Self-Fulfilling Prophecies in Western Animation.
- Adventure Time: "Frost and Fire" plays with the trope; Finn's attempts to find out what the prophecy actually is are what set it in motion, and by the time he actually gets the message, it's too late to stop it. Finn has a dream involving Flame Princess, the Ice King, and the Cosmic Owl. Upon learning that Owl dreams are supposed to be prophetic, he attempts to recreate the circumstances that led to the dream. He's successful, but in the process, sets off a chain of events that results in the Ice Kingdom melted into a puddle and Finn and Flame Princess' relationship in tatters. And what was the Owl trying to tell him?Cosmic Owl: You blew it.
- The entire plot of The Amazing World of Gumball's "The Oracle" revolves around Gumball hoping to prevent an embarrassing event foretold by Banana Barbara in the form of a painting. Gumball's efforts to prevent the seemingly unlikely circumstances shown in the painting cause all of them to occur, including a shower of raccoons that is a direct result of Gumball sabotaging the family car.
- In American Dad! episode "Merlot Down Dirty Shame", Stan and Roger became friends in a previous Un-Installment, but after Roger kisses Francine while they're both drunk he becomes terrified that it'll destroy their newfound friendship. He goes to quite a few extremes to keep Stan from finding out about the kiss — culminating in him burying Francine alive to keep her from telling, and subsequently burying Stan alive when he finds out about this — which naturally pisses Stan off a lot more than a simple Accidental Kiss, and the episode ends with him beating Roger into a bloody pulp and taking away his "best buddies" necklace.
- Amphibia: Leif, one of Andrias' former friends who was also the Plantar's ancestor, stole the Music Box that Andrias and his father were going to use to conquer Earth because it gave her a vision of Amphibia being destroyed by its own moon, and hid it on Earth where it would be used by Anne, Sasha, and Marcy about a thousand years later. However, other parts of the vision are things that we already saw happen, and it's later revealed that the moon falling is caused by the Core deciding to destroy Amphibia out of anger after Earth is saved from being invaded, meaning that it could have been prevented if Leif hadn't taken the Music Box to Earth and allowed the girls to come to Amphibia in the first place.
- Animaniacs: In the episode "Taming of the Screwy," Mr. Plotz is holding a banquet for foreign investors, and said investors want to meet all of the workers at the Warner Bros. studio, including Yakko, Wakko, and Dot. Under his orders, Dr. Scratchansniff manages to convince the Warners to keep their lunacy under control so they can attend the banquet... only for Mr. Plotz to force them out of the banquet regardless the second they finished their hellos with the investors, because he doesn't trust them not to screw things up. Snubbed and insulted, the Warners return to the banquet and ruin it in their usual Karmic Trickster fashion. In a nutshell, if Mr. Plotz had just let them stay since they were behaving, the entire thing would have gone off without a hitch.
- The episode "The Fortuneteller" from Avatar: The Last Airbender focuses on a town that hangs on to every word of their fortune teller, Aunt Wu. Aunt Wu's predictions are almost always right, but what the villagers don't realize is that it's what they do after hearing her predictions that cause them to happen. Like the old man who was told that he would be wearing red shoes on the day he meets his true love... so he wears red shoes, every day. Wu also predicts that the village will not be destroyed by the nearby volcano. While the villagers' minds are put at ease, the more skeptical protagonists go to check the volcano and find that it is about to erupt. They warn the villagers, who refuse to believe them. So they manipulate one of Wu's fortunetelling methods so she will predict the eruption, then work with the villagers to divert it. Much to Sokka's frustration, this does nothing to dissuade the village's faith in Wu; after all, she predicted the village wouldn't be destroyed, and it wasn't.
- Big City Greens: In the episode "Hiya Henry", Cricket is irked when Tilly finds Gramma Alice's old ventriloquist dummy, Hiya Henry, to use in her act for Big Coffee's open mic. Cricket spends the whole episode being tormented by Henry, and doesn't tell Tilly or anyone else because he thinks it would hurt her feelings. When Tilly's act begins, he cannot take it anymore and destroys Henry onstage, which in return hurts Tilly's feelings anyway because he ruined her performance without telling her.
- Danny Phantom may have been this if you read The Movie a certain way. Specifically, Clockwork was tasked with preventing the Bad Future by killing Danny before it could happen. However, the ghosts he sent back in time failed to do this, causing a series of events that cause it to happen anyway. Well, almost happen anyway.
- The Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "In Like Ed" has the neighbourhood kids through a birthday party for Jimmy, with the Eds not invited or even told about it since they have a habit of ruining them. The Eds being Locked Out of the Loop causes them to become suspicious of the activity and they end up ransacking Jimmy's house to figure out what is going on, inevitably leaving the place in chaos and the kids inufuriated.
- Fugget About It: In the episode "The Full Mountie." Petey was reluctant to present his new girlfrined to his family since she is Persian and they can be kind of racist to other peoples and she might get offended. When he is finally forced to bring her, he takes any minor comment his family makes as some kind of racist commentary and tries to pre-emptively defend himself, but he brings too much attention to her race, giving the impression that's all he can see and offends her himself, so she breaks up with him.
- A few examples in Gargoyles:
- Demona goes back in time from 1995 to 994 to warn her past self about the slaughter of her clan by the humans. This causes her past self to distrust the humans living in the castle, so she betrays them to the Vikings... who slaughter her clan after taking over the castle.
- Prince (later King) Duncan was paranoid that his cousin Macbeth would try to claim the throne of Scotland, and this paranoia was exacerbated when the Weird Sisters prophesied that Macbeth would become king. So he attacked Macbeth, unsuccessfully, and Macbeth killed him and became king anyway. The catch is that Macbeth had no interest in becoming king and was loyal to Duncan, and he never would have killed Duncan if Duncan hadn't attacked him first.
- In Grojband episode "Hear Us Rock", a South American chocolate calendar declaring that day is The End of the World as We Know It leads to Corey deciding to set off a huge party so everyone can go out with style. Grojband sends out a party-invite in the form of an internet meme that causes the people to riot, destroying Peaceville.Corey: It looks like the world is ending!
Laney: And we're causing it! We whipped the town into a wig-wearing panic!
Kin: That's totally possible! The prophecy doesn't say how the world ends! We're the bringers of doom!
Kon: Doom was the last thing I wanted to be bringer of! - In the Hercules: The Animated Series episode "Hercules and the Big Kiss", Cassandra has to kiss Icarus awake. He was put into the sleep in the first place by her efforts to avoid fulfilling a vision which showed her kissing him.
- Justice League Unlimited's Project Cadmus arc is all about averting a Superhero-Government war that happened in an Alternate Universe. Lex Luthor and Brainiac take full advantage of the paranoia to trigger one. Even those actions taken by Cadmus without Luthor's overt involvement (Waller claims, and believed he was mainly a source of income) contributes to the scenario at the end of the arc. Ironically, the war in the Alternate Universe was also Luthor's fault as he murdered The Flash in cold blood.
- The Loud House:
- In "Raw Deal", the family goes on a trip to Grand Venture State Park, and on the way there, Lucy gives tarot readings. Lincoln's reading is his day at the park will "end in tragedy", which in turn makes him become a hypochondriac and ends up believing everything is dangerous so he won't face anything tragic. As it turns out, there wasn't any danger at the park after all, and he ends up missing out on all the fun which in turn, ends his day in tragedy as predicted.
- In "Stall Monitor", Mrs. Johnson is intent on seeing Rita and Lynn Sr. for Parent-Teacher Conference Night, and Lincoln, worried about what she is going to tell them, tries to stop them from attending with Clyde's help. As it turns out, she was actually telling them what a great student he was, not a bad one, but as a result of trying to stop her, he gets grounded for a week, along with a week of detention.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In the season 2 episode "It's About Time", Twilight Sparkle is unexpectedly visited by Twilight from next Tuesday morning, looking quite disheveled with an eyepatch, burnt mane, bandaged head, and torn black suit. Future Twilight attempts to communicate a message to Present Twilight, but due to the latter's excited questioning about time travel the former only gets to say "Whatever you do, don't-" before she disappears. Present Twilight then spends the next few days trying to determine what horrible event will befall Equestria on Tuesday, and put an end to it. As she does so, she receives the same injuries her future self had, but ultimately nothing happens on Tuesday morning. Realizing that she should solve problems as they come up, instead of trying to prevent them preemptively, Twilight then decides to use a time travel scroll she got to tell her past self not to worry about Tuesday morning, only to be interrupted by her past self and eventually realizing that she is now Future Twilight. Twilight trying to tell herself not to freak out about the future is precisely what led to her freaking out about the future.
- The Simpsons:
- One episode regarded a tapestry that predicted everything that would ever happen to it. When one of Homer's ancestors discovered this, he saw that the tapestry depicted him eating it, so he ate it.
- The "Treehouse Of Horror XV" segment "The Ned Zone" has Ned gaining the ability to foresee people's deaths. When he foresaw himself shooting Homer to death, he at first successfully changed the fate... only for him to foresee Homer killing everyone via a nuclear explosion at the power plant. Ned then tries to shoot Homer to prevent this, but inadvertently causes the explosion himself anyway.
- In "I'm With Cupid", Homer and many Springfield men are envious of Apu's gestures of love towards his wife Manjula in the weeks leading to Valentine's Day, and when the holiday arrives, they follow him to the Springfield Airport, where Elton John is landing due to a malfunctioning chandelier in his private jet, but they think Apu hired him to perform for Manjula. They force Elton into a dog carrier before realizing that Apu's plan was actually to ask a skywriter to send a message for him. Apu frees Elton and afterwards, Elton ends up privately performing for the couple after all.
- South Park:
- The "Pandemic" two-parter is full of this. The prophecy - that Craig would be the one to avert the Pandemic - is brought about by a combination of the Big Bad sending Craig to Peru, and Craig himself simply walking away when he learns of the prophecy, fully intending to ignore it... leading to him standing on the exact spot necessary to activate his Eye Beams (Makes Just as Much Sense in Context) and avert the global crisis.
- In the episode "Ike's Wee Wee," Mr. Mackey tries to explain to children Drugs Are Bad. But his attempt to educate children by having them smell a sample of marijuana got his fired, mocked, and evicted from his apartment when that sample was stolen. His response to this Trauma Conga Line: start taking drugs to cope with his depression.
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- In "Squid's Visit", SpongeBob goes to great lengths to get Squidward to visit him, to the point he "borrows" his vacuum cleaner as bait and redesigns his house interior to look like Squidward's, down to the smallest detail. In the end, he gets more than what he bargained for when Squidward has to stay with SpongeBob when his house gets burnt down from a casserole left in the oven, but SpongeBob has to sleep outside on the wreckage.
- The episode "InSPONGEiac" has SpongeBob slacking off a bit on the job (i.e. using a teensy bit too much mustard) because he went to sleep two minutes later than usual, prompting Mr. Krabs to flip out over it and conclude that he's an insomniac. SpongeBob starts to get paranoid about his lack of sleep, eventually causing him to become an insomniac for real.
- "The Kwarantined Krab": As it turns out, nobody has the illness and it was all in Mr. Krabs' head, but because everyone was trapped together for such a long time, it causes them to get sick for real, and pretty badly, too.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: An investigation taking place over ten years after Sifo-Dyas' assassination reveals that he really did secretly make the initial order for the clones, lying that the order was under Republic orders after having visions of an upcoming war which which would end in the slaughter of the Jedi. The Sith caught wind of this and killed him, taking over the start of the cloning operations and sealing the fate for the Jedi Order and the Republic, the two groups whose demise Sifo was trying to prevent.
- Tangled: The Series has an interesting take on this in the season 2 finale. From Demanitus' cryptic warning to Eugene about a traitor in their midst, after he decided to bar Rapunzel from entering the castle to protect her, Pascal makes him realize that he was the one who betrayed her by stopping her from fulfilling her destiny. Eugene then tears up the note and tries to find Rapunzel to resume their objective again. Turns out, this was actually averted as the traitor among them was actually Cassandra, just as Eugene initially thought.
- Inverted in Teen Titans (2003) season four. Raven is troubled by her destiny to destroy the world and, along with Slade and her father Trigon, repeatedly insists that no matter what she does, there's nothing she can do to prevent it. She fails to realize that the only way the prophecy can come true is if she willingly goes along with it, as the destruction of the world is completely dependent on the conscious actions she makes of her own free will.note
- The events of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) episode "Timing is Everything" implies that the events of the series up to that point are a result of this. The Utrom Shredder, after his first initial battle with Turtles, travels to the year 2105, where the Turtles and Splinter are currently stuck as a result of a time travel mishap with the time window. He and his army attempt to take the technology, only to start getting their asses kicked all over the place. The initial battle had it take all four turtles and Splinter in order to defeat the Utrom Shredder; in this battle, three of the turtles and Splinter trounce his army while Leo beats him down easily, before kicking him back to his own time, but not before Raph reveals that they had defeated him already. This event is implied to be the reason why the Shredder became so ruthless after his first defeat, which would cause the events of the next four seasons, facilitating said defeat.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012): The four-part Monster Arc of the fifth season involves Savanti Romero traveling through time and assembling an army of monsters to take over the world, starting with New York. Renet arrives and takes the Turtles back in time to stop Savanti from doing so, but throughout the arc, their efforts end up only helping him:
- In "The Curse of Savanti Romero," they go back to Ancient Egypt to prevent him from taking control of a mummified pharaoh, but end up not only leading Savanti right to the pharaoh's tomb but activating the mummy's curse.
- In "The Crypt of Dracula," they go to Transylvania and get assistance from Vulko and Esmeralda, a Gypsy father-and-daughter duo, in stopping Savanti from recruiting Dracula. In the process, Raph gets bitten by Dracula and turns against his brothers, and Savanti manages to get control of not only Dracula but Vulko, who's revealed to be a werewolf; before he leaves Transylvania, he even gloats that he's gotten everything he wanted to get and more.
- In "The Frankenstein Experiment," Donnie decides to help Dr. Frankenstein complete his experiment with the ulterior motive of collecting synthetic blood to Find the Cure! for Raph; all he ends up accomplishing is enabling Savanti to add the monster to his ranks.
- All in all, when they return to New York in "Monsters Among Us!", the group is able to tell right away that their efforts to stop Savanti in the past were All for Nothing; as Leo notes, if anything, the streets are infested with even more monsters than there were before they left.
- The Thundarr the Barbarian episode "Prophecy of Peril" deals with three women, the hermit barbarian Cinda, the element queen Maya, and the ordinary human woman Valerie Storm. In the end, the three women destroy the Gem of Glory, the power source of the evil wizard.
- Prophecy Crystal Spirit:
One lies beneath Endor with Silver to bind her;
One comes from the past and her foe will find her;
One dwells in the Canyon of Death, lonely-hearted;
Unite them, and Vashtar's power is thwarted!
- The wizard of the week, Vashtar, goes back in time to kidnap Valerie and bring her to his era. The wizard states on camera he knows the sorceress Ariel cannot time travel. All he had to do was leave Valerie alone and the prophecy simply couldn't have been fulfilled (unless Ariel somehow found some MacGuffin to allow for time travel, like the Moondial from a previous episode). Worse still, when he does drag her through time, he doesn't kill her straight away, giving her a chance to escape — and then he imbues her with superpowers when he accidentally launches a beam of magic through his power-boosting Gem of Glory whilst trying to kill her!
- Cinda couldn't care less about Vashtar's tyranny — until he invades her domain. Vashtar was trying to kill her and hopefully Maya, with Thundarr's crew as a possible side bonus. All he did was tick off Cinda and set her on his trail.
- In the Thunder Cats 2011 episode "Native Son", the Ancient Spirits decree the infant Tigra must die, because he will grow to be the spirits' enemy. To protect Tigra, Javan sends him away, where he is adopted by Claudis and raised by a culture that rejected the spirits of evil.
- In Transformers: Prime, when Megatron discovers that his battle beast Predaking is intelligent and capable of transformation, he has his Decepticons destroy all Predacons that were being created to serve as his army, believing that Predaking might turn on against him. However, this ends up being the very thing that results in his betrayal; Predaking already swore Undying Loyalty to Megatron and had no intention to betray him, and once Ratchet reveals that Megatron deliberately allowed the Autobots to destroy his Predacons, he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to destroy Megatron.
- Young Justice (2010):
- After hearing that there is a mole in the team, Aqualad decides to withhold the information and investigate himself for fear of causing disunity amongst the members. When the other members find out, they end up distrusting Aqualad and it causes a rift.
- Blue Beetle learns that he will one day lead the Reach to conquer the Earth. He's so desperate to avoid that that he trusts Green Beetle to damage his Scarab for him. As a result, his Scarab is rebooted and he's now a Reach mole.
