Follow TV Tropes

Following

Thread of Prophecy, Severed

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/prophet_2.png
Looks like this shop doesn't offer a hero discount.

"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."
Pop-up message (to players when an NPC who is essential to the main quest dies), The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Chosen One finally has found the weapon they were destined to grab, or the MacGuffin was retrieved and is about to be used, or The Chosen Many are finally assembled. It seems like The Prophecy is about to be fulfilled.

But then the weapon/MacGuffin is disposed, lost, or destroyed, or The Chosen Many start to argue or most of them are captured by the evil forces. The prophecy foreshadowed years ago crumbles before it ever gets a chance of happening.

The difference between this trope and the trope Prophecy Twist is that in the Prophecy Twist, the prophecy does end up fulfilled, but not in the way expected, whereas in this trope, the prophecy is completely shattered by something happening to a deeply crucial part of it.

Overlaps with Screw Destiny when a character intentionally defies a prophecy, causing it to fail. May be caused by The Poorly Chosen One (or may have caused The Poorly Chosen One to exist in the first place), by someone Immune to Fate getting involved, or a Time Traveller deciding to Make Wrong What Once Went Right (or the opposite!). Compare Self-Defeating Prophecy. Contrast with Prophecies Are Always Right, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Not to be confused with the webcomic Prophecy Failed. See also Threads of Fate.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Comic Books 
  • In Astonishing X-Men, the titular heroes find themselves on the Breakworld, a planet where bloodthirsty murder and destruction are a way of life, after its inhabitant Ord comes to Earth on a violent, anti-mutant rampage. The team discovers why: an ancient, recently-discovered mural on Breakworld depicts Colossus (recently back from the dead) somehow destroying the entire planet. Colossus makes it clear that he has no intention of fulfilling this prophecy, suggesting that the thread of fate will be severed...and then the whole trope is subverted when it's revealed that there was never a prophecy to begin with. Aghanne, a Breakworldian healer who'd grown so exhausted by the constant suffering of her people that she figured blowing up the whole planet was the only course of action, secretly carved the mural into a cavern wall and then ensured that people would discover it in the hopes of bringing Colossus and the rest of the X-Men to space so he could fulfill his "destiny", as the organic metal he transforms into can be used to destroy the energy source for the Breakworld's power. He ultimately doesn't go through with the plan.
  • In Astro City, a wise and benevolent race of Precursors left a one-use, unimaginably powerful weapon for their descendants (humanity) to use against a terrible enemy they foresaw. The weapon ends up used against a terrible enemy, but the wrong one and far too early, not only leaving humanity defenseless but also tearing a rift in reality from the overkill which later causes its own problems.

    Fan Works 
  • Better Bones AU: Thistleclaw was supposed to become leader and Mosskit was supposed to be the hero who overthrew him. Then Bluestar manages to succeed to the leader position instead, at the cost of Mosskit's life, completely breaking the prophecy.
  • Big Sister: Vulkan's ability to Screw Destiny and defy all of Konrad's visions of death and despair perplex the seer. While he's briefly paralyzed by the notion that it might be possible to destroy the Bad Future that his visions predict, he's soon convinced to take up arms and fight against it.
  • The Chosen Six: The pact made by the titular six winds up overriding the original prophecy.
  • The Karma of Lies: After most of her classmates prove to be Fair-Weather Friends, Marinette decides that Alix will never receive the Rabbit Pocket-watch and become Bunnyx. In order to prevent a Time Paradox, the Bunnyx that had already appeared in the past is implied to be a sentimonster impersonating Alix's future self. Alix doesn't take this well.
  • In The Many Sons of Winter, a Green Man makes an offhand comment to Arya Stark, asking her not to allow her brother Bran to climb any towers. This perplexes her, as he's long since abandoned the hobby in favor of starting warg training. This disquiets the Green Man, who laments destiny has been severed and fate is no longer certain.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Double subverted in the Star Wars films (if watched in chronological order). The prequel trilogy often refers to a prophecy that a Chosen One will arise to "bring balance to the Force", meaning destroying the last of the Sith (it's spelled out in the novel Master and Apprentice). The Jedi believe Anakin Skywalker to be the Chosen One due to his miraculous birth, so when he falls to the dark side and becomes Darth Vader, the few surviving Jedi believe the prophecy has failed. As it turned out, Anakin eventually did destroy the Sith, after significant prompting from his son Luke. Then in the sequel trilogy (as well as in Star Wars Legends) it eventually turns out the Sith didn't stay destroyed.
    Obi-wan Kenobi: You were the Chosen One! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring Balance to The Force, not leave it in darkness!

    Literature 
  • Both sides in The Belgariad fear this happening, and the Prophecies get very edgy in circumstances that neither can account for. The Legions of Hell try to do this in order to nullify both Prophecies and take over, though the attempts fail.
  • Invoked in the Forgotten Realms trilogy The Year of Rogue Dragons. The Big Bad of the piece is the one attempting to fulfill a prophecy, that dracoliches will inherit the Earth (for whatever reason, he seems to think this is a good thing), and it's the heroes' job to prevent this.
  • In the bonus chapter of The Garden of Sinners, a precognitive terrorist sets up a Death Trap for Shiki, foreseeing a 100% chance of successfully killing her. Because his vision is so clear, however, Shiki is able to "see" it, too, and, using her Mystic Eyes of Death Perception (which let her essentially destroy anything she can perceive visually), "kills" that particular timeline outright, rendering her attacker's prophecy utterly wrong (and stripping him of prophetic powers as a side effect).
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude: Aureliano Jos´ was destined to marry Carmelita Montreal, have seven children, and die of old age, but instead he ends up getting murdered at a young age due to not listening to Pilar Ternera's advice.
  • In The Saga of Darren Shan, the Either/Or Prophecy says that Darren and Steve will fight to the death, and the winner will live on to become Lord of the Shadows. Darren doesn't want to become evil, so he says Screw Destiny and makes it so that he dies along with Steve. When Darren is briefly resurrected for a short mission, Lady Evanna, the one who told him the prophecy, tells him that the surviving vampires have gone on to seek peace in ways that had previously been considered impossible.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: When Daenerys is pregnant with her son Rhaego, he is prophesied to be the "stallion that mounts the world", a mighty conqueror... up until he's killed in the womb by a witch's Blood Magic in Revenge for the massacre of her people. Given the series' penchant for Prophecy Twists, though, well, Daenerys is later called "Mother of Dragons" for a reason.
  • Justified in Star Wars Legends, which handwaved away the apparent failure of The Chosen One Anakin Skywalker to permanently destroy the Sith and balance the Forcenote  with the notion that Anakin's role was not, in fact, to destroy all the Sith forever, but to end Darth Bane's line of Sith specifically, due to the damage that the experiments of Darth Plagueis on the Force itself were doing. The Jedi of the prequel era simply misinterpreted the prophecy.
  • In Wings of Fire, Burn kills one of the five prophecy dragonets in its egg in the prologue of the first book, leading to the guardians trying to raise said dragonets getting a replacement that clearly doesn't fit the prophecy. Turns out this is because the prophecy was made up in the first place.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Played With in the episode "Movie Madness" of Power Rangers Time Force. The Monster of the Week is a movie director with borderline Reality Warper powers who can do just about anything he wants for the movie he's making about the destruction of the Power Rangers as long as it's in his script, to the point he seemed unbeatable. Then during the climax of the Megazord battle, turns out that the script's final page depicting their destruction is missing because Trip ripped it out to ask for an autograph, which allows the Rangers to destroy him.
  • In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Reckoning", Ben Sisko and Jadzia Dax translate an ancient tablet predicting an apocalypse called the Reckoning, which is set off when the tablet is inadvertently broken and a Prophet and Pah-wraith that had been sealed within escape. They possess respectively Major Kira and Jake Sisko and do battle on the station, but are interrupted when Kai Winn activates a technobabble emitter prepared by the crew, driving the warring Sufficiently Advanced Aliens out of their hijacked bodies and off the station.
  • Things get a little nuts in Supernatural after season five because the Winchester brothers manage to abort the Biblical apocalypse in the finale. Other supernatural superpowers they interact with in later seasons sometimes comment that they have no idea what's "supposed" to happen anymore because "we're post-apocalyptic now", and so their new cadre of villains is now basically making things up as they go along. The writers are Leaning on the Fourth Wall a bit here: the series planned to last only through season 5, so when The CW renewed them they had to resort to Writing by the Seat of Your Pants.

    Mythology & Religion 
  • Classical Mythology: One of the extremely rare success stories is the tale of Metis. Zeus heard a prophecy that the child Metis bore after she gave birth to Athena would become the lord of heaven, so, to prevent this from happening, he swallowed Metis while she was still pregnant with Athena. Which as far as we know, successfully averted his doom.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Pathfinder: Aroden, the patron god of humanity, prophesied that he would return to the world and usher in a Golden Age. Instead, on the foretold date, he died under mysterious circumstances. No major prophecy has come true in the approximately hundred years since, and the planet is wracked with cataclysms and political upheaval in the "Age of Lost Omens".

    Video Games 
  • The Elder Scrolls:
  • God of War Ragnarök: When the Norns deliver a prophecy that Heimdall will kill Atreus, Kratos fights him. When Heimdall makes it clear he will never stop trying to kill Atreus, Kratos kills him to make sure that prophecy will never come true.
    • The Norns also reveal that there isn't any prophecy at all, prophecies and destiny come true because everyone involved simply acts as they always do - Heimdall will kill Atreus because he can't stand the boy and Atreus will continue to push his buttons. Kratos will kill Heimdall and trigger Ragnarok because he kills gods and is a Papa Wolf. Kratos and the gang's respective character developments involve learning from their mistakes so they won't constantly make the prophecies come true. They succeed at the very last second.
  • In Super Paper Mario, the Dark Prognosticus is a prophetic book detailing how The Multiverse will be destroyed. The Ancients responded to this by writing the Light Prognosticus, a book that details how the destruction can be prevented, though it's noted that, unlike the Dark Prognosticus, it's not a 'real' prophecy, just a sequence of countermeasures that are tailor-made to Screw Destiny. It just barely works.
  • Played With in Tak and the Power of Juju, when Lok, the believed mighty warrior prophesied to save the Pupununu people, ends up getting Squashed Flat, thus sending Tak on a quest to revive him to put the prophecy back on track. It's then revealed near the end of the game that the prophecy was never severed: Tak is the prophesied hero.

    Web Comics 

    Western Animation 
  • Amphibia: Attempted by King Andrias and the Core regarding a prophecy of "three stars burning bright, come from beyond to expel the night". It is revealed that the "three stars" are actually Anne and her friends Sasha and Marcy, who had unknowingly absorbed the energy of the Calamity Gems when they were pulled into Amphibia. Initially, the Core wanted Andrias to kill Marcy when he first met her, but instead he (not willing to do so since she reminded him of his old friend Leif) convinced it that it would be more pragmatic to trick the trio into giving up their powers and drain them back into the Calamity Box, under pretense that the Gems needed to be recharged in order to send them home. Unfortunately, he discovered that Anne still maintained a fraction of her power due to inadvertently stopping the transfer before it was complete. According to Mother Olm, as long as she still has that piece, she can restore Sasha and Marcy's power.
  • Gravity Falls: After audiences had been teased with the image of the Zodiac/Cipher Wheel since the beginning of the series, the series finale reveals that the natives of Gravity Falls predicted that ten people who represent the ten symbols in the Zodiac, when united, could create a force strong enough to vanquish Big Bad Bill Cipher and reverse his hold on the town. After the main and supporting cast sort out who represents which symbol, they hold hands and begin glowing... until Stan and Ford's unresolved issues cause them to fight, breaking the circle before it could finish Bill off. Even worse, with all the Zodiac members assembled in one place, Bill makes quick work of polymorphing those not in the Pines family and trapping the Pines to stop them from trying again. (Thankfully, the Pines brothers find another way.)
  • In Samurai Jack episode "Jack and the Wandering Creatures", Jack encountered a powerful guardian of a time portal, who had declared that only one person was destined to defeat him and use the portal. After Curb Stomping Jack, the Guardian spared him because Jack was the one destined to use the portal, but couldn't use it yet. Unfortunately, episode "C" reveals that Jack would never get to use the destined portal as Aku had found and destroyed it and the Guardian.

    Real Life 
  • For propaganda purposes, when he entered the Thirty Years' War, the Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus adopted the moniker of Der Löwe aus Mitternacht ("the Lion from Midnight", or "the Lion from the North"), a world-altering figure from a prophecy by 16th-century Swiss philosopher Theophrastus von Hohenheim (also called Paracelsus). Unfortunately for those who believed his prophetic claims, King Gustaf was killed in a mishap at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. Explained in more detail by Sabaton History here.

 
Feedback

Video Example(s):

Top

"You were the Chosen One!"

Obi-wan Kenobi defeats Anakin "Darth Vader" Skywalker on Mustafar, and mourns his role in the Jedi Purge and the apparent failure of the prophecy of the Chosen One.

How well does it match the trope?

4.88 (25 votes)

Example of:

Main / ThreadOfProphecySevered

Media sources:

Report