Self Fulfilling Prophecy - Television Tropes & Idioms

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alt title(s): Self Fulfilling Prophecies

What's really going to burn your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?
- The Oracle, The Matrix

Sokka: Hey, you. I bet Aunt Wu told you to wear those red shoes, didn't she?
Red Shoed Man: Yeah, she said I'd be wearing red shoes when I met my true love.
Sokka: Uh-huh. And how many times have you worn those shoes since you got that fortune?
Red Shoed Man: Everyday.
Sokka: THEN OF COURSE IT'S GOING TO COME TRUE!
Red Shoed Man: Really? You think so? I'm so excited!

- Avatar The Last Airbender

One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
- Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda

Whenever anyone tries to avert a prophecy, for good or ill, the end result of their actions is to bring the prophecy about. The harder he struggles to prevent it, the more inescapable his destiny becomes. Fate, it seems, loves irony.

When a hero tries to prevent the prophesied release of an ancient evil, his actions will help it escape because You Cant Fight Fate. When the Big Bad tries to kill its prophesied nemesis before he can become a threat, it will only manage to create the hero it fears, Because Destiny Says So.

One common mechanism for this is a Prophecy Twist. If no one understands the real meaning of the prophecy, any attempts to avert it will naturally be futile. A cynic will point out that by this measure, a prophecy must be vague. Otherwise how to defeat it would be easy, or else those it affects must carry an Idiot Ball and not take the direct approach that would have no room for failure.

The archetypal Older Than Dirt example is the myth of Oedipus. A prophecy says the king will be killed by his own son, so the king orders his infant son killed. (He has him crippled and abandoned in the wilderness, instead of just breaking his neck.) Oedipus is rescued, and brought up not knowing he's the prince. Twenty years later he learns his fate: he will kill his father and marry his mother. Wanting to protect his adoptive family — who he believes are his natural parents — Oedipus leaves home. On the road, he doesn't recognize his father, gets into an argument, and kills him. Shortly thereafter he comes to the city his father ruled, and frees them from the Sphinx; as a reward Oedipus is made king of the city and marries the widowed queen...his own mother. The other version of this myth involves Oedipus becoming an athlete, and a thrown discus killing his father, who was watching, by pure coincidence.

Most of the real-world prophecies that come true are also self-fulfilling — simply stating that something will happen often ensures that it will happen someday, whether by accident or because someone read your prophecy and decided he'd make it happen. An example sometimes given is that a prediction of a bank becoming insolvent becomes true because everyone tries to withdraw their money from the bank, which (since the bank uses fractional-reserve banking) they don't have at that moment (they'd have to recall all the loans they'd given), and this then causes the bank to become insolvent. Another popular example is the fear that there will be a shortage of a commodity (especially gas). Everybody stocks up on the commodity, resulting in a shortage. Viewers Are Morons, after all.

Compare Prophetic Fallacy. Often an integral part of Tragedy. May cause a Clingy Mac Guffin.

Examples:

Fairy Tales

In The Fish and the Ring, Vasilii the Unlucky, The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs, The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, and many other fairy tales, a man who discovers finds his child doomed to marry a poor child tries to kill them with many tasks, before and after the wedding. It never works.
In Sun, Moon, and Talia, an older variant of Sleeping Beauty, wise men prophesy that Talia will be harmed by flax. Her father therefore orders it all kept of the castle — which means Talia doesn't know what it is and finds it intriguing.
In Madame d'Aulnoy's Princess Rosette, the fairies (reluctantly) predict that the princess will cause grave danger, or even death, to her older brothers. So her parents lock her in a tower. When they die, her brothers immediately free her. She learns that people eat peacocks and, in her innocence, resolves to marry the King of the Peacocks. Her loving brothers try to bring this about and end up in grave danger (though they do survive).

Live Action TV

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Prophecy Girl": The Master is freed by drinking Buffy's blood, but she went to fight him only because of the prophecy.
Another Buffy The Vampire Slayer example from "Help": Cassie's prophetic abilities convince her she is going to die. Naturally, this causes her no small amount of stress. Despite Buffy saving her from demons and deathtraps, she dies from an aggravated heart condition. Aggravated no doubt by the aforementioned belief she was going to die, the demons, and the deathtraps. She was convinced she would die, and so she died.
Subverted in one episode of Xena Warrior Princess, in which a particular child is destined to take a king's throne, and the obligatory evil councillor tries to use the prophecy to start a civil war which will put the baby on the throne and himself in place as regent. Eventually, the king marries the baby's mother, and so the prophecy is fulfilled: The baby is now heir to his father's throne.
Often used in conjunction with time travel. For example, a classic Twilight Zone episode involves a man traveling back in time and attempting to prevent a small town fire he knows will happen. Instead, his actions end up causing the fire.
- Another involves a Jewish man finding himself in control of a young Hitler's body. The man immediately sets out making Hitler's life miserable, even trying to drown him at one point. After the man returns to his own time, Hitler laments at how this evil Jew has ruined his life, and vows revenge.
Thats So Raven. Most of the episodes revolve around the tried-and-tested formula of vision > attempt to stop vision > vision happens because of attempt.
Heroes is full of these. Especially Isaac Mendez' comic book 9th Wonders, which depicts Hiro and Ando doing things like renting a car... and after Hiro finds the comic, he follows it to the letter, because he is shown doing it in the comic; but Isaac had only drawn it that way because he had seen Hiro in his visions of the future.
- Before that, he reads a comic in which he saves a little girl. He does, but only after putting her in danger in the first place.
- Even Sylar, after he steals Isaac's precognition power, does things like killing Ted and impersonating Nathan to get the presidency solely because he had painted himself doing it.
Done, though never identified as such, on Angel in the case of Sahjan and Connor. Sahjan read a prophecy that Angel's son would grow up and kill him. He tried to get rid of him by sealing him in an inescapable Hell Dimension, where time moved faster so that after only a few weeks on earth, Connor would have died of old age there. He escaped grown up, a few days later, and killed him a year on earth after that. Additionally, because of his meddling he spent the intervening time locked in an urn.
- The false prophecy that Angel would kill Connor that prompted Wesley to kidnap then infant Connor from Angel in the first place is also an example. The kidnapping was the event that triggered the tragic chain of events that made up most of season 4 and culminated in Angel killing Connor to save a bunch of hostages. Thanks to a Deal With The Devil, Connor got better.
Averted in one episode of Stargate Atlantis, the crew meets a man who can tell the future (correctly) and even show his visions to other people. The team suggests that they are Self Fulfilling Prophecies, however even events that could not have been self fulfilled through the prophecy turn out to be true.

Film

The entire plot of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. This was done to contrast with Luke later being confronted by the same sorts of troubling prophesies, but ultimately deciding to Screw Destiny and avoid the path his father took.
In The Matrix quote above, The Oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. Neo turns around to see what vase she's talking about, and in the process knocks it over.
- As a more serious theme, however, it's subverted when Neo, The Messiah "prophesied" by the Machines to perpetuate a cycle of death and rebirth of Zion that had repeated several times before, he rebelled against the prophesy and later broke the cycle.
- Another self-fulfilling prophecy, Trinity said that the oracle had told her she, Trinity, would fall in love with the guy who was The One from the prophecies. When Trinity fell in love with Neo, she used this to justify her belief that Neo was The One. But maybe she only fell in love with him because she thought he was The One? She was so fixated on the idea of the prophecy that she was unable to fall in love with anyone else, but once Morpheus announced Neo as The Chosen One, Trinity wanted desperately to believe in it.
- Similarly, when the Oracle told Neo that he wasn't The One the first time he met her, she was probably speaking the truth. He wasn't. Not at that point in time, anyway. But by giving him the choice, to chose whether he wanted to rise to the challenge or not, he became exactly what she wanted and did what she needed him to do.
  - The Oracle was a memetic program designed to understand and manipulate human emotions. Go figure. The Architect even admitted that the whole religious prophecy crap was just another control mechanism.
  - It's mentioned that the Oracle may see the future, but she usually doesn't tell the future. That is, she doesn't tell the Zionites what the future actually holds. She just tells them what they need to hear in order for that future to come about. Case in point: She told Neo he wasn't the One because that would lead him to realizing he was. Presumably, if she'd just said, "Yes, you're the One," things wouldn't have worked out so well.
  - Case more in point, she told Neo "no, not in this life". And then he dies, and gets resurrected in blatant Christian metaphor, and at that point he becomes the One. And, of course, gets himself crucified a few films later.
  - Or this is a complete subversion, because this was a Self Denying Prophecy. The only way to make Neo become The One was to tell him that he's not. Neo is really the king of reverse psychology.
The bank insolvency example was mentioned in Sneakers.
- A recent real life example of this was seen in the UK with Northern Rock. The bank quietly asked the Bank of England if they could have an extended overdraft (effectively), even though they didn't actually need it at that point. Word got out, leading to every branch in the country being besieged by savers desperate to take all their money out before the bank collapsed - which it wasn't in danger of doing until people panicked.
- In a similar example, also from the UK in recent weeks, a two-day strike at an oil refinery in Scotland wouldn't have affected petrol distribution in the slightest as several days' reserves are stored off-site. However, as soon as news of the strike got out, queues appeared at petrol stations all over the country - even those areas which got their petrol from completely different refineries. This of course meant they sold out of petrol quickly, leading to local news stations running stories about petrol stations running short, which led to more people trying to fill up before the nationwide fuel drought struck their beloved motor...
In the first Terminator film, John Connor would not have been conceived if the T-800 hadn't traveled back in time and attempted to kill his mom.
- Similarly, in the third film he likely wouldn't have been in position to survive a nuclear war and assume command of the widespread human survivors (or get together with his future wife and second-in-command) if the T-X had simply gotten on with covertly helping the rise of Skynet and left him alone.
  - What third film?
In Willow, the local evil sorceress inadvertently causes her own downfall by trying to kill the infant prophesied to... well, be her downfall.
- This troper seems to vaguely remember something about an ancient king who did roughly the same thing, with the same results. Something about a slave baby left in the willows and raised as a prince in the king's own household. It all ended horribly, with plagues and all the slaves up and leaving to go form their own country. Actually, as this troper remembers a bit more. As it turned out, the descendants of those slaves are still alive today.
  - It was left in the reeds, If I recall correctly
Subverted in The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari: Cesare predicts that Alan has until dawn to live, and then goes and ensures the accuracy of his prediction. With a knife.
Minority Report exemplifies this trope.
In Wanted the Loom of Fate ( I dare you to say it with a stright face) is also the case. It makes Sloan an agent of Chaos by marking his name, how Sloan didn't want to eff himself, he started to use the world of the Loom of Fate as for his gain (since it wanted him dead), since he was the only one who interpreted it. Then (presumably) the Loom of Fate marks every member of the Secret Brotherhood because they're working for Sloan. One tries to say Screw Destiny, but is effed by the Action Girl just after (and then she effs herself... with the same bullet, in the same shot).

Literature

In Split Infinity, the protagonist eventually ends up killing the Red Sorceress, primarily out of self defense. Turns out that the only reason she was attacking him, is because of a prophecy that said he would kill her. Oops. This is later revealed to be a Xanatos Roulette by an overly sentient computer.
Done with a Prophecy Twist in the Star Trek New Frontier novel "Martyr". A prophet 500 years in the past predicts the savior of his people will come when certain events happen. When those events do happen, Captain Calhoun is revered as that Savior.. The Twist? The actual Savior is the man who thinks he's appointed to kill the Savior, whose traits include a scar (which Calhoun has...and gives the appointee while he's struggling). He does kill the Savior—himself—accidentally. And then it's subverted by the fact that The prophet was cheating by using Advanced Alien Technology to look into the future.
In Fire Logic an army attacks the peaceful Ashawala'i people because an oracle told them that someone from there would defeat them. Naturally, the lone survivor does just that because they killed off her people.
Inverted in I Claudius. A prophecy is made that Caligula (yup, that one) can "no more become Emperor that he can ride across the bay from Baiae to Puteoli". One of Caligula's first acts as Emperor involves a very long bridge...
Subverted and lampshaded in Calderon's Life is a Dream, where Segismund - subject of an Oedipus Rex type prophecy - points out that it would be a Self Fulfilling Prophecy, while preventing it from getting fulfilled.
My father, who is here to evade the fury
Of my proud nature, made me a wild beast:
So when I, by my birth of gallant stock,
My generous blood, and inbred grace and valour,
Might well have proved both gentle and forebearing,
The very mode of life to which he forced me,
The sort of bringing up I had to bear
Sufficed to make me savage in my passions.
What a strange method of restraining them!
In the Harry Potter books, Voldemort hears half of a prophecy about a boy about to be born who will be his nemesis. With two possible choices, he chooses Harry, but in the process of trying to kill him, gives him both the power to defy him and a reason to. What's the best way to turn an otherwise unimportant young wizard into your mortal enemy who's well-equipped to defeat you? Well, murdering his parents and spending the better part of a decade sticking him in convoluted death traps is not a bad start.
In the Wheel Of Time series Mat learns he would marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Much later, she comes across him trying to flee from a city and has to be tied up. When Mat finds out what she is, having already learned the hard way that You Can't Fight Fate, he changes his mind about hiding her in the lofts and kidnaps her instead. And much later, Tuon only completes the marriage ceremony Mat accidentally started because of the marriage prophecy she got.
Greek Mythology adores this trope. A prophecy that Paris will cause Troy to burn down? His parents abandon him in a remote area, but he gets found and raised by someone else, eventually returns home by which time his parents have forgotten the prophecy, and due to things he did when abandoned, causes a long chain of events that ends with Troy burning. Many times this trope in Greek Mythology results in an Idiot Plot; for example, Chronos (father of many of the Greek gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades), in an attempt to avert the prophecy that one of his children will overcome him, decides to swallow them as soon as they're born. His wife finally gets tired of it and smuggles the sixth (Zeus) off after he's born, tricking Chronos into swallowing a rock instead. After growing up, Zeus defeats Chronos and frees his siblings. Now, rather than eating the children when they're born, wouldn't it have been far more logical to just not have any children in the first place?
- Given the lack of contraceptives, even divine ones, that would entail keeping it in his toga. And how many of the Greek gods ever did that?
  - None, especially considering that it was the Romans who wore Togas!
- Greek tragedy often revolves around the idea that You Cant Fight Fate. Those who attempt to do so suffer grisly punishments for their hubris. If you consider Oepidus et al., Paris got off lightly.
- Then there's King Croesus, who was told that if he attacked his neighbor, a great empire would fall. Think about that for a moment—obviously it's going to come true, since whichever empire lost the war would fall. Croesus just didn't consider that it might be his empire...
- See also the myth of Perseus' birth. See, the oracle at Delphi told King Acrisius that his grandson would kill him, so he decided to prevent his daughter Danae from ever bearing a son by locking her up in a brass tower, where her weeping drew the attention of Zeus...
- In addition, this is not helped by the fact that in ancient Greek times, it was considered a huge sin to kill your own family directly, no matter what the circumstances. So, most rulers and such didn't really have a choice in leaving their children out in the wilderness.
Paycheck offers examples of these as reasons why the machine that sees into the future is a really bad idea.
- Specifically, the machine sees in the future that there will be a plague. So, leaders use the machine to see who will get the plague, round them all up and keep them together to prevent it from spreading. Surprise! They all get the plague. The machine predicts a war with another country, so leaders launch a pre-emptive strike against the evil country and the result is a war. By seeing the future, the leaders create the future, which they then see. It's weird and circular, but makes sense: the machine doesn't so much see the future, it sees the future that the machine will create merely by existing.

Western Animation

Kung Fu Panda has the Old Master Oogway warning that he had a premonition that the villainous Tai Lung will escape his prison. Master Shifu has a bird messenger sent to the prison to increase the security, when he gets there, he inadvertently proves the essential element that puts Oogway's premonition in motion and Tai Lung escapes. Oogway even tries to warn Shifu of this possibility before the fact.
- Arguably, Tai Lung's descent into darkness is itself something of a Self Fulfilling Prophecy: if Oogway had not foreseen such darkness in him and denied him the Dragon Scroll, he would not have gone mad with desire for power and sought to steal it. And the snow leopard would never have believed himself destined for it in the first place if a) his father-figure Shifu hadn't filled his head with dreams about it and b) he hadn't been given a name which rings the knell of destiny.
  - Yet, he actually GETS the scroll during the last fight, and Po goes as far as explaining to him the meaning of the scroll. Considering his violent and not so smart reaction after that Oogway may have had a point.
  - This editor more saw Tai Lung's reaction as a refusal to believe the truth, because it would mean he'd wasted twenty years of his life for nothing since he didn't need the scroll to prove he was a great warrior himself. To find out the goal you had, in his own words, broken bones to achieve, was actually unnecessary would make anyone pissed. Anger and darkness aren't the same thing. In any case, this just proves him to be stubborn and proud, not inherently evil or unworthy. And it'd be nice to think, if he survived the fight, that Tai Lung would have calmed down afterward and realized the wisdom of what Po told him.
There's an old cartoon this troper used to watch, where the empress went after a pair of "twins" who were prophesied to be her downfall. The prophecy was that the people would turn against her when they saw how mean was to two innocent kids.

Video Games

Overlord Zetta from Makai Kingdom receives a prophecy from an oracle that his Netherworld will be destroyed. In an attempt to Screw Destiny, Zetta hunts down and consults the 'sacred tome' - a book in which "everything pertaining to his Netherworld" is recorded - only to find that it states that his own stupidity has doomed the Netherworld. Insulted, Zetta responds by burning the book to a crisp, consequently un-recording the whole Netherworld in the process and fulfilling the prophecy (as seen here).
- Would it still be a self-fulfilling prophecy if the book wanted Zetta to do this?
This is the plot of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Zelda has a vision that Ganondorf will take the Triforce from its hiding place sealed within the Golden Realm, sends Link to preemptively collect the Mc Guffins sealing the Golden Realm that Ganondorf has been attempting to obtain, and of course Gannondorf follows Link into the Golden Realm and takes the Triforce when Link unseals it. This sort of thing happens a lot in the series.
Similar to the Willow example, Kamek targets the newly born Mario brothers because of a prediction that the brothers will be trouble for the Koopas. However, he only managed to kidnap Baby Luigi, while Baby Mario ended up in the hands of the Yoshis. The Yoshi's decide to help Baby Mario rescue his twin, which leads to the first defeat of then baby Bowser.

Tabletop Games

In Warhammer 40k, the primarch Horus gets infected with a damonic plaque that causes him to fall into a coma and get visions of the future from the Chaos Gods. In the visions he sees a world where the Emperor is worshiped as a god and his name is not mentioned anywhere. This, combined with his anger about the Emperor returning to Earth and leaving him and the other primarchs fighting to expand the Imperium, causes him to turn to Chaos and start a civil war that nearly destroys the Imperium. As a result of the war (known as the Horus Heresy), 10000 years later the mortally wounded Emperor, now confined in the life-supporting Golden Throne, is venerated as a god and the names of Horus and other traitorous primarchs have been removed from Imperial records.

Web Comics

Durkon in Order Of The Stick has one of these in his background. He's going to cause bad things to happen when next he returns to the dwarven kingdoms, so his bosses send him away without telling him why, and tell him never to return. But he would never have really been able to return if he hadn't left. (Handwaved when they pointed out the possibility of him buying groceries or somesuch.)
- The kobold Oracle, on the other hand has prophesised that Durkon WILL return home... Albeit posthumously. Meaning that the 'bad things' may for instance be due to him not being able to defend the place or simply that his own death and the subsequent mourning may be those 'bad things
- The dwarven clerics lampshade this (not exact words since this Troper doesn't have the book with him):
Dwarven cleric 1: 'Tis risky business screwing with prophecy.
Dwarven cleric 2: Aye, don't I know it.

Real Life

Economics: Investors' fears of a downturn in the stock market are one of the most common reasons for a downturn in the stock market.
Plain old paranoia: The more paranoid, the more likely you are to make yourself some enemies.
- If you become so paranoid that people start actively hating you as a result, are you still paranoid or just really insightful?
  - Remember, it's not paranoia if they really are all out to get you.
There are many people of the Christian persuasion actively trying to bring about the events of the book of Revelation. Apparently none of them is wondering whether this means interfering with God's plans.
- They probably think they are doing God's work with His blessing, conveniently forgetting that Pride is one of those Seven Deadly Sins that's frowned on in the Bible.
  - The Seven Deadly Sins aren't actually in the bible (at least not formally, but there's probably some point at which excessive pride is spoken out against)
Both Jews and Christians donate money to organizations dedicated to building the third temple in order to usher in the foretold Messianic era. However, exactly what happens during the "Messianic era" depends on which side you ask. Will it be as foretold in Ezekiel, with God reinstating the Aaronic priesthood, the temple sacrifices, and taking the Jewish people under His proverbial wing again? Or will it be as in Revelation, with the golden cube-city of New Jerusalem descending from the heavens to bring God's eternal presence to Earth? Only time will tell...
- "Many" Christians is more then a little exagerrated. This troper has never met, read, heard, or even known the name of anyone who believes in trying to "bring about the end times" and he is more familiar with Christians then most tropers here. Most of what this troper has heard about this idea has come from outsiders.
Banking Runs are considered to be often impacted by the perception of a bank being solvent. In reality most banks can't withstand all of their liquid money being hit at once. The FDIC knows this, and their list of banks most likely to fail is considered to be top secret since publishing the list will cause runs on those banks and cause them to fail.
A disturbing number of US politicians have argued that there is no need to protect the environment because the world is ending soon. Uh, guys...