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Unwitting Instigator Of Doom / Literature

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  • Acid Row: While no single person is responsible for what happens in Acid Row, Fay Baldwin is technically the one who sets off the whole thing when, in a moment of anger, she spitefully tells Melanie that there's a paedophile living down the street from her and that she should keep a closer eye on her daughter - something that's extremely unprofessional of her (nor very accurate, as it turns out the sex offender committed minor offenses against teen boys and is no danger to young children). Rather than scaring and shaming Melanie into submission, it makes her righteously angry that there's a supposed child predator living close by and word quickly spreads. Melanie and her mother organise a protest to oust the paedophiles and protect the children, but some troublemakers hijack the protest and turn it into a full-scale riot. Despite Fay insisting that she's not responsible, many people note that if someone hadn't shot their mouth off about there being a dangerous paedophile living in Acid Row, this probably wouldn't have happened.
  • Agatha H. and the Siege of Mechanicsburg: Otilla can modulate her voice to find the right frequency that will make people listen and obey her. Unfortunately this is what gives Lucrezia the idea to program a specific vocal harmonic command voice for her slaver wasps.
  • In Animal Farm, Old Major was the one who pleaded with the animals to revolt against Farmer Jones and make the farm into their own paradise. Of course, he had no way of foreseeing that this "paradise" would ultimately devolve into a tyranny just as bad as Farmer Jones's under Napoleon.
  • In Battle Royale, just as Shinji is about to pull off his plan to escape the Program, a fellow student, Keita Iijima, shows up, oblivious to what's going on, and accidentally ruins the entire plan, getting everyone involved killed.
  • Bazil Broketail: Not that he had any way to be aware of it, but by letting himself be captured alive and used in a dark ritual, Jumble allowed Waakzaam to gain enough power from his spirit in order to finish an evil spell that the Dominator later used against the Sinni.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In Bad Bargain, amateur warlock Michael Czajak and his mother unwittingly cause the main conflict of the book. Mrs. Czajak thoughtlessly donates a medallion she finds to the school rummage sale without asking Michael, who uses it for protection against the demons that plague Sunnydale. Desperate to retrieve his medallion, Michael casts a summoning spell in the school basement, not realizing he is standing near the Hellmouth portal, which weakens whenever magic is cast nearby. This causes everyone in the school to be infected by demonic diseases, and eight people die.
  • Cakes in Space: Before her and her family's journey to their new planet home began, Astra asked the food replicating machine in the canteen, Nom-O-Tron, to make her "the ultimate dessert", one "so delicious, it's scary", and "brilliant". She only meant the best dessert possible, but after she went into hyper-sleep with everyone else, Nom-O-Tron took her words at face value, and over the course of a century, started filling up the ship with hostile cake monsters.
  • Cat's Cradle has whoever failed to perform proper maintenance on the fighter plane which crashed into the side of the castle.
  • The Cat Who... Series: In book #18 (The Cat Who Said Cheese), there's Aubrey Scotten, whose actions in telling his friend Victor Greer about having seen Greer's ex-wife in Pickax lead to a hotel bombing and three deaths, including Greer's own.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: In The Last Battle, Shift the Ape and Puzzle the Donkey find a lion skin in the waters of Caldron Pool, which leads to the former convincing the latter to dress up in it and pose as Aslan. Their actions kick-start the End of Narnia, but the source of the lion skin is casually mentioned as being a hunter up in the Western Wilds who killed and skinned a lion weeks before.
  • According to Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF, Chihiro Fujisaki. Using his skills as the Ultimate Programmer, he created the software for a new robot. That robot's name? Monokuma. Yes, Monokuma.
  • Debt of Honor:
    • A pair of improperly-galvanised fuel tanks explode when the cars they're in get into an accident, starting a series of events that lead to disaster. One character who knows about The Plan likens it to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. For added sick irony, for all the furor they cause over alleged Japanese safety defects, the problem can be traced to a worker at an American factory who smelled a rat but didn't think it was worth taking a second look at and just let the defective fuel tanks be installed rather than giving them a thorough inspection.
    • George Winston, who sold off the Columbus Group to Yamata and unintentionally gave the man a vital foothold for his plan.
  • Dirk Pitt Adventures: Clement Massey from Night Probe! robs a train station and prevents the conductor from stopping a train from going over a weakened bridge and plunging into the Hudson River. He had no idea that the train was carrying a document that would merge the United States and Canada into a single country. Subverted when it turns out the train was actually rerouted into an underground quarry to be robbed with more time. Doubled Subverted when Massey and the train's crew and passengers are trapped in the quarry with no escape.
  • Discworld
    • When Twoflower, the Disc's first tourist, enters Ankh-Morpork in The Colour of Magic, he ends up triggering a brutal brawl between the thieves, assassins, and businessmen when he oh-so-innocently begins paying everyone with solid gold coins, unaware of how valuable gold is there (it's a very common metal in his homeland). At one point, he sells an insurance policy to the Broken Drum (introducing the concept of insurance to the people of Ankh-Morpork), and the resulting attempt at Insurance Fraud inevitably leads to a giant fire that consumes large portions of the city.
    • Twoflower does it again in Interesting Times; after returning home, he wrote a book on his experiences around the Disc. His novel, "What I Did On My Holidays" ends up provoking the oppressed people of the Agatean Empire to revolt. When Twoflower laments that he wasn't trying to stir up trouble, Rincewind the Wizard mentally notes that Twoflower never intends to cause trouble.
  • Lucy's mother in Dracula is partly responsible for killing Lucy by opening the window and removing the garlic, which allows Dracula to get into the room.
  • For All Time: It's specifically noted that many significant historical events aren't recorded for posterity, and many of the people involved are unwitting instigators of doom who don't realize the significance of what they've done. Consider the following: a Soviet soldier serving in the Congo is injured and saved by a blood transfusion. He later serves in Poland and Bulgaria before returning to the Soviet Union, donating a pint of blood every three weeks wherever he is. Unknown to him, he brought something with him in his blood, and thanks to inadequate testing by the Soviets and the need for blood due to constant casualties, that something was allowed to spread unchecked. In that timeline, it's called SPID. In ours? It's called AIDS.
  • Halo: Contact Harvest:
    • A shard of Mendicant Bias reveals to the future High Prophets that humanity are the heirs to the Forerunners. Realizing that this revelation would cause the Covenant to collapse, the Prophets decide that humanity must be wiped out to cover this up. If not for Bias, the Human-Covenant War would have never become so vicious (or even started), and it's possible that none of the Halo games would have even happened.
    • A Huragok (aka Engineer) invents a farming vehicle as a gift for humanity. His Brute overseers find out what he's been doing, and turn his invention into a weapon; this is the origin of the Brute Chopper.
  • Harry Potter:
    • Bertha Jorkins in Book 4. Doesn't appear 'on-screen', doesn't have any speaking roles, dies long before Book 4, but is absolutely crucial in giving the Big Bad the capacity to put together his Evil Plan for the book—she worked for the Ministry's Sports Department, so she knew about the Triwizard Tournament. She then went on holiday to Albania, where Voldemort was lying low with Wormtail. She happened to bump into Wormtail and recognised him, and then she was subjected to lots of tortures and Mind Rape to make her a source of information to Voldemort. It didn't help that she had coincidentally discovered Barty Crouch Jr.'s existence, either.
    • Remus Lupin in Prisoner of Azkaban. If he'd remembered to take his potion before the climactic confrontation, he wouldn't have been a threat when he became a werewolf, and could have continued to concentrate on keeping Pettigrew from getting away. And if Pettigrew hadn't gotten away, and had been turned in to the authorities, Sirius would have been cleared of his murder charges and would no longer have to be a fugitive, meaning he could have a closer relationship with Harry. And if he'd had a closer relationship with Harry, Voldemort wouldn't be able to use their separation to trick Harry, and Sirius wouldn't have ended up dead. Furthermore, if Pettigrew hadn't gotten away, he wouldn't have been able to play a pivotal role in expediting Voldemort's return to a fully-formed body and enable the tragedies of books 4-7 — including Lupin's own demise at the hands of the Death Eaters during the Final Battle.
    • Morfin and Merope Gaunt in The Half-Blood Prince, as shown via Pensieve Flashback, though Merope was a more indirect example. Morfin, a Muggle-hater, hexed Tom Riddle Sr. upon finding out Merope was in love with him. This simple act of bigotry led to him and his father's arrest after they tried to fight the Aurors coming to arrest Morfin, giving Merope an opportunity to trick Tom Riddle Sr. into drinking Love Potion so she would be with him and escape the abusive home life she had to endure throughout her whole life. She got pregnant with a son after raping him during their elopement; said son would grow up to rename himself "Lord Voldemort".
    • Regulus Black in the Backstory revealed in Deathly Hallows. Fresh out of school, he joined the Death Eaters. He had a change of heart and tried to defect after he found out Voldemort's biggest secret, that he had split his soul into horcruxes. He didn't tell anyone else he knew to be against Voldemort (ie his brother or Dumbledore) and decided to destroy it himself. He wasn't able to do it but had created a fake to put in its original location. This delays the eventual finding of the others by almost two decades (since Dumbledore had suspected there were more but didn't have any sort of proof), drags out Voldemort's downfall, and causes countless deaths.
    • Sirius Black blames himself for the role he played in contributing to James and Lily's deaths. Even if he never betrayed them, he was the one to convince them to make Peter Pettigrew their Secret Keeper instead of himself.
    • When Voldemort targeted the Potters, it's noted that James did not have his family's Cloak of Invisibility with him, which should have at least provided them a temporary concealment as the family attempted to flee their house. It's later revealed that he did not have it because he had lent it to Dumbledore, who wanted to study its properties, as he had always been curious about the Deathly Hallows.
    • In the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook, the creature the Quintaped is rumoured to have been created by one of these. Legend has it that one island had two feuding families. One family transformed the other into monstrous five-legged creatures — who then proceeded to massacre their rivals.
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy contains Arthur Dent making a comment about his difficult lifestyle... that gets sucked through time and space to the conference table of two armies, is interpreted in their language as the worst thing to ever say, and ultimately sparks a thousands-of-years-long war between the two that devastates all in its path and kills thousands. Then the two realise the problem and team up to attack the Earth where they are promptly eaten by a small dog. Indeed, this sort of thing is hinted by the book to happen all the time, potentially making everyone this trope.
    • Arthur is also this to Agrajag, hundreds or possibly thousands of times. Every single one of Agrajag's incarnations dies because Arthur Dent crossed paths with him, usually by accident without Arthur even noticing.
  • The Iliad: Prince Paris violating King Menelaus' hospitality then eloping with the latter's wife Helen, kickstarting the Trojan War that ended with the fall of Troy itself.
  • In Death: This trope has happened a few times. Vengeance In Death had a brilliant plan to catch the murderer ruined by a robot poodle that caused a chain reaction of events that caused the cops to reveal themselves and for the murderer to spot them and run for it. New York To Dallas contains two instances of this. The first one had a brilliant plan to catch the murderer's partner ruined by a dog that caused a kid to almost get run over by a car, a cop having to save the boy's life and reveal himself as cop, causing the murderer's partner to spot them and run for it. That instance got subverted by the partner getting caught despite a chase anyway. The second instance had the cops closing in on the murderer, only for the murderer to get away. How? The murderer was out shopping when he overheard a conversation between staff member and a stock boy about cops. The staff member recognized an undercover cop working in the area and he was just telling the stock boy about how this cop came to a criminology class and how cool he is. The murderer naturally chose to run for it. Clearly these minor characters would not get a lot of sympathy from readers.
  • Jurassic Park: Hammond's poor treatment of Nedry resulted in the latter deactivating the defenses keeping the dinosaurs in their exhibits and endangering the tourists visiting the park. The limits Hammond mandated for the park's budget also resulted in some creatures escaping.
  • The Kingkiller Chronicle: Trading even a single word with the Cthaeh will turn you into a highly destructive one of these. This is because the creature, which is trapped in a tree and unable to act outside of speech, knows every last outcome that could ever happen, and will pick its words so as to chose the worst possible outcome it can manage. And since it's The Omniscient, it can pick some catastrophic outcomes indeed.
  • The Locked Tomb: While everyone in the "John X:Y" flashbacks in Nona the Ninth, friendly or antagonistic, plays some part in things ultimately going about as badly as they possibly could, the nun plays the most profound role. By killing herself in front of John, she lets him really touch the human soul for the first time, which allows him to feel the soul of the Earth itself. Within three pages, John has killed ten billion people and seized the power of said soul to make himself God. Thus empowered and consumed with vengeful spite directed at the elites who abandoned the Earth and left everyone else behind, he rebuilds the entire Solar System into the heart of his empire and begins a ten thousand year war which leaves planet after planet uninhabitable and costs countless lives in order to eradicate the unimaginably distant descendants of the people he blamed for it.
  • Looking for Alaska: Numerous characters blame themselves for the title character's fatal car accident, but the one who initially sets the Butterfly of Doom in motion is her boyfriend Jake, who barely appears in the story otherwise. As Alaska and Miles are about to have Their First Time, she gets a call from Jake. While taking the call she absentmindedly doodles a white flower, as she often does, which suddenly reminds her that it's the anniversary of her mother's death and for the first time in her life she forgot to put white flowers on her grave. The realization that she not only missed the anniversary, but spent the last few hours of it cheating on her boyfriend, sends her into a Freak Out, and she tears out of the school, stinking drunk, gets into her car, and crashes trying to race to her mother's grave to make things right.
  • Curley's wife from Of Mice and Men wanted to have a friendly conversation with Lennie, despite George's orders to Lennie to stay away from her. She eventually took advantage of Lennie's fondness for soft things, and invited Lennie to touch her hair; this soon led up to Curley's wife getting scared and beginning to scream, which in turn made Lennie scared that George would hear her so he squeezed her hair tighter. Guess who winds up with her neck broken. The death of Curley's wife quickly led up to the novel becoming a Shoot the Shaggy Dog Story.
  • In Ollie's Odyssey, a little girl won the Bonk A Zozo game, and claimed the ballerina Zozo loved as her prize. This was what turned Zozo into a toy-stealing villain. That little girl was Billy's mom.
  • In Poster Girl a scientist named Naomi Proctor originally developed the Insight eye implants to help people and developed further advanced prostetics. The ruling Delegation regime though had other plans, using the implants to constantly monitor and punish their population...
  • Jacob in The Red Tent: Because he demands an outrageous bride price for his daughter (after a sarcastic comment by Joseph), and a combination of greed and overprotectiveness, his sons murder Dinah's True Love, and all the other Shechemite men. Jacob calls his sons out on it and dies full of regrets.
  • In Sarah Beth Durst's The Queens of Renthia trilogy, Merecot is by far the most talented of students in the Northeast Academy of Aratay, a school for magically-gifted girls/women to learn control over spirits. Merecot drops out of school and becomes Queen in a neighboring land, she's also aggressively expansionistic (but not militaristic). Unfortunately the Queen of Aratay kingdom, Fara is paranoid and power-hungry. She already engages in Human Sacrifice to bolster her power, but against the prodigy Merecot, Fara has to greatly increase the number of sacrifices and what people she's willing to sacrifice. From starting with criminals then isolated rurals, against Merecot, Fara targets promising students in the Northeast Academy, her own Heir, Sana, and later the replacement Heirs, leading to the Coronation Massacre where Fara has everyone murdered except for unlikely Heir, Daleina.
  • Almost every adult who ever happened to be the guardian/s of the Baudelaire Children in A Series of Unfortunate Events. The worst example of the lot would have to be Mr. Poe, however, who in every book has been rightfully warned by the children about Olaf performing a new scheme for every book, refusing to believe them, being proven wrong, escorting them to the next available guardian, and repeating the cycle for up until The Vile Village, where the cycle only stops because the Baudelaires are wrongfully accused of murdering Jacques Snicket, who the villagers thought was Count Olaf.
  • In The Shadow of Kyoshi, it's revealed that Avatar Yangchen was unintentionally responsible for causing all of the problems her next two reincarnations had to face. She gave undue favoritism towards humanity over spirits when they came into conflict during her tenure as Avatar, causing the spirits to become angry and corrupted. Her direct successor Avatar Kuruk spent his entire life hunting down these corrupted spirits in order to preserve her reputation as a great Avatar, and his successor Avatar Kyoshi was left saddled with major problems in the human world because he was too busy cleaning up Yangchen's mess to deal with them himself.
  • Sherlock Holmes: In The Final Problem, a Swiss messenger in Moriarty's employ catches up to Holmes and Watson with a message saying that an Englishwoman at the hotel they're staying at is on the verge of death and wants to see an English doctor. Watson obediently returns to the hotel, unknowingly leaving Holmes to face Moriarty alone at the edge of Reichenbach Falls, apparently leading to both of them falling to their death. However, it is implied that Holmes knew all along what was going down but saw no reason to put Watson at further risk.
  • The Son Of The Ironworker: When her chief shepherd disses Laurea's foster son as a low-born worthless beggar, Laurea reveals that Martín is of noble blood and makes Cosme swear to secrecy, because Martín's aristocratic grandfather is not happy with his daughter eloping with an ironworker, and is looking everywhere for Martín's family. Cosme, who wants Martín out of the way so he can woo Laurea and seize her wealth, quickly breaks his oath and denounces Martín's location to the Count of the Arcos' men.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Catelyn Stark. Twice, but releasing valuable prisoner Jaime Lannister in an attempt to get her daughters back from the Lannisters is more cited than kidnapping Tyrion Lannister, believing him responsible for the attempted murder of her son on the word of her Unlucky Childhood Friend Petyr Baelish, Despite the fact that the Tyrion incident was the casus belli of the civil war that has made the entire world turn to shit ever since.
    • Fans often cite the release of Jaime as a crucial step leading up to the Red Wedding, but there are parts of the text suggesting that said wedding was already being planned before it happened. Both Lord Tywin Lannister and the Starks's treacherous ally Lord Roose Bolton appear to be planning something around the time of his release.
    • The irony of Catelyn is that, in most other fantasy worlds, she and Ned would be the most sympathetic characters in the entire story, and the clear virtuous protagonists of the piece. In the Crapsack World that they live in, though, they are either directly or indirectly the cause of something like 90% of the tragedy that follows.
    • Also Sansa Stark with the whole Lady affair, or running off to Cersei when she did. Forgiven by many only because of what happened to her after that.
    • When she was a girl, Lysa Tully was in love with her father's ward Petyr Baelish, who was light-years below her in social status so a marriage was impossible. Also, he was in love with her older sister Catelyn. So one night after watching Petyr dance with Cat and get very drunk after Cat wouldn't kiss him, Lysa crept into Petyr's bed in the dark and had sex with him. She told him she loved him and wanted to marry him, while letting him think she was Cat. Shortly after this, Cat's engagement to Brandon Stark was announced and (understandably from his point of view) Petyr challenged him. Short scrawny 15-year-old Petyr nearly died fighting tall strong 20-year-old Brandon and was promptly thrown out for this and for getting Lysa pregnant. This humiliation was Petyr's Start of Darkness, turning him into the villain responsible for the entire civil war — with Lysa manipulated into lighting the first fuse. Well done, Lysa!
    • Rhaegar Targaryen's abduction of Lyanna Stark set the ball rolling on a chain of events that ultimately brought about both of their deaths, the fall of the Targaryens from power, and a long generation enmity among several Houses who were affected by the war.
    • There are many examples from the books about single isolated events having much greater effects down the road. Had Edmure Tully let Tywin return to Casterly Rock as Catelyn suggested, Tywin wouldn't have been able to return to stop Stannis from taking King's Landing, which would have ended the war. Had Robb not let Theon return back to his father, Winterfell would not have been captured, which would have left Catelyn less likely to free Jaime as well as making the Freys and Boltons less likely to turn on Robb. Had Theon simply killed or ignored Ramsay, Winterfell would have been quickly retaken, once again helping the Starks' war effort. Had Robert listened to Ned about sending an assassin after Daenerys, she and Khal Drogo likely would have been content to leave the Seven Kingdoms alone. Had Tyrion decided to decisively deal with Littlefinger once he knew the man had set up the conflict between the Starks and Lannisters and set him up as the patsy the war would likely have been resolved much more quickly as well. And on and on it goes...
    • The Tales of Dunk and Egg have quite a few as well.
      • Prince Daeron losing sight of his little brother Aegon "Egg" leads to the death of Baelor Breakspear and the exile of Aerion "Brightflame".
      • Little Walder Frey (yes, the very same Troll that later rules House Frey during the main series) snitching on his sister's lowborn boyfriend basically sparks the Second Blackfyre Rebellion.
    • And, of course, the backstory has plenty more:
      • Had Viserys I been more decisive about who would inherit the crown (or just not married a second time), the Dance of Dragons would have never happened.
      • Had Baelor I either tried to have children with Daena or just betrothed her to someone else, the Blackfyre rebellions would not have taken place.
    • Crown Prince Duncan Targaryen abdicated his birthright to the Iron Throne to Marry for Love Jenny of Oldstones. This caused his younger brother Jaehaerys to succeed their father as king... and eventually Jaehaerys was succeeded by his son, Aerys, who would bring down the entire House Targaryen because of his madness.
  • Spaced Out (2016): Dr. Goldstein got tired of dealing with Nina chiding her for not growing a bountiful crop, which is hard to do on the surface of the moon. So, she decided to make a fake account and get Nina to smuggle moon rocks to the surface so she could rat her out to NASA. Unfortunately, Nina disappeared one night, and was ultimately found in the old Moon Base Alpha Operations Pod. Dr. Goldstein felt extremely guilty over Nina's disappearance.
    • Cesar Marquez and the Sjoberg twins decided to play football one night. They decided to use everyone's space helmets as football helmets, and put them back without telling anyone. The resulting roughhousing caused all the helmets to develop cracks in their visors while people were outside the base, endangering the lives of everyone wearing the helmets. Nina included. It was because of this that Nina had to flee into the MBA Operations Pod and almost died.
  • The Stand: Charles Campion, a guard at a top secret research base. One night the alarms go off indicating something has gone very wrong somewhere, and he flees in a panic, grabbing his wife and daughter before the base can be sealed up. He's unaware he's caught a virus they were testing, which is super-transmissible, lethal within days, and has a 99.6% fatality rating. He dies four days later, having driven like a maniac across four states, by which point the virus spreads, and spreads, and spreads. Within two weeks, it's wiped out most of the population of America, and the people who made the virus made sure to unleash it on the rest of the world while they could.
  • Star Wars Legends:
  • The Stormlight Archive: Eshonai, a Parshendi girl who became their last general, accidentally caused most of the plot of the series by stumbling upon the Alethi while she was out exploring, which led to the Alethi king trying to turn them into Voidbringers, which led to the Parshendi assassinating him, which led to the Alethi declaring war on them, which led to the Parshendi desperately turning themselves into Voidbringers, summoning the Everstorm, and starting the next Desolation. Admittedly, the Everstorm and the Desolation likely would have happened eventually anyway, but she feels understandably guilty about the exact events leading up to it.
  • Thebe and the Angry Red Eye combines this trope with First Contact Faux Pas. A Benevolent Abomination in the form of a giant, snakelike alien lives inside Jupiter. When the heroes' Cool Starship approaches the planet, the being attempts to say hello with a radiation surge. Tragically, the surge hits the ship, causing a series of disasters that winds up killing all but one of the astronauts.
  • Trapped on Draconica: Yusef tells Gothon where the Eastern Alliance's HQ is and how to defeat their army. He thinks this will lead end the war with minimum casualties on both sides. This is his only action in the entire story.
  • Tsuyokute New Saga: Mileina's father chose to protect some human refugees instead of assisting the dwarves in the original timeline, a decision that ultimately weakened the human forces.
  • In Two Years' Vacation, the ship where the students were planning to go on their end-of-school travel was in port when somehow it gets unmoored just to get caught in a violent wind that ends up pushing the ship to a desert island somewhere in the Pacific. With survival being foremost in their minds, none of the teenagers gives much thought to how it happened. Until nearly two years in, when the teens discuss who will undertake a dangerous ride on a kite to find where the mutineers threatening them are, and Jacques (who was The Prankster before the travel but suffered a mysterious personality shift during the travel) volunteers, confessing that he was the one that unmoored the ship as a prank, not expecting the wind to take them so far away.
  • Vertical by Rafał Kosik: The constructors of the climbing "cities" equipped each one with sort of biological computer utilizing a bioengineered microorganism... which turns out to be extremely virulent when released from its container, causing a rabies-like disease. By the end of the book it has already doomed at least two "cities" and spread to all other known human settlements, including the one where it was engineered.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, has his own personal version of this trope in Toren Divas who manages to be both his best and most hated friend. The best example is in the starship at the start of Death or Glory: while Cain and Jurgen struggle to get out of a room where the hull has been breached, Divas' attempts at being over-dramatic knock some guardsmen off balance as they hold open the emergency doors, trapping Cain and Jurgen and forcing them to get into a lifepod, making planetfall deep in ork-held territory. This sets off the whole plot, though as that involved Cain and Jurgen's flight to safety snowballing into liberating the planet, the people of Perlia would probably have thanked him.
  • The Witcher: Ciri accidentally introduces the bubonic plague to The Continent after a diseased flea hitches a ride on her jacket during a space/time jump from Medieval Europe.

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