Villain Fixing / Fan Works

Times where a villain's actions actually benefitted the good guys in Fan Works.

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Crossovers

• A Is A: The entire plot is kickstarted by Sen. Kinsey trying to force Stargate Command to fail by leaning on them to test if the quantum mirror can be activated by the stargate. Suffice to say, he was shown just how well it could work...
• All For Luz
  • Luz was seconds away from peacefully surrendering to the police, where the Dirty Cop chief was most likely planning on arresting her on trumped up charges to put her away for a long time, when Riley chooses to go in for the kill with her Bomb Touch power. Not only does this fail to murder her cousin but makes her decide to fuck self-control and goes into a murderous blind rage.
  • Tyler Wittebane sending Quirk user assassins after Luz only succeeds in making her stronger, thanks to her Power Parasite ability stealing their Quirks, but more willing to kill him.
• It's a small victory in the grand scheme, but in Avengers: Infinite Wars, while Ultron's attack on Mandalore gave him access to Beskar, it also encouraged the Mandalorian factions (with the exception of most of Death Watch) to band together to face his threat as a united people.
• Braigen's DCU (Now With Owls): In Kingdom of Mirrors and Snakes, Sam Scudder drags Luz into the Mirror Realm in an attempt to overwhelm her in their fight. Unfortunately for him, it turns out that the Mirror Realm is the surface level of the In Between, and being there allows Luz to tap into the echo of the Titan's power and briefly retake her own Titan form, proceeding to wipe the floor with Scudder.
• The Broken Day;
  • When Harry finds himself in an altered reality where Professor Tom Riddle of Hogwarts is leader of a third party in the war between Hydra and the wizarding world (led by Dumbledore and Grindlewald) for control of the world, Riddle ultimately ruins his best chance at gaining a valuable new ally because he can't stop being himself. When Harry is found at the centre of a temporal storm and rescued by the local versions of his old friends Ron, Neville, and Ginny, rather than simply question Harry, Riddle attempts to get answers by probing Harry's mind, essentially providing Harry's old allies with suitable evidence that Riddle is the one who cannot be trusted.
  • Later on, when Hela thinks she's killed Harry during the Battle of Wakanda, she only learns afterwards that she actually "killed" an illusion of Harry created by Loki, with Loki taunting her that she just gave all of her enemies a reason to rally against her rather than basically avoiding each other.
• The Chaotic Masters: At the auction of magical artifacts, Wong mentions how Jade and her family were the ones that stopped Shendu and the other Demon Sorcerers when he gets mad at how the other bidders are stopping him from keeping Jade from getting a Palisman, but since several of the bidders are magical enough to have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory of the Demon World incident, that just makes them like her more.
• Children of Time:
  • In The Manhattan Conspiracy, Dalek Caan's decision to "study" a Time Lord's regenerative energy at work results in said Time Lord using a burst of energy against him, which saves the lives of the hybrid Daleks.
  • In Every Good Fairytale, Professor Moriarty has already corrupted Sherlock Holmes into his own image. The results having backfired on him, he now seeks Revenge, pure and simple... and gets it by breaking Holmes to restore his humanity. This backfires even more spectacularly, as Holmes's redemption is half of what was needed to restore Time.
• Earth's Alien History:
  • The Mekon's attempt to keep the neutral Vulcans and Andorians from getting involved in his war with the Terran Treaty Organization is to try and use his Romulan allies in a False Flag Operation to get the two species fighting each other. When this is exposed, however, it just leads to both entering the war on the side of, and later formally joining, TeTO.
  • The Goa'uld creating the Kull warriors to try and give themselves an edge against TeTO scares the military brass enough to authorize the creation of the SPARTANs in response.
• Fate/VRAINS sees Kiara Sessyoin break down the walls between dimensions to seek out Hakuno Kishinami in order to obtain the Regalia. Thanks to her breaking down the walls of dimensions, Gilgamesh, who's normally confined to the Far Side of the Moon Cell, was able to allow Hakuno to use his power against Kiara.
• The God Empress of Ponykind: Abaddon tries to kill the Emperor while He is still on the Golden Throne. This ends up being just what the Emperor needs to heal himself and turn the Siege of Terra against the forces of Chaos.
• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
  • Phobos' mistreatment of Daolon Wong causes the latter to turn against him. And later, Lothar and all the Guards go the same way.
  • Daolon Wong ends up turning Jade into a Shapeshifter, which comes back to bite him and the other villains.
  • He's more an Anti-Villain than anything else at that point, but Aldarn's decision to use Ikazuki's mask to win his duel with Caleb ends up completely discrediting his bid for leadership of the Rebellion.
• Honoka's Bizarre Adventure: Yoshikage Kira, fearing that the girls of µ's would interfere with the Yoshida Conglomerate's plans and thus his plans to get back to his peaceful life, heads to Otonokisaka to kill them off despite being banned from entering after an early attempt to kill them under the disguise of recruiting them for the Yoshida Conglomerate. The ensuing conflict would lead him to kill Fumiko in a matter that lets Reimi identify them as another victim of her murderer, while Fumiko uses the last of their strength to have their Stand carry one of Kira's suit buttons to Honoka. By narrowing down why would a serial killer come to Otonokisaka to kill them off without being aware that µ's knows about his existence, the Stand-using idols figure out that Kira is the serial killer and that his employers in the Yoshida Conglomerate are involved in Stands.
• In Infinity Crisis, Hela gives the heroes a new fighter when she has Thanos recreate Mjolnir for her; unaware of Mjolnir's new worthiness enchantment, Hela can't use the hammer herself, but drops it in a manner that allows Jane Foster to pick up the hammer and use it herself as a new hero (later adopting 'Thunderstrike' as a code name).
• The J-WITCH Series:
  • At one point in Season 1, Tarakudo corrupts Jade back into the Queen of the Shadowkhan in order for his Villain Team-Up with Phobos to gain an extra edge against the Guardians. But not only does this enrage the heroes and give them further incentive to fight even harder against the villains, but the process of using the Heart of Kandrakar to purify Jade creates a sixth Auremere that bonds to her, turning her into the Guardian of Shadows.
  • Similar to canon, Drago leaving Will's calculator at the Browns' house as "evidence" of her being involved in Elyon's disappearance means the now sentient device can tip her off about who's framing her, and by extension the rest of the Guardians.
• The Last Connor:
  • Newt’s school bully, Bianca Horsepower, steals Newt’s phone and answers it in a moment of petty spite, which causes a Terminator to kill her by mistake, thus tipping Newt off to the fact that someone’s after her and giving Pops time to find her.
  • Later, certain Company agents try to track down Newt by announcing her disappearance, which gives Hicks the first sign that Newt isn’t dead and thus leads to his discovery that the Company lied to him.
  • On a wider note, Skynet targeted Newt with no knowledge of her relationship with Sarah Connor, which allows Pops to become involved in its attempt to target the LV-426 survivors and stop Skynet in its tracks.
• Metal Gear: Green: All for One's attack on the USJ as well as Madam President demanding Nezu do something (i.e. submit to her demands) has Nezu get the MSF onto UA grounds as security, making both their respective goals far more difficult and allowing the MSF to track Night Owl's next move more easily.
• Hikigaya Hachiman was planning on dropping out of the U.A. High School Hero Course in My Hero School Adventure Is All Wrong As Expected. Then, the League of Villains attacked U.S.J. and he found out about Zaimokuza's fate, thereby providing him all the motivation he needed to continue on his path to becoming a hero and make the LoV pay for their crimes.
• The Priestess's quirk "Reincarnation" in My Heroes Reborn is a double edged sword. Due to the way it works, on one hand, most heroes affected either quit or fall into villainy. But, a small number of people have been able to get something useful usually in the form of additional abilities, the most egregious cases being Izuku Midoriya knowing his as "Black Leg" Sanji and Hibiki Kinzoku knowing his as Tony Stark. The absolute worst case by far is Katsuki Bakugou reawakening his memories as "Pirate Hunter" Roronoa Zoro, as he is potentially even stronger than Izuku, but with none of the drawbacks other than No Sense of Direction.
• Canonical examples aside, Rise of the Galeforces has a case of this that works three-fold. Firstly, if Mr. Ludlow hadn't gotten the idea to clone the Supers who had died in the Golden Age, they wouldn't have contributed to the Aperture's downfall. Secondly, if he hadn't turned Violet into a T. rex, she wouldn't have had the power to wipe the floor with him and his men. And third, if he hadn't jumped into the storyline a couple dozen chapters too late and tried to kill everyone participating, thus throwing a spanner into Ripper's Evil Plan, the Supers would never have found a reason to join forces against the enemy, and thus the ending might have turned out a whole lot worse.
• In the Stargate SG-1/Battlestar Galactica (2003) crossover Seven, it is revealed that John Cavil didn't just sabotage the production line for the Model Sevens, but left a few bodies alive for him to hunt, torture, and kill, until he transferred Daniel's personality into the final body of an infant (the system hadn't finished preparing it when Cavil acted), suppressed the infant's memories, and then shot it off into space. By some fluke event, rather than drifting or landing on a barren planet, the ship made its way to Earth, where the infant Seven was found by Claire and Melbourne Jackson and grew up to be Daniel Jackson. Once Daniel's original memories were restored during his time as Nem's prisoner, he was able to determine the likely location of the Twelve Colonies, create a computer program that would dial a suitable Stargate, and then find the other Cylons and reveal the truth about Cavil's agenda.
• A Spider’s Evolution opens with Spider-Man getting involved in the Brotherhood and the X-Men’s attempt to recruit Rogue (X-Men: Evolution, "Rogue Recruit"), which results in Rogue deciding to stay with May Parker based on the memories she ‘borrowed’ from Peter. When the Brotherhood manage to get photos of Peter changing into his costume, Pietro and Todd attempt to use this evidence to blackmail Peter and Rogue into joining them against the X-Men, but Peter points out that trying to force him to join the Brotherhood isn’t the best way to create a good team dynamic, as neither party would be able to trust the other, essentially ruining any hope of convincing him and Rogue to join the Brotherhood.
• Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Bardiel inadvertently shields Asuka from the kryptonite radiation coming from Unit 01's kryptonite reactor when Gendo engineers a slight radiation leak.
• Teen Titans Tokyo: Blackfire's decision to land in Japan instead of America when she returns to Earth causes her to blow through a building rainstorm, stopping it from raining. With this one tiny deed, she causes Ranma Saotome to arrive at the Tendo Dojo in his male form, which in turn leads to him getting engaged to Nabiki instead of Akane, and from there into both of them becoming superheroes.
• Turnabout Storm: Because of prosecutor Trixie's ego and personal grudge against Twilight and her friends, she lets Phoenix get away with casting suspicion on Fluttershy to get more time to investigate since she cares about making Twilight and her friends squirm more than anything. Phoenix himself points out that she could have secured a conviction and denied them a chance to gather more evidence by shutting down this line of argument.
• Ultimate Video Rumble 3 sees M. Bison gain godlike power atop the hotel. Alex has a Mineral MacGuffin to supercharge himself to similar levels but loses it off the side of the roof before he can activate it. Whereupon Bison taunts: "Just once I would love to see a competent opponent challenge me." This is Rolento's cue to climb onto the battlefield with the missing MacGuffin; Bison belatedly realizes that his new power over reality may have made his taunt true.
• The Weaver Option:
  • During the Horus Heresy all spare parts for the Golden Throne and the means of producing more were destroyed by Chaos. However, a shipment of the items had been stolen by Dark Eldar pirates and hidden in the Webway, safe from the daemons, until Taylor was able to recapture them.
  • Xerxes Vandire used a technicality to deny Taylor the Triumph she deserved for killing Slaanesh, reducing her reward to only an Ovation. The author has noted this helped Taylor as a Triumph would have overloaded her with new responsibilities while an Ovation gave her room to breathe and regroup.
• In the Harry Potter/A Nightmare on Elm Street crossover We Are Nothing, Umbridge attempts to use Veritaserum to question Harry about the recent murders in Hogwarts, but this plan goes horribly against her. Not only can Harry honestly answer that he didn't kill anyone, but he also uses the opportunity to confirm that Voldemort is alive, with Umbridge giving the investigating aurors sufficient evidence to arrest her when she nearly poisons Harry with an overdose of the potion trying to make him stop 'lying'.
• The Supernatural/NCIS fic When Worlds Collide basically begins with two of Gibbs’ deceased enemies suggesting to Crowley that he arrange a scenario where Gibbs will go after the Winchesters after Crowley convinces the NCIS team that the Winchesters are a genuine threat. Instead, not only do the Winchesters ward the entire NCIS building against supernatural intrusion but go on to confirm the existence of the supernatural to the US government and make arrangements to ward the White House and other relevant buildings, as well as force Crowley to make a deal agreeing that he will leave all elected officials alone.
• In the Lyrical Nanoha/Sailor Moon fanfic, White Devil of the Moon, some mistakes in communication lead to the Sailor Senshi coming off as suspicious to Nanoha and Fate, when they are trying to convince Nanoha to join them as their princess to fight the Dark Kingdom. When one of Beryl's lieutenants, Jadeite, attacks Nanoha's brother's wedding with an army of youma, Nanoha and Fate start believing the Senshi and then begin to work together against the Dark Kingdom.
• In A Witch, A Wizard, and a Mechanic, when the Aurors raid a Death Eater mansion, they discover victims of human trafficking. Among the victims is a dwarf. When the other dwarves find out what happened, they demand that those particular Death Eaters get the death penalty or else the dwarves will declare war on the wizarding world. Corrupt politicians, obstructive bureaucrats and lawyers all try to keep the Death Eaters out of court and away from a guilty verdict, and the Aurors despair as the dwarves get impatient. Meanwhile, Voldemort decides his minions have failed him for getting caught red-handed, so he lethally siphons all the magic out of them. Nice job averting war with the dwarves, Voldemort!

Adventure Time

• Frozen Hearts (Red Witch): By forcefully abducting Betty into the Ark, Damon inadvertently saved her life from the nuclear explosion of Mushroom war and allowed her to reach out to Simon within his Ice King persona. Simon even acknowledges this trope to him and for that, decides to give him the mercy killing he deserved.

Amphibia

• A Moth to a Flame: At the climax of the throne room fight, Marcy has Anne and the Plantars dead to rights as she has the Calamity Box in her hands and is about to deactivate the portal back to Earth... until a half-blinded King Andrias accidentally impales Marcy In the Back while trying to attack Sasha, giving the heroes the chance to escape the castle. "Oops" indeed.

Animorphs

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In “What if Jake was stuck in morph?”, most Yeerks only realise they have the option of becoming nothlits when Visser Three announces that any Yeerk caught doing so would be executed.
• In What Tomorrow Brings, Yeerk technology retains the telepathic interface from when it was originally adapted from the Andalite software Seerow gave them; the Yeerks have never bothered to rewrite the code to remove such interfaces, allowing high-ranking Andalites such as Elfangor to access the interface with the proper command codes. More specifically, Edris 562- the former Visser One- created a backdoor to give herself complete control of the Blade Ship, but although she was unable to use it before she died, Eva witnessed it during Edris's fugue, allowing her to pass that information on to Marco, who subsequently uses it in the new timeline to give Ax permanent control of the ship.

Arrowverse

• In Rebirth, Ra's al Ghul unwittingly ruins his own plans when he attacks Laurel rather than Thea; when Laurel is put in the Lazarus Pit to save her life, a fluke event causes her to emerge with her Canary Cry, which she instinctively uses to kill Ra's by throwing him into the wall behind him. As a result, Oliver will be able to choose who becomes heir as Ra's can no longer force him into the role, and Laurel will not be troubled by the bloodlust that previously plagued those who were reborn via the Pit as she has killed her killer.
• Never Be Silent: In the final battle, Damien Darhk's intention was to show the power of metas to inspire fear against them as Malcolm forced Star, a little girl who can generate illusions, to create hallucinations during a riot. Instead, this riot gave Team Arrow and their allies a chance to show the positives of metas as the Flash comes to assist in stopping the prisoners along with a group of other metas from Central City.
• Things As They Should Be: When Laurel comes to assist in the prisoner transfer when Thawne sets the pipeline to overload, Thawne takes advantage of the opportunity to restore one more part of the "original" timeline by trapping Laurel in a cell of the pipeline and setting off a minor dark matter explosion so that she gains her 'Canary Cry'. While Thawne's only purpose in doing this was to make it easier for him to return to his own time, Laurel's new power causes her to ruin Oliver and Malcolm's existing plan to subvert the League of Assassins, prompting Oliver to set up a new plan where Barry accompanies them back to the League base so that he can evacuate the entire League before Laurel destroys the mountain with her scream, destroying the Lazarus Pit and depriving the League of most of its resources even before Ra's is killed. Laurel also assists in Thawne's subsequent capture alongside Oliver, Barry, and Firestorm.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

• Absolute Trust:
  • With Jet's death, Alec had no cover story he could use to explain away his knowledge of Ba Sing Se's conspiracy...up until Long Feng confronts him for blowing up at Joe Dee and insinuates that Alec's own mother had been a Joo Dee. As soon as Long Feng leaves and Toph confirms there are no eavesdroppers, Alec laughs his head off.
  • Ozai's intolerance for failure comes back to bite him in a massive way: when he orders Azula murdered and it apparently succeeds, Azula falls into the hands of Team Avatar. Which is to say, the only people on the planet who have the volition and know-how to persuade Azula to make a Heel–Face Turn in the face of Ozai's betrayal. And thus, the Fire Lord's most valuable weapon becomes Team Avatar's politics teacher.

Batman

• In Monsignor George Ryan's backstory in Angel of the Bat, his parents were part of a superstitious sect of the Irish Mob, who agreed to forgive his father's debts if they raised him to be a priest. The plan was this would allow the mob to wash their hands of their sins and go right back to doing them, but Ryan's religious conviction became too strong to be swayed by them and he eventually abandoned them and began working for the betterment of Gotham.

Beetlejuice

• The Arc Villain of The Bug Princess unwittingly does this while doing some (offscreen) gloating. Thinking that he has the heroes beaten, he trips himself up by giving their ally the single piece of information they need in order to defeat him: where Lydia ended up when a magic ritual went haywire.

Buffyverse

• In in silent screams and wildest dreams, Warren attempts to kill Buffy by paying a sorceress to cast a spell that requires Buffy to have sex with the one her heart desires most within the next day or she will die. Warren assumed that Buffy's truest desire was Riley, who he had already confirmed was too far away to get back to Sunnydale on short notice, but in reality, Buffy's true love remains Angel, who was not only able to get back to Sunnydale to help Buffy in time, but their moment together allowed them to find a balance where Angel could have sex with Buffy without triggering his clause.
• In Unconquerable Souls, Darla essentially sabotages her own plans to remove Angel's soul when she fed the soul of 'Amy Madison' to the soul-eater she summoned; unaware that Amy's body had been stolen by her mother Catherine, the disappearance of Catherine's soul allows Amy's to return to her original body, which leads to Amy giving the Scooby Gang vital information.

Calvin and Hobbes

• The one-off criminal Tom accidentally causes his partner Bill to suffer a Rake Take to the groin in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series.

Danganronpa

• Hope on a Distant Mountain: The corrupt Steering Committee of Hope's Peak put Makoto Naegi into an Unwinnable Training Simulation (i.e. the first game) to scare him into quitting, because they thought his 'Luckster' talent wasn't really a talent and that having a Lucky Student each year was too much of a resource drain. Instead, Makoto manages to break the simulation to the point that the A.I. has to invent a win condition just for him (which itself is a good example of the trope since it was a desperate last attempt to break Makoto's will- which, of course, he didn't fall for). Winning the game (something even Izuru Kamukura couldn't do) more than proved his worth, to the point where he is enrolled as the SHSL Hope, essentially declaring him the school's Messianic Archetype and rendering him nearly untouchable.
  • Later, in a desperate attempt to discredit Makoto, the Committee has Kyoko Kirigiri face him in a class trial to determine whether he's really worthy of being the SHSL Hope. Makoto manages to win this trial (using the skills he developed in the sims, for extra villain fixing), humiliating the Committee and Kyoko, who'd been using the trial to get one over her father (who supported Naegi) and had used all sorts of unethical tricks, including deliberately triggering Makoto's PTSD, to win. Now everyone in school is even more thoroughly convinced that Makoto deserves his title, given that he won against the SHSL Detective.
• In Never Say Never, Junko allows Mukuro to sit out of the first trial. This gives Mukuro the chance to discover that Sayaka is still alive and treat her wounds, then reveal her survival right before the execution can be carried out.

Death Note

• In Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami, assuming that Dark is the hero, L does this when he shoots and kills Light, but accidentally revives him with the Life Note. Light then seeks out L for revenge, enabling Dark to trick them into killing each other.

Digimon

• In The Teacher of All Things, Apocalymon's deletion of Zeromaru's V-pet proves to be a double-whammy: First, the sheer callousness of this act emotionally pushes Tai to the breaking point and causes him to unleash the power of the Digimental, which was within him all this time without his knowledge, and second, due to Apocalymon's nature, this action causes Zero to finally be reborn inside his mindscape, the latter event preventing Apocalymon from destroying the Digidestined with his Total Annihilation attack.

Farscape

• Left Behind:
  • A minor example, but early in their time on Rohvu, Crichton and Chiana each express private guilty relief at separate points that the Xarai have already eaten Pilot’s arms, as otherwise he would knock them away from his control console while he’s flailing around in a panic (By the time his arms have re-grown enough for that to be a risk, Pilot is sufficiently calm for them both to be sure he won’t do that).
  • Later, Pilot muses that Kaarvok’s time in control has ‘encouraged’ Rohvu to a degree of independence, allowing him to rescue Crichton from being sucked into space on his own initiative after Furlow disabled some of Pilot’s controls to stop him preventing her own escape.

Fairy Tail

• Alternate Tail Series:
  • The demon Beelzea possessed Mirajane after the latter killed her, then caused her arm to become demonic to make the girl an outcast. But when Mira was captured by Cultist to build the R-System, not only does she learn about her Take-Over magic from Rob, but the torture from the cultist gives Beelzea a reason to lend Mira her power, letting her Take-Over her demonic power and make her become one of Fairy Tail's strongest wizards.
  • Edolas set up two Animas at once to identify multiple agents in their way. One of those Animas was over Galuna Island, which not only led to the heroes helping the demons regaining their memory but also led to Lyon using two-handed Maker Magic and allowed Levy to find the stone tablets that grant her Holy Scripture.

Gargoyles

• The final chapter of Kimberly T's Gargoyles fic Escape from Avalon reveals that the author planned for this trope to apply to events in another storyline; Oliver Grimm, the founder of the Quarrymen, attempted to stage a home invasion of criminals wearing gargoyle costumes to suggest that the gargoyles had killed a Quarryman lieutenant and his family while the true gargoyles were hunting for kidnapped allies, but when the lieutenant kills the invaders before realizing they were just humans in disguise, it gives the rest of New York 'evidence' that the gargoyles' previous home invasions may not have been genuine, thus preventing the clan losing any of the goodwill they've gained with the average New Yorker to date.

Harry Potter

• 3 Slytherin Marauders because Lucius Malfoy insists on gloating to Arthur Weasley, Arthur's bosses assume he must be very important and well-connected, greatly advancing Arthur's career.
• crawlersout: After Fem!Harry admits she wouldn't be able to stand by if people were being persecuted, Gellert Grindelwald deems her a threat and tries to kill her. It backfires horribly: since Harry is the Master of Death, she is immune to the Killing Curse. Worse, Grindelwald used the Elder Wand to cast it; as Harry's ownership of the wand trumps any other claims, no matter the time or place, the curse rebounded. The only reason Grindelwald survived is because Harry saved him, leaving his life indebted to the woman he just tried to murder.
• In Harry Potter and the Ritual of Love's Memory, Umbridge's efforts to turn the school against Harry by constantly taking house points off him only serve to turn the rest of Gryffindor even more against her. Since she's taking points from Harry for completely petty reasons like him leaving when the bell goes for the end of the class, rather than wait for Umbridge to dismiss them (something that no other teacher enforces), the rest of Gryffindor decide that since they clearly aren't going to have a fair shot at the House Cup this year they're not going to bother trying.
• In My Brother, when Malfoy tries to expose Harry's plan to smuggle a dragon out of Hogwarts, his efforts backfire from the beginning because various events had prompted Harry and Hagrid to change their plans after Norbert burnt Harry's arm, with the result that Harry was in the hospital wing while Hagrid was dropping Norbert off with Charlie in Hogsmeade before leaving to check on Harry's little sister Emma. When Malfoy tries to insist on hearing Harry's excuse, McGonagall angrily retorts that Harry has a right to privacy, with the result that Malfoy costs Slytherin several house points while Harry just gets a detention for doing something that left him with that burn (as he's assured all concerned parties that nobody did it to him on purpose).
• In The Parselmouth of Gryffindor, Scardemort's attempt to take over Hogwarts by summoning the Death Eaters not only fails but ends with the arrest of most of the Death Eaters whom Barty Crouch had broken out of Azkaban earlier. The Dark Side as a whole was much better off without his interference.

How to Train Your Dragon

• In Black As Night, Mildew’s actions to try and rally support for the idea that Astrid blinding Hiccup is divine judgement create the opportunity for Hiccup and Astrid to show what they’ve learned about dragons.
• In The Blacksmith's Apprentice, Snotlout finally ruins his chances to ever become Chief when he tries to rape Astrid, finally committing an act that Stoick can’t try to overlook with the argument that Snotlout just needs time to develop. This results in Hiccup eventually taking back his position as Stoick's heir.
• In the medieval AU "The Imposter", Dagur has almost succeeded in leaving Hiccup psychologically broken by convincing him that all of his 'allies' think he's a traitor and then sends Hiccup into a fight to the death against his champion... only to give Hiccup the perfect ally when the 'champion' is revealed to be the imprisoned Stoick, who was captured years ago and convinced that his family were dead.

The Hunger Games

• The Victors Project: Boudicca's career program, with its public emphasis on absolute loyalty to the Capitol and viewing the bloody Hunger Games as a great honor, is almost single-handedly responsible for revitalizing the rebellion that Boudicca despises. Before her first trainee's victory, people were slowly becoming resigned to the Hunger Games. Hatred for the kind of Career tributes Boudicca turns out erases these feelings of defeat and resignation.

Jackie Chan Adventures

• Queen of All Oni: Hak Foo does this twice during the Mini Khan chapter. First, during his rant about how the mask is useless, he spills the beans about Jade forcibly transforming Viper into the Shadowkhan Hebi, ruining his boss's plan to make the Chan Clan think Viper had voluntarily made a Face–Heel Turn. Secondly, his "Reason You Suck" Speech to Jackie ends up snapping the latter out of his Heroic BSoD.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• from porcelain to ivory to steel: In chapter 28, Alessi uses Sethan to deage Joseph to before he got his stand while the latter tries to save Midler who was turned to a child earlier. The problem is that Sethan turn Joseph back to his prime when he was fighting the Pillar Men and he's more of capable to beating up the horrendous man with his strength, wits, and hamon.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

• League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Tempest Rewrite: By attempting to make her a vampire, Dracula/Prospero/Nyarlathotep had infected Mina with magic, which was then passed along to her daughter who (also thanks to Prospero) was born at an asylum and adopted by a wizard family, who raised her into the mother of Harry Potter, who became England's Eternal Champion against the eldritch horrors released by Prospero. Also, that same magic within Mina allowed the Elohim/Oyeresu to transform her, Emma, and Orlando into the warrior-priestess Star Fems.

Lyrical Nanoha

• In the Deva Series, the Al Hantheans were an unknown factor. Only the Yagami Academy and the Circles were unambiguously aware of the threat they posed to Earth; other nations and parties might have considered trying for non-aggression or even collusion. Then they tried to kill off Noriko and the Japanese Imperial family, hoping to take one of Earth's nations and one of Hayate's fighters out of the picture. However, the attempt did not completely succeed, and with their villainy exposed, the survivor gave a speech that will probably rally the nations of Earth into properly uniting against them. One of the higher-up villains even does some Lampshade Hanging on this.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• Applies to a degree Anything for You, when a father and son capture and drug Spider-Man to try and make him 'confess' to the Avengers' role in the 'Blip' and later events, while also holding Morgan Stark hostage to ensure the Avengers' compliance. After they make a live broadcast while interrogating a drugged and disorientated Peter, although the two refuse to let him properly explain Thanos's history and the reason the Mad Titan came to Earth, when they ask about Mysterio's death Peter is able to tell the truth about Quentin Beck's agenda. On top of the broadcast also showing Peter trying to protect Morgan Stark, who clearly trusts Peter despite his current public reputation, their actions actually produce an outpouring of online support for Spider-Man before the rest of the Avengers rescue him.
• In Because I Knew You, Wanda observes that the Darkhold made a mistake trying to amplify her negative emotions after she spent time visiting Peter Parker in New York; with Peter having reminded Wanda that she wants to be a hero rather than a destroyer, now that enhanced negativity is focused on the Darkhold itself.
• In If I Could Start Again, after Thor kills Thanos, he is sent back in time to the day of his coronation when he picks up the Time Stone, with his mind returning to the body of his past self. The Ancient One later observes that this is because Thanos used the Time Stone to undo the destruction of the Mind Stone just moments before, creating a link between those two Stones in particular, allowing Thor to travel back mentally rather than physically.
• Lies of omission: As Peter spends more and more ignoring his messages, Richard starts sending him threats of physical harm and ultimatums. All this accomplishes is giving the Starks evidence that the Parkers are abusive to Peter and throws a wrench in their plan to ruin Stark Industries' reputation.
• In Once Lost Now Found, Zemo is contacted by Quentin Beck with the goal of targeting Tony's newly-rediscovered son, Peter Parker (AKA Tony Stark Junior) as part of their mutual revenge on the Avengers, capturing Peter with the goal of triggering Bucky to kill Spider-Man in the bunker after Steve, Tony and Bucky arrive. However, despite Tony also learning about Bucky's role in his parents' deaths, this new attack prompts Tony to focus more on preventing a new tragedy rather than lashing out at Bucky about past actions, giving Tony and Steve a chance to get past the worst of their issues after Peter has been taken to Wakanda for treatment.

Miraculous Ladybug

• In Bite off more than you can chew and you will choke, Lila's attempt to get Marinette expelled trigger Adrien to (a) get closer to Marinette and (b) plan out how to ruin Lila. When Adrien's Relationship Upgrade with Marinette is revealed, Lila is in shock for a full day at realizing how her attempts to ruin Marinette instead brought her together with Adrien.
• Cheshire:
  • Chloé's attempt to bully Marinette further by giving her the job of gopher during the internship at her father's hotel gives Marinette the chance to impress Jagged Stone and Penny Rolling with her design skills.
  • During the Black Queen's fight, King Monkey attacking Cheshire (in Knightmare mode) with Uproar teleports her to New York where she finds the Eagle Miraculous and helps the United Heroes.
• In Chloé's Lament, her poorly considered Wish ends up correcting a lot of problems in the new world it creates:
  • Marinette was gradually being overwhelmed by all the responsibilities piling up on her shoulders, which was only going to get worse after Miracle Queen's actions. In the new reality, somebody else becomes the new Ladybug heroine, and she's no longer the Class Rep, taking many of those burdens off her shoulders, while her new wealth and status give her the means to continue helping people without overwhelming her.
  • Mayor Sabine Dupain-Cheng convinced Gabriel to let his son have a more normal childhood (and reminded him that child labor laws exist). As a result, Adrien has been attending public school for three years before the new heroes make their debut, doesn't have to deal with a tightly controlled modeling schedule, and is significantly happier and less sheltered, having made several friends aside from Chloé.
  • Sabrina is not stuck as Chloé's Beta Bitch, serving as their Class Rep... and as this world's Ladybug heroine, Red Queen.
  • Since she's no longer the Mayor's daughter, Chloé is no longer able to abuse his status to dodge any serious consequences for her actions. Facing actual disciplinary action makes her significantly less of a threat.
• All the installments of the CONSEQUENCES series have Lila do this. Each time, she tries to ruin Marinette, Adrien, and/or someone else who tried to go up against her, but not only does she inadvertently bring about her own downfall, she actually makes their lives better, usually reconciling friends and even helping Marinette and Adrien get closer.
• In Exposed, Alya manages to catch Ladybug transforming into Marinette and publishes the video on the Internet out of the belief that she's entitled to be the one that reveals the heroine's identity. This ends up getting Adrien to become a lot closer to Marinette out of a shared outrage for Alya's total lack of care for Marinette's privacy (with him even revealing he's Chat Noir), gives Marinette the way to ensure Lila's status as a liar is revealed and leads Hawkmoth to send the Butterfly and Peacock Miraculouses because he found out Adrien was Chat Noir and he realized his obsession with bringing Emilie back would cause him to lose Adrien.
• Fashion Upgrade:
  • Mlle. Bustier kicks Marinette out of her class... and it turns out to be the best thing she ever did for her former student, as she winds up in a significantly healthier environment. Mainly because her new homeroom teacher Ms. Mendeleiev actually takes care of her students rather than foisting off her responsibilities upon a few unlucky "model students".
  • Not only was Lila responsible for Bustier booting Marinette out and getting her transferred, she attempts to twist the knife by proposing a competition that she intends to stress her out. Instead, said competition just helps Marinette realize that she doesn't have to shoulder all the responsibility by herself; her new classmates and friends are more than happy to help and support her in ways that her old class didn't. What's more, Lila's attempts to make matters worse for Marinette end up blowing up in her face.
• Feralnette AU: During the Birds of a Feather arc, Lila latches onto Marinette Taking the Heat as a chance to get her favorite target expelled again, with every intention of making sure it sticks this time. However, this causes both girls to learn that expulsion is currently off the table thanks to Chloé's influence. Marinette is then able to do a bit of Briar Patching so that her punishment involves being barred from participating in any school activities — much to her relief, as she'd been volunteered to make Mylene's Impractically Fancy "dream costume" for their school's production of The Little Mermaid. On top of all of this, Lila also learns that Ms. Mendeleiev does not approve of her threatening to attack Felix's gender identity, getting her held back in the principal's office while Marinette gets to leave in a much better mood than when she entered.
• Leave for Mendeleiev: By going out of his way to antagonize and upset Simon so that he can akumatize the hypnotist, Gabriel makes himself a natural target for the resulting akuma. This provides Ladybug with the perfect opportunity to investigate her suspicions and confirm that Gabriel is Hawkmoth.
• Marinette Dupain-Cheng's Spite Playlist: Lila's inability to leave Marinette alone after forcing her to transfer to another school ultimately convinces Marinette to retaliate by beating her at her own game: namely by taking all of the charitable acts Lila claims to engage in and doing them for real.
• Maris Stella: There's a noted pattern of whatever Moment of Weakness Riodinidae akumatizes people over getting proper help afterwards, often directly because of the akumatization. It gets to the point that Natasha outright suggests "hope someone gets akumatized" to deal with a problem that seems to be otherwise insurmountable.
• The One to Make It Stay:
  • In The Radio Still Plays, Gabriel inadvertently puts himself back on Ladybug's radar. While Marinette had stopped considering him as a potential candidate for being Hawkmoth after he staged his own akumatization, she becomes suspicious of him again after Hawkmoth strikes at Summer Sesh twice. Thanks to Master Fu, she knows that the Butterfly Miraculous doesn't have enough range to reach Marseilles from Paris, and after Marinette encounters Adrien at the festival and later learns his father was there in person to handle Clara's outfit, she considers that he might be working with Hawkmoth.
  • I Owe You Every Joy of Love and All the Laughs We Had in the Past imply that Lila tampered with Alya's phone, disabling her ability to receive important notifications. Whatever her reasoning for this move was, it proves to be key in helping Alya realize that she was a False Friend all along, weakening her sway over them.
• Recommencer:
  • Lila's attempt to fire a parting shot at Marinette as she transfers to a new school by slandering her online ultimately backfires. While this triggers Luka's akumatization into Restarter, this also leads Marinette to discover that some of her new peers are Badass Bystanders, followed by learning that they didn't all blindly buy into Lila's lies. This helps her feel safer and more comfortable around them. Chat Noir's misbehavior during this attack also leads to Master Fu revoking the Black Cat Ring and giving him a different Miraculous, which ultimately proves to be a positive turning point for Adrien.
  • Lila starts slandering Marinette during an outing with several of her classmates; when Adrien attempts to defend her, she casually insults his attire, declaring that his father likely wouldn't approve of him 'looking like a girl'. This sets off alarm bells for Nino and Kim, who both act to defuse the situation and get him out of there, weakening her sway over them both.
  • Alya's attempts to back up Lila's claims by insisting she saw the cyberbullying texts (that never existed) and that they came from Marinette's number just ends up clearing the names of the falsely accused, since Principal Achthoven can confirm that the number she rattles off does not belong to any of her students. She then destroys Lila's credibility even more (along with her own) by revealing something she told her in confidence: that she was the new Fox Heroine Imperatrix, with Alya wildly accusing the real Imperatrix of being an imposter.
• Scarlet Lady:
  • Hawkmoth's decision to akumatize Alya into Lady Wifi led to her mother learning that her daughter had been suspended from school for a whole week... something that nobody working at Francoise Dupont had bothered to contact her about. Her outrage results in the punishment being lifted.
  • During Reflekta's assault, Chat Noir hides in a locker and detransforms, giving Plagg a chance to flee with the Black Cat Ring. Once she locates him, Reflekta hits him with her Transformation Ray before opening the locker. Not only does Hawkmoth believe the Ring was transformed with him, preventing them from claiming it, this also protects Adrien's Secret Identity.
  • During their class's Internship Day, Chloé assigns Marinette to menial duties in order to keep her away from the front desk where she and Adrien will be working. This results in André volunteering Marinette as their "chasseur", which leads to her meeting and impressing Jagged Stone, earning him as a recurring client.
  • Chloé's refusal to do a simple favor for Rose, ripping up her Love Letter and laughing in her face about it, gets her akumatized into Princess Fragrance... which results in her meeting her crush Prince Ali after getting cleansed. The two immediately hit it off... and when Chloé angrily reveals that Rose is already dating Juleka, Prince Ali proves open-minded enough that he doesn't even realize Chloé's intentions, simply saying that he'd love to meet Juleka.
  • While possessing Scarlet Lady, Despair Bear makes her summon her Lucky Charm, creating a fork that Chat Noir and Marigold use to defeat him by unraveling his costume. While they might have still been able to defeat him without the Lucky Charm, he still provided them with the means of his unmaking.
• By putting pressure on Adrien, Gabriel inadvertently pushed Marinette to become Someone to Watch Over Me for him, resulting in her getting past her canonical inability to confess her feelings.
• Tattered Remains of Broken Dreams (Yours, Not Mine):
  • Lila manipulates Alya and most of the class into ripping up Marinette's sketchbook. Unfortunately for them, said sketchbook contained a bunch of projects she was working on for her classmates... and convinces Marinette that she doesn't need to do anything for them anymore, stepping down from her position as class president and cutting off the gravy train. This removes a major source of stress and leaves Marinette free to focus upon other matters.
  • When Hawkmoth tries exploiting how stressed out most of Bustier's students are, one of the akumas he creates turns out to be a walking stress reliever, making others feel more comfortable. Ladybug sees no reason to do anything about this particular akuma, letting them wander around spreading the good vibes until Hawkmoth gives up and recalls the butterfly himself.
• In Watch Me Burn, Adrien discovered Ladybug's Secret Identity and started a relationship with Marinette while amping up his harassment of her as Chat Noir, amused by the Dramatic Irony of her crushing on his civilian persona while rejecting his unwanted advances. His plans to keep this going indefinitely for his own amusement get blown out of the water when the akumatized Mr. Ramier takes him out, exposing his Secret Identity — and Hawkmoth's as well, thanks to the argument Rat King gets into with the terrorist.
• In The Wavering Peahen, Gabriel decides to give the Peacock Miraculous to Lila in order to test whether it's actually fixed, figuring that if it isn't he'll be able to easily recover it from Lila. Not only does she prove to be The Millstone as Pavona (to the point the heroes openly state having her around makes things easier for them), her stubbornness keeps Hawkmoth from realizing she's suffering the symptoms of using the broken Miraculous, and her selfish misuse and overuse of if to "prove" she really knows all those famous people causes her to collapse and become horribly sick - right in front of Marinette, who manages to recover the Miraculous, allowing her to learn Hawkmoth's true identity and finally arresting him.
• The Wolves in the Woods:
  • On Marinette's last day at Francoise Dupont, Ms. Bustier spitefully reveals that she's transferring to another school. She does so knowing full well that most of her class has been viciously bullying Marinette and fully expects this will make matters worse. However, not only does this cement Lila's Heel Realization and spur her first step towards atonement when she attempts to distract the angry mob, the resulting ruckus at the Dupain-Cheng Bakery draws the attention of her new neighbors, who step in and intervene themselves. As a result, Marinette winds up with several valuable allies she might not have gotten otherwise, and New Transfer Students Ben, Amila, and Andres are well forewarned of just what they're getting into.
  • Along the same lines, Ms. Bustier later leads her students to march on the bakery in an attempt to ambush Marinette. Rather than forcing her to bow to her former teacher's selfish demands, this only succeeds in drawing further attention to just how many lines she's been crossing, resulting in her getting formally charged.
• Lila wishing to have Adrien Agreste's life in Your Wish is my Command effectively wipes away the impact of her triumphing over Ladybug and Chat Noir.
  • While she knows who Ladybug and Chat Noir were, two different holders are chosen in the post-Wish world — and contrary to Lila's expectations, she's not one of them, despite her assuming she'd get the Ring as part of switching lives with Adrien.
  • Marinette is much happier without having to bear all the heavy responsibilities of being Ladybug, while Adrien wasn't saddled with a Control Freak for a father and is naturally much more independent and outspoken, a far cry from his Extreme Doormat counterpart.
  • Lila's Karma Houdini Warranty no longer applies in her new reality, and she has to deal with Gabriel being an overbearing yet distant father who micromanages her schedule.

Monster Rancher

• Phoenix's Tear: Reignition: During their duel, Gray Wolf gets the upper hand over his brother and seriously wounds him. Rather than finishing him off, however, he deliberately drags it out, wanting Tiger to suffer first... which buys the other Searchers enough time to track them down.

MonsterVerse

• Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Alan Jonah's attempt to break the San-Vivienne Graham hybrid by making Vivienne aware of Serizawa's death backfires, as it ultimately helps Vivienne to reconcile and seriously bond with San, which enables the hybrid's two halves to better work together at escaping Jonah's imprisonment of them.

Mortal Kombat

• In with the Old, Out with the New: Nice going, Kano. Not only did you kidnap and rape Cassie, both Sonya and Johnny Cage are hell-bent on seeing you dead for what you did to their little girl.

My Hero Academia

• In the Announcer AU, Nezu is trying to track down Izuku after his stint as a guest announcer, but he has so little presence on social media that he's not having much luck. Then he gets an email from Tsubasa, who's trying to spread Malicious Slander about Izuku out of jealousy... and since Tsubasa used his school email, Nezu now knows exactly where to look.
• Cain: In an effort to stop Izuku's training sessions with All Might, Katsuki forces Izuku to strip and takes staged photos to try and trick Inko into believing her son is being molested by a pedophile. This spurs Inko to confront Toshinori directly — and not only does she wind up granting Toshinori her blessing to continue training Izuku, this also exposes Katsuki's attempted Frame-Up. Suffice to say, Toshinori is not pleased by Katsuki's actions; neither are his parents.
• Cheat Code: Support Strategist: Suspecting that Izuku is Cheat Code, Mineta tries to kidnap him by setting a trap on his usual route home. Not only does this fail, since Izuku didn't happen to go home that day, it also enables Izuku to pick up on Kurogiri's signature, giving him a way to track the teleporting villain.
• Dead on Arrival: Overhaul unintentionally aids the Metahuman Network, as by fighting him, the Network and their allies gain valuable experience and are able to test what works and what doesn't before applying the results more broadly. He also accidentally helps sell the idea of sanctioned superheroes by demanding a public battle with the Metahuman Network, as he gets exactly what he wanted... and gets his butt kicked.
• It's Over, Isn't It (it's only just begun): All throughout when i talk, it lights a fire in you, Izuku is struggling to put his self-defense lessons to good use, as he keeps freezing up, even during sparring sessions. Then he happens to run into Katsuki, and the Barbaric Bully promptly attacks him, helping Izuku get over his mental block and defend himself.
• One for All and Eight for the Ninth: All for One decides to kidnap Izuku in order to attempt to steal One for All from him. Not only does he fail in his attempt, he ends up creating a channel between both Quirks that allows Izuku to take an extra eleven Quirks from him while destroying twenty-three more, and later on lets the Vestiges destroy more than five hundred of them.

My-HiME

• In Perfection Is Overrated:
  • Miyu, by destroying Akane's child, kills the first of the SUEs, Mariko, who had the power to win over everyone she met. This proves to be a double example, as Mariko's bonding to Akane with her powers enables Kazuya to survive.
  • Hitomi, who starts off by mind-controlling and robbing people before moving on to mass murder, comes to Midori's attention, who contacts Mai and lets her know that she might be linked to Nao's alleged attack on Yukariko in some way. As a result, Mai and Natsuki delay going after Nao, and the group is able to cooperate against Hitomi and the other SUEs (even Nao overcomes her reluctance to associate with the other Himes by virtue of how horrific Hitomi's crimes are and out of a sense of self-preservation).
• In Stain, Nao tells Shizuru that her killing her mother enabled the Reset Button that happened in the last episode to bring her out of her coma in addition to resurrecting her.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Anthropology: After explaining his intentions to her, Discord turns Lyra back into a pony. However, this allows Lyra to use the necklace Princess Celestia gave her to return to Ponyville and gather the Elements of Harmony.
• A Brief History of Equestria: Sullamander thought that, by killing the only general on her Joint Chiefs-of-Staff who outright opposed her, she could cow the Staff into doing whatever she wanted. Instead, the General that replaced her was Wind Whistler, who proceeded to No-Sell Sullamander's nonsense and pointed out how the Articles of Command allowed her to kill the Commander for her actions if she didn't back off. She would continue to defy Sullamander for the rest of her life, eventually launching the coup that led to both their deaths and the rise to power of Sullamander's rival (and Wind Whistler's lover) Hurricane.
• Earth and Sky: If Diamond Tiara (who runs her husband Blueblood's airship company for him) hadn't downsized her staff, leading to Pipsqueak becoming unemployed, he wouldn't have been free to become Harmony Aeronautics test pony, meaning they wouldn't be in a position to threaten the company's business.
  • Also, in chapter 38, Chrysalis manages to throw ponies off her trail, only to end up shooting herself in the hoof when she tries to avoid getting arrested for crimes committed by Diamond Tiara (whom she was impersonating).
• In The Elements of Friendship, Book IS: Bonds, Trixie's Alicorn Amulet-powered conquest of Ponyville and enslavement of its citizens gives Queen Selena the motivation and catalyst she needs to regain her full power for the first time since she was purified of NightMare Moon.
• In Guide To Recent Equestrian History, before the Reign of Discord, the ponies of Equestria are teetering on the brink of civil war. Good thing that Discord showed up to give them someone to unite against.
• The Immortal Game: Near the latter end of the story, Titan captures Twilight Sparkle during an attack on the Loyalists' base and proceeds to torture her. But in the process of doing so, he causes her split personalities to fuse back together and restore her full power. This proceeds to really, really backfire on him.
  • Terra's attack on Ponyville, which served no purpose other than emotionally hurting the protagonists, ends with the Elements of Harmony—previously rendered inert by Titan—reignited, and Terra herself stripped of all power.
  • Titan raising the Citadel for the Final Battle enables Harmony's last gambit, which transforms Twilight into an alicorn capable of facing Titan in an even fight, allowing her to defeat him.
• Loved and Lost:
  • Prince Jewelius usurps Equestria's throne and turns the public and Twilight Sparkle against the princesses, Shining Armor, and Twilight's friends by using the disastrous Changeling invasion to disgrace and banish them from Equestria. However, to flaunt his ego and satiate his desire to personally murder Celestia and Cadance, Jewelius sets in motion a scheme that includes luring the banished heroes back to Canterlot and telling them that he set Queen Chrysalis to commit her invasion before betraying her at the last minute, and what plans he has in store for Twilight. This gives the fugitives — who've been blaming themselves for the invasion ever since their banishment — every reason to bring him down and expose him for the monster he is. After the heroes and the Changelings have escaped, Jewelius refuses to do anything about the Changelings until he's done with the heroes, even though Twilight and Canterlot's citizens acknowledge the Changelings as the more urgent matter. When he's had enough of Twilight's insistence, he stops pretending and shows her that he's as evil as the fugitives told her. Not only does this motivate Twilight to escape from Canterlot with the Elements of Harmony and fully reconcile with her brother, friends, and mentor before the final battle, but when Jewelius threatens Canterlot's citizens for wanting to pardon the heroes now that she's joined their cause, he loses his good PR entirely, and the citizens start really wishing that the princesses were still ruling them.
  • As Celestia awaits her Public Execution, Jewelius takes the heroes out to be Forced to Watch and to be reproached by Canterlot's citizens, knowing that any attempt on their part to warn the citizens about his secret evil nature will only earn them more ire due to his good standing among the masses who feel betrayed by their former protectors. Indeed, this is exactly what happens, but it also causes Celestia to realize that trying such a thing won't get her anywhere since everypony has lost all faith in her. Instead, she uses her farewell speech to earnestly apologize for failing to heed all the warning signs of the Changeling attack and letting everypony down, especially a now-jaded Twilight, earning the forgiveness of the public against Jewelius' wishes. Even Twilight joins the ensuing outcry for the execution to be stopped, only for Jewelius to attempt to carry it out anyway. Luna fortunately saves her sister, helping along Jewelius' gradual self-inflicted downfall described above, but even if he'd succeeded in hanging the penitent Celestia, the public would've still turned on him for such a heartless act.
  • When Queen Chrysalis escapes from Canterlot's dungeons and tries to kill Jewelius for his betrayal, Twilight faces her in battle. Unable to best the unicorn, Chrysalis tells her about Jewelius the same Cassandra Truth the disgraced heroes tried to tell Twilight in the previous chapter. When Twilight is about to shrink the Changelings a second time, Chrysalis voices the possibility that Cadance (the only fugitive whom Twilight still trusts and respects) is in danger from Jewelius, making Twilight conflicted enough to let the Changelings escape. However, Chrysalis' act of instilling in Twilight the first seeds of doubt regarding Jewelius' trustworthiness, along with his above-described behaviour supporting Chrysalis' claims, leads to Twilight realizing how unwell things are in Jewelius' hooves.
• The Nuptialverse has multiple examples:
  • In the backstory, as shown in Metamorphosis: Discord makes Celestia and Luna immortal to torture them, and lets them take the remains of the orb containing the Energy of Friendship. This gives them the time they need to become alicorns and turn the pieces into the Elements of Harmony. Longtime viewers of the show know how well that would have turned out for Discord.
  • During the climax of Families, Olive Branch's men manage to turn their kidnapping of Twilight, Applejack, and Pinkie Pine into a complete 180 merely by telling Twilight that Spike will die.
  • As Luna gloatingly tells Olive Branch himself after he's arrested, his half-assed plan and the actions of himself and his lieutenants have caused the anti-Celestia movement to lose almost all support, not only allowing the royals to focus once more on searching for Chrysalis rather than defending their position but now no one will object to Twilight officially adopting Spike.
• In the Pony POV Series:
  • Discord's Mind Rape of the Mane Cast before his downfall leads to the entire Mane Cast becoming better off than beforehand, with such things happening as Applejack becoming a Living Lie Detector and Pinkie Pie becoming much more crazy than normal by performing a Split-Personality Merge and healing herself of a serious mental condition, which wouldn't have happened if he hadn't done it. Not only that, but thanks to him the Mane Cast gets two Sixth Rangers and new Elements of Harmony, one of which he made himself. The most extreme example of this happened in the backstory. Discord was the one who accidentally created the Elements of Harmony in the first place. That's right, Discord created the only thing that could defeat him.
    • Also, in the Dark World spin-off arc, the fact that he kept the Main Six alive as his Brainwashed and Crazy Co-Dragons for an entire millennium meant that by the time they were finally free from his control, they had become so powerful they were able to take on reality warping physical gods like Discord and actually win!
  • Queen Chrysalis initially has the upper hand against Princess Cadance and mocks her for not fighting at her full potential, as Alicorns have the powers of all pony tribes. This causes Cadence to suddenly realize she can shape-shift like a Changeling does, which turns the tide.
• In Shorn, the Order of Harmony demands that Princesses Celestia and Luna, along with the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, should shave their heads and humble themselves to prove themselves worthy of hearing the knowledge the Order safeguards. Rarity refuses. When Celestia and Luna try to bargain with the Order's head, his vicious rant reveals that he's hiding behind tradition as an excuse to force the mares to humiliate themselves as a way of stroking his ego. This motivates Celestia to take advantage of the fact that she and Luna previously went through this two thousand years ago to pull rank, forcing the Order to comply with her demands.

Naruto

• Androgyninja's A Dose of Venom: Sakura's Psycho Psychologist Ishino points out that she hasn't made a serious effort to reconnect with Ino and repair their strained friendship. She promptly corrects this — something that promptly bites Ishino on the booty, given how pissed off Ino is to learn that he abused their clan's Mind-Walking technique to hurt her friend.
• Hakumei: By attempting to get Naruto disqualified from the Chuunin Exams, the Sound Trio accidentally brings him to the attention of Yugito, who winds up joining Hakumei.
• In A Leaf of the Tree, Kabuto gives Takeo all of his ninja info cards. This gets them brought to the attention of the Hokage, with Hiruzen and Danzo realising that there was a security breach and setting up more safeguards.
• True Potential: Suzumebachi manages to galvanize plenty of support in Iwa towards challenging Onoki to a formal duel for the position of Tsuchikage in her plot to erase all the progress he's made and go to war against Konoha (especially after Danzo's operatives manage to kill her brothers but fail to kill her); traditionally, when the duel is won, the loser and all of Iwa will follow the winner's lead without question. But after her victory, Suzumebachi then coldly executes the unconscious and helpless Onoki. This blatant breaking of tradition and cold-blooded act of murder immediately turns the entire crowd against her, guaranteeing they'd never follow her as Tsuchikage and leaving the alliance with Konoha intact.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Advice and Trust: Bardiel grew an S2 organ into Unit 03 when it hijacked the giant mecha. Thanks to that NERV got an Eva would not run out of power, which saved Shinji and Asuka when they used Unit 03 to fight Zeruel and they ran out of external power.

Once Upon a Time

• Regina basically does this by doing nothing in Finding You Always; unaware that Charming/David Nolan arrived 'outside' of Storeybrooke, she spent the first decade assuming her plans for him had worked, unaware that he was actually in a coma outside the town with Emma actively aware of her destiny and looking for him. As a result, when David regains consciousness and comes to Storeybrooke with the ten-year-old Emma, his would-have-been Storeybrooke wife Kathryn has married the person she loved in the Enchanted Forest, leaving David free to pursue Mary Margaret even before they remember their true identities.

One Piece

• This Bites!:
  • Intent on getting the fight with Luffy that he has waited for without Lucci getting in the way, Jabra takes out Blueno before he can regroup and report back to Spandam, solving the Straw-Hats' problem of the foolproof backup plan to get Robin out of their reach.
  • The fact that Jabra kept a Six Powers cheat sheet in his room for review greatly helped Boss when he got his flippers on it.
  • Thanks to Spandam having such a superiority complex that he kept an operational black book for CP9, a black-ops organisation whose actions are all but clandestine, in his possession, Cross is able to broadcast on the SBS enough Dirty Business to permanently tarnish the WG's reputation.
  • During their Cat Fight, Kalifa attempts to use her Bubble-Bubble Fruit to wash Nami's mind blank of any thoughts, but all she ends up doing is washing away all of Nami's stress instead. As such later, she doesn't hesitate to jump into the churning waters between the Tower of Justice and the Bridge of Hesitation, in order to get to and activate the controls that close the Gates of Justice.
  • As the Straw Hats approached the end of Paradise, Cross and his co-collaborators are unsure how to explain to Luffy that the crew needs to be temporarily disbanded so they can train for the two years needed to survive the New World. But thanks to Doflamingo's manipulation throughout the Sabaody Revolution and Ace's capture and execution being announced by Kizaru, Luffy comes to the conclusion that his crew isn't ready for the New World on his own, and while not happy with it, he accepts that the crew has to split up and train if they want to survive, let alone reach the One Piece.
  • Cross spends the remainder of Paradise after Enies Lobby convinced that he's completely averted the events leading to Ace's death and the Marineford War, meaning he makes no preparations for it even as he gets ready for the Time Skip separation. Then Kizaru spills the beans, and he spends what time he has left giving Luffy, the Whitebeards, and the New World Masons all the information he can to try and counteract the Navy's plans, and on the day of the execution he calls up Sengoku on the SBS to call him out on his hypocritical and pointless reasons for wanting Ace dead, which further ruins the World Government's PR, and inspires the Revolutionaries and Supernovas to intervene. Altogether, this renders the events at Marineford an even bigger disaster for the Marines as while Whiteboard still dies, Ace lives, and Cross happily rubs it in the Government's faces during his last SBS before the time skip that all this would have been avoided and they would have won if they hadn't sent Kizaru to mock them.

Persona

• In Forewarned is Forearmed, Akechi attempts to sabotage Naoto's investigation into the circumstances of Akira's probation by having her blacklisted by every police organization she's ever made contact with. He smugly believes that this will get her off his trail as she'll be struggling to find work. In reality, this ends up narrowing the candidates of suspicious people down to him, and she immediately warns Yu and Akira about this while finding work with the Shadow Operatives for the time being.

Pokémon

• During the Opelucid City fight in Pokémon Black & White: Tale of a Legend, Zinzolin mocks Bianca and Volan for taking on his Weavile with unevolved Pokémon... and as one, they decide that now is the time to evolve them. And that's how a Weavile ends up losing to a Grass-type and a Flying-type.
• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: During the Fuchsia Tag Tournament, Ash and Red have a heated argument over the use of their bloodliner powers in competitive battling that causes their teamwork to fall apart during the semifinals. Then Paul decides to release his Raichu for losing one too many battles, not even bothering to properly heal her. This action prompts Ash and Red to forget their differences and work together to ensure that Paul doesn't win the tournament.

Rango

• In the first chapter of Old West, Tomson tells Sheriff Rango that he's looking for a snake without giving specifics. This leads Rango's thoughts to Rattlesnake Jake (the only snake he knows) whom he seeks out and hires to protect the town against the mercenary harassers. Jake's presence makes it a lot harder for Tomson's employer, Dufayel, to claim the lands in his campaign to get the underground gold.

The Rising of the Shield Hero

• I am Bitch, the Shield Hero's Slut: The Church of Three Heroes tries to free Malty from Naofumi by hiring mercenaries, but because he's already earned her Undying Loyalty, they instead kill said mercenaries and manage to reach level forty (so they can get their class upgrades) before the next Wave, something Malty had realized was impossible at their current rate.

Rosario + Vampire

• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
  • In Act I chapter 30, Rarosun and Surason have Dark and Rason tricked into thinking that they molested the other's respective girlfriends, and have Mizore and Kurumu restrained and are making them watch the fight. However, the two get tired of waiting and decide to morph into Mizore and Kurumu and give the boys the final push to kill each other; instead, Dark and Rason see through their disguises, promptly kill the Kiyo brothers, and subsequently realize they were duped. In short, Rarosun and Surason screwed themselves over through their own impatience and sadism.
  • In Act IV chapter 19, when Hitomi petrifies Moka, it allows Inner Moka to bypass her seal, break free of the petrifaction, and kick her ass.

The Secret World of Alex Mack

• The Secret Return of Alex Mack: The location of the Collective's base is a secret for most of the story. Then they try snatching every unaligned Orphan, at which point Batman foils the attempt on Bruce Paine and finds a clue to the general area. And there's only one location in that area that is always covered in fog.

Sherlock Holmes

• Mortality: Smith captures Holmes, tortures him with an inch of his life, and gloats over the guy while he's dying. Basically, Smith unknowingly tripped off protective instincts.
  • The captured criminal, especially. Watson is trying to get information on his friend's whereabouts, and said "If your master's actions destroy him whom I regard as the best and wisest man I have ever known, make no mistake that I shall hunt down to a man everyone who played a part in his destruction." Cue idiotic criminal most likely begging for remorse in playing a part in Holmes's long-term imprisonment, which leads to said idiot being killed IN COLD BLOOD.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• The Mountain and the Wolf:
  • While unaware of his influencing things one way or another, the Wolf's interference allowed several characters to survive their canon deaths, such as Wun Wun, Theon Greyjoy, and Beric Dondarrion.
  • His dispatching a Crow Brother to the Winterfell crypts allowed the civilians inside to escape, as the wights were concentrated on killing it instead of them.
• The Weirwood Queen: Cersei Lannister has a tendency to inadvertently help out her enemies due to her extreme arrogance, short-sightedness, paranoia, and the simple fact that she's nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is. Specific incidents include:
  • Her decision to endorse the Sansa/Olyvar marriage ends in a fiasco for the Lannisters. Sansa was the Lannisters' only real card against Robb and the marriage allowed Sansa to leave King's Landing, meaning she is no longer their hostage and can't be used as a bargaining chip anymore. What’s more, given that Olyvar is actually Aegon Targaryen VI, letting Sansa marry him basically gives the North a very important ally and weakens her own position overall.
  • Cersei tries to get Mace, Margaery, and Loras Tyrell murdered by sellswords pretending to be Northmen, which would allow her to get rid of the Tyrells in King's Landing while still keeping Highgarden loyal to her and frame the Starks as well. Instead, while Mace is successfully killed, both Margaery and Loras survive and escape to the North, where Margaery has her marriage to Tommen annulled so she can marry Robb (an alliance that gives the North some badly needed supplies for the upcoming winter), and sends a message to her older brother Willas informing him of the truth. The end result is that the Tyrells sever ties with the Lannisters and declare Tommen a bastard, massively weakening Cersei's position just in time for Olyvar and Sansa's invasion.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• Sonic the Hedgehog: Redemption and Revenge has Lien-Da suggesting to Eggman, who is upgrading Mecha Sally, to put her original Spark which results in restoring her free will. Way to go, Lien-Da.

Stargate-verse

• Ba'al arguably does this in the Stargate SG-1 fic Ending Before We Begin which looks at one of Ba'al's clones attempting the same time-travel attack as the original attempted in Stargate: Continuum, but on this occasion going back just over a decade in time and capturing Jack, Sam, and Daniel before Jack and Daniel were brought into the Stargate program. As part of his attempts to manipulate and control the future SG-1, Ba'al intends to turn Sam into Hathor's new host and is able to bring Charlie O'Neill back to life (the Charlie that was buried was a dead clone) so that he can use Jack's son as a hostage to control his future enemy. However, Sam and Daniel escape after killing Hathor before she can be implanted in a host, and Jack uses a salvaged puddle jumper Ba'al was forcing him to fly to abandon Ba'al in the middle of Antarctica while returning home with Charlie. As a result, Earth has gained considerably more knowledge of the wider universe than they would have possessed in canon, and dealt with a significant threat and gained a key asset years in advance (Admittedly, most of that knowledge came because the clone wouldn't stop monologuing...)
• Essentially applies for Kinsey in What You Already Know: Lost City, as Kinsey's efforts to kill Daniel not only lead to Kinsey being assassinated by his erstwhile allies but also expose the existence of the Trust to the SGC so that the organization can be shut down before they get the chance to become a more genuine threat.

Star Wars

• Double Agent Vader begins with Darth Vader being sent by Emperor Palpatine on a mission to his former homeworld of Tatooine; Palpatine's intention is to taunt him by reminding him of what he's lost, but the actual result is that he finds a way to reconnect with his roots, reclaims his identity as Anakin Skywalker, and dedicates himself to bringing down Palpatine and the Empire from the inside.
• The Finer Shades of Why is basically all about Dooku doing this; realising Palpatine's intention to replace him with Anakin, Dooku kills Palpatine himself, triggers Order 66 (resulting in the death of Yoda and various other Jedi), and captures Obi-Wan and Anakin with the intention of corrupting Obi-Wan to the Dark Side while using Anakin as a hostage. Not only does Dooku fail to corrupt Obi-Wan, but he failed to take into account that Palpatine's plan depends on him being in charge of both sides of the conflict, with the result that Dooku encourages opposition against himself from the Republic forces from the beginning where Palpatine could have presented himself as the Chancellor or Darth Sidious depending on which side won. On a more personal note, Dooku's attempts to taunt Obi-Wan with the 'truth' about Anakin, such as him killing the Sand People after his mother's death and his marriage to Padme, actually just help Obi-Wan and Anakin confront the issues Palpatine had attempted to create in their relationship and acknowledge Anakin's need for emotional support, with the result that Anakin affirms his dedication to the Light Side even in the face of Dooku's taunts. His part of the story ends with Dooku defeated and even having a Heel Realization because of all those events.
• Revenge of the (kinder, gentler) Sith has a complex version of this where Palpatine took Padme as an apprentice when she was twelve. While Padme has only weak Force potential, she is also smart enough to realise that Palpatine considers her more of a pawn in his plan than a true potential successor, and manages to arrange events so that Palpatine is killed during her trip to Coruscant, allowing her to take Anakin as her apprentice and work to shape the Sith into a comparatively more benevolent Order.
• Ironically, Palpatine basically does this in Take My Hand; learning that Mara Jade, the woman he had come to love, was actually the Emperor's personal assassin, was initially a shock to Luke, but the revelation that the Emperor has had someone that close to his inner circle for the last few days gives Luke 'evidence' to support his argument that the Empire's knowledge of the Rebel Alliance's attack is new rather than them walking into a trap. As a result, Luke maintains a clearer control of his emotions during the duel on the Death Star, culminating in him convincing Mara to join him in fighting Vader and the Emperor, with Luke making a more positive showing of his own skills in his duel with Vader and convincing Vader to turn on the Emperor with greater ease.

Supernatural

• It's All in the Details has Zachariah in particular make things better for the Winchesters by accident;
  • When Zachariah orders Castiel to send Dean back in time to witness Azazel's deal with Mary even when Castiel reveals that Dean already knows about the deal, this results in Dean changing history so that Samuel and Deanna survived Azazel's attack, with Deanna still alive in the present day and Dean and Sam having had a happier childhood (Samuel died in the same fire that killed Mary). Zachariah is particularly frustrated that he can't even legitimately get angry at Castiel for these changes when the other angel told him that wasn't a good idea.
  • Later on, believing that Alastair had become the new final Seal, Naomi and Zachariah abduct Alastair just as he is attacking Dean, but their efforts to complete a ritual that would fully restore the last Seal just cause Alastair to explode, as the last Seal is actually Abaddon (it was initially Anna as a fallen angel, but it shifted to Abaddon once she returned to the present due to her sheer power, but the angels initially assumed it was Alastair as the strongest known demon).

Tolkien's Legendarium

• In Heart of the Inferno, Smaug at first refuses to involve himself and his soulmate Kathryn in the War of the Ring when Gandalf and members of the Free Peoples ask for their aid. The dragon changes his mind when Kathryn is psychically assaulted by Sauron just as her labour begins, and he vows to destroy the Dark Lord.

Turning Red

• In Turning Red: Secrets of the Panda, during his fight with Xia, Howard accidentally breaks the ring which contained Mei's panda spirit, releasing the spirit and allowing it to re-enter Mei's body, instantly changing her to her panda form.

When They Cry

• Sillyhat Productions: During "Endgame Tea Party", Battler and Beatrice seem on the verge of permanently breaking apart due to the replica boards, with Battle accusing her of being a fake who can't even use the red truth... except that when Lambdadelta restored all of his missing memories, it included an instance of her doing just that. And he remembers that.

Wicked

• The Land of What Might-Have-Been;
  • Just prior to the final battle, the Empress tries to recreate the Champion by transferring Fiyero/the Scarecrow's soul into his body, but since she was unaware that Elphaba had tampered with the transfer system, Fiyero comes through the process with his personality fully intact and with a body augmented beyond even the standard Purified.
  • Indirectly features in the epilogue; after Elphaba and the others return to Oz, she only has to deal with a few poisoning attempts because Morrible attempted to play up the ‘deaths’ of Dorothy and the others by claiming that the Witch couldn’t be killed by mortal weapons, stopping people from attempting more blatant attempts to kill Elphaba because they think it won’t work.

Worm

• Hilariously parodied in Collection Quest. Vees attempts to manipulate Danny and Taylor into making Taylor subservient to Danny (and therefore Vees) so they can rub their skills in Queen Administrator's face. However, they do so by playing up the 'family' angle so much that Danny promises to help Taylor out, which is the exact opposite of what Vees wanted. The fact that it plays so big a part in healing their relationship is just icing on the cake.

X-Men: Evolution

• In Wanda's Life, Magneto basically ruins his own plans when he abducts Wanda from Xavier's school and has Mastermind change her memories so that she remembers living with him rather than Xavier. As this included erasing Wanda's memory of her relationship with Kurt, Mystique is naturally outraged that Magneto would deprive her son of a happy relationship, and Lance is so uncomfortable with what Magneto did that he helps Wanda remember her true past.

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