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What Could Possibly Go Wrong
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alt title(s): How Hard Can It Be 
Fastest Comeuppance Ever. Though most readers can think of ways in which crashing a zeppole cart into a barbecue pit could fail to produce delicious food.
"Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possibly go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent." — Terry Pratchett
Before editing: See Other Stock Phrases for the Stock Phrase, which, as described below, is different from the trope.
There is one critical thing that could happen that would cause a catastrophe that, left unchecked, would directly or indirectly result in the destruction (or tyrannical rule) of the entire universe, or at least a large chunk of the city. But everyone in the story is assured that this critical thing will never, ever happen. Ever.
The audience knows better.
If anyone ever mentions a component in a reactor that is the only thing stopping a meltdown, or a lockout chip that is the only thing stopping a megalomaniacal AI from taking sentient control, or a supernatural artifact that is the only thing keeping the Big Bad in his Soul Jar, it will be either stolen, destroyed, or damaged to the point where it loses at least some of its functionality. Usually results making things Go Horribly Wrong.
The Law Of Conservation Of Detail helps this along; the scientist isn't going to bother to mention the failsafe unless it's going to, well, you know.
It's often used to drive a plot. Everything is normal and then this happens and all hell breaks loose.
Named after the popular Slashdot tag , which appears whenever this trope is invoked in real life. Example here.
A sub-trope of Million To One Chance. Not always related with the Stock Phrase "What could possibly go wrong?". In these cases, it's often said seriously by characters performing a "simple" task where it does indeed appear that nothing can go wrong (although the end result is similar... something does). When this trope is in effect, it's said sarcastically by the audience, or one of the more Genre Savvy characters in the story, when a very obvious danger is being foreshadowed.
See Finagles Law, Tempting Fate, Mugging The Monster, Phlebotinum Rebel, and Failsafe Failure. Compare Gone Horribly Right.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Film
- Doc Ock does this twice in Spider-Man 2. The reactor that threatens to destroy New York City if there's a flaw in the experiment is bad enough, but probably the best example of this trope is his mind controlled arms; the only thing stopping the AI from taking over his brain is a painfully over-exposed "lockout chip" which is separate from all of the other programming of the arms. There isn't even a fail safe in place to stop the arms if the lockout chip shorts out (not that that would ever happen).
- Not to mention that the plan is spectacularly bad to start with. What could possibly go wrong with a power generation plan that requires someone to actually stand here and reactively make sure it does boil out of control on a second to second basis?
- You might have heard of this one:
Commander #1: We've analyzed their attack, sir, and there is a danger. Should I have your ship standing by?
Grand Moff Tarkin: Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances.
- Opening credits to Crazy Like A Fox: "All I need is a ride. What could possibly happen?"
- From The Mummy. They find the ancient Egyptian "Book of the Dead", and Evey decides to read from it. "No harm ever came from reading a book", she says. Cue the titular Mummy waking up and trying to kill everybody.
- And she doesn't even learn her lesson in the sequel! "No harm ever came from opening a chest."
- Well, no world ending harm from opening a chest. The real harm came from wearing that gold bracelet, but that was her son not learning from his parents.
- The Incredibles has "We're superheroes. What could happen?" Something always does.
- Before the crew of the Enterprise-E engages in mortal combat with the Borg in Star Trek First Contact, Worf specifically tells them at no cost to hit two doohickeys next to the warp core or it'll release a noxious gas that will dissolve anything organic. Guess what gets hit in Picard and Data's final confrontation with the Borg Queen?
Literature
- Jurassic Park. Although in this one, the critical "thing" that could happen (the control system being hacked, among other things) isn't clearly foreshadowed as far as this troper can remember. But c'mon, an island full of vicious dinosaurs run by an man who continuously insists everything is perfectly safe is just asking for trouble.
- In the book, this is all but Ian Malcolm's sarcastic catchphrase.
- This troper recalls that Mr. Hammond "spared no expense" with every single element of the park EXCEPT the IT guy.
- And the door locks on the cars... and the people who were to research the frog DNA (you know, so they DON'T change gender)... and the people who designed the T-Rex enclosure (whom somehow managed to screw up the enclosure SO bad that they broke the fabric of space and time.)
- In retrospect, it's fairly obvious that Michael Crichton stacked the deck against the possibility of things working fine so he could make his anvilicious point about man trying to control nature.
- This is the plot of the book and film Fail Safe. An accidental nuclear attack on the USSR is impossible, Mr. President.
- And Dr Strangelove. In fact, they sued Fail Safe because it was so similar.
- In the novel The Amorous Umbrella the hero is trapped in a world based on the more melodramatic 1950's soap operas. By that world's natural laws, the surest way of committing suicide is to say "I've never felt better in my life".
- In the great Indian epic Ramayana, a Rakshasa general leads his 14,000 troops against one man: Rama. His last words; "He's only one man."
- Ravanna the Demon-King was so hard to kill because of blessings he extorted from Brahma that prevented gods and demons and such-like from killing him. He disdained to get immunities from human or animals, because they were mere food. What could they possibly do?
- One of SpikeMilligan's silly poems for kids has the King of China declare "I've never felt finer!" — and then promptly keel over and die.
Live Action TV
- Jeremy Clarkson saying,"How hard can it be?" on Top Gear,
often always uttered before they show a segment where the presenters have to work on cars.
- Lampshaded once, after the series came off hiatus:
Richard: Oh, how I've missed the pang of dread every time you say the words "How hard can it be?"
- In the Angel episode "Spin the Bottle," Lorne introduces the Phlebotinum:
Lorne: A memory spell—provided by one of my clients—that is guaranteed to bring our Cordy back to the way she was.
Angel: Guaranteed?
Cut to Lorne, narrating
Lorne: So, I'm an idiot. What are you—perfect?
- A fine example in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode Once More With Feeling:
Dawn: Come on, songs, dancing around... What's gonna be wrong with that?
- Snap cut to the demon Sweet looking at one of the dancers burst into flames.
- Lampshaded on The West Wing:
Toby: It's not going to be a big deal.
Sam: Isn't that what we usually say right before something becomes a big deal?
- From the new Doctor Who episode "The Satan Pit":
Ida: "We’ve come this far, there's no turning back."
The Doctor: "Oh, did you have to? 'No turning back'? That's almost as bad as 'Nothing could possibly go wrong' or 'This is gonna be the best Christmas Walford's ever had.'"
- The Doctor later lets loose with a "WCPGW" at the start of the episode "Midnight", his tone suggests he wants something to go wrong. And it does, and he's very sorry by the end of the episode.
- The predictable Sit Com variety is parodied on That Mitchell And Webb Look, in the "Get Me Hennimore" sketches. The boss gives his Ralph Wiggum employee a truly preposterous set of tasks to do, with maximum scope for confusion, embarrassment and general disarray, and tops it off by wondering aloud how his instructions could possibly be misconstrued; Gilligan Cut to the smoking aftermath. "HenniMOOOORE!"
Real Life
- Let's simulate a power blackout in our nuclear power plant to field-test the new emergency cooling system we installed. What could possibly go wrong? The Chernobyl Disaster.
- Three Letters: LHC. "Two CERN-commissioned safety reviews have examined these concerns and concluded that the experiments at the LHC present no danger and that there is no reason for concern [4 citations]." In other words, we're screwed.
- Never mind it works... so far...
- We'll need to wait until all the scientists get together to do one big thing on the LHC. It needs to be televised live on every station, preferably with some scientists getting ready to pop open some champagne in celebration just before running the experiment, and one crazed guy in the background getting kicked out for shouting "WHY WON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?! IT WILL TURN US ALL INTO MUTANT ZOMBIES!" (how'd he get in there anyway?)
- Actually, it did do something totally unexpected when they turned it on. It broke.
- The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World courtesy Cracked, invokes the trope by name.
- A highly-contagious pathogen being tested in a lab in tornado alley. Slashdot link (note the tag).
- The Unsinkable Titanic
- The perfectly safe Hindenburg
- (Considering they filled it with hydrogen instead of helium like it was supposed to be, it might well have been perfectly safe, had it been put together right.)
- The guaranteed big seller Ford Edsel
- Most real life examples don't work quite the way the trope description implies. In fiction, you get cases of the whole thing being a disaster because of one critical failsafe that "couldn't" go wrong, but which breaks down. In real life, it's usually that the designers overlooked something important and ignored the need to put in failsafes.
- History Channel's Modern Marvels series does a sub series titled Engineering Disasters every now and again. Every one of them seems to invoke What Could Possibly Go Wrong at least once per episode. They've produced 21 hour long episodes and still haven't covered everything.
- National Geographic Channel has Seconds From Disaster which is the same thing.
- Almost all disasters have multiple things that go wrong with poor design of several different systems. Generally, normal designs have enough safety factors built in to justify thinking that it is safe. But when several things go wrong in a way that seemed highly unlikely, well...
- Titanic, for example, had failure to properly heed iceberg warning by going too fast and not changing course enough out of the way, poor design of water tight compartments, iceberg hits side of ship in exactly wrong place to open up several different sections, and not enough life boats.
Webcomics
Video Games
- The trope title was Bubsy's catch phrase. Cranked Up To Eleven in the Animated Adaptation.
- Dead Space, breaking down entire planets for their mineral resources, hmm, not too bad, already pretty dangerous, but it's mundane dangerous,what are the odds of finding some VERY unwanted cargo when you start mining the place?
- Dr. Muto says this before turning on his everlasting power source, which five seconds after being turned on blows up the entire planet, except for his house.
Western Animation
- Subverted/parodied on The Fairly Odd Parents. When Timmy gets his daily life turned into a reality TV show, Executive Meddling forces him to adopt the trope title as his Catchphrase. Then, when Timmy invokes the phrase while referring to his mom's cooking, she thinks Timmy is insulting her.
- Most of the time it's played straight, however. That became his catch phrase because he actually does say the trope title often. It's almost a Once Per Episode thing for Timmy.
- Said literally by Genie in Aladdin and the King of Thieves, just before the titular King of Thieves reveals his plan to crash and rob Aladdin's and Jasmine's wedding.
- This is literally the title of the pilot (and only) episode of the cartoon based on Bubsy the Bobcat. It's also his catchphrase during said show.
Newspapers
- Oh, boy! It's a title of a oddball story from about Tour De Paris for prisoners. If you don't believe me—check this out. [1]
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