History GoneHorriblyRight / Literature

* In the classic Russian short story "Put too Much Salt" by Creator/AntonChekhov a traveler riding a mailcoach is scared of the large and rough driver and tries to scare him. The traveller sort-of-casually mentions how BadAss he is, how many weapons he carries, how he loves to fight and that several armed friends will be joining him midway to the next station. The driver thinks he's a bandit and runs away. Leaving the coach in the winter forest in the middle of nowhere with sunset approaching. Fortunately, the driver only hid within earshot and the traveler managed to persuade him it all was a joke.

* ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'': Esmenet bears the children of her emotionless supergenius husband Kellhus. All she wants is a child who will love her back, but all of her children by Kellhus are as emotionless as him. Then finally she has Kelmomas, who appears to be a normal, loving son. Little does she realize that he's actually a manipulative, psychotic and murderous EnfantTerrible who is so obsessed with loving her that he wants to be ''the only one'' to receive her love.

* {{Discworld}};

* ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'': Esmenet bears the children of her emotionless supergenius husband Kellhus. All she wants is a child who will love her back, but all of her children by Kellhus are as emotionless as him. Then finally she has Kelmomas, who appears to be a normal, loving son. Little does she realize that he's actually a manipulative, psychotic and murderous InfantTerrible who is so obsessed with loving her that he wants to be ''the only one'' to receive her love.

* ''Literature/SecondApocalypse'': Esmenet bears the children of her emotionless supergenius husband Kellhus. All she wants is a child who will love her back, but all of her children by Kellhus are as emotionless as him. Then finally she has Kelmomas, who appears to be a normal, loving son. Little does she realize that he's actually a manipulative, psychotic and murderous InfanteTerrible who is so obsessed with loving her that he wants to be ''the only one'' to receive her love.

* Mention is made in ''Literature/TheLostFleet'' of a secret project to make an undetectable bioweapon. It worked so well that nobody could tell that it had escaped containment and infected its creators until they started dying - at which point the epidemic had spread out of control. As a result of this project, the moon of Europa is totally uninhabited, and there's a small fleet dedicated to quarantining it so that nobody can accidentally let the Europa plague escape the gravity well and contaminate the rest of the galaxy.

* "Answer" is a very short (about 200-word) science fiction story by FredricBrown, in which a computer is built to answer the question, "Is there a God?" The computer answers [[spoiler:"Yes, now there is a God," and with a single lightning bolt kills the man who tries to turn it off and fuses its switch on]].

* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'': In the first book, Tasio's goal was for Eric to [[GrewASpine Grow A Spine]]. By the third book, Eric has become so confident that he sasses Tasio when The Trickster is trying to enlist his help for a new goal.

* ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'': In the first book, Tasio's goal was for Eric to GrowASpine. By the third book, Eric has become so confident that he sasses Tasio when The Trickster is trying to enlist his help for a new goal.

** Penny's debut as a superheroine results in adults taking her seriously and thus forbidding her from doing anything similar until she's 18.

* In ''CheaperByTheDozen'', Frank Gilbreth Senior prides himself in having his family operate much like their own company, holding meetings about matters, bidding on bigger chores, etc. This backfires when his children conspire and all vote in favor of getting a dog, which of course has them outvote him twelve to one. He panics when this happens, as he realizes that they could conceivably vote in favor of all sorts of frivolous things. Fortunately, they stop with the dog. There's also the matter of Lilly winning the bid to paint the fence for five cents (she was saving up for roller skates). The job is clearly too much for her to handle and she spends the entire time working on it exhausted. Both of her parents are upset, but the children were taught to follow through on their jobs, so she went through it to the end. [[spoiler:When she finished, her father paid her the five cents [[CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming and then revealed that he bought her the roller skates she'd wanted]].]]
* The killer in DeanKoontz's ''Mr. Murder''. He's eventually revealed to be a genetically engineered [[ProfessionalKiller ideal killer]] who just happens [[spoiler:[[IdenticalStranger to look just like the book's protagonist]]]]. While various aspects of him are GoneHorriblyWrong, one ''very'' scary aspect was a case of this trope: his genetic propensity for rapid self-healing and self-repair. [[spoiler:Turns out that same capacity was also removing the ''intentional'' imperfections put into him to keep him impotent, giving his handlers all the more reason to round up their ''now-renegade'' assassin, as he'd ''also'' developed a tendency to rape prostitutes]].
* A lot of RobertSheckley's short stories have this:

** Gentling (rendering unable to use magic) the male channelers worked very efficiently to remove male channelers from the population and keep them from taking over, including CrystalDragonJesus when he was needed to take over and defeat the forces of darkness.
*** Gentling also had the unfortunate side effect of eventual death from loss of the will to live or suicide. By the time the main story unfolds, channelers of both sexes are at an all time low and it's theorized (in-universe) that it's due to natural selection.

*** Since they were incapable of ''outright'' lying, most people just assumed they were being dishonest through lies of omission or literal truths (not that the assumption was entirely off base)

** Gentling the male channelers worked very efficiently to remove male channelers from the population and keep them from taking over, including CrystalDragonJesus when he was needed to take over and defeat the forces of darkness.

* In the ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'' universe, genetically engineered viral cures for the common cold and for cancer both worked very well. What no one knew was what would happen when the two met. Hello, ZombieApocalypse.

* In {{Discworld}}, golems are prone to this, often taking a cue from the broom in ''Sorcerer's Apprentice'' by performing their tasks to excess. Turns out they do this deliberately; they are fully sentient beings who, while unable to disobey their masters directly, can still rebel by invoking this trope.
* In ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', the Thaum Reactor was built for the purpose of creating more heat for the University in winter (The Senior Faculty were lukewarm on the subject of knowledge, but boiling hot when it came to frosty windows). The reactor ends up working too well- just before Hex channels the excessive magic into the Roundworld Project, the college becomes so hot that Ridcully dreams he's lost in a broiling desert, only to find reality no different in temperature.

** In ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld'', the Thaum Reactor was built for the purpose of creating more heat for the University in winter (The Senior Faculty were lukewarm on the subject of knowledge, but boiling hot when it came to frosty windows). The reactor ends up working too well- just before Hex channels the excessive magic into the Roundworld Project, the college becomes so hot that Ridcully dreams he's lost in a broiling desert, only to find reality no different in temperature.

** On the planet Darni, which had very masculine culture, scientist created a GenderBender method by which a female embrio could become male. Most future parents used this method. As a result, Darni is now a NoWomansLand, where woman comprise only about 10% of population and are mostly used as breeding machines, while men constantly fight over them.
** On Earth, the government understood the above implications the moment it heard of the method. Realising that a ban would not be enough, it had its scientists develope an andtidote, which was the forcibly administered to all fertile women on Earth. Unfortunately in the haste the antidote was only tested on girl embrios, and while it works perfectly on them, it also has a high chance of ''reversed'' effect on boy embrios, turning them into girls - so now on Earth, [[LadyLand women outnumber men]] greatly. HilarityEnsues, though not to the same extent as on Darni - at least it remains peaceful.

* In {{Discworld}}, golems are prone to this, often taking a cue from the broom in ''Sorcerer's Apprentice'' by performing their tasks to excess. Turns out they do this deliberately; they are fully sentient beings who, while unable to disobey their masters directly, can still rebel by invoking this trope.

* In ''Literature/SonOfTheBlackSword'', this happens rather satisfyingly at the end of the book. Omand, who has been congratulating himself on his [[BatmanGambit fiendishly clever plan]] of making the [[ExtremeDoormat completely-and-utterly-obedient-to-the-Law-]], not to mention [[DeTerminator invincible]] and [[TheDreaded widely feared]] Ashok into the rebels' new leader....only to realize that Ashok's pure devotion to the Law just ''might'' turn into [[TheUnfettered pure devotion]] to another cause. Omand is too [[SmugSnake smug]] to panic, but he's definitely disturbed by the thought.

** And from ''Literature/TalesOfTheBountyHunters,'' we have IG-88. Some scientists work to create the ultimate assassin droid, one that can kill efficiently and protect itself. After trying to turn it off, it labels them as threats and kills them all in less than a minute.

* In ''Literature/DragonBones'', Ward pretends to have [[ObfuscatingStupidity brain damage]] after his father beat him nearly to death, in order to seem so harmless that his father won't try to kill him again. It works. The problem is, it works so well that, when his father has died, people try to take Ward to an asylum for insane nobles. He has to prove that he is not so stupid after all. Later, he tries to convince people that he's a scheming bastard who would do everything to get his position as heir of castle Hurog back. It works - even his own allies now think he would walk over the dead bodies of his relatives to achieve his goals, and are angry at him. It takes him some time to recover from the shock this causes him, and convince them that he would never do such a thing.

* In the first collection of ''Literature/ArseneLupin'' short stories, Lupin's first heist, as a kid, stealing jewelry from his mother's employer (She was a maid to a rich couple) to pay for health care for said mother who was sick. The employers never found how the theft was made, or who made it... So they assumed Lupin's mother had done the deed and fired her over it.

** The exile Noldor Elves create the Rings of Power during the Second Age, enabling them to stop the flow of time and prevent them from fading (as was their fate in Middle-Earth). Thus they enabled the rise of Sauron as the new DarkLord, and eventually caused downfall of the mightiest of their ''own'' allies - the kingdom of Nûmenor of Men.

* ''{{Carrie}}'': [[AlphaBitch Chris]] wanted to humiliate Carrie at the prom as revenge for her getting kicked out of said prom, which she blames on Carrie. It works -- Carrie is getting laughed at by hundreds of her classmates and faculty, and she's collapsing into tears on what should be the happiest night of her life... and then everybody finds out why it's not wise to laugh at somebody who can [[MindOverMatter kill hundreds of people with her mind]].
* In another StephenKing book, ''Literature/{{Cell}}'', it's theorised that the Pulse - a cell phone signal that causes people to go crazy, causing the collapse of civilisation - actually started as a terrorist weapon that got out of control when the signal kept getting relayed all over the world.

** In fact, a several other stories can be thought of as robots doing their work too well, such as "Robbie", "Satisfaction Guaranteed", "Kid Brother", and "Reason".

* TheSilmarillion:

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