History Main / MeaninglessVillainVictory

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', Kefka gets what he wants, ascending to godhood by absorbing the power of the three statues and then rearranging them. Once he's arrived at the pinnacle, [[AndThenWhat he suddenly loses all sense of purpose]], and sets about killing people for his own amusement, until he grows bored of that too. Following this, [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum he just decides to destroy the world]] because he believes that [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery life has become unbearably meaningless]]. The protagonists, meanwhile, inverted the trope entirely by finding purpose and reasons to live after their defeat, and are able to put a stop to him.

* ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueAdventures,'' the comic-tie in with the "''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague''" series, in issue #15 had Kanjar Ro hired by Kromm and Sayyar, two Warlords who were in "war games" with Queen Hyathis. Kanjor Ro ends up capturing Hyathis' latest prize, the Gamma Gong, and the Justice League as well. Kanjar Ro uses the Gamma Gong to entrance Hyathis' people, and loot her trophies. When Ro seems he'd get away with his loot when the Gong's destroyed, Hyathis gives him a proposition Batman advises her to: join the Warlords in their games. This gives Kanjar Ro "respectability" as it means he's no longer scurrying around like a thief; but Queen Hyathis then reminds Ro he's limited in the use of his loot. And that she'd watch him, Kromm, and Sayyar to make sure they don't cheat from here on. To help with enforcement of this...the Queen shows her new allies -- The Justice League!

* The ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' episode "Patriot Act" has Wade Eiling, having used a SuperSoldier formula to become a hulking behemoth, attack a parade where the Justice League sent a number of its members to show support. His intent was to defeat the League and prove the danger of superpowered individuals, and he delivers a brutal CurbStompBattle to the Leaguers present--but ends up accomplishing the exact opposite of his goals. As it turns out, all the Leaguers present were {{Badass Normal}}s with nothing but tech and magical equipment at best, and yet still managed to HoldTheLine through sheer gallantry in the name of protecting the civilians. And, as is pointed out, Eiling's attempt to prove that the Justice League are dangerous metahumans resulted in him ''becoming'' [[YouAreWhatYouHate a dangerous metahuman]], which the Justice League exists to combat. If anything, his attack actually ''raises'' the profile of the Leaguers involved, who were previously seen as CListFodder who were picked for parade duty in the first place for not being involved in anything important at the time: the crowd goes from disappointed to hailing them as true heroes.

* The final episode of ''Series/{{Alias}}'' has [[spoiler:Sloane finally achieving immortality... only for Jack to sacrifice himself in an effort to [[SealedEvilInACan seal Sloane beneath a mountain]] for all eternity.]]

** In "Dances with Smurfs" Cartman uses his position as morning announcement leader to basically become an obnoxious sensationalist pundit who Wendy, the school president, for literally ''everything'' as well as accusing her of trying to kill Franchise/TheSmurfs, which ends with Wendy admitting Cartman is right and stepping down so Cartman can become the school president. Except, Wendy admits he was right in a way that makes him seem like the bad guy in his fictional Smurf story with her being heavily sympathetic, ''she'' sells the rights to the story to Creator/JamesCameron who uses it to make ''Film/{{Avatar}}'', Cartman can no longer read the morning announcements since that can't be done by the school president, and he learns said school president is at best [[PuppetKing a figurehead with no real power]]. Naturally, it also ends with the new morning announcement kid all the school's problems on the school president.

* The ''Franchise/IndianaJones'' movies almost always do this. Despite, and often because of, Indy's best efforts, the bad guys obtain their prize, only to be killed by it.

** Indy and Elsa manage to acquire the Holy Grail in ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheLastCrusade'', but the knight guarding the Grail informs them that it can't be removed from the temple. Elsa tries anyway and dies for her efforts.
** Irina achieves her goal in ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheKingdomOfTheCrystalSkull'' of attaining knowledge from the aliens. However, [[MySkullRunnethOver the information she receives is too much]] and she disintegrates while begging them to stop.

* ''VideoGame/CapcomFightingEvolution'': Play as [[VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}} Jedah Dohma]] and for him, victory is assured. Swarms of Q-Bees assaulting civilians, [[VideoGame/RedEarth Kongou and Gi Gi]] are wreaking havoc, and cities have been devasted. Jedah, rather fittingly, [[LaughingMad decides to celebrate his triumph]]... oh yeah, and [[VideoGame/DevilMayCry Dante]]'s about to kill him right there and then.

* In ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', Tai Lung does get the Dragon Scroll eventually. But it's blank. Or rather, it has a mirrored surface to show the reader ItWasWithYouAllAlong. Po gets the message, Tai Lung doesn't, and gets his tail kicked by Po because of it.

* ''Justice League Adventures,'' the comic-tie in with the "''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague''" series, in issue #15 had Kanjar Ro hired by Kromm and Sayyar, two Warlords who were in "war games" with Queen Hyathis. Kanjor Ro ends up capturing Hyathis' latest prize, the Gamma Gong, and the Justice League as well. Kanjar Ro uses the Gamma Gong to entrance Hyathis' people, and loot her trophies. When Ro seems he'd get away with his loot when the Gong's destroyed, Hyathis gives him a proposition Batman advises her to: join the Warlords in their games. This gives Kanjar Ro "respectability" as it means he's no longer scurrying around like a thief; but Queen Hyathis then reminds Ro he's limited in the use of his loot. And that she'd watch him, Kromm, and Sayyar to make sure they don't cheat from here on. To help with enforcement of this...the Queen shows her new allies -- The Justice League!

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'': Near the end of Season 3, Zaheer achieves his goal of [[spoiler:dispatching the already corrupt and incompetent Earth Queen, resulting in the Earth Kingdom descending into chaos, but in the process he's lost everyone he cares about and ends up in prison for his crimes. What elevates this act from a PyrrhicVictory to this trope is Kuvira promptly [[TyrantTakesTheHelm installing herself as the dictator of the newly christened Earth Empire]], and thus [[MakeWayForTheNewVillains taking over as the new]] BigBad of the fourth season. To add insult to injury, he also tried to get rid of the Avatar for good as part of his scheme, which incapacitated Korra to the extent that she wasn't able to deal with Kuvira when she otherwise could've, allowing the latter to become a far more oppressive and monstrous despot than even the Earth Queen could've hoped to be - and for someone who values freedom as much as Zaheer does, spending life in prison is nothing compared to the horrors she's unleashed]]. So all in all, as he himself bitterly concedes, the only thing Zaheer succeeded at in the long term was making an already bad global situation even ''worse''.

** ''ComicBook/TheBlackRing'': Luthor becomes a PhysicalGod at the climax, just as he'd wanted, but he cannot use the power for negative purposes. This is largely fine by Luthor, who uses the power to banish suffering from the universe... until he finds out that he can't harm Superman. He winds up throwing away everything he'd spent the series working for so he could attack Superman again. Total time with unlimited cosmic powers: less than 5 minutes. To top everything, that was his final appearance in that continuity.

** In ''Film/IndianaJonesAndTheDialOfDestiny'', Jürgen Voller manages to get the titular device and accomplish his objective of traveling back in time, [[spoiler:but the Dial of Destiny is set to carry travelers to only one location: the Siege of Syracuse, many centuries before modern Germany even exists, let alone the Nazi regime Voller wishes to save from losing in World War II. And then Voller is killed by the Greek army, sealing the StableTimeLoop that was foreshadowed well in advance.]]

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'': Near the end of Season 3, Zaheer achieves his goal of [[spoiler:dispatching the already corrupt and incompetent Earth Queen, resulting in the Earth Kingdom descending into chaos, but in the process he's lost everyone he cares about and ends up in prison for his crimes. What elevates this act from a PyrrhicVictory to this trope is the fact that Kuvira [[TyrantTakesTheHelm installs herself as the dictator of the newly christened Earth Empire]], [[MakeWayForTheNewVillains taking over as the new]] BigBad of the fourth season. To add insult to injury, he also tried to get rid of the Avatar for good as part of his scheme, which incapacitated Korra to the extent that she wasn't able to deal with Kuvira when she otherwise could've, allowing the latter to become a far more oppressive and monstrous despot than even the Earth Queen could've hoped to be - and for someone who values freedom as much as Zaheer does, spending life in prison is nothing compared to the horrors she's unleashed]]. So all in all, as he himself concedes, the only thing Zaheer has succeeded at in the long term is making an already bad global situation even ''worse''.

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', Kuja's mastery of XanatosSpeedChess allows him to out-maneuver every other character and eventually ascend to become a PersonOfMassDestruction unrivaled by any other in the story. He celebrates by [[TheStarscream killing his master]], and then prepares to finally TakeOverTheWorld. However, the spirit of his master then tells him that his victory is meaningless, because Kuja was designed to have a finite lifespan and thus will die soon. Kuja... [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum does not take it well]].
[[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery At all.]]

* The original plot of ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'', the former TropeNamer, is subverted in the Star Trek novel 'Dark Mirror'. Picard reads a mirror universe version of ''The Merchant of Venice''. In the Mirror Universe Shylock gets his pound of flesh because no one would really think you can really get a pound of flesh without liant but utterly blank doll. Tetch has a breakdown, [[NeverMyFault blaming Batman for forcing him to resort to such measures]].
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', after Terry had to take off his mask to rescue a young boy from a fire, the boy reveals on the news he saw Batman's face. This gets the boy captured by Kobra agents to have his mind scanned to recreate Batman's face. By the time Terry reaches them, they completed the face recreation and the leader mocks Batman that his identity will be revealed to Kobra before jumping into a SnakePit. That is, until Terry sees the face Kobra made was actually the face of the boy's action figure.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGummiBears'', a villain tries to get control of the Great Book, by stealing Zummi's medallion. In the end, after Zummi outright gives him the medallion, he promptly tries to kill the Gummi Bears... and is himself incinerated instead, since "Nothing in the Great Book can hurt Gummi Bears."
* One arc of ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'' had Bullwinkle discover he was the heir to a recently dead British aristocrat and stood to inherit something like "a million pound note." Some of the aristocrat's relatives believed themselves the rightful heirs and did everything they could to keep him from inheriting. In the end it turned out he wasn't the heir after all (or was he?) and the relatives got their prize, a million pound PROMISSORY note. They were now responsible for paying back the aristocrat's debts, while Bullwinkle and Rocky literally sailed off into the sunset.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'':
** In one episode, "The Price" David Xanatos discovers a method to immortality based on the cauldron of life story. He kidnaps Hudson as a plan to test the formula by forcing him to bathe in it first, but Hudson is able to escape. Afterwards, Owen decides to dip his right arm into the formula. It's discovered that the formula does work, only it turns the person into ageless, solid, stone. Owen's arm remains turned to stone for the rest of the series. [[spoiler: Good thing he was really Puck in disguise and can easily neutralize the effect with his magic.]]
--> '''Xanatos:''' What does the legend say? Whoever bathes in it will live as long as the mountain stones. [[ExactWords How literal minded]].
** "Metamorphosis" has Xanatos gain the loyalty of several humans mutated into creatures similar to the Gargoyles, and they don't appear again until well into the show's second season, which ends with them turning on Xanatos.
** Another episode ends with Xanatos acquiring a dangerous computer virus that nearly destroyed the cyborg Gargoyle Coldstone, and is [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse never brought up again]].
* ''WesternAnimation/{{MASK}}'' did this a few times:
** Similar to the ''Dukes of Hazzard'' example above, one episode has a search for buried money in Washington, D.C. which turns out to be worthless Confederate money.
** Another episode has a search for a golden totem pole. Mayhem gets his hands on it first, but scans it for purity and discovers it's actually amber.
** Another episode has a search through the Scottish Highlands to find a buried treasure. Mayhem is last seen climbing out of the treasure chamber asking "Is that all there is?" and escaping. It turns out the "treasure" was the warmth of the cavern during cold weather.
* While most of the victories by The Light in ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'' play some part in their larger scheme, even events where their involvement seems tagged on, the episode that introduced Lex Luthor, which ended with him gaining the trust of the leaders of Korea stand-ins, turns into this simply because it's never ever brought up again.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' has Darth Maul work with Death Watch to take over Mandalore, and then pulls an EvilerThanThou on their leader, leaving him the uncontested ruler of the planet. Unfortunately for him, this draws the attention of [[BigBad Darth Sidious]], who shows up and puts him well and truly in his place, rendering his victory moot.
-->'''Sidious:''' You have become a [[SuddenlyShouting RIVAL]].
** Maul doesn't do any better in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels''. Every encounter with the heroes ends with him getting at least part of what he wanted, moving him closer and closer to a final reckoning with Kenobi... who kills him in a CurbStompBattle that lasts two seconds and three moves.
* ''WesternAnimation/PacMan'': When Pac-Man has to drive an armored truck, Mezmaron believes it contains power pellets and orders the ghost monsters to steal it. They do steal it but, instead of power pellets, it has fireworks.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''
** In "Plankton's Army", with the help of his brethren, Plankton manages to get into the Krusty Krab safe and procure the Krabby Patty formula. As he reads the ingredients out loud, he discovers that the most important one is four pounds of freshly ground [[spoiler:plankton]], which causes Plankton and his family to run out of the Krusty Krab. [[spoiler:It's then revealed that what Plankton found wasn't even the real formula and that Mr. Krabs has the actual one in his home under his mattress]].
** "Bucket Sweet Bucket" has another one involving Plankton. After tricking [=SpongeBob=], Patrick, and Squidward into fixing up the Chum Bucket, Plankton manages to get into the Krusty Krab safe and find the formula, [[spoiler:only for it not to be the formula, but a To Do list and that Mr. Krabs had the formula with him while he was on vacation]]. In addition, since [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick used the ''entire Krusty Krab'' to fix up the Chum Bucket, Plankton also lost his restaurant when Mr. Krabs pushes his back to its normal spot.
** Yet another one involving Plankton, in "For Here Or to Go", Plankton enters a contest at the Krusty Krab where the prize is a free Krabby Patty (and he brings in a contest official that makes Mr. Krabs allow Plankton to enter). Plankton manages to win and despite Krabs's attempts to prevent the patty from being made, Plankton gets his patty, but has to eat it on the premises. However, Plankton makes it back to the Chum Bucket and has the patty analyzed before it's digested, with him selling Krabby Patties the next day. [[spoiler: However, they taste awful, due to Karen having analyzed all the contents of Plankton's stomach, which in addition to the Krabby Patty also included things such as stomach acid and pills.]]
** The episode "I Heart Dancing" has this combined with KarmicTwistEnding. [=SpongeBob=] has been chosen to audition for a role in a dance number, but Squidward, jealous of him, decides to "teach" [=SpongeBob=] various dances in an effort to overwork him so he can't go to the audition and eventually works him like a dog. In the end, [=SpongeBob=] is too tired to go and Squidward auditions instead and gets the part. However, it turns out that the number Squidward's going to be dancing in is [[spoiler:Squilliam's, who proceeds to work Squidward like a dog much like Squidward worked [=SpongeBob=] like one]].
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'' involved a soapbox derby that many of the kids take part in that has a top-secret mystery grand prize. When Bebe and Chalky end up in trouble towards the end of the race, Doug and Skeeter decide to turn back and save them, allowing Roger to win the race. However, as Doug puts in his journal at the end of the episode, Roger won the mystery grand prize that everyone ''thought they wanted'', a week as vice mayor, a.k.a. a desk job where Roger has to do paperwork for Mayor White.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'', an episode involved a reindeer race that Kip O'Donnel and Neil Beiderman took part in where the prize was 1000 lievos. At the end of the race, Eliza exposes Kip and Beiderman's reindeer as a racehorse in disguise, which disqualifies them, but they're then shown making off with the 1000 lievos anyway. Turns out that "lievos" means "pastry" and that Kip now has 1000 pastries (no wait, 12 of them are Beiderman's).
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': After Hayley and Jeff absconded with $50,000, Roger tracks them down and begins harassing them to get the money (mostly by just making a really annoying sound over and over, which drives them crazy). After an elaborate chase around the world, they finally give in and give him the money... or what's left of it, since they spent most of it trying to get away from him.
* ''WesternAnimation/KiddVideo'' and his band once came across Master Blaster's good twin brother who's been imprisoned by the villain. It turns out he's the mayor of a city based around plumbing and has access to the city treasury. The kids try to get the good one recognized as the real deal, but their mother intervenes to let Master Blaster have the treasury. And he does go to take it...only to discover it's a pile of shower heads.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'', Aku hires cat-like hunter aliens to capture Jack. After a long, arduous chase, they finally subdue him. Unfortunately for Aku, however, their people have a custom that any prey who can give them such a challenging hunt deserves to run free.
** In another, Aku lured Jack to a graveyard and then wore him down with an endless army of undead before joining the fray himself. He manages to disarm Jack, has him completely at his mercy and is preparing to execute Jack with his own sword. Even Jack prays for forgiveness from his father for his failure. And then the sword bounces harmlessly off of Jack's chest with a metallic *tink* sound. The momentary distraction allows Jack to reclaim the sword and go on the offensive while stating that even he had forgotten that the sword was forged to destroy evil, it is completely harmless to the pure of heart.
** In season 5, Jack loses his sword - the only weapon that can harm Aku - but Aku himself is unaware of it [[VillainousBreakdown because he's since given up on tormenting Jack directly]]. Scaramouche, one of Aku's [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots mechanical assassins]], finds out, and after [[NotQuiteDead managing to survive]] his [[OffWithHisHead apparent destruction at Jack's hands]], starts seeking out Aku to tell him the good news. The problem is, he's now just a head with none of his impressive combat capabilities, can only move around by hopping, and has lost favor in the eyes of Aku after his defeat, making it difficult for him to actually get through to Aku. After many trials and tribulations he finally succeeds, and Aku rewards him with a brand new body... [[spoiler:and then immediately [[YouHaveFailedMe vaporizes him]] when it turns out that while Scaramouche was trying to relay his message, Jack had gotten his sword back in the meantime.]]
* The dream demon Morpheus in ''WesternAnimation/ExtremeGhostbusters'' too late realizes that he was invulnerable as long as he stayed in dreams. When he became corporeal, he became vulnerable to the Ghostbusters' weapons.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': At the end of Season 4, The Lich [[spoiler:tricks Finn into opening a portal to Prismo's Time Room. He then uses the one wish that anyone who enters the Time Room gets to wish for the extinction of all life. However, since Finn and Jake followed him through the portal before he made the wish, they weren't affected and also got wishes. Coaxed along by BenevolentGenie Prismo, Jake wishes that the Lich had used his wish to send Finn and Jake back home. All of the Lich's schemes and trickery to get to Prismo's Room is instantly rendered moot.]]
** And in Season 5, he makes a grand impact by successfully unleashing a jailbreak in the multiverse's #1 Superjail, but since Finn defeats him he's not around to lead the criminals into destroying the multiverse, so they're busy spreading plague and endless disease and all kinds of malicious life, the exact opposite of what he wanted.
* The ''WesternAnimation/WildWestCowboysOfMooMesa'' episode "Stolen on the River" had Sheriff Terrorbull cheat in a raffle to win the tickets to the Dixie Trixie that were given to the C.O.W.-Boys by a wealthy couple in gratitude for rescuing them from Five Card Cud and his gang. Sheriff succeeds, but his victory turns out to be pointless when it's discovered that the Dixie Trixie was just a front for Five Card Cud to dupe wealthy people out of their valuables and that the heroes had the boat hauled onto dry land when this was found out.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
** In the season 4 finale "The Disaster", [[spoiler:Rob]] finds a remote that can be used to control real objects and uses it to ruin Gumball's relationships with all his loved ones, make his parents get divorced, and very nearly kill Penny, before pausing time to reveal himself for a confrontation. He then uses the remote to open a portal to the Void, and tries to eject Gumball, but the remote doesn't work and [[spoiler:Rob]] assumes it's broken. He then tries a second plan: he throws the remote into the Void, forcing Gumball to jump in to try and find it so he can fix everything. [[spoiler:It turns out one of the batteries had just fallen slightly out of place; Gumball finds it, fixes it, and rewinds time back to the beginning]].
** Happens again in the follow-up "The Re-Run". [[spoiler:Rob actually manages to make things [[FromBadToWorse even worse than last time]], leading to Gumball's parents reverting to babies, Anais getting erased from existence, Darwin turning back into a regular fish in the middle of a mall and then suffocating to death, and Gumball getting trapped in the Void with him. However, when Rob sees that even after everything he's done, Gumball is still willing to risk his life to save him from being trapped in the Void for eternity, he has a fit of conscience and rewinds time to undo all the damage he's done and destroy the remote before he had done anything with it.]]
* I.R Baboon actually beats ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' in "I Are Big Star". Baboon steals Weasel's pelt and sidelines him for the rest of the episode. Baboon gets to act alongside a beautiful actress and his "performance" is praised by the director. Then he gets run over by a bus and he loses the memories of the best day of his life.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' ends with Bat-Mite screwing over the show to get it cancelled so that a darker, more serious Batman series will be made in its place. The new series focuses primarily on Bat''girl'', and as ComicBook/AmbushBug points out, a serious Batman series has no room for [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] silliness... like Bat-Mite himself. Bat-Mite realizes his mistake seconds before he is [[PuffOfLogic erased from existence.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' special "Timmy's Secret Wish", Foop succeeds in making Timmy look like the worst godkid ever and having all his wishes undone, including Poof. However, he learns too late that as Poof's anti-fairy, he gets erased from existence too. This brings AscendedFridgeHorror into play when many wondered what would happen to Foop if he succeeded in erasing Poof.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' had this with "Chained." Sure, they got the untrusting townspeople to hand over Gooseman, they free their leader, Macross, and the gang can now get their cache of rare [[GreenRocks starstones]]. They get the stones, but the stones degrade quickly when exposed to ultraviolet light (and they buried the cache in a desert - meaning the stones start crumbling as soon as they unbury the box), and then some townspeople led by sympathetic settler Annie show up armed and sporting for a fight seeing as the gang ''did'' trash their settlement on the way in. Macross and the gang high-tail it, leaving Gooseman behind, but they get nothing for their trouble.
* One ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' episode, "When Mice Rule The Earth", has the duo going back in time in order to uplift prehistoric mice so that their species becomes dominant. They succeed, but this results in a world of...Pinkies!! Horrified, Brain goes to push a ResetButton, as while he ''could'' rule the world as it was... "Who'd want to?"
* ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'': In "The Agony of De-Bleat", General Specific manages to capture Sheep for use in the Secret Military Organization's sheep-powered raygun. However, the threat of General Specific having to downsize the SMO and fire everybody now that their big mission is complete inspires Private Public, the Angry Scientist, and the Plot Device to [[StatusQuoIsGod conspire to set Sheep free]].
* In the Season 1 finale of ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'', the Kingpin steals the sample of "Prometheum-X" that astronauts brought back from an asteroid (along with the Venom symbiote...) It's a fissile material, like uranium or plutonium, but isn't radioactive unless heated, and thus can be carried around safely without any special equipment. The Kingpin intends to sell it on the black market to the highest bidder - despite his chief scientist Smythe's warnings that he should run more tests on it first. Spider-Man steals the Prometheum-X from the Kingpin, who then takes hostages and demands that Spider-Man trade it back. Spider-Man actually spends a few hours studying the sample, however...and then happily agrees to the exchange, and leaves without making further effort to obtain it. When the Kingpin tries another test explosion, however, it's a dud: Smythe discovers that the entire sample has decayed into simple lead. It turns out that Prometheum-X is so powerful because it is unstable - so unstable that it has a very short atomic half-life, so that the entire sample just naturally burned out into uselessness in a matter of days. Kingpin realizes to his chagrin that Spider-Man figured this out, and it's why he agreed to the trade.
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' had MAD searching for a formula to turn lead into gold. They succeed in reproducing the formula, then later on, they drop one of the transmuted gold bars, to discover that what the formula really made was lead-based gold ''paint''.
* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'':
** The episode "Operation: C.R.I.M.E." had a boy pretend to be able to predict the future so that everyone else in school would be in detention and he'd be first in line at the cafeteria before the good food runs out. He succeeds in his scheme, but finds that today's lunch is a lima bean sandwich rather than the pizza bagels he desired.
** Invoked by the heroes in the episode "Operation: C.A.K.E.D.T.H.R.E.E." which starts out as Sector V trying to steal the Delightful Children's birthday cake, like normal. However, [[ItMakesSenseInContext a bunch of chickens that Sector V was going to use]] end up [[ToiletHumor doing their business on the cake]], at which point Sector V decides to leave. The Delightfuls (who didn't realize what happened) are confused, but go along with their plan of eating their cake on live TV for all the children of the world to watch...only for no child to be jealous or upset, but rather utterly grossed out.
** In "Operation: R.O.B.B.E.R.S.", the Six-Gum Gang manage to succeed in stealing everyone's spelling homework and give it to the Delightful Children. However, the first paper the teacher reads is [[DumbMuscle Numbuh 4's]], whose horrible spelling causes the Delightfuls to get detention.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': Toffee’s EvilPlan to [[spoiler:recover his missing finger and restore his full powers, making him nigh-unstoppable,]] goes off without a hitch... only to be nullified seconds later when [[spoiler:Star manages to attain her SuperMode, allowing her to blast him with so much raw power that even his precious HealingFactor can’t save him.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E17MySisterMySitter My Sister, My Sitter]]", after Lisa is put in charge of babysitting Bart while Homer and Marge are away, Bart decides to ruin Lisa's reputation as a babysitter out of anger, and succeeds in doing so when a prank [[GoneHorriblyRight Goes Horribly Right]] and he ends up injured (a dislocated shoulder from falling down the stairs) and unconscious, and she accidentally brings him to the pier where everyone is while trying to get him to the hospital. However, despite her now looking like the worst babysitter ever, Lisa ends up still getting calls for babysitting jobs as she's still the only reliable sitter in town.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'':
** While calling her a "villain" might be extreme, the one time Candace finally manages to expose her brothers' antics to their mother Linda and have it stick, it's nullified by the fact she reveals it to the version of their mother twenty years in the future (during a TimeTravel adventure), at which point things like holograms, flying cars, and jetpacks are commonplace, the future Phineas and Ferb are by then independent adults, and present day Phineas and Ferb aren't technically her jurisdiction anymore, so there's not much Linda can do to punish them. Candace at least finds a little solace in being vindicated and in the fact it's even possible for her to win.
** Dr. Doofenshmirtz has a victory like this during the episode, "Cranius Maximus". He is trying to steal the key to the city as he believes that it works like a master key for the city and can open any door. Towards the climax of the episode, he does succeed in getting it, but realizes that it's meant to be an award and can't open anything. And then he gets struck by lightning.
** Another Doofenshmirtz example occurs in the episode, "Magic Carpet Ride", when he tries to take petty revenge on his brother Roger (who, years ago, accidentally ruined a masterpiece painting Heinz poured his heart and soul into), by ruining a painting Roger is about to unveil to get even. Dr. Doof actually succeeds in preventing Perry from stopping him ruining the painting, but too late does Heinz find out that the painting being unveiled was ''his'' painting Roger had been fixing since then. Doofenshmirtz is so depressed by his "win" that he doesn't even flinch as Perry sends him and his hovercraft crashing into the street.
** Yet ''[[RuleOfThree another]]'' Doofenshmirtz example in "Happy New Year", when he creates an "-inator" which changes everyone's New Year's resolutions into helping him take over the Tri-State area as his minions. It worked as intended but Doof ''didn't'' anticipate the fact ''no one keeps their New Year's resolution''. In fact, Perry predicted this exact outcome and didn't stop Doof from enacting his plan because he knew it was doomed to fail.
** ''Another'' Doofenshmirtz example happens in "That Sinking Feeling". Doofenshirtz reveals that, ever since he purchased the building that would become Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, he tends to have sleeping issues due to a variety of ships at the docks making too much noise when moving towards the lighthouse at night, so he decides to put a stop to it by moving the lighthouse elsewhere by installing rockets on it, in order to finally get a peaceful night. He succeeds, as the lighthouse flies away while the ships chase it no matter where the lighthouse is going. Unfortunately, later at night, the lighthouse crashes right ''into'' Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc, with the ships surrounding the building, thus making Doof's nights more noisy than before.
** This happens in the SeriesFinale, when Doofenshmirtz uses a TimeMachine which induces a GroundhogDayLoop, allowing him to keep trying and trying until he finally ends up governor of the Tri-State Area by exploiting a legal loophole, then making it illegal for Perry to stop him. However, he doesn't get long to enjoy his victory, partly because the invention goes haywire and started gradually erasing everything from existence, spontaneously resetting the timeline on increasingly shorter intervals, resetting his victory as well, and partly because his motivation to become tri-governor to stop his daughter from wanting to move out (since he believed it was because she thought he was a loser) is rendered moot when she tells him her moving out had nothing to do with him being "cool" or not, and she convinces Doof to [[HeelFaceTurn give up his evil ways]] because she can tell he only does it out of obligation rather than from his heart.
* The ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' episode "Patriot Act" has Wade Eiling, having used a SuperSoldier formula to become a hulking behemoth, attack a parade where the Justice League sent a number of its members to show support. His intent was to defeat the League and prove the danger of superpowered individuals, and he delivers a brutal CurbStompBattle to the Leaguers present--but ends up accomplishing the exact opposite of his goals. As it turns out, all the Leaguers present were {{Badass Normal}}s with nothing but tech and magical equipment at best, and yet still managed to HoldTheLine through sheer gallantry in the name of protecting the civilians. And, as is pointed out, Eiling's attempt to prove that the Justice League are dangerous metahumans resulted in him ''becoming'' [[YouAreWhatYouHate a dangerous metahuman]], which the Justice League exists to combat. If anything, his attack actually ''raises'' the profile of the Leaguers involved, who were previously seen as CListFodder who were picked for parade duty in the first place for not being involved in anything important at the time: the crowd goes from disappointed to hailing them as true heroes.
** In "Hereafter", Superman is sent to a BadFuture in which the only human remaining is the immortal Vandal Savage. In this timeline, not long after Superman's apparent death, Savage had completed a device that [[GravityMaster granted him control over gravity]], in his bid to dominate the world. However, it worked too well, disrupting the gravitational balance of the solar system, and resulting in the extinction of most life on earth. Savage had reflected on how meaningless his ambitions were for tens of thousands of years after the fact.
-->'''Savage:''' I should never have done it.\\
'''Superman:''' Done what?\\
'''Savage:''' This. I destroyed the world.
* The ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan2000'' finale has Dr. X able to accomplish all of his goals. He’s gained superhuman abilities, doesn't need food or air any longer, and becomes NighInvulnerable... and then Action Man traps him on an empty rock floating in the immense vastness of space with no means of escape. He actually does scream Action Man's name one last time as the rock drifts away from earth.
* In ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' the antagonistic ensign competing with Boimler to be named acting captain succeeds while Boimler humiliates himself to save his crewmates. He serves as acting captain only for a few moments before being relieved by the next shift, and it's made apparent none of the officers regarded who filled the seat as a question of the slightest importance. By contrast, Boimler's actions were noted and commended by a senior officer.
* ''WesternAnimation/FanboyAndChumChum'': The original ''WesternAnimation/RandomCartoons'' short had Berry the Ice Monster agree to thumb wrestle Fanboy for the last of the Frosty Freezy Freeze in Fanboy and Chum Chum's possession. Berry wins, but finds out after being handed the cup that it's already empty due to Chum Chum drinking it all.

* ''Film/BatmanVSupermanDawnOfJustice'': On paper, ComicBook/LexLuthor's scheme [[spoiler:to kill Franchise/{{Superman}}]] worked. He can hardly enjoy this victory, however, [[spoiler:because Superman died a hero and his reputation is at an all-time high. Also, Lex has been arrested for treason and his assets are seized by the government. Franchise/{{Batman}} and Franchise/WonderWoman, inspired by Superman's HeroicSacrifice, set out to form the [[Film/ZackSnydersJusticeLeague Justice League]] - using Luthor's own data on metahumans to find them.]] And the cherry on top? [[spoiler:Superman is not even dead, just in a healing coma.]]

* The original plot of ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'', the former TropeNamer, is subverted in the Star Trek novel 'Dark Mirror'. Picard reads a mirror universe version of ''The Merchant of Venice''. In the Mirror Universe Shylock gets his pound of flesh because no one would really think you can really get a pound of flesh without shedding blood. They weigh it, it is too much, and they laughingly say he can take some of it back.
* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire''
** ''Literature/AClashOfKings'': [[spoiler:Theon and his Ironborn raiders]] capture Winterfell but they are too far away from reinforcement and resupply. He is MadeASlave by [[spoiler:Ramsay Snow]].
** Everything starts going to hell for the Lannisters right after their apparent victory over House Stark in the War of Five Kings, rendering it pointless. [[spoiler:Joffrey is poisoned. Tyrion snaps after being falsely accused and convicted of his murder, turns against his family and kills Tywin. Cersei runs the Seven Kingdoms into the ground with her incompetent leadership and is overthrown by the resurrected Faith Militant that ''she'' authorized]]. Meanwhile, House Stark isn't quite as dead as everyone believes, with some of the surviving Stark children poised to take a level in badass.
** [[spoiler:Ser Gregor kills Oberyn Martell but Oberyn had poisoned his weapon and Clegane dies a long and painful death.]]
** The Freys and the Boltons [[spoiler:massacred the Starks and their bannermen in the Red Wedding which earned them new titles from the Iron Throne. However, this made them become easy targets by the Brotherhood Without Banner and everyone in the Riverlands and the North who like to remind them that "The North Remembers"]].
** ''Literature/ArchmaesterGyldaynsHistories'': WordOfGod says Aegon II was a villainous usurper who is recognized in the history books as the rightful king, but he lost his family, their dragons and his life after reigning for only two years.
* In the Literature/LeftBehind book ''Kingdom Come'', Abdullah Smith points out to Sarsour the futility of Satan's and The Other Light's plan to overthrow God by telling him that even if Satan has a chance of winning, he wouldn't be able to resurrect all the people who died as martyrs for The Other Light because God hasn't given Satan the power to do so.
* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheDeathlyHallows'', [[spoiler:Voldemort spends a large portion of the book looking for the Elder Wand, and eventually takes it in Dumbledore's tomb. The Elder Wand transfers its allegiance to the one who defeated its last master. Voldemort assumed that this meant 'to kill' and so he killed Snape, who had killed Dumbledore. However, Snape wasn't really the one who had defeated Dumbledore, as it had been planned out beforehand. Draco Malfoy, who had broken through Dumbledore's defenses and disarmed him, was the real master of the wand, although he didn't know it. Then Harry defeats and disarms Malfoy, meaning that the Elder Wand is ''his''. Then when push comes to shove, the Elder Wand refuses to act against its master, and Voldemort's own killing curse backfires on him.]]
* In ''Literature/StarlightAndShadows'', various factions of evil drow attempt to steal a powerful magical artifact called the Windwalker from Liriel. [[spoiler:Liriel's main nemesis, Shakti, eventually succeeds in claiming it; but by that point its magic has been exhausted and it is worthless]].
* ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'' has Wickham succeeding in nearly ruining Lydia's reputation, and Darcy hurriedly pays him off to marry her. Although the two of them are living off Jane and Bingley's estate by the end, it's implied that even they are growing sick of them. The final time we see the couple in Joe Wright's film implies that the marriage will probably end in DomesticAbuse.
* ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'': after 500 years of struggle, the last remaining Sons of Fëanor, Maedhros and Maglor finally get the two remaining Silmarils. In the process, they lost their father, all their brothers, their kingdoms, their followers and, thanks to them committing genocide against other elves on three separate occasions, they've made enemies of the entire world, and they reject the Last-Second Chance offer for them to return to Valinor for trial (where they may eventually be reunited with their dead family). And when they try holding the Silmarils in their hands? The gems burn them due to all the evil they've done, so they can't even hold them without feeling unbearable agony. Maedhros ends up throwing himself off a cliff with his Silmaril, while Maglor throws his away and spends the rest of his days Walking the Earth lamenting their folly, too ashamed to ever face another living being again.
* In ''Literature/Haunted2005'', a reporter ruins the life of a FormerChildStar turned veterinarian and gets a hefty fee for the story, but his dog gets sick and he doesn't know any other vets so it dies.
* For three consecutive books in the ''Literature/JourneyToChaos'' series, Gruffle tries to kill Eric. It even becomes his UnfinishedBusiness. Then he finally succeeds [[spoiler: at the end of ''Transcending Limitations''. Unbeknownst to him, Eric plotted with another reaper to thwart him. This reaper felt indebted to Eric and so travels to the Abyss, at Eric's request, to revive him moments after Gruffle took his disembodied soul there.]]
* In ''Literature/WithoutRemorse'', though the Americans end up with leverage to get the return of the captive soldiers from Vietnam, the Russians still managed to break some of them and extract highly sensitive information from them, and even with the loss of the interrogation records, the interrogator can reproduce much of the data from memory. But it doesn't matter. Everything he got from the captives was high level strategic stuff that likely would never be used unless WWIII broke out, and since the Americans ''know'' that he knows, all of the leaked plans will be changed long before anyone finds a way to exploit them.
* In ''Literature/FiveLittlePigs'', Elsa succeeded in killing her lover Amyas and framing his wife Caroline for the murder. Even when Poirot deduces that she was the culprit instead of Caroline sixteen years after the murder, he admits that he doesn't have the concrete evidence to get her convicted. However, Elsa still feels like she ultimately lost because not only did Caroline's serene acceptance of her fate deprive her of any satisfaction she might have gained from watching her love rival get punished in her place, but her own life has been empty and devoid of joy after Amyas's death with her being unable to love any other man.
* The second book of ''Literature/{{Renegades}}'' ends with the Anarchists successfully stealing Ace Anarchy's helmet, which would let Ace recover all of his powers. Unfortunately, at the same time the Renegades capture Ace, rendering the helmet completely worthless.
* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'': Gollum finally gets his hands on The One Ring again, only to [[spoiler: fall into Mount Doom and burn alive with it. In the books, he becomes careless and while jumping for joy slips off the edge, while in [[Film/TheLordOfTheRingsTheReturnOfTheKing the film trilogy]] Frodo fights him over the ring and they both go over the edge, though Frodo is able to grab the ledge.]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E2TheHandOfFear The Hand of Fear]]", Eldrad the Kastrian, having long ago been executed by his people for attempting to usurp rulership of Kastria, is resurrected on Earth many centuries later. He returns to Kastria to become its ruler, only to find the planet entirely dead. A final message from King Rokon (the king who Eldrad planned to usurp) crowns him 'King of Nothing'.
--->''"[[Music/{{Metallica}} Where's your crown, King Nothing?!]]"''
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors The Five Doctors]]", Time Lord President Borusa, having manipulated the Doctors into granting him access to Rassilon's tomb, claims the reward of immortality promised to the winner of the game of death. Rassilon grants it, which, unfortunately for Borusa, takes the form of [[AndIMustScream being turned into a living statue]].
** The topmost scenario is repeated in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS24E4Dragonfire Dragonfire]]" when Kane finally frees himself only to discover that he's outlived everyone he wanted to take revenge on, and promptly commits a [[FamilyUnfriendlyViolence very gruesome]] suicide.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
** In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' two-part episode "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E4Gambit Gambit]]", a militant Vulcan seeks an ancient weapon, and it's as deadly as expected. But Picard realizes that the weapon is based on emotion, so when the ancient Vulcans embraced logic and emotional control, the weapon was abandoned; by suppressing their own emotions, the Enterprise crew easily apprehends the villain.
** In the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E12WhoMournsForMorn Who Mourns for Morn?]]", a band of thieves who the barfly Morn used to work with tries to find the loot he helped them steal (and swiped from under their nose) in a famous heist after he tried FakingTheDead (because the statute of limitations was up and he knew they'd finally be coming for him), dragging our good old Ferengi friend Quark along for the ride. Ultimately, they fail to force Quark to help them, but turn on each other as soon as the loot is in their hands. Quark is ecstatic that now it's ''all his'' nice and legally... but it turns out Morn had long ago extracted the valuable parts from it, leaving behind a bunch of WorthlessYellowRocks, rendering the thieves' search moot, even if they ''had'' succeeded in finding it. Then turned around for Quark when Morn comes out of hiding after the other thieves leave and gives Quark a sizable portion of the material that he had extracted and had kept in hiding elsewhere the entire time in order to make it up to him.
** The ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' episode "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS7E18AuthorAuthor Author, Author]]" does a WhatMeasureIsANonHuman plot involving the Doctor's property rights to a holonovel he's written. His publisher argues that the Doctor cannot own his work, as, legally, a holonovel is the property of the artist who created it, and an artist is defined as "a person who creates an artistic work". Going against the handful of precedents set in ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', the courts find that the Doctor doesn't count as a person, which ought to disqualify him. However, the victory is a hollow ([[{{Pun}} or holo]]) one for the publisher, as the courts instead decide to expand the definition of ''artist'', so that personhood is not a necessary precondition... which turns a loss into a similar hollow victory for the doctor, who's now legally an artist, but still no person.
* ''Series/RedDwarf'': In the final BBC season this is used against the heroes: Having been imprisoned for stealing and destroying a Starbug, their attempt to escape and prove their innocence demonstrates to the captain that their story is true, exonerating them regarding the theft. But it also demonstrates that they had improperly accessed classified personnel files, a crime carrying ''exactly the same penalty''. (The files would have revealed the Captain bribed his way up the career ladder, which explains why he was looking for the loophole.)
* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'': This becomes a plot point with the Cylons' whole plan to destroy humanity as laid out in ''The Plan''. It turns out that [[PsychoPrototype the Cavils]] orchestrated the whole thing because they were angry at their parents, the original Five Cylons, for giving them human bodies. They even went so far as to wipe their memories and put them on the Colonies so they could experience their destruction first-hand and realize that HumansAreBastards. By the end of the special one of the Cavils realizes that wiping out humanity isn't going to make their parents suddenly change their minds and adore them instead. His brother completely [[IgnoredEpiphany ignores this epiphany]] and pledges to deactivate the other one before continuing on his genocidal quest to get their approval.
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'':
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E15IShotAnArrowIntoTheAir I Shot an Arrow into the Air]]", a group of astronauts crash-land on an asteroid. The villainous SoleSurvivor kills his crewmembers and takes their water, [[spoiler:only to find out that it was EarthAllAlong. They crashed in the Nevada desert]].
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]" features a band of crooks who pull off a gold heist and put themselves in suspended animation to avoid the {{statute of limitations}}, sleeping for 100 years. The rest of the story deals with the lengths each member goes to (culminating in every one of them dying) trying to get the most gold. Then we learn that [[spoiler:[[WorthlessYellowRocks gold is worthless]], [[ShootTheShaggyDog because it can now be manufactured]]]].
** A famous example is "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]" in which a snobbish Colonel bets a fellow club member in desperate need of money that he can't keep quiet for a year. When despite all odds the man actually succeeds and goes to collect his money, it turns out that the Colonel is broke and can't pay him his winnings -- however, the man had his vocal cords severed so he could win the bet.
* The final episode of ''Series/{{Alias}}'' has [[spoiler:Sloane finally achieving immortality... only for Jack to sacrifice himself in an effort to [[SealedEvilInACan seal Sloane beneath a mountain]] for all eternity.]]
* Illyria of ''Series/{{Angel}}'' nearly laid claim to the world. She sacrificed her immortal demon form, high priest, and a good chunk of power in order to access the alternate dimension where her demonic army awaited her command. Only Wesley managed to follow Illyria as she prepared to unleash the army... only to find that her army had fallen into ruin, leaving her with nothing. Illyria was at this point so powerful it's not clear she even ''needed'' her army to conquer the world... but the fact that the army was long dead shocked her into realizing that her time had come and gone. She proceeded to hang out with the heroes because she had nothing better to do. An extra case of this because it turned out that she was too powerful for her new form, which led to her being depowered so she could survive. Even if she had kept her army, ''at best'' she'd have been only slightly more powerful than them. At worst she'd have died shortly after conquering the planet.
* At the end of ''Series/TheWire'', [[BigBad Marlo]] survives and keeps his freedom and money, on the condition that he not return to the drug scene... which is all he really cares about. He's last seen walking out of a high-class party and antagonizing two random thugs on an empty street corner who don't even know who he is, simply unable to let go of the Game. It's clear that he will inevitably end up in jail or in the morgue, unable to enjoy his riches.
* The Australian children's education program ''Infinity Limited'' had a group of trouble-shooters helping a pet shop to use a new computer for inventory control while their "rival" company (and comic relief), Vortex Ventures with Valerian Vortex and Arthur Plankton tries to win a competition where you need to guess the number of a certain product which would fit into a sports stadium. After Vortex and Plankton fiddle with the shop's computer in an effort to get it to calculate the number, they end up accidentally ordering a huge amount of "plankton" fish food. Arthur wins the contest by simply guessing a number and Valerian immediately assumes ownership of the money... then the Infinity Limited people arrive, having figured out who ordered all of that Plankton. The money they won will just cover the cost of all that fish food...
* An episode of ''Series/TheDukesOfHazzard'' has the Duke Boys in a race for buried treasure against Boss Hogg and Roscoe. This is one of the few times that Boss Hogg manages to come out on top, only for the buried treasure to be worthless Confederate money.[[note]]Though Confederate currency isn't literally worthless, it can be sold as a collectable.[[/note]]
* An episode of ''Series/AreYouAfraidOfTheDark'' involved a mummified Egyptian princess and a ring that would grant eternity. Towards the end of the episode, the bad guy corners the main characters and their father, threatening to burn down the museum if they don't give him the ring. After giving him the ring, the villain decides he'll burn down the museum anyway so that the good guys can't tell the authorities on him. However, the male protagonist decides to ask the bad guy if he'll put the ring on first to see if it makes him immortal. The bad guy does so, but after glowing a few colors, he gets [[TakenForGranite turned into]] [[AndIMustScream a statue]] and the father says that the villain got what he wanted, [[ExactWords immortality]].
* In one episode of ''Series/TheDeadZone,'' the villains are after the cargo of a crashed plane. All they know about the cargo is that it was insured for millions of dollars. They force Johnny to help them find it at gunpoint, and they do ultimately get their hands on it, but it turns out to be a crate of 3-year-old computer chips. Given how fast computer technology becomes obsolete, they're essentially worthless.
* The prequel series to ''Series/SpartacusBloodAndSand'' shows just how much effort Quintus and Lucretia went through to achieve prominence with their ludus - including murdering Quintus's own father. The end of the prequel shows them celebrating their newfound success - only to cut to the last shot of the first season where the two lie dying after the gladiators have rebelled. The shot practically screams WasItReallyWorthIt.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'':
** In season 6, Walder Frey finally defeats the Tullys and Starks [[spoiler: then Arya Stark feeds him his sons in a pie before killing him. He also dies oblivious to the fact that Sansa Stark and Jon Snow have taken the North back]].
** After decades spent attempting to wield power through others, (first her drunken, apathetic King of a husband and later her children) Cersei finally grabs the reins of power for herself at the end of Season 6. [[spoiler:Too bad nearly every single region of the Seven Kingdoms is involved in either open or covert rebellion against her, Cersei's family and the throne have utterly bankrupted themselves, her armies are in tatters from "winning" the war, her beloved children are all dead, and ''everyone'' around is looking to pile on, including old enemies, new rivals, and even supernatural threats. Good luck, Cersei. Enjoy it while it lasts.]]
** In the end, Cersei really doesn't. [[spoiler:Her sole true achievements in the final season, killing Daenerys' friend in front of her via execution and one of her two surviving dragons via her underling, ends with Daenerys fully embracing the Targaryen madness and unleashing the full might of her armies and remaing dragon upon King's Landing. It's more than a CurbStompBattle, it is a '''massacre''', and Cersei is forced to first declare surrender to the North and then try to run away... only for her to find out the escape tunnel caved in and then finally get crushed by a collapsing ceiling.]]
* [[spoiler:Lucas North]] from ''Series/{{Spooks}}''. He succeeds in selling [[MacGuffin the Albany file]] to the Chinese, but in the process destroys the life he built and [[spoiler:causes the death of the woman he loves]]. And to top it off, [[spoiler:the weapon Albany is a blueprint for turns out not to work]].
* At the end of the second season of ''Series/{{Fargo}}'', Mike Millegan finally manages to claw his way up the ladder of the Kansas City Mafia, but instead of the throne that he'd imagined, he ends up with an office chair. And a desk. And very few opportunities to commit violence. It turns out that the higher echelons of the Kansas City Mafia are moving away from the kind of bloodshed that allowed Millegan to thrive and instead turning their focus to more respectable pursuits like banking and finance.
* Root in the ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' season 2 finale finally finds The Machine, but its hardware components have all moved long ago.
* In ''Series/XenaWarriorPrincess'', she realizes that [[spoiler: Ares killing Eli has sealed the Olympians fate because the human race will not continue to worship gods who murder the innocent]].
* Aaron Echolls on ''Series/VeronicaMars'' is revealed as the murderer of Lily Kane at the end of Season 1. At the end of Season 2 he goes on trial and his AmoralAttorney manages to slime Veronica and Keith Mars both and create reasonable doubt by casting suspicion on Duncan Kane, who's fled with his daughter and isn't around to defend himself. Echolls walks away a free man. [[spoiler: And as soon as he gets to his hotel room, he's killed by Clarence Wiedman, acting on orders from Duncan who's been monitoring the trial from a distance.]]
* ''Series/{{CSI}}'':
** Hannah West, a sociopathic TeenGenius and the ArcVillain that made Sara Sidle quit being a CSI (for a while) because she got fed up with the horrors of the job. On the second time she appears, she manages to frame her brother for murder and place him in jail for the rest of his life because that way she will always have him under control and be the only girl he will ever have contact with, and she rubs this in Sara's face. Hannah's victory becomes meaningless because her brother, the only family she had left after their parents died, [[DrivenToSuicide commits suicide out of despair]] and the fact it's the only way he sees he will get out of under Hannah's thumb, leaving the little girl (who has a severe case of IntelligenceEqualsIsolation) to live the rest of her life completely alone.
** A handsome young dwarf who was engaged to be married is murdered by hanging. The girl he was engaged to was the average-height daughter of two little people, with her father very proud that she'd beaten the odds and ''not'' inherited dwarfism. [[spoiler: It turns out that the father considered her fiancee to not be tall enough for her, and knew that any child of their marriage would have a 50% chance of being a dwarf, so the father killed him. Except his daughter was already pregnant with her fiancee's child, making that he'd only succeeded in denying his future grandchild - dwarf or otherwise - a loving father.]]
** In another episode, two teenage [=BFFs=] suffer a car crash that leaves one dead and the other terribly injured, face mangled and unable to speak or write. It's discovered that the survivor was driving and is culpable for the accident. The grieving mother sneaks into the hospital and murders her in vengeance ... only for the investigators to discover that the one she killed was ''her own'' daughter, who'd swapped [=IDs=] with her slightly-older and similar-looking friend so she could get into a No-Minors-Allowed nightclub.
* ''Series/TheManInTheHighCastle'': In the finale of season 3, Hawthorne Abendsen explains to John Smith that the Nazis' plans to invade other dimensions and all the effort they put into building an InterdimensionalTravelDevice will be for naught, since [[spoiler:people can only travel to dimensions where [[DeadAlternateCounterpart their counterparts are dead]].]]
* In one episode of ''Series/TheWubbulousWorldOfDrSeuss'', Yertle the Turtle is tasked with looking after his aunt's kingdom while she's away. Taking advantage of the situation, he decides to use underhanded tactics to convince those from other lands to annex their lands to "his" kingdom. Eventually, all that's left is a small hill where Literature/TheCatInTheHat is, but TCITH won't give Yertle said hill, so he devises an offer for TCITH, with it being increasingly large parts of the kingdom until Yertle offers him ''the entire kingdom'', which TCITH agrees to. Yertle gets the small hill, but since he gave the entire kingdom away for it, it's all he has now.
* At the end of the second arc of ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'', [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Gai Amatsu]] manages to buy out Hiden Intelligence, leading to [[TheHero Aruto]] leaving the company. However, the very next episode after this happens reveals that the [=HumaGear=] and Zero-One technology, which is what Gai really wanted, is patented, not under the company, but under the Hiden family name. Aruto proceeds to simply start a new company, allowing him to resume his activities as a Kamen Rider.
* ''Series/CobraKai'':
** At the end of Season 4, this happens to Tory. Sure she wins the All-Valley Tournament, but she overhears that Terry Silver bribed the judge to be biased in her favor and realizes she ''should'' have lost and the judge not seeing that foot go out of bounds wasn't just luck. Furthermore John Kreese goes to prison and Terry Silver takes over Cobra Kai meaning the dojo that she looked up to has become exactly what she hated.
** Same goes for Kreese himself in season 4. Thanks to Tory's victory, the Cobra Kai dojo as a whole is awarded the Grand Prize, but he doesn't get to enjoy his victory for long. Silver soon reveals that he [[FrameUp framed Kreese for aggravated assault and attempted murder]], leading to his arrest and Silver acquiring full control of Cobra Kai, which he plans to franchise. Kreese had also made a gentleman's bet with Daniel to close down Miyagi-Do if they lost the tournament, which Daniel [[ILied flat-out refuses to do]] and recruits Chozen to continue the fight against Cobra Kai.
* ''Series/LazyTown'': Robbie successfully makes off with a trophy in "My Treehouse" only for it to break immediately.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Music]]
* In Trans-Siberian Orchestra's ''Music/BeethovensLastNight'', Mephistopheles forces [[Music/LudwigVanBeethoven Beethoven]] to give up his 10th Symphony in exchange for not torturing a homeless girl to death. Fate (literally) steps in, and Mephistopheles signs a contract for one copy of the 10th Symphony, written by Ludwig von Beethoven, first son of his parents. However, the composer is actually Ludwig von Beethoven the second, as his elder brother of the same name died shortly after birth. While you could say that [[FridgeLogic they can't pay up and Meph gets a refund?]] It was implied in-script as the fact that his soul in Heaven could write music and that the tenth symphony of Ludwig the elder (should it ever be written) will belong to Mephistopheles.
* One Tin Soldier. In it, the people of the valley slaughter the people of the mountain for their treasure (which the people of the mountain had offered to share). They find that the treasure is simply a message stating "peace on earth."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]
* Myth/NorseMythology: Loki bet his head to the dwarf Brokk on whom could give the Aesir the better gift. When Brokk wins the bet, he demands his payment. Loki at that point pointed out he'd never bet any of his ''neck'', and neither side could agree on what constituted the head and what constituted the neck. Brokk got annoyed by being cheated out of his prize and sewed Loki's mouth shut to stop his word twisting (Loki was unable to argue that ''it'' was in any way not part of his head).
* Piers Shonks, a knight on Mediaeval England, killed a dragon belonging to Satan, who turned up in a rage and promised that "whether you're buried in the church or out, I'll have your soul!" When Shonks died, he was buried ''in the wall'' of a church near Brent Pelham, with the inscription "Shonke one serpent kills, t'other defies / And in this wall as in a fortress lies."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theater]]
* ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'': Shylock pleads his case in court, and the court finds that, indeed, the contract he made with Antonio is binding, giving Shylock every legal right to extract a pound of flesh from him. However, the court also rules that Shylock is not entitled to any blood. Therefore he would have to take the flesh without spilling a drop of blood, which everyone simply accepts is impossible. Not just that -- he asked for a ''pound'' of flesh, which also means he can't take any more or less than an exact pound of Antonio's flesh, adding to the impossibility of the task. To rub salt into the wound, he is forced to convert to Christianity by the man he tried to take vengeance on, and he cannot even take his own life to get out of it.
* Occurs in ''Theatre/{{Beetlejuice}}: The Musical''. Right at the end of the play, Betelgeuse gets exactly what he wants by marrying Lydia and coming back to life. But then, Lydia just instantly kills him again. And since Betelgeuse is now recently deceased, he can be banished to the Netherworld and never escape.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theme Parks]]
* In ''Ride/KungFuPandaAdventure'' at [[Ride/UniversalStudios Universal Studios Hollywood]], the ride's villain, Kang, succeeds in getting the "Liquid of Ultimate Power", but his victory is short-lived as it turns out that it was actually just a bottle of hot sauce, which he experiences the full effects of upon drinking it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
%%(ZCE)* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' when you first arrive at [[spoiler:Spellhold]], the BigBad quickly imprisons you and [[spoiler:steals your soul]], then leaving you to rot in a dungeon to be quickly killed by TheDragon, who however ignores the orders and thinks that there is more fun by giving you a chance and hunting you through the maze. This single decision will backfire spectacularly. (HOW does it backfire?)
* ''VideoGame/CapcomFightingEvolution'': Play as [[VideoGame/{{Darkstalkers}} Jedah Dohma]] and for him, victory is assured. Swarms of Q-Bees assaulting civilians, [[VideoGame/RedEarth Kongou and Gi Gi]] are wreaking havoc, and cities have been devasted. Jedah, rather fittingly, [[LaughingMad decides to celebrate his triumph]]... oh yeah, and [[VideoGame/DevilMayCry Dante]]'s about to kill him right there and then.
* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaDawnOfSorrow'': In the bad ending, [[spoiler:Celia successfully resurrects Dracula. The problem is that she accomplished it by [[FakeKillScare pretending to murder]] an emotionally unstable teenage boy's girlfriend and then [[StrikeMeDownWithAllOfYourHatred goading him into killing her as retribution]]. Predictably, she is "rewarded" for her efforts with nothing but death]].
* In ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'', [[spoiler:Alex]] manipulates both the heroes and the villains into breaking the seal on Psynergy so that he can claim the awesome powers of the Golden Sun for himself. And ''succeeds''. But then [[spoiler:[[{{God}} The Wise One]] shows up and informs him that it placed a small portion of the Golden Sun's energy into the Mars Star that Issac carries, rendering Alex's powers slightly less than god-like. Now, being ''almost'' [[TheOmnipotent omnipotent]] should be prize enough, except for the fact that the Wise One ''is'' [[TheOmnipotent omnipotent]], and swiftly renders Alex unable to move.]] It's also a case of ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler:at the ''very'' beginning of the first game, the Wise One asks Isaac to show up the Mars Star for a brief moment, and nothing is made of it until that moment.]]
* ''VideoGame/Jak3Wastelander'' features Veger accomplishing his goals to meet the Precursors, as well as become one of them. [[spoiler:But, it turns out the Precursors are actually ottsels, like Daxter. And Veger only learns that after he wishes to become a Precursor, leading him to [[OhCrap realize this]] mid-sentence before he's polymorphed into a fuzzy rodent.]]
* Ganondorf in ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' gets this twice.
** Ganondorf's manipulation of Zelda and Link in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'' nets him access to the Sacred Realm and the [[CosmicKeystone Triforce]] and neither of them can do anything to stop him... But unfortunately for him, the Triforce has a caveat that unless a human is perfectly balanced with its virtues, they can only possess one piece of it. This means that Ganondorf only gets one third. The most powerful third, yes, but still not ''quite'' the ultimate power he had envisioned, and he becomes doomed by fate to forever be thwarted by the owners of the other two pieces (Zelda and Link, for those not in the know), which together overpower Ganondorf.
** At the end of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker The Wind Waker]]'', after he [[CurbStompBattle beats up Link]] and summons the full Triforce before him, [[spoiler:King Daphnes Nohanson Hyrule comes out of nowhere and touches the Triforce, causing his wish to be granted instead of Ganondorf's.]]
* ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' has Allen Marks, who was known to have killed and robbed many wasteland inhabitants for Sunset Sarsaparilla star caps [[WorthlessTreasureTwist just so he could win a "legendary treasure" from before the war.]] [[spoiler: Once he had collected enough caps, the guardian of the "treasure", Festus, (who was nothing more than a primitive robotic mascot with pre-programmed phrases) allowed him entry into the prize vault. Somehow, he became permanently trapped inside and discovered that the prizes were merely plastic deputy badges for children. Eventually, he succumbs in the tightly sealed vault from lack of oxygen, and his body is found slumped against the wall by the time the Courier arrives. All the caps Allen collected were for nothing, and all the people he killed died in vain.]]
* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'':
** In ''VideoGame/SonicRiders'', Eggman appears after Sonic and co. make it through the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, and when the treasure for which Eggman sacrificed the ''Chaos Emeralds'', the series's go-to {{Mineral Macguffin}}s, is within sight, he actually holds off the heroes with a laser gun in order to grab the treasure at the last minute. However, when Eggman opens the chest containing said treasure, he finds [[spoiler:an ancient prototype [[HoverBoard Gear]] in the form of a FlyingCarpet, outclassed by every other [[HoverBoard Gear]] currently available to the public and therefore worthless to Eggman. At least it was a really nice rug...]]
** In ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'', Eggman finally manages to build [[{{Egopolis}} Eggmanland]] after alluding to it in some previous games. However, Sonic survives the ensuing gauntlet and defeats him as per usual, [[spoiler:with Dark Gaia also [[EvilIsNotAToy giving him his just desserts]] after it fully awakens]].
* In the ''VideoGame/ChzoMythos'', this trope is in effect for the Chzo cultists. Chzo finally has the bridge to crossover from the World of Magic into the World of Technology at the very end of the story. However, the cultists vastly overestimated Chzo's interest in doing so. Chzo was more interested in the pain and suffering the cultists inflicted upon themselves in making the bridge, as well as the emotional pain when they realized Chzo never cared about them and was never going to reward them for anything they'd done.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', Kefka gets what he wants, ascending to godhood by absorbing the power of the three statues and then rearranging them. Once he's arrived at the pinnacle, [[AndThenWhat he suddenly loses all sense of purpose]], and sets about killing people for his own amusement, until he grows bored of that too. Following this, [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum he just decides to destroy the world]] because he believes that [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery life has become unbearably meaningless]]. The protagonists, meanwhile, inverted the trope entirely by finding purpose and reasons to live after their defeat, and are able to put a stop to him.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', Kuja's mastery of XanatosSpeedChess allows him to out-maneuver every other character and eventually ascend to become a PersonOfMassDestruction unrivaled by any other in the story. He celebrates by [[TheStarscream killing his master]], and then prepares to finally TakeOverTheWorld. However, the spirit of his master then tells him that his victory is meaningless, because Kuja was designed to have a finite lifespan and thus will die soon. Kuja... [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum does not take it well]].
[[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery At all.]]
* In ''VideoGame/HalfLifeOpposingForce'', [[EliteMooks black ops]] are sent to Black Mesa to cover up the incident once and for all by murdering everyone present there, including the [[YouHaveFailedMe Marines previously sent there to do exactly that]], culminating in using a nuclear warhead to detonate the facility. The world finds out everything that happened anyway due to there being survivors, and not long after the world is invaded and annexed by the Combine.
* ''Franchise/TheKingOfFighters'':
** Both Ángel and K9999/Krohnen end up achieving one in ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters2001''. Good news: they successfully wounded Foxy, traumatized Kula, and escaped with their lives. Bad news: their employer is rendered essentially defunct and they're now in the same boat as the very traitors they were meant to be hunting. They seem to be handling life on the run well enough by ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFightersXV'', though.
** Speaking of ''XV'', the Awakened Orochi Team score such a victory in their ending. They successfully [[KillAllHumans ensure the genocide of the human race]], allowing their master Orochi to reclaim the Earth... except that they now have [[VictoryIsBoring nothing to go do after that]] and [[GoMadFromTheIsolation nobody but themselves for company]]. Needless to say, [[TheSociopath Chris]] is the only one celebrating, as both [[MsFanservice Shermie]] and [[BoisterousBruiser Yashiro]] show some apprehensiveness about what they just pulled off.
* Killing the Jedi Masters in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' and effectively wiping out the Jedi Order results in Kreia confronting The Exile. Asking what, if anything, they have really accomplished. She points out that it's gotten them no closer to defeating the Sith who are hunting them, and questions if it brought the Exile any sense of peace.
* In ''VideoGame/TheNeverhood'''s bad ending, Klogg succeeds in convincing Klaymen to put on Hoborg's crown and gloats about his victory. Seconds later, Klaymen is corrupted by the crown's power and kills Klogg, declaring himself the Neverhood's new ruler.
* ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'': Grodus succeeds in his goal of getting into the Thousand Year Door and managing to reawaken [[spoiler:the Shadow Queen]], even successfully managing to dupe the heroes into helping him. However, when Grodus attempts to order [[spoiler:the Shadow Queen]] to destroy the heroes, he quickly learns that EvilIsNotAToy, as [[spoiler:the Shadow Queen]] effortlessly destroys his body, leaving him as just a head. To add insult to injury, the heroes manage to defeat [[spoiler:the Shadow Queen]] anyways, meaning that even the one part of his plan that was successful didn't amount to anything.
* ''Franchise/{{Persona}}'':
** The end of ''VideoGame/Persona2: Innocent Sin'' has Nyarlathotep succeeding in destroying the world with the help of several deluded humans, but thanks to an intervention from Philemon, the heroes managed to bring back the world before he intervened. Then in ''Eternal Punishment'', Nyarlathotep tries again only to be defeated by a new team of heroes, and is banished for his troubles.
** ''VideoGame/Persona5'': The Phantom Thieves never manage to stop [[spoiler:Shido from becoming Prime Minister]], but they ''do'' succeed in changing his heart, preventing him from taking any joy in his achievement, ever. Moreover, thanks to this changed heart and the rest of their efforts, his day in court is rapidly approaching.
* In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Pokémon Platinum]]'', the BigBad Cyrus manages to [[RageAgainstTheHeavens successfully enslave the gods of time and space]] for his GodhoodSeeker plan but this ends up alerting [[FantasyPantheon the god of antimatter, Giratina]] [[BarrierMaiden who keeps the two in balance]]. As shown in the original duology and the AlternateUniverse in ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'', he only needed ''one'' of the two for his plan, but he overextended himself and ensured that either Giratina or the PlayerCharacter would've showed up to make his efforts meaningless.
* In the Decepticon mode of ''VideoGame/TransformersCallOfTheFuture'', the Decepticons succeed in getting the Zel Quartz and defeating every Autobot that stands in their way, but Starscream attempts to take the Zel Quartz for himself and it turns out that the Zel Quartz loses its power when removed from its environment without a proper covering. Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge also end up disappearing because their assistance in helping Megatron, Starscream and Soundwave obtain the Zel Quartz before Shockwave found it has altered the course of history.
* ''VideoGame/MortalKombatArmageddon'': Shao Kahn's arcade ending is the canonical one, [[spoiler:as he ultimately wins after the events of said Armageddon by surviving the ascent up the pyramid and follows that by killing [[PhysicalGod Raiden]] (who sends a message to his past self about the events, thus setting the stage for ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9''). Finding out there's nothing else left to conquer, Shao Kahn is DrivenToMadness]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'':
** In the final case of ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyJusticeForAll'', the killer confronts Phoenix with the {{sadistic choice}} of [[spoiler:getting a sociopathic murderer acquitted and sending an innocent woman to jail, or getting the killer sent to jail but having Phoenix's assistant be killed by an assassin.]] After some BigDamnHeroes moments with the last crucial pieces of evidence, Phoenix [[spoiler:reveals to Shelly de Killer that Engarde taped him killing Juan Corrida, and planned to blackmail de Killer with the footage. This means that Engarde has broken his bond of trust with an assassin that values his bond of trust with his clients above all else, a fatal mistake. It puts Engarde in a MortonsFork of getting either the death penalty or hunted by one of the best assassins in the world, with either one spelling Engarde's demise. At his point, Phoenix can choose to either change his plea to guilty and send Engarde to jail right there, or to keep pleading not guilty in the smuggest way possible, stressing to Engarde that this is an act of CruelMercy. Either way, Engarde screams in court that he's guilty, claws the hell out of his own face in pure panic, and ends the trial completely humiliated]].
** Case 2 of ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyDualDestinies'' has [[spoiler:Florent L'Belle, a supposed business partner of the victim]] commit murder in order to gain access to the Forbidden Chamber and steal the giant chunk of gold contained within. While the killer's plan ultimately works, somebody had already stolen the gold many years ago, so all the killer got for their trouble was an empty room and a murder conviction. And once that comes to light, the killer rapidly gets a series of phone calls in court during their VillainousBreakdown where every one of their business partners backs out of deals, because they don't want to be associated with a murderer, leaving them not only headed to jail but completely broke.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Animation]]
* In episode 35 of ''WebAnimation/NoEvil'' Charles breaks [[spoiler: the last piece of the Black Tezcatlipoca]] but is quickly reminded that Xipe Totec and the Monkeys [[spoiler: didn't so much [[SealedEvilInACan seal the Black in a can]], as make it into the can sealing the [[PlayingWithFire Red Tezcatlipoca]]. And it does [[AnArmAndALeg NOT]] find him worthy to wield it.]]
* In ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'', the villains of ''The Chorus Trilogy'' get ahold of the MacGuffin they need to kill everyone on the planet... but said MacGuffin is LoyalPhlebotinum that only works for its wielder, in this case [[spoiler: General Doyle.]]. So until [[spoiler: Doyle]] is dead and one of their own can pick it up, they're out of luck.
* ''WebAnimation/Supermarioglitchy4sSuperMario64Bloopers'': In ''[=SMG4=] Movie: Revelations'', [[spoiler: the Box Club Leader finally gets to the God Box thanks to Melony!Niles, and upon it being opened, immediately jumps in to absorb some its power. It ends up being too much for him to handle and [[KarmicDeath he disintergrates]].]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* In an early arc of ''Webcomic/AntiheroForHire'', Doctor Nefarious successfully launches and uses his mind-control satellite, only to learn that he doesn't have the ability to issue orders to anyone the satellite is controlling, making it useless.
* One strip of ''ComicStrip/{{Nodwick}}'' has Artax deconstruct the fact that villains are experts in planning but always seem to go wrong with the execution which renders any victories moot.
** An evil warlord raised an army and sacked a celestial temple to lay claim to a powerful artifact. Only to discover that the item can only be worn by a size 1 waist and requires some exotic anatomy.
** An evil sorceress summoned a powerful elemental storm to lay waste to the enemy kingdom to the west. Forgetting that her castle was on the east side of her domain.
** The clerics of an evil deity gained the power to foul any liquid they touched and used it to destroy city water supplies. However they forgot that they funded their church primarily through wine sales.
* During the TimeTravel arc of ''Webcomic/PS238'', Zodon winds up tens of thousands of years in the past. He realizes that with his intellect and a lack of any pesky superheroes to stop him, he could easily conquer the world. However, he also realizes that he has no interest in ruling a world devoid of video games or other modern forms of entertainment and opts to [[HumanPopsicle freeze himself in a glacier]] until he reaches the present again, instead.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'' episode "[[Recap/TheOwlHouseS1E17WingItLikeWitches Wing It Like Witches]]", AlphaBitch Boscha catches the GoldenSnitch that wins the grudgby match for her team. By doing so, Boscha's team wins the bet with Luz's team, which will let Boscha bully Willow and her friends even more. However, Boscha's friends come to like Luz and Willow, and Boscha sees she'll probably lose her spot as team captain if she continues to abuse them. Boscha has an arrogant attitude, but puts a ''lot'' of her self-worth on her grudgby skills, especially being team captain. So while Boscha ''can'' cash in on the bet, it would be in her best interest not to. Not only that, but this cements Amity's HeelFaceTurn that causes her to leave Boscha's social circle.
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'':
** In one episode, Vlad succeeds in becoming mayor, but after being tricked into injuring Danny, he has to undo various actions he did to avoid bad publicity.
** In the GrandFinale, Vlad reveals himself as a ghost and offers to save the world from the approaching asteroid for complete domination. Unfortunately for him, the asteroid is comprised of material that not even ghosts can touch, with Vlad leaving the planet knowing he'll be hunted if he returns.
* In the Joe Oriolo ''WesternAnimation/FelixTheCat'' cartoons, the villains, Professor and Rock Bottom, [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin are always trumped by Felix]], be it through his intervention, their sheer incompetence or just pure bad luck. But whereas Professor, Felix's main nemesis, never once scored a victory over Felix, Rock Bottom [[TeamRocketWins actually did manage to score a victory over Felix]] in "Penelope the Elephant"--but even that victory doesn't pay off for him in the long run. The episode's plot is centered on the eponymous elephant who has gotten lost from her Rajah, who offers a 50,000,000 bakshee reward for her return. Felix finds Penelope and intends her safe return, but Rock Bottom gets word about the reward, kidnaps her and ties up Felix, and makes it to the Rajah's palace to claim the money reward before Felix can stop him. He is promptly given it by the Rajah—but it turns out that thanks to foreign exchange rates, [[RidiculousExchangeRates 50,000,000 bakshees is only worth 10 cents in American money]]. Rock Bottom is so flabbergasted at this outcome, that he angrily throws the meager award aside and goes into shock, while Felix gets the last laugh.
* The 1980 WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadRunner short ''Soup or Sonic''. In the last gag, Wile E. Coyote chases the Road Runner through a series of smaller-diameter pipes until they come out tiny at the end. Wile E. waves the Road Runner back through. Out the large end, the Road Runner is back to normal, but Wile E. is still tiny. At this point, the Road Runner allows Wile E. to "catch" him. But he is now way too big for Wile E. to actually eat.
-->'''Wile E. Coyote''' (signs to the audience): Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him. '''Now''' what do I do?
* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'':
** {{Inverted|Trope}} in "Le Petit Tourette", where Cartman fakes having HollywoodTourettes so that he can shout anti-Semitic things as much as he wants without anyone getting mad. He even gets a TV interview, which Kyle naturally tries to stop, and succeeds in doing so. Unfortunately, while he was doing that, Cartman discovers that spending all that time just blurting out whatever thoughts popped into his head has caused him to lose all ability to ''not'' do that, and he couldn't stop blurting out horribly embarrassing secrets about himself. Cartman couldn't have been more relieved that Kyle got his interview cancelled on him.
** In "Dances with Smurfs" Cartman uses his position as morning announcement leader to basically become an obnoxious sensationalist pundit who blames Wendy, the school president, for literally ''everything'' as well as accusing her of trying to kill Franchise/TheSmurfs, which ends with Wendy admitting Cartman is right and stepping down so Cartman can become the school president. Except, Wendy admits he was right in a way that makes him seem like the bad guy in his fictional Smurf story with her being heavily sympathetic, ''she'' sells the rights to the story to Creator/JamesCameron who uses it to make ''Film/{{Avatar}}'', Cartman can no longer read the morning announcements since that can't be done by the school president, and he learns said school president is at best [[PuppetKing a figurehead with no real power]]. Naturally, it also ends with the new morning announcement kid blaming all the school's problems on the school president.
** In "Christian Rock Hard", Cartman makes a bet with Kyle over who can form a band and earn a platinum album first. Cartman creates a Christian rock band, Faith + 1, and actually manages to sell one million copies of their debut album to qualify, while Kyle's rock band, MOOP, ends up wasting time by going on strike against people downloading songs on the internet. However, Cartman's victory becomes meaningless, because in the world of ''South Park'', Christian music albums can only go gold, frankincense and myrrh, meaning he doesn't actually win the bet because [[ExactWords his album did not specifically go platinum]]. To make it even more bitter for him, he spent all the money the band made on an excessively extravagant platinum album ceremony confident that the band's future success would make up for the losses. Upon learning that he could never go platinum, however, he ruins any chance of the band having future success by angrily cursing out Jesus, which their Christian fanbase naturally doesn't take kindly to. And to add insult to injury, he insults his bandmates, causing Token to beat him up and Butters to fart on his face as he's on the ground.
* In ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim'', Zim uses MindRape (via virtual reality helmets) in order to sell millions of candy bars and win a school fundraiser. He makes first place, but the "secret prize" he coveted so badly turns out to be literally nothing.
* In ''WesternAnimation/VoltronLegendaryDefender'', Haggar manages to reach [[spoiler:a reality where Zarkon and Lotor are alive, until Lotor immediately pointed out that the woman standing in front of him isn't his real mother. After this, she decides nothing is worth living anymore and decides to destroy all of existence.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/RockosModernLife'': In "[[Recap/RockosModernLifeS4E5EdGoodRockoBadTeedOff Ed Good, Rocko Bad]]", Rocko and Ed run for city dog catcher, with Rocko being (justifiably) afraid that Ed will be cruel to the dogs. Thanks to a ton of mudslinging, Ed wins in a veritable landslide... but another measure passes that turns the dog catcher position into an undesirable job with no real power (in case you wanna know, he became a glorified poop-scooper).
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'':
** Glomgold manages to beat Scrooge in a race to gain the wishes of a magic lamp, using the first wish he sends Scrooge to a deserted island and while gloating about his victory, he accidentally uses the second wish when he said he wishes to see the look on Scrooge's face and ends up on the same island. Angered that he's stuck with the person he hates the most, Glomgold shouts that he wished him and Scrooge never found the magic lamp, thus hitting the ResetButton.
** In another episode, Glomgold succeeds in taking ownership of a mine filled with hundreds of diamonds, and sends Scrooge to take ownership of another mine filled with nothing. Just then, a volcanic eruption occurs that blasts all of the diamonds in Glomgold's mine towards Scrooge's side, leaving Scrooge with all of the diamonds and Glomgold with zero.
* ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales2017'':
** Ma Beagle manages to get her hands on the Lamp of the First Genie before Scrooge and his ally Djinn. Except, there is no genie, so all Ma Beagle got was an old oil lamp.
** The grand finale becomes this for [[spoiler:Bradford Buzzard]]. After spending more than twenty years of his life enacting the perfect plan to rid the world of adventure, it comes to fruition when he [[spoiler:gets Scrooge to sign a magically-binding contract that he only gets to keep his family if he agrees never to adventure again.]] Sadly for him, [[spoiler:the contract accepts the [=McDuck=]/Duck family's interpretation that "Family is the greatest adventure of all," which renders the contract meaningless.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'':
** "[[Recap/KimPossibleS2E28RonMillionaire Ron Millionaire]]": Drakken steals the royalty money Ron gets for inventing the Naco, as in ''''ninety-nine million dollars'''' (a nickel for every Naco sold). While the two fail to get Ron's money back, Drakken still ends up failing, having spent the money on a new lair and laser cannon... but the diamond to power the cannon is too big, causing the cannon to backfire and destroy it and the lair.
** "[[Recap/KimPossibleS4E8ClothesMinded Clothes Minded]]": Drakken's plan to merge the continents together with his new weather machine actually works, but [[DidntThinkThisThrough he didn't think to earthquake-proof his new lair]], which results in it and the machine being destroyed in the process.
** Bonnie once spent an episode scheming to replace Kim as cheerleading captain, since Kim's world-saving exploits kept her too busy to compete. In the end, Kim concedes... then points out that all the hard work Bonnie did to get elected is just the beginning, and she now has to keep it up. All Bonnie wanted was the clout that came with being in charge, not the responsibility, so the position is actually meaningless to her. (Next time we hear about it, [[StatusQuoIsGod Kim is captain again.]])
* ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'':
** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987S03E11AprilsFoolAKAAprilFoolish April Foolish]]": Shredder manages to get away with a rare isotope. Unfortunately for the bad guys, the isotope is unstable under high atmospheric pressures (especially those deep within the Earth), and the sample explodes after the Shredder returns to the Technodrome -- which is parked many miles beneath the Earth's surface.
** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987S03E43Shredderville Shredderville]]": Shredder becomes emperor of the world and mismanages it so badly that when the turtles arrive he begs them to take him to their world where he doesn't rule. [[spoiler:However, this turns out to all be a dream the Turtles have.]]
** "[[Recap/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987S06E1RockAroundTheBlock Rock Around the Block]]": Shredder successfully uses a laser to free the Technodrome from its ice prison only for Bebop and Rocksteady's violent argument over a comic to cause the laser to blast the ice underneath them, which results in the Technodrome being trapped underwater.
* ''WesternAnimation/Ben10'':
** After spending the episode racing against Enoch of the Forever Knights to obtain an ancient Mayan superweapon, Max lets him have it after a FriendOrIdolDecision when the kids were about to fall to their deaths. Enoch holds the weapon above his head in triumph... only to have it crumble into dust. [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome Even an ancient superweapon can't stand against a few millennium of decomposition]]. The episode ends with Max and the kids walking back to their van laughing as Enoch tries to cusp the dust into his hands, obviously [[VillainousBreakdown mentally broken]].
** Played more painfully in ''WesternAnimation/Ben10UltimateAlien''. Charmcaster actually succeeds in killing Ben, Gwen, and Kevin and manages to drains the souls of every living being in Legerdomain, [[DealWithTheDevil which she then feeds to Diagon in return for her father being resurrected]]. Unfortunately for Charmcaster, her father Spellbinder would not allow countless innocents to be sacrificed for his life and goes back to the dead. With the bargain refused, Diagon returns the souls to their rightful bodies [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone leaving Charmcaster crushed by what her actions ended up costing her]]. Ben, Gwen, and Kevin don't even arrest her because of how bad they feel for her.
* ''Westernanimation/{{Wakfu}}'' has this [[spoiler:as the end result of the plans of its first season villain, Nox. He's spent 200 years killing living things in order to gather their [[LifeEnergy wakfu]] to use that energy to rewind time and prevent the death of his family. Despite the heroes' efforts in the final battle, he defeats them, succeeds in draining the Tree of Life, and having left everyone left who could stop him dead and/or broken he finally turns back time...but it turns out that much wakfu was only good for a 20-minute rewind, making everything he's spent the last 200 years trying to achieve pointless. What's worse, the only thing the 20-minute rewind managed to do was undo even that final worthless victory. The only thing that is seemingly not undone by the rewind was Sadlygrove's death, but even then he comes back early into the next season, meaning Nox ended up achieving absolutely nothing. The revelation that all of his atrocities were pointless ends up sending Nox into a VillainousBreakdown.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/FreeWilly'': Jessie and Willy were looking for a lost treasure and lost it to the villain. Then, it was revealed the chest actually contained whistles.
* ''WesternAnimation/YogisTreasureHunt'': An alien known as Dr. Mars gave a 24-hour deadline for an old chest to be recovered or Earth would be destroyed. Dick Dastardly and Muttley found it and left Earth with it and the flying saucer of Dr. Mars, who explained to the heroes the chest contained no treasure but a bomb.
* ''WesternAnimation/FenderBender500'': The Fender Bender racers were in Russia to compete for "The Red Square Prize". Dick Dastardly won, and the prize was a red square instead of ''that'' Red Square.
* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'':
** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS2E15TheSuperSpeedyCiderSqueezy6000 The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000]]": The Flim Flam Brothers win the cider-producing contest to claim the exclusive rights to sell cider in Ponyville. But to do it, they had to turn their machine's quality control off, resulting in a horrible product. Combined with the way they thoroughly alienated everyone in town with their gloating over winning, they're quickly convinced to leave.
** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS3E11KeepCalmAndFlutterOn Keep Calm and Flutter On]]": Discord secures his freedom by making Fluttershy promise to never use the Element of Kindness against him (thus neutralizing all of the Elements of Harmony, as they have to be used together), a promise she refuses to break because doing so would invalidate the trust and friendship they have built up. However, when he returns to his old ways after having ensured that the only possible threat to him is entirely out of the picture, she makes it clear that their friendship is over, and Discord realizes that Fluttershy has worked her way into his heart enough that sacrificing their bond just isn't worth it. Well played indeed.
** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E25TwilightsKingdomPart1 Twilight's Kingdom]]": Tirek sets out to [[ManaDrain steal all magic from Equestria for himself]]... and he succeeds, with Twilight [[HostageForMacGuffin exchanging all the alicorn magic she was imbued with for the safety of her friends]]. The aftermath ends up with more and even more powerful magic being created, and the seemingly all-powerful Tirek being {{Curb Stomp|Battle}}ed back to Tartarus with an express ticket.
** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS4E8RarityTakesManehattan Rarity Takes Manehattan]]": Suri gets away with stealing Rarity's designs and the prestige that came with them. However, Rarity still manages to beat her in the fashion contest with new designs she whipped up the previous night, and her actions also cost her her HypercompetentSidekick Coco Pommel, meaning she's left in no position to build her business any further.
** "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS8E13TheMean6 The Mean 6]]": Although Queen Chrysalis' plan to take control of the Elements and rebuild her hive falls through and her new minions are destroyed, she manages to learn of the existence and location of the Tree of Harmony without the main characters knowing anything about it, providing her with potentially extremely useful info on the source of the main characters' power. Then the Tree [[spoiler:is destroyed alongside the Elements]] in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS9E1TheBeginningOfTheEndPart1 The Beginning of the End]]" and [[spoiler:reborn as an entirely different entity with no direct connection to the main characters' power]] in "[[Recap/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicS9E3Uprooted Uprooted]]", thus negating any advantage Chrysalis may have gotten for the tribulations she went through to get that information.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheDreamstone'': Played with. There are actually moments Zordrak succeeds in sending nightmares to the Land of Dreams, and while he does actually savor that victory, the negative effect it has on the heroes is [[PokeThePoodle so short-lived]] (to the point of sometimes being offscreen) and usually met with a [[DisproportionateRetribution far more brutal retaliation]] (a few instances the Urpneys managed to send dreams they were met with a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown), that it's hard not to view it as this trope. This is especially evident for the Urpneys, who usually hate their job and usually the best they hope out of a victory is that it keeps their BadBoss from lashing out at them.
* In ''WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex'', Van Kleiss [[spoiler:gets his hands on the Meta-Nanites, the keys to godhood, before anyone else... only to learn that he can't tap into their united power because Cesar and his parents programmed them in such a way that only Rex could do it.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs1981'' episode "Flighty's Plight", Gargamel gets his hands on his godfather Balthazar's book that contains the gold-making formula and escapes his castle with it...but unfortunately the book isn't written with waterproof ink, as Gargamel finds out when he opens the book after coming out of the moat.
* ''WesternAnimation/BackToTheFuture'': In "[[Recap/BackToTheFutureTheAnimatedSeriesS2E3AFriendInDeed A Friend in Deed]]", Biff finds a deed saying he owns the Parkers' land. After Marty and the boys have gone back in time to fix it, Thaddeus Tannen still succeeds in getting Wendell Parker to sign over his land to him to save his wife, and he still manages to run off and bury the deed where Biff Jr. will find it in the present. However, because [[GuileHero Marty]] gave Wendell a pen full of disappearing ink, the signature doesn't show up and the Parkers keep control of the extorted land.
* In ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', shy researcher Jervis Tetch is infatuated with his co-worker Alice, who does not return his interest. He uses his mind control research (earlier demonstrated to work just as well on humans as it does on mice) in order to secure the perfect [[Literature/AliceInWonderland Wonderland date]] with her ([[GoGoEnslavement including putting her in an appropriately-themed outfit]]). When Batman shows up, he calls Tetch out on it, pointing out that any part of her personality that might have attracted him has been suppressed by the mind control stuff, leaving her as a perfectly compliant but utterly blank doll. Tetch has a breakdown, [[NeverMyFault blaming Batman for forcing him to resort to such measures]].
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'', after Terry had to take off his mask to rescue a young boy from a fire, the boy reveals on the news he saw Batman's face. This gets the boy captured by Kobra agents to have his mind scanned to recreate Batman's face. By the time Terry reaches them, they completed the face recreation and the leader mocks Batman that his identity will be revealed to Kobra before jumping into a SnakePit. That is, until Terry sees the face Kobra made was actually the face of the boy's action figure.
* In one episode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGummiBears'', a villain tries to get control of the Great Book, by stealing Zummi's medallion. In the end, after Zummi outright gives him the medallion, he promptly tries to kill the Gummi Bears... and is himself incinerated instead, since "Nothing in the Great Book can hurt Gummi Bears."
* One arc of ''WesternAnimation/RockyAndBullwinkle'' had Bullwinkle discover he was the heir to a recently dead British aristocrat and stood to inherit something like "a million pound note." Some of the aristocrat's relatives believed themselves the rightful heirs and did everything they could to keep him from inheriting. In the end it turned out he wasn't the heir after all (or was he?) and the relatives got their prize, a million pound PROMISSORY note. They were now responsible for paying back the aristocrat's debts, while Bullwinkle and Rocky literally sailed off into the sunset.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Gargoyles}}'':
** In one episode, "The Price" David Xanatos discovers a method to immortality based on the cauldron of life story. He kidnaps Hudson as a plan to test the formula by forcing him to bathe in it first, but Hudson is able to escape. Afterwards, Owen decides to dip his right arm into the formula. It's discovered that the formula does work, only it turns the person into ageless, solid, stone. Owen's arm remains turned to stone for the rest of the series. [[spoiler: Good thing he was really Puck in disguise and can easily neutralize the effect with his magic.]]
--> '''Xanatos:''' What does the legend say? Whoever bathes in it will live as long as the mountain stones. [[ExactWords How literal minded]].
** "Metamorphosis" has Xanatos gain the loyalty of several humans mutated into creatures similar to the Gargoyles, and they don't appear again until well into the show's second season, which ends with them turning on Xanatos.
** Another episode ends with Xanatos acquiring a dangerous computer virus that nearly destroyed the cyborg Gargoyle Coldstone, and is [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse never brought up again]].
* ''WesternAnimation/{{MASK}}'' did this a few times:
** Similar to the ''Dukes of Hazzard'' example above, one episode has a search for buried money in Washington, D.C. which turns out to be worthless Confederate money.
** Another episode has a search for a golden totem pole. Mayhem gets his hands on it first, but scans it for purity and discovers it's actually amber.
** Another episode has a search through the Scottish Highlands to find a buried treasure. Mayhem is last seen climbing out of the treasure chamber asking "Is that all there is?" and escaping. It turns out the "treasure" was the warmth of the cavern during cold weather.
* While most of the victories by The Light in ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice2010'' play some part in their larger scheme, even events where their involvement seems tagged on, the episode that introduced Lex Luthor, which ended with him gaining the trust of the leaders of Korea stand-ins, turns into this simply because it's never ever brought up again.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'' has Darth Maul work with Death Watch to take over Mandalore, and then pulls an EvilerThanThou on their leader, leaving him the uncontested ruler of the planet. Unfortunately for him, this draws the attention of [[BigBad Darth Sidious]], who shows up and puts him well and truly in his place, rendering his victory moot.
-->'''Sidious:''' You have become a [[SuddenlyShouting RIVAL]].
** Maul doesn't do any better in ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels''. Every encounter with the heroes ends with him getting at least part of what he wanted, moving him closer and closer to a final reckoning with Kenobi... who kills him in a CurbStompBattle that lasts two seconds and three moves.
* ''WesternAnimation/PacMan'': When Pac-Man has to drive an armored truck, Mezmaron believes it contains power pellets and orders the ghost monsters to steal it. They do steal it but, instead of power pellets, it has fireworks.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants''
** In "Plankton's Army", with the help of his brethren, Plankton manages to get into the Krusty Krab safe and procure the Krabby Patty formula. As he reads the ingredients out loud, he discovers that the most important one is four pounds of freshly ground [[spoiler:plankton]], which causes Plankton and his family to run out of the Krusty Krab. [[spoiler:It's then revealed that what Plankton found wasn't even the real formula and that Mr. Krabs has the actual one in his home under his mattress]].
** "Bucket Sweet Bucket" has another one involving Plankton. After tricking [=SpongeBob=], Patrick, and Squidward into fixing up the Chum Bucket, Plankton manages to get into the Krusty Krab safe and find the formula, [[spoiler:only for it not to be the formula, but a To Do list and that Mr. Krabs had the formula with him while he was on vacation]]. In addition, since [=SpongeBob=] and Patrick used the ''entire Krusty Krab'' to fix up the Chum Bucket, Plankton also lost his restaurant when Mr. Krabs pushes his back to its normal spot.
** Yet another one involving Plankton, in "For Here Or to Go", Plankton enters a contest at the Krusty Krab where the prize is a free Krabby Patty (and he brings in a contest official that makes Mr. Krabs allow Plankton to enter). Plankton manages to win and despite Krabs's attempts to prevent the patty from being made, Plankton gets his patty, but has to eat it on the premises. However, Plankton makes it back to the Chum Bucket and has the patty analyzed before it's digested, with him selling Krabby Patties the next day. [[spoiler: However, they taste awful, due to Karen having analyzed all the contents of Plankton's stomach, which in addition to the Krabby Patty also included things such as stomach acid and pills.]]
** The episode "I Heart Dancing" has this combined with KarmicTwistEnding. [=SpongeBob=] has been chosen to audition for a role in a dance number, but Squidward, jealous of him, decides to "teach" [=SpongeBob=] various dances in an effort to overwork him so he can't go to the audition and eventually works him like a dog. In the end, [=SpongeBob=] is too tired to go and Squidward auditions instead and gets the part. However, it turns out that the number Squidward's going to be dancing in is [[spoiler:Squilliam's, who proceeds to work Squidward like a dog much like Squidward worked [=SpongeBob=] like one]].
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'' involved a soapbox derby that many of the kids take part in that has a top-secret mystery grand prize. When Bebe and Chalky end up in trouble towards the end of the race, Doug and Skeeter decide to turn back and save them, allowing Roger to win the race. However, as Doug puts in his journal at the end of the episode, Roger won the mystery grand prize that everyone ''thought they wanted'', a week as vice mayor, a.k.a. a desk job where Roger has to do paperwork for Mayor White.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheWildThornberrys'', an episode involved a reindeer race that Kip O'Donnel and Neil Beiderman took part in where the prize was 1000 lievos. At the end of the race, Eliza exposes Kip and Beiderman's reindeer as a racehorse in disguise, which disqualifies them, but they're then shown making off with the 1000 lievos anyway. Turns out that "lievos" means "pastry" and that Kip now has 1000 pastries (no wait, 12 of them are Beiderman's).
* ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'': After Hayley and Jeff absconded with $50,000, Roger tracks them down and begins harassing them to get the money (mostly by just making a really annoying sound over and over, which drives them crazy). After an elaborate chase around the world, they finally give in and give him the money... or what's left of it, since they spent most of it trying to get away from him.
* ''WesternAnimation/KiddVideo'' and his band once came across Master Blaster's good twin brother who's been imprisoned by the villain. It turns out he's the mayor of a city based around plumbing and has access to the city treasury. The kids try to get the good one recognized as the real deal, but their mother intervenes to let Master Blaster have the treasury. And he does go to take it...only to discover it's a pile of shower heads.
* In an episode of ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'', Aku hires cat-like hunter aliens to capture Jack. After a long, arduous chase, they finally subdue him. Unfortunately for Aku, however, their people have a custom that any prey who can give them such a challenging hunt deserves to run free.
** In another, Aku lured Jack to a graveyard and then wore him down with an endless army of undead before joining the fray himself. He manages to disarm Jack, has him completely at his mercy and is preparing to execute Jack with his own sword. Even Jack prays for forgiveness from his father for his failure. And then the sword bounces harmlessly off of Jack's chest with a metallic *tink* sound. The momentary distraction allows Jack to reclaim the sword and go on the offensive while stating that even he had forgotten that the sword was forged to destroy evil, it is completely harmless to the pure of heart.
** In season 5, Jack loses his sword - the only weapon that can harm Aku - but Aku himself is unaware of it [[VillainousBreakdown because he's since given up on tormenting Jack directly]]. Scaramouche, one of Aku's [[RidiculouslyHumanRobots mechanical assassins]], finds out, and after [[NotQuiteDead managing to survive]] his [[OffWithHisHead apparent destruction at Jack's hands]], starts seeking out Aku to tell him the good news. The problem is, he's now just a head with none of his impressive combat capabilities, can only move around by hopping, and has lost favor in the eyes of Aku after his defeat, making it difficult for him to actually get through to Aku. After many trials and tribulations he finally succeeds, and Aku rewards him with a brand new body... [[spoiler:and then immediately [[YouHaveFailedMe vaporizes him]] when it turns out that while Scaramouche was trying to relay his message, Jack had gotten his sword back in the meantime.]]
* The dream demon Morpheus in ''WesternAnimation/ExtremeGhostbusters'' too late realizes that he was invulnerable as long as he stayed in dreams. When he became corporeal, he became vulnerable to the Ghostbusters' weapons.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'': At the end of Season 4, The Lich [[spoiler:tricks Finn into opening a portal to Prismo's Time Room. He then uses the one wish that anyone who enters the Time Room gets to wish for the extinction of all life. However, since Finn and Jake followed him through the portal before he made the wish, they weren't affected and also got wishes. Coaxed along by BenevolentGenie Prismo, Jake wishes that the Lich had used his wish to send Finn and Jake back home. All of the Lich's schemes and trickery to get to Prismo's Room is instantly rendered moot.]]
** And in Season 5, he makes a grand impact by successfully unleashing a jailbreak in the multiverse's #1 Superjail, but since Finn defeats him he's not around to lead the criminals into destroying the multiverse, so they're busy spreading plague and endless disease and all kinds of malicious life, the exact opposite of what he wanted.
* The ''WesternAnimation/WildWestCowboysOfMooMesa'' episode "Stolen on the River" had Sheriff Terrorbull cheat in a raffle to win the tickets to the Dixie Trixie that were given to the C.O.W.-Boys by a wealthy couple in gratitude for rescuing them from Five Card Cud and his gang. Sheriff succeeds, but his victory turns out to be pointless when it's discovered that the Dixie Trixie was just a front for Five Card Cud to dupe wealthy people out of their valuables and that the heroes had the boat hauled onto dry land when this was found out.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
** In the season 4 finale "The Disaster", [[spoiler:Rob]] finds a remote that can be used to control real objects and uses it to ruin Gumball's relationships with all his loved ones, make his parents get divorced, and very nearly kill Penny, before pausing time to reveal himself for a confrontation. He then uses the remote to open a portal to the Void, and tries to eject Gumball, but the remote doesn't work and [[spoiler:Rob]] assumes it's broken. He then tries a second plan: he throws the remote into the Void, forcing Gumball to jump in to try and find it so he can fix everything. [[spoiler:It turns out one of the batteries had just fallen slightly out of place; Gumball finds it, fixes it, and rewinds time back to the beginning]].
** Happens again in the follow-up "The Re-Run". [[spoiler:Rob actually manages to make things [[FromBadToWorse even worse than last time]], leading to Gumball's parents reverting to babies, Anais getting erased from existence, Darwin turning back into a regular fish in the middle of a mall and then suffocating to death, and Gumball getting trapped in the Void with him. However, when Rob sees that even after everything he's done, Gumball is still willing to risk his life to save him from being trapped in the Void for eternity, he has a fit of conscience and rewinds time to undo all the damage he's done and destroy the remote before he had done anything with it.]]
* I.R Baboon actually beats ''WesternAnimation/IAmWeasel'' in "I Are Big Star". Baboon steals Weasel's pelt and sidelines him for the rest of the episode. Baboon gets to act alongside a beautiful actress and his "performance" is praised by the director. Then he gets run over by a bus and he loses the memories of the best day of his life.
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' ends with Bat-Mite screwing over the show to get it cancelled so that a darker, more serious Batman series will be made in its place. The new series focuses primarily on Bat''girl'', and as ComicBook/AmbushBug points out, a serious Batman series has no room for [[UsefulNotes/TheSilverAgeOfComicBooks Silver Age]] silliness... like Bat-Mite himself. Bat-Mite realizes his mistake seconds before he is [[PuffOfLogic erased from existence.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' special "Timmy's Secret Wish", Foop succeeds in making Timmy look like the worst godkid ever and having all his wishes undone, including Poof. However, he learns too late that as Poof's anti-fairy, he gets erased from existence too. This brings AscendedFridgeHorror into play when many wondered what would happen to Foop if he succeeded in erasing Poof.
* ''WesternAnimation/AdventuresOfTheGalaxyRangers'' had this with "Chained." Sure, they got the untrusting townspeople to hand over Gooseman, they free their leader, Macross, and the gang can now get their cache of rare [[GreenRocks starstones]]. They get the stones, but the stones degrade quickly when exposed to ultraviolet light (and they buried the cache in a desert - meaning the stones start crumbling as soon as they unbury the box), and then some townspeople led by sympathetic settler Annie show up armed and sporting for a fight seeing as the gang ''did'' trash their settlement on the way in. Macross and the gang high-tail it, leaving Gooseman behind, but they get nothing for their trouble.
* One ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' episode, "When Mice Rule The Earth", has the duo going back in time in order to uplift prehistoric mice so that their species becomes dominant. They succeed, but this results in a world of...Pinkies!! Horrified, Brain goes to push a ResetButton, as while he ''could'' rule the world as it was... "Who'd want to?"
* ''WesternAnimation/SheepInTheBigCity'': In "The Agony of De-Bleat", General Specific manages to capture Sheep for use in the Secret Military Organization's sheep-powered raygun. However, the threat of General Specific having to downsize the SMO and fire everybody now that their big mission is complete inspires Private Public, the Angry Scientist, and the Plot Device to [[StatusQuoIsGod conspire to set Sheep free]].
* In the Season 1 finale of ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManTheAnimatedSeries'', the Kingpin steals the sample of "Prometheum-X" that astronauts brought back from an asteroid (along with the Venom symbiote...) It's a fissile material, like uranium or plutonium, but isn't radioactive unless heated, and thus can be carried around safely without any special equipment. The Kingpin intends to sell it on the black market to the highest bidder - despite his chief scientist Smythe's warnings that he should run more tests on it first. Spider-Man steals the Prometheum-X from the Kingpin, who then takes hostages and demands that Spider-Man trade it back. Spider-Man actually spends a few hours studying the sample, however...and then happily agrees to the exchange, and leaves without making further effort to obtain it. When the Kingpin tries another test explosion, however, it's a dud: Smythe discovers that the entire sample has decayed into simple lead. It turns out that Prometheum-X is so powerful because it is unstable - so unstable that it has a very short atomic half-life, so that the entire sample just naturally burned out into uselessness in a matter of days. Kingpin realizes to his chagrin that Spider-Man figured this out, and it's why he agreed to the trade.
* One episode of ''WesternAnimation/InspectorGadget'' had MAD searching for a formula to turn lead into gold. They succeed in reproducing the formula, then later on, they drop one of the transmuted gold bars, to discover that what the formula really made was lead-based gold ''paint''.
* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'':
** The episode "Operation: C.R.I.M.E." had a boy pretend to be able to predict the future so that everyone else in school would be in detention and he'd be first in line at the cafeteria before the good food runs out. He succeeds in his scheme, but finds that today's lunch is a lima bean sandwich rather than the pizza bagels he desired.
** Invoked by the heroes in the episode "Operation: C.A.K.E.D.T.H.R.E.E." which starts out as Sector V trying to steal the Delightful Children's birthday cake, like normal. However, [[ItMakesSenseInContext a bunch of chickens that Sector V was going to use]] end up [[ToiletHumor doing their business on the cake]], at which point Sector V decides to leave. The Delightfuls (who didn't realize what happened) are confused, but go along with their plan of eating their cake on live TV for all the children of the world to watch...only for no child to be jealous or upset, but rather utterly grossed out.
** In "Operation: R.O.B.B.E.R.S.", the Six-Gum Gang manage to succeed in stealing everyone's spelling homework and give it to the Delightful Children. However, the first paper the teacher reads is [[DumbMuscle Numbuh 4's]], whose horrible spelling causes the Delightfuls to get detention.
* ''WesternAnimation/StarVsTheForcesOfEvil'': Toffee’s EvilPlan to [[spoiler:recover his missing finger and restore his full powers, making him nigh-unstoppable,]] goes off without a hitch... only to be nullified seconds later when [[spoiler:Star manages to attain her SuperMode, allowing her to blast him with so much raw power that even his precious HealingFactor can’t save him.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E17MySisterMySitter My Sister, My Sitter]]", after Lisa is put in charge of babysitting Bart while Homer and Marge are away, Bart decides to ruin Lisa's reputation as a babysitter out of anger, and succeeds in doing so when a prank [[GoneHorriblyRight Goes Horribly Right]] and he ends up injured (a dislocated shoulder from falling down the stairs) and unconscious, and she accidentally brings him to the pier where everyone is while trying to get him to the hospital. However, despite her now looking like the worst babysitter ever, Lisa ends up still getting calls for babysitting jobs as she's still the only reliable sitter in town.
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'':
** While calling her a "villain" might be extreme, the one time Candace finally manages to expose her brothers' antics to their mother Linda and have it stick, it's nullified by the fact she reveals it to the version of their mother twenty years in the future (during a TimeTravel adventure), at which point things like holograms, flying cars, and jetpacks are commonplace, the future Phineas and Ferb are by then independent adults, and present day Phineas and Ferb aren't technically her jurisdiction anymore, so there's not much Linda can do to punish them. Candace at least finds a little solace in being vindicated and in the fact it's even possible for her to win.
** Dr. Doofenshmirtz has a victory like this during the episode, "Cranius Maximus". He is trying to steal the key to the city as he believes that it works like a master key for the city and can open any door. Towards the climax of the episode, he does succeed in getting it, but realizes that it's meant to be an award and can't open anything. And then he gets struck by lightning.
** Another Doofenshmirtz example occurs in the episode, "Magic Carpet Ride", when he tries to take petty revenge on his brother Roger (who, years ago, accidentally ruined a masterpiece painting Heinz poured his heart and soul into), by ruining a painting Roger is about to unveil to get even. Dr. Doof actually succeeds in preventing Perry from stopping him ruining the painting, but too late does Heinz find out that the painting being unveiled was ''his'' painting Roger had been fixing since then. Doofenshmirtz is so depressed by his "win" that he doesn't even flinch as Perry sends him and his hovercraft crashing into the street.
** Yet ''[[RuleOfThree another]]'' Doofenshmirtz example in "Happy New Year", when he creates an "-inator" which changes everyone's New Year's resolutions into helping him take over the Tri-State area as his minions. It worked as intended but Doof ''didn't'' anticipate the fact ''no one keeps their New Year's resolution''. In fact, Perry predicted this exact outcome and didn't stop Doof from enacting his plan because he knew it was doomed to fail.
** ''Another'' Doofenshmirtz example happens in "That Sinking Feeling". Doofenshirtz reveals that, ever since he purchased the building that would become Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, he tends to have sleeping issues due to a variety of ships at the docks making too much noise when moving towards the lighthouse at night, so he decides to put a stop to it by moving the lighthouse elsewhere by installing rockets on it, in order to finally get a peaceful night. He succeeds, as the lighthouse flies away while the ships chase it no matter where the lighthouse is going. Unfortunately, later at night, the lighthouse crashes right ''into'' Doofenshmirtz Evil Inc, with the ships surrounding the building, thus making Doof's nights more noisy than before.
** This happens in the SeriesFinale, when Doofenshmirtz uses a TimeMachine which induces a GroundhogDayLoop, allowing him to keep trying and trying until he finally ends up governor of the Tri-State Area by exploiting a legal loophole, then making it illegal for Perry to stop him. However, he doesn't get long to enjoy his victory, partly because the invention goes haywire and started gradually erasing everything from existence, spontaneously resetting the timeline on increasingly shorter intervals, resetting his victory as well, and partly because his motivation to become tri-governor to stop his daughter from wanting to move out (since he believed it was because she thought he was a loser) is rendered moot when she tells him her moving out had nothing to do with him being "cool" or not, and she convinces Doof to [[HeelFaceTurn give up his evil ways]] because she can tell he only does it out of obligation rather than from his heart.
* The ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueUnlimited'' episode "Patriot Act" has Wade Eiling, having used a SuperSoldier formula to become a hulking behemoth, attack a parade where the Justice League sent a number of its members to show support. His intent was to defeat the League and prove the danger of superpowered individuals, and he delivers a brutal CurbStompBattle to the Leaguers present--but ends up accomplishing the exact opposite of his goals. As it turns out, all the Leaguers present were {{Badass Normal}}s with nothing but tech and magical equipment at best, and yet still managed to HoldTheLine through sheer gallantry in the name of protecting the civilians. And, as is pointed out, Eiling's attempt to prove that the Justice League are dangerous metahumans resulted in him ''becoming'' [[YouAreWhatYouHate a dangerous metahuman]], which the Justice League exists to combat. If anything, his attack actually ''raises'' the profile of the Leaguers involved, who were previously seen as CListFodder who were picked for parade duty in the first place for not being involved in anything important at the time: the crowd goes from disappointed to hailing them as true heroes.
** In "Hereafter", Superman is sent to a BadFuture in which the only human remaining is the immortal Vandal Savage. In this timeline, not long after Superman's apparent death, Savage had completed a device that [[GravityMaster granted him control over gravity]], in his bid to dominate the world. However, it worked too well, disrupting the gravitational balance of the solar system, and resulting in the extinction of most life on earth. Savage had reflected on how meaningless his ambitions were for tens of thousands of years after the fact.
-->'''Savage:''' I should never have done it.\\
'''Superman:''' Done what?\\
'''Savage:''' This. I destroyed the world.
* The ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan2000'' finale has Dr. X able to accomplish all of his goals. He’s gained superhuman abilities, doesn't need food or air any longer, and becomes NighInvulnerable... and then Action Man traps him on an empty rock floating in the immense vastness of space with no means of escape. He actually does scream Action Man's name one last time as the rock drifts away from earth.
* In ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'' the antagonistic ensign competing with Boimler to be named acting captain succeeds while Boimler humiliates himself to save his crewmates. He serves as acting captain only for a few moments before being relieved by the next shift, and it's made apparent none of the officers regarded who filled the seat as a question of the slightest importance. By contrast, Boimler's actions were noted and commended by a senior officer.
* ''WesternAnimation/FanboyAndChumChum'': The original ''WesternAnimation/RandomCartoons'' short had Berry the Ice Monster agree to thumb wrestle Fanboy for the last of the Frosty Freezy Freeze in Fanboy and Chum Chum's possession. Berry wins, but finds out after being handed the cup that it's already empty due to Chum Chum drinking it all.
[[/folder]]

* In ''Death: the High Cost of Living'', the villain manages to steal Death's symbol, her ankh, and gets away with it, under the impression that it's an artifact of great power. Turns out it really is just a symbol; Death buys a new one from a street vendor and all is well.

* ''Film/OldBoy'': The main villain, Woo-jin, [[spoiler: spends decades plotting his revenge on Oh Dae-su for accidentally revealing Woo-jin's [[VillainousIncest incestous relationship with his sister]] and her resulting suicide: locking Oh Dae-su away for 15 years, killing multiple people, and tricking Oh Dae-su into having sex with his own daughter. Once his revenge is complete, Woo-jin is satisfied for all of five seconds...before realizing that [[VengeanceFeelsEmpty revenge did not bring him any closure for his sister's death]], and with his quest complete he no longer has anything left to live for. Thus, Woo-jin proceeds to blow his brains out.]]

** In ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack,'' the Empire [[CurbstompBattle completely kicks the Rebel's asses]] during the Battle Of Hoth and destroys their base. Luckily, all of the non-[[{{Redshirts}} redshirt]] characters manage to evacuate in time.

%%(PCE)* ''VideoGame/BaldursGateII'' when you first arrive at [[spoiler:Spellhold]], the BigBad quickly imprisons you and [[spoiler:steals your soul]], then leaving you to rot in a dungeon to be quickly killed by TheDragon, who however ignores the orders and thinks that there is more fun by giving you a chance and hunting you through the maze. This single decision will backfire spectacularly. (HOW does it backfire?)

* While most of the victories by The Light in ''WesternAnimation/YoungJustice'' play some part in their larger scheme, even events where their involvement seems tagged on, the episode that introduced Lex Luthor, which ended with him gaining the trust of the leaders of Korea stand-ins, turns into this simply because it's never ever brought up again.

* The former TropeNamer comes from Creator/{{Shakespeare}}'s ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'': Shylock pleads his case in court, and the court finds that, indeed, the contract he made with Antonio is binding, giving Shylock every legal right to extract a pound of flesh from him. However, the obviously biased court also rules that Shylock is not entitled to any blood. Therefore he would have to take the flesh without spilling a drop of blood, which everyone simply accepts is impossible. Not just that -- he asked for a ''pound'' of flesh, which also means he can't take any more or less than an exact pound of Antonio's flesh (without violating his contract), and this along with the fact that his contract never included ''not'' being held accountable for potentially killing Antonio means that the Anti-Semitic court can use this LoopholeAbuse to bring down the full force of the law upon Shylock. To rub salt into the wound, he is forced to convert to Christianity by the man he tried to take vengeance on, and he cannot even take his own life to get out of it (note that by the standards of Shakespeare's time his forced conversion would be a just punishment and be considered salvation of the "villain"; ValuesDissonance makes it come off as extremely cruel and religiously-intolerant).
* Occurs in ''Theatre/{{Beetlejuice}}: The Musical''. Right at the end of the play, Betelgeuse gets exactly what he wants by marrying Lydia and coming back to life. But then, Lydia just instantly kills him again. And since Betelgeuse is now recently-deceased, he can be banished to the Netherworld and never escape.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'' episode "Flighty's Plight", Gargamel gets his hands on his godfather Balthazar's book that contains the gold-making formula and escapes his castle with it...but unfortunately the book isn't written with waterproof ink, as Gargamel finds out when he opens the book after coming out of the moat.

* In ''VideoGame/SonicRiders'', Eggman appears after Sonic and co. make it through the VeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, and when the treasure for which Eggman sacrificed the ''Chaos Emeralds'', the series's go-to {{Mineral Macguffin}}s, is within sight, he actually holds off the heroes with a laser gun in order to grab the treasure at the last minute. However, when Eggman opens the chest containing said treasure, he finds [[spoiler:an ancient prototype [[HoverBoard Gear]] in the form of a FlyingCarpet, outclassed by every other [[HoverBoard Gear]] currently available to the public and therefore worthless to Eggman. At least it was a really nice rug...]]

* In ''VideoGame/HalfLife'', [[EliteMooks black ops]] are sent to Black Mesa to cover up the incident once and for all by murdering everyone present there, including the [[YouHaveFailedMe Marines previously sent there to do exactly that]], culminating in using a nuclear warhead to detonate the facility. The world finds out everything that happened anyway due to there being survivors, and not long after the world is invaded and annexed by the Combine.

** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'', Kuja's mastery of XanatosSpeedChess allows him to out-maneuver every other character and eventually ascend to become a PersonOfMassDestruction unrivaled by any other in the story. He celebrates by [[TheStarscream killing his master]], and then prepares to finally TakeOverTheWorld. However, the spirit of his master then tells him that his victory is meaningless, because Kuja was designed to have a finite lifespan and thus will die soon. Kuja... [[SuicidalCosmicTemperTantrum does not take it well]]. [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery At all.]]

* ''Manga/FairyTail'': When the crew goes off on an S-Ranked mission to save an island from a curse that turns them into demons, they find that there is a demon on the island that was sealed away in ice and the villains are trying to thaw it out so the main villain of that arc and kill it and thus surpass his master, who sacrificed herself to seal it in the first place. [[spoiler:The villains manage it, only to find that it was already dead. Turns out, [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome being frozen in ice for several years is fatal]] even to demons.]]

* In the ''VideoGame/ChzoMythos'', this trope is in effect for the Chzo cultists. Chzo finally has the bridge to crossover from the World of Magic into the World of Technology. Problem is that the cultists vastly overestimated Chzo's interest in doing so. Chzo was more interested in the pain and suffering the cultists inflected upon themselves in making the bridge and the emotional pain when they realized Chzo doesn't really care about them.