also playing and throws his ball to hit the potion and send it flying in Alex's direction so that she gets drenched with it instead.
• Nigel and Marmalade :
  • A rare heroic case: Nigel is well intentioned and tries to use his powers for good. But being an Hero with an F in Good it usually ends up poorly for the people he tries to help. And yes, that includes him when, for some reason, he casts his own spell on himself or on his house. Repeatedly.
  • A more traditional villain case with the Prank Wizard. He uses a magic balloon to prank Marmalade and send him into the sky, not caring the danger of the situation. So, in return, in one of the few occurrences where Nigel actually does magic exactly how he wants, he turns the Prank Wizard into a balloon himself to go save Marmalade.
• In Noob Season 2 finale, Master Zen calls a Game Master on Arthéon and Sparadrap for possession of the hacked staff. When the Game Master shows up, he reveals that possession of hacked equipment no longer ban-worthy due the fact that the game authorities have realized that it was involuntary on the player's part. Master Zen's reaction is to take the cheated staff and try using it against Sparadrap and Arthéon, and act which is still forbidden. This scene is the equivalent of calling the police on someone for misconduct, having it transpire that the misconduct was involuntary, then having the person who called the police doing something arrest-worthy while the agent is still present.
• Nyx Crossing features a fight scene in episode 3. Frank pulls out a knife to fight one of the natives, but it gets turned against him, and Frank ends up with a serious injury.
• Party Crashers:
  • In "Mario Party but the Magic Conch COMMANDS US", Nick asks if he can not get a Star during the last 3 turns of the game, banking on the Conch telling him "no". He ends up skipping 2 Stars due to the Conch replying "yes" to every question he asked. It isn’t until his very last attempt on the final turn of the game when the Magic Conch finally gives him the "no" he’s been looking for, in spite of insistence from the others that he would have gotten the Star much more easily had he just asked normally.
  • In "Mario Party 3 is the MOST TOXIC, and this game proves why...", Brent receives the Wacky Watch from Toad early on in the game, a rare item that causes the game to immediately go to the last 5 turns. He ultimately decides to use it on turn 20 (despite having a guaranteed victory) to add 5 more turns to the game just to show off the item. This ends up costing him the game as Nick manages to overtake him in Stars during those extra 5 turns.
• In Fkin Meteos, The Odd One, as Brolaf, was caught trying to kill the enemy pink by Leona, he then got hit by the enemy Ahri's Q, which gives her movement speed every time she cast it, causing her to be more aggressive, which ultimately resulted her getting caught by TOO's axe and get herself killed by Irelia.
  TheOddone: That's right, I've just Ahri's movement speed bonus AGAINST HER.
• The Questport Chronicles: The mysterious mage falls victim to a nasty cycle of Addictive Magic and a life-draining Amplifier Artifact.
• In Reds!: A Revolutionary Timeline:
  • When the socialist Worker's Party wins the 1932 US election by a landslide, President Herbert Hoover, at the urging of Douglas MacArthur, decides the suspend the Constitution, declare the whole election void, and order the Worker's Party members arrested. This creates such a storm of outrage amongst the public and the military that it leads to the very socialist revolution the capitalist powers were hoping to avoid. End result: the capitalists get their asses kicked out of the USA (which becomes the UASR) and MacArthur becomes President Evil of the US government in exile.
  • Henry Ford flees the UASR to Germany, where he becomes Hitler's chief armament minister. His arrogance and belief in Nazi superiority leads him to put his marque on everything his company builds, including weapons produced with slave labour. When Germany is defeated, he's unable to deny his very obvious role in Nazi atrocities, and gets no mercy from the UASR.
• The space pirates in Red vs. Blue use an alien structure as a tractor beam to crash ships and strip them for parts. Later on the Reds and Blue's send their trainees to take control of it and crash the pirates' own captured ship.
• While Let's Playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii, The Runaway Guys frequently abuse the bubble mechanic. This can backfire when the sole player who's not bubbled winds up dying. In particular, Episode 14 illustrates this well — in part by being the first episode of that Let's Play that had to be broken up into two videos due to its length...
• RWBY:
  • Nolan's shock weapon unwittingly buffs Nora, whose Semblance channels electricity to give her Super-Strength. She takes him out with a single strike.
    • This happens again in a much more serious battle during Volume 5. Hazel, who's empowered himself with lightning dust, grabs Nora by the head and tries to finish her via electrocution. Nora screams in agony... and then breaks out of his grip and tosses him across the room due to the massive strength boost said electrocution gave her. His attempt to charge at her again is met by her promptly smashing him with her hammer so hard he's knocked through a wall and out of the building they were fighting in.
  • Dew, Gwen, and Nebula try to take advantage of Neptune's fear of water by gathering knee-deep in it. Unbeknownst to them, Neptune's weapon can channel electricity, so he sticks it in the water to defeat them in a single strike.
  • During the Flynt and Neon tournament fight with Weiss and Yang, Neon constantly taunts Yang to make her angry. However, Yang's power-up is connected to her temper; when she finally explodes, she destroys the arena. Neon's speed-enhancing rollerblades trip over the rubble, leading to her defeat.
  • Adam's character short reveals Ghira was extremely critical of Adam's violent, lethal actions against antagonistic humans. Sienna defends him and supports the Faunus interpreting him as a hero. She takes him on missions, grooms his rise through the ranks, gives him command of the Vale branch, and hopes to see him one day stand beside her throne. He instead pursues his own agenda, pushes White Fang violence beyond Sienna's tolerance levels, murdering and replacing her when she confronts him in Volume 5.
• RWBY Chibi: Floyd is so bad at coming up with evil plans to antagonise the heroes that every time he tries, his plans blow up in his face. Examples include him possessing a stack of pancakes, only to be eaten by Nora and possessing a Hallowe'en pumpkin, only to be baked into a pie by Ruby and Yang.
• Dslyecxi, the founder of the gaming clan Shack Tactical, has occasionally run into this. For example, in the first minute of his ARMA video Hip Shooting, Dslyecxi shoots down an enemy helicopter by Sniping the Cockpit... only to realize in horror seconds later that it's going to crash right next to him, which will possibly kill him and nearby friendly units too. Months later in another video after a string of similar incidents, he would joke that he made a Deal with the Devil that allows him to do things like shoot down helicopters with unguided missiles... but only if the helicopters then land on friendly units.
  Dslyecxi: (after seeing that the helicopter he shot down is about to crash right next to him) Oooh boy. I regret that. (teammates scream in fear, the helicopter crashes and blows up, killing or wounding multiple people, including Dslyecxi)
• Tom Scott's story, Single Point of Failure, is set off when one of Google's five trusted users sabotages their password code to, effectively, let anyone into any Google account without a password. Most of the story focuses on the devastating effects this has, but at the end, almost as an afterthought, he mentions that she ended up arrested when her getaway flight was delayed — because the airport ran on Google Apps.
• Secret Life SMP: Mumbo gets this twice on Day 6. His task as a Yellow of being Grian's horrible butler causes him to purposefully get on a Strider with no means of controlling it and no means of safely dismounting. He miraculously shifts off it in a way that causes him to land on Grian's hastily-placed netherrack rather than the lava, only to walk too far and immediately fall off into the lava to his death anyway. Later in the session, he's eliminated by the fence posts he placed the previous session preventing him from escaping the Warden.
• SMPLive: While chasing Poke around at spawn, Cooper falls victim to one of his own pitfall traps.
• In Strong Bad Email, Strong Bad attempts to humiliate everyone at the local prom with a device that will make everyone's pants disappear. However, it turns out that he's the only one who actually wears pants, so he's the only one humiliated.
• SMG4:
  • Francis, the main antagonist of the Anime Arc, ends up getting killed by one of his own machines, called the Ink Zuccer, which he used to forcefully extract ink from inklings in order to fuel Inkweaver. Plus, even if that didn’t kill him, one of the beings he created from Inkweaver self-destructing certainly would have.
  • Series Big Bad SMG3 frequently gets defeated by his own machinations. Notably, his final defeat in War of the Fat Italians 2020 (prior to his Heel–Face Turn) has him get banished to the Internet Graveyard by Susan using the YouTube Remote, the very item he had been using for the entire arc.
  • Throughout the Revelations Arc, the Box Club Leader had been seeking the God Box, a gigantic box in the Great Beyond that supposedly will grant him unlimited power. In SMG4 Movie: Revelations, he finds the God Box and jumps right in, before having a Super-Power Meltdown and being incinerated as he’s unable to handle the power.
  • During SMG4 Movie: Western Spaghetti, One-Shot Wren had been using a simulation machine gifted to him by the Mysterious TV Guy as a Lotus-Eater Machine, trapping the gang inside. Once the gang escapes, Wren tries to prevent them from leaving, trying to bring the simulation into the real world. The instability of this causes the machine to collapse, with him still inside.
• Tolarian Community College: Played for Laughs during Jace's appointment with The Professor, wherein he attempts to wipe Prof's short-term memory. It backfires, and he erases his own memory. TWICE.
• Unwanted Houseguest: In the comic Dr. Tigani is killed by the X-Ray machine he intended to use on Melody.
• Sociopathic Hero Jobe of the Whateley Universe created a serum that would let him turn women into his dream girl - a drow hottie with incredible regeneration abilities. Yep, you guessed it. He accidentally received an injection. In addition, just to rub it in, the amazing regeneration means he can't find a way to turn back to his old self.
  • Power mimic Counterpoint has this happen to him more than once in the Whateley Universe. In a holographic simulation, the version of Counterpoint attacks Phase to steal Phase's powers; but Phase figures out how to use his density-changing powers to kill someone with density-changing powers. Counterpoint beats up Chaka to get Chaka's Ki-manipulation power; but Counterpoint can't use both yin and yang (he's a very masculine god of war) and so the built-up yin in his system nearly kills him before Chaka saves him. And then he tangles with Jobe...
• Worm:
  • Alexandria tried to gaslight Taylor into lashing out in a way that would ruin her credibility. However she was gauging how hard she needed to push to get this reaction based off Taylor's body language, not realizing Taylor was shunting those reactions into her swarm to stay composed. As such Alexandria was caught off-guard when Taylor snapped and successfully smothered her.
  • Jack Slash suffers a Fate Worse than Death at the hands of Gray Boy, who he had cloned in the first place to replace the original. In addition, Golem, the hero that orchestrated these events, is in fact Theo Anders, who Jack had challenged to kill him two years previously.

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