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alt title(s): Xanatos Backfire
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"If I've learned anything from movies about evil robots, and I have, it's that inventors siding with their own sinister robots eventually get betrayed and pulled apart while screaming, 'You can't do this to me! I created you! You are my perfect creatioaACCKK!'"
"Violence, in truth, recoils upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit he has dug for another."
The villain's own weapon is the cause of his downfall/death. Mad Scientists who create monsters and/or a Weapon Of Mass Destruction are particularly vulnerable to this type of death, as are wielders of unique or unusual weapons.
A form of Death By Irony that can free a hero of having to kill their enemies, a la Self-Disposing Villain.
If the villain is using the weapon at the time, it can also be a Karmic Death.
The term comes, slightly mutated, from Shakespeare: "For 'tis the sport to have the enginer / Hoist with his owne petard" - Hamlet, Act III, scene iv, in which Hamlet plans to have his two schoolfellows, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, executed instead of him on order of King Claudius. A "petard" is an explosive device (basically a bucket full of gunpowder) intended to demolish gates and fortified walls; being too close to the detonating explosive could well toss the engineer into the air. Thus, it refers to being undone by one's own trap.
It was the Petardiers assistant who tended to bite the dust with their task of navigating the battle field with a large amount of unstable explosives harnessed to themselves, getting to the target and deploying the petard and getting away, assuming it did not spontaneously detonate en route.
Quoted from Backyard Ballistics by William Gurstelle: "There was a big problem with fifteenth-century petards; namely, they were more dangerous to the maker than they were to the target. The petards were fairly crude devices and not usually made with any real care or precision. Therefore, they were prone to explode prematurely. When an unfortunate commando was blown sky-high by a premature petard blast, the enemy troops watching from the ramparts joked that he had been 'hoisted'.
French armies first developed the petard concept. In fact, the word 'petard' comes from the French word 'peter,' meaning 'to break wind,' or to put less delicately but more accurately, 'to fart.'". Or, in other words, its use in Hamlet is yet another of Old Willie's sly Double Entendres. Or maybe the French just wanted to fart in their general direction. (To quote Schlock Mercenary: "the word 'petard' was only successfully inserted into English lexicon with the help of William Shakespeare, who nowadays has most of us thinking it was some sort of a polearm you could get wedgied with.")
If an Eldritch Abomination, God Of Evil or otherwise supernatural evil entity gets Punched Out by the same powers it gave, you have a Faustian Rebellion in action. If it's an Ancient Conspiracy, Government Conspiracy or other organisation whose Applied Phlebotinum is empowering the one who will bring them down, you have a Phlebotinum Rebel. If it's a Mook, long abused, who finally snaps and turns against him at the last moment, it's The Dog Bites Back.
Compare Nice Job Fixing It Villain and Beat Them At Their Own Game (a video game variation on this).
As a Death Trope, all Spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Soukou No Strain kills off Medlock by having Ralph override her ship and order her own killer robots to tear her apart. The real irony is that she had recently turned good, and the good guys assumed she got out safely like they did and didn't think anything of looking for her...
- Many Sailor Moon characters died this way (in fact, the protagonists themselves rarely kill anyone, except for monsters-of-the-week) — at least when they were not offed by the Big Bad for their constant failures, betrayed by their peers, or redeemed. Kunzite died of his own reflected attack; Mimete died when she used a machine built by Eudial, whom she killed; Tellu was eaten by the giant plant she summoned; Viluy had her Nanomachines turn against her and "erase" her; Cyprine and Ptilol (regarded as one person) were tricked into blasting each other, and Sailor Lead Crow was sucked into the black hole that she tried to use against Sailor Moon.
- In the second season of Yu-Gi-Oh, when Yugi dueled Marik's mind-slave
Steve the mime Strings, the only way he was able to beat his invincible card setup was to use it to his own advantage so that his monster would be destroyed and regenerated an infinite number of times within a single turn, and due to one of the effects Marik had on the field, Strings was forced to keep drawing cards from his deck every time the monster regenerated, until he ran out of cards and lost the duel by default.
- In Negima, Negi used the same power Rakan tried to use on him. It failed to keep him down for the count though.
- Dragonball Z
- A good example of the monster variety: Babidi is done in by Majin Buu (while Buu was his father's creation, not his own, he intentionally released him).
- Frieza was cut in half by his own attack which led to his first demise (though he got better later on).
- Once in a movie and once in the series, Garlic Jr. opens a hole to the Dead Zone, an empty dimension, to try to capture our heroes. No points for guessing what happens both times. Even worse, being immortal, the Dead Zone is the ONLY known thing which could potentially defeat him. And he let it be used against himself TWICE. He was asking for it, really.
- Dr. Gero, twice (in the "real" timeline and in the future timeline).
- And in Dragon Ball, Tao Pai Pai got blown up by his own grenade, as Goku kicked it back to him (although like Freeza, he got better later on.)
- In Rurouni Kenshin the puppetmaster Gein surrounds Aoshi with oil soaked wires that he lights causing a forest fire. Aoshi uses Onmyô Hasshi to hit Gein with a Kodachi, and reveals that he has tied a wire Gein had left during the battle. Gein begs him not to kill him but Aoshi pulls Gein into the fire Gein had set himself killing him. Aoshi escapes the fire by using a hole he had dug earlier.
- In an early episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed does battle with an alchemist who transmutes a sword and is later impaled by it. Needless to say, he doesn't get better. This also shows up much later in the Brotherhood series when one of the generals awakens the Mannequin Soldiers so they can take back the city. They promptly eat him.
- The main villains of both the first and second anime are pretty done in like this too. In the 2003 version Dante, tired of Gluttony's whining over the loss of Lust and needing him to make a Philosopher Stone. Transmutes his reason away and turns him into a mindless monster. After her plans are thwarted however and she tries to escapes, Gluttony comes after her very hungry and unresponsive to her pleas. In the second anime (and manga canon) We actually get two villains who do this. The first is Pride who earlier eats Kimblee (long story) and adds him to his Philosopher Stone. But later in his fight with Ed, Kimblee now apart of him, prevents Pride from trying to steal Ed's body. Delaying him long enough for Ed to turn the process back on Pride and crush his body. The second is Father Who succeeds in his plan to obtain "God" in his body. But as the fight goes on his stone starts to run out and his body can't hold it in. He gets desperate and tries to takes Greed's stone but this only success in letting Greed use his power to turn Father's body to charcoal. Allowing Ed to deliver the final blow and "God" imploding Father.
- Manga Wrath on 2 counts. His ultimate eye's sensitivity & his sword reflecting the light of an eclipse.
- Naruto:
- Gato, the gangster who hired Zabuza and Haku, gets slaughtered by Zabuza.
- Zaku ended up having his arms blown up by his own air tubes he used for attacks which were inside of them when he used them after Shino snuck some of his bugs up into them, clogging it.
- Sasori the puppet master gets impaled by his first creations, puppets made to look like his own parents, wielded by his own grandmother. She suggests that the human heart left in him made him hesitate upon seeing them rushing toward him, rather than dodge it.
- She only suggests that he could have dodged. Frankly, looking back on the fight, it kind of seems as though he may have been planning to kill just Sakura & then allow himself to be done in.
- In filler news, two of the three Jannin from the Land of Greens arc were whacked by having their own powers used against them. The first was Gentle Fist'd by Hinata in a way that smothers him in his own magnetic powder, effectively making his jutsu into a ball of suck by breaking the "off" switch; and the second had his ice-crystal death ray reflected back at him by Naruto's headband.
- Almost happened to Deidara when Sasuke pinned him to his explosive clay bird with two large shurikens and sent the bird plummeting down to a minefield he had set earlier, but he manages to escape.
- Kisame suffers this twice. First, his own sword Samehada betrays him for Killerbee/the Eight-Tails because he fed it so much of his chakra while they fought. Then it turns out that the huge water jutsu he used to drain the Eight-Tails chakra and trap Killerbee attracted the attention of Raikage and company. Raikage and Killerbee (rejuvenated by the chakra Samehada just gave him) promptly team up to decapitate Kisame. While this was Just As Planned, even he said it worked a little too well.
- In The Prince Of Tennis, Hajime Mizuki attempts to use Yuuta Fuji's desire to defeat his hated-loved older brother Shuusuke, by (among other things) teaching him a Deadly Upgrade-type skill that could seriously injure him - without telling the kid about the last detail. Well, when it's Mizuki's time to play against the older Fuji, the other deliberately gives him the advantage... and then completely trashes him, all because he's pissed off at Mizuki for the way he treated Yuuta.
- In the Grand Finale of Mai-HiME, after the ObsidianLord sheds his host body and reveals his true Eldritch Abomination form, he taunts the heroine and says that as long as the HiME Star (supposedly the prime source of the violence that's surrounded their school) hangs in the sky above their school, he will keep regenerating. Cue about a dozen charging, re-energized HiME and one blown-the-heck-up celestial being, leaving him wide open to be blasted into oblivion.
- Fate/Stay Night: It is already ironic that Kirei Kotomine was killed with the Azoth dagger he gave Rin years before. What is even more interesting is that the dagger was given to him in the prequel by Rin's father, Tokiomi Tohsaka who was Kirei's teacher. It was then used to stab Tokiomi by Kirei while Tohsaka's Servant Archer (Fate/zero 's Archer, aka, Gilgamesh) watched impassivly.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha:
- Toredia was an insane Orussia Liberation War activist that experimented on mass-producing the Mariages in StrikerS Sound Stage X, planning to use them to attack the capitols of numerous countries, saying that they needed to know pain. He was devoured by the Mariages before he could execute this plan.
- Precia Testarossa, desperate to reach Al Hazard before dying of her disease or being arrested by the TSAB, tried to go do the dimensional transference when she had nine out of 21 Jewel Seeds, short of even the 14-seed bare minimum she suspected she would need. She falls to her death as the transference fails and her lair collapses.
- In One Piece:
- Even though no one dies, Luffy is beaten around by Foxy for nearly their entire fight. Foxy uses both his power to slow down time and mirrors to reflect his "slow beams." At the end of the fight, however, he's caught by one of his own beams, reflected from a shard of the same mirrors he used earlier, allowing Luffy ample time to set up a truly epic finishing punch.
- Also with Eneru, the very gold ball he grafted onto Luffy's arm meant to slow him down becomes the very thing that ends up stopping Eneru's energized death ball and defeating the fake "god".
- Subverted in Rave Master with Six Guard's Sean. When he's knocked out by his own sleep-inducing power, he ends up fighting in his sleep and is even stronger than when he's awake. He grinds his teeth, too.
- In Death Note:
- One of the Death Note owners, Kyosuke Higuchi, is killed when his notebook is repossessed by Light, who recovers his memories and writes Higuchi's name in a scrap that he tore out of the notebook earlier.
- Light himself suffers this fate at the very end of the anime when Ryuk makes good on his promise to Light in the very first episode and writes Light's name into the Death Note.
- Subverted in Bleach during the fight between Kurotsuchi and Szayel Aporro. Szayel possesses Kurotsuchi's giant-demon-baby Bankai. Just as it starts to turn on him, it self-destructs, with Kurotsuchi remarking that he'd obviously already thought of that.Apparently someone's been doing their reading.
- AND used straight. Kurotsuchi's awesome in that particular respect. He works in a job where being eaten is a job hazard. So what does he do? He implants packets of drugs inside himself and his lieutenant so anything that takes a bite out of them or otherwise consumes them gets an nasty overdose.
- ...how many jobs do you know where being eaten isn't a hazard?
- Hachigen kills Barragan by teleporting his rotting arm into Barragan's stomach, causing him to age himself to death.
- Tosen gets a taste next. When his hollow form gives him the ability to see, he becomes so focused on his new-found sight to the exclusion of everything else, allowing Hisagi, his former lieutenant, to own him.
- Robotech The Shadow Chronicles is basically an epitome of this trope. Basically REF has weapons based on technology provided by Haydonites, a Not So Harmless race. When they clash, the question becomes: will Haydonites manage to turn humans' Haydonite-based weapons against humans, or will humans defeat Haydonites with Haydonite-based weapons? Both actually happens, but in the end humans win, at least for the moment.
- In the Bile Fascination-filled Queen's Blade, the assassin Melona's primary means of attack is to squirt some sort of acidic fluid... from her breasts. Reina defeats her by blocking off her nipples with her Breast Plate, causing the acidic liquid to back up, swelling Melona's breasts to massive sizes.... and blowing them up.
- Ranma 1/2 includes this on a few occasions, usually as a way for Ranma to beat opponents who, for whatever reason, outclass him. The best example is the Musk Dynasty story; Ranma's opponent Herb is far stronger and better trained at ki attacks then Ranma is, and knows how to disrupt the Hiryu Shoten Ha, which normally feeds off of the opponent's ki (which makes it a tentative example of this trope). Realizing that his opponent's attacks have left large quantities of ki floating loosely, he tricks his foe into apparently destabilizing the Hiryu Shoten Ha again- instead, Herb actually gives Ranma what he needs to gather all of the available ki, coalesce it into a single massive bolt, and drop it right on his head.
- In an earlier story, the Date Monster of Watermelon Island, Ranma is stuck in female form and defenseless against Tatewaki Kuno, who has lost his delusions and thus is capable of actually concentrating on defeating Ranma for once. Aware that his Training From Hell has conditioned him to attack watermelons, s/he slips one onto Kuno's head, whereupon he knocks himself out cold and restores his memory- and thus his delusions.
- The Martial Arts Dining story might also count by a technicality; Ranma's winning move, the Parley du Foie Gras, not only takes advantage of a loophole in the rules, but also turns Piccolet Chardin's normally advantageous mutations into Ranma's key to victory. Piccolet's rubber-like face allows him to eat faster then Ranma can, but also makes it easy for Ranma to force his own food down Piccolet's throat.
- Actually referred to by name in an anime-exclusive OAV; early into the Christmas Scramble OAV, Kodachi mockingly points out that Kuno's unidentified but huge present is far too big to even get through the door, never mind into Akane Tendo's stocking. Kuno, horrorstruck, points out that he's been hoisted with his own petard. And is promptly squashed under Shampoo's bicycle.
- In Gundam Wing, several OZ officers end up killed by their own Mobile Dolls, who use a visual enemy identification system, when they have them target an enemy in the same spacesuit they were wearing.
- Not really an example, seeing as one of the Gundam Pilots deliberately set it up by wearing an OZ spacesuit and shooting at a Mobile Doll, causing it to register the spacesuit as a threat.
- Ah, but the super weapon with a programming defect may as well be the same as the mad scientist whose creations kill him in the end. This also happened in the live-action movie, G Savior, directly to the main antagonist.
- In the mid-season of Code Geass R2, when he is badly wounded and expecting help from Charles, V.V. instead gets his Code taken from him by Charles out of anger for lying to him too many times, and is left to die.
- Jessie Mavia in Kinnikuman lost to Kinnikuman when he was goaded into going on the offensive. This was a mistake because, while Jessie is a master at move counters and reversals, he has no original moves of his own. Taking the intiative as he did left him wide-open to Kinnikuman reversing Jessie's attacks.
- In Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Paul released his Chimchar because it lost one too many battles, and considered it weak. In the Sinnoh League, he was defeated by Ash who used the same Chimchar...as a fully evolved Infernape.
- In Digimon Xros Wars, Neptunemon is killed by his own trident. It has a homing ability, and Shoutmon X4 uses that to his advantage and jumps behind Neptunemon, causing the trident to have to pierce through him to reach its target.
Comic Books
- In both the Spider-Man movie and the comic storyline it was based on, the Green Goblin attempts to kill Spider-Man by impaling him with his hovercraft, but Spidey jumps to avoid it and it hits GG instead.
- Parodied in Spider-Man 3 How It Should Have Ended
 .
Spidey: I'm just sayin' there's only one way this is gonna go down, it happens every time. We'll fight for a bit, you'll tear my mask, but in the end I'm gonna leap outta the way and you're gonna do something that makes you kill yourself.
- In the limited series The Thanos Quest, the titular supervillain seeks (and ultimately attains) the Infinity Gems in order to become God and thus a worthy mate for Mistress Death. However, he miscalculates spectacularly when he discovers that omnipotence made him not her equal but superior, preventing anything other than a servile relationship; for the extra kick in the teeth, he is now subjected to the (no pun intended) cold shoulder of the cosmic being, who considered his pursuit and attainment of godhood a heinous betrayal, and his subsequent attempts at wooing her back childish and insulting.
- It doesn't get much better in the follow-up storyline The Infinity Gauntlet, as when Thanos decides to give up on Mistress Death and fully embrace his status as God, eventually defeating Eternity and becoming the very embodiment of the universe, he makes another grievous error (or perhaps not) when by forsaking his body in replacing Eternity, he leaves it (and the Infinity Gems) vulnerable to theft by his upstart "daughter" Nebula.
- Subverted with Lex Luthor: the kryptonite ring that he used to bedevil Superman ends up giving him fatal radiation poisoning due to prolonged exposure. However, he cheats death because of his
brilliance Joker Immunity.
- Used in the tongue-in-cheek Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe the Punisher actually manages to kill the nearly unkillable Wolverine. How does he do this? By forcing good ol' Logan into a generator and electrocuting him, and using his metal bones as a conductor, simultaneously frying all his cells and brain.
- Mentioned for being hilarious, the otherwise quite forgettable Superman vs. Dracula comic ended with Dracula draining Superman's blood and absorbing his power - at which point his head exploded. Superman, after all, is solar powered.
- After a rooftop battle in the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a defeated Shredder is about to use a thermite grenade to kill both the turtles and himself, when he is thrown off the roof by Donatello's bo staff. Boom.
- Unus the Untouchable was a mutant criminal with a force field that protected him from all harm. Eventually, it got so powerful that not even air could get through.
- In Watchmen, Dollar Bill was killed when his cape was caught in a revolving door in a bank, and was was shot by some thug. It becomes double when the bank happens to be the one who he worked for, and made him put on a cape
- The Punisher 2099 villain Fearmaster has a hand (later a claw) that can turn anything biological it touches into anything else. When the Punisher finally corners him, he tries to turn his entire body to mud. Too bad he forgot that he chopped off one of the Punisher's hands two issues prior; all Puni has to do is reach out with his fake hand, grab Fearmaster's arm, and shove the claw right back in his face.
- In Teen Titans Terra died by accidental suicide when she was crushed by rocks due to her rage, and want to kill the Teen Titans.
Eastern Animation
Fairy Tales
- In many Fairy Tales, someone describes the crimes to the villain without using any names and asks what a suitable punishment would be; the villain, who has usually framed the hero or heroine for the crimes in question, then (often gleefully) prescribes a horrible punishment and is subjected to it. These include:
Film
- Aliens: the Corrupt Corporate Executive who ordered the colony to acquire the alien eggs (and thereby caused all of their deaths) was eventually killed by the aliens himself.
- The unspoken reason for Rotti Largo's terminal illness? Exposure to the same poison that he used to kill Marnie Wallace.
- Vic Deakin (played by John Travolta) of Broken Arrow hilariously and literally gets hit by the nuke he intended to slaughter innocent millions with. It doesn't detonate, though.
- In Dumb And Dumber, an enemy poses as a friendly hitchhiker, intending to drop pellets of rat poison into Harry and Lloyd's food. But before he can succeed in this, he needs first aid for a heart attack (which was induced by Harry and Lloyd's own practical joking). Harry and Lloyd try to administer his emergency medication, but they mistake the pellets of poison for the heart-attack pills, and feed him his own rat poison instead. Maybe this guy would have survived if he had been Carrying the Antidote.
- In Stealth, a medic attempts to inject an initially unsuspecting Ben (Josh Lucas) with 'pain relief' medicine (actually poison). Ben politely refuses, but the medic's stubborn insistence clues Ben in that something is wrong and a struggle ensues. The medic ends up being stuck with the needle himself and dies, showing Ben what the medic was trying to do (not that it wasn't fairly obvious).
- This moment in itself leads into Ben's commander being hoisted by his own petard. In trying to cover his tracks by having Ben killed and failing, his duplicity is revealed to his superiors by Ben and he is relieved of command. Then he takes a bullet rather than face court martial.
- In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, after Judge Doom reveals himself to be a toon, he meets his end by getting sprayed with "Dip," a toon-killing cocktail of paint thinners that he himself created.
- General fate of James Bond's adversaries. Some examples: Doctor No's metal hands made it impossible for him to climb to safety, Oddjob was electrocuted through his steel-bladed hat, Goldfinger was sucked out of his own depressurizing jet, Trevelyan was crushed by his own evil satellite dish, Carver got shredded by his own giant drill, Renard was skewered by a rod of plutonium he was trying to blow up a submarine with, etc. etc.
- In the opening sequence of For Your Eyes Only, Ernst Stavro Blofeld uses remote devices to kill the pilot of (and then commandeer) the helicopter Bond was on. Just shy of crashing, Bond naturally manages to get control back, but having had far more than enough of the bastard, Bond then uses the helicopter's landing strut to hook and carry Blofeld's wheelchair and carry him off. Blofeld begs to be let down and is — directly into the mouth of a very tall smokestack!
- To be fair Renard let himself die because he couldn't live without Electra King.
- If The Dragon in a James Bond film is not killed by being Hoist By His Own Petard, chances are he's not really dead...
- What about Baron Samedi? He's knocked into the casket full of poisonous snakes that he was intending to sacrifice Solitaire into. But just before the credits he's riding the plow of the train, laughing demonically.
- Hellboy Kroenen dies in his own spike pit.
- Don't forget Hellboy crushed him with his own giant gear.
- In Golden Army Mr.Wink dies after launching his Rocket Punch into a griding machine. Hellboy even states before "I wouldn't do that" and after that happened "Whoa. Told ya."
- Nearly occurs in the Iron Man movie, where the shrapnel that forces Tony Stark to wear his electromagnet comes from a Stark Industries missile used by terrorists. Obadiah Stane's Iron Monger suit was also reverse-engineered from the remains of Tony's first suit.
- Not to mention Stane being killed by the same device he decried as useful only for "publicity."
- In the sequel, lots of Hammeroids get blasted out of the air by fire from their own. Also defied, according to the novelisation, as Ivan Vanko specifically constructs his armour so that in case of a mishap (which incidentally doesn't happen) he won't cut himself with his whips.
- In the Super Mario Bros. movie, Mario and Luigi use Koopa's own de-evolution guns against him, turning him into a tyrannosaurus. Then they blast him a second time, turning him into primeval slime.
- Tank Girl. Kesslee had a device that drained a person's blood from their body, killing them, and purified it into drinkable water. He used it to kill one of his subordinates, and at the end of the movie Tank Girl used one to kill him.
- Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. The Indian who had acted as Captain Seas' assassin by using the Green Death (created from the venom of poisonous snakes) falls into the pit holding the snakes and is bitten repeatedly, killing him.
- At the climax of ''GMK'', Godzilla explodes after his own nuclear breath backfires and instead tears him open from the inside out. Somewhat a subverted example in that, Godzilla isn't killed but instead reduced to a disembodied yet still-beating heart.
- In Hannibal, Mason Verger is eaten by the killer pigs he had been training to eat Hannibal Lecter. There's even a bit of The Dog Bites Back added in for good measure.
Hannibal: Hey, Cordell. Why don't you push him in? You can always say it was me.
- The bridgekeeper in Monty Python And The Holy Grail:
Bridgekeeper: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
King Arthur: What do you mean? African or European?
Bridgekeeper: I don't know that! AAAAAAGGHHHH!!!!
- In Help! I'm A Fish, Joe the pilot fish dies (rather horribly) when he drinks too much of the Anti-Fish potion, effectively turning into a human. Whilst underwater. He drowns.
- The Avengers. While Sir August is fighting Steed, he's stabbed through the chest with his own fighting staff and then hit by a bolt of lightning from his Weather Control Machine and killed.
- In The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Former Chief Inspector Dreyfus is killed when his Bavarian castle is disintegrated by his own doomsday weapon. It was supposed to be fired at England, but Clouseau hoist himself into the castle with a conveniently placed catapult. He proceeds to land on the doomsday machine, causing it to swivel around and hit Dreyfus instead, who has his legs disintegrated. Then the doomsday device overloads and starts to dissolve the rest of the castle. The last thing we see of Dreyfus is him slowly vanishing while playing the organ that any self-respecting villain must have in his Bavarian castle hideout.
- In Perfume, Grenouille ends his own life by dumping his perfect perfume over his head, causing a nearby crowd to become overwhelmed by the concentrated beauty and devour him.
- In the first Transformers live action movie, the Decepticon Frenzy is killed by one of many CD like 'throwing stars' which he himself fired. The thing arced in mid-air and came right back at him.
- In the first Spider Man live-action film, The Green Goblin is stabbed in the chest by his own glider after trying to use it to kill Spider-Man (Spider-Man senses it, and quickly gets out of the way). This led the Goblin's son to believe Spider-Man killed his father.
- In Bride of the Monster, Dr. Eric Vornoff is killed by his own giant octopus. "He tampered in God's domain."
- Ghost Rider's Penance Stare allows him to burn the pain of all the people someone has hurt into that person's soul. The film's villain, a demon, has no soul and is thus immune. Near the end, he takes on the power of 1000 evil human souls to start the apocalypse. Guess what happens.
- Jurassic Park uses this, create prehistoric monsters and there is a good chance they'll kill you. It is played better in the book and the dinosaurs aren't created as weapons but for entertainment but it otherwise fits the trope.
- Rather literal in Law Abiding Citizen. Clyde is about to activate the bomb he set up in city hall. Nick tries to talk him out of it. He activates it anyway, and Nick leaves him in his cell and locks the door as Clyde realizes the bomb is now in the cell with him. He accepts having finally been outplayed and sits on the bomb as it goes off.
- The Wind in the Willows/Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: Chief Weasel tries to blow up Toad Hall from the dog food factory. Rat switched the labels on some barrels labeled "bones" and "explosives" earlier on. You can probably figure out how this ends...
- In Disney's Tarzan, Clayton repeatedly tries to slash Tarzan with his sword. Unfortunately for Clayton, the two of them are fighting in a thick jungle, where Clayton cuts just the right vines to accidentally hang himself.
- In Godzilla: Final Wars, Gigan fires two spinning disks from his chest at Mothra, who dodges it. Gigan then sets Mothra ablaze with his laser beam. As Mothra is burning, Gigan turns around to savor his victory, only to have the two spinning disks come back and decapitate him.
- It is not really known why the disks came back, although the yellow powder Mothra threw might've been the cause, as Mothra has reflective scales in the films Godzilla vs. Mothra and Godzilla: Toyko SOS.
- In Edge of Darkness, Craven gains a measure of symbolic revenge when he forces Bennett, the man who ordered the radioactive thallium poisoning of both Craven and his daughter Elle, to drink a jar filled with thallium-tainted milk.
- In Traitor, the Deep Cover Agent protagonist Samir is unable to break his cover by giving the suicide bombers that are planning to blow up busses in the United States fake equipment. His solution? He arranged for them all to be on the same bus, so that they only managed to blow each other up.
Literature
- In A Series Of Unfortunate Events, Count Olaf is killed after the biological weapon he planned on using to rule the island leaks out. It also kills almost everyone else on the entire island.
- Used in Jurassic Park. The monsters where created for a themepark rather than as weapons but the trope is still followed.
- In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort is finally defeated when his own Avada Kedavra is reflected back in his face by an Expelliarmus from Harry. Arguably, the first time Voldemort tried to kill Harry, only to have it backfire and blow up in his face, counts too - even though he didn't stay dead.
- Something similar occurs in Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets when Lockhart's memory charm backfires on him, because he was using Ron's very broken wand to cast it. Dumbledore lampshades this ("Impaled on your own sword, Gilderoy?").
- Which, of course, implies that Dumbledore knew all along that Lockhart was full of shit and never accomplished all those things he claimed, instead stealing other people's stories and places memory charms on them. Heh.
- Also in Deathly Hallows, Wormtail is strangled by his own silver hand after he hesitates to kill Harry.
- Although it is implied that this was because the hand was made by Voldemort and punished him for his momentary hesitation after Harry's reminder of who did save him back in Po A.
- Non-fatal example: In Oot P, we see a memory Harry's dad picking on Snape by making him hang upside-down in midair. In the next book, Harry finds the potions book of the guy who invented that spell...and at the end of the book, it turns out to be Snape himself.
- In a supplementary material to Guardians of Ga'Hoole, a Tropical Screech Owl named Honeyvox drinks the potion meant for his enemy, muting him for life.
- In Dan Abnett's Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Rawne is kidnapped and tortured by Heldane before Corbec and other Ghosts rescue him. He intended to make him a "pawn" but succeeded in only making him sensitive to influence. This, however, let Rawne sense when Heldane was about to unleash his actual pawn, and bring his weapon to bear beforehand.
- In a kind of play on this trope, in the first of the newest Wild Cards novels, "Inside Straight", African American Ace Stuntman manages to win a challenge on the reality show he is participating in by accusing one of his opponents of using a racial slur against him. In the next novel, "Busted Flush" Stuntman main role in the storyline is fighting a genuine racist (while the guy who he accused of being a racist went on to be part of the UN super team).
- In Graham Mc Neill's Warhammer 40000 Ultramarines novel Dead Sky Black Sun, Honsou has Uriel killed by putting him into the daemonculaba. He breaks free. Since this was the process by which the Unfleshed were created, they smell it on him, and are willing to listen to him; he gets them to join him on an attack on Honsou's fortress.
- In Logos Run, an evil circus master tries to kill the heroes with his dangerous poisonous snake. Once introduced to a scent, it will unerringly kill that person. His comrades all wondered why the snake had never bitten him. After sending the snake, he is injured in an unrelated event. The intended victim actually helped him by bandaging him. When he woke up, the first thing he asked was who put the bandages on him. The snake struck right after he got the answer...
- In James Swallow's Warhammer 40000 Blood Angels novel Deus Sanguinius, Inquisitor Stele summons a daemon to a battlefield. It choses him as its flesh vessel.
- In A Song Of Ice And Fire, the loathsome city of Astapor brutally trains eunuch slave Super Soldiers for sale as mercenaries as well as to defend the city. Astapor has nothing to fear from its own soldiers, who are robotically loyal and cannot disobey an order from their masters. However, no one thought it was a bad idea to sell every single soldier they have to an ambitious warrior queen, thus turning their entire garrison into a foreign army that's already inside their walls.
- Then there's Cersei's brilliant actions as Queen Regent: she reinstates the Church Militant wing of the Faith of the Seven in order to pacify the rioting faithful, while plotting to expose the betrothed of her son (the crowned king) as engaged in an extramarital affair. However, the guy she sends to spill on her son's fiancee ends up tortured by the new High Septon, and confesses that he's had relations with Cersei as well. She ends up in the cells rather quickly.
- Hell, the very first book has Ned Stark, whose plans to expose Cersei's adultery and Joffrey's illegitimacy end with him playing straight into the Lannisters' hands.
- In Atlas Shrugged, Robert Stadler tries to take over a Death Ray installation that he feels belongs to him. The outcome of the struggle is the obliteration of him, the building, and everything within a 100-mile radius.
- In Matthew Reilly's novella "Hell Island", the Island is overrun by 300 mountain apes who were genetically modified to be supersoldiers. They were controlled by silver disks, and anyone wearing one was immune to them. The island hadn't been overrun at all... it was part of an exercise. Schofield has Mother wipe out the disks, so nobody is immune, and everyone who was previously safe was killed by the apes, before Schofield drowned them.
- Also in Ice Station when the one remaining French soldier attempts to take out the marines by planting a Claymore mine at a dead-end corridor. Rebound discovers his plan and turns the mine around, resulting in the gruesome death of the Frenchman at the hand of his own mine.
- Somewhat amusingly, the aforementioned French soldier? His name is Jean Petard.
- In In The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, the officer is killed by the machine he helped create. Somewhat subverted in that the officer went into it willingly.
- A throwaway joke in one of the Discworld books mentions that it's not often that weapon inventors are killed by their own creation and the widespread belief in this happening is due to the unfortunate death of William Blunt-Instrument in an alley.
- Also, in The Colour Of Magic, Garhartra the Guestmaster casts a spell to stop a flung bottle of wine in mid-air. Eight hours later, he returns to the room just in time for the spell to wear off, and the bottle resumes its interrupted journey, smacking him on the head.
- Narrowly averted in His Dark Materials, where Mrs. Coulter is to be separated from her daemon by the same process she used on kids at Bolvangar, but manages to escape at the last moment. Arguably played straight immediately thereafter when her would-be executioner, still needing the energy released by the process and pressed for time, does it to himself.
- Does it count if it's suicide?
- The Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Speckled Band features a villain who dies after being bitten by the poisonous snake he intended to use to murder his stepdaughter so he could keep her money. Holmes even remarks that he is indirectly responsible for what happened when he hit the snake with his cane to drive it away, which made it retreat and bite its owner in anger, but says he's unlikely to lose much sleep over it.
- In the Warhammer 40000 novel Grey Knights, the Big Bad Valinov is freed at his execution by Ligeia's death cultists]] and proceeds to use the servitor-mangler meant to kill him on Riggensen, who had succeeded in breaking him.
- Basically, Warhammer 40000 stories tend to end due to the villain inevitably screwing himself over (unless he actually succeeds, which happens a lot).
- Two books in the Demon Headmaster series do this. The first one is when the Headmaster falls into a machine that he uses to clone life, although that only lasts until the next book, where the machine clones him. The clone—who has the Headmaster's powers—is undone by an information overload in his brain.
- Stationery Voyagers, of course, has Clandish "Cybomec" Consto. After having his only fuel rod removed, he still uses his electroblast to fry Pextel's librionic body. But this only has the effect of draining what little remained of Cybomec's own librionic energy and knocks him dormant. Thus, allowing the other Voyagers to defeat an otherwise unbeatable foe.
- In The Killing Star, both humanity and the our alien nemeses get Hoisted: first a race of aliens, whose only apparent purpose in the universe is to cause the deaths of others, nearly destroy mankind by flinging giant rocks at us at just under light-speed. Their reasoning? Because they heard "We Are The World" once centuries ago, and thought we meant it to say humanity was a unified nation that would attack them now that we have relativistic spaceships, because it seemd like a logical train of thought to them. One wonders how they ever got into space. In the end the humans nuke the Earth's sun, killing a good chunk of their fleet, and a few humans flee with the genetically engineered clone of Jesus Christ (no I'm not making this up...) into deep space, planning to retaliate when they get the chance.
- To be fair, the motivation for aliens' genocide of humanity was entirely logical and rational (1. any species will place its own survival before that of a different species, 2. Any species that has dominated its planet will be intelligent, aggressive, and ruthless, 3. They will assume the first two rules apply to us).
- It's logical...assuming you have perfect information on what you are up against, and there aren't "third parties" (other species) watching who punish the genocidal. Let's say, for example, that you hear my radio emissions, and decide to wipe me out. Oops! Looks like I had 100 systems settled to your one (or handful). Have fun dealing with my retaliation. Not only did you NOT wipe me out, but now I've gone from a "possible threat" to a "confirmed threat".
- In the Honor Harrington book Field of Dishonor, one of the villains is Denver Summervale, a professional duelist (and we're talking actual gun duels not happy go lucky card games for your soul). He hires himself out to kill people by goading his victims into challenging him to a duel and killing them there, where it's considered legal. When he kills someone close to Honor, her eventual response is to walk up to him, accuses him of murder-for-hire, goads him into challenging her, then shoots him down with contemptuous ease during the duel itself.
- Mesa certainly has one of these coming, seeing as how their massive conspiracy to exterminate the Star Empire of Manticore and the Republic of Haven by keeping them constantly at war with each other has resulted in a massive, massive increase in the levels of technology employed by the Manticorans and Havenites. Well, as it turns out, Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki are very, very much Not Quite Dead, and the end result is that Manticore and Haven - whose space navies are now approximately a thousand times more Bad Ass than they were - are teaming up to turn all that technology, skill, pent-up anger and experience on them. Essentially, Mesa is facing the single set of Allied nations in the galaxy that is ready, willing, and able to destroy them, and has spent the better part of a century honing themselves to do just that. Oops.
- In the Dresden Files, Lord Raith has a fairly squicky predilection, which he ultimately becomes the victim of.
- In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, forgemaster Inch spends a great deal of time torturing The Hero, Simon, by strapping him, crucifixion style, to the giant waterwheel used to power the forge's works. Simon manages to escape with Guthwulf's help; in the ensuing confrontation, Inch's belt gets caught in the wheel and he's carried off to his messy doom.
- The Big Bad in Black Dogs summons a demon to destroy another character, but it backfires and demons, being the hostile creatures they are attacks him instead.
- Snot Stew: Toby teases the family's vicious dog Butch by leaping down into his enclosure and slipping out through a hole in the fence. He also bullies his sister Kikki by eating all of her food. Turns out these don't work well together, as he discovers when he tries to squeeze through the hole... and can't. Nightmare Fuel follows as Butch proceeds to maul his back end, with Toby screaming that he's eating him alive. He survives, but only because the humans rush him to the vet, and he loses his tail in the process.
Live Action TV
- In the Stargate Atlantis episode "The Tower", the villain dies due to a scratch from his own poisoned dagger. It is likely that this is a deliberate reference to the above-mentioned work of Shakespeare, where Claudius and Laertes are both done in by the very poison they had conspired to kill Hamlet with. (Well, Claudius also gets stabbed a little bit. And, in one notable adaptation, hit by a chandelier.)
- The Huntsman from The Tenth Kingdom. Earlier in the miniseries, we are told that his magic weapon is a crossbow that, when fired, shoots bolts that will not stop until they hit the heart of a living being. So quite naturally, during the climax when he and Wolf are struggling over the weapon and it is accidentally fired upwards through the skylight, the rule of Karmic Death (as well as the law of gravity) dictates the arrow comes right back down and stabs the Huntsman in the heart from behind. Despite its predictability, however, it's one of the more satisfying versions of the trope this editor has ever seen.
- In Primeval, Oliver Leek amasses a mind-controlled army of vicious predators from the future in a bid to obtain power. This royally screws up when the mind-control device breaks, and the predators kill him.
- Similarly, the woman who had raised a sabre-toothed tiger from a cub that she found is killed by it at the end.
- In the Grand Finale of Star Trek Voyager, the Borg Queen is tricked into assimilating Future-Janeway, causing her to contract a nanovirus (ten years in the making and about seventeen ahead of its time), killing her... again.
- The villain wasn't killed in the Doctor Who episode "Dalek", but Henry van Staten surely paved the way for his eventual fate. His policy of using torture on his alien captive caused said alien to go on a murdering rampage when it finally got loose, and his fondness for wiping people's memories and dropping them off in a town starting with the same letter as their last name got turned around on him by his newly appointed second-in-command.
Goddard: And by tonight, Henry Van Statten will be a homeless, brainless junkie living on the streets of San Diego, Seattle, Sacramento... Someplace beginning with S.
- In Doctor Who: "Genesis of the Daleks", when the Daleks turn on Davros and his followers Davros (in his one and only moment of compassion) begs the Daleks to have pity on the scientists who helped to create them - but they don't, because Davros did not include pity in their data banks.
- Similarly, in "The Age of Steel", John Lumic is defeated because all devices in the parallel universe are capable of interfacing with each other, allowing Mickey and the Doctor to get the code to deactivate the emotional inhibitors into the system.
- In The Robots of Death, Taren Capel is killed by his own robot revolutionaries when Leela uses helium to change his voice.
- Not forgetting Evolution of the Daleks, where The Cult of Skaro's human soldiers, when contaminated with Timelord DNA, end up destroying the Cult's own Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast.
- And The Last of the Time Lords when the Archangel network The Master used to become Prime Minister allows humanity to pool its psychic energy to restore The Doctor.
- In the Lost Season 4 finale, Ben kills Keamy with Keamy's own knife. It also works on a metaphorical level; killing Keamy has the result of killing everyone on the freighter, including innocent people; Ben had been avoiding killing innocents until Keamy "changed the rules" by killing Alex. Thus Keamy dies by his own weapon and as a result of his own actions.
- On an episode of Law And Order a killer was captured in Canada, with the defense arguing that he shouldn't be extradited, because he could be executed for the murder upon return to the US. (The Canadian government is politically opposed to the death penalty.) When the judge asks if that wouldn't result in Canada becoming a haven for American killers, the attorney says that's only a theoretical possibility and shouldn't influence the decision. Then the prosecutor from New York announces they only want to extradite the perpetrator for kidnapping and car theft, which aren't capital crimes. When the defense complains that it's just a ploy so they can get him back to the US and then charge him with murder, the judge (with obvious amusement) points out that it's just a theoretical possibility which won't necessarily influence his decision. Owned!
- In the Pie-lette of Pushing Daisies Chuck laments that she was hoisted by her own petard - her vacation was also smuggling monkey figurines, which got her killed. It prompts Ned's reply, "What's a petard?"
- In Heroes, Mohinder talks about the upsides of Nathan Petrelli's plan for snatching and interning enhanced humans, only to get snatched himself shortly after by the stormtrooper squad.
- In Life (season 1, "Powerless"), the main villain becomes obsessed with Reese (they both go to the same AA meetings, and he figures that she lied about her dark past), so he holds her hostage in her kitchen and forces her to drink a massive bottle of vodka, and finally she tells him about her past in a totally awesome speech, and when he looks away for a second, she grabs the empty bottle of vodka and whacks him across the head with it, thus giving her partner and his backup time to break in and save her.
- In The Closer episode "Tijuana Brass", a corrupt Mexican cop looking for an accused murderer (who plans to testify against the drug cartel the cop works for) has the word spread among locked up convicts that whoever kills the guy he's looking for will get a big reward. After his corruption is ultimately revealed and the protagonists arrest him, they book him under the name of the guy he had put the hit on, which results in him being murdered in prison.
- Nonfatal example: the humourless forum administrator in the children's television program Lift Off was in the habit of digging up new things to ban, at one point producing a ban sign with a mirror on it. Then he was convinced to turn it around. Then pure force of Lawful Neutral kicks in.
- One episode of CSI featured a woman and her father who co-owned a construction company and wanted to end the marriage to the woman's husband without getting a divorce, since if they did that Nevada law would state that the husband would receive half the woman's shares in the company. They try to frame him for attempted murder, since Nevada law also requires that criminals not profit from their misdeeds, which would have meant the husband wouldn't get anything belonging to his wife. The scheme backfires horrifically when the CSIs uncover the woman and her father's plan and charge them with conspiracy, and it's implied that, under the very same law they tried to use to deprive the husband of any part of the construction company, he's going to end up owning the whole thing.
- Meanwhile, in Miami, a wife uses the fact that she's part of a set of triplets to set up what seems to be an airtight alibi for herself when one of the triplets murders the husband. Except it turns out that the husband has been using a body double because of his high profile job, and the body double was the one who died.
- In one episode of new Battlestar Galactica, in Season 2, a big Cylon Raider fleet fleet is disabled by a Cylon Logic Bomb, which they previously planted onto Galactica.
- The inventor of Hymie the KAOS robot on Get Smart gets killed by his own invention. Something similar happens to many Big Bads, including "Mr. Big" in the pilot.
- The inventor of the Cybernauts on The Avengers gets killed by his own invention, as does his brother who tries to follow in his footsteps.
- Invoked in Robin Hood...sort of. Guy of Gisborne gives his sister Isabella a vial of poison, intending for her to use it. She instead laces the blade of a dagger with it and stabs him in the back. On the other hand, Guy is also impaled on the sheriff's sword, an injury which kills him before the poison gets a chance.
- The Sheriff of Nottingham is blown up by explosives that he himself brought into the castle.
- On Merlin, Hengist, villain of Lancelot and Guinevere, is killed and eaten by the pet monster he'd spent the whole episode feeding people too.
- On Supernatural, this happens all the time, normally to the humans who mess with the dark arts. They always get what's coming to them, and almost never from the main characters.
- On Sanctuary episode Sleepers, Tesla loses his powers by his own "Devamper", which was powered by the very ability it ended up taking away. And really his own fault for making both ends of the weapon functional.
- On Spike TV's 1000 Ways To Die, a pair of dimwitted terrorists were blown up by their own bomb when they forgot about daylight savings time while setting the device's GPS-based timer.
- The Big Bad of Dollhouse, Boyd Langton, spent a good portion of S2 manipulating the main cast into creating and handing over a device capable of wiping and imprinting anyone, not just Actives. Topher uses it to wipe Boyd, reducing him to a Doll-state, and he blindly—happily!—follows Echo's instructions to strap a bomb to his body and blow up the Rossum headquarters.
- In an episode of The Adventures of Superboy, a demon turns a woman into Yellow Peri, a powerful witch who wreaks havok. When Superboy confronts them, Yellow Peri sets a photo of him on fire. Like a voodoo doll, this causes him to burst into flames, falling to the floor and screaming in agony. The demon laughs and mocks him. Angrily, Superboy blasts him with heat vision, but it has no effect. The demon smugly boasts that only magic can hurt him, and Superboy immediately grabs him, causing the fire to spread to him and reduce him to ashes. Fortunately, with him gone, his curses wear off, Superboy is healed, and Yellow Peri reverts to Lorretta York.
- Non-death example from Buffy The Vampire Slayer: In the sixth-season episode "Older and Far Away," Dawn makes a wish to the vengeance demon Halfrek that everybody would spend more time with her. Halfrek makes the dream come true by magically making it impossible for any of the guests at Buffy's birthday party to leave the house. She then comes and taunts them... until she realizes that she can't escape the house, either, and reluctantly reverses the spell.
- Death example: Maggie Walsh is killed by her own creation that she was planning to sic on the heroes.
- Also, the Mayor in the Season 3 finalle. He was immortal, and was only killed after he inacted his plan to become a killable giant snake.
- In Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey enacts a masterful gambit to ensure that the Employment Secretary is removed from his post after suggesting a brilliant idea to move large sections of the armed forces Oop North, which has received much hostility from senior civil servants and military officials because they'll, well, be Oop North and far away from Harrods and Wimbledon and all the nice cushy things down south which they like. He expertly plays on Hacker's paranoia to make Hacker think that the Employment Secretary is using this plan as part of a coup to secure Hacker's job. It works, the plan is scuttled, the Employment Secretary gone, and Humphrey is left to leave in smug satisfaction of another job well done... until in the last minute of the episode, Hacker realizes that now the Employment Secretary is gone, there's nothing to stop him safely implementing the plan...
- Models Inc. ended with Emma Samms' character getting shot by a hitman she'd hired to shoot her ex's new wife-to-be at the wedding... but most viewers never saw this, as the original broadcast of the episode ended on a Cliff Hanger at the fatal gunshot. Aaron Spelling had the foresight to film an alternate ending in case of cancellation *
but not enough foresight to also bring closure to Carrie Anne-Moss' storyline; if anything, Emma's death would have made things even worse for Carrie .
Mythology And Religion
- In the Biblical Book of Esther, corrupt Persian minister Haman is hung on the gallows he built for his rival Mordechai, who also happened to be Queen Esther's uncle and caretaker. So this is Older Than Feudalism.
- Classical Mythology: When Theseus traveled on the road to Athens, he encountered numerous bandits/serial killers who had unique murder methods. Theseus offed them with their own methods. These included:
- Epidaurus, who would beat people to death with his club.
- Siris, who would tie people between two trees that he had bent down. Then he let go of the trees, ripping them in half.
- Sciron, an elderly man who would ask passersby to wash his feet as a sign of respect. When they bent over to comply, he would punt them off a cliff and into the jaws of a sea monster at the bottom.
- Cercyon, who would challenge passersby to wrestling matches, then kill them after they had lost.
- Procrustes, who would invite passersby to stay the night at his place. If they were too short for the bed, he would stretch their bodies until they fit. If they were to tall for the bed, he would chop off the excess.
Professional Wrestling
- During the "Monday Night Wars" between the WWF (Now WWE) and WCW, Eric Bischoff would often spoil the outcome of WWF Raw matches on WCW Nitro (Raw was pre-recorded, while Nitro aired live in the same timeslot). In 1999, he gave away a spoiler that Mick Foley was going to win the WWF title, and mocked Foley as someone who was dumped from WCW because he couldn't "put butts in seats". A huge number of viewers proceeded to switch channels to WWF Raw to see Foley win the title. Obviously, this wasn't a death, but it was arguably one of the things that sent WCW on its downward spiral.
- Made doubly devastating in that this happened on the same night as the infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom" match, where Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash put months of feuding and a WCW title match entirely to waste.
- For the next year or so afterward, fans going to WWF events would hoist signs saying "Mick Foley put my butt in this seat".
- The really painful part for WCW was that at the time Nitro lasted until 11:10 or so in order to fit in with the Turner networks' scheduling, while RAW ended at 11am. Nitro's last, unopposed segment drew huge ratings...which means that most viewers who switched to RAW switched back to Nitro afterwards and were at least somewhat interested in seeing Nitro's main event; had they not known about Foley's title win, they would have been content to watch Nitro. Well, content until the Fingerpoke happened at least.
- Edge, on two separate occasions, used the Money in the Bank Briefcase (a prize earned at an annual Wrestlemania match that allows the victor to challenge a champion to a title match at any time the briefcase holder desires) to blindside and defeat a champion after they'd just taken an asskicking from someone else. So lo and behold, on 6/30/08 edition of Raw, he showed up as World Heavyweight Champion to boast that Raw had no world champion and never would, due to his screwing Batista over the prior night. These boasts were interrupted by Batista, who came out and beat him senseless... and then CM Punk, who was at that point the present owner of the briefcase, proceeded to run out with a referee and use his title shot then and there in what has to be the Crowning Momentof Awesome of his WWE career.
- CM Punk was the victim of a double-barrelled one as the result of his feud with Raven in Ring Of Honor. Punk cut promos talking about how his Straight Edge revolution would destroy the revolution that Raven was a part of (i.e. ECW), and ragging on the "debauched" ECW fans, as well as Raven's history of drug and alcohol problems. After beating Raven in a dog-collar match, Punk decided to sink the boot in by tying Raven to the ropes and forcing beer down his throat... only to be jumped by ECW icon Tommy Dreamer, who proceeded to do just that to Punk. As an epilogue, when Punk make his WWE debut, it was in the revived ECW.
- The Undertaker has a tendency to lose casket or buried alive matches, which are supposed to be his specialty, being a wrestling gravedigger and all. Typically, after a loss he disappears for a while and comes back with a new gimmick.
- Actually this is true of pretty much any wrestler. If the announcers build up a match as a certain wrestler's "specialty," (IE: Jeff Hardy in a ladder match; Team 3D in a tables match) said wrestler will lose nine times out of ten.
- Anytime thumbtacks show up in the WWE, more often than not, the person that brought them out is going to be the one that falls into them.
- A frequent spot in WWE matches will have a wrestler will attempt to slam his opponent through the announcers' table only for to be reversed and have the opponent slam the wrestler through. This especially happens to Triple H a lot since his Finishing Move, the Pedigree, leaves him wide open to a back body drop (onto the other announcement table) or a low blow that sets up the other guy's finisher. For some reason, Triple H keeps trying.
Radio
- Adventures In Odyssey: Dr. Blackgaard's death is doubly ironic. Not only does he become infected with the same lethal virus he was developing, but he commits suicide first, right before his professor-assistant reveals he found a way to create an antidote for the virus.
- In the recent radioplay "Elvenquest" on BBC Radio 4, the Genre-savvy villain Lord Darkness played by Alistar Mc Gowen creates, in a series full of lampshading and parody, a machine called "The Petard of Irony"- basically, taking the worst fate you have ever wished on an enemy and turning it on yourself. The only problem is, the person he uses it on, the so called 'Chosen one', is a dog from our world that's been transformed into a person upon arriving in the world the story is set. Seriously. Listen if you don't believe it.
Tabletop Games
- Mishra in Magic The Gathering relied heavily on his machines and weapons, to the point of falling to the manipulations of a cult of machine worshipers.
- Truly sadistic GMs in just about any game have been known, instead of railroading difficult PCs, to give them just enough leeway to get in over their heads due to their own actions and decisions.
- One early 1st Edition AD&D adventure from Role Aids concluded when the hero shows the Big Bad a branch from a tree in which the villain had gotten trapped as a young boy. This triggers a panic attack in which the Big Bad cries aloud: "That tree tried to kill me! Kill me!" Unfortunately for the evil wizard, the obedient flesh golem Mook at his side takes its orders very literally, and compliantly snaps its maker's neck.
- In the Greyhawk D&D setting, the tyrannical mage Tuerny was eventually tricked into getting trapped inside an artifact of his own invention: the Iron Flask that bears his name.
- In Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Warhammer 40K this is a danger with daemonweapons. Misfire also does this.
Theatre
- In Oklahoma!, Jud Fry dies when he tries to stab Curly with a knife and falls on it himself.
Toys
- In Bionicle, the Bohrok-Kal are about to release their leaders, the Bahrag, with the Toa's own Nuva Symbols when the Toa use their abilities to cause the Nuva Stones to start feeding power to the Bohrok-Kal. At first the Bohrok-Kal are overjoyed at this, thinking they were going to be powerful enough to rule alongside the Bahrag but soon they realise the Nuva Symbols were giving them too much power and, inevitably, they lose control of their abilities and are destroyed by their own powers.
Video Games
Web Comics
Western Animation
- This was a frequent cause of Amusing Injuries for Wile E. Coyote, whose Acme Products would constantly backfire upon him.
- Played straight in one of the 1930's Van Beuren Felix The Cat shorts, specifically The Goose that laid the Golden Egg in which the villain of the short, Captain Kid, ends up hanging off a hook attached to his trousers in the end.
- In a Citizen Kane themed episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, Buster enlisted Babs and Plucky to discredit Montana Max after Max framed Buster for cheating on an exam by planting a false book of answers. The title is actually lampshaded by Babs and Plucky.
Buster: C'mon guys, it's time to hoist Monty by his own petard!
Babs: What's a petard?
Plucky: I hope it's not heavy to hoist; I'm hernia prone.
- In Codename: Kids Next Door Operation C.R.I.M.E., the villain of the week was a kid who was supposedly a psychic who would predict crimes by using crayons to draw what bad thing the students at Gallagher Elementary are about to do. However, it turns out it was a lie, so that the kid can be the only one to get pizza bagels in the cafeteria, but unfortunately, it was lima bean sandwich day.
- Though he survives, it's his own love for opera that undoes the villain's plan in An American Tail 2. How? Watch it for yourself.
- Not to mention it was his own secret weapon that shot him and his cronies out of town.
- In Adams family, Mr. Adams used the scissors of a member of a gang on the entire gang. The owner got promptly chased afterwards when Mr. Adams explained, "Why blame me? He's the one with the scissors."
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, Zhao plans to conquer the Water Tribe by capturing the moon spirit (in the form of a koi fish) to cut off their ability to waterbend, rendering them defenseless. They end up anything but defenseless when he kills the spirit and enrages its companion, the ocean spirit, enough to use Aang as a medium to become a giant water monster, wipe out Zhao's entire fleet, and drag him to a watery grave. Him killing the moon spirit also makes this a Karmic Death. Especially ironic considering that his The Reason You Suck Speech to Zuko a few minutes before would fit perfectly considering the circumstances behind him killing the Moon Spirit.
- Later there's Combustion Man, who twice tries to use his explosion powers after a nasty blow to head. The first time it detonates prematurely, sending him flying back. The second time it doesn't even leave and blows him up.
- Towards the end of Barbie And The Diamond Castle Lydia is turned to stone by the very spell she was casting on the heroines.
- A better Barbie example would be how Exact Words screws over the evil lady in her version of Rapunzel.
- And Diamond Castle wasn't even the first time Barbie bounced back a spell to its caster: in her version of 12 Dancing Princesses, her Evil Stepmother has a wish-granting flower. Barbie has a fan. Figure it out.
- An interesting variant in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker in that Joker is killed by the same weapon he used on one of his own thugs in an earlier scene. What makes this interesting is that, while in order of appearance he shot the gun first, the scene where he dies chronologically happens some forty years before he actually killed the goon. Considering also that he was shot by Tim Drake, who was brutalized by Joker and used as a psychological weapon against Batman, he might have been hoisted on two petards at once.
- And then, later on, Joker - now residing in Tim Drake's body with the wonders of modern technology - is ended for good by his own electrical joy-buzzer.
- In the series proper, Derek Powers gets infected by the very nerve gas that he was going to sell to a foreign dignitary.
- Syndrome in The Incredibles is knocked onto the wing of his jet and subsequently sucked into its engine. There's a long enough pause between the two that Syndrome easily could have survived had he not been wearing a cape — which the audience has been warned is a bad fashion choice for a superhero, or remembered one of his rocket boots was still working.
- This happened a good deal to Syndrome. His robot was so smart that it figured out his wrist computer was a threat and shot it off. He was knocked into the engine by Mr. Incredible's sports car, that Syndrome had essentially paid for by hiring him for secret hero work. Also, this secret hero work helped Mr. Incredible bounce back from a flabby has-been who barely survived a prototype robot, into the efficient, superheroic persona of his glory days who could fight back. And his right-hand, Mirage, betrays him at the critical moment, largely due to his own cavalier attitude when Mr. Incredible was threatening to kill her.
- Jonny Quest TOS episodes:
- "Mystery of the Lizard Men". The Big Bad fires a laser at the Quests' ship, Dr. Quest reflects it back with a mirror and blows him up.
- "Arctic Splashdown". An enemy Mook tries to blow up the Quest's ship with a bomb. Race Bannon gets rid of it by throwing it off the ship, it lands in the Mook's raft and blows up.
- "The Curse of Anubis". The Big Bad is killed by a cave-in caused by his shooting his pistol.
- "Dragons of Ashida". Dr. Ashida breeds huge carnivorous lizards that he uses to hunt down escaped servants (and eventually the Quests). At the end of the episode his servant Sumi finally has had enough of the doctor's abuse and throws him into the dragons' pit, where he's eaten alive.
- "Pirates from Below". Villains try to blow up the Quests' vehicle with a mine. Race Bannon removes it and releases it, and it floats up to the bottom of the Big Bad's boat. Boom.
- "The Devil's Tower". Von Dueffel blows off his biplane's wing with a hand grenade and crashes.
- "The Quetong Missile Mystery". General Fong shoots a guard, who falls on a detonator and blows Fong up with one of his own mines.
- "House of Seven Gargoyles". Enemy Mooks shooting at Dr. Quest while they're under a glacier cause an ice collapse, killing them and the Big Bad as well.
- "Terror Island". Dr. Chu Sing Ling is blown up by a power plant explosion caused by one of the giant monsters he created.
- Happens in The Real Adventures Of Jonny Quest also. The first episode even uses the trope name, almost word for word.
- My Little Pony: He doesn't get killed, but in the episode "The Revolt of Paradise Estate", the wizard Beezen gets chased away by his own magic wand, which was brought to life by his own magic paint.
- Transformers Armada has a schemer by the name of Thrust. Sideways convinces the guy to side with giant, planet-eating Transformer Unicron. While everyone else is trying to defend their home planet from Unicron, Thrust is standing on the big guy's shoulder. Unicron starts to transform, and Thrust is knocked off balance and crushed in one of Unicron's joints.
- In the finale of the 1981 Spider-Man cartoon's Story Arc, Doctor Doom, who has finally taken over the world through clever use of a satellite-mounted laser, has his plot foiled and is subsequently vaporized by the same device.
- Happens all the time to Dr. Doofenshmirtz on Phineas And Ferb—in one episode he invents a deflating ray and wields it from a blimp.
- On Drawn Together, Clara shuts down Wooldoor Sockbat's "Clum Babies" store (Wooldor's sperm have magic healing powers) in a transparent parody of religious objections to stem-cell research. She contracts tuberculosis shortly thereafter.
Clara: Please! [cough] I don't want [cough] to die [cough] so ironically... [passes out]
- Mentioned in audio commentary for The Lion King when the hyenas eat Scar.
- Twice in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003):
- The first occasion occured in "Return to New York" with Baxter Stockman, where, after the main power source of his exo-suit is destroyed, he gets back up, again, and gloats about how each component of it has its own backup power supply, which prompts Donatello to work over to an arm-cannon that was cut off earlier and says "So what you're saying is, this arm should still be fully functioning right?" Cue hilarious Oh Crap! moment before Don blows away Stockmen with his own gun.
- The second occasion occasion occurs in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover movie Turtles Forever, where the Utrom Shredder's latest body proves suprisingly vulnerable to his Technodrome's super-laser.
- In the season 2 finale of The Spectacular Spider Man, Green Goblin's glider is damaged after Spider-Man uses one of his own bombs against him, which then sends Goblin into a large container of more of his own bombs, originally intended to kill Spider-Man, creating a tremendous explosion. Unfortunately, Joker Immunity applies, because of course, No One Could Survive That.
- In The Princess And The Frog, when Dr. Facilier's demonic amulet gets shattered, that's considered to his Friends on the Other Side as breaking their contract, causing the shadowy demons that once worked for him to drag him into a gaping mouth to his doom, all the while happily chanting the exact same song that he was singing when he was cursing Naveen.
- Batman says this almost word-for-word in Batman The Brave And The Bold when his reliance on Superman-like powers while on the alien planet Zur-En-Arrh leads to his being taken out by a Kryptonite Factor-like weakness.
- The Herculoids. Gorvak, the leader of "The Android People" is killed by the warrior android duplicate of Zandor he created.
Real Life
- A rich businessman went completely apeshit when he learnt his girlfriend had been raped years ago by her ex-boss, so after months of spying on the old man he hired a hitman to murder him in revenge. What happened? After the guy was killed, both hitman and "avenger" burnt the house where he was murdered, but the businessman couldn't get away in time and was so severely injured, that he agonized very painfully for almost three months in a private clinic, before finally dying.
- Ongoing, non-evil example: Many people will tell you that the level of play in the National Basketball Association is way down from its Magic/Bird/Jordan peak. It is - and it's not for lack of star power. Two decisions meant to maintain continuity are largely to blame:
- The Rookie Salary Cap, meant to prevent such owner foolishness as Glen "Big Dog" Robinson's infamous $100 million rookie contract by putting a limit on how much rookie contracts can be worth (About $5mil a year, for five years, max). This led to a flood of high school players and "one-and-done" college players rushing to the league to get their rookie contracts "out of the way" so they could make the big money, which then led to many rosters full of players who are literally learning on the job.
- A Veteran's pay scale was put into place to keep owners from low-balling veteran players on contracts. Players with six years or more NBA experience are guaranteed at least $1million a year (You get $1.5 with 10+ years). This led to owners signing less-experienced (and often less-skilled) but cheaper younger players to fill roster spots.
- Expanding the league by nearly a third (From 23 teams to 30 over the last two decades) hasn't helped, either.
- Then again, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that this is just a result of looking through the Nostalgia Filter.
- Marie Curie's major claims to fame are her study of radioactivity as well as discovering radium. The dangers of radiation exposure weren't understood at the time and she ultimately died of radiation poisoning.
- Then again, if it wasn't for her studies on radium and radioactivity, we might not have fully understood radiation poisoning as well as we do, which makes her sort of a martyr. Well, not really, but still.
- Maximilien Robespierre, who was behind much of the Reign Of Terror that followed The French Revolution, was ultimately himself executed by the guillotine which he so adored. Along with quite a few others. (Another irony is that several people who participated in Thermidor actually were against the guillotine, as it was too slow— and were more in favour of shooting their victims randomly with cannon from a distance and throwing them into a mass grave to die.)
- However, the rumor that Dr. Guillotin was executed on the device he had introduced (referenced in the aboved Discworld example) is untrue.
- It's also shown in at least one film that Louis XVI had a hand in designing the guillotine, which he was later put to death by.
- Lord Shang Yang, author of The Book Of Lord Shang and notorious in ancient China for his draconian punishments, met his end under a punishment that he himself formulated into Qin law when he was convicted of treason against King Huiwen of Qin. The punishment, which was reserved for law enforcers who broke the law themselves, called for not only the offender's execution, but that of his family as well. Ouch.
- Joke/urban legend: A terrorist once sent a mail bomb which had insufficient postage. It was returned to him, and he, forgetting what was in it, opened the envelope. (Does that count as a suicide bombing?)
- From the same source: Two animal rights activists were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn, Germany, by freeing a captive herd. Suddenly all two thousand of pigs stampeded through the gate they were opening, and trampled the hapless protesters to death.
- The infamous Pope Alexander VI died in suspicious circumstances. While many historians attribute his death to a plague, a popular rumor claims that he accidentally drank poisoned wine intended for one of his political rivals.
- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin had maintained his grip on power for more than three decades by terrifying everyone around him. One night in 1953, Stalin stayed up drinking with his goons until about 3 or 4 AM, at which time he went to bed. When Stalin didn't come out at his usual hour, people began to get concerned, but they left him alone since they were under strict orders not to disturb him and too terrified of his wrath to risk going in to check on him. By the time one of his cronies finally mustered enough nerve to see what was going on, it was 10 PM of the next day and Stalin was dying of a stroke. Stalin lay for almost a full day, helpless and alone. Had his stooges checked on him, they might have been able to get the doctors in on time, but as it was, Stalin's own brutal tactics kept his thugs from saving his sorry hide. If that isn't poetic justice, I don't know what is.
- To add insult to injury, interior minister Lavrentiy Beria (who was a Complete Monster) mocked Stalin after his apparent death. When Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Beria crouched down to kiss his hand, and when Stalin went unconscious again, Beria spat upon his body. Beria would later gloat that he killed Stalin with poison.
- Stalin had also recently initiated (or was about to initiate) a purge of doctors.
- This really applied to the USSR in general, and still does in communist countries (North Korea especially). As was remarked later "Oftentimes, the one who put someone in the gulag yesterday was sentenced to the gulag today."
- Generally, just look at photos or video of who is around the Leader to find out who is "in favor." The best example is on the cover of a book Soviet Censorship◊. Let's just say those who fell out of 'favor' were never seen again.
- On one occasion, late in his life, Sir Robert Watson-Watt, considered by many to be the "inventor of radar," reportedly was pulled over in Canada for speeding by a radar-gun toting policeman. His remark was, "Had I known what you were going to do with it I would never have invented it!"
- That Other Wiki has its own article on the subject.
- NFL player Plaxico Burress is currently serving time for unlawfully carrying a gun at a nightclub. This case is special because:
- It was only made public knowledge that he was carrying a gun because he accidentally shot himself.
- He accidentally shot himself because his gun was in a style of clothing that only an idiot would wear to a nightclub.
- The NYPD only found out about this because it was on the news, because he was so popular, and not because he'd gone to a hospital. *
Hospitals in New York are required to report this kind of case, because the hospital did not do this because Plaxico was famous, and were found out because he was so famous, this makes an example for them too .
- King James II of Scotland was a big supporter of the use of then-modern artillery in warfare. He was killed when one of his own cannons exploded.
- The Peacemaker Accident. The USS Princeton was the first screw propelled ship in the US navy hosted a large number of dignitaries and most of the cabinet. The opportunity was used to show off different cannons to the higher ups. One of these was named the Peacemaker. Its explosion killed 7 including the Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of State, the Captain, and the head of the construction, equipment and repairs.
- Enron's accounting fraud. A lot of the transactions used in the fraud created large amounts of extra debt, and a lot of the other transactions and investments lost value very quickly when the company was being investigated, significantly speeding up the bankruptcy.
- A Greek brass worker named Perilaus invented the brazen bull, a particularly gruesome brand of execution. The victim would be placed inside a hollow brass statue of a bull, and a fire would be lit underneath. The screams of the victim were turned, by the bull's inner workings into the roars of an angry bull. Perilaus presented it as a gift to Phalaris, a ruler of a local city-state. So disgusted was Phalaris with this invention that he ordered its creator to be its first victim.
His words revolted me. I loathed the thought of such ingenious cruelty, and resolved to punish the artificer in kind. "If this is anything more than an empty boast, Perilaus," I said to him, "if your art can really produce this effect, get inside yourself, and pretend to roar; and we will see whether the pipes will make such music as you describe." He consented; and when he was inside I closed the aperture, and ordered a fire to be kindled. "Receive," I cried, "the due reward of your wondrous art: let the music-master be the first to play."
— Phalaris I
- On Christmas Eve of 2008, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo went to a party held by his relatives dressed in a Santa suit, opened fire on them and killed eight, and then set fire to the house with a homemade flamethrower. His original plan was to establish an alibi and flee the country; however, the homemade flamethrower burned part of the Santa suit into his flesh, sabotaging his plans and driving him to commit suicide.
- On Feburary 16, 2010, a man responsible for a string of terrifying holdups in Adelaide, South Australia was arrested due to the fact that not only were two of the stolen cars used for the robberies parked on his property, he had in his posession a SPAS-12 shotgun, which was clearly identifiable on the released CCTV footage of some of the robberies, and is very rare, not to mention illegal to own in Australia.
- Thomas Midgley, Jr. is a double example: he invented leaded gasoline and CFCs, contributing to some of humankind's greatest screwups, then died when a machine he built to hoist him out of bed malfunctioned and strangled him.
- Talk about irony. Literally hoisted by one's own invention.
- The 2009 Cincinnati Bengals played their final game of the regular season against the New York Jets. The Jets would only enter the playoffs if they won, but the Bengals already had their best position locked up and so rested their players and visibly did not play hard to win the game. The Jets won handily. The following week the Jets played Cincinnati again, and eliminated them from the playoffs.
- The urban legend of the guy who was killed by his own fart gas. The Myth Busters busted this one.
- Drug suspect kills self with own shotgun booby trap.
- In 1982, Universal Studios sued Nintendo of America on the grounds that their Donkey Kong arcade game was a rip-off of Universal's King Kong. However, Nintendo's lawyer Did Do The Research, and found out that Universal had previously won a lawsuit declaring King Kong was in the public domain. The judge ruled that Universal had acted in bad faith by threatening Nintendo's licensees, and Nintendo received $57,000 (plus damages and attorney's fees) as a result.
- In 1927, Isadora Duncan, a dancer known for wearing long scarves, died from a broken neck when a large silk scarf draped around her neck became entangled around one of the vehicle's open-spoked wheels and rear axle.
- Also in 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a Welsh racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under stress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph (275 km/h).
- 1928: Alexander Bogdanov, a Russian physician, died following one of his experiments, in which the blood of a student suffering from malaria and tuberculosis, L. I. Koldomasov, was given to him in a transfusion.
- The Collyer brothers, extreme cases of compulsive hoarders, were found dead in their home in New York in 1947. The younger brother, Langley, died by falling victim to a booby trap he had set up, causing a mountain of objects, books, and newspapers to fall on him crushing him to death. His blind brother, Homer, who had depended on Langley for care, died of starvation some days later. Their bodies were recovered after massive efforts in removing many tons of debris from their home.
- The term in question is still valid today; several movies and TV shows dealing with The War On Terror, such as The Kingdom or NCIS, have pointed out that bomb-makers often lose a finger or two to their own bombs, or worse.
- Some of the funniest cases reordered here.
- In 2004, when it looked like John Kerry might win the presidential election, the Democrats scrambled to change the rules so that an appointee of the governor (Romney, a Republican) wouldn't serve out the term. Six years later, under a Democratic governor, Ted Kennedy died too quickly for them to change the rules back, but it didn't really matter since the Democrats couldn't possibly lose a Massachusetts Senate election, right? Right? Right?
- Basketball player crushed by collapsing wall after grabbing hoop.
- The owner of the Carrier Chipping Company was shredded by his own wood chipper.
- Famous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was himself brutally murdered in prison by being impaled through the ass with a broomstick and having his head bashed in with an iron bar.
- An unlicensed pyrotechnician was decapitated by a firework when he looked down the tube after it failed to launch.
- Happened in the Burmese general election of 1990; the regime officially said the election was multi-party(and it was), but they thought they were so popular their candidates would win easily. Results? National League for Democracy wins ''392'' seats (out of 492), making for a rather convincing win. However, the junta refused to recognize the results, and put NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, making this more of a Subverted Trope.
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