Tempting Fate / Webcomics

She's already been dunked in 5°C water, is in an active hurricane, has lost her pants, is currently using her shirt to stop her leg from bleeding, and is who-knows-how-far from the nearest help.

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• A Running Gag in 8-Bit Theater is the phrase "[situation] is X, X forever!" (e.g. "At last that Hell Door is vanquished, I'm safe. Safe forever!" — Black Mage, on getting past a door which was constantly opening and closing). Characters who have uttered these words always suffer in some way or other (for example, Black Mage was immediately attacked by the personification of Thief's greed).
  • One of the more blatant cases: "Well, I'm safe. Probably forever. I'll celebrate by leaning against this landing gear. (beat) So very safe."
    • "And now we're safe forever" is a Running Gag in itself, usually said by Red Mage right before something calamitous occurs. Near the end of the comic, he says they're "...safe forever. Again." while super-evil orb-charged omnipotent jackass wizard Sarda appears in the background, preparing to kill them all. Again.
  • Also the gag of a character or characters saying something sickeningly ideal, often about how life finally stopped sucking for them, before they get hit by a Hadoken or a meteor or something.
• Lampshaded in the anti-HEROES webcomic.
  Lana: We can see the tower from here, it's not like something totally unexpected is going to suddenly jump out and stop us from getting there... ...Right?
  Aldran: Let's get out of here.
  Lana: Okay we must have been lucky that time.
  Aldran: Go ahead. Tempt fate some more why don't ya?
  Lana: At least it couldn't possibly get any wor—
  Aldran: SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!
• Subverted in Antihero for Hire:
  Dechs: [while waiting on a rooftop for something interesting to happen] I'm bored.
  [pause]
  Dechs: It seems like a quiet night.
  [pause]
  Dechs: I said, it seems like a quiet night.
  [nothing happens]
  Dechs: Well damn, that usually works.
• Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: In the episode, The Last Cookie, a triumphant Damian holds the last cookie over his head and gloats about how he's the superior Robin. Jason tackles him mid-sentence and grabs the cookie.
• This is a Running Gag on Bob and George.
  Ran: The way I see it, we've broken every law of physics except the third law of thermodynamics.
  Dr. Light: Aha! Negative two Kelvin!
  Ran: Nevermind.
• Bobwhite: Marlene observes that, given enough time, things revert back to their natural order. At which point her roommate Ivy calls to say that they can't be roommates next semester.
  Marlene: What? Why— Ivy, how is it that you always pick the most ironic moments to ruin my life?
  Ivy: Oh no, did you just get done saying that everything was back to normal again?
  Marlene: ...No...
  Ivy: Yes you did. I know that tone of voice. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?
• In Captain SNES: The Game Masta, whenever anyone says the words "I am invincible!" a treasure chest flies out of the sky and hits his or her head, causing no small amount of injury. Even if they were tricked into saying it. It Makes Sense in Context, sort of.
• Either invoked or averted in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures when Dan escapes the burlap sack in his first adventure.
  Dan: Ha! Shows what you know, universe! Trying to bury me with girls only makes everything better!
• In Doc Rat, a tragic turn. Two rabbits discuss how lucky one is that she has kept all four of her litter alive. A fox got one, and shortly thereafter a second.
• This strip of Dominic Deegan. Lack of scrying alerts aside, you would think a seer who has been through as much crap as Dominic has would know better than to even think the words "Nothing bad will happen."...
  • To be fair, we find out later that "the bad thing" actually blocked his second sight so that he — nor any other seer — would spot him coming.
  • Fate launches all salvos in this strip. Also combines a "Things can't get any worse." statement with a response in the next panel midsentence. Either Dominic needs his crystal balls polished or he has a really twisted definition of "Nothing bad will happen."
  • And Dominic does it again here.
  • Stunt does it twice in the space of a few strips; here and here.
• Dragon Ball Multiverse:
  • The Nameks at the beginning go out of their way to mention ”nothing bad can happen”. May double as a Suspiciously Specific Denial.
  • Also, Vegetto during the lunch break. He's certain he won't need to face Broly, because the maniac'll break the rules and get sent back... guess who gets chosen as his first opponent?
• Dungeons & Doodles: Tales from the Tables: Episode 15 has Rumples the dwarf unwisely boasting, "HA! THAT DUNGEON WAS SO EASY! WE TOTALLY STEAMROLLED IT!" The girls freak out and try to silence him, but it's already too late as the DM naturally takes this as a challenge. Next panel, he drops a red dragon on the panicking adventurers. Luckily for them, this dragon is content with reading his cringy stories to them... (though they might have preferred being eaten).
• El Goonish Shive
  • Mr. Raven approves being careful in this regard, and explicitly advises Ellen not to tempt fate.
  • Abe adds this trope to his long list of mistakes and stupid decisions when he just has to respond to a break in the action with "Out of dolls, elf?" Needless to say, thinks quickly get much worse for him.
  • When Ashley was a child, her father let her talk him into buying her Ranma ½ despite his misgivings that it might not be appropriate for someone her age (she only wanted it because "It has a panda"). But then he just had to go and say, "It's not like it could warp your young mind too badly." It's safe to say that she developed a bit of a transformation fetish later in life.
• Erfworld: Prince Tramennis asks King Slately about parleying with Parson: "Come! What's the worst that could happen?" The King's response: "The worst? The Titans could hear you ask such a question."
  • A few pages later, the King asks "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances." Tramennis calls him on this.
• Far from Home: "Yeah, I bet there's not a pirate within fifty light-years of this pile of rocks."
• Finders Keepers: Cailyn and Card are in a magical market, looking for Fate. Cailyn suggests they split up in the middle of a market full of powerful and dangerous supernatural creatures. She figures if Fate doesn't want to be found, she can make it want to find her.
• In the universe of Footloose, the Theory of Narrative Causality is real and extremely undesirable (e.g. the lead suffers from "Primary Protagonist Syndrome"), so it is only right and proper to stop any fool before they finish saying "What Could Possibly Go Wrong??"
• Freefall:
  • In this strip, Varroa Jacobsoni asks what could possibly go wrong. Sam gives a justified warning about saying such!
    Sam Starfall: Hey, even I don't say that out loud.
  • Florence Ambrose knows not to ask "what else could go wrong?" when washed up on a beach and having gotten cut by a sharp rock when she fell. That's not even mentioning the hurricane she's in the middle of or the freezing temperature of the water she just left.
• Girl Genius:
  • It has savvy characters who realize what was just said. Which makes it all but certain that uncle Barry will show up in the Castle arc.
  • Oggie's great-great-grandson. Also, Oggie himself:
    Maxim: Oh, now hyu iz just asking for it.
  • The commander of the heliolux airfleet (communication systems/roasting) after being informed that contact with several units was lost mid-sentence and then the contact with a bay of their own ship is lost right now. She couldn't finish the next sentence with anything better than "We'll miss the fighting!". Cue a Jägermonster walking in right behind her and happily screaming "Wrong!" (Jorgi likes to be contrary).
  • The commander of Armorpants was asking for it, too.
  • Xerxsephnia makes a very foolish assumption that she has Agatha helplessly grounded, far away from her town or any potential allies. When her brother tries to persuade her that "the Heterodyne Girl" is a threat after all, she brushes his concerns off, assuring him they are not in a Heterodyne Play and asking "What can she do?" Cue Agatha flying past the tower's window in a swan-shaped sleigh.
  • Poor Wooster is almost immediately presented with a "more destabilizing situation" directly after saying he can think of few that would be more so than the one they're currently in.
  • Tarvek wonders if Rakethorn and Trelawney Thorpe are deliberately vamping Gil and Agatha under orders from the Crown to separate the Baron's heir from the new Heterodyne, and notes that there's been no equivalent targeting of him, but there's nobody who'd be effective if they did. Cue the unexpected appearance of one of the Muses he's obsessed with.
• Goblins has a sub-comic called Tempts Fate[1] after the lead character, Tempts Fate. Why is he called that? The writer decided to have people's donations actually do something tangible, so he set up Tempts Fate as a sort of arcade game: if donations reach a certain goal by a certain date, Tempts Fate will pass the obstacle in his way; the more the donations exceed the goal, the more awesome Tempts Fate's victory will be. If people fail to donate enough money by the deadline, then Tempts Fate will fail, and die, and live on only in our memories.
  
  And so far, Tempts Fate has lived through 8 challenges in spectacular fashion. So much so that the author has added extra properties to the donations, including a sort of "dice" modifier based on the cents digit that decides which cool item Tempts Fate gets if the biggest goal is met. When he offered T-shirts for donations during the "Tempts Vs. The Really, Really poorly Made Characters" challenge, the donations skyrocketed, collecting more than enough for the fourth and final goal before the first goal's deadline. The result? Tempts killed the poorly made characters so hard that it killed the people playing those characters (except Elfgirl, as she didn't want to kill him or, indeed, even play D&D, so he just let her go; he killed the DM instead).
• Happens twice in quick succession in Godslave:
  • First Turner states that the jar he's carrying is stronger than it looks and won't break. A moment later, he collides with Edith.
  • Edith performs a Desperate Object Catch and tells Turner that the jar is fine. Cue both of them being proven false as the jar breaks in her hands.
• Lampshaded in this Grrl Power strip.
  Maxima: Besides, you do realize that you just proclaimed invincibility, and then immediately challenged someone to a fight, right?
  Sydney: Gasp! A guaranteed loss!
• Gunnerkrigg Court, Chapter 23 has an interesting variation on this. During the camping trip, students start mysteriously disappearing, and the remaining students deduce that it must be a prank the teachers are pulling. They come up with a plan to find the missing students and expose the prank, but it requires one more student to deliberately get kidnapped. Kat volunteers, because she's cool with being kidnapped by Mr. Eglamore. Cue Kat, sitting by herself, announcing to no-one in particular, "Oh boy! I sure hope nothing happens to me now that I'm here all alone!" As expected, she immediately gets kidnapped... but not by Mr. Eglamore.
• Played with in Hellbound; mostly used straight, occasionally subverted, the best one occurring fairly early on:
  Guy: At least things can't get any worse....
  [silence]
  Baxter: Hey, nothing happened! I guess your life can't get any worse than this! You've hit Rock Bottom, but at least nothing else can go wrong!
  Guy: Oh good, my suicide shall go flawlessly.
  Baxter: That's the spirit!
• Homestuck likes this one. Due to the high number of playable characters, the narrative is prone to sudden shifts in perspective, often at key dramatic moments. The fate-tempting is mostly hanging a lampshade on the whole affair.
  This is it. You have no choice but to wage a fierce rooftop battle. This is totally going to happen now, and could in no way conceivably be interrupted by a sudden shift in our attention.
• Taken up to eleven by Grape in Housepets! when she's asked if it's weird the temple level is guarded by a single weak monster.
  Grape: What's to jinx? We're only on floor five! How tough could it possibly get?
  Monster: KLEEEEEEEEEEEE!
  [Glowing eyes appear behind them]
  Grape: In fact, I would put real money on this being the only challenge remaining on this entire floor.
  Peanut: Grape...
  [more eyes appear behind them]
  Grape: And if I am wrong, may I be struck dead by an ironic...
  Peanut: GRAPE!
• Irregular Webcomic!:
  • Things not to say about the GM in a tabletop game:
    Mordekai: Oh c'mon! How many dinosaur models can one person have?
    Dinosaurs: [fully surrounding party] RAAARRRHH!
  • Combined with Historical In-Joke once, when an obstructive Ukrainian railway official mockingly asks Dr Smith "What will [Stalin] do? Purge entire country?"
  • Yet another Historical In-Joke version here.
• In Kaspall, Sam, reassuring Alex. Lampshaded in the Alt Text.
• Kevin & Kell:
  • During the 2000 election Arc, Lindesfarne is confident that Kevin "has the election in the bag", until his opponent claims that Kell ate his campaign manager, which causes Kevin to lose the election, but Lindesfarne finds the wife and interspecies child, causing Sheldon to admit Coney into the youth league.
  • Danielle believes that Rabbit's Revenge won't go through Kell's house to get to her. They don't; they burrow directly into her room.
  • This one time at summer camp, Coney was tamping down Harcourt and Lin's expectations of finding big prey, saying prey wasn't just going to fall into their laps. In the same strip, Jess suddenly falls through their tent, having been dropped by a drone that had caught her in another camper's attempt to raid the herbivore side of the summer camp.
• Mario & Luigi: Cleanup Crew: Toadsworth, who accompanies the minister, tries to bring him down to earth by assuring him that no one is wearing body paint. At that exact moment....
• In A Miracle of Science Caprice says "We're perfectly fine" right before her ship is attacked by the weapon from which it got no protection. And repeats just before it explodes. Benjamin shuts her up before she says this the third time. Though it was after he taunted killer bots himself.
  • Later she had it Played for Laughs intentionally.
• Cade and Sam in Modern Day Treasure Seekers talk about how rickety the mines look, and the possibility that any booby traps would have stopped working after being there for many years... immediately before triggering a trap.
• Mr. Boop: Betty at the beginning of Book III:
  Betty: It's really great that nothing bad is going to happen to us ever again.
• Lampshaded in Narbonic: the characters are stranded in a raft at sea, with no food, no water, and no cigarettes, and Dave starts to say it couldn't be worse. Mell tries to stop him, but as the huge wave looms over the raft, Helen points out that it's too late. Dave's last words are "Well, MY face is red." Not only that, but Dave continues that insist that his statement makes sense even after Mell warns him not to say such a thing. It takes nothing short of a giant wave to make him realize his mistake.
• NEXT!!! Sound of the Future: At the end of Chapter 1.1, after Shine's equipment falls in the harbor, she outwardly exclaims that there's no way things can get any worse, just as she herself gets knocked over the side of the bridge.
• In The Order of the Stick, any such event will probably be lampshaded by one of the many Genre Savvy characters.
  • Too many examples to count, so let's just start with this one:
    Old Prisoner: HA! I knew I made the right call staying in prison. That Tsukiko chick is getting her ass kicked by an elemental! It's so much safer up here!
    Tsukiko: SHOUT!
    [cell crumbles, a slab of stone falls and crushes the old man to death]
    Nale: Well, now, really, what did you expect after a line like that?
  • The fourth panel of this strip.
    Partially obscured wall writings: in danger... with... Belkar...
  • Inverted in On the Origins of PCs: Belkar breaks out of prison, murders a guard and exclaims, "Things can't get any better!" He promptly stumbles upon a 2-for-1 deal on whores.
  • Played straight in this one. Lampshaded in this strip.
  • And now Yukyuk got "his lucky day", with a hostile wizard floating right behind him.
• Happens unusually literally in Our Little Adventure when the main party finds a gift from the Goddess of Fate and Fortune. They know that she has a twisted sense of humour, and yet...
  Rocky: I will now search this giant orange for traps.
  Lenny: Why would a giant orange have a trap?
  [fiery explosion]
• PepsiaPhobia: "— And nothing short of a barrage of arrows could make me move from this spot!" Now, Phobia, that's beyond merely Tempting Fate and simply asking for it.
• Pixie and Brutus: When Brutus yells at her to bring Pixie down "or else", the eagle questions what he's going to do given that dogs can't climb trees. Cue Brutus hooking the branch with an "anchor" and starting to climb up.
• Stated to be a general rule in Plume — if you do anything to tempt fate into being attacked, the power of the protective amulet weakens.
• Questionable Content has some examples:
  • This Questionable Content applies it to vaginas.
  • Lampshaded and inverted when Faye and Bubbles open their repair shop:
    Marten: You'll do great, I know it.
    Faye: Don't say that. What if it's like showbiz and if you wish someone good luck they're doomed?
    Marten: In that case, may you end up in prison for assaulting a priest during bankruptcy hearings.
    Faye: I like the implication that we'll fail so hard we need an exorcism.
• Schlock Mercenary has made this into an inside joke. The entire cast refers to doing this as "taunting/invoking Murphy". Every time a character tries to say "What could go wrong?" or "It's a guaranteed success" or the like, he/she/it/they is violently interrupted. It's generally foreshadowing that something will go wrong, but that's a sucker bet anyway.
  • For example:
    Der Trihs: Trouble, sir? What kind of trouble could they—
    Captain Tagon: Do not finish that sentence.
    Der Trihs Oops! Sorry, sir.
    Para Ventura: Oh, come on. What's the wo—
    Kevyn: You have not worked here long enough to be allowed to finish that sentence.
  • Tagon's father knows better, too.
  • Pibald once said "No way to miss a target that size".
  • In fact, there is even one point at which Captain Tagon says, "I don't see how things could possibly get any worse" (with Schlock hanging the lampshade) — and they don't.
  • Everyone knows this.
    Legs: Officer Training 101: Don't taunt Murphy.
  • Not even robots can afford to taunt Murphy, not even Speak of the Devil way.
  • Their enemies are just as susceptible.
    Lieutenant: What are they going to do? Take a potshot through two layers of hullmetal?
    [POTSHOT]
    Corporal: Correction, two layers of hullmetal and one lieutenant.
  • Sometimes it doesn't even involve mortal danger, such as when Para Ventura bets that whatever they can find to replace Ennesby's lost manipulator stem (which allows him to both fly and manipulate objects) "won't be too bad."
    Ennesby: (now bolted to the wrist of a giant robot hand) Do you lose a lot of these bets?
• Sequential Art had this jinx:
  Art: If I had to run away from something right now, I'd be so screwed. [...cue Flying Trashcans who came all the way from Mars just to get him]
• This Shortpacked! strip takes it to new heights.
  Faz: But I will never tell you where they have the others, unless you do something that hurts me a lot, like punch me in the face repeatedly.
• Skin Horse goes meta with it in this comic.
  Guard: This station's a joke posting! Nothing ever happens in this sector. ... What, you think hubris invites ironic downfall? It is to laugh! ... My declaring how safe I am is perfectly safe.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Parodied one strip when Torg and Zoë are racing K'Z'K to the Book of Güd. (More specifically, Torg tries to invoke the opposite version — tempting fate to do something good — before Zoë mentions tempting fate the usual way, and that works.)
  • There's a pretty over-the-top one early on.
    Riff: I can fetch him back in a few hours. Torg will be fine as long as he didn't get zapped to a "Dimension of Pain" or something.
    (meanwhile)
    Demon Lord Horribus: Welcome to the Dimension of Pain!
    Torg: Thanks! Can I use your restroom?
    Horribus: Nope.
• In Something*Positive, one of Davan's friends says that he won't have a costume unless they have one in a can waiting for him. They do.
• Spacetrawler. This page. Yuri ends her A God Am I speech with...
  Yuri: I can move large objects, be willful, and am now the perfect killing machine. Nothing can stop me.
  [Yuri collapses and loses consciousness.]
  Emily: Martina loaned me Yuri's power-off button.
• In Spare Keys for Strange Doors, Andrew Cole describes a pair of lizards as "a bit small".
• Stand Still, Stay Silent:
  • Don't worry, Sigrun knows how to drive. How hard can it be?
  • Also by Sigrun: barely a quarter into the first arc is a great time to hope you and your crew won't hit too many curveballs.
• 30-Something Wolf: In one strip, Xed warns Zephyri that continuing to do a Fascinating Eyebrow expression will end up straining her face. She promptly dismisses his claim, and it doesn't take long for her face to get strained to the point where it ends up getting bandaged.
• In Tweep, Milton barely escapes following the trope.
• During the battle with King's invincible army in Two Evil Scientists, one of King's robots, Ballade, points out how a battle against weak enemies is no fun when you can't get hurt. In the very next panel, the severed head of another supposedly invincible robot, that being Metal Knuckles, bounces by him. He is then promptly surrounded by some of the heroes. Cue Oh, Crap! face.
• Weregeek:
  • Abbie should have know better than stating that Joel must be somewhere boring. He immediately crashes through the window injured.
  • And Dustin should have known better than to act so dismissive about the possibility of monsters.
    Dustin: You worry too much. I think it's a safe bet there's no monsters... AAAUGH!!! [jumps on Mark's hands]
  • The drive-thru girl with her Vampire Pulp. "What harm can it do?" Cue the freakout...
• The Whiteboard:
  • Doc asks "What could possibly go wrong?" in this strip, when using explosives to take care of some seriously expired fridge food.
  • Later, when locked in Doc's shop during the cleanup following the 2011 Zombie Apocalypse, Sandy asks what trouble the guys could get into playing a game of poker. She and Pirta realize the error of asking that question, in the second panel, and in the last panel she gets an answer, in response muttering "yeah, yeah, me and my big mouth."
  • Bruno attempts to invoke this by washing his car and inviting people to a barbecue to make it rain.
• Yahtzee Takes on the World adds a bit of spin by showing a flying saucer crashing into the characters' lair before it cuts to a very annoyed Yahtzee, who announces "As I was saying, it's nice to get back to normal."
• Yumi's Cells has two modes of jinxing.
  • Jinx Cell, sometimes called Jump-The-Gun Cell, will claim that something great is about to happen to get the other Cells excited, only for their expectations to be destroyed. When Yumi is excited about her date with Woong, Jinx builds a Balloon of Expectation for the Cells to ride in, and the balloon bursts midair when Woong cancels the date.
  • Jinx, dressed as a crow, will ensure that anything Yumi imagines will never come to pass. When Writer Cell is pumped for a writing contest, Jinx makes sure Yumi will never get the grand prize. Or the runner-up prize. Jinx won't ever go to hell either. Negative thoughts are an exception; when Yumi thinks she's going to bomb the contest, Jinx is happy to make it come true.

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