History Main / SelfDefeatingProphecy

* ''ComicStrip/ThePhantom'': In the storyline "Death of the Phantom", the Ghost Who Walks plans to rescue his old ally Sarvana from Gravelines Prison in fascist Rhodia. Old Man Mozz, a Bandar elder, warns him not to, telling him that if he does so, this will [[IncitingIncident start a chain of events]] that inevitably leads to Phantom's son Kit abandoning the legacy to become a hardbitten freedom fighter, Diana leaving him and taking Heloise, and ultimately Phantom himself being killed by his own son's militia because they didn't know who he was. The Phantom then sets out to rescue Sarvana anyway, while trying to avoid the specific moment that triggered everything in the prophecy. He succeeds, and the story ends with the implication that this was exactly what Old Man Mozz intended to happen the whole time.

[[folder:Newspaper Comics]]
* In the 2021-2022 ''ComicStrip/ThePhantom'' storyline "The Chronicle of Old Man Mozz", the Phantom is told of the dire consequences that will result if he rescues Sarvana from Gravelines Prison. The Phantom is quick to note that the prophecy seems to depend not just on him doing so, but doing so ''without knowing what Mozz has told him'', and that he could easily rescue her ''and'' take precautions against the events Mozz describes now that he knows about them.
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Generally, a single person knows that something terrible will happen in the next 24 hours... unless that person can use her special knowledge to prevent it. More rarely, a person will accidentally thwart a good prophecy by trying to force it, or the prophecy will simply fail ''because'' people know about it; the prophecy itself is PointOfDivergence from the future being prophesised..

[[folder: Comic Strip]]
* In the ''ComicStrip/{{Phantom}}'' storyline "Death of the Phantom", the Ghost Who Walks plans to rescue his old ally Sarvana from Gravelines Prison in fascist Rhodia. Old Man Mozz, a Bandar elder, warns him not to, telling him that if he does so, this will [[IncitingIncident start a chain of events]] that inevitably leads to Phantom's son Kit abandoning the legacy to become a hardbitten freedom fighter, Diana leaving him and taking Heloise, and ultimately Phantom himself being killed by his own son's militia because they didn't know who he was. The Phantom then sets out to rescue Sarvana anyway, while trying to avoid the specific moment that triggered everything in the prophecy. He succeeds, and the story ends with the implication that this was exactly what Old Man Mozz intended to happen the whole time.

Generally, a single person knows that something terrible will happen in the next 24 hours... unless that person can use her special knowledge to prevent it. More rarely, a person will accidentally thwart a good prophecy by trying to force it, or the prophecy will simply fail ForWantOfANail; the prophecy itself is the nail.

* Some people belive Marx's prediction of the uprising of the proletariat to have been just that. Chances are, if he hadn't made the upper-class aware of that, it might have happened a lot more.

* Discussed in ''Film/{{Next}}'': The ArcWords of the film are, "This is the thing about the future. Every time you look at the future, it changes, ''because'' you looked at it."

** The Soviet Union hockey team in the 1980 Olympics: Coach Viktor Tikhonov rested most of his best players in the days prior to the medal round while U.S. coach Herb Brooks maintained his team's intense training. But the big shot was during the U.S.-Soviet game itself, when Tikhonov benched goalie Vladislav Tretiak after one period for allowing two goals; many U.S players saw this as arrogance that the Soviets felt they could win with backup Vladimir Myshkin [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYscemhnf88 The rest is history.]]

* The Dark Prognosticus in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' is a book that details a series of events that would come to destroy all universes. The Ancients, in response, created a counter-prophecy in the Light Prognosticus.

-->"It wouldn't exactly take ''much'', John. In the middle of transporting someone Mr. Captor realizes how utterly exhausted he is and that he's never going to manage to carry all sixteen of us to safety. And so he can't."
-->"But it wouldn't be ''true''!"
-->"He'd believe it is. His power is mostly mental. He's prone to depression. There's already a probability of it happening on its own. We do not need even a smidgen of weight added to ''that'' balance."

[[folder:Films]]

[[folder:VideoGames]]

* In the 2021-2022 ''ComicStrip/ThePhantom'' storyline "The Chronicle of Old Man Mozz", the Phantom is told of the dire consequences that will result if he rescues Sarvana from Gravelines Prison. The Phantom is quick to note that the prophecy seems to depend not just on him doing so, but doing so ''without knowing what Mozz has told him'', and that he could easily do so ''and'' take precautions against the events Mozz describes now that he knows about them.

* ''VideoGame/{{Xenoblade}}'' ''revolves'' around this. Not only do Shulk's [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Monado]]-born visions allow him to change the course of the story, they are also ''[[GameplayAndStoryIntegration a system in-game]]'': An enemy charging a powerful attack will make the team see a vision of the attack, and gives the player time to reduce the ill-effects of the attack, delay it, or flat-out shatter the future and not allow it to happen.

** Many players on the 1968 Baltimore Colts still believe their believing their own hype led heavily to them losing Super Bowl III to the New York Jets. The late John Mackey frequently said in interviews about the game: "If you think you've won before the game begins, you got a major problem -- and we had a major problem, because we had already won that game in our minds."
** The New England Patriots were gunning for an undefeated perfect season in 2007, a record not matched since the 1972 Miami Dolphins. They rolled into the stadium at Super Bowl XLII like they already had it in the bag, openly antagonizing the New York Giants and their fans. When talking to reporters about a prediction from the Giants' Plaxico Burress that the Giants would win 23-17, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady responded dismissively, "We're only going to score 17 points? HA! HA! HA! Okay!" Words Tom Brady and the New England Patriots would soon regret when the Giants pulled a last minute upset during the fourth quarter, with David Tyree's famous "helmet catch" putting the Giants above the cap. Victory for the Patriots trickled away and their perfect 2007-2008 season was ended by losing the one game that mattered -- The UsefulNotes/SuperBowl -- to the 5th seed New York Giants. However, the Patriots did not score 17 points...[[EpicFail they scored 14, the Giants scored 17]].

[[folder:Cross-Media]]
%%* The visions in ''Literature/TheDeadZone''.
* The visions in ''Film/MinorityReport''. In the original short story, this is taken to an extreme: one precog sees the future as it would have been if there were no visions. The second sees the future as it would have been if only the first vision existed. The third sees the future as it will be when all three exist.
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[[folder:Music]]
* The music group Music/SneakerPimps exploded onto the scene with an unique sound and a charismatic female singer named Kelli Ali with an unique voice. It was later learned that the sound was called TripHop, a music sub-genre that was already at the peak of popularity in Europe. Because of this, their debut album, 'Becoming X' was a good success for them. However, the leader of the group wasn't satisfied and decided to drop the lead singer and replace her with the lead guitar player, Chris Corner. And they changed their sound from Trip Hop to AlternativeRock. When asked why, he claimed he didn't want the band to sound like another Trip Hop band with a female singer, which has been popular in Europe since the artist Music/{{Tricky}} and the group Music/MassiveAttack. [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks However, this backfired.]] While they no longer sounded like a Trip Hop band, which they believed would cause them to fail, they sounded like one of the many alternative bands that were flooding the airwaves during the 90s. Also, the fans of the group were already in love with the Trip Hop sound and captivated by Ali as the lead singer. This resulted in a downward spiral that eventually caused the band to break up after releasing two follow up albums that didn't do as well as the first.
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%%* The visions in ''Literature/TheDeadZone''.

* In ''Fanfic/TheParselmouthOfGryffindor'', according to Dumbledore, this is why Trelawney's predictions rarely seem true, because they were only accurate as long as Trelawney didn't alter fate by saying them. [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Hermione thinks that just sounds like a bad excuse]]. At any rate, that sets small-p predictions apart from true Prophecies, which, as in canon, are the opposite, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy only coming true if their targets act on their information]].

* In the ''Literature/BookOfJonah'', the titular prophet announces that the city of Nineveh will be destroyed for its wickedness. The people of the city repent, so the destruction does not happen. [[DramaticallyMissingThePoint This makes Jonah angry]], because he actually wanted Nineveh wiped off the planet. God gently shows him how unreasonable his anger is.
* In ''Literature/SixteenThirtyTwo'' by Eric Flint, and its many sequels making up the Ring of Fire series AKA the 1632 series, the arrival of Americans from our time and the new knowledge about "historical" events from their timeline, prevents many events from happening, such as the tulip speculation and crash in 1637 or the overthrow of Charles I in 1649.
** Of course, sometimes the efforts to avert them just make them likely to come early. Charles I's having Cromwell preemtively arrested for regicide in 1633 (Killing his wife and eldest son in the process) just makes Cromwell start planning said overthrow a decade sooner than he originally would have.

* Defied by Larry in ''Literature/ANightInTheLonesomeOctober'', whose gift of "anticipation" makes his intuition near-prophetic. He knows that telling people about what he's anticipated may change the outcome of events, so he [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee keeps quiet if talking would prevent the outcomes he's counting on]].

* Whether or not this is possible is a major question for the characters of ''Series/FlashForward2009''.
* In ''Series/{{Charmed|1998}}'', Phoebe's premonitions allow the sisters to prevent almost all of the tragedies she sees. It tends to be a real TearJerker on those rare occasions when they can't.

* Played with ''hard'' in ''VideoGame/TalesOfTheAbyss''. Two thousand years ago, Yulia Jue and Lorelei worked together to read the planet's future and record it in a huge prophecy known as The Score. The catch is that they had a choice of multiple futures - fate isn't set in stone. They foresaw the destruction of the world (basically the events of the game) and deliberately chose the path most likely to give the protagonists a chance to break the prophecy and escape the doom foretold. On the other hand, since the Order of Lorelei has everyone following The Score religiously, down to the last detail, it's also a SelfFulfillingProphecy unless they ''can'' find the way to break it... and it's not an EitherOrProphecy because they aren't told ''how''.
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' had an odd combination of this and SelfFulfillingProphecy as part of the Cataclysm expansion. In ages past, the titans had a vision of the world of Azeroth covered in flames/darkness/evil/general old god nastyness, which they dubbed the hour of twilight. To prevent the hour of twilight, they created five powerful dragon aspects. However, the old gods corrupted one of these dragon aspects, Neltharion, who became known as Deathwing. A few thousand years later, Deathwing [[SelfFulfillingProphecy was on the brink of causing the very hour of twilight he was created to prevent]]. However, he was then stopped due to the efforts of another one of the dragon aspects, Nozdormu, who transported a group of heroes through time [[TimeyWimeyBall (after they defeated a future version of Nozdormu that lived after the hour of twilight had already happened)]] to retrieve a powerful artifact that Deathwing had created long ago. This artifact was then empowered by the combined forces of the remaining dragon aspects (plus an orc) and used to kill Deathwing.

In RealLife, predicting that something terrible will happen often allows you to prevent it. Intelligence is an awesome power.