Mortons Fork / Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney:
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All features a version of this that takes up the entire plot of the last case. Phoenix's friend and legal assistant Maya Fey is kidnapped by the assassin Shelly de Killer and held hostage, and Phoenix is told she will be killed unless he gets Matt Engarde, a suspect in a murder, found innocent. Over time, Phoenix finds out that Engarde, is truly guilty (he hired de Killer to kill the victim) and that if Engarde gets off the hook, a truly innocent young woman will be convicted of the murder. However, De Killer is also blackmailing Phoenix into defending him by having him hold Phoenix's friend Maya hostage during the trial. Therefore, Phoenix must choose between defending a sociopathic killer to save a friend while an innocent person is imprisoned for a crime she didn't commit, or letting said friend die to see justice done as well as saving an innocent woman's life. With Phoenix being a morally upstanding attorney who fights for justice, this choice is not so simple for him. Phoenix manages to Take a Third Option and shows De Killer proof that Engarde was planning on betraying him. Since De Killer believes mutual trust between him and the client to be sacrosanct, he drops his agreement with Engarde, lets Maya go, and vows to get revenge on Engarde for his betrayal, giving Engarde no leg to stand on. This twists the situation around so that Engarde is on the receiving end of a Morton's Fork: either he gets found "guilty" and spends the rest of his life in the slammer if he isn't given the death penalty, or he's found "not guilty" of the crime like he originally intended, but De Killer will hunt him down and kill him in cold blood. No matter what Phoenix does at that point, Engarde royally breaks down and pleads guilty.
  • Phoenix apparently learned from that case, because in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney he sets one up for Kristoph Gavin; either Kristoph points out that the decisive evidence against him is a forgery, thus going to jail because he shouldn't have known that, or he says nothing and goes to jail because, well, it's decisive evidence against him.
  • In the final case of the first Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, two murders are committed in an embassy- one on the Allehbast side and one that is apparently on the Babahl side, but is actually in the "Theatrum Neutralis" on Japanifornian soil. Edgeworth proves that the Big Bad is responsible for both murders, then asks them which country's court they'd like to stand trial in first. Cue Villainous Breakdown.
• There are no good endings in Case 1 of Aviary Attorney. Option A: you lose the case and begin your career on a sour note. Option B: you get an innocent man sent to jail while the real culprit walks.
• Boyfriend To Death: Went to the Snake Pit? Sano kidnaps and tortures you. Went to the Snapdragon? Rire kidnaps and tortures you. Went to the Braying Mule? Strade kidnaps and tortures you. And there's no option to just stay home.
• At one point in Episode 3 of A Clockwork Ley Line: The Borderline of Dusk, when Michiru and Neko are within a strange world, you have three options of where to head to next. If you chose a tower-like structure, strange monsters force the two to retreat. If you chose a brightly lit area, an invisible wall of sorts prevents further exploration. If you chose the darkened area, zombies make the two turn back. Unlike other examples of this trope, you have to select each place once, then Michiru and Neko end up going on a completely different route elsewhere.
• Danganronpa:
  • The fifth case of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is set up as one of these: the mastermind tries to frame Kyoko for a fake murder in order to execute her, and sets it up so that the only way for Makoto to exonerate her is to take the fall in her place, leading to his own execution. Either way, one of the two people most likely to figure out the mastermind's identity is going to face execution. Makoto takes the fall, but Alter Ego's intervention causes the execution to fail.
  • Hiyoko Saionji is given one in Case 2 of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: After being knocked out and left at the scene of the murder. She is forced to either leave via the beachside door, thus leaving identifiable footprints in the sand. Or to move the victim's body so she can leave via the roadside door instead, thus getting her clothes (which she cannot change due to the island rules) covered in blood. Either way, she's bound to become a prime suspect in the class trial.
  • Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu is also given one in the second trial. Either betray the class and say that Peko, his childhood friend and Implied Love Interest is nothing more than a "tool" to him and "graduate" and kill them all, or to tell the truth, that Peko means a lot to him and kill her. He chooses the latter, but either way, Monokuma was going to just kill her, as she was the true culprit and she did all the covering up of the crime of her own volition.
  • During the end of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, Komaru is told that she can either break the controller for the Monokumas or not, but it turns out that regardless of which choice she makes, one group of people would die. If she chooses to break the controller, the Monokids' helmets explode, killing all the children in Towa City. If she doesn't break the controller, then the Monokumas will kill all the adults. After being given the choice several times (including a situation where BOTH choices are "Break the controller."), Komaru decides to not break the controller, but chooses to instead save both sides.
  • Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
    • Himiko Yumeno becomes a major suspect in the second case due to Ryoma's corpse being discovered during her magic show. Unfortunately for her, clearing her of suspicion also means uncovering the method she used to escape the water tank, because she claims she used real magic and not tricks.
    • During the climax, after it's revealed that the events of the game was an in-universe reality show, there is a vote to decide whether Hope or Despair wins. However, it turns out that regardless of whether Hope or Despair wins, the killing game show will continue. The survivors decide to instead not vote at all and die without letting either side win to end the killing game once and for all.
• Doki Doki Literature Club!:
  • You're eventually given an extremely difficult choice, confess your love to Sayori (possibly abandoning whatever other girl you were pursuing at the time right when your relationship is starting to get serious) or essentially friendzone her. By the way, this happens the day after she confesses that's she's been suffering from serious depression all her life, she's been slowly distancing herself from you for the last couple of days, and now comes to you admitting that she has romantic feelings for you and has no idea how to process them, and is even implying that she's considering suicide. If you choose to tell her you want to stay friends^note and the clueless Player Character elaborates this by kind of saying he'll help her go back to being a Stepford Smiler, she has a total breakdown there and then. If you say you love her, she'll be devastated that it's not the happiest moment of her life and she's still horribly depressed.
    • Either way, Sayori hangs herself the next day.
    • And you don't even get the chance to go back and attempt the other, equally doomed option, because your save files mysteriously become corrupted, and restarting the game at this point has Sayori disappear from the game entirely as it takes a turn for the meta.
    • Technically, there is another alternative, although it requires you to have advance knowledge of the game: have a copy of Sayori's CHR file and add it back in after she gets Ret-Gone. Unfortunately, since the game didn't expect you to do this (although it does have reactions for similar actions), nothing happens and you're forced to proceed as normal. Anyway, if the creator had anticipated this, he could very well have just had the file get immediately deleted again for the same in-story reason as the first time.
  • After that, the game eventually provides an even darker double-fork: Accept Yuri's deranged confession of love, or reject her — having gone full knife-obsessed yandere by this point, no matter which choice you make, she finally goes Laughing Mad and stabs herself to death right in front of you. It could be inferred that it's either out of rejection or because she's just got arousal and Self-Harm really mixed up at that point, but honestly, by the looks of her, it might just be the latter in both cases.
• Discussed in Katawa Shoujo by an art teacher in regards to one of the potential love interests, a talented artist born without arms. He says that if the school plays up Rin's disability, they'll be accused of exploiting it, but if they hide it, they'll be accused of discrimination.
• In Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, no matter what choice you make, the narrator will complain about it. If you have Jane get hired, the narrator will scold you for letting her work for a misogynistic pervert. If you have Jane get rejected, the narrator will complain about you screwing up John and Jane's relationship. If you have the boss take advantage of the situation, the narrator will complain about the direction that you're taking the story, even though it's the only option that allows you to advance.
• In Sunrider Mask of Arcadius, the Sunrider comes out of warp to find itself surrounded by a PACT fleet. Veniczar Cullen, the fleet’s commander, demands that Kayto Shields hand over an ancient Ryuvian artefact that can be used to track down the Big Bad’s runaway bride-to-be. If Kayto refuses, Cullen’s fleet will open fire. If Kayto agrees to hand it over on the condition that they spare his crew, Cullen will open fire anyway once he has the artefact. Either way, the Sunrider only escapes destruction because Asaga, the aforementioned bride-to-be, gives herself up to Cullen in order to save her friends.
• Trapped with Jester: The "Obedient Pet" ending gives a choice to either take Jester's hand or remain silent at the proposition of being taken as a pet. Regardless of which you pick, the protagonist realises that there's nowhere else to go and follows Jester to somewhere hopefully better than the carriage.
• In the Web Game Which Way Adventure, you can stumble across a secret nuclear command center with two buttons. If you push the "Fire" button, you launch a nuclear missile, which causes Russia to fire their nukes in retaliation, destroying America. If you push the "Shutdown" button, you shut off America's nuclear arsenal, which allows Russia to fire their nukes without fear of retaliation, destroying America. Once you enter the command center, you have to push a button, so there's no way to Take a Third Option.
• Your Turn to Die: Saved Sou's life? Congratulations, because that means that all your efforts to save either Reko or Alice meant diddly squat, as regardless of who you took with you, Ranmaru will hang them anyway.
• Zero Escape: In one Team C segment of Zero Time Dilemma, Carlos plays an AB game with Junpei, who inexplicably changes his vote depending on what was chosen. Choosing "Ally" results in Junpei betraying Carlos to take Akane out of the shelter. Choosing "Betray" will cause Junpei to vote ally, with Carlos frantically justifying himself by pointing out that Junpei picked "Betray" last time, and then wondering why he recalls a "last time", before getting murdered by a vengeful Akane.

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