Mortons Fork / Film

Examples of Morton's Forks in live-action films.

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• Said by Billy the Kid in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure before a poker match.
  Billy the Kid: What I win, I keep; what you win, I keep.
  Bill and Ted: Sounds good, Mr. The Kid!
• According to the adult film version of Caligula, the tyrant leader of Rome would often use this tactic to brand someone he didn't like a traitor, no matter what they said to defend themselves from the accusation, or even if there was evidence to prove their innocence. Pretty much, if Emperor Crazypants didn't like you, or if he just felt like it, you were as good as dead.
• Evelyn's final choice in Chinatown. She can either surrender to the police and try to explain the truth, which won't work because her father, who also raped her, has already made her look insane to everyone and like she probably killed her husband in a jealous rage (and he has the money to pay off the right people), which will result in him probably taking custody of Evelyn's daughter from the rape, Katherine, or she can make herself look exactly like the violent murderer Noah has made her seem to be by pulling a gun and driving off, in the vague hope she and Katherine might make it out of Chinatown alive. She picks the latter, and as she's surrounded by armed police, her last try fails, she's killed, and Noah takes Katherine.
• The Dark Knight Rises:
  • Jonathan Crane's Kangaroo Court allows the guilty their choice of punishment: death or exile. "Exile" means being forced to leave Gotham by way of walking across the frozen river, which is essentially a death sentence since the ice is so thin there's no way you'll make it all the way across without falling through and dying of hypothermia. When Commissioner Gordon opts to skip the theatrics and just choose death outright, Crane obliges and sentences him to death... by exile.
  • Bane's hostage ploy: any outside attempt to interfere with his plan means the bomb in Gotham kills everyone. While presented as a legitimate choice (don't try to interfere so that the hostages may live), the fact that his plan ends with the bomb exploding after five months of no interference, killing everyone anyway, makes it a hidden Morton's choice.
• Deewaar: When Sumitra falls ill, Vijay is faced with a decision: If he doesn't go to the hospital, he won't get to see his mother. If he does go to the hospital, he'll be arrested by the police waiting for him there, and won't get to see his mother (he decides to go to the temple to have a chat with Shiva). Ravi notes that since he surrounded the hospital with police officers, he has left Vijay with no good options.
• Emily the Criminal: Discussed.
  • Youcef tries to get Emily on his plan to get revenge on Khalil by stealing from him. Emily has reservations and seems like she won't do it. Youcef tells her that Khalil will blame her regardless of her actual role in events, so she might as well take a cut. It doesn't end up happening since Khalil steals from Youcef first.
  • After Khalil robs Youcef, Emily defends herself by telling Youcef that her role in it (specifically, that she broke his rules) doesn't matter because Khalil was always going to steal from Youcef.
• The "interactive" movie Fast Lane To Malibu was full of this out of necessity. When it originally ran on the Playboy Channel, the gimmick was that certain scenes could go one of two ways, viewers had a certain time to call one of two numbers to vote for which one they preferred, and the one with more votes got shown. However, since the plot had to keep going in the same direction lest it sprawl out of control and seriously overwork everyone involved, and the viewers obviously didn't want to miss out on the sex no matter what, these choices had virtually no real effect. In order:
  • Monica hires a call girl, and Brian can either have sex with her or watch Monica have sex with her. Whichever he chooses, Monica takes it badly for some stupid reason, and the two bicker before Monica leaves in disgust. This is the only choice with two separate sex scenes, of which the viewers could see only one. The VHS adaptation went with the former scene, then put the other in as a Fantasy Sequence much later in the story.
  • Brian and Zack can take either Brian's crummy Jeep or a snazzy Porsche belonging to Brian's (never named or seen) brother. Both choices lead to them taking the Jeep. The only difference is that the latter precedes this with them heading down the freeway a short distance before a security measure causes the Porsche to shut down (which sets up a Brick Joke at the end of the movie).
  • The travelling buddies have a coin flip to decide whether to pick up a hitchhiker. Both outcomes lead to the same sex scene (one "real", one a Fantasy Sequence), followed by the buddies discovering that the hitchhiker robbed them.
  • Zack decides whether to finish pleasuring the mechanic's girlfriend or leave her unsatisfied. Either way, the mechanic finds out and gets furious (for slightly different reasons), and the buddies steal his car and make a break for it.
  • The buddies get arrested for the theft and have to decide whether to break out of jail and become fugitives or stay, miss out on the party, and go to prison. The first option leads to Brian, seconds after the breakout, changing his mind completely out of the blue and both of them locking themselves back up. And either way they manage to get off scot-free (and get some action to boot).
  • Monica decides whether she wants to compete in the wet t-shirt competition. She ends up doing it either way; the only difference is that if she initially turns it down, Ashley also takes part.
  • Weird subversion near the end: Brian and Zack finally get to the party, but see Monica and Ashley in the distance. A couple phone calls later, Monica pleads for Brian to forget about the party and come home. There actually was a vote here, but it didn't matter since Playboy only had one scene for this part: Brian initially decides to go home with Monica, then changes his mind, says that he's "vetoing the decision", and goes to the party. The DVD release doesn't present any choice here; the scene just proceeds normally.
  • And the sequel, Fast Lane to Vegas, continued in the same vein:
  • Brian and Zack can pick up either the homecoming queen or the stripper. Whichever they choose, a little later the other shows up literally out of nowhere (in identical fashion), and they both have a three-way with Brian.
  • Zack decides whether to watch his old college flame get it on with her current boyfriend. Both choices lead to 1. the same sex scene (one real, one fantasy), 2. the boyfriend finding out, and 3. Brian and Zack fleeing for their lives as the boyfriend shoots at them.
  • The buddies decide whether to assist the two mysterious women in suits. Both choices end up with them narrowly avoiding being mind-controlled and fleeing.
  • Zack decides whether to hit up the daughter of a tavernkeeper. Completely inconsequential decision; either way Zack simply learns that hitting her up is a bad idea.
  • The buddies decide whether to use up one of their wishes (long story...) to become invisible so they can peep on the tavernkeeper's daughter while she's bathing. If they do, they get to see her but get found out when the invisibility wears off at the worst possible time. If they don't, the wish gets wasted on nothing, they get to peep on her anyway after finding a back door to the bathroom, and they get found out after accidentally knocking over a screen.
  • Monica decides whether to have sex with a stripper or watch Ashley have sex with him. Both choices, of course, quickly lead to both of them getting in the act.
• The Hong Kong film Fatal Move ends with the last two survivors of a gang war, realizing they're surrounded by the police, deciding to engage each other to a fight to the death. The survivor will then commit Suicide by Cop.
• Two occasions, one in each half, of Full Metal Jacket:
  • Lampshaded and subverted in the first half. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman asks Private Joker whether he believes in the Virgin Mary. When Joker says no, the drill sergeant angrily gets in his face. When Joker stands by his answer Hartman slaps him and threatens to do worse to Joker. When Hartman asks again whether Joker believes in the Virgin Mary, Joker still answers no, explaining that he knows that any answer he gives will be wrong and that the drill sergeant will only punish him harder for giving in under pressure. The sergeant responds by promoting Joker to squad leader, stating that "Private Joker is silly and ignorant, but he's got guts, and guts is enough."
  • In the second half, during a helicopter ride, the door gunner is shooting his machine gun at anyone who passes by, despite them being civilians. After a minute of this he turns to the other passengers and explains that "anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC."
• Godzilla (2014):
  • Elle Brody ends up trapped on a road with a group of other people with Godzilla on one side and the winged MUTO on the other.
  • When Ford Brody asks the MONARCH folks why they didn't just kill the MUTO while it was dormant in the ruins of Janjira, Drs. Serizawa and Graham explain that the MUTO was absorbing the radiation that would have flooded the city otherwise. They ultimately concluded that having a Kaiju getting nutrition and possibly becoming a physical threat to people years later was a lesser threat than having millions die from radiation poisoning.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: This is basically the end result of the High Evolutionary's utterly insane and illogical standards set for his creations. He's such a perfectionist, he's willing to wipe out entire planets inhabited by his creations for minor slights that he deems make them "inferior", but at the same time gets irrationally furious at Rocket for solving a problem that he could not (demonstrating that Rocket is smarter than him), ordering that Rocket be dissected, his friends incinerated, and mocks him for crying after killing one of them. So in the end, he hates it when his creations are both less and more intelligent than he is, and they must be killed either way.
• In Inglorious Basterds, after the squad wrings any useful information out of their German captives, they play a game with the captives where those captives are asked if they ever intend to take off their uniforms after the end of World War II. Saying no will be interpreted as saying that you are an unrepentant Nazi, which will infuriate the Nazi hating, mostly Jewish squad. Saying yes still earns them the wrath of the Bastards, because as Aldo Raine (the leader of the Bastards) explains, anyone who fought for Nazi Germany should be marked as a Nazi for the rest of their days, instead of being able to take off their uniform and pass as a normal member of society afterwards. So the Bastards carve a swastika into the forehead of anyone who says yes, they will take off their uniform. At the end of the movie Aldo corners Hans Landa, and asks him if he intends to take his uniform off. Landa, who knows what happened to the soldiers who said yes, and anticipates what would happen if he said no, refuses to answer. After a minute of silence, Aldo casually points out the Fridge Logic in the question by saying that nobody could actually keep wearing the same uniform every minute for the rest of their life, it simply wouldn't be practical, and at some point they'd have to take it off. He then carves a swastika in Landa's forehead.
• In Kung Fu Panda, Po's (then-)abusive mentor sets one of these situations up. If Po says he believes that he's The Chosen One, then Shifu will have carte blanche to beat him up for his pretension. If Po says he doesn't believe that, then he's saying that the revered Master Oogway was wrong, and Shifu will rebuke him for his doubt. ^note Disagreeing with authority figures was a huge taboo in ancient Chinese culture. Either way Shifu gets an opportunity to hurt the boy.
• In the classic 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, Kris Kringle catches Granville Sawyer practicing psychiatry without a license and promises to go tell their employer, Mr. Macy, about it in order to get him fired. Sawyer cuts Kringle off by getting him committed to a sanitorium before he can do so...and then quickly gets fired anyway for costing Macy his star employee.
• The Menu: Margot is initially interested in Chef Slowik's indecision over whether as an unexpected attendee he hasn't had time to evaluate she should be placed with the staff or the guests. Then he clarifies that the staff are also all going to die - the difference is really just Chef Slowik's opinion of you, which is important to the existing staff but not particularly to her.
• Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation: CIA director Hunley is faced with this situation in the end. Having spent the entirety of the film trying to get the IMF shut down, he is forced to choose whether to keep it active or admit to the oversight committee that his British counterpart, MI6 chief Atlee, secretly formed the Syndicate, a covert kill squad Hunley himself didn't believe existed, under his nose, thus casting doubt on his competence and his effectiveness. He picks the first option.
• In Monty Python's Life of Brian, Brian doesn't want to be the Messiah. Unfortunately:
  Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!
  Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
  Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
  Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!
• The Mummy Trilogy
  • In The Mummy (1999), after fully regenerating, Imhotep tells Evelyn that if she takes his hand, he'll spare her friends. Evelyn decides to go with him to save the others, telling Rick that Imhotep still needs to perform the ritual and thus they can still stop him. However, as Imhotep is leaving with Evelyn, he tells the mind-controlled townspeople to "Kill them all!".
  • In the backstory of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the titular emperor presents Zi Yuan with General Ming prepared to be quartered by horses. He tells her "Become my queen, and I'll let [General Ming] live." Zi Yuan responds with that it's this trope, as he'll kill Ming anyway. The Dragon Emperor tells her she's right and has Ming quartered.
• In Muppets from Space, Rizzo ends up becoming a lab rat. One of the tests he's subjected to is that he's given a choice of a wedge of cheese and a container of rat poison with a straw; when he goes for the cheese, he gets hit by an Extendo Boxing Glove, and when he goes for the poison later he gets hit by it again.
• In Mystic River, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) confronts Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) about the murder of Markum's daughter. Markum is wrongfully convinced that Boyle killed her, and angrily refuses to listen to Boyle's attempts to deny it. Eventually Markum tells Boyle, "Admit what you did and I'll let you live," with a pretty clear implication that if Boyle tries to continue denying his culpability, Markum will kill him for "lying". Boyle confesses to save his life, and Markum kills him.
• In National Treasure, when Ben Gates is being interrogated by a federal agent, the agent offers him an ultimatum: "Door number one, you go to prison for a very long time. Door number two, we're going to get back the Declaration of Independence. You help us find it... and you still go to prison for a very long time. But you'll feel better inside." Gates asks if there's a door that doesn't land him in jail and is told "Someone's got to go to prison." Gates solves it by aiming the federal agent at the Big Bad, whom he has sent on a wild-goose chase while he solved the mystery. Someone's got to go to prison, after all.
• Not Okay: What turns out to be the choice as Danni is confronted by Harper about her multitude of lies. She could either confess that she made up her whole story of survivorship, or Harper would tell the world herself that she did. Danni chooses to do the former, but in doing so, she still receives worldwide backlash for her major fabrication, even if she did decide to keep quiet otherwise.
• Official Secrets: The eponymous Official Secrets Act causes problems for Katharine Gun even after her original charge for leaking the NSA memo: she's informed by a Scotland Yard detective that discussing the details of her potential charges with an attorney counts as an additional OSA violation in its own right, even though she has a right to legal representation under British law. In other words, if she gets an attorney she takes two OSA counts instead of one, but if she doesn't, she almost certainly goes to prison. Katharine turns it back on him by promising that she won't discuss the memo with anyone else unless she's charged, and her lawyer Ben Emmerson is able to get the gag order lifted before the trial.
• Saw: While Jigsaw's twisted philosophy ensures that every Death Trap must have a chance, however gruesome or slim, of escaping it, the ones prepared by his Bastard Understudy Amanda are all designed to be truly inescapable, leaving victims with the choice of simply dying horribly from the trap or suffering while trying to escape the trap with no option to survive.
• In Shredder Orpheus, in the Eurydice Door Show game, Orpheus is told that one door leads to Eurydice, while the other leads to his death. In actuality, Eurydice is locked in her dressing room, so which door he picked doesn't matter—he'll die anyway.
• Discussed in Serenity. The Operative attempts to appeal to Mal's morality to get him to hand over River, to which Mal demands money. The Operative says Mal's just being difficult.
  Operative: That is a trap. If I offer you money, you'll play the man of honor and take umbrage. I ask you to do the right thing, you'll play the brigand.
• Star Wars:
  • In Star Wars: A New Hope, when Leia refuses to tell Grand Moff Tarkin the location of the Rebels, he decides to have Alderaan destroyed by the Death Star. When Leia expresses horror over his decision, Tarkin tells her that if she were to prefer a military target instead, then tell him where the Rebels are. Leia says they are on Dantooine. However, Tarkin decides to have Alderaan blown up anyway, citing Leia as being far to trusting and that Dantooine is too remote for a proper demonstration.
  • In Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, it's speculated that the Jedi's plan to apprehend Chancellor Palpatine was this. If they failed to do so (which happened due to Anakin's interference), Palpatine would then execute Order 66 and wipe out the Jedi Order. If the Jedi succeeded in apprehending Palpatine, it would have been seen by the Senate as an attempt by the Jedi to take control, Palpatine would've gotten off easy (as Mace Windu put it, "[Palpatine] has control of the Senate and the courts!"), and with the pretense of the Jedi's attack on him, executed Order 66 anyway. As a third tine to the fork, Palpatine knew that the Jedi would predict this, and that they would likely come to kill him outright instead of take him prisoner, which would horrify Anakin and prompt the young Jedi to come to Palpatine's defense, and thus cement his turn to the dark side.
• The Suicide Squad: In the opening fight, Savant can either stay at the beach and face almost certain death or flee and be killed by the bomb in his head.
• Tell Me How I Die: One of the characters gives himself a dose of the drug tested at the remote facility so he will have the same future visions as his friends and can anticipate the next move of the (equally prescient, though far more advanced) killer stalking the premises. At one point he has two alternatives on what to do next: he can either try to hide in a parked car but then sees the killer attacking him from behind, or try to hide in a nearby garage where he sees the killer also attacking him. There's no third option: he can't re-enter the rest of the building because the doors are all mechanically locked, and if he tries to flee on foot then the snow storm will undoubtedly kill him. It turns out both visions were true: the first attack at the garage causes him to flee to the car instead, but he forgot about the rear door he left open to grab a blanket previously so the killer can sneak up behind him and stab him to death.
• Toy Story 2:
  • Evil Dr. Porkchop (Hamm) forces one upon Woody in Andy's playtime, making him choose between feeding Bo Peep to a shark or killing her with monkeys. Woody chooses Buzz Lightyear!
  • In tussling with Stinky Pete on the conveyor belt, he rips Woody's arm, then threatens him so:
    Stinky Pete: Your choice, Woody: you can go to Japan together, or in pieces. If he fixed you once, he can fix you again. Now GET IN THE BOX!
    Woody: Never!
• In The Transformers: The Movie, it's revealed by Word of God that the "trials" the Quintessons conduct are like this: being declared guilty results in you being fed to the Sharkticons. Being declared innocent also results in you being fed to the Sharkticons. The Quintessons are jerks like that.
• In The Film of the Book Timeline, a group of 1999 History students travel to The Hundred Years War France and are captured by English soldiers. A Blood Knight singles out the only French student and accuses him of being a spy; his pals claim that they are English pilgrims and he is their interpreter. The knight, who speaks French and English, gives the student the choice to prove this right by translating sentences of the knight's choosing aloud. If the student refuses, or translates wrongly, the knight warns, he will be proven to be a French spy and executed immediately. The last sentence the knight says is I am a spy. When the student painfully complies, the other English soldiers take it as a valid confession and kill him. It is later discovered that the knight is a time traveler himself and he knew from the beginning who the "pilgrims" were.
• In Would You Rather, a horror movie based on being forced to make bad choices, it should come as no surprise that there are a few of these in the movie. For example, when one character is given the option of sticking her head in a barrel for two minutes or following the instructions on a printed card in a sealed envelope, she chooses the envelope. When she refuses the barrel, she reads the card, which says she is to stick her head in the barrel for four minutes.
• In Zack Snyder's Justice League the titular League quickly realise that they can't prevent Steppenwolf from causing the end of the world on their own, so they decide to bring Superman back from the dead. Moments before the switch is flicked, team member Cyborg suddenly has a premonition of Superman being brainwashed into working for the Greater-Scope Villain, who goes on to cause the end of the world.

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