Prophetic Fallacy

A variation on the Prophecy Twist and, sometimes, the Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, the Prophetic Fallacy is different in that the prophecy itself — typically a prophetic dream or glimpse through a time window — is incomplete or deceptive in some way rather than simply vague.

For example, a man might see himself being knocked down by a car and note that the time on a digital display is 10:51, then spend the entire episode trying to avoid going near a road, despite various events conspiring to put him in danger. He eventually makes it to 10:52 and thinks he is safe, but is knocked down an hour or so later and discovers that he saw the digital clock in a mirror and his actual time of death is 12:01.

Alternatively, characters might have a vision of a terrible future and give up hope, but discover that the vision was of something fairly innocuous that looked unusually dangerous because of the limits that the vision imposed.

The important factor is that whoever sees the vision is not given enough information to work out the truth. Thus, the Prophecy Twist comes not from the character misunderstanding a vague prophecy, but coming to the only available conclusion given the lack of a full story.

This can be used to deliver a moral about not jumping to conclusions.

See also Poor Communication Kills and Unspoken Plan Guarantee.

As this is a Twist Ending trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Basara, male and female twins are born, and it is prophesized that one of them will overthrow the evil kings that rule post-apocalyptic Japan. The villages automatically assume that the boy is the savior... but he gets killed, leading the girl to disguise herself as him and lead the rebellion. The village wise man comments that she noticed without realizing it that she was in fact the savior.
• In Dog Days Princess Leo receives a prophecy from a magic mirror that both Princess Millhiore and the Hero Cinque will be killed at a certain date and time. Turns out fortune telling is far from accurate and trying to avoid the prophecy, which never came true, was nearly a disaster.
• In the manga of Dragon Half, Mink is given a prophecy that if she sheds her skin a second time, a hideous monster will appear. Everyone interprets this as her turning into said monster. In the final battle, Mink is forced to turn off the artifact preventing her from molting in order to gain the strength she needs to defeat the Demon Lord Azatodeth, and the monster in question does appear... as a birthmark on Mink's butt.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The Stand Thoth is a comic book that shows the future, and just like its user Boingo says, its predictions are never wrong; however, when they come true, they do so in an extremely convoluted way that ends up having the opposite effect of what Boingo and his allies expect.
  • The first time it appeared, it predicted that Boingo's brother Oingo would plant a bomb disguised as an orange in the Joestar company's car, and when it went off, it would split Jotaro's face in half. When Oingo went to plant the bomb, the Joestar group returned earlier than expected, forcing Oingo to disguise himself as Jotaro^note the only member of the group not present or hospitalized at the time. Forced to enter the car with them to maintain his cover, Oingo tossed the bomb-orange out the window, but Iggy retrieved it. Oingo then claimed he needed a bathroom break and took the opportunity to flee, but Polnareff noticed that the bomb-orange had been in Iggy's mouth and tossed it out the window, whereupon it landed directly beneath the feet of Oingo, still disguised as Jotaro. One guess what happened to him. Interestingly enough, in Stone Ocean, Jotaro did met his end via having his face split in half, meaning the prophecy did technically come true.
  • In more minor examples, it has predicted that Jotaro and company would drink poisoned drinks... but not that they would have a collective Spit Take (caused by Iggy) a few seconds later. It also predicted that Oingo and Boingo would beat a man up and steal his wallet... but doesn't extend to him coming back for revenge.
  • In Oingo and Boingo's second appearance, it predicted that if Hol Horse fired his gun down an open pipe, the bullets would ricochet out the other end and hit Jotaro in the face at exactly noon. Horse complied with the prediction, but Jotaro moved out of the way just in time, and the bullets ricocheted off a building and passed through the picture of Jotaro in Thoth itself, and Horse's head behind it.
• In Naruto, the Great Toad Sage from Mount Myoboku foresaw Jiraiya travelling the world, writing a book and being the master of someone who will bring a great change in the world, who which either save it or destroy it. Jiraiya would then have to make a difficult choice. And that choice will determine the fate of the world. Listening the prophecy, Jiraiya then travels the world, meets people, write a book and take various pupils: Nagato, Minato and Naruto. All three have the requirements to become the chosen one. Over the course of the story, Minato dies, Nagato takes the path of evil and then dies, leaving only Naruto to takes the role of the Chosen One, since he's the last pupil of Jiraya still alive.
• In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the prophecy of the Blue-Clad One refers to a great leader, a bird perched on his shoulder, appearing from a field of gold to lead the nations to peace and unity and save them from the Sea of Corruption. What it actually foretold was Nausicaa, her Dorok tunic stained deep blue and indigo from a baby Ohmu's blood, being lifted high into the air by the shining, golden feelers of innumerable Ohmu, her long and bushy-tailed squirrel-fox Teto on her shoulders.
• Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions has the Big Bad Grings Kodai getting a vision early on that he would be able to absorb Celebi's Time Ripple and refresh his prophetic abilities at the cost of destroying Crown City's vegetation, and during the climax the event proceeds almost exactly as envisioned despite the heroes' best efforts to stop him. What he didn't see, however, was that the Time Ripple he absorbs is an illusion created by Zoroark, which he couldn't identify due to his illusion-cancelling device being damaged earlier without his knowledge. He then gets his comeuppance shortly afterward.
• In Rave Master, a seer sees Haru (hero) stabbing Elie (heroine) with his sword. Turn out, Elie's magic was going to go crazy and Haru activated the next form of his sword that can cut magic but nothing of substance, thus sealing her nearly-rampaging magic and saving everyone. After this, he waves the sword through his arms a few times to demonstrate.
• Steins;Gate manages this despite the "prophecy" being something the protagonist saw with his own eyes. Turns out "the female lead dies" was a red herring for the real fixed point in time: "the main character sees the female lead lying in a pool of blood, prompting him to send the text message that leads to the discovery of time travel."
• Ushio and Tora led up to the climactic final battle with a time-traveling bakemon visiting the future, when the actual final battle is in full swing. He sees the vaunted Beast Spear shattering into tiny pieces, and his report drives the bakemon coalition to try and forge their own new Beast Spear since the original will fail. Turns out this was the Beast Spear's own intent, splitting itself into shards to attack every Memory Eater that the big bad had sicced on the populace and the heroes' allies.

Comic Books

• This was the major conflict behind Civil War II. The Inhuman Ulysses would see flashes of the future, but not exactly what happens. Carol Danvers is more than happy to use these flashes to stop crimes before they happen while Tony Stark constantly warns her that they're not 100% accurate and can't be trusted.
• This was the basis of Dream Girl's use in the Legion of Super-Heroes. Her prophecies were always completely accurate but often misinterpreted.
• Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen
  • In the story "The Amazing Spectacles of Dr. X", Jimmy Olsen winds up with a pair of spectacles that can see the future, and sees a vision of himself drowning in a fishing accident soon afterwards. When the day actually arrives, though, it turns out that the spectacles were showing him a public service announcement he had agreed to take part in about how an iron lung can save a person's life in a case like this.
  • In the later story "Jimmy Olsen's Blackest Deeds," Jimmy agrees to an experiment effectively testing reincarnation. He spends a few mental days as men connected to Julius Caesar, Richard the Lionheart, and Abraham Lincoln — only to discover to his horror that he apparently helped assassinate Caesar, deserted King Richard, and fell asleep, allowing Booth to kill Lincoln. Superman, who can also time-travel, explains a few details Jimmy didn't get, which shed an entirely different light on events.
• In the graphic novel Top 10 — The Forty-Niners, two characters see part of a newspaper headline from the future that suggests Nazis have taken over America. However, the headline is later shown in full and revealed to be celebrating the Nazis' failure.

Fan Works

• The actions of Princess Celestia in How I Lost My Mother boil down to this, experiencing a vision of her daughter terrorizing Equestria that she ends up sealing away Cozy's Magic on top of Erasing all memory of her from the public before banishing her from Canterlot. A few years later, Cozy who had been living in the Everfree Forest stumbles across Celestia's personal journal: where she discovers that just less than a day after that happened, Celestia realized that she wound up setting events in motion that would make Cozy Glow into the very threat the vision warned about, and that due to her own pride and ego; she just decided to leave her daughter to her fate thinking she'd just stay away forever. This unfortunately sends Cozy Glow careening off the deep-end as she finds out her years spent in complete solitude when she was barely 5-years old were completely baseless and avoidable.
• Legendarily Popular: Grings uses his seer abilities and sees himself in the future, taking the Time Ripple from the countdown clock. He assumes that he therefore can't lose. When he's arrested, and protests that it can't be happening because his vision hasn't occurred yet, his own words inform Zoroark of exactly what illusory scene to create.
• Let the Galaxy Burn: There is a framing device observation that practically all prophecies can fall here if you focus so much on prophecy that you neglect gathering information the normal way, something Rhaegar falls hard into. The specific example is a prophecy that says the North will launch a second rebellion after certain mystical events have occurred… without actually having any guarantee you will know about those events when they happen, for that you'd have to look elsewhere.

Films — Animation

• Invoked in Encanto. Bruno has a vision that Mirabel will — in some way — be involved with their magical home collapsing, the cracks in the house appearing and disappearing depending on the angle that you're looking at it. While Bruno recognizes that the vision was too vague to make any rash assumptions, his reputation as a Harbinger of Impending Doom and his mother's paranoia would result in everyone assuming the worst possible explanation; that Mirabel was directly responsible for the miracle dying. When the family discovers the vision, his assumptions are proven true when Alma begins to apply everything going wrong to Mirabel.

Films — Live-Action

• The Matrix takes this to rather insane extremes as Neo and his friends deal with apparently contradicting prophecies from the Oracle that work themselves out in the end. The trick, though, is that the Oracle isn't really telling Neo or the other Zionites what her prophecies actually are. She tells them, "exactly what they need to hear" in order for her prophecies to come true. She said Neo wasn't The One — didn't say he couldn't become The One. In fact, she said the opposite; she compared being The One to being in love and said it seemed like Neo was "waiting for something", which suggest that Oneness isn't something you just get automatically.
• In Prince Valiant (1997), the bad guys steal Excalibur, but in their base, the sword embeds itself into the floor. Morgan le Fay orders her Magic Mirror to show them a person worthy of pulling the sword out besides King Arthur. It shows what appears to be Sir Gawain, so they try to kidnap him and force him to pull it out. Naturally, the mirror had shown Prince Valiant in Sir Gawain's armor.
• The Scorpion King includes a vision by the female lead where Mathayus gets shot in the back, at which point it ends. Said prophecy happens, then Mathayus gets back up, pulls the arrow out of his back, and shoots it back at the Big Bad, killing him.
• The main plot of The Smurfs is driven by Papa Smurf misreading an attempt to foretell the outcome of the Blue Moon Festival thanks to having the critical part of the vision interrupted by Clumsy Smurf — who, of course, ends up being integral in said scene. The rest of the film consists mainly of Papa making the prophecy come true with his attempts to keep Clumsy out of the way.
• Star Wars:
  • In the prequels, the Jedi Council is beginning to suspect that they have misunderstood the prophecy that someone would come to bring balance to The Force. The prophecy omitted all details of what bringing balance to The Force would entail. They assumed that it would involve the destruction of the Sith, which was correct. What they failed to account for was that The Chosen One would first destroy the Jedi and become a Sith, and only years later would he also end the Sith by killing his master at the cost of his own life.
  • Anakin's own visions of Padme's death in childbirth during Revenge of the Sith count. They showed exactly what would happen if Anakin became obsessed with stopping exactly that event and turned to the Dark Side. Said visions may have been influenced by Palpatine for exactly that effect.
  • In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker has a vision of Leia Organa and Han Solo being tortured on Cloud City, and jumps to the conclusion that they'll die if he doesn't go help them. Yoda and Obi-wan both warn him that precognition is an unreliable gift before he leaves, and are proven correct: Leia and Chewbacca escape on their own because Lando Calrissian gets tired of Darth Vader Moving the Goalposts and turns on him, and Luke nearly gets himself captured by Vader. The only thing he contributes to the escape in the end is R2-D2, who reactivates the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive before the Executor can catch them in a Tractor Beam.
• Willow sees the evil Queen Bavmorda come across the prophecy of a child bearing a mark, who will lead to her destruction. Naturally, she scours the land capturing all pregnant women in search for this child. When Elora Dannan is born, all those people who have heard of the prophecy rally to protect the newborn so she can fulfill her destiny... accidentally bringing together a force that can storm Bavmorda's castle, while the queen herself is destroyed by the very spell she intended to kill baby Elora with. In the (divisive) sequel novel series Chronicles of the Shadow War this leads to all sorts of problems when she grows up as The Chosen One who's already done what she was Chosen to do (it involves alternate timelines and inter-dimensional travel).

Literature

• In Always Coming Home, Stone Telling has a vision at one point of her father's corpse. When he shows up later, she believes her vision to be false, but later, when he helps her escape the Dayao people, she realizes it must have been a vision of the future.
• Angels of Music: In the climactic section, Unorna receives a warning in a vision, the true meaning of which is not apparent until it's too late to be useful. The warning — "One of us is not to be trusted. One of us is not who she seems." — is actually two separate warnings. The Angel who is not who she seems is entirely trustworthy, while the traitor Angel is untrustworthy for reasons that have always been apparent.
• In the story An Appointment in Samarra, a servant is sent to a Baghdad marketplace where he sees Death make a threatening gesture. His master lends him a horse to flee to the town of Samarra. When the master finds Death, and asks why she made the gesture, she replies that it was only a start of surprise at seeing him in Baghdad, since their appointment was that night in Samarra.
  • As a parody on this, Death's introduction as a character in the very first Discworld novel goes like this: Rincewind runs into Death, who comments that they have an appointment soon in a far away city and asks if Rincewind would mind going there, even offering to lend him a fast horse. Rincewind declines.
    • In the same novel, a fortune-teller sees her own death in a crystal ball, panics, sells all her possessions and sets off for a far away city. She is killed by a freak avalanche at the exact same instant that her house collapses into a pile of ashes. The narrator informs us that this just goes to show that Death has a sense of humor too.
• In the Apprentice Adept series, the Red Adept receives an Oracle prophecy stating that she would be "destroyed" by Adept Blue. Red sets about striking first; murdering Blue and making an attempt at Blue's "other self", Stile, in Proton (scientific twin world to Phaze's magical one). When Red and Stile finally meet, and Red confesses why she's been trying to kill him, Stile points out that, had she not killed Blue, Stile never could've entered Phaze. And probably wouldn't have anyway, if Red's first attempt to kill him hadn't left him unable to race horses. Turns out The Oracle (Who was really a self-aware super-computer with connections in both Phaze and Photon) intentionally phrased Red's prophecy in such a way that her paranoia would do the rest, counting on her not to stop and think about it.
• Much of The Darksword Trilogy concerns an ancient prophecy about the destruction of the world. Unfortunately, the prophet died in the middle of speaking it, leaving it unfinished. Naturally, when the final line of the prophecy is eventually revealed it completely changes the meaning. Turns out the people who have been trying to prevent the end of the world have been doing exactly the wrong thing for several thousand years now. Oops.
• Discworld:
  • Interesting Times references Croesus (below). A seer, who, as he's on the Discworld, probably has a decent batting average, is completely flummoxed by a demand to predict the outcome of a battle, which is understandable as Lady Luck, several billion chaotic-system-generating butterflies, and Rincewind ("With him here, even uncertainty is uncertain") are all in the immediate vicinity. Knowing that he would be put to death for admitting it, he says only that "a decisive victory would be won" — neglecting to mention who would be the victor. Even then, he almost doesn't get away with it; Lord Hong demands to know if he's sure, and he only manages to escape by pretending to get indignant: "What, so you're the seer now? You can see what the liver means just here? I suppose you know all about this green wobbly bit over here!" He then waited until Hong had lost interest in him and legged it.
  • Jingo: Nobby Nobbs chooses to take the cheap version of a genuinely magical fortune teller's vision^note Essentially, he's asked if he wants "the ten pence or the ten dollar" fortune in the crystal ball, which is just asking for this trope. She sees him surrounded by women who like him. It turns out this only happens because he's dressed as a woman himself at the time, so it's not exactly what he hoped for. (Nobby then bemoans that he should have just gone ahead and paid the $10.)
• In Daphne du Maurier's short story Don't Look Now (later made into a film), John Baxter stays in Venice because he sees his wife on a boat. Turns out he can see the future, and she was actually returning to Venice for his funeral.
• The Faerie Queene: The sea nymph Marinell's mother was scared by a vague prophecy made by a sea god Proteus that a woman would be the cause of her son's doom. Assuming that the woman who could hurt him the most would be the one he loved, she forbade her son from falling in love or getting married... eventually leaving his girlfriend Florimell easy pickings for Proteus. Meanwhile, the prophecy was fulfilled when Marinell was severely injured in battle with the Action Girl Knight in Shining Armor Britomart. His mother eventually saw her error in interpreting the prophecy and got Zeus to release Florimell and give Proteus a stern lecture on abusing the power of prophecy to manipulate people.
• Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer plays with this trope and adds a tragic twist to it. Applied Phlebotinum briefly transports the mind of everyone on Earth to the future, giving everyone a short "vision" of what is to come. Believing this means the future is predestined, people make assumptions based on what they saw themselves doing in the future. Some start doing whatever their future selves did while others are devastated by their visions. This drives one character who wanted to be a writer but saw himself as a bus boy to kill himself, ironically proving that the future wasn't predestined anyway. It's also implied he was working as a bus boy for book research.
• A subversion in Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. One of the main characters owns a book of prophecies made by a distant ancestor that's been passed down from generation to generation. Every last prophecy is perfectly accurate-but pronouncedly unclear. The subversion is that this character, and generations previous, were fully aware of this, and it became a sort of family business to try and decipher them. This wasn't an easy job, since the best explanation that she can give another character was that Agnes Nutter, the original seer, was looking at things she didn't understand through a very small metaphorical tube, in no discernible order, and so while things often slot into place afterward (some in time to do some good even, like, "Dont buye Betamacks"), until then what anyone thinks the original seer was predicting is as good a guess as anyone else's.
  • On the other hand, the prophecies are indeed so accurate that the characters eventually realize they can just pull one out at random and it'll be the one they need.
  • The ones relating directly to her family tend to be extremely straightforward, like "at this date and time avoid a falling brick". There's also a clear prophecy that the pair above will fall in love and have sex while working on the problem (with lots of "encouraging" commentary from generations in between in the notes); the non-descendant is rather disturbed to learn this.
• In the Harry Potter books, Voldemort hears half of a prophecy about a boy about to be born who will be his nemesis. With two possible choices, he chooses Harry, but in the process of trying to kill him, gives Harry both the power and a reason to defy him, which was the half of the prophecy that he missed. Also a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
  • It's implied that the prophecy still would have been true if he had attacked the other boy, in a bit of a Schrödinger's Gun.
  • It's also clear that Voldemort intended to kill both children, just to be sure. But once Harry survived the attempt and Voldemort was temporarily reduced to a near-death state, it became obvious that he was the one the prophecy referred to and thus Voldemort lost interest in the other child. He didn't realize, and never did figure out, that Harry was only The Chosen One of the prophecy because Voldemort was the one who chose him. As mentioned above, that's the Fallacy part of the Prophetic Fallacy. Also, the other child (Neville Longbottom) ended up being instrumental in his defeat, by killing Nagini, Voldemort's final Horcrux.
• The Heroes of Olympus series: Several new prophecies are mentioned in Son of Neptune, but are only half complete, leaving their ultimate meaning unclear.
• In The High King, when the sword Dyrnwyn is stolen, the main characters get two prophecies about regaining the sword^note "Ask, sooner, mute stone and voiceless rock to speak", and "Quenched will be Dyrnwyn's flame;/Vanished, its power./Night turn to noon/And rivers burn with frozen fire/Ere Dyrnwyn be regained". They interpret them as meaning "Ain't gonna happen"; it's actually a reasonably literal chronicle of events leading up to the sword's recovery.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Arthur Dent knows that he can't be killed until he visits Stavromula Beta and has an attempt made on his life while there, thanks to his encounter with Agrajag. Dent assumes it's a planet and does his best to find out where it is, so he can avoid it. It turns out to be a nightclub, Stavro Mueller's Beta. He doesn't realize that this is the name of the nightclub until he enters it. The attempt on his life is made, and he's killed seconds after that.
• Done on a galaxy-wide scale in the Horus Heresy novels. Whilst on the brink of death, Horus is shown a vision of the future where his father, The Emperor of Mankind, is worshipped as a god across the entire galaxy. He "visits" a world devoted solely to the Emperor's worship and sees statues devoted to the Emperor and the Primarchs, only to note to his compounding fury that only some of the Primarchs are so honored — Horus himself and the Primarchs he is closest to are all missing. Horus draws the conclusion that the Emperor wants to install himself as a god, and will furthermore suppress all knowledge of Horus, his faithful Warmaster, out of a desire to claim all the glory, as though he'd conquered the galaxy without help. Thoroughly incensed, Horus launches a galaxy-wide rebellion that will eventually lead to the Emperor being unwillingly deified as he languishes on life support, and Horus and the "missing" Primarchs very well known indeed, as the arch-traitors of all mankind.
• The Journey of the Catechist series has the main character repeatedly warned that if they continue they will die. They do, only to be resurrected immediately afterward.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Denethor sees the coming of the Black Fleet in the Palantír, and loses hope for Gondor defending itself against the onslaught from Mordor. Aragorn saw the same and went on to commandeer said ships, fill them with the now-unoccupied soldiers from southern Gondor, and helps turn the tide in Gondor's favor.
  • The Palantír does this a lot. Among other things, it also tricks Sauron into attacking Aragorn.
  • It's heavily implied that the Palantír also shows Denethor that Frodo is imprisoned in the tower of Cirith Ungol, leading him to believe that the Enemy has the Ring. He doesn't realize that Sam had taken the Ring, and is still free.
  • Even the elves get in on this. Glorfindel foresees that the Witch-King will fall "not by the hand of man," without mentioning that he will fall by the hands of a woman and a hobbit.
  • Word of God claimed that the last was inspired by Macbeth: Tolkien always thought that the quibble about Macduff not being "a man of woman born" was too inelegant, and it would have been much more satisfying if Macbeth had simply been killed by a woman. Similarly, the Last March of the Ents comes from Tolkien's disappointment that Birnam Wood didn't literally march on Macbeth's castle.
• In the trilogy Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams, a prophecy speaks about three swords that have to be united, so the early can resist against the late. This is interpreted by the protagonists that they have to get all three swords to resist the undead Storm King. Unfortunately, no one remembered the fact that the elves lived in the world before the humans arrived. Or, for that matter, that the prophecy was written by a servant/victim of the Big Bad.
• Done quite impressively in the Mistborn books. The God of Evil Ruin is imprisoned in the Well of Ascension, but can still affect the world in subtle ways, especially changing writing, so he carefully reworded the prophecies about the Hero of Ages to say that they need to do the exact opposite of what they're supposed to. The first time round he was foiled by a man with a Photographic Memory, but it worked spectacularly the second time.
• In Myth-Gotten Gains, a prophecy states that the Golden Hoard will be reunited by a green hand. Normally this would be a helpful clue, except that both Aahz and Barrik have green scales, and Tananda's skin has a touch of green to it: everyone who's a candidate to find the Hoard fits the description, making the prophecy worthless due to its imprecision.
• In a Star Trek: New Frontier novel, a scientist is given a vision that he'll die on his 43rd birthday. When the day comes and goes, he is relieved...until he finds out that his assistant had been surreptitiously altering things on his project, inadvertently speeding up the clocks in the process. A raiding party promptly beams onto their station and kills him...on his 43rd birthday.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • The Thrawn Trilogy:
    • The insane Jedi Master Joruus C'Baoth prophesies that Mara Jade would become his apprentice because he saw a vision of her kneeling before him. Turns out that Mara "kneels" in order to duck under C'Baoth's Force Lightning and chop him in half with her lightsaber.
    • Also relating to Mara was the order/prophecy/hypnotic compulsion the Emperor issued her that she would kill Luke Skywalker. She invoked this trope by killing his (evil) clone instead, freeing herself from the Emperor's last command.
  • Discussed in Hand of Thrawn, where Jedi Master Luke Skywalker intentionally meditates on the future to decide his next move. Instead of a singular vision, he sees a multitude of possible futures, and realizes that this might have been what Yoda saw back in The Empire Strikes Back while Luke himself was fixated on his vision of Han and Leia being tortured on Cloud City. He ultimately just tries to pick the future that looks the most peaceful, and trusts the Force to see him through. He succeeds: he saves Mara Jade's life and they have a Relationship Upgrade, and they recover a complete copy of the Caamas Document from Grand Admiral Thrawn's personal archive, resolving the Bothawui crisis and allowing the Republic and the Empire to make peace.
  • New Jedi Order: Among the Yuuzhan Vong is that twins are exceedingly rare—and their religious beliefs indicate that one will always kill the other. They are intrigued not only by Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo, but by Leia's children, Jacen and Jaina. To that end, they attempt to make it happen, by capturing one and inducing them to kill the other. This in fact leads to their downfall, as with a little help from a spy Jacen not only is able to fake loyalty to the Yuuzhan Vong, but learns a number of Force uses that become instrumental in the war, but also that he corrupts a critical piece of Vong biotech. Disturbingly, they seem to have actually succeeded in the long run, as that training becomes a step along his path to becoming a Sith Lord in Legacy of the Force, which drives Jaina to kill him.
• Harry Turtledove's fourth Tales of the Fox story has a prophecy about "bronze and wood" that fools even the clever and well-educated Fox into thinking it just refers to chariots, but that's okay; it wasn't meant for him anyway, but for his son and his demigod houseguest, who puzzle out the true meaning just in time to save the Fox's army.
• China Miéville's Un Lun Dun plays around with this trope: a young girl named Zanna is prophesied by an living book of prophecy to be the Shwazzy, the saviour of UnLondon, a fantasy counterpart to London, from the evil sentient smog that threatens the city. When Zanna and her best friend Deeba accidentally travel to UnLondon, Zanna attempts to fight the Smog...and is almost immediately put out of commission. Deeba, however, proves to be much more effective at combating the Smog, and she rapidly becomes the hero of the story. This is only the first of MANY plot twists in this novel. Also, the book of prophecy that predicted incorrectly? It spends quite a lot of the rest of the book being depressed and thinking that it is useless. All this results in the one thing the Book was certain was a misprint being absolutely correct and the key to stopping the Smog.
• Discussed in The Year of Rogue Dragons. Big Bad Sammaster's Cult of the Dragon seeks to turn all the world's dragons into dracoliches in service to an ancient prophecy that, so he thinks, says that dead dragons will one day rule the world. Other mages and sages argue that something got Lost in Translation in Sammaster's version^note at least in the part of the prophecy that Sammaster fixated on, the most commonly accepted translation amongst scholars has the same words in the same order as Sammaster's, but different punctuation, and in any case he's the only major character who thinks undead dragons ruling the world is a good thing.

Live-Action TV

• An Inhuman in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. could grant people brief glimpses of their future, and this trope was in effect. For example, one vision left out the context that what was being seen was a reflection in a mirror.
• Angel:
  • In the first season finale, Wes translates a prophecy to say that Angel will die. In the end it is revealed that Wes mistranslated it, and the real prophecy said that he would "live and die" (the language of the prophecy uses the same word for both); in other words, become human. Of course, the prophecy only said "the vampire with a soul," so in the fifth season, a conflict is introduced that it could have been Spike they were talking about. At the time the prophecy was translated, Angel was not only the only vampire with a soul, but the only one that had ever existed, nobody had even considered the idea that it could refer to someone else.
  • Also the prophecy "the father will kill the son", which drove multiple episodes in the back half of the third season, was faked by the demon Sahjhan (who, upon revealing this, taunts "read any good prophecies lately?") because the true prophecy was "the one fathered by the vampire with a soul will grow to manhood and kill Sahjhan". When Wesley goes to one of the Loa for clarification, he is told that the vampire will certainly devour his child. Angel's blood supply from the butcher had been spiked with Connor's blood by Wolfram & Hart. As pointed out by Word of God, the fake prophecy does still come true in a way: in the season 4 finale, Angel 'kills' Connor: he destroys Connor's true identity, giving him a fake one to save his sanity by giving him a normal family life, one that carries no memory of his real life, and enacting this spell involves slashing Connor's throat. Also, Sahjan hearing only "the son would kill Sahjan" led to him causing Connor to be in the exact position to do just that.invoked
• Babylon 5:
  • The first episode that introduced prophets had a vision about Babylon Five being invaded with forces at a last stand. It turns out to be the future of an alternate timeline. It was linked to a second vision where Babylon Five was destroyed with one ship barely escaping. This was actually a vision of the station being scuttled at the end of its service life, and the "last ship escaping" was the last engineer leaving just before setting off the explosives.
  • "If you go to Z'Ha'Dum, you will die". For a while, anyway...though even so, afterward, his days are numbered.
  • Londo Mollari had a vision of his own death: when he is an old man, he and a Narn will strangle each other to death. When he meets G'Kar, Londo recognizes him as the Narn from the vision and treats him as a personal enemy (it didn't help that their people had been enemies for decades). While this occurs exactly as Londo saw, he misread the context: he and G'Kar are no longer enemies, and G'Kar killing him is an act of mercy because Londo's "Keeper" will not let him kill himself. He strangles G'Kar because the Keeper wakes up and tries to defend itself.
• An Applied Phlebotinum / Techno Babble-powered example occurred in the first episode of Blake's 7 after the super-computer ORAC joined the cast, when they tested out its future-prediction capabilities and got a short video clip of what appeared to be the Liberator exploding. Turns out it was another ship of the same design, launched in pursuit after they spent the episode trying to escape the people who built the Liberator and disputed their salvage claim, and it turned out to have been ORAC who sabotaged it. Apparently they decided that getting ORAC to predict the future was more trouble than it was worth after that, as it was never used again. It's also vaguely implied that ORAC was intentionally screwing with them, either to make a point or for its own amusement.
• This happens a fair bit in The Dead Zone, with Johnny getting visions where the intended target/victim is unclear or he jumps to the wrong conclusion about what he is seeing because he doesn't know what he's seeing is incomplete. A particularly good example occurs when he has a vision of himself killing a stranger and the clues lead him to believe Sarah or JJ are in danger ( the victim is really Bruce and it's a complete accident.) At the end of the episode, Johnny laments that he just sees flashes of events out of context which makes trying to predict (and prevent) the future very difficult.
  • In another episode Johny gets a vision of a school shooting but does not see the shooter's face. The school principal believes him and institutes a zero-tolerance policy in order to prevent the event from occurring. At the end of the episode Johny realizes that the vision was from a few years in the future and the shooter is still a young boy who has yet to experience the abuse that will turn him into a killer. Johny exposes the pedophile teacher that would abuse the boy and prevents the tragedy. However, the school's heavy handed tactics cause another student to rebel because of the harassment he received and then a paranoid security guard shoots the student thinking that the he is the shooter from Johny's vision.
• In Doctor Who, the Tenth Doctor is told that before he regenerates, "he will knock four times." Considering the last episode was set to feature the return of The Master (who, in the new series, constantly hears four drum-beats in his head), many presumed the seemingly obvious. Turns out it wasn't the Master, nor was it the power-mad President of the Time Lords...it was Wilf, after all the trouble had been sorted, knocking quietly on the door of the broken containment chamber that's about to be flooded with radiation. And he even knocks four times a sequence of four times. The only way for the Doctor to get Wilf out is for the Doctor to lock himself in the adjacent chamber, thus triggering his regeneration.
• Used many, many times on FlashForward (2009), but here's one example: Demetri's fiancee doesn't believe that Demetri's blackout means he's going to die, as she had a vision of herself walking down a beach to greet Demtri's family while dressed in white — so, obviously, she saw their wedding, which means he'll still be alive in six months. Then she realizes that she was in South Korea in the vision, where white is a color of mourning...
• This was a staple of Heroes throughout the 1st season thanks to future-painter Isaac Mendez. Everything he painted came true, except that none of them came true in quite the same way everyone interpreted them. Some examples:
  • Two in Homecoming, the first was the painting of Sylar standing over a dead cheerleader, which everyone expects to be Claire Bennett, who he's currently chasing. It turns out to be fellow cheerleader Jackie, who Sylar mistakes for Claire. The other was a picture of a dead Peter lying outside Claire's high school. That does come true, except that he comes back to life thanks to acquiring Claire's regenerative abilities.
  • A picture of Hiro pointing a sword at a dinosaur, which made everyone believe Hiro's time traveling abilities would send him back to the Jurassic Age. Instead it came true when he pointed a fake sword at a museum dinosaur.
  • A picture of Nathan standing in the Oval Office, insinuating that he gets elected president, a painting that becomes the basis for mob boss Daniel Linderman's plan for world domination. As it turns out, the painting comes true, but it's not really Nathan. It's Sylar, who gains illusion abilities, kills Nathan, and takes his place in his own plot to gain power. Thank god it only happened in an alternate future seen only in Five Years Gone.
• Medium uses this a lot. The main character and her three daughters has lots of visions that often take days to figure out what those visions really are saying.
• In Misfits, Curtis (in a relationship with Alisha) receives a vision of the future where he is standing on a roof in a superhero costume where he is propositioned by an unknown girl. Once back to the present he assumes that this happens in the far future, where he is destined to become a superhero and have a new love interest. In fact his relationship with Alicia quickly falls apart, he meets the girl from the vision, and after only a week or two he attends a fancy dress party wearing the costume, allowing the vision to come true.
• The series that was truly the king of this trope was the contemporaneous One Step Beyond, which seemingly used this twist every other episode.
• Happened numerous times in The Outer Limits and other supernatural anthology shows, typically involving someone trying to avoid their death at a given time/date, but learning that he was supposed to die a little while later.
• In the Red Dwarf episode "Cassandra", the eponymous computer predicts that Rimmer will die of a heart attack. However, he notes that Cassandra does not know that he's Rimmer, and tricks a crewman into wearing his jacket (with nametag). Sure enough, the crewmember dies. (Also a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: he dies of a heart attack brought on by the stress of being told he's going to die of a heart attack). However, we later learn that several of the predictions she made were intentional lies in an attempt to get revenge on Lister for killing her. It fails and Lister does kill her, but it's more a Rube Goldberg Device-esque accident than any intentional murder.
• Stargate Atlantis did an episode with a number of these, that always cut off right before revealing that the scene shown is actually to their benefit.
• On one episode of Taxi, Reverend Jim gives a number of prophecies that seem to come true. When Jim declares that Alex Rieger will die the following Thursday at 7 PM, Rieger is skeptical. One the night of the prophecy, Louie goes to visit Rieger to keep him company and to help avert whatever tragedy is to fall him. As the highly improbable prophesied chain of events leading up to Rieger's death start to come true, Louie grows more concerned and Alex grows more incredulous. He finally decides to tempt fate by acting out the more ridiculous of Jim's prophecies, just to prove to Louie that it's all a bunch of hogwash. Finally, at 7 PM, there's a knock on the door. Alex pushes Louie aside, opens the door, and there is a Girl Scout selling cookies. Louie screams, the Girl Scout screams and flees, and Louie says to Alex: "Did you see it, Rieger?! It was hideous!!"
• That's So Raven is entirely built around this, as Raven's brief glimpses of the future never give her the whole story. She tries to fix what may or may not actually be broken — and breaks it. And learns her lesson... for precisely twenty-three hours and five minutes.

• In one episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, a widower king's evil advisor tries to get him to kill a child prophesied to take his throne. Eventually, the plot's exposed, the king marries the infant's mother, and the baby will, in the fullness of time, take the king's throne. But he will take the king's throne as his heir, not his usurper. The series is (loosely) based on Greco-Roman myth, where this sort of thing was common, though usually more tragic.
  • Also quite nicely subverted in season four. The entire season features Xena being haunted by a vision of herself and Gabrielle being crucified, and slowly the pieces seem to start coming together for it to happen: she recognizes a nearby mountain peak as in the background of the vision, and is forced to cut Gabrielle's hair to the length she saw. So much time is spent on this over an entire year's worth of episodes that the audience pretty much all assumed that there was going to be some twist to get them out of it. Nope; things happen exactly as Xena saw, and she and Gabrielle die on their crosses. Of course, this being the show it is that's no obstacle for them continuing to star on the show.

Mythology & Religion

• In the modern age, Christianity teaches that the reason for the inconsistencies in The Bible (like how God apparently Took a Level in Kindness between the Old and New Testaments) is that God gave the writers a general idea of who He was, but that their interpretations of His messages was limited by their own understanding and cultural background. The principle of progressive revelation states that as time progressed we gained more and more understanding of who God is until Jesus arrived to give us the full story.

Theater

• In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the witches prophesy that Macbeth 'need fear none of woman born'. Macbeth is eventually killed in battle by Macduff, a man born by caesarean section. The trope is downplayed in that the prophet is himself a hint of the prophecy twist: a bloody child.
• In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus was prophesied to "Kill his father and marry his mother." Consequently, Oedipus left his family and his city to wander the world. In the process, he did kill his father and marry his mother in unrelated events. The prophecy omitted critical information about the events of the prophecy. (Any vision of the events would have seen beyond the bare statement of the prophecy, which naturally implies immediate connection between the two events.)
• Being killed by a creature who was already dead seemed rather unlikely to Herakles until the end of The Trachiniae, where it is revealed that his wife (who has since also killed herself) accidentally poisoned him with a purported love potion given to her by a centaur he killed on his deathbed.
• Early in Wicked, Elphaba predicts her future greatness, saying "When people see me, they will scream" and "There'll be a celebration throughout Oz, all to do with me." However, as it turns out, people scream out of fear, and the celebration is about her death.

Video Games

• As befitting a game that the developers call a "playable Greek Tragedy," this occurs in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, during the "Family Values" quest. Supideo has locked himself in a cage much to his parents consternation, after an oracle told him his mother's blood would be spilled on the ground and his father would scream to the heavens. He contracts the protagonist with finding his sword and his shield with which his parents will protect themselves from his supposed wrath, but by the end of it, his parents reveal that he was adopted, the protagonist murdered his birth mother to get his shield, and they may or may not have also had sex with his birth father, which was why he was screaming to the heaven—just not in agony. Supideo proceeds to free himself from the cage, running screaming from the revelations, and goes blind, upon which he curses the protagonist.
• In The Curse of Monkey Island, the Voodoo Lady warns Threepwood that she has seen that Blood Island will be the place where he dies. When he actually reaches Blood Island, he draws 5 Death cards from a single Tarot deck. Turns out, everyone does see him die there: He fakes his death, multiple times, in order to gain access to certain crypts.
• In inFAMOUS and inFAMOUS 2, the prophecy is that a supremely powerful Conduit called the Beast will rise in the near future and utterly destroy civilization. The character who brings the warning knows it because he's from the future and witnessed the destruction first hand. What neither he nor anyone else ever realizes is that this information is missing one important detail: the Beast's motivation. It turns out that the Beast isn't committing genocide For the Evulz, he's sacrificing the non-Conduit population to bring as many Conduits into their powers as possible, and he's doing this because only Conduits can survive a plague unleashed by the event that began giving them their powers. If the player chooses the good ending in the sequel, Cole decides that this new information changes nothing and he still has an obligation to stop the Beast, even though the only alternative is to reverse the direction of the genocide, killing himself and all Conduits as part of the process needed to cure the plague.
• The Journeyman Project III: Legacy of Time. The El Dorado fragment of the titular Legacy gives the city's shaman precognitive abilities, which are usually scarily accurate to the point that some of the city's Nazca-esque line art (in the first millennium AD) depicts the exact logo of your 24th-century top secret Time Police organization. However, one particular prophecy he receives apparently shows a nearby farm boy using the legacy fragment to stop the Two Brothers (actually the alien species Cyrollan and Qo'Thalas) from destroying the city; actually he's seeing the player character, disguised as the boy, retrieving the fragment and bringing it back to the future to stop them from destroying the Earth. El Dorado, on the other hand, is utterly destroyed in the crossfire the very night after the player leaves.
• In Labyrinths of the World 11: The Wild Side Jagan tries to ritually sacrifice Princess Manu, the only human in the animal worlds, because of a prophecy which foretold a human causing his death. He falls into a crevasse when Simon, a human visitor, blows a magic horn to disrupt the ritual.
• In Legacy of Kain, depending on how you interpret the prophecy that Raziel will kill Kain, either it foretells both Raziel killing Kain (which happens) AND Kain killing Raziel (which happens), or Raziel destroying himself (which happens). The series has always been a bit of a Mind Screw with temporal mechanics.
  • All of this is actually an in-universe misinterpretation of the prophecy; the two precursor races each foretold of a champion. The prophecy showed two possible outcomes, one with each champion winning. Everyone assumes that Kain is the vampire champion and that Raziel is the other one. In truth, Raziel is both champions, and the multiple choice prophecy is due to his own free will, something that only he has in the setting.
• Little Big Adventure II/Twinsen's Odyssey has an old prophecy hijacked by a character who removed the final part of it, since it predicted the downfall of a deity he was impersonating. Naturally, his actions eventually made the full version of the prophecy self-fulfilling (and it did turn out to be true in the end).
• Overlapping with the self-fulfilling variation, the wizard whose prophesies form the narrative of the Myth 2 mod The Seventh God can see everything about the war but the identity of the Big Bad, a foreigner who had united the scattered goblin tribes. He tries to prevent the game's events by traveling to their lands and trying to unite them and "lead them to greater glory." This trope is actually a rule of prophesies in the setting, as seers can't see their own future. He actually knows this rule, but is thrown off because he actually can see himself in the prophesies; it turns out it's his apprentice, who had adopted his name.
• In Odin Sphere, the Fire King Onyx believes himself to be invincible since the prophecy of the Worlds End clearly states that he can only be defeated by the World Tree. Because there is no World Tree in Erion, he basically assumes that he can stomp his way through the fairy kingdom. This gives Mercedes the reason to attack and kill him. She is mortally wounded herself and with her last breath reveals her true name: Yggdrasil
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
    • Jolee Bindo recounts the tale of an old Jedi comrade of his, whom other Jedi believed to have a great destiny. Jolee and this Jedi were later captured by a warlord, but the other Jedi raving about his destiny annoyed the warlord so much that he threw him into the ship's engines. Jolee notes that the Jedi's must've damaged something during his fall, as the ship blew up, the warlord was killed, and the political system of the entire sector was radically changed.
    • Similarly, Jolee's accounts of the player's "swirling force" are vague and cryptic enough to prevent them from affecting the player's choices at all. Jolee simply wants to observe.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords:
    • Kreia is a quintessential Unreliable Expositor: pretty much everything she says, prophetic or not, is a semi-lie that manipulates everyone and everything to following her grand plan. For instance, she says the Jedi cut the player off from the Force. When in fact it was the Jedis' flawed teachings that led to the Mandalorian Wars, during which the Exile cut him/herself off from the Force due to self-inflicted trauma at the Battle of Malachor V. The Exile goes looking for the Jedi to get some answers... and, well, they don't survive long.
    • Her grand plan doesn't matter much beyond itself, it is meant to build up the PC as a Jedi and ally in Revan's quest against the real Sith Empire and nothing else. Completely wiping out the remains of the Jedi and the local bunch of Sith was an incidental bonus (she seemed quite annoyed that she had to wipe out the Jedi in fact).
    • That and she also wanted, y'know, to kill the Force.
    • Well, maybe. Or she wanted the Exile to kill her, completing his/her training in typical Sith fashion. Or she had some bad cheese. With Kreia, it's impossible to know for sure about anything she ever said or did. She basically never tells the full truth, and it's difficult to impossible to figure out which parts are the truth and which are the lies.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic:
    • Lord Zash chose the Sith Inquisitor as her apprentice due to having foreseen them in a vision where they quiet the newly reawakened spirit of Lord Kallig, whose influence had killed or driven mad nearly every soul to enter the Dark Temple on Dromund Kaas. She didn't realise however that this was because the Inquisitor is a direct descendant of Kallig himself, who had long been awaiting their arrival at that time.
    • She later has two visions where she sees the Inquisitor standing over Zash's own body and leading the Empire into a new future. However, her vision fails to take into account the possibility that her plan to steal the Inquisitor's body would fail, and therefore assumes that "she" is possessing the Inquisitor's body at the time. Thanks to Khem Val acting as a Spanner in the Works, she instead ends up trapped in Khem's body and is unable to raise a hand to her former apprentice, watching as they eventually ascend to the Dark Council.
• The plot of Mortal Kombat 9 is based on this. During the Battle of Armageddon, Raiden — in his dying breaths, just before Shao Kahn is about to claim victory over all the realms — sends a cryptic message to his past self: "He must win." This leads Raiden and the rest of the world into an Alternate Timeline based on the decisions he makes in response to this prompt, and unfortunately, the fact that it's so vague ends up causing certain things to go off the rails and diverge in the name of determining who exactly was meant to "win" and how. He comes to conclude that it was meant to be Liu Kang. He's wrong; it turns out it's Shao Kahn all along.

Webcomics

• At one point in Archipelago the protagonists receive more-or-less intangible gifts from the Sealed Good in a Can. Raven's is a vague but unpleasant piece of advice: "you will have to choose between the one you love and the one who made you. You will choose the latter." He thinks (being a former evil drone) the one who made him is The Big Bad, while the one he loves is, as he's slowly realising, The Hero - Credenza. Raven's very unhappy about this, but in the end, his choice turns out to be about something else: this is what he has to do to break out of Maze of Dreams, where he has the choice between remaining with the illusionary Credenza and having love, or staying faithful to the real Credenza's (who made him the person he is) ideals and waking up to save the world, even if he has to do this without her (they've been separated and he thinks she's dead at this point). He must choose the hard truth over pleasant illusion to wake up.
• In Arthur, King of Time and Space, Merlin tells King Rience that if he attacks Arthur a great king will fall. You can't beat the classics.
• In the Ciem Webcomic Series, Arfaas keeps trying to kill Candi because he believes "liPo" refers to "Flippo." It really means library position, so it actually referred to Dolly the whole time! Worse, believing it to be Candi so long only resulted in him inadvertently motivating and giving both of them the means to undo the Hebbleskin Gang!
• Some of Jade's prophetic dreams in Homestuck. She sees individual scenes, but not necessarily the context, which winds up causing a few severe Nice Job Breaking It, Hero moments. For example, she sees that John will end up facing the Big Bad, so she sends him a Disc-One Nuke to protect him. It winds up allowing the Big Bad's rise to power in the first place.
• In The Last Days of FOXHOUND, Vulcan Raven, having the gift of future sight, is puzzled when he is unable to see past his upcoming encounter with Solid Snake. Somewhat inverted when, near the end, he guesses that the reason he can't see past that point is that he will die in that battle. Since the webcomic is based off of the game Metal Gear Solid and Raven had a role as a simple boss and only appeared in that one game, one can guess how this prophecy plays out.

Western Animation

• General Iroh from Avatar: The Last Airbender had a vision when he was young that he'd one day successfully invade the Earth Kingdom capital of Ba Sing Se. Years ago he attempted to conquer the city for the Fire Nation, and led a 600 day siege until the death of his son left him without the will to fight. Over the years he had a Heel Realization, and by the Grand Finale, he realizes his destiny was to liberate Ba Sing Se after it was conquered by the Fire Nation. As he says: destiny is a funny thing.
  • There's also the entirety of the Fortune Teller episode, which SEEMS to be leading this way. Everything she prophesises is either incredibly vague, self-fulfilling ("I'll meet my wife on the day I wear red shoes, so every day I wear red shoes!"), or indicative of a decent amount of Genre Savvy (predicting that Sokka's future will be full of self-inflicted hardship). Then she makes a series of predictions that fly in the face of logic concerning the local about-to-erupt volcano, and everyone adopts a very laissez faire approach. It gets so bad that the Gaang has to fly up and literally rearrange the clouds to get her to change her prophecy, which FINALLY gets everyone off their asses, proving that her initial prediction was the wrong one. The subversion, pointed out explicitly by her, is that she never said the volcano wouldn't erupt, just that it wouldn't destroy the village... and, thanks to the Gaang, the village was indeed saved, so she was right.
• Happens in Kim Possible with a prophecy about how the leader of the monkey ninjas will be unstoppable. At the end of the episode the prophecy spirit rather sheepishly shows up to explain to the disgruntled monkey ninjas that due to a typo he actually meant something else (Ron Stoppable).
• Discussed in Miraculous Ladybug, as a time-traveling Akuma reveals that Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Hawk Moth are still around... but Hawk Moth is a different person than the present one. Present-Day Hawk Moth worries that this means he's destined to fail... but Nathalie notes that this could also meant that he succeeded in his ultimate goal and as such retired from being Hawk Moth, allowing someone new to take up the mantle. The Akuma is purified without ever explaining further (although it's implied that the new Hawk Moth will be Lila), leaving the correct interpretation up in the air. The true answer is a little of both; he succeeds in making his wish but has to sacrifice his own life to bring Emilie and Nathalie back. It also turns out that the Akuma genuinely didn't know who the past Hawk Moth was or what happened to him, just that it wasn't the same person who Akumatized him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic features this in "It's About Time", when future Twilight comes back in time to warn past Twilight about something but gets cut off (by her past self geeking out over the time travel spell) before she can explain what she was warning against. Twilight spends the next week freaking out because her future self looked pretty rough. Turns out that she looked rough because she had spent all week freaking out, and when she finally found the time travel spell, goes back in time in a vain attempt to warn herself not to worry about what is going to happen.
• In Star Wars: The Clone Wars, General Pong Krell decides to betray the Jedi and the Republic because he saw the fall of both of them in a vision and wanted to jump ship before it was too late. However, he interpreted the vision as the Separatists winning the war, so he seeks to join them and become Count Dooku's Sith apprentice. Everybody who has watched Revenge of the Sith knows how the Jedi and the Republic will fall.
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Vision of Hope", Ezra has a Force vision of himself meeting Senator-in-exile Gall Trayvis, who says he knew Ezra's parents. Kanan warns him that he may be seeing what he wants to see, but Ezra blows him off. It turns out Trayvis is The Mole, and he didn't actually know Ezra's parents, he'd only heard of them.
  • Elderly lasat mystic Chava discusses this trope. She's lived long enough to give multiple prophecies and knows there are multiple ways of interpreting even what seems very straightforward. In relation to her most recent prophecy about The Child, The Warrior, and the Fool, she admits to Zeb (the Child) that people change throughout their lives and thus his disbelief that Kallus is the Warrior (based in what he knows of Kallus) isn't enough to discount the entire prophecy. So far the parts involving Zeb and Kallus have been right, but part of Kallus fulfilling his part and forging his own destiny via becoming the next Fulcrum only happened because Zeb, having fulfilled his role already, was willing to give him a chance and save his life.

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