Often a Death Trope, so expect to see unmarked spoilers ahead.
Times where somebody is hoist by their own petard in the Marvel Universe.
- Captain America:
- This is what allows Captain America to enact his plan in Secret Empire - Maria Hill, former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., had found evidence of Cap secretly being a member of HYDRA. She contacts Rick Jones with this news, but he seems incredibly doubtful and ultimately rejects this, specifically due to the fact that saying something like this is the sort of stunt she would have pulled ever since she took over S.H.I.E.L.D.
- This seriously happened to the Red Skull soon after he was reborn in a clone of Steve Rogers' body, and he has never recovered from it. Throughout the Skull's entire career, he used a poison called the Dust of Death, which not only killed people, but caused the skin on their head to shrivel and turn red, making the corpse look like a "red skull". But when he tried to use this on Captain America, he fell victim to it himself. He survived due to an antidote he took, but still suffered the secondary effect, turning his head into a living red skull.
- To make this more ironic, soon after being reborn in the clone's body, he had resolved to change his strategy, and no longer use his masked identity at all, thinking that being a well-recognized terrorist was a hindrance to his plans. After this accident, he really didn't have a choice.
- When he discovered Kubix, a living Cosmic Cube, could alter memories, the Skull came up with a genius idea. He had Kubik alter Captain America's memories so Steve was convinced he'd been a decades-long deep cover Hydra operative, believing in them totally. The Skull figured with Captain America a willing agent, Hydra would rise higher than ever. But Steve became convinced he was loyal to the "true" Hydra that the Skull had warped and the Skull was holding them back so began his moves to take over Hydra for himself. In a confrontation, the Skull admits what he did...and is shocked that Steve doesn't believe his memories could have been warped and kills the Skull to take over Hydra.
- Captain Marvel: In The Death of Captain Marvel, Mar-Vell dies because his own powers worked against other heroes' efforts to cure the cancer that eventually killed him. The energies of the nega-bands that gave him most of his powers included a healing factor that kept the cancer in check for several years, but the cancer eventually mutated to the point where the nega bands could no longer stop it, and made Mar-Vell reliant on them to the point he would die in a matter of hours without them. Worse, the mutated cancer was now linked to the nega bands, meaning that a cure would not only have to overcome the cancer itself but the bands as well, making it basically impossible for the heroes to do more than delay the spread of the disease.
- Fantastic Four:
- In one story Doctor Doom gloats to an imprisoned Reed Richards about a torture room he designed full of thousands of mirrors arranged in such a way that the myriad reflections are so incomprehensible to the human mind that looking at it without protective goggles can induce a Heroic BSoD. At the end of the story, about five issues later, Doom and Reed's climactic battle leads to Reed chasing Doom into the aforementioned room, where Doom beats the living crap out of Reed and strangles him while screaming about how much he hates him. However, Reed manages to tear off Doom's mask just before he passes out, and the sight of his grotesquely disfigured face reflected at him thousands of times drives Doom completely insane (he gets better).
- Fantastic Four #10. Doctor Doom develops a Shrink Ray device with the intent of using it on the Fantastic Four, but he ends up getting shrunk down to nothingness by it.
- In the first appearance of the villainous Super-Skrull, Reed determined that he was having his power remotely beamed to him from the Skrull homeworld, and he managed to get the Skrulls to call off their attack by threatening to use his 'space-displacer' machine to bombard said world with lethal radiation, using the Super-Skrull's own power beam as a targeting guide.
- Johnny Storm once had a minor villain named Asbestos Man, who wore a fireproof armor made out of asbestos. He ultimately succumbed to mesothelioma related to using asbestos. Connected to this, the Golden Age Human Torch had a more major villain named the Asbestos Lady. She, too, succumbed to mesothelioma.
- The Incredible Hulk: The U-Foes seem to kill themselves off like this the first time they turn up — their newly gained powers are strong enough to potentially take down the Big Green Machine, but Power Incontinence kicks in. Vapour can turn herself into any gas... but soon cannot keep her molecules together. Ironclad can increase his mass... which keeps increasing so he cannot move and sinks into the ground. And their leader Vector, just like Unus above, can repel things — eventually he repels the air around him so he suffocates, then he repels Earth itself and shoots out into space. X-Ray's ability to manipulate radiation very nearly causes him to explode from absorbing too much energy. They come back.
- Marvel Adventures: In one issue of Marvel Adventures: The Avengers, Giant Girl (Janet Van Dyne) ends up under the control of the insect humanoid Psyclops. Seeking answers, Storm, Wolverine and Spider-Man head for Van Dyne Labs for answers, where they meet Hank Pym. Pym reveals that her costume's equipment were meant for shrinking and communication with insects. When Janet discovers she can grow, she ignores all of that until Psyclops' powerful insect control took her over. Thankfully, her new costume averts that problem from then on.
- The Punisher:
- In The Punisher 2099, the villain Fearmaster has a hand (later a claw) that can turn anything biological it touches into anything else. When the Punisher finally corners him, he tries to turn Jake's entire body to mud. Too bad he forgot that he chopped off one of the Punisher's hands two issues prior; all Jake has to do is reach out with his prosthetic hand, grab Fearmaster's arm, and shove the claw right back in his face.
- Used in the tongue-in-cheek The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe: The Punisher actually manages to kill the nearly unkillable Wolverine. How does he do this? By forcing good ol' Logan into a generator, using his metal bones as a conductor to electrically fry every cell in his body.
- The Punisher MAX has the "Kitchen Irish" arc—one of the parties attempting to claim Old Man Nesbit's inheritance is an IRA bomb-maker, Finn Cooley. In the middle of an attempt to blow up a Belfast police station, his bomb's fuze tripped, causing the thing to literally blow up in his face. Cooley survived, but not happily. Frank's MI-6 friend Yorkie comments dryly:
Yorkie: IRA own-goal. If there was one thing guaranteed to warm the heart of any British soldier, it was one of those fucking wankers blowing himself up by accident. - Runaways: The teens discover that one of their newest companions is a vampire and, to save the others, Karolina offers herself to him. When he goes to drain her, he realizes too late that Karolina is solar powered and he promptly explodes.
- Spider-Man:
- In The Night Gwen Stacy Died, the Green Goblin attempts to kill Spider-Man by impaling him with his hovercraft, but Spidey jumps to avoid it and it hits GG instead.
- Parodied in Spider-Man 3 How It Should Have Ended
.Spidey: I'm just sayin' there's only one way this is gonna go down, it happens every time. We'll fight for a bit, you'll tear my mask, but in the end, I'm gonna leap outta the way and you're gonna do something that makes you kill yourself. - Norman's son, Harry (before the One More Day Retcon), also suffered a hoisting of his own — he created a new Goblin Formula that made him stronger. However, it would later kill him. Thankfully, Spidey saved his son from that same fate later on down the road.
- After being transformed into an entity of living light, Dr. Edward Lansky was forced to always surround himself with light to survive. Building an arena full of neon lights, he lured Spider-Man there to get revenge, but accidentally overloaded New York's power grid and caused a blackout. Without light to sustain himself, Lansky's physical form dissipated and he was trapped in the Light Dimension.
- Carrion created a monster called the Spider-Amoeba intending to use it to kill Spider-Man, but the entity — immune to his Make Them Rot powers — devoured him instead.
- During the AXIS storyline, Phil Urich, taking up Norman Osborn's old title of "Goblin King", ends up getting impaled himself when battling the inverted Hobgoblin.
- Another Spider-Man villain, the voodoo practitioner Calypso, ended up killed in trying an old plan twice - she had brainwashed the Lizard previously and came close to killing Spider-Man, thus she opted to try again. The second time ended with an angry Lizard cutting her throat open.
- Mysterio got cancer from overexposure to the materials he used for his illusions.
- The villain of the five-part "Perceptions" crossover with Wolverine is a serial killer who creates mass hysteria about the Wendigo in order to cover for his own crimes. After being exposed, he tries to escape but ends up being shot dead by a hunter caught up in the hysteria who mistakes him for the Wendigo.
- Superior Spider-Man (2013):
- Ock!Spidey gets one over J. Jonah Jameson. He records Jameson giving him explicit instructions to outright murder Alistar Smythe and, once he does the deed, uses it to blackmail him into giving him the Raft.
- Issue 19 has everything tumble on top of him. In issue 9, Octavius seemingly deletes Peter and his memories and prepares to romp around as a truly Superior Spider-Man... until a time disaster strikes Horizon Labs and Spider-Man 2099 arrives in an attempt to fix it. Ock promptly knocks him out, then tries to stop everything by himself. In a short time, he's briefly killed, loses 9 hours of his life, destroys Horizon Labs, allows Ty Stone to acquire what's left, forming Alchemax Labs, gets Spidey 2099 stranded in the past, loses more credibility from his closest friends... oh, and gives Peter the chance to dig himself out of the Mental Rubble Octavius buried him in.
- Issue 25: What makes The Avengers stop pussy-footing around and go and fully confront Spidey? Tony Stark finding out that he erased the files on his diagnostics and the security camera tapes... except for the one Tony knows about. For all of Octavius' smarts, he was outwitted by one man smarter than him.
- Thanos: In the limited series The Thanos Quest, the titular supervillain seeks (and ultimately attains) the Infinity Gems in order to become God and thus a worthy mate for Mistress Death. However, he miscalculates spectacularly when he discovers that omnipotence made him not her equal but superior, preventing anything other than a servile relationship; for the extra kick in the teeth, he is now subjected to the (no pun intended) cold shoulder of the cosmic being, who considered his pursuit and attainment of godhood a heinous betrayal, and his subsequent attempts at wooing her back childish and insulting.
- It doesn't get much better in the follow-up storyline The Infinity Gauntlet, as when Thanos decides to give up on Mistress Death and fully embrace his status as God, eventually defeating Eternity and becoming the very embodiment of the universe, he makes another grievous error (or perhaps not) when by forsaking his body in replacing Eternity, he leaves it (and the Infinity Gems) vulnerable to theft by his upstart "granddaughter" Nebula.
- Later in the same story, Thanos' friend and eternal nemesis Adam Warlock outright states that Thanos subconsciously sabotages his own schemes for ultimate power, as, in the darkest depths of his soul, he believes he's unworthy of it.
- Ultimate Marvel:
- All-New Ultimates: Diamondback has Bombshell under her control, and uses her against the Ultimates. But when she mentions the death of Poey, the anger allows her to break free of their control.
- Ultimate Fantastic Four: Revka Temerlune Edifex Scyros III a.k.a The Psycho-Man constantly put others under his blissful mind control, but could not feel the sense of bliss himself. Thanks to Reed causing a psychic backlash, Psycho-Man was placed in an eternal state of ignorant bliss while being unable to put anyone else in the same state ever again.
- Ultimate X Men: Beast managed to find Cornelious in the Weapon X complex thanks to his new feral snout, that Cornelious himself gave him. He enjoyed the irony.
- Marvel Mystery Comics: in the third issue's The Angel story, the evil Sacred One tumbles into his own pit trap in his attempt to get away from The Angel.
- What If?: In What If...?: Infinity - Dark Reign we're shown a world where Norman Osborn gains control of the Infinity Gauntlet and uses it to take over the world and resurrect his father. However, despite all of this, his father shows him love not because he's done all of this, but just because he's his son. Norman can't accept this and erases him from existence. It takes a moment before he realizes, whoops, he's just erased himself, too.
- Wolverine:
- In battles between Wolverine and Magneto, the latter tends to make short work of the former with him controlling his adamantium skeleton. In their first fight, Wolverine is nearly skewered in the head with his own claws and is only knocked out as he's able to retract them in time.
- In Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Wolverine kills Gorgon by using his metal claws to show the villain his own reflection, thus turning his own petrifaction abilities on himself.
- X-Force: Reverend Craig Sinclair brainwashes his daughter Wolfsbane into attacking Angel and mutilating his wings. During a confrontation, Craig ends up standing in front of Angel's mutilated wings which causes Wolfsbane's "kill the angel" brainwashing to kick in and she ends up eating him alive.
- X-Men:
- Unus the Untouchable was a mutant criminal with a force field that protected him from all harm. Eventually, it got so powerful that not even air could get through.
- In the final arc of New X-Men, bacteria-based Big Bad Sublime summons the Phoenix to Earth, in hopes of using her in her role as destroyer of evolutionary dead ends to wipe out mutantkind. Guess who she ends up deeming the actual evolutionary dead end and destroying?
