Fiction
Robin: Gosh, Batman. The nobility of the almost-human porpoise.
Batman: True, Robin. It was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours.
Batman: True, Robin. It was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours.
"I've been suddenly rescued by some force utterly outside of the context of this narrative! How... unsatisfying."
"That certainly is convenient."
— Tyrone, The Backyardigans, frequently.
"I mean, come on! Time travel?! What kind of deus ex machina bulls@#! is that?!"
— Yami Bakura, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, lampshading the use of this trope during the 5th season of Lost.
"You can't just throw stuff like this into the story out of nowhere! Where's the foreshadowing?!"
"Who says deus ex machina is an outdated plot device?"
— Captain Janeway, Star Trek: Voyager
"Oh Lord, hear our prayer... HELP!!!!" (God's hand appears to help him and Richie)
— Eddie Hitler, Bottom
"This particular blunder is known as deus ex machina, which is French for "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Where in the name of deus ex machina did that T. rex come from?!"
— Norbert, The Angry Beavers
"'Life is too precious to be left to chance.' - Deus X. Machina"
"I've never liked this scene," I said. "Detective confronts murderer. Murderer produces gun, points same at detective. Murderer tells detective the whole sad story, with the idea of shooting him at the end of it. Thus wasting a lot of valuable time, even if in the end murderer did shoot detective. Only murderer never does. Something always happens to prevent it. The gods don't like this scene either. They always manage to spoil it."
"Just accept the deus ex machina. You only get one."
— Helen Narbon, Narbonic
Makoto Domyouji: A Deus Ex Machina in every sense of the word.
Joe Maya: What’s that? Some type of new Machina?
Domyouji: Nah, it’s a plot device that showed up in Greek tragedies. A character that stood for God and would take to the stage whenever the story couldn’t resolve itself.
Domyouji: When the Deus Ex Machina turned up, it’d bring a conclusion to the drama through some entirely unexpected occurrence.
Ken Kaido: Put it simply, then, it wrecked everything ‘til the problem was gone? Sounds good to me!
Ryo Magami: Hmph, are you looking to play the part of a devil of destruction? Because you can do that on your own, monkey.
Kaido: Whatchu say there?
Joe Maya: What’s that? Some type of new Machina?
Domyouji: Nah, it’s a plot device that showed up in Greek tragedies. A character that stood for God and would take to the stage whenever the story couldn’t resolve itself.
Domyouji: When the Deus Ex Machina turned up, it’d bring a conclusion to the drama through some entirely unexpected occurrence.
Ken Kaido: Put it simply, then, it wrecked everything ‘til the problem was gone? Sounds good to me!
Ryo Magami: Hmph, are you looking to play the part of a devil of destruction? Because you can do that on your own, monkey.
Kaido: Whatchu say there?
"I could really use a deus ex machina right now!"
— Actor near a rampaging god or monster, Zeus: Master of Olympus
So the children learned how to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by... oh, let's say... Moe.
—The Simpsons, "Das Bus"
"There's something I haven't told you. I can fly."
— The horse, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
On works
"Deus ex machina not only erases all meaning and emotion, its an insult to the audience. Each of us knows we must choose and act, for better or worse, to determine the meaning of our lives...Deus ex machina is an insult because it is a lie."
—Robert McKee
"Genies are only fun in the movies if you define and limit their powers."
— Roger Ebert, review of Kazaam
"A death, an investigation, a social ill unearthed, a lecture that says things are bad...but not that bad yet so relax, and no real resolution—all neatly wrapped up in 50 minutes (For the Benefit of My Patients is the most egregious example of this, where no one explains where all the government money is going to come from to subsidize a new non-profit hospital...and vicious gang members turn into Disneyesque community organizers)."
"Doctor Who stories are resolved by a Time Lord who emerges from a Time Machine — they're ALL deus ex machina."
"That's the whole point of Doctor Who in these narrative collapse stories - that ultimately there is no such thing as threatening the fundamental narrative logic of Doctor Who because, eventually, it just shrugs its shoulders and does something random to get out of it."
"It's one of the bigger cop-outs in epiphany history."
— The Nostalgia Chick, on the end of Dragonheart
"Lois getting nuked in Superman: The Movie and then time getting reversed, Superman losing his powers FOR EVER in Superman II and then, I dunno, deciding he wants them back and that’s all it takes, and now this. I mean, I guess you could say the same for the comics, but the movies go the extra mile in weaseling out of their own stupid plot points by making their excuses as dumb as possible. Compared to those, a Kryptonian crystal 1-Up Mushroom is actually the most believable."
—Chris Sims and David Uzumeri on
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace"One minute they're dying of asphyxiation in deep space and the next minute they look over and: 'Hey, look, look, there's a space ship that civilians can fly, that can take us back to Earth and it's within half mile of a station that no one's noticed until now!' It's this kind of thing that was a running joke in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Fucking Galaxy."
''Y'know, I could have started this comparison out any number of ways. I could have started by quoting a definition from dictionary.com
deus ex ma·chi·na
n.
In Greek and Roman drama, a god lowered by stage machinery to resolve a plot or extricate the protagonist from a difficult situation.
An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.
A person or event that provides a sudden and unexpected solution to a difficulty.''
n.
In Greek and Roman drama, a god lowered by stage machinery to resolve a plot or extricate the protagonist from a difficult situation.
An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot.
A person or event that provides a sudden and unexpected solution to a difficulty.''
or with a line from the dub that sums up my feelings about the battle
Liza: I can't believe that worked!
but either way, the message would be the same: this battle sucked. The Saint Seiya rip off golden armor power-up is the biggest load the anime producers have pulled out their ass, plain and simple. I've seen people try to explain the whole thing by saying that Ohsubamenote is using its "Guts" characteristic or that it somehow makes sense for a tough pokemon like Ohsubame to get a friggin' power up from a bolt of lightning, but I honestly think these people are full of crap. It's just wrong for so many reasons, and I seriously hope the anime producers don't try to pull any more shit like this in the future.
— Dogasu's Backpack review of the Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "Solid as a Solrock"
of the Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "Solid as a Solrock""And all this because he is BFF's with God. Remember in the Bible when Jesus is on the cross and he laments: "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Well, probably because He was playing mini-golf with Souya or something."
— Leo York, on In Another World with My Smartphone
In Another World with My Smartphone