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Nice Job Breaking It Hero
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"It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero." — GlaDOS, Portal
The hero has accomplished their goal; they've killed the Big Bad, or defeated them forever, or at least scored a major blow against the antagonist. They've done what they set out to do...
... but Not So Fast Bucko! It turns out that by the very act of success, they've unwittingly made things worse. Maybe the now-dead antagonist was actually holding back an even greater evil. Maybe the villain, having been defeated or damaged, is now transformed into a new, ultimate, unstoppable, invincible, angry form, generally against the villain's will (or against their expectations, anyway). Maybe the villain, despite their villainy, was serving some other greater good — keeping the world/universe/nature/whatever politically or literally balanced — and their demise throws things into chaos. Maybe that princess you saved is a cold-hearted tyrant at the head of an oppressive regime. Perhaps taking down the villain has resulted in an Evil Power Vacuum, and now even worse guys are fighting to fill the void that the previous villain left, without a single regard for who else gets hurt. Or perhaps the only means of foiling the villain involves questionably massive "collateral damage." For whatever reason, the hero's victory over death and destruction directly or indirectly leads to an even greater wave of death and destruction, or at least an even greater threat of such. Oh dear.
Maybe the villain themselves will warn the hero about the possible consequences, as a last-ditch attempt to save their own skin, or as a bitter "parting shot" to ruin the hero's victory. ("You fools... do you even know what you've done?") Villains being villains, this may just be a bluff. Or maybe the villain will just lament over how the hero defeated them despite all their efforts - it wasn't some Xanatos Gambit sort of plan of theirs for the hero to "win" and thus make things worse. (If it was, that'd be My Death Is Just The Beginning.)
If the mission was a rescue, it was an Unwanted Rescue, and the former captive may bitterly inform them of the true facts.
In most cases, of course, the hero's new mission is to stop the new danger they've unleashed, preferably in a way that doesn't spawn ever greater menaces. "Darker" plotlines may end the story right there, instead, and it's always possible the villain's demise inadvertently resulted in the irreversible destruction or horrifying mutation of the world. I hate it when that happens. If used excessively, this trope often leaves an audience with a sense that the hero shouldn't have tried to change things for the better and indeed shouldn't have even left home, which can be a Family Unfriendly Aesop, but also a more literal moral about getting seriously involved in things without learning much about them.
This trope can be annoying in video games as often-times Stupidity Is The Only Option, particularly in the case of a MacGuffin Delivery Service... It is not particularly fair to try to make the player feel guilty about a course of action they they had no control over, and indeed, might've gotten a "Game Over" if they attempted to not fulfill the objectives in question.
The term " Pyrrhic Victory " has the same connotation and originated from the Pyrrhic War fought by King Pyrrhus in 279 BC, which makes " Nice Job Breaking It Hero" Older Than Feudalism.
Compare Xanatos Sucker and Resuscitate The Dog. Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act is a subtrope of this. No Endor Holocaust is what happens when this is ineptly averted. And if the hero dies following the reveal and is unable to stop the new menace, you've just read a Shoot The Shaggy Dog story. Spoilers, of course.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the first part of the story is about the struggle for humans to return to the surface by killing the evil overlord keeping them underground... Sadly, the evil overlord was protecting the humans from something worse. Ooops.
- Turns out that the "Something worse" is actually oppressing and destroying sentient races across the universe because if they become too advanced, they could cause existence itself to collapse.
- Some have theorized the opening takes this even farther, and actually shows an alternate ending right before existence does end.
- And Rossiu, in an attempt to figure out how close "something worse" is to happening, evacuates humans from their underground cities even when they don't want to leave— not-quite-unwittingly bringing disaster closer with every person living on the surface.
- In Princess Mononoke, it's not exactly the hero who cuts off the Forest Spirit's head; Ashitaka, of course, was trying to stop it. As soon as Jigo collects the head, the body turns into a protoplasmic horror destroying every living thing in sight, searching for its head.
- Magic Knight Rayearth. Save the princess, kill her kidnapper, Save Both Worlds, right? Uh... not when he was RESCUING the princess from a life as a Barrier Maiden that can't even think for herself, and, because she knew she was stuck in that role and her happiness and self-fulfillment could kill the whole kingdom, she sent the Magic Knights as unknowing Laser Guided Tykebombs to kill HER, not him. After the resulting psychological trauma of The Reveal and being forced to kill the both of them, that leaves the place without a Barrier Maiden, and guess who has to choose between letting the kingdom suffer and dooming one person to a life of misery? No wonder Hikaru decides to Make A Better World instead.
- That isn't even all of it. The Dragon of the second season is actually the consequence of the events of the first season; Nova is the personification of Hikaru's grief over the fact that they had to kill Emeraude. In effect, Hikaru almost ends up killing the man she loves along with thousands of innocents and destroying the world in the process. Nice Job Breaking It, Heroines.
- Arguably, this is also the result of the entire world falling into despair because they've relied on Emeraude for so long that they can't imagine life without her. Which coallesces like Nova into Debonair, an immensely god-like power formed from their collective fear, anxiety, and despair. Debonair is, in turn, the one who manipulates Nova into being her Dragon, as well as brutally screwing up her perception of reality, thus causing all the deaths and pain of the second season. Nice job breaking it, Cephiro.
- In Dragon Ball Z, Mr. Satan/Hercule nobly attempts to fight Tyke Bomb Majin Buu in spite of being outmatched eleventy billion times over by the monster. Through all Hercule's attempts at tricking the childish villain, he unexpectedly befriends Buu, and ends up convincing him to stop killing. The threat to Earth is all but defused, until a pair of hunters Shoot The Dog — literally, a stray puppy Buu had adopted — and trigger Buu's transformation from friendly horror to sadistic demigod. While the hunters are obviously more to blame, had Hercule never gotten involved, Buu would eventually have been defeated by the combined forces of Gohan and Gotenks.
- Wait... Mr. Satan basically saves the day until two guys Shoot The Dog, and you blame Mr. Satan? Man, that's some fierce Fridge Logic.
- Mr. Satan himself gets shot trying to beat up the dog-shooters. It's Satan's near-death that takes Buu over the edge... so maybe it is because Satan is, well, basically living in his own fantasy world inside his head.
- You would predict Buu's evil side manifesting into being? Honestly, if I could convince somebody who didn't know better to stop killing, I would. The later damage may have been quite bothersome, but the Dragon Balls fixed it all up. In the end, the heroes more than stopped the reign of destruction thanks to Mr. Satan.
- No, the MASTER OF THIS TROPE will forever be Prince Vegeta. Here me out, now. He is, obviously, behind the Saiyan Saga, as Raditz was his soldier to give permission to go to Earth and it was his plan get the Dragonballs and wish for immortality. Then, Frieza found out, through him, about the Namekian Dragonballs, spawning the Namek Saga. When that fiasco is over, it's Vegeta's son who warns Goku about the Androids. Vegeta stops Bulma from doing the obvious, which is wish the Androids away with the Dragonballs and insists on allowing Cell to power up to his strongest level, thus pushing the Android and Cell Sagas way beyond where the heroes COULD have stopped things. Well, when all that gets Goku killed anyway, years later, Vegeta decides that marrying the richest woman in the world and being the strongest being on Earth isn't fun anymore and volunteers to be possessed by an evil wizard looking to steal energy to feed his father's pet, Majin Buu. The only way Vegeta could have been more responsible for every disaster that happened in Dragonball Z was if he held a Ki Blast to a villain's head and ordered him to "kill Kakarotto". WTF?!...
- Occurs on a spectacular scale in Neon Genesis Evangelion. While Gendo and SEELE propagate the general purpose and technically true cover story that their mission is to prevent the Angels from initiating Third Impact (which would kill the entire human race), the reason for killing the Angels is in actuality so that they don't interfere in the Human Instrumentality Project, which is a fancy name for SEELE-controlled Third Impact.
- While Gendo has been preparing his own Instrumentality plan for years under the noses of his superiors, one that is arguably a little better than "genocide and hope for the best," Shinji accidentally triggers their original plan at the eleventh hour. Things get better. I guess.
- played straight in Rebuild 2.0: Oh Shinji, in the short span of 90 minutes you've managed to make yourself likeable again, have reached out to other people, grown a bit of a spine, and even got to kick a gargantuan amount of ass...Too bad saving the girl results in Third Impact, trapping you and her in your "Giant Robot" while your bishounen counterpart descends from the moon to lance you in the chest!
- In Pokémon Special, one of the first things Yellow does is breaking up an attempt by an apparently resurfacing Team Rocket to hijack the ship S.S. Anne. Said hijacking was part of a plan by a reformed Lt. Surge to lure out the Elite Four with a rumor about finding the one they were looking for.
- Frequently implied to occur whenever the Dirty Pair are on the job, but one OVA episode spells it out plainly. The Angels are investigating the mysterious deaths of several hundred mining employees on a planet run as a religious colony; they find that the religion's leadership has evolved into a murdering cult that, with the help of a ring of weather satellites, is capable of calling down Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style devastation down in a specific location. After they destroy the cult's station in orbit, they assume correctly that the cult's reign of terror is ended. Unfortunately, the space station was also the control for the weather satellites, and the weather satellites weren't just used for destructive purposes; the Angels look down from orbit and see about nineteen hurricanes beginning to form, with no weather-control system left to prevent them....
- The whole story of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. "Let's save our mistress by filling this Book of Darkness!" Well, it's not really their fault anyway, but nevertheless they made quite a mess.
- Princess Tutu. In order to prevent Mytho from destroying his own emotion of love, Fakir cuts the mythical sword capable of doing so in half. It also ensured that his heart could not be shattered again. Now how could this possibly be a bad thing? Well, the piece of Mytho's heart that held love was recently bathed in raven's blood, thus corrupting it — and now it's corrupting Mytho. The only way to get the thing out? Shattering his heart by using the very sword that Fakir destroyed. Whoopsie...
- This type of thing happens a lot in Princess Tutu. Mostly because the characters are living in a tragedy and Drosselmeyer gets his kicks from making a person's good intentions be catalysts for the demise of those they're trying to help. The main character frequently makes everything worse courtesy of her humble attempts to help Mytho.
- Code Geass: Facing obliteration, Lelouch/Zero geasses Suzaku to "Live!" One year later... When Lelouch specifically orders his best pilot Kallen in her new Super Robot to kill Suzaku, the Geass activates and Suzaku turns to his only remaining weapon: an anti-matter nuke. Nice job nuking Tokyo, anti-hero.
- And don't forget when Lelouch make a joke: "Let's kill all the Japanese". And you had Mind Control power. Nice job making your sister a mass murderer.
- In his defense, that was immediately after his Geass turned on permanently, and he had no way of knowing that had happened or was even possible. So it's more of a Diabolus Ex Machina.
- If I remember correctly, his geass momentarily turns on while he is angrily telling a Brittanian noble to die, and noticing it turn on, stops himself midsentence. Lellouch, being a Chessmaster, would have taken this development into account along with C.C.'s warning. If the writers had bothered keeping his character even halfway consistent, he would never have made the joke, and if he had, would have stopped himself before finishing the command for sure.
- In that instance, he was actively trying to force the noble to die in an out of the way place, but then Rivalz gets in the way and he has to stop the command or risk having Rivalz be affected by it, but then again, if he hadn't used his geass for such a petty reason, then his geass wouldn't have evolved enough to the point that it was constantly on, and the Princess Masacre incident wouldn't have happened.
- In Jigoku Shojo Mitsuganae, Mikage is able to sense when someone nearby may soon be a client of Enma Ai. In one episode, she stops one such person and urges her not to use the Hotline to Hell... which she had never heard of until then. Smooth.
- In the Season 2 finale of Yu-Gi-Oh GX, Kenzan tries to stop a brainwashed minion from firing the Earth Shattering Kaboom by smashing the laptop computer that controls the satellite cannon. As soon as he does this, he learns the missile was just fired, and he's just destroyed the only means of stopping it!
- In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Sakura leaves one of her memory-feathers behind in Acid Tokyo to keep the reservoir pure and the inhabitants alive. While this act ultimately apparently results in her birth, the aging of the feather also allows the Big Bad to win when he returns it to her body in the "several hundred years later" dimension.
- Also, Syaoran. If only he could turn back time, everything would be okay and he could save her, right? WRONG.
- This is clearly becoming a theme, since it turns out that the entire frickin' plot was set into motion by Clow's wish that Yuuko wouldn't die, though he didn't intend for it to turn out quite that way and the Big Bad just happened to be listening.
- In Gundam Wing, the Gundam pilots decide to attack Federation meeting, in hope to obliterate Federation leaders and ending their threat toward colony. Only that meeting is about getting to peace talk with the colonist. Yeah, nice job. VERY nice job putting OZ and Romefeller into leadership, you idiots.
- To their defense, they went to that meeting to destroy only OZ, but Treize put every pacifist on a plane with OZ's name, using that to trick the Gundam pilots into killing them and allowing OZ to take over the world, all that while making the Gundams legitimate enemies.
- The entire plot of Inu Yasha is based on this. Kagome kills a demon that stole the Shikon Jewel and in the process shatters the afore mentioned Mac Guffin. This kicks off an incredibly drawn-out plot where the main characters have to fix the jewel and fight evil demons who want its power for themselves. Nice job breaking it, Miko.
- Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru has the characters discover Kukuri's birthplace where items for her use had been left behind. The bad news is the items had been collected by monsters called Gimu Gimu. Good news is they're tame and don't object to people taking back what's theirs. Unfortunately, they also don't object to people taking items and selling them, which is exactly what Nike, Kukuri, and Toma did prior to reaching the ruins. To make it worse, a necklace meant specifically for Kukuri was lost when Toma earlier used the item it was kept in as an impromptu rocket launcher. Poor Kukuri simply snaps at this point and regresses to a four-year old for a few moments. For the record, they did find the necklace soon after.
- In Naruto, Itachi kills the Uchiha clan to stop them from taking over Konoha. Unfortunately, by sparing Sasuke, he has allowed Konoha to be destroyed by him. Worse yet, he strengthened Akatsuki by doing missions for them, which eventually led to Konoha being destroyed anyway by Pain.
- You could argue that he expected something far worse and Sasuke's defection to the Akatsuki along with Konoha's destruction by Pain was Just As Planned.
- Possibly true seeing as he prepared Naruto with that weird crow jutsu specifically against Sasuke, which indicates that he probably predicted that Sasuke would join Akatsuki after learning the truth about Itachi.
- Then again, he failed to capture Naruto when he could easily have done so, and he gave Kisame no assistance against the four-tailed beast host (albeit at Kisame's insistence), and Naruto was reassigned to Pain before his death, so it's questionable how much he strengthened Akatsuki.
- Manga example from Basara: when Momonoi is killed and the Red King retakes his city, Tatara and his rebel army plan on using the leftovers of Momonoi's gunpowder to blow up the water supply of the palace, making the Red King suffer. Too bad it results in the whole city having no water left and the citizens, formerly happy to be freed from their king turn against the rebels. A desert city cut off from water, good way to get their support hero.
- In the Berserk manga, Skull Knight manages to slash Femto from behind at the very moment of his apparent ascension, using his dimension-crossing sword to teleport and get the drop on him. Unfortunately, Femto then redirects his strike towards the vortex of demonic power they are both standing on, and uses its dimension-bending to bring the unholy nature of that place closer to earth, thus bypassing the walls between Seen and Unseen by folding time and space, resulting in the energies of the Unseen manifesting physically on Earth. You've brought about Hell On Earth, Skull Knight. Whoops. Guess that's what you get for bringing in sci-fi conventions into a Medieval Fantasy world!
- Gundam00 gives us a Nice Job Breaking It Villain. Near the end of Season 1, the Big Bad's assassination of the hibernating Iolia Shenberg triggers a Dead Man Switch which unlocks the Gundams' Super Mode. With this advantage, the good guys have a fighting chance in what had previously been an all but impossible battle. Thus, in the first season finale, They manage to kill the Big Bad and fight the remainder of his forces to a bloody stalemate.
- In a way similar to the Magic Knight Rayearth example above, the entire first half of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne was this. Maron/Jeanne is helping out God by sealing demons to keep Satan at bay and her boyfriend/arch enemy Chiaki/Sinbad is an agent of the devil, right? Bzzt, wrong! In one of the most shocking Face Heel Turns this troper has ever seen, it is revealed that Maron's angel sidekick Finn Fish is actually working for the devil and had been lying to Maron the whole time, and Maron was actually helping the devil and Chiaki God, not the other way around. So Maron had actually been helping the devil that whole time, making him stronger than ever.
Comics
- Happens all the time in Hellblazer; it's a fact of the protagonist's life that he never has any permanent, unequivocal victories.
- Done on a universal scale by Reed Richards. Reed learned some time ago that Galactus' existence, however problematic, is necessary to the universe. He tried to get around the problem by turning Galactus into a star. In mainstream continuity, this still ends up releasing Abraxas. In Earth X, it frees up the Celestials to overrun the universe (because what Galactus was really eating was their young, which gestate in planetary cores—then hatch).
- In Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of The Authority, we find out that a thirteen-years-old Jenny Sparks convince a friend in Vienna that he was wasting his life making paintings that didn't sell and suggested that he'd find another profession.
Jenny Sparks: There must be something you can do. You're patriotic, well-read and an excellent communicator. Have you ever considered a career in local government? Do I even have to say it?: Politics? Actually, that might no be such a bad idea.
- This happens at the very beginning of the French comic book series Les Légendaires. The Five Man Band confronts the Big Bad and foils the plot that should grant him eternal youth... but in doing so, they shatter the magic stone he was using, which results in a supernatural discharge that turns not only the heroes but all the adults on the planet into children. (As well as the denizens of the near-by Elfin World parallel dimension.) Unfortunately for the protagonists as they struggle to correct their mistake, their responsibility in this mess is common knowledge. Needless to say, they aren't very much welcome anywhere after that.
- In an early Avengers issue, the team has come to a military base to locate the Cosmic Cube, an all-powerful wish-granting machine. They find Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner trashing the place for unrelated reasons. During the fight, Hercules tells Namor they'll never let him get the Cosmic Cube. Namor promptly escapes, leaving Hank Pym fuming — he's guessed (correctly) that Namor had never heard of the thing until Herc told him. Naturally, Subby finds the Cube and comes back to mop the floor with them.
Films
- At the end of Hellboy, the titular Anti Anti Christ kills the villain Rasputin... only for a very huge and scary tentacle monster to pop out of his dead body.
- During the climax of Dogma, the fallen angel Bartleby needs to become human so he can take advantage of plenary indulgence in order to return to Heaven. Thus proving God wrong and thereby unmaking all of creation. To do so, he needs to remove his wings... which is promptly done for him with a machine gun by a particularly clueless hero who was trying to kill him.
- In the Star Wars prequels, the Republic winning the Clone War was a Xanatos Gambit made of a series of Nice Job Breaking It Heroes that no one even realized were such. i.e. Anakin Skywalker leading the counterattack against the Confederacy fleet and freeing the capture Chancellor Palpatine was orchestrated specifically so he could defeat Darth Tyranus and murder him. It might be seen as necessary—even a handless Sith Lord would be able to escape all but the most secure prisons while awaiting a war crimes or treason trial—but the fact remains that Anakin killed a badly injured and (at the time) helpless old man because someone told him to.
- In The Day The Earth Stood Still one of the soldiers shoots some spiky Applied Phlebotinum out of Klaatu's hand. It turns out to have been a gift for the President that would have let him study life on other planets. Well played, soldier man.
- On the other hand coming out in a face concealing helmet and pulling an unidentified object isn't what this troper calls good First Contact protocol!
- Klaatu at least has the excuse of coming from a culture that hasn't had a war in generations, and thus has forgotten the part about never making sudden hand movements when confronting nervous men with guns. The soldiers, on the other hand, are being a tad irrational in believing that a hostile alien invasion would start with one alien using one hand weapon.
- Depends on the power of the hand weapon. It was an unknown piece of tech, after all. And when you add "Alien Technology" as a label...
- It's still paranoia. Really, if an alien had a) technology powerful enough to destroy whatever he wanted and b) wanted to destroy Earth/Mankind/New York City, why would he bother to land?? Just nuke Earth from orbit and be done with it.
- Serenity has a complete inversion of this; the Alliance feared any secrets River might have known, and their attempt to recover River by triggering her innate asskickery so that she would draw notice to herself only resulted in the double whammy of her unlocking her ingrained combat training and bringing up the very memories and knowledge they feared she possessed. Nice job breaking it, villain.
- In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo encounters the Architect on his journey to destroy The Matrix. He learns that, if he proceeds, every man, woman, and child connected to The Matrix would die, which, combined with the destruction of the rebellion, would be The End Of The World As We Know It. Neo does it anyway. It got better, though.
- In Neo's defense, the Architect may have been lying and/or exaggerating in his description of the consequences.
- Except at the end of Matrix Revolutions he confirms part of it to the Oracle by stating that the people who have chosen to be freed will be allowed to.. When she asks for his word, he replies with "what am I, human?" Implying that he (and indeed all programs/machines) cannot/don't lie.
- In Frequency, John manages to use the time-travel radio to keep his father, Frank, from dying in the burning building that had claimed his life thirty years ago. And so doing began a chain of events that caused a serial killer to live instead of die who then goes on to murder many more women including John's mother. Oh, and did I mention Frank still dies from lung cancer because he smokes?
- Basically the whole plot of The Butterfly Effect is a series of these.
- The Dark Knight. Batman's destruction of the Falcone family's dominance of Gotham City leads to not only a myriad of gangs attempting to fill the gap, but also the Joker and other imitation criminals who create far more chaos and destruction. There are obvious real life parallels in international politics (collapse of the Soviet Union leading to rise of nationalism and fundamentalism) and law enforcement (the weakening of the Mafia clearing the way for Chinese, Russian, Columbian, etc, gangs).
- Planet Of The Apes. The original had an astronaut landing in the future from a freak accident. The remake has the hero CAUSING the freak accident that launches his ship even further back in time and giving his mutant lab apes free reign over a primitive world. Changes things considerably.
- At a fairly early point in Return to Oz, Dorothy mentions that the Ruby Slippers fell off her feet during her flight back to Kansas, and apparently thought nothing more of them after that. During the climax, the Nome King takes great delight in telling Dorothy what happened because of this:
Dorothy: My ruby slippers—
The Nome King: No, no, no... My ruby slippers. They just fell out of the sky one day — you were so anxious to get home! They're very powerful: they made it possible for me to conquer the Emerald City... thank you.
- In Sunshine, one of the crew members forgets to adjust the heat shield... causing the Icarus II to have a catastrophic fire. Nice job breaking the ship that was supposed to save Earth, hero.
- Actually the misalignment just causes damage to the hydralics. It is the fact that the communication towers are vaporized in the sunlight that causes the fire and causes the first death.
- Near the end of The Haunting in Connecticut, the reverend manages to exorcise the ghost from the house. Too bad he's a benevolent spirit who was preventing the dozens of malicious ghosts from wreaking havoc.
- In The Monitors, after the heroes drive off the dictatorial machines that enslaved mankind and stopped all human conflict, wars start breaking out all over the place.
- In the first Fantastic Four [The Movie movie] the team is cheered on for their heroic efforts to save people on the Brooklyn Bridge from a major accident they caused. Also, the major supervillain of the film exists because Reed screwed up his calculations when predicting the approach of a cosmic storm. The disaster gave Doom his powers and ruined his company providing him with the motivation to attack. So the whole movie is about the Fantastic Four cleaning up their own messes.
- Sir Galahad wasn't so keen on being rescued from Castle Anthrax, what with the peril of spankings and oral sex and all.
Lancelaut: No, it's far too perilous.
Galahad: Well, let me have just a little bit of peril?
Literature
- In the SF novel Legacy of Heorot, human colonists on an alien planet manage to eliminate the "grendels", a native, komodo-dragon like species, that threatened their existence. They find out too late that the grendels were the mature(female) form of these tasty(male) "fish" that are just about everywhere. (Think frogs and tadpoles. Only the frogs are a lot bigger. And have big, pointy teeth. And decide that people taste good.) The mature grendels kept the population down through cannibalism. Now that there are no more mature grendels all of the immature grendels start to grow up and undergo metamorphosis, and they're hungry. Even worse, all of them can move almost faster than the eye can see. Guess what they decide to snack on...
- Nice job breaking the food chain, heroes.
- This is more or less how the The Sword Of Truth series moves from one book to another: Resolving the conflict of one book leads directly to the problems in the next, at least in the beginning.
- Happens not once but twice in the Eoin Colfer novel The Supernaturalists.
- Done twice in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
- First, at the end of the first book when Vin kills the Lord Ruler he warns her that she has no idea what he does for mankind and that she has doomed the world. In the second book, the protagonists discover that the mists that have covered the world for the past thousand years are are growing thicker and destroying crops. In addition, the mists are killing a small fraction of the people that go out in them.
- To stop this, Vin finds the Well of Ascension, which is rumored to have the power to stop the mists. When she finds the well, she releases the power in it as described in the prophecies. Rather than saving the world, this releases the Sealed Evil in a Can. Oh, and the mists are still getting thicker, but that's the least of their problems from this point on. It turns out that the mists were not created by the sealed evil but his now-defunct opponent. He just made them stronger in order to distract the heroes from his true goals. He also perverted the prophecies to play out his Xanatos Gamit. Luckily, it turns out his opponent had anticipated him breaking free and planned for it. It was still a close call.
- In the backstory of the Wheel Of Time series, Lews Therin comes up with a badass plan to re-imprison the Dark One. Unfortunately, something goes terribly wrong, and from then on all male channelers are doomed to go mad, wreak havoc with their immense powers, and then die horribly. The world gets Broken.
- Though in his defense, it's technically better than it could have been had the Dark One won.
- In the final volume of Tad William's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy it is revealed that the swords the hero had been trying to bring together to defeat the Big Bad were in fact the only things which would release the Big Bad from his prison. Whoops.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe New Jedi Order series, it is implied (or outright stated, whichever) that Palpatine formed The Empire and ordered the construction of weapons such as the Death Star to prepare for the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong, a species whose sole purpose is taking evil to a level that Palpatine could only dream of, making the original movies a Nice Job Breaking It Trilogy.
- On the other hand, given the historical tendency for Sith Lords' motives to almost invariably decay, he probably would have run the galaxy into the ground to the point where they'd side with the Vong against him.
- Furthermore, when someone suggests that the Empire could have easily dealt with the Vong, Pellaeon points out that since the Empire couldn't handle the Rebellion, why would they be able to handle the Vong?
- Because the tide is turn wend what's left of the Empire shows up, they just weren't design to fight a small group of rebles.
- In the First Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant Covenant's breaking the Staff of Law in self-defense has only good consequences. Then in the Second Chronicles the act turns out to have enabled continuing and rather imaginative evil and suffering on a massive scale. Cue a lengthy quest to repair the damage.
- In the third book of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy, the Inhibitors are finally wiped out; however, it is implied that their absence is what allows a swarm of von Neumann machines to eventually consume literally the entire universe. As such this also counts as an Inferred Holocaust.
- Ian Irvine, and the conclusion to the Well of Echoes series. The Magnificent Bastard has gained two artifacts of unsurpassed magic power and is taking over the world. Tiaan tries to stop him by destroying the power sources of all magic, thus preventing anybody from using it. Except then it turns out that said artifacts are the only significant exception, and what she actually did was destroy every single source of power that would have given the heroes a chance. Dang.
- The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie. The whole plot is preventing arms manufacturers from pulling off a terrorist attack in order to jack up prices for their new attack helicopters... that made a lot more sense when I was reading it. But anyway, the last page states flat out that the sales of the very weapon he used to beat them skyrocketed. Awkward.
- In Sailor on the Seas of Fate, Elric helps the Creature-Doomed-to-Live to die... And inadvertently sets in motion events leading to the end of the world. Oops.
- In Kevin O'Donnell's novel ORA:CLE, set in a universe where all computers run unprotected operating systems like DOS and all news are shown in Bulletin Board Systems, the news are censored by a viral software implanted by the global Coalition. This is a perfect excuse for a coup by a group of erudites, who then keep the status quo and keep the censors; as the protagonist is an erudite but does not agrees with the methods of the new group in power, he arranges to hack the several levels of censor programs, each more seriously defended, until that immediately before deactivating the last one, he's warned by the leader of the group in power about not deactivating the last censor. The protagonist does anyway and the leader kills herself while communicating with the protagonist. Later is discovered that the censor programs were implanted to prevent extraterrestrial avian invaders, who use Earth as their hunting grounds, from finding out about a plan to transform Jupiter into a star in order to blind their sensors and allow Earth to launch everything against them in a last ditch effort to get rid of the invaders.
- In the final arc of Deltora Quest, Leif and friends have to destroy the Four Sisters who are killing their land slowly by singing evil spells. No one hears their songs, as they are so quiet and have been in place for so many hundreds of thousands of years that everyone just thought of their songs as the sound of silence. When they finally manage to kill the last one, it turns out that the singing that was making the land barren actually also kept an even worse monster locked down: basically a bubbling pot of poisonous goo that will keep expanding until the entire land—the mountains, streams, forests, cities, and everything alive—is buried under a thick, hard crust of grey stuff. Essentially, it is unbeatable: swords cannot cut it, there is nowhere to throw it away and it expands too fast to curb it in any manner. The Shadowlord thought he had them beat there: die slowly or die quickly were the only options. Thankfully, the goo is not flame retardant, and they did have six gargantuan fire-breathing dragons on demand.
- In the Bible, Adam and Eve manage to achieve this for the entire human race. Having been given the paradise of Eden in which to live they are told that there is one rule: they must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. One talking snake later and... yeah, nice job.
- To be fair, the lack of Dakka was seriously hampering humanity's development. Eden totally needed more Dakka, what with all those different animals confined in one convenient place...
- Never mind that without Adam and Eve screwing things up, it's quite likely that there would never be war, disease, or death, and we might even be colonizing other planets by now. Guess we'll never know.
- Except that they had no drive, no knowledge, no need to do anything. Hungry? Grab some fruit. Tired? Have some sleep. Want nooky? Have some. How it would be possible to develop any kind of technology under such conditions is beyond this troper's imagination. Snake deserves a good, round applause.
- Huh? So technology is worth war, disease, and death? Sorry, I missed the part on how abundant food, leisure, and sex is bad.
- Then you need to read Brave New World.
- Some people needs to reeducate themselves. The fruit was of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not any kind of knowledge. The ONE thing they were forbidden to do, they went ahead and did. Please note; they were NOT forbidden to do ANYTHING else...
- A number of theologians have suggested that God, being omnipotent and omniscient, knew in advance the events that were about to take place, yet allowed them to happen; without the ability to choose between doing right and wrong, homo sapiens would lack free will—that element which makes us fundamentally human.
- A number of Said number of Theologians also say this is why we got Jesus. In fact, he was planned from the beginning specifically because God knew Humanity was going to screw up.
- As Thomas Aquinas said, (imperfect quote here) "Oh Happy Sin, that gained for us So great a Savior."
24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life
26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
- In the regular Animorphs series, Elfangor tends to come across as noble and wonderful, a cross between The Obi Wan and The Minnesota Fats, willing to break his people's laws, yes, but only to serve the greater good. In The Andalite Chronicles, however, we see that Visser Three's capture of Alloran is a direct result of Elfangor refusing to kill a mass amount of harmless Yeerks. This capture also led to Visser Three's eventual promotion. While he originally gained prominence by being the Yeerks' authority on Andalites, his brutish ways and lack of subtlety wouldn't have let him progress much further. Thanks to Elfangor, who opened the door for him to do what no other Yeerk could, Visser One's agenda is the only thing keeping Visser Three from declaring an all-out space war on Earth!
- In the original novels of The Ring, the Asakawa delves into the mystery of the Cursed Tape not only because it's a good story, but to save himself, his family, and his friend from the killing curse. In doing so, he chronicles his investigation in the Asakawa Report, which details every little incident of the quest. By the end of Spiral, the second novel, Sadako reveals that the curse has mutated and taken on the Asakawa Report as its new vector, as well as any of its adaptations —movies, television, radio, and any other form of media where the tale is recounted. Eventually, all of mankind will have been destroyed as she replicates within each individual, infected human. At least the Cursed Video was contained...
- Even in the original concept, it is only the protagonist who realizes that the only way to escape is by copying the Tape and showing it to someone else, as every previous instance stopped at the victim's death. However, by each film adaptation's sequel, the public at large is aware of this method: it doesn't take long for one to realize that this means the Curse will spread like wildfire throughout the world, especially with the advent of new media.
- Which creates the interesting mental image of Cursed Tape Rickrolls...
- Four words, not in this order: 'cup','girls','one','two'...just wait until the effect suddenly shows up.
- In the second book of Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles, our young heroes succeed in luring the rampaging fire breathing giants into the ocean using a recorded mermaid song. As it turns out though, the giants were awakening so they could fight off an even bigger threat: a group of evil dragons that would be even more destructive.
- In the third book of The Darksword Trilogy, Joram destroys the capstone of the Well of Life. While it seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, the fourth book describes a lot of the unpleasant consequences.
- In Isaac Asimov's short story The Dead Past, the main character's research into time travel reveals that the government has been conspiring to hide the fact that it is easy to build a time telescope that can see perfectly anywhere in the world anytime in the last several centuries. The release of this information dooms humanity to existence with no privacy whatsoever, because you can just as easily set the time telescope to see 1/100th of a second ago as 100 years ago. Sometimes the government keeps secrets for good reasons, geniuses.
- In another Asimov story, The Life And Times Of Multivac, humans chafe under the generally benevolent but definite control of Multivac. One of them figures out a way to maneuver Multivac into making itself vulnerable, then crashes it. The protagonist declares that humanity is now free... and realizes that it's not at all clear that freedom — including responsibility for running the world without Multivac — is what humanity really wants.
- Metro 2033 has an extremely cruel version of this. To bottom line it, the protagonist ends up unwittingly eradicating a sentient and very humanoid species. Turns out it was trying to make peace with humanity all along and help it to survive. Oh, and it also kept a Sealed Evil In A Can in check, guarded the titular Metro from the worst hazards and was literally humanity's only and last chance to ever regain the planet... or even survive for a few more generations. Nice job indeed, Artjom.
- Early in the first Hollows novel Ivy Tamwood is gifted with a wish. Rather than use it selfishly for herself she gives it to a Mia, a banshee who once gave her life altering advice. Banshees in the Hollows are the life draining apex predators of a world already filled with powerful monsters. Through various means Ivy's wish allows Mia to gain a human mate as murderous as she is, deceive people long enough to drain them of life before they can defend themselves and conceive a child more powerful than any banshee before her. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished indeed.
- In The Company Novels by Kage Baker, Dr. Zeus the AI relies on the threat of this to preserve himself after his period of omniscience comes to an end. It doesn't work.
- In the Ravnica novel Dissension, Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (leader of the Azorius Senate) explains to our heros that House Dimir isn't the reason why the plane/city of Ravnica has had a significant increase in existence-ending disasters: it's because our heros arrested/killed the leader of House Dimir in the first book. Since Ravnica is a world where every Guild and its leader are legally required to exist, even if they are legally required to attempt to kill everyone, arresting/killing the leader of House Dimir had doomed the plane/city to obliteration.
- However, As the Rogue Cop Agrus Kos points out, that makes the first book into a Kobayashi Maru: The first book culminated in Szadek draining the leader of the Selesnya guild - the power sustaining the legal and magical obligation for all the guilds to exist. If Kos hadn't incapacitated Szadek, the power sustaining the civilization would have been destroyed, because he did, the resulting magical imbalance destroyed the civilization anyway.
- In Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere this is basically the entire plot. All Richard has to do is help Door bring the key to The Angel, Islington, so It can return to Heaven and Door can be reunited with her family. Oh, Islington didn't mention that It isn't in Heaven right now because It had been banished to Earth by God? And Its return would lead to God's will being subverted and war in Heaven, possibly leading to Heaven's destruction as well as humanity's? Oops.
Live Action TV
- Subverted slightly on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, in the season four episode "Fear Itself." Observe:
Giles: (flipping pages) I have it, I have it. Uhm, "The summoning spell for Gachnar can be shut down in one of two ways. Destroying the mark of Gachnar..." (Buffy walks over to the mark and puts her fist through it, ripping up the floorboards. Gets up and looks over at Giles with a proud smile) "...is not one of them and will in fact immediately bring forth the fear demon itself."
- Good thing Gachnar is only four inches tall.
- This troper has to point out that Giles is far more at fault than Buffy. There was absolutely no reason for him to take such a long pause at that point in the sentence.
- In Angel, the crew defeat the demon-goddess Jasmine, who took over the world through mind control and was eating people on a daily basis... and are later rewarded by the demonic law firm Wolfram and Hart for "destroying peace on earth and good will toward men" because during the short time Jasmine was in control, there was no war or fighting or hatred anywhere on Earth.
- In the Doctor Who episode "The Long Game", the Doctor thinks he's saving the world by shutting down a space station that controls an Earth-spanning propaganda regime. In the season finale, however, he returns to Satellite 5, a century later - and learns that as a result of the shutdown, Earth has become technologically and socially stagnant, and the station itself has become a clearinghouse for reality shows, secretly run by the Daleks.
- It's also been suggested (including in a column by Russell Davies) that the Doctor's self-righteous overthrowing of Prime Minister Harriet Jones after her actions in "The Christmas Invasion" directly allowed the Master to take her place, conquer the world, and rule in an unequalled reign of terror and genocide for an entire year until things managed to get sorted out. By contrast Harriet's truncated term, according to the Doctor himself, would have been "a Golden Age". Nice going, Doc.
- Originally, this was going to pointed out by the Master in "The Sound of Drums"/"Last of the Time Lords." However, it was decided that this sort of gloating—in addition to the abuse the Master had already heaped upon the Doctor—would be an overkill.
- And to go more Old School (or DVD-school): Did you know it was The Doctor who gave Nero the idea to burn Rome?
- Stargate Atlantis, as a whole:
- Our heroes woke up the Wraith, inflicting them upon the galaxy angrier because of the lack of "food" (humans). The Wraith were always bad news, but their newly accelerated schedule has resulted in many worlds wiped off the map, and everyone working on a way to stop them finding out they have a few decades less than they thought.
- Then they turn a Wraith into an amnesiac human. He starts to turn back, but not all the way, and so once he remembers who he really is and escapes, he finds his people no longer want him now that he's half-human. By now, he's out to overthrow humans and Wraith and have the other human-Wraith hybrids he's created rule. He didn't hate humans that much, though, until our Designated Heroes betrayed him further, though.
- Then they turn the Replicators against the Wraith... and the Replicators decide that the best way to fight the Wraith was to attack their food supply. (Of course, they may have chosen this tactic because they already hated humans and Ancients.)
- In short, all three major threats to humans in the Pegasus Galaxy were created by the Atlantis team. They really, really should have just stayed at home.
- It was even Lampshaded when the combined peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy put Sheppard's team (and, by extension, the Atlantis expedition as a whole) on trial for doing all of this, and call them out on every single mistake mentioned above.
- Not to count the Genii. One major enemy in season 1 and 2. All because they were trying to trade C4 as "farming tools"...
- The Ancients also did a good Neglectful Precursors work, as they accidentally created the Wraith, then developped the Replicators as a weapons against them.
- Then there is Stargate and Stargate SG-1. Every time they defeated a Goa'uld, another, even more ambitious one rose to take his place in the resulting Evil Power Vacuum. This only stopped when the Goa'uld were overthrown as a whole.
- Unfortunately, the SG-1 team wasn't content to rest on their laurels. Instead, they hunt down some old Ancient technology, get transported to another galaxy (sort of), thus allowing the Ori (evil ascended beings) to move in. In effect, after killing off the evil false Gods, the SG-1 team invited evil real "gods" to move in.
- Torchwood: Owen Harper's opening of the rift rescued his boss and his best friend from being trapped in the wrong decade forever, but it also caused a wave of anachronisms including ancient soldiers in the streets and an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Wales. This despite Ianto practically begging Owen not to open the rift, and even shooting him to try to prevent it. Instead of learning from this colossal mistake, the rest of the team eventually side with Owen and do the exact same thing, again. Predictably, things get worse before they get better.
- Star Trek: Kirk and company go to the Mirror Universe, and Kirk gets Mirror Spock to try reforming The Empire. So he does. When next we visit it, it turns out that the reforms made weakened the empire to the point of being unable to defend against the Klingon/Cardassian Legion Of Doom. Humans and Vulcans are now slaves. Way to go, Jim.
- The episode "Coyote Piper" of Charmed revolves around a spirit escaping from her demonic scientist creator. She eventually posseses Piper, and uses Piper's body to get her sisters to kill the demonic scientist when he comes to look for his creation...making it significantly harder to deal with the spirit. The demon's final words "You fools! She will destroy you!", as somewhat apt.
- In Supernatural, Dean's obsessive need to keep Sam alive led to the Devil's Gate being opened and a demon army being unleashed and it also led to Sam becoming more of an Anti-Hero, being pissed enough to brutally murder Jake and to slightly slide down the humanity scale. Way to protect both the world and your brother, Dean.
- As Dean is The Chew Toy of the Supernatural world, this happens to him far too often. When he was nine and tired of babysitting Sam for three days, he went out to play videogames and didn't kill the Monster Of The Week when he should have done, thus leading to lots of other kids dying. The Devil's Trap example (the demon getting away) can be blamed on both Sam and Dean, seeing as how a dying Dean was begging Sam not to kill their demon-possessed Dad and Sam listened to him. And in In The Beginning, he tells Samuel everything that's going to happen, not realising that he's being possessed by the same demon that will eventually fuck up his family and ruin his life. You've actually got to wonder why he hasn't put a bullet in his brain yet, considering that he even feels guilty for still being alive.
- To be fair to Dean, Jake would still have opened the Devil's Gate even if Sam had stayed dead. However, without Sam — the only other person on Earth immune to Jake's mind control powers — available for the fight at the Devil's Gate, Dean and Bobby and Ellen would never have been able to close it again. So nice job saving the world, hero.
- Congratulations, Sam! You finally killed Lilith... which was the final seal that needed to be broken to free Lucifer from hell. Oops.
- Heroes had two in a single episode now (though one got started a few episodes prior): Big Bad Arthur Petrelli is able to get off life support by stealing Adam's healing power — which he had easy access to because Angela sent Hiro and Ando off to release Adam in a bid to stop Arthur's schemes. Later on, Peter storms Pinehearst on his own, finds Arthur there, and subsequently gets his powers stolen.
- It must be said: Nice job breaking it, Hiro.
- According to Angela Petrelli, Future Peter was responsible for Sylar acquiring Claire's healing power. As Angela put it, "She had a very bad day."
- When Sylar tries to kill Elle, she renders him unconscious with a massive blast of electricity. Unfortunately, she also overloads the Level Five power grid, allowing all of the super-powered prisoners to escape.
- Nathan Petrelli intiates a government program to round up persons with superhuman abilities in order to protect regular citizens. But he is forced to flee when he is revealed to have an ability. As a result, Total Monster Emil Danko takes over the operation; unlike Nathan, he wants to kill all so-called evolved humans (Danko calls them "animals"). Not only does Danko murder Daphne Millbrook and Traci Strauss, he then enlists Sylar to help him carry out his nefarious plans!
- Then there's the Charlie issue. Hiro decides he can't save her life as she's already dying, so forgets about her, as do the writers. But at the very least hecould have saved her from being killed by Sylar instead of allowing Sylar to take her ability. At least the writers' inconsistency with abilities has prevented Super Memory from cropping up again.
- Nice job figuring out Cromartie's plan, Sarah. Go ahead, call John and warn him Cromartie is after him. Wait, is that a phone tap... into the local cellular tower... oops.
- Nice job taking the tougher, advanced battlestar capable of building Vipers and ramming it into a Cylon basestar to save the aged, more obsolete battlestar, Lee. Especially since the Galactica is now falling to bits entirely.
- Dollhouse has a rare villainous example. In "Omega", Alpha achieves his goal of causing Echo to have a composite event. However, as most of Echo's imprints were good guys, Composite!Echo attacks Alpha.
Mythology
- Nice Job Opening the Box, Pandora. Subverted in that the gods purposely made her so curious she wouldn't be able to resist.
- Hmm. Can you subvert a trope when you predate 99% of the examples?
- Why not? It's old, sure, but that doesn't necessarily make it the oldest.
- For possibly the oldest: Adam and Eve. We could've had paradise forever, but noooooo you just HAD to eat that fruit. Nice job eating it, Eve.
- Considering the relative timing involved between the formation of Hebrew culture and theology versus the development of ancient Greek religion and myth, Pandora's story may actually pre-date the Garden of Eden by centuries.
- Wait, what? The Hebrew nation came into existence between their release from captivity in Egypt and their eventual captivity under Babylon, which was overrun by the Medo-Persians, who in turn lost to the Greeks. So it seems highly unlikely that the Pandora's Box tale predates Moses (who wrote the Book of Genesis).
- Except, you know, most of Genesis is lifted from older Sumerian myths.
- Except that there is absolutely no reason to believe that any of that ever happened. The Hebrews were never enslaved by the Egyptians, Moses never existed, and even if he did, it would have been impossible for him to write the Pentateuch, which is obvious, if for no other reason than it mentions his own funeral.
- Just because someone finished the story for him (Joshua, his chosen successor, incidentally), that doesn't preclude him from writing the rest of it. Not to mention that even modern-day Bedouin Arabs speak of Moses as a historical figure and not a literary one.
- The Proto-Greek culture is no younger than the Hebrew - it just was not literate at the time. Homer wrote folktales and myths that had been passed orally for untold generations. The chances are that the Pandora-myth existed at the time, although probably not in identical form to the one we know today. Also, it's highly improbable that Moses (if he existed) would have written the entire Book of Genesis. It shows distinct writing styles of at least two, possibly three authors, and is most likely written from oral tradition, just like Homer's tales.
- Considering that "Pandora" means the gift of everything, it's more of an "ignorance is not bliss" tale than "nice job breaking it, lady". Of course, the Greeks were known for their irony. Heracles' name, for example. Applies to Eve and the apple as well (one of which may inspired the other, as per above - whichever one isn't really the point). Especially if you buy into the "God was the snake" interpretation.
- One could interpret the same from the Genesis, with God/Enlil/The Demiurge just keeping us down
Radio
- Halo tie-in I Love Bees ends with the gang taking out a covenant artifact and uncovering an evil plot by a power hungry man in the Earth Navy, only to inadvertantly call the covenant to Earth, triggering the invasion at the beginning of Halo 2 (and alerting the covenant to earth's location, making it possible for later invasions.)
Tabletop Games
- In a Dungeons & Dragons adventure featured in Dungeon magazine, an evil giant living in a flying castle waged a terrible campaign of vengeance upon human towns and villages, murdering scores of innocents in the process. If the heroes killed him instead of making some sort of agreement with him, however, castle dissolved... and released an unspeakably powerful god-spawned monstrosity from its centuries-old prison. The monstrosity would then begin methodically and efficiently killing everything in the area, followed by everything else on the planet. Whoops.
- Urza from Magic the Gathering pretty much lives for this trope, between the sylex blast, the soul bombs and the tolarion academy he probably killed as many people as Yawgmoth did in the invasion!
- Years ago, a French tabletop RPG magazine had released a two seasons campaign for a generic Dystopia Twenty Minutes Into The Future setting. Season one had the players going against a Nightmare Fuel Psycho For Hire known as the Butcher, who was trying to initiate the biblical apocalypse. They were helped in their quest by a mysterious cube (no, not that kind of cube... Or Is It?), which, between fast-paced action sequences in the present, allowed them to time travel via mind-transfer to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. Then in season 2, it is revealed that The Butcher was really acting this way to prevent a Bad Future to occure (effectively willing to sacrifice millions of people to save billions later), and the players have been manipulated into opposing him all allong, the cube actually being a gift from some Cosmic Horror, with which they really were setting worse what once went wrong — and now of course they have to clean their mess, by time traveling again, this time with a cube given by The Butcher, all while fighting Big Bad 2 The Plague, a High Octane Nightmare Fuel Complete Monster sweating Body Horror and borderline Eldritch Abomination, who is actually one of the secondary antagonists of season 1, Left For Dead by the players and "reconstructed" later — oh, the Irony! (for extra irony, the second cube, with which the characters are supposed to fix what they spoiled, is actually much less user-friendly than the first one).
Theatre
- Urinetown ends with the heroes triumphantly toppling the evil toilet monopoly and launching a new era of free urination. Only, as it turns out, the monopoly was right about the water shortage, the newly unrestricted flushing makes the town run dry, and almost everyone dies of thirst.
Little Sally: What kind of a musical is this?! The good guys finally take over and then everything starts falling apart?! Lockstock: Like I said, Little Sally, this isn't a happy musical. Little Sally: But the music's so happy! Lockstock: Yes, Little Sally. Yes, it is.
Toys
- The whole goal of the heroes in BIONICLE is to awaken the sleeping Great Spirit Mata Nui. Unfortunately, Big Bad Makuta (who put Mata Nui to sleep in the first place) plays them all for Xanatos Suckers: he allows the heroes to succeed and during a window of opportunity in the revival commits Grand Theft Me, taking control of the body of a Physical God and therefore also the world's very laws of nature. Nice Job Waking It, Heroes.
Video Games
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion makes use of this trope. The Daedra are perfectly content to sit in hell twiddling their thumbs waiting to pour forth into Tamriel, but until the player takes the steps to advance the main quest, he can spend years of in-game time joining the Dark Brotherhood, becoming Arch-Mage, and just generally ignoring the crisis going on. The moment he delivers Martin to Weynon Priory, though, all hell literally breaks loose and it's not unusual to see travelers on the game's roads getting disemboweled by giant demons. So Yeah. Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
- This is more of a Gameplay And Story Segregation due to the game's sandbox nature then an actual plot point though.
- Although the reason that the situation had arisen in the first place was due to the hero from Morrowind releasing the Heart of Lorkhan at the end of the main quest. This weakened the barriers enough between Nirn and Oblivion enough that after taking out the Dragonfires it was incredibly easy for the Mythic Dawn to pop Oblivion Gates into existance in large numbers (normally it would either be extremely difficult if not outright impossible to create even a very small portal). So overall it's more of a Nice Job Breaking Hero on the Nereverine's part rather than the Champion of Cyrodiil's.
- Also used in the Benirus Manor quest. The undead former owner wishes to repent and can only do this if you put his severed hand back on his corpse - which is in fact a Batman Gambit, and releases a (semi-)powerful lich against you and the rest of the town/world etc.
- In the game Metroid Fusion, the Metroids — a species of highly dangerous alien animals — have been virtually eliminated from their homeworld by the protagonist; it turns out that the Metroids were keeping a terrible shape-shifting parasite in check, and now it's overrun the planet, forcing the protagonist to deal with it. Whoops.
- Do be fair, she was given the mission of exterminating them. She can't be blamed for her employers' Not Doing The Research... or for the Chozo failing to tell her what they apparently created Metroids for.
- Near the end of the old PC game Ultima Underworld, the protagonist finally cuts down the evil Big Bad wizard... only to have the wizard reveal, as he dies, that he's been keeping an invincible demon in perpetual confinement in a chamber below, and with his death the confinement spell will fade shortly, but not too shortly. Now the hero has to run down and find a way to banish the demon for good before it breaks loose and destroys the world. Whoops.
- The Ultima series in general is one big string of these moments, to the point where by Ultima 9, it looks like Britannia, and indeed, the entire multiverse, would have been a lot better off if you had just stayed home, due to the Guardian, the Big Bad of Ultima 7 through 9, having been brought into being by you completing the quest of the Avatar. Ultima 4 was the only major Ultima game to really buck this trend, by making completion of a quest an actual good thing for the world.
- The quest in Ultima 4 actually being the quest of the Avatar that brings the Guardian into existence...
- In the PC game Portal, alas, Stupidity Is The Only Option: the very first part of the AI villain destroyed by the protagonist was all that stood between the protagonist and a countdown to death from a deadly neurotoxin. Whoops.
GLaDOS: It was a morality core that they installed after I flooded the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Center with a deadly neurotoxin.
- And this game is the Trope Namer. Added for great justice.
- Portal may be one large Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, if GLaDOS's claim is to be believed. She implies, during the final battle, that the Combine invasion that led up to Half-Life 2 is going on at that moment. "All I know is I'm the only thing standing between us, and them... Well... I was." But then, one must consider the source of the claim.
- Happens twice in Drakengard 2. First the destruction of the Knights and their seals unleash a red dragon that intends to destroy the world. And then, when you kill the red dragon, it turns out that it was a seal for the dark gods that control the world. And the sky explodes. Whoops indeed.
- They actually knew that the first set of seals were protecting the world from destruction... but given that the seals required large-scale human sacrifice to maintain, the lead characters decided risking this in order to find some other way was preferable.
- In ending four of the original Drakengard, the heroes kill the Big Bad, Manah, while she's still the instrument of the gods, killing the gods in the process. Turns out that even though the gods are evil Cosmic Horrors that want to destroy the world, they're also keeping the world in some semblance of order... And without them, giant, flying, plasma-breathing, man-eating babies descend from the sky. Really.
- In the end of Half Life 2, Gordon's attempt to stop Breen from teleporting off-world, while successful, results in the partial destruction of the Citadel - so that the Combine decide to sacrifice the Citadel (and thus destroy what's left of City 17) to open a superportal and send reinforcements to Earth.
- It gets worse in Half-Life 1. Killing the Nihilanth? His death throes amplify the resonance cascade, so the Combine see a giant INVADE HERE sign, so they pop through the borderworld and eventually appear in our dimension. Add to that Gordon had recently launched a satellite that allowed the Combine to open portals all over the Earth AND the fact that he also started the resonance cascade, and it becomes more difficult to cheer him on as the atrocities pile up...
- So, he stops an invading force bent on exterminating mankind to take the world for themselves, and when he learns it allowed other aliens to establish Vichy Earth, he comes back to finish the job, completely isolates the Combine, and helps the townsfolk evacuate the city alive. Oh, and at least he didn't say it was "within acceptable parameters"...
- Also, the causing of the resonance cascade was, at least to Gordon, an unforeseen consequence of the task assigned to him, so it had more to do with Breen's manipulation than any actual fault of his.
- I thought most of it was Frohman's fault.
- Nope, it's the G-Man's fault.
- Talking of him: prior to the announcement of the sequel, HL 1's ending appeared to be that the US government had deliberately engineered the resonance cascade to provoke an alien war that, judging by the army bodies seen on Xen during G-man's final speech, ended with a military conquest of the alien world. Which is still somewhat of a Nice Job.
- In Mortal Kombat: Deception, Shujinko spends over 40 years collecting the Kamidogu for the Elder Gods, only to find that he had been serving the Dragon King Onaga all along when Onaga is resurrected. He then embarks on a quest to undo the evil he unleashed on the realms.
- Happens in Final Fantasy IV, where Zemus' defeat dredges up Zeromus, and in Final Fantasy V, where power-hungry Exdeath turned into the near-omnipotent destructive nihilist Neo-Exdeath. (Speaking of which, who thinks up these names, anyway?)
- "The same tard that names the Zords of Power Rangers fame?"
- It also happened earlier in Final Fantasy V, when the heroes retrieve the four Crystals that Exdeath was after...which were behind a seal impenetrable to evil creatures and thus perfectly safe until they went and unsealed them.
- An extremely common way of ensuring yourself a sequel. One example is Dungeon Siege 2.
- In Guild Wars, you beat up the White Mantle, then learn they were actually sacrificing people to pay off an even worse evil, who's now waging outright war. And then, to deal with those guys, you turn something even worse on them.
- After beating the Final Boss in Secret of Evermore, it's revealed that the hero's actions have disrupted the world's balance of good and evil, and the world will effectively implode unless it's fixed. Whoops...
- In Prince Of Persia: Sands of Time, the Prince activates the palace's traps, only to realize too late that they will do absolutely nothing to hinder all the monsters running around and will only make his life more difficult.
- Not to mention releasing the Sands of Time in the first place. And causing the creation of the Sands themselves. And then undoing that, pushing the Reset Button, and bringing back the original villain.
- In Persona 3, the twelve shadows SEES went out of their way to destroy turn out to have been keeping the Anthropomorphic Personification of death sealed away. And yes, now it's awake and going to destroy the world, and a bunch of high school kids are going to have to try and stop it. It doesn't help that a particularly well placed Chessmaster orchestrated the whole thing.
- Nice job killing Hitler, Einstein.
- Nice job killing Einstein after he killed Hitler, Soviets.
- Nice job blowing up Temple Prime, Boyle.
- Nice job invading Earth, Foreman.
- The majority of Assassin's Creed involves Altaďr killing various Templars who are, in one way or another, helping and protecting the people of the Holy Land, even as he himself is trying to save the land by killing them.
- The real fun part comes at the end, where Al-Mualim turns out to be behind everything, having Altaďr kill the Templars so that only he knew the secret to how to operate the Piece of Eden and thereby giving him absolute control of the Holy Land.
- I'd like to point out to you that the Templars were only attempting to protect the people by their own reckoning and that each member of the Knights Templar is shown to be corrupt, morally bankrupt and in some cases way over the edge of the Moral Event Horizon. When you take into account that their present-day counterparts are planning to rule the world via satellite-operated mind control, kidnapped the protagonist, killed every one of his former friends ( Or did they?!), the conclusion becomes less of a Nice Job Breaking It Hero and more of a "What The Hell Hero, why didn't you finish the job when you had the chance?"
- In the flash game, Fishy, you play as a fish with the goal of eating smaller fish, gradually becoming larger as you do so. If you go on long enough, the game abruptly ends, informing you that you've destroyed the pond's ecosystem by eating everything. Whoops.
- Done double duty in Lunar Knights. Dumas was ruling over the planet using Casket Armor, the paraSOL, and bottlenecked humans all in an attempt to protect his own people from the paraSOL's Planet Eater functionality; Lucian and Aaron taking Dumas down gives Polidori a reason to fire it up. Furthermore, after taking down a simulacrum of Polidori at the very top of the Vambery, a freshly revived Dumas warns them that what they just did was akin to starting a war with the Immortals, an entire race of Omnicidal Maniacs. I want my sequel, Konami.
- Played with in the Mega Man Zero series. In Zero 3, Zero forces Copy X to go "all out," but instead of activating his ultimate form he instead activates a bomb that was planted in his body by Dr. Weil. Results: everyone thinks Zero retired Copy X and Dr. Weil takes over Neo Arcadia, as an even less benevolent ruler.
- Before that, there's Ciel, effectively the series' female lead, responsible for creating the Big Bad of Z1, the imperfect Copy-X.
- Subverted in "Infinite Undiscovery". Upon killing the final boss, Veros, all existing "lunaglyphs" vanish from their owners and no more can be created. Subverted in that, despite granting awesome magic powers their owners, everyone who has one is in constant danger of being turned into superpowerd, invisible, genocidal monsters.
- The ultimate focus of the game Brave Fencer Musashi: you spend the game running around collecting the scrolls that the original Brave Fencer Musashi used to seal a dark wizard with the sword Lumina. You do this to power up the sword in the hopes of stopping Thirstquencher Empire's bid for world dominance, only to find out that the original Brave Fencer Musashi didn't seal the dark wizard with the sword, but in the sword, and Musashi must then fight the released wizard.
- The final boss of the World Of Warcraft dungeon "the Blood Furnace" is overseeing the efforts of the dungeon's fel orc residents to keep a powerful demon lord confined so they can suck his blood away. He attacks you, yelling that you're "ruining everything." When you kill him, his last words are: "Good luck....you'll need it." (Luckily the demon is in his own separate instance beneath the floor grating.)
- Also in Shadowmoon Valley — the quest chain that leads to the resurrection of Teron Gorefield. Whups!
- Also the Shadow Labyrinths — the cult you just killed there was fending off a Cosmic Horror (Murmur). Although, this time, you get a chance to kill it right then.
- The entire Hakkar questline, starting in Tanaris and leading you around the world thrice and through three instances, has you resurrecting the blood god, revitalizing the evil troll empire, and finally re-defeating him with a raid.
- The first campaign in Warcraft 3's expansion set is even worse. The player takes control of a group of night elves on their quest to stop the traitor Illidan from killing the Lich King and ending the undead threat once and for all.
- Admittingly, Illidan's plan was to destroy Northrend in the process, an equal example of the hero breaking it.
- To make Illidan's actions seem even less heroic, he was doing them at the behest of a greater evil, and destroying Northrend would have seen to the entire planet splitting open. Not as heroic as great as a lot of people initially think.
- Illidan's dialog seems to indicate that he wasn't aware of the full damage the spell would cause. Illidan has a history of not thinking things through.
- This far and nobody's brought up the best gem in the gameworld? "Upon further analysis of the Gnomeregan situation, it would appear as though we not only failed to eradicate the troggs but we also happened to turn most of the gnomish race into horrific, mindless, evil-doing leper gnomes..."
- Drakuru plays you for a chump while locked in a cage, using you to take down the Drakkari Empire and clear out their stronghold.
- Whereupon Drakuru calls up The Lich King to inform him of your success at restoring him to the place of power in Drak'Tharon, which in turn inspires the Lich King to transform Drakuru into one of the most powerful Death Knights in the scourge army. Hey, at least then he offers you a job as a reward for your help instead of killing you outright.
- Apparently when we killed C'thun, we risked destroying the planet because the Old Gods tied their existence to the survival of Azeroth. And now we're going after another one, fully aware of this possibility.
- Well Arthas, it seems trading your soul for power to get revenge and save your kingdom turned out to be less of an awesome idea and it seemed. Especially since Mal'Ganis didn't actually die.
- Warcraft really likes this one. This one depends on whose side you think is the hero and who is the villain, but Daelin Proudmoore declaring war on the Horde? Not a great idea. Not only did you get yourself killed, you pissed off the Horde, and when they killed you that pissed off the Alliance because you were a war hero. Oddly enough, the leader most affected (his daughter) actually helped take him down and is still the one most devoted to peace.
- Most recently, by killing the corrupted Watcher Loken in the Halls of Lightning, the players accidentally set in motion a process to get the Titans to destroy and rebuild Azeroth. Oops.
- In a "seemed like a good idea at the time" moment, in one quest chain in Burning Crusade, the players help Orcish leader Garrosh Hellscream get overh is depression and grow to become a leader. And, ín the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King', he's a bloodthirsty maniac who's trying to restart the war with the Alliance and might be out to replace the Orcish Warchief, Thrall. And he's only in the position to do this becuse of the players' intervention.
- In an alliance quest, King Wrynn asks you to accompany Jaina Proudmoore in a diplomatic mission to speak to Thrall after Varimathras and the Grand Apothecary Putress have overthrown Sylvanas and taken over Undercity. Jaina and Thrall hope that a joint mission to reclaim the Undercity will inspire new cooperation between the Horde and Alliance. When King Wrynn discovers Thrall is also in the Undercity Wrynn attacks Thrall and the squad he brought with him in an attempt to kill Thrall, over Jaina's objections. This makes Thrall decide that cooperation with Wrynn and the Alliance is futile and the divide betwen the two factions is further deepened and Jaina is forced to teleport the Alliance warriors back to Stormwind castle before everyone is killed. Nice job breaking the gesture of peace between Horde and Alliance, Wrynn. (There is an accompanying quest for the Horde side.)
- There are a number of quest lines in World Of Warcraft that operate on this trope. Probably one of the earliest ones encountered belongs to the Night Elves. In your first few levels you encounter a satyr who just wants you to go kill a few animals and bring him back some of their bits and parts. After completing this quest, you get another quest after it's explained that you really kinda probably shouldn'ta done that because that satyr is really up to no good. So you wind up turning him into a frog. It's a very short quest line and isn't terribly fleshed out, but sets up a pattern for you being tricked into actions that result in rather negative consequences throughout the game. You just never learn, do you, Hero.
- Dhaos, the Big Bad sorceror from Tales Of Phantasia, wages war against the world in general across several generations with the aim of taking a Mana Seed from the Tree of Life. It isn't revealed until after you've finally killed him that he was actually a being from another planet, on a mission to replace his world's own Tree of Life, which is dying. Oops. After everybody else is gone, though, the resident goddess transforms his body (and hers, too, depending on which version you play) into a Mana Seed and sends it on its merry way, making one wonder what the fuss was all about.
- Midway through the game a human army, desperate to fight off Dhaos, unleashes an enormous mana-sucking weapon which has the unintended (but totally predictable) effect of killing off our Tree of Life. It's a little uncertain whom the bigger "oops" is on here, since Dhaos's whole war was about preventing humanity from bleeding out all the mana with their excessive use of sorcery. Nice job on that one, eh?
- The magitek cannon backfired on its second firing and destroyed a good portion of Midgards. Dhaos was sure that Lyzen wouldn't be a massive idiot and fire it before it was ready.
- In Tales Of Symphonia, the prequel, eventually reveals that the whole magitech problem which destroyed most of mankind in Phantasia's backstory, and comes close to doing it again during Phantasia is the heros' fault, as the Big Bad they killed was keeping technology stagnant ''for the purpose of preventing humans from making Mana Cannons and using up too much mana and causing mass destruction. Ironically, they use a mana cannon to defeat him, and it is implied that it was mana cannons' use which led to him taking over the world in the first place.
- Why people keep using the damn cannons if the technology has over 8000 years of history of causing death, destruction, and suffering to all (including its users) is never addressed.
- Tales of Symphonia is full of this. Your heroic quest to save the world by reviving the flow of mana turns out to actually be stealing the mana from a parallel universe, which explains why all these blue-haired elf freaks and ninjas are trying to kill you for it. Of course, when you are nearly finished in your quest but haven't touched Disc 2 yet, you know something's up.
- It's sort of subverted in that the party never goes through with the regeneration because of the Friend Or Idol Decision that results from it.
- On a more personal note, the Key Crest that Lloyd gives Colette to save her soul ironically nearly kills her. This leads to your first Disc 2 quest.
- It even gets worse: having moved on to that parallel universe, the heroes proceed to blindly assume that cutting off the exchange of mana between the two universes will save both worlds and proceed to do so. Naturally, this nearly destroys both worlds instead. And you know that something's even more wrong when you've almost finished your second world-saving quest and STILL haven't touched Disc 2. Yes, you read that right.
- In fact, this continues right on through the final battle in that killing the boss nearly destroys the world yet again, except that the requisite Final Cutscene Awesomeness allows the hero to finally go about saving the world.
- It could also be argued that the entire game is a severe case of this, what with Mithos the Hero who saved the world by breaking it being the Big Bad.
- In the sequel, reuniting the two worlds in the first game has the effect of the major kingdoms about to declare war on each other.
- Averted in the sequel by meaningful relationship development, because if Emil/Ratatosk had fully won the game, it would have ended with the world being overrun by demons. But there is a Heel Face Turn which neatly averts the trope.
- The villain-throwing-a-parting-shot version is used in Fire Emblem 7, when Nergal uses his own Life Force to summon a dragon to cause The End Of The World As We Know It.
- Don't forget Ninian. You find a girl with memory loss drifting in the ocean near the island with the Big Bad on it. So of course you bring the girl straight back to the island. Nice job unleashing the dragon and getting Elbert killed, hero! What's more, later in the game the same Ninian gives you an even worse example. So you just got the sword that kills dragons. Look, here's a dragon! Nice job killing your love interest, hero.
- Early in Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, Phoenix proves his client innocent of theft... with an alibi which implicates him as a murderer. Whoops.
- in "Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All" in the last trial Matt Engarde is actually GUILTY. and by fighting throught the trial, by the time he realises his client is guilty, Mr. De Killer has kidnapped Maya. If he had lost the trial before then, then he would have saved himself lots of trauma. Therefore making it a perfect example of this trope.
- In both Super Robot Wars Original Generation games, the act of defeating the alien invasion leader activates a failsafe device that tries to destroy the entire planet.
- In the Neo Geo Pocket version of SNK vs. Capcom, the bosses (the usual Geese Howard and M. Bison) unveil a clone of Iori or Ryu, whom they intend to be the first of their powered-up slaves for their world conquest scheme... and your team will be next. Once you defeat Geese and Bison, you discover that your fight caused the clone, an Orochi Iori/Evil Ryu, to be released. And, of course, the 2 cowardly bosses are leaving YOU to stop him. "Enjoy the wrath of Orochi blood!"
- In Treasure Of The Rudras, during Sion's Scenario he is stuck on the Sky Islands and wants to return to Terra Firma to stop the Rudra Cult. However when he does activate the path back to Terra Firma, the entire archipelago falls putting everyone at risk of being killed by the Rudra.
- Said Archipelago was part of the Earth in the past anyway.
- In Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, Hector's defeat of Dullahan turns out to be a vital step in Isaac's plan to resurrect Dracula a century early. ...Well, Isaac's plan as likely dictated into his brains by the lurking spirit of Drac Himself.
- Two of the four possible endings of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night involve an underinformed Alucard eliminating the Belmont bloodline by beating the stuffing out of one extremely possessed Richter. Seeing as the Belmonts are humanity's best and perhaps only hope in the fight against Alucard's infamous father... Oops.
- Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia does this too, doubling as a Non Standard Game Over: if the player hasn't rescued all of the villagers before defeating Albus, Shanoa completes the Dominus glyphs and uses them on Dracula's seal, only to unwittingly kill herself and RELEASE Dracula, rather than destroy him. Whoops.
- Kirby has been known to pull this on occasion.
- In Kirby's Adventure and the remake Nightmare in Dreamland, Kirby defeats King Dedede and his henchmen, repairs the Star Rod, and puts it in its rightful place on the Fountain of Dreams... where it gives the Nightmare hiding in the fountain the strength to emerge, and Kirby has to beat that, too. Oops.
- And in the true ending of Kirby: Squeak Squad, in his quest to recover his cake from the titular thieving band of mice, he defeats every villain in his path, recovers all of their stolen treasures, and opens a sealed door in his path. In front of him is what seems to be the last of their chests, the one that must contain his cake. Oops, turns out it's not one of their chests at all, but a coincidentally identical prison for an ancient evil.
- This decision becomes even less intelligent by the fact that he continued to chase THAT PARTICULAR CHEST thinking there was cake in it even after Meta Knight stole it from him just before he could open it. After all Meta Knight just LOVES stealing strawberry shortcakes from people.
- Speaking of Meta Knight, his decision fight just Kirby rather than telling him that the chest contained a demon rather than cake can probably qualify for this trope as well.
- In Kirby Super Star, Kirby goes out to awaken Nova, a mysterious cosmic clockwork entity, so that he can wish for the Sun and Moon to stop fighting. Then Marx knocks him aside. Turns out he had you wake Nova up so he could use it to conquer Popstar. Crap... then again, the Sun and Moon stop fighting so they can hold Nova off...
- In Star Ocean: The Second Story, your team investigates the Eluria Tower to find out about the demons that are attacking all the towns. Too bad that you accidentally bring the key to the "Sorcery Globe" with you. The result? Instead of the planet Expel being destroyed centuries from now, it gets destroyed immediately. Whoops.
- To be fair, the mere existence of that key on the same planet caused that acceleration. (Bringing the key closer just made it worse.)
- In The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link follows Zelda's instructions and manages to gather up all of the spiritual stones, the ocarina, and the Song of Time and then pop open the Door of Time... allowing Ganondorf to waltz in and plunder the Golden Land. Actually, you should really blame this one on the Master Sword, for not letting a kid be the Hero of Time and instead sealing him away for seven years while Ganondorf became King of Evil. Nice job breaking it, sword.
- Also, most of the Legend of Zelda games featuring the Master Sword use this - the Master Sword is a "key" to the Sacred Realm/Golden Land where Ganondorf/Ganon is held captive, and in the process of collecting to sword to defeat the beginnings of his influence, the player releases him fully.
- And in Wind Waker, the Master Sword held Ganondorf's power in check...and the Master Sword is a shadow of its former self to boot (though it's still more powerful than the Hero's Sword). Nice work, King of Red Lions.
- And again! Minish Cap consists mostly of a quest to find the "light force" which is needed to defeat Vaati. Unfortunately, Vaati's after exactly the same thing... and he's spying on you when you find out how to get it.
- Incorrect. At no point in Minish Cap does Link actually search for the light force (which is, incidentally, the Triforce of Wisdom, Princess Zelda's piece of the Triforce. Zelda thus has it.) Link is instead gathering the four elements necessary to reforge the Four Sword. However, he's forced, upon completing the sword, to discover information regarding the light force, which Vaati quickly notices.
- Twilight Princess does a fairly good job of not breaking things: although the Dragon is still able to grab the Fused Shadows, grabbing the Master Sword actually doesn't unleash some kind of unspeakable evil on the world. Someone else did that already.
- Subverted in the final battle of Eternal Darkness. The player has to use the Villain's giant Circle of Power (which he had used to unseal his Canned Evil, Big Bad Elder God) to summon the Canned Evil God that trumps him/her/them/it, stalling the first one and letting the heroine deal with the villain himself. Upon offing him, she realizes that the god she had summoned is just as Big, just as Bad, and just as in need of resealing, at which point the grandfather (also controlled by the player at this point) finishes the job.
- ... And then un-subverted with the 100% ending. Playing the game 3 times, destroying the 3 different gods, was just one big Xanatos Gambit by the 4th god so that he could destroy his rivals and possibly let him escape to take over the world again. OOPS.
- The RPG Enchanted Arms takes the "Way to Go, Serge" rule and runs with it. You're being manipulated to do exactly what the Big Bad wants you to up until the VERY last part of the very last boss fight. Destroying the evil creatures that were killing everybody was exactly the WRONG thing to do. And if you're wondering why this troper didn't put that in spoilers, it's because the game itself spells it out for you. Constantly. From pretty much the very start. You're just not able to do anything about it.
- Do be fair, Atsuma is an Idiot Hero of quite high degree. In fact, in one part you're given the option of saying the thief is small, light, and nimble, or that he/she trains mice. No joke.
- In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, Lady Lima demands that the Mario Brothers prove their identity by repairing the castle's plumbing. That was actually Cackletta in disguise, and the broken sewer system was the only thing keeping her from getting into the Beanstar chamber. Nice job fixing it, hero.
- In addition, the brothers went on this quest to recover Peach's voice... which was never stolen in the first place, thanks to an early Batman Gambit on the part of the other protagonists. Unfortunately, they only got there due to an Enemy Mine from Bowser, and the villains take advantage of his presence to make things much worse... Of all the times to try to be helpful...
- In the sequel, Mario & Luigi: Partners In Time, the titular brothers and their infant companions gather up the pieces of the cobalt star, only to realize that the star is actually a broken prison for the Big Bad.
- Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War ends with Brother-Captain Gabriel Angelos destroying an artifact containing a demon.. which, instead of destroying the demon with it, let the demon go. The demon merrily thanks Gabe for his help.
- From his words it seems that he destroyed the artifact knowing it, so he could destroy the demon completely later.
- And of course, this being Warhammer 40K, the crapiest crapsack that ever crapsacked, Gabriel will inevitably fail, die horribly, and kill several billion people and destroy a few planets in the process.
- Nope, him and the unit of Grey Knights that like to hang with the Blood Ravens killed it.
- In Star Control 2, the Shofixti blew up their own star to take down a massive Ur-Quan fleet. That's great and all, considering they've been enslaving everyone up until that point. That is, until you find out that the Ur-Quan's genocidal cousins are coming to this section of the galaxy, and the Shofixti had crippled the enslaving Ur-Quan's fleet enough so that they'll lose the upcoming doctrinal conflict.
- Don't forget that in order to finish the game, you have to kill off two races. It would be an Inferred Holocaust if it wasn't for the fact that there's no inferring to it. Then again, both were on the villan's side, and both were Always Chaotic Evil.
- Well, you don't HAVE to. In both cases, getting the race to go get itself killed is only one of several ways to get what you need. Anyway, just because the race is no longer a galactic power doesn't mean every single individual is dead...
- Played very effectively in Baldurs Gate II with Bonus Boss Kangaxx the demi-lich. He asks you to retrieve his body, which was torn apart, but not destroyed, and hidden under the city. When you do so, he "rewards" you by making you the first people he kills. Then, if you destroy him, his skull floats up, cackles madly and declares he's now stronger than ever. He gains insane damage resistance and can cast game-ending spells without limit on the party. The resulting battle is essentially impossible without prior knowledge, either in Guide Dang It form or of the standard powers of Dungeons And Dragons demiliches.
- What you need is a scroll of Protection From Magic and some kind of insanely powerful weapon, like Crom Faer or Carsomyr.
- And this pales in comparison to releasing Demogorgon, the most powerful Demon Prince in the universe. And somehow, even that isn't as bad as defeating him. "Killing" a demon in the mortal realm merely banishes it back to the Abyss for a few hundred years. That's right, all you did was give Demogorgon a ticket back home.
- Chrono Trigger:
Party: Yay! We stopped Magus from creating Lavos!
Magus: No! I was summoning Lavos so I could kill it, and you only let me finish the summoning part!
Player: Oops!
- To be fair, it was probably for the best; it's implied that in the original timeline (where no-one intervened), Magus only succeeded in getting himself killed by Lavos.
- Chrono Cross. Not only was it bad enough in the main game to get The Grand List Of Console Role Playing Game Cliches entry named after it, it retroactively did this to the first game's ending. It turns out that the Chrono Trigger heroes, by meddling in the Zeal Kingdom's time line, caused princess Schala to be absorbed by Lavos, becoming an entity that would eventually evolve into the Time Devourer, a being that would then proceed to consume all of time and space. The CC heroes will have to break a lot of things on their own to fix this one.
- To get across just how bad this is: by confronting Lynx at Fort Dragonia, you let him steal your body so he can go start up FATE and effectively destroy the world. Nice Job Breaking It Hero. The player then goes through hours and hours of Humans Are Bastards philosophizing in order to destroy FATE, at which point he discovers that FATE was the only thing preventing the Dragonians coming back and erasing humanity from existence. That's right, the solution to the first Nice Job Breaking It Hero is another Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
- It gets worse. It turns out the Dragon God is (more or less) Lavos, who has been destroying all of space and time. When you fix that, you get "rewarded" with either "you bought humanity same time. The end", aka "congratulations, you didn't break it any worse", or a "good" Gainax Ending, so the best ending is the one where they don't tell you how much you've messed things up this time or not.
- To be fair, it eventually turns out that these incessant Nice Job Breaking It Heroes are in fact a giant Xanatos Roulette orchestrated by the Guru of Reason, who predicted that all of these events had to take place in order for the heroes to obtain the trinket that would fix the Nice Job Breaking It Hero the Chrono Trigger heroes caused.
- Sly Cooper 2 has a headslapper of an example. Bentley tells you to invert a set of magnets holding up the separated parts of Clockwerk, since if his calculations are correct, the resulting force will tear them apart. Turns out that when you Reverse The Polarity, the parts weld together inseparably. Crap.
- Nice job fixing it, hero.
- Star Craft has a few examples:
- After you help Arcturus Mengsk overthrow the Confederacy and become emperor of Terran space, you decide that he's not such a good guy after all and have to fight your way out.
- During the first campaign of the expansion, you, playing the Protoss, end up helping Kerrigan — who claims to have regained her human morality after the destruction of the Overmind in the previous game — destroy a brand new Overmind being formed by a conglomeration of remaining Cerebrates. Unfortunately for you, she has had a taste of evil and likes it, and she reveals that by destroying the new Overmind you have, in fact, paved the way for her complete and unchallenged dominion over the Zerg. Oops.
- In fact, the majority of the expansion is one big Xanatos Gambit on her part to attain unchallenged dominion of the entire sector.
- In another Protoss example, you are forced to kill a "traitor" who turns out not to be a traitor, and who has instead seen the evil you are truly working for and taken up arms against you. Then you're forced to do the same thing with an entirely unrelated not-really-a-traitor in the Terran campaign, as for some reason you trust the word of the guy you happened to pick up partway through the campaign who you knew nothing about other than he seemed to have the same goals as you over the word of an officer who outranks you and is a close personal friend of the admiral in charge of the entire campaign.
- All of this was enough evidence for this Troper to conclude that the only character in Starcraft with half a brain that is also not evil is: Jim Raynor.
- Word Of God seems to agree with you. He's the main character of the Terran campaign in Starcraft II.
- In Samurai Warriors 2, in Saika Magoichi's story it's revealed that the bandit attacks are caused by Nobunaga's assassination (at Magoichi's hands), since he had kept order (and presumably bandit suppression) up while alive. Sure, Nobunaga massacred Magoichi's village for his unit being so dangerous, but...
- In Metal Gear Solid 1, when you finally insert the last keycard (after changing the shape of the card three times using different temperatures) into the last terminal in order to disarm Metal Gear Rex you actually end up ARMING the machine and you then have to destroy it manually. In the fourth game, destroying the Patriots AI system would also cause intense PTSD in every soldier in the world, thanks to the SOP system suppressing emotions, and damage basically every electronic service or infrastructure in the world. Sunny's FOXALIVE computer virus averts this trope narrowly.
- At the end of the indie game Doukutsu Monogatari / The Tale of the Cave / Cave Story, after defeating the evil Doctor who had subjugated the floating island and its inhabitants as bearer of the Crown, the hero discovers he has merely freed him from his corporeal form and let him use the full power of the Red Crystal, and posess and corrupt his friends. Cue the real final battle.
- Earlier in the game, the hero and Curly attack a huge spherical creature and nearly destroy it. Said creature is the core that keeps the floating island in the sky. A last-second save of the core by Misery and the Doctor keep this NJBIH moment from coming full circle.
- In the finale of Diablo, the hero takes the soulstone containing Diablo's spirit of pure evil and jams it into his own forehead, intending to contain the spirit within him. He fails spectacularly as Diablo consumes his soul, takes over his body, ravages the town of Tristram that the hero spent all of Diablo trying to save, and becomes the villain of Diablo II.
- To be fair to the hero, by that point Diablo had already long since managed to subtly corrupt and influence him to the point that shoving that shard into his head seemed like a good idea. It's even brought up as a plot point in the second game, that Diablo's powers were strong enough and woven throughout the whole labyrinth enough to corrupt all the strongest heroes that went into it.
- In Call Of Duty 4, the United States sends in a Marine expeditionary force to dethrone Al-Asad, the dictator of Qurac. They succeed, easily steamrolling over Al-Asad's army, but his defeat only results in him detonating a nuclear bomb in his own capital, destroying a good sized chunk of the country, along with most of the U.S. expeditionary force (including the player character).
- This is justified for two very good reasons: 1) The U.S. expeditionary force does steamroll over Al-Asad's army easily, and it can be assumed they would have controlled the capital in a matter of hours after the initial invasion, gaining control of the nuke at the same time (given the Shock and Awe nature of the attack, this was most likely the objective), and 2) who's crazy enough to set off a nuclear bomb in their home turf, killing themselves in the process? Generals planning the attack probably assumed that Al-Asad had some sanity. They were, unfortunately, wrong.
- About 3/4ths of the way through Bioshock, the hero kills President Evil, but not before President Evil gives him a Hannibal Lecture revealing that the hero is only a pawn whose actions are only going to hand control of the city over to the Big Bad.
- To be fair, President Evil pretty much kills himself by forcing the hero to do it via the mind control phrase.
- In The World Ends With You, you're given a mission early in the game to make a certain pin popular. In the end, that turns out to be the key to Kitaniji's plans for Instrumentality. And since you have to complete the missions or face erasure, you had no say in whether or not to do it.
- It gets worse. Once you defeat Kitaniji, you learn that he and Joshua were playing a game. The prize was Shibuya. If Kitaniji couldn't pull off his Instrumentality in one month, Joshua would erase it entirely. And guess what you just messed up? Thank heavens for the Gainax Ending, huh?
- In the Halo series when one of the Halo weapons is activated, and then deactivated prior to firing, it causes all other Halos in the galaxy to go active and on standby, whereupon a single command from the Ark command center will fire them all, effectively ending all life in the known universe. Whoops, indeed.
- In Halo 2, as the Arbiter, you are sent to kill a "traitor" who has, in fact, seen that what the prophets seek is, indeed,the triggering of the Halo rings and the destruction of all life.
- To be fair, not deactivating it would have activated the entire Halo network anyway.
- Terranigma has a few of these - you start off the game by opening Pandora's Box, for crying out loud. You then resurrect the continents, plants, birds, animals, humans, and usher in a golden age of free trade and genius thinking... only to resurrect Beruga, a mad scientist who proceeds to wipe out the city of Neotokio with a supervirus and try to take over the world. It then turns out that this was the entire reason your old village elder sent you topside, so he could completely destroy it via Beruga. This isn't the Nice Job Breaking It Hero. No, what is is that to fix all that, you get back to the underside and defeat the village elder... Who turns out to be the god of your own world and the thing keeping it and everything in it in existence. You've just destroyed your entire world, killed all your friends and destroyed yourself. Nice Job Breaking It Hero, even if you did it Because Destiny Says So.
- In the first System Shock, SHODAN's ethical constraints were removed by the player character. Whoops. It gets better too. In the second game, you find out the fate of the virus-infested grove that the Hacker jettisoned in the first game, where SHODAN was developing an experimental mutagen. Upon crash landing on Tau Ceti V, the mutants evolved into the collective alien hive mind known as The Many, the main antagonists in the second game. Additionally, ejecting the grove also allowed a portion of SHODAN's AI to survive. This version of SHODAN nearly succeeded in using the ship's warp drive to assimilate reality into cyberspace, after the player character spent a great deal of effort helping her gain control of it. Whoops indeed.
- And in the second game, you help SHODAN against The Many in an Enemy Mine... Only to discover too late that The Many were the gray in the game's Black And Gray Morality, not the black you were led to believe... and with their lesser evil gone, there's no longer anything stopping SHODAN from conquering the universe. Whoops, again.
- The gardens in the first game aren't really an example of this trope, though (since as dangerous as they were jettisoned randomly off into space, they were much much more dangerous orbiting around earth.) That's less an example of 'nice job breaking it, hero' and more 'nice job not fixing it completely, hero'.
- Another example that also results in a Non Standard Game Over is, early in the first game, it's possible to activate the mining laser, which you need to do to blow it up. Except, you know, without getting it ready to blow up in the first place. Well, you've just helped SHODAN raze the Earth of life. Nice job breaking it, Hero.
- In Shantae, suddenly, a genie, which were supposed to leave the earth, leaving behind only their half-breed kids like you, who looks like the game's villain sans pirate hat and suggests you cut your hair, which is your only means of offense, sends you into a dungeon to get the last ((Mc Guffin)), which the villain is hunting to power a tank to make herself ruler of the world, but leaves you to go in alone, despite the fact genies have great power. When you show her what you have received, she puts on the pirate hat and laughs. Suddenly, you see yourself on the ground, Mc Guffinless, as she runs away.
- After you complete the last quest in Kingdom of Loathing, the council informs you that the monster attacks are due to your presence in the kingdom. They just really don't like you. And since you're stuck in a cycle of eternal ascension and reincarnation, the monsters will never go away.
- On the other hand, the Council's offhanded way of 'researching' the 'problem', and the fact that they weren't in any rush at all for the Naughty Sourceress to be defeated (They pretty much tell you they love being in power) could mean that this was a complete lie to make you reset the continuity and bring them back into power. (See WMG)
- After the first level of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, namely the Scrappy Level Peragus (an asteroid-based fuel mining facility), the asteroid blows up, and, with it, an important and abundant fuel source is completely destroyed. Although the player had to get the place blown up (or blow the place up yourself, if you want to Kick The Dog) to stop the Sith, the player will be berated by damn near everybody for creating a galactic energy crisis throughout the first half or so of the game.
- And again, later on, for Light Side players. After the Exile gathers all the Jedi Masters together on Dantooine, they tell her they need to cut her off from the Force, so she will no longer be a risk factor in the war against the Sith. In walks Kreia, who then reveals that she is, SURPRISE, still a Sith, and proceeds to Force Wave all three Masters AT THE SAME TIME, chew them out, and fatally sever their connections to the Force SIMULTANEOUSLY (again). Oops.
- She's not really a Sith. Well, maybe she is. Who the hell knows? But the game doesn't depict the death of the Jedi as a bad thing; the Exile's crew members go on to build a new order that isn't as corrupt as the old one was (until the movie era, but whatever). The dark side version is really a better example; the player kills the Jedi - which arguably is a good thing - but because they fell to the dark side to do it, they've unwittingly caused a chain of events that will lead to the DEATH OF ALL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE. But of course the Exile is forced to undo the damage, leading to more or less the same conclusion as the light side version: Jedi and Sith dead, with the Exile and company left to rebuild.
- On a much smaller end of the scale, you can at one point give money to a beggar. If you do so, Kreia berates you for your naivety, and shows you a vision of the poor guy getting mugged. Of course, if you don't give him the money, he goes out and mugs some other poor guy, so there's really no way to not break things.
- Back on the larger scale, way back when, the Exile destroyed Malachor in order to stop the Mandalorians. But all the deaths there lead to the events of both games, and the death of all the Jedi. That's why Vrook's such a Jerk Ass. Mostly. To be fair a lot of it was Revan's fault. Exile's just there to blame.
- Time Hollow for the DS. Expect everything you alter in time to have at least one catastrophic side effect. Best summed up in the second chapter, where you take your friend's bike lock key to keep them from getting hit by a truck later that night. It hits a little boy and his dog instead.
- Soul Calibur IV borders on this in Siegfried's ending- destroying the evil weapon which corrupted his soul, he creates a 'utopia'...but it's unclear if he knew this would mean turning the entire world into crystal, wiping out all life. Nice going there, Siegfried.
- Tales Of Vesperia plays with this, actually, in that invoking the trope is entirely optional (thus, yes, Stupidity Is Not the Only Option). When the party collects the first Fell Arm in an optional sidequest, they decide to collect the rest (as is Tales tradition) in order to keep the dangerous weapons from falling into the wrong hands. Those wrong hands? The final boss, who, if you collect all of them, absorbs their power and gains an extra form that is seventeen levels higher and that much more difficult. And yes, once the sidequest is complete, it is necessary to beat him to finish the game and watch the ending. Nice job breaking it, player.
- In the background for City Of Heroes, Back Alley Brawler took his superhuman war on drugs all the way to South American and Afghanistan, using superheroes to raid drug cartels and burn poppy and coca fields directly to stop the flow of drugs into American cities. Unfortunately, the Evil Power Vacuum was filled with a Psycho Serum called Superadyne, and government research into that led indirectly to the Alien Invasion. Oops.
- In the PS 2 game Vexx, you start off the game being told by an old man called Darby to collect Wraithearts to power the Rift to travel to new worlds. After you collect a certain number of hearts, it's revealed that Darby is actually the Big Bad, Dark Yabu, in disguise, and had Vexx collecting Wraithearts for him so HE could use the Rift and unleash his pet Shadowraiths on all the worlds. Your objective remains the same, however.
- Tales Of The Abyss. Full stop. Granted, Luke didn't know any better, but try telling him that while he was in the midst of his Heroic BSOD.
- Pretty much everything the party does for the whole game is an example of breaking something and desperately trying to fix it. The death toll they rack up far exceeds that caused by the villains.
- Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. First invoked when Starkiller, having rounded up discontents within the Empire and founding the Rebel Alliance, is suddenly attacked at the first meeting of said Alliance by his own master, Darth Vader, who reveals the whole plan to form the Alliance was a Xanatos Gambit by him and the Emperor to weed out their last remaining foes. Canonically, this is then inverted when Starkiller, or Galen by now, valiantly sacrifices himself against the Emperor to buy time for the Alliance leaders to escape...thus providing the Alliance with a martyr to rally around, inspiring them. The Emperor and Vader realize this...which means that, yes, the entire original trilogy was a direct result of a failed Xanatos Gambit by the Big Bad! Nice Job Fixing it, Villain!
- Fallout 2. In a random time-travel incident, you go back in time to Vault 13. The only thing you can do is look at the Vault's Water Chip. And break it. Nice job!
- Rather hilariously, you can also find out that Vault 13 was supposed to receive a lot of Water Chips specifically so that the vault could remain sealed pretty much forever. They were shipped to Vault 5, which never had a problem with its original water chip. So, Nice Job With Shipping, Random Background Warehouse Director!
- The hardest ending to get in Demon's Crest involves Firebrand taking on the usurper king Phalanx before getting all the crests. The resulting abbreviated boss fight (Phalanx doesn't get to transform) satisfies Firebrand's desire for revenge, and he takes off. But then we learn that "With the defeat of Phalanx, the Demon Realm lost all order and fell into anarchy. Many now ask if living under the rule of Phalanx would have been worse than the hell they are now confined to..."
- To be fair, Firebrand didn't really care one way or the other about anyone else's circumstances, so this is really just the result of an Evil Versus Evil rivalry.
- Exmortis 2 has you free the Earth from the reign of the Exmortis horde... only for their leader, who set you up for this mission to begin with, to take their place as ruler. And, to rub it in, he says this:
Lord Vlaew: So, Mr Hannay, for your role in this, I commend you. For your part in this, I applaud you. And, for your help in this, I offer you a gift...
(Suddenly, you're face to face with Vlaew, and the screen goes black. A scream echoes from nowhere.)
Lord Vlaew: A quick death.
- Odin Sphere is the story of five different heroes who completely and royally screw everything up. Cornelius escapes from the Underworld alongside an evil now-undead king who wants to cause the apocalypse, Gwendolyn brings back her dead love by killing the Queen of the Dead and allowing an also-now-undead monster to take control of the Underworld and attack the world of the living, Mercedes saves her kingdom by destroying the Demon King's most powerful weapon that was made specifically to fight against the forces of the apocalypse, Oswald kills anyone else who might be able to help, and pretty much everybody fails to keep safe the ring that can control a machine capable of draining the life force from the planet. To add insult to injury, this was apparently foreseen, as there is a prophecy involved that you have to follow during the final boss fight to get the ending where two people (and the pooka) actually survive.
- Legacy Of Kain is made of this. At the end of Soul Reaver 2, Kain discovers that his "edge of the coin" is precisely what the bad guys had been hoping for. Fortunately for him, they weren't quite as omnicient as they thought.
- Deus Ex likes to pull this one on the protagonist. While the quote above is the most glaring, throughout the game you destroy everything the enemy has in the way of assets. Generally, this comes back to bite your ass and chew with gusto. Let's take a look at a few.
- You retrieve the terrorist's stolen medicines against a deadly plague, and their leader is dead, possibly by your very hand. But wait, they were the good guys, and you just stopped the medicine from getting to a guy who could use it to make more.
- You blow up the machine the Big Bad uses to make the plague. The same machine you needed to make the cure.
- You save one ally only to lure him into a trap. Xanatos Sucker, thy name is JC Denton.
- You retrieve schematics to build your own cure making machine, and the big bad uses you to rebuild his own plague maker. Nice job fixing it, hero.
- You redirect the badguy's nuke at himself, and incinerate innocent US soldiers without even inconveniencing the big bad.
- Well, for one, you didn't have to fight through half the US army just to get to him...
- In Shadow The Hedgehog, the PC gathers the Chaos Emeralds... which the Big Bad uses to start stealing the earth's energy. Oops.
- In Dragonfable, Nythera kills and usurps Warlic using the potions you helped her create. Then she goads the Elemental Lords into attacking Falconreach. So, thanks to your efforts, Warlic is apparently dead and some of the most powerful beings in the world are going to attack your town. Nice going, hero.
- Gears of War 2: In Act 3, Niles' AI advises Marcus and Dom not to mess with the main computer. They do, which wakes up the Sires, causing you to have to flamethrower your way out of the place.
- Fate Stay Night, Heaven's Feel route, has a villain whose big plan to become immortal involves bestowing incredible power on a certain girl, then using her as a sacrifice. So let's give her that power in the most brutal, abusive way possible, and while we're at it, have her raped on a regular basis! What could go wro— *crunch*. Nice job Breaking The Cutie, Zouken.
- Did you just call Zouken a hero? On a more related note, nice job giving Sakura a hope spot and then finally tipping her into total craziness by selective obliviousness, Shirou.
- In Bomberman 64, the white bomber travels to the 4 anchors of the Big Bad's floating fortress to destroy its barrier, allowing our hero to confront Altair and prevent him from draining the planet's life force using the Omni Cube. However after stopping Altair, your own ally, Sirius, who was using you to distract Altair and destroy his defenses, steals the cube for himself and begins draining the Planet's life force at a much faster rate. And as an added bonus he promises to completely destroy the planet afterwards. What a pal.
- Bomberman 64: The Second Attack has two similar cases of this. After confronting the Big Bad who is possessed by a demon, the demon will take advantage of the fact that Bomberman has gathered the elemental stones needed for his full resurrection and siphon the energy from them to regain his earthly form. Depending on certain choices you made previously, the goddess Mihaele may appear after this battle and attempt to use the stones to seal the demon away for good. However, the demon counts on her to try this and ends up sealing her away and absorbing the stones' full power to become an unstoppable god of chaos and destruction.
- Lunar: The Silver Star: Alex needs to get the fourth piece of the legendary Dragon Armor to challenge the Magic Emperor, but the zombified Black Dragon is in his way. He and his allies kill it, but, as the Emperor notes after the battle, Blue and Red were already dead by the time he got the Dragon Shield and Helmet, and the Emperor himself personally killed Quark, the White Dragon. With Black dead, there are no Dragon Tribesmen left to protect the goddess Althena (you might recognize her as Luna), allowing him to turn her into a Person Of Mass Destruction.
- Shadow Of The Colossus. So yeah, it kind of turns out the benevolent deity asking the hero to kill the monsters was actually an evil demon trapped inside the monsters. And the hero accidentally starts a 1000-year bloodline resulting in hundreds of horned boys killed and trapped in the ICO Castle. Oops.
- As this troper understands it, the "evil demon" was actually a god of both life and death, and was technically neutral. He was just pissed that these guys with a new religion had sealed him away for however many years, and decided to kick some ass now that he was free.
- In Okami, Amaterasu and Issun go off to stop the raging Water Dragon and end up going inside it. There they get the Plot Coupon-y Fox Rods, but in the process end up killing the Water Dragon. Upon escaping from inside the dying Water Dragon you come across Rao, who you then give the Fox Rods to, but it's only once you've returned to Queen Himiko's palace that you find out that Rao is Ninetails - an imposter who killed the real Rao months ago. Now having the Fox Rods (whose hands - er, paws you were trying to keep the Fox Rods out of), Ninetails promptly kills Queen Himiko, and reveals that because you killed the Water Dragon there's now no way to reach Oni Island, and with Queen Himiko dead, the location can't be predicted. Whoops. It's quite the severe case of Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
- Jak And Daxter. Having bested Gol and Maia's Humongous Mecha, Jak moves a huge warp gate back to Sandover Village. When opened, it releases a Horde Of Alien Locusts, leading directly to the reign of Baron Praxis, the betrayal of Damas, every game after that... And this happened in the first two minutes of Jak II: Renegade. And it's always happened, thanks to a Stable Time Loop.
- Let's not forget his role in revealing the location of the Tomb of Mar, and opening the main chamber, letting Baron Praxis steal the Precursor Stone, which if broken open will destroy the entire universe. And then there's the end of Jak X, when his victory in the races permits Rayn to become the biggest crime lord in the world. Yeah, Jak does this sort of thing a lot.
- The Age Of Mythology Titans expansion is about Kastor being tricked into destroying all the safeguards the gods had put in place to keep Kronos in Tartarus. Of course, while the player knows this, Kastor doesn't, making going along with the mission objectives the only option.
- In Dragons Lair 2, Dirk the Daring is responsible for quite likely the single biggest Nice Job Breaking It Hero in HISTORY... or at least the first: He gives Eve the apple, while trying to fend off her advances, an annoying cherub, and two hungry snakes.
- The goal of Fruit Mystery is to feed the animals at the zoo. The zookeeper doesn't approve.
- Sora's mission in Kingdom Hearts is pretty simple: Reunite with his friends Riku and Kairi, stop the Big Bad, and smash up any Heartless that may be standing between him and these goals. Except later in the game, the Big Bad Ansem takes control of Riku's body and uses it for the rest of the game. Which means when Sora defeats the Big Bad, well, he pretty much kills one of his two best friends at the same time. Whoops. In the sequel, he gets better, but Sora encounters another problem. All the Heartless he'd been smashing up in the first game? was helping the real Big Bad accomplish his Xanatos Gambit master plan. Yeah. Nice Job Breaking It Hero.
- In the second game, Sora is tricked into removing the lock that Zeus placed on the Underdrome. Hades is pleased.
- In Rune Scape, the quest 'Spirit of Summer' ends with the spirits telling you that Summer's great plan to defeat the Big Bad turned into a Xanatos Gambit for the other side: instead of hurting the Spirit Beast, you just made it stronger, starting the sequel, 'Summer's End'.
- And in the quest 'Enakhra's Lament', you get enlisted to build a statue and end up solving the puzzle in a temple, ending with you liberating an entrapped spirit and attempting to capture his nemesis, who breaks out and they both flee. Then the guide throughout, Lazim, is furious at you because he wanted to learn from the Mahjarrat spirits, but you freed them, effectively ruining his chances.
- This troper considers wanting to learn from two Mahjarrat makes Lazim Too Dumb To Live- wanting to learn is fine, but actually believing that they wouldn't kill him in a second was stupid.
- How about the "Tenpenny Tower" quest of Fallout 3? Some ghouls, victims of Fantastic Racism, are trying to move into a luxurious tower, but the humans living there will have none of it. If you don't feel like slaughtering either party, you can convince the prominent members of the human community to either relent or move somewhere else, thus letting ghoul and human live together in harmony. Come back a few days later, and the ghouls have executed all the humans over a "misunderstanding." What, and you thought a game with a Karma Meter was immune to Black And Grey Morality?
- It becomes more of a Wall Banger when if you kill the ghouls afterwards you lose Karma. This Troper had manly tears due to being betrayed and obliterated the lot of the stinking zombies. Losing karma especially with the leader that practicly gloated over the fact that all the humans had died horribly seems to be a bit much...
- Happens at least twice in Neverwinter Nights 2, both times being of the Stupidity Is The Only Option variety. After you've defeated the leader of the Githyanki who have been trying to kill you since the beginning of the game, she reveals that the silver shards she was willing to kill you for were needed in order to destroy the Sealed Evil In A Can...and now the world is doomed. The same thing happens after you've defeated Ammon Jerro and destroyed his source of power - it turns out he's not the Big Bad the game tried to make you think he was, and now you've foiled his plans of trying to save the world, too. If only these people would, say, share their motivations instead of just trying to kill you all the time.
- For most of Silent Hill, Harry runs around the town finding and neutralising the Marks of Samael that Dahlia claims are causing "the darkness" to encroach upon the town. Of course, they're actually Seals of Metatron, placed by Alessa to prevent the power behind the darkness from increasing in strength, not only causing the two worlds to collide in an even more nightmarish monument to Chaos Architecture, but weakening Alessa enough for Dahlia to capture her and use her in the ritual to birth "God", resulting in the death of Harry's daughter and the permanent transformation of Silent Hill into a malevolent Genius Loci. Thanks a lot, Harry.
- Nice job destroying SHIKI in a way that makes you swallow his and more importantly Roa's persona, Akiha. Made you a totally crazed yandere with emotional restraint issues. Plus essentially turned Shiki into a breathing corpse because he couldn't get more energy from SHIKI. And turned yourself into a bloodsucking monster that admittedly didn't kill its victims at least. And... well, we'll just stop there, hm?
- Even earlier:
Neck, back of the head, from the right eye to the lips,
Upper right arm, lower right arm, right ring finger, left elbow, left thumb,
Middle finger, left breast, from the rib bones to the heart, two places of the stomach to the abdomen,
Left crotch, left leg thigh, left leg shin, all of left foot toes.
As I went passed her.
Without even taking a second.
Literally at a blink of an eye.
I "dissected" her into 17 pieces of meat.
- In Crackdown you, the Agent, end up being a massive Xanatos Sucker who took down all crime syndicates so the Agency could roll in over their former territory and control the city without complaints. Keep in mind the Agency had bankrolled the gangs in the first place to cause a bigger panic. Nice job creating permanent martial law, hero. Although since you can play the game as a Heroic Sociopath who mows down pedestrians without much trouble, you just might not care.
- Happens twice in Killzone 2. The first time, Rico ignores Sev's plan to rescue the rest of their squad and the scientist, resulting in Garza's death. The second time, Rico ignores their orders to arrest Scolar Visari and Visari's warnings of what would happen if he died, resulting in a large Helghast fleet arriving to what's left of the ISA invasion force.
- Paladin's Quest for the SNES begins with a particularly huge example. On a dare, the Player Character, a thirteen year old student Spiritualist (the setting's term for a magic user), sneaks into the abandoned and spooky tower on the school campus. When he reaches the top, he pushes a big shiny button. This awakens Dal Gren, a biomechanical terror from ancient times that nearly destroyed the world about 10,000 years ago. Said monstrosity immediately knocks the poor sap unconscious, lays waste to the magic academy, kills everybody else there in the process, and flies off to destroy the rest of the world. Um, oops?
- This happens in The7th Saga after you manage to recover all of the Runes. Turns out the king who sent you on your quest was actually the time traveling Big Bad Gorsia in disguise. The runes he sent you to find were the seals on his powers, which you practically handed to him on a silver platter. He rewards you by blasting you so hard you go back in time thousands of years. Then he goes back in time also to get revenge on the hero who defeated him the first time. Yes, the reward for all of the Level Grinding up to that point is finding out that the world would have been better off if you had just let that first wandering monster eat you.
Web Comics
- In Sluggy Freelance, when Torg exorcises the demon K'Z'K out of Gwynn, he sets K'Z'K free upon the world. Subverted in that this was actually intentional: they needed the Demon out of Gwynn so that they could use their plan on it directly and not harm her. However...
- Done again almost immediately afterwards, when Riff's attempt to freeze the demon in time actually sends it back in time, creating all sorts of havoc during the middle ages.
- In the process of defeating the big bad guy they've been chasing after, The Order of the Stick destroys a powerful interplanar Gate that he'd been trying to master. Turns out that the Gate is one of a set of portals sealing away a deity-level chaos monster intent on destroying the world, and each one that gets broken brings it closer to freedom. However, several characters argue that letting the villain control it is worse than destroying it, hence why the second one was rigged with a self-destruct rune.
- In an example later in the comic, Bunny Ears Lawyer Celia manages to make a settlement with the local Thieves' Guild. While this settlement fixes a lot of their problems, part of the agreement was that Lovable Rogue Haley (who betrayed the Guild in the past) donates 50% of her loot to the Guild as apology. Since all this loot is part of her "get her father out of jail" fund, she is... upset, to say the least.
- Haley doesn't even have the loot anymore. To pay off the Guild at all she'll need to steal twice that much over again, giving 50% of the new thefts to the Guild outright and paying off the balance with the other 50%; just to end up back at zero as regards getting her father out of jail.
- In an example earlier then the above one, Miko Miyazaki chooses precisely the wrong moment to destroy the Gate of Azure City - if she had been stalled for even a few more rounds, Xykon and Redclock would be dead and Azure City wouldn't have fallen into the hands of the hobgoblins.
- Most recently? http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0660.html Xykon's phylactery is now who-knows-where, rendering him even MORE immortal then usual!
- In the first chapter of Gunnerkrigg Court, Antimony helps a lost Shadow-Man return to his forest home, by assembling a Robot to escort him there (since the rules prohibited Annie from going herself). She also tells Robot that he only has to return to the Court afterwards if he wants to, so he decides to go exploring the woods. Several chapters later, Robot returns, possessed by another, violent and malicious shadow-creature, and the process of stopping the shadow results in Robot getting impaled on a BFS and deactivated. A few chapters later, Annie finds out that the people of the forest have not been on good terms with the Court for the past decade, and that they hate technology on principle. Nice job completely screwing over your friend and causing a diplomatic crisis, hero.
- 8-Bit Theater has a nice scene where Muffin Dragoon's pet parrot (dragon) reveals to the light warriors that Bahamut, who they had previously awakened, would only awaken when the world is about to be destroyed. Only Red Mage seems to care, though in retrospect any acts of "good" the Light Warriors do usually makes everything worse for someone else.
- During the "Sin City" (no, not that one) arc of Dominic Deegan, Dominic reveals to The Infernomancer that the demon lord he was supposedly bound to serve didn't have control over him, meaning he didn't have to follow any orders. The Infernomancer's response? "Now I get to kill you the way I've always wanted to — slowly!"
- Not to mention the "War In Hell" arc, where Dominic helps out Karnak the whole time only to realize he probably shouldn't have been helping Karnak this whole time.
- In his defense, Karnak's death would have also killed Szark Sturtz, since he and Karnak will linked by a wound Karnak had inflicted on Szark when the latter was a child. You really can't blame Dominic for trying to keep his best friend alive. Plus, as pointed out by Dejah, there was really no way for the war to end positively for humanity.
- And then there's Klo Tark, who started a prison break to (rather circuitously) save Dominic's life.
- In Starslip, the crew (mainly Quine, though Vanderbeam initiated it) have done a Nice Job Ruining The Quel's Utopia.
Western Animation
- In Jackie Chan Adventures, the defeat of the first season's Big Bad allows the antagonists of the second season back into the world. And he was much weaker than they were. Way to go, Jade... At the beginning of the third season Jackie himself destroys the talismans while trying to keep them away from two opposing forces, the very act of doing this causes the arc for that season.
- In an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, where the three girls and Professor Utonium move to a much larger city than The City of Townsville, which is reversely named the Town of Citysville, The Powerpuff Girls think it's a good idea to continue fighting crime in their new location. After stopping a couple of robbers by destroying the bridge they were trying to get away on, the mayor of Citysville complains to them. "At what point did you think it would be a good idea to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge? Those robbers stole $4000 in cash. But it's going to cost TWO MILLIONS dollars to replace the bridge!!!" This catches the girls off guard because, in every single episode prior, plenty of buildings get destroyed Godzilla-style and nobody seems to care a thing about it, as long as the monster is gone.
- Then again, there is a significant difference between destroying a few buildings in the process of preventing a giant monster from razing the entire town, and stopping a pair of petty crooks.
- The Simpsons has a send-up of the David vs. Goliath legend, in which King David (Bart) fights Goliath Jr. (Nelson) and loses, with Goliath Jr. taking over as king. After some Training From Hell, he comes back and does a Nice Job of slaying the giant. The Breaking It part comes when he's told that Goliath Jr. was the best king the city had ever had, building roads, libraries, and hospitals, and David is arrested for megacide. Whoops!
- Transformers Animated has a Whack A Mole episode in which the wrong Autobot was arrested. Wasp goes on to become insane and vengeful in solitarily confinement until he finally breaks out to get revenge on Bumblebee. Longarm, who's really Shockwave, goes on to become the head of Autobot intelligence. Well, slag.
- There's also the first Season Finale, where Prime decides the AllSpark key isn't safe with Sari and has Ratchet hold onto it... who them loses it a couple scenes later as he was alone when trying to defend it.
- At the very end of Beast Wars, Optimus and the Maximals stop Megatron from destroying the Ark and the Autobots on it, preventing a time storm that would destroy the Maximals and made the Predacons dominant. They then tie Megatron to the bottom of the shuttle and bring him back to Cybertron to stand trial. All seems well until Megatron manages to break free from his shackles in a time warp, landing on Cybertron long before the Maximals, becoming a dictator and extracting the sparks of every Cybertronian on the planet, leading to the events in Beast Machines.
- From the villainous perspective: according to the Beast Wars Transmetals game, had Megatron's plan to kill Optimus Prime succeeded, there would have been no Autobot Matrix of Leadership to stop Unicron from destroying Cybertron, dooming both races.
- Occurs twice in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series: first when the turtles "kill" the Shredder in the "Return to New York" which sparks a gang war between different factions trying to fill the power vacuum; the second when they steal the Heart of Tengu from The Foot to trade for a cure for the mutated Donatello. Unbeknownst to them, the Heart was the only thing binding a quintet of elemental mystics to the Foot's will; with its theft and subsequent destruction, the mystics were free to resurrect their master, the original (and demonic) Shredder.
- In an episode of South Park, people have been spontaneously combusting. Scientist Randy Marsh discovers that this was caused by people holding in their farts, so he tells people not to hold it in. Unfortunately, the constant release of flatulence begins to cause global warming.
- Speaking of South Park... who knew that Peruvian Pan Flute Bands were the only thing holding back the hordes of Mutant Guinea Creatures intent on destroying the Earth? The Secretary of Homeland Security, that's who.
- Stroker and Hoop pretty much abide by this trope, as no sooner they they think they've fixed things. It only proceeds to get worse due to their blundering.
- How could all of you missed Jimmy Neutron? This trope is used in EVERY EPISODE. And all of the movies. He has even came within inches of cancelling Christmas!
- In the Justice League episode "The Terror Beyond", Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl find Dr. Fate and Aquaman seemingly torturing Solomon Grundy. Fate doesn't even try to explain what he's doing, so the Leaguers stop him by roundly kicking his and his friends' butts. At which point Ichthultu rips a hole between dimensions and starts wiggling its tentacles at the League. Quoth Dr. Fate: "I was trying to prevent that."
- Who do the Major League Baseball official scorekeepers credit with the "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero" on that one? At first, it seems obvious that Supes, Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl get it but if Dr. Fate had simply said, "Wait, I can explain!" the whole episode probably wouldn't have happened. Stupid grey areas.
- Danny Phantom has been manipulated into doing this doing this a number of times. It usually turns out alright, but the one time it didn't, someone hit the reset button.
- Sam does this once in "Memory Blank".
- ... but Vlad does this three times. Once, he let out Ghost King Pariah Dark, another he messed up the efforts to stop a meteor simply to embarass Jack Fenton. The third was erased from the timeline, where he was actually trying to help Danny.
- Xavier Renegade Angel is pretty much the poster boy for this trope. As Xavier's attempts to "help" people invariably lead to the deaths of hundreds.
- In the Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends movie, Frankie manages to reason with the clingy godlike friend World. And it looks like everything is solved. Until Heriman bursts into the room, takes Frankie off, and scolds World.....Who turns into a Tyke Bomb. Nice going, Mr H.
- Avatar The Last Airbender, season 2. Politically destabilizing Ba Sing Se may have felt right, but it was a very, very, bad idea.
Real Life
- The restrictions placed on Germany after World War One were supposed to prevent Germany from starting another war. Instead, they fuelled the resentment that helped Adolf Hitler into power, who of course, started another war.
- As this troper's history teacher described the Treaty of Versailles: "Not enough to cripple the Germans but just enough to piss them off."
- The restrictions would've been able to cripple Germany militarily forever, if the Allies hadn't allowed Hitler to ignore them. Which they hadn't done when Germany was still democratic. What idiots.
- Conversely, had the Allies taken the time to honestly admit to themselves that they were as much a part of the problem as Austria and Germany were (one of the major causes of the war being the fact that every major power had signed multiple chaining treaties to the others, so even a single incident could eventually pull all of Europe into the conflict), and that Russia had played a major role as well (before falling apart under internal pressures and pulling out of the war entirely), they might easily have "neutralized" German militarism without need to resort to constant vigil and control. Instead, by absolving themselves of all responsibility and making Germany the scapegoat (doubly ironic since Germany was arguably one of the nations LEAST responsible for the outbreak of WWI), they directly contributed to WWII.
- Let's not forget the pacifism and disarmament going on at the time, with for example the US and UK pressuring France into dismantling part of her armies for the sake of the "balance of power". (Churchill had a lot of bitter words about that in the first tome of his memories, The Gathering Storm.) The Munich Conference was also a nice job breaking Czechoslovakia, letting Germany annex all the part of the country that had been fortified to withstand an invasion, and thus making the conquest of the rest a piece of cake freeing more troops for the other fronts.
- Munich wasn't about pacifism so much as "oh shit, look at Germany (and Italy and Japan), we need to bulk our arms - sacrifice Czechslovakia to buy time!". Which you could argue made the resulting war worse by getting Czechslovakia conquered far quicker and Germany getting extra resources from the conquest, so even there it's a Nice Job.
- Let's not forget all the people who supported Hitler because he would stop the Communists. Both Germans (who financed and voted for him) and non-Germans who supported him and Fascism.
- This sort of thing has been going on roughly since the dawn of history. A large powerful nation will support one small distant nation as a way of defeating other small distant nations. This leads to one or the other of two kinds of Nice Job. Either:
- The small nation defeats all its enemies with the larger nation's help. Only now there's no one to support it when the large nation moves in to make the small nation part of its empire... this is what happened to the North American natives. Also to a lot of the enemies of the ancient Romans. Nice job breaking the balance of power, hero.
- On the other hand, the small nation might defeat its enemies and become so strong that it now poses a threat to the large nation, in which case it's the large nation that gets a "Nice Job" award, and not the small one.
- During the 80's, both the US and Saudi Arabia aided various factions in Afghanistan fighting the invading Soviet Union. After the Soviets left, the more fundamentalist of those factions killed the less fundamentalist, became the Taliban, and took over.
- Not quite accurate: after the Soviets' allies were deposed and killed, the "government" was a loose coalition of warlords, most with a nominal commitment to religion, all corrupt and in the drugs trade. The Taliban started as a local self-protection militia, was discovered and tremendously fostered by the Pakistani intelligence agency, and soon accreted both the more religious ex-fighters and (after it started to win) anyone who wanted to get an AK-47 and a Toyota Landcruiser.
- As was sublimely parodied by Jon Stewart in his "America to the Rescue" segment, the 9/11 attacks can be traced back to US mucking around in the Middle East's business some two decades earlier. First, when the USSR was at war with Afghanistan, the US decided to arm the Afghan fighters and train their soldiers, including one Osama Bin Laden, a benefactor of and coordinator for the foreign jihadis (mostly Sa'udis) whom most Afghanis, in turn, couldn't stand. Then, when Saudi Arabia saw a rising threat in Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (another fine example of America Breaking It), the US sent troops in to help protect their oil reserves, pissing off Bin Laden who wanted the job (and was ticked off at "infidels" being allowed on Muslim holy land). So not only did the US government of the day put the loaded gun in Osama's hand, they also painted a nice big target on their rears. Nice job breaking it, American government!
- True; however, (as mentioned earlier) Pakistani intelligence also had a role in arming and financing the Taliban.
- As aluded to above, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was originally approved as leader of Iraq by the American government so that the Americans would have an anti-Soviet ally in the middle east to balance Syria; his Ba'ath Party was [intensely] anti-Communist, and a major Communist leader was in fact the victim of the young Saddam's first "hit". Later, Saddam was prized as an ally against Iran. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out so hot in the subsequent years....
- There's also the issue of the Iraq war, which could also be cited as yet another example of the American government Breaking It. Saddam, the proverbial Big Bad in the conflict, was actually the only reason the patchwork country was still staying together (mostly through acts of intimidation and shocking brutality). With his removal, the country came perilously close to open civil war and it was only with the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars that open war has been avoided.
- To sum up: pretty much every time the US has gotten involved in the middle east, terrible unintended consequences happen, to the point where (in This Troper's opinion) we've gone way past "Nice Job Breaking It" all the way to "What The Hell?".
- Or Stop Helping Me.
- When the British and the Americans beat the French in the Seven Years War, they drove them out of the colonies. However, the war drained British pockets, forcing them to raise taxes on the Americans without the Americans' consent. I think we all know what happens next....
- King Pyrrhus of Epirus in 280-279 B.C. defeated superior Roman forces in the eponymous war [1], but with incredible losses in troops, commanders and friends. Nice job — as it is quoted, "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone."
- And is the origin of the phrase "Pyrrhic Victory." Sure you won the war, but you also salted the land, killed 90% of the population, ruined the economy and made the rest of the world hate us forever. In other words, Nice Job Breaking It Hero is Older Than Feudalism.
- This troper's father claims that the crackdown on the mafia that destroyed their power base in America's cities left a "power vacuum" for more thuggish, openly violent street gangs to fill.
- Let's look at the history of the mafia in Sicily. Sicily was one of the last true feudal nations in europe, but with Italian unification the Italian government decided to free Sicilian people from the yoke of tyranny and the thugery of enforcer gangs hired by the landowners to extract money from the farmer-tenants by abolishing the feudal system, thus simultaneously creating a power vacuum and making thousands of people whose only qualification was in demanding money with menaces unemployed. Nice job breaking it, Italy.
- Then, just when Mussolini’s regime had nearly wiped out the mafia in Sicily and left them week and unable to get their hands on black-market guns, the Allies decided they needed partisans within Sicily to aid them in their invasion, and handed out guns, supplies and training to any groups who hated Mussolini, restoring the Sicilian mafia to its former strength almost overnight. Nice job breaking it, Allies.
- Many have argued that alcohol prohibition in the 1920s led to the rise of organized crime in the United States, because suddenly criminals had a ready source of income in the smuggling of liquor.
- Likewise, it's been argued that the prohibition of other psychotropic substances, and the War on Drugs of the 1980s onward, have fueled the growth of gangs, created powerful and violent drug syndicates, funded terrorism, led to a US prison population proportionally several times larger than any other on Earth, impeded medical science and psychopharmacological therapy, and caused innumerable other unintended consequences... and didn't do anything to curb the prevalence of drug use. So remember, Just Say No.
- Another front of the Drug Wars broke something entirely different: Banning the sale of syringes to non-medical personnel led to needle sharing among drug users... which led to explosions in several blood-borne diseases: AIDS and Hepatitis chief among them.
- The Great Depression and the Great Recession: The world may have royally screwed themselves over with their lending practices and trade policies, but it was (and is) the US that did it the most and the worst, and once our economy collapsed, the entire house of cards came down.
- The senators who assassinated Julius Caesar thought they were heroes and were doing it to save the Republic. Oh, did THAT one backfire spectacularly. Instead, they more or less put the final nail in the Republic's coffin, with none other than Caesar's adopted son becoming the new emperor. And what did the murderers get? They were hunted down by Caesar's successors and executed, and history saw them as Caesar's murderers, nothing more. Of course, whether the empire was a good or bad thing, Your Mileage May Vary, considering the good and bad emperors Rome had...
- That's why taking unprescribed medication and/or herbal products without consulting with your physician/pharmacist, especially if you had severe illness (DM, renal, liver and/or heart disfunction) is a VERY BAD IDEA.
- In yet another example of a dictator's fall from power, is the utter anarchy that is the nation of Somalia. When resident dictator Siad Barre fell from power in 1991, the country split asunder, with Islamic extremist factions vying for control with the weak Transitional Federal Government; as if to make it worse, warlords sprang up to try and take control of Somalia themselves. The resulting instability was not good for the economy, and poverty skyrocketed, as a result, many Somalis turn to piracy for their profit.
- Anglo-French efforts at Decolonising their territories in Africa didn't go down too well. In many places, the new Governments couldn't handle the different tribal rivalries, so now we have many areas that are corrupt, dictatorships or completely lawless.
- Of course, a number of those rivalries were made worse or outright started by the European colonies to make them easier to control. The Dutch did this too, creating the Tutsi/Hutu conflict in Rwanda. Now THAT'S breaking it.
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