Basic Trope: Trying to summon and/or manipulate an evil being or device does not work out to the user's advantage.
- Straight: Bob uses the Artifact of Doom to doom Alice, but it dooms him instead (or dooms him along with Alice).
- Exaggerated: Instead of simply backfiring, it causes Bob to experience a Fate Worse than Death.
- Downplayed: For attempting to use the evil device Bob is cursed with... Evil Eyebrows!
- The evil being starts trying to kill Bob when it appears, but Bob doesn't find it too difficult to persuade or force it to cooperate with him.
- The "evil" is anything but, however it is no less dangerous and/or destructive.
- Use of the Artifact of Doom is properly maintained and safeguarded to prevent most malfunctions... key word is "most". When the Artifact of Doom causes immense havoc, it's accidental and rare.
- Justified:
- The Artifact of Doom is sentient and hates all of the human race. It's not going to make an exception for its user.
- The Artifact of Doom has very complicated controls. Bob didn't use it correctly, resulting in it backfiring.
- It's rather naive to assume that a powerful otherworldly entity has any obligation to obey you just because you know how to summon it.
- Just because you can summon the demon doesn't mean the demon actually wants to be summoned. Would you want to obey somebody who yanked you to another world while you were in the middle of taking a shower?
- Inverted:
- Good is not a toy. Trying to use holy powers is usually a bad idea since any impurity of motivation or use in the user will result in a backfire.
- Evil is indeed a toy, and manipulating the resident Artifact of Doom or Eldritch Abomination isn't actually all that hard, as it only has a few simple demands (being kept at room temperature, spoken to with some degree of reverence, and being given an abundant supply of souls, for example.)
- Evil humans are not a toy. An Artifact of Doom or Eldritch Abomination tries to take an Evil Sorceror over, only to be forced into serving him and his evil plan.
- Faustian Rebellion
- Subverted:
- The Artifact of Doom appears to turn on Bob and destroy him, but it actually turns him into a One-Winged Angel so he can doom Alice with his own hands.
- Bob seems to be demoted to court jester by his new demonic ally, but as soon as it has done the hard work of conquering the kingdom Bob reveals that he was only playing along the whole time. He promptly kills the demon while gloating about how easy it was to manipulate through seeming Anti-Advice and inane humor, and takes its power along with his new throne.
- Double Subverted: After transforming, Bob is quickly overcome by the evil mind within the Artifact of Doom and forever trapped within his own mind.
- Parodied:
- Bob has a full selection of Evil devices, which he is testing to determine which are toys and which aren't.
- Some varieties of My Little Panzer, where evil is literally a toy and possess a "choking hazard" so to speak.
- A toy company sells Artifacts of Doom, and gets complaints that their products keep dooming their customers.
- Bob summons a demon, who's furious about being under his control and proceeds to... mildly inconvenience Bob, like by misplacing one of every pair of his socks and swapping salt and pepper in their shakers.
- A toy (of any kind) having the label "EVIL AND NOT A TOY" haphazardly taped on it.
- Zig Zagged: Bob uses the Artifact of Doom and it backfires, but he survives and finds another device, vowing to be more careful. He uses it for longer than the first one but it ultimately backfires like the first. With evil devices, you can never be too careful.
- Averted:
- Bob decides not to tempt fate and leaves the device alone.
- A summoned evil being is entirely on the summoner's side and carries out their orders as best as it is able.
- Enforced:
- The author wants to demonstrate that evil is self-destructive and so he has the evil device backfire on the villain.
- The author wants to show that there's always a Greater-Scope Villain and greater evil in the setting, so he introduces the Artifact of Doom, a device so evil that it even scares the villains. To show how bad it is, he has Bob try to use it, at which point it dooms him.
- Lampshaded: Bob's sidekick tells him that he really shouldn't use the Artifact of Doom because he has no way to be sure that it's on his side.
- Invoked: Charlie, Bob's mentor, knows that Bob is susceptible to the temptation to use something powerful, but evil to serve his purposes, so he purposefully sets it up so that Bob will encounter a fake/ real-but-relatively-harmless Artifact of Doom to teach Bob a lesson about playing with fire.
- Exploited: Alice knows that the Artifact of Doom can't be targeted and its uncontrolled hate dooms anyone in the vicinity, so when she sees Bob with the device, she retreats instead of fighting, ensuring that Bob is the only possible target for the Artifact of Doom.
- Defied:
- Bob finds the Artifact of Doom … and promptly throws the thing into a volcano because he doesn't want to use something so volatile and fears the artifact corrupting him to the point where he forgets his original reservations and gets consumed by its hate.
- Bob had already prepared himself for using the Artifact of Doom in order to handle it properly. This results in its usual corruption having no effect on him.
- Alternatively, the creator of the artifact made it so it wouldn't backfire on the user.
- Discussed: "Bob, I know that the prospect of finding the Artifact of Doom and using it against Alice is tempting, but it's a bad idea. How do you know it won't backfire?"
- Conversed: "Bob should be more careful when tampering with powerful, evil artifacts. He might live longer that way."
- Implied: Bob gets his hands on the Artifact of Doom and tries to use it against Alice. The audience doesn't see what happens, but Bob never appears again after that.
- Deconstructed: Some kinds of evil devices have to benefit the user, or nobody would have anything to do with them.
- Reconstructed: The evil devices do provide benefits- it's just that they have hidden costs that aren't noticeable immediately, and/or corrupt their users and cause This Is Your Brain on Evil.
- Played For Laughs: The Artifact of doom explodes on Bob sending him flying off into the distance.
- Played For Drama: Alice tries to tell Bob that the artifact is not the correct way to satisfy his desire for revenge, but This Is Your Brain on Evil has kicked in.
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