- Anecdote of Error: When Talshko tells Atshi to shape up and prove herself, she means that Atshi had better improve her studies lest she get expelled. But Atshi interprets it to mean, “Run headlong into danger to try to save everybody yourself.” This leads directly to Luntsha getting expelled, and it’s a miracle that no one gets seriously injured.
- Cirque Royale: If Quinn and Leo had never sent the exploding glitter bomb to antagonize Dusty Pockets, Scorpowitz wouldn't have dropped his one of a kind ceramic My Tiny Hippo and broken it and attacked them in a rage, and Leo wouldn't have been injected with scorpion venom, skirted the edge of death, and become disabled. And if Dusty hadn't sold him a fake one in the first place.
- Darths & Droids: Pretty much everything in the plot stems from Jim, in-character (loosely) as Qui-Gon Jinn, deciding to search a meeting room for traps. From there, events lead to Anakin Skywalker joining the Jedi, the destruction of the Jedi, the corruption of the Senate, the creation of the Empire, and Palpatine becoming Emperor (and that's the short list). Jim never catches on. The other players do.Pete: (after the latest disaster) Actually, like most things, it's Qui-Gon's fault.
- One El Goonish Shive storyline featured a rampaging boar which was enchanted to grow to an enormous size. Said enchantment is heavily implied to have come from Rhoda, who was unwittingly given a magic mark and unknowingly used it on the boar while in a state of panic.
- In Freefall, Florence has suspicions that Maxwell Post might be this when she learns that he is the spiritual advisor to the sapient robot population. So far, his efforts have been among the least of her worries.
- Girl Genius:
- Dr. Beetle was the one who inspired Lucrezia's experiments with mind-transferral, meaning a good deal of issues in the story and the longest lasting plot thread tied to the Big Bad's danger to the main cast can be traced back to him.
- Still later, it's Beetle's ill-advised plot against Klaus Wulfenbach that ultimately attracts the Baron's attention to Agatha, thus kicking off the plot.
- Virtually everyone in Homestuck. Turns out pretty much the entire universe (or at least, the correct timeline) and everyone's actions in it were a specially orchestrated sequence of events in time designed to bring Lord English into existence, and vice versa: English's existence is so intrinsic to the proper workings of the comic that any timeline deviating from the main one doesn't fulfill the requirements to result in his birth and consequently becomes a doomed timeline, so it can't really be considered their fault. Naturally, in keeping with the messed-up time shenanigans ingrained into the comic, English set this up himself beforehand/afterward. The single good character who doesn't manage this is Nepetanote .
- Tavros deserves special mention. At one point he attempts to save a young Jade from accidentally shooting herself by taking psychic control of her dog, Becquerel, and deflecting the shot at her grandfather (whom he believed was a hostile intruder), killing him. He then points out that Becquerel would have saved her even if he hadn't done anything (in a way that would not have killed Grandpa Harley) and that he only interfered so he could feel a little better about himself. Even when she points out that killing her grandfather was not appreciated, he still thinks he made the right choice.
- In Kevin & Kell, Nick and Ki's arrival in Domain by way of interdimensional travel disrupts the balance between the animal- and human-dominated worlds to the point at which the other two humans living on the animal side Lindesfarne and Danielle are forced to leave lest the world suffer instinct loss. Luckily, Catherine and Nigel do it instead.
- In Kid Radd, two Moderators are given a large sum of money in order to hire an assassin to kill Radd, as Captain QB can't be directly implicated in illegal activities and needs to use a proxy. They reason that it can't be hard to kill someone in jail (as Radd is being imprisoned for illegally entering other games), and hire Kobayashi the discount ninja so that they can pocket the rest of the money. Radd survives the assassination attempt and Kobayashi becomes a recurring character who later meets up with Gnarl and, while training together, stumbles upon Chimera Point, the keystone to Crystal's plans, which eventually results in her finding it too.
- Several characters in minus. take actions that, unbeknownst to them, lead to The End of the World as We Know It. First, a mysterious man pretty much "breaks" minus by stuffing her into a briefcase. She is freed, but becomes a Cloud Cuckoo Lander. In an attempt to cure her, the green-haired girl throws a rock at minus's head, causing her to shatter. Because she is now a ghost, minus starts to spend more time with her ghost friends than her live ones. Which leads to the biggest example of this trope in the comic: the red-haired ghost asks minus to bring her back to life, because she has some Unfinished Business with certain humans that the readers don't get to see. minus agrees. Unfortunately, once the other ghosts find out, they demand that minus revive them too. She does, only for the sheer influx of bodies on Earth to suffocate every living thing on the planet, including those who were just revived. And that is why you should never ask anything of an omnipotent being, ever.
- In Nobody Scores! this is frequently the role of Jane Doe. This
for example. - The Order of the Stick:
- Miko Miyazaki, having already lost her Paladin abilities through the unwarranted execution of of Lord Shojo, ends up destroying the Sapphire Gate, having once again misinterpreted what the gods wanted of her. Had she not been so hasty in doing this, the ghost of Soon Kim could have permanently ended the threat of Xykon and Redcloak, who, themselves, were aiming for the gate, anyway.
- Right-Eye had the idea to recruit Xykon. If not for that one moment, Xykon never would have learned about the Snarl, probably never would have had the brains to become a lich on his own and would have continued his life of petty evil until he died and went to the Lower Planes without ever becoming the apocalyptic threat he is today.
- When Vaarsuvius went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and cast Familicide, killing every creature related to the Ancient Black Dragon, they didn't have any intentions beyond protecting their own family (and maybe enjoying the wildly Disproportionate Retribution way too much). Unfortunately for them, and also the world, the Draketooth family guarding one of the Gates has a Meaningful Name, and Familicide wiped out every last one of them, leaving the Gate completely unprotected.
- The "civilized monster" races were Fenris's contribution to creating the world. He intended for the fast-breeding and resourceful goblinoids to outcompete the humanoids, but lost interest and turned to other projects. When the Dark One ascended to godhood, he assumed the goblins had been designed this way to provide easy targets for humanoid adventurers, leading him and his priests to seek the Snarl to overthrow the gods. Because Fenris was careless.
- Schlock Mercenary: The Toughs accept a contract to deliver some food to what is referred to, in-story, as an 'UNS charity project'... Credomar. Due to the ship's AI interfering with a fuel delivery (which, in its defence, could have looked like an attack on the station if you squint right, particularly since the authorities take down the entire teraport denial field in order to teraport in the fuel), unrest in the station boils up quickly and leads to the station having several new holes in the side. It's a space station floating in the vacuum of space. Of course the fact that one of their own 'build-a-bot' projects takes the opportunity to take charge, save everyone it could, become King, and inadvertently throwing a wrench in the UNS's plans to take over through other means (mainly by influencing the rebellion had it happened when expected, along with using the Toughs to "prop up a pro-annexation group" without actually telling them this) was the icing on the cake.
- Sleepless Domain:
- In Chapter 2, Sally gets in a fight with Tessa over her being the team's leader just because she had the strongest powers. This leads to Tessa deciding to sit out the night's patrol, to give her teammates a chance to prove themselves right. That night, the team gets caught off guard by a powerful monster, and without Tessa to help them, three of them — including Sally — end up dead.
- Later on, Vedika mentions to Cassidy that Undine is probably dealing with issues that she can't really talk about. Unfortunately, with Cassidy already jealous of how much time Undine has been spending with HP, she takes this to mean that Undine is hiding something — more specifically, that she was somehow complicit in the deaths of her teammates. This leads to Cassidy harshly interrogating Undine, then storming off when the rest of the club chews her out, and ultimately Cassidy herself getting murdered by Goops. Vedika is brought to tears when she tells everyone about this.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: Reynir's older brother Bjarni to his Little Stowaway situation. While growing up, Reynir was told by his parents that only people who are The Immune can travel internationally, while those who are not, such as himself, aren't allowed to do so. This, combined with having The Immune Designer Babies as siblings, gave him a quite bad case of Small Town Boredom. Reynir eventually told Bjarni about it, and it goaded Bjarni into telling him that the international travel ban on non-immunes had actually been lifted a long time ago, and that their parents just didn't want an Empty Nest. Bjarni also mentioned that while military ships don't take non-immunes onboard, some merchant ships do. The merchant ship Reynir ended up on turned out to not have a license to let people disembark at its destination and its captain got blackmailed into making a detour to deliver food to the crew exploring an area with a high risk of The Plague. All Reynir noticed about the latter situation was that the ship stopped moving and that crates big enough to fit a person were being taken out of the supply room.
- Trevor (2020): It’s pretty safe to say that Dr. Madison never imagined that his attempts to find a Cure for Cancer would lead to Trevor’s leukemia morphing into a severe case of Body Horror, and that the military’s subsequent involvement would turn the whole thing into a Super-Soldier project with Cold-Blooded Torture-style experiments regularly preformed on his former patient.
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