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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
Wanda: What could possibly go wrong?
Daryle: You want that alphabetical or in likely order of occurrence!?
There is one critical thing that could happen that would cause a catastrophe that, left unchecked, would directly or indirectly result in disaster. 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 either fail, be stolen, or be damaged or destroyed, and things will 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. When is the last time you were watching a movie, and someone mentioned "if this object was damaged, there would be a catastrophe!" and the object was never mentioned again for the rest of movie?
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:
NB: Before editing, see Other Stock Phrases for the Stock Phrase, which, as described below, is different from the trope.
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- 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 doesn't 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 eponymous 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."
- But it does get lampshaded by Rick, "No harm ever came from reading a book either, but you saw how that turned out."
- 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?
- This troper remembers watching it for the first time and as soon as Geordie says "its getting a little warm in here" knew it would all go to hell.
- Invoked in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs:
Sam: So, you're sure this is safe?
Flint: Don't worry. I have a dangeometer that lets us know if the food is going to overmutate.
Sam: What happens if the food overmutates?
- Jurassic Park. Although in this one, the critical "thing" that could happen (the control system being hacked, among other things) isn't clearly foreshadowed. 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 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 Spike Milligan's silly poems for kids has the King of China declare "I've never felt finer!" — and then promptly keel over and die.
- 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.
- 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 in an earlier episode:
Xander: As long as nothing really bad happens between now and then, you'll be fine.
Buffy: Are you crazy? What did you say that for? Now something bad is gonna happen!
Xander: Whaddaya mean? Nothing's gonna happen.
Willow: Not until some dummy says, 'as long as nothing bad happens!'
Buffy: It's the ultimate jinx!
Willow: What were you thinking? Or were you even thinking at all?
- 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!"
Newspaper Comics
- Calvin And Hobbes, about Calvin's plan to push the car out of the garage so they can use it as a clubhouse:
Calvin: We'll move it 10 feet. What could possibly go wrong?!
Hobbes: Whenever you ask that, my tail gets all bushy.
- Let's simulate a power blackout in our nuclear power plant to field-test the new emergency cooling system we installed. Oh, but wait, that's not enough - we also need to disable all the safety precautions, and then end the experiment with an emergency measure that was never meant to be used routinely. What could possibly go wrong?
- 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).
- We want the ship to look good on the papers, so punch it and never you mind the icebergs. After all we've got a fancy new double-hull, what could possibly go wrong?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Web Original
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.
- Half-Life. Black Mesa. "The possibility of a Resonance Cascade scenario is extremely unlikely". Guess what happens.
- Homeworld:Cataclism. Let's open a million years old alien pod after having tucked ourselves in the futhest corner of the galaxy, where no one can come to our aid in case something goes wrong!
- 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. 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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