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Crossovers

  • All For Luz:
    • Camila may have been the one to send Luz to Summer Camp, but she knew nothing about it being turned into a Death Camp for superhumans. There Luz witnesses the murders of her new friends and kills both in self-defence and revenge with her, causing the deterioration of Luz's mental state and becomes more easily influenced by All For One.
    • All Might may have done his world a favour putting down All For One in their Final Battle before the story events of My Hero Academia starts, he unknowingly caused a Mass Super-Empowering Event in Luz's world when All For One's Quirk transferred into the girl, setting off the story's bloody events.
    • 24 years before the start of the story Eda discovered the Mutant Realm aka the My Hero Academia world. While there King was captured by All For One and got his hands on his Titan Blood. Even after she rescued him and returned to their home world, the supervillain acquired the means to follow her back to the Boiling Isles and waged a 10-year long war for control of the land that resulted in many casualties of her people, something that haunts her to this day.
    • Tyler Wittebane sending his assassins to try and kill Luz ends up escalating the Collateral Damage in Gravesfield to the point that it ends up being turned into a giant crater after only 4 hours, destroying his ancestral home and killing off nearly all his people. Though, he considers it to be Worth It, Not knowing that Luz survived al that and is now coming for him in the Demon Realm..
    • Aiya Kagurami ended up giving birth to Yoichi and Rikitasu Shigaraki, the latter of whom would grow up to be none other than All For One - which might not have been so bad if she hadn't died in childbirth, leaving him and his brother to grow up on the streets.
  • Amazing Fantasy:
    • Endeavor's harsh words to Clash during an emotional low point were the final straw that led to her becoming a Villain.
    • After coming to U.A., Izuku's radioactive blood gets studied by a young scientist hoping to get her big break. Little does she know that his brand of gamma radiation is also the same kind of radiation that created the Hulk, linking it to the One Below All. If she hadn't burned her notes and killed herself, Izuku would have served as the unwitting door to the evil god.
  • The Bridge: The entire plot is kicked off by a hapless and nameless archaeologist breaking the seal keeping the Big Bad at bay. While he's not quite free just yet, this allowed him to wake up and extend his influence enough to start manipulating events.
  • In The Dragon King's Temple, Nekht's stupidity is responsible for the entire plot: if he never hatched the ill-planned delivery of Zuko and Toph to the Tok'ra - securing their world as a source of potential hosts - several people including himself would be still alive, Zuko wouldn't have fallen sick and almost died, and a fragment of the yukioso wouldn't have wreaked havoc on the base of SGC.
  • Eevee Therapy for Little Magi inverts this after Shirou and Illya wake up together in the Pokemon world, and while explaining how he's related to Kiritsugu Emiya he casually mentions that his adoptive father would often make trips to Germany, even when he was sick. This helps Illya realize that her father didn't abandon her but had repeatedly tried and failed to save her from the Einzberns, ending her misplaced hatred and preventing the initial antagonism she had with Shirou in Fate/stay night.
  • Hunters of Justice kicked off when Arthur Watts found and successfully activated a stray Mother Box that had landed on Remnant. Brainiac detected the signal and, after studying the conflict between the Hunters and Grimm, determined that Remnant was on the verge of collapse. As per his MO, the Coluan bottled all of the major cities before blowing up the planet. All because Arthur couldn't resist tinkering with unknown technology.
  • Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger:
    • The entire reason that the Mask of Darth Nihilus ended up on Remnant was because a team of adventurers, wanting to keep the mask out of Darth Vader's hands, decided to pull a Sealed Evil in Another World using a random primitive planet in the Unknown Regions they stumbled across. That planet happened to be Remnant and the first person who finds the mask is a random monk. Under Nihilus's influence, the monk transforms his church into a Religion of Evil specializing in training deadly assassins. These assassins claim hundreds of victims during the Great War and became notorious enough for the King of Vale to send his most trusted general to eradicate them. After the cult is wiped out by Vale's army, the mask is taken as a trophy by the army's general, Alixandre Arc. Alixandre eventually realizes the mask is evil and hides the mask inside a secluded cave. This is the same cave that Alix's descendent, Jaune, wanders into on his way to Beacon, resulting in his possession by Nihilus's soul.
    • The circumstances which led to Jaune finding Nihilus's mask are due to the actions of a single Beowolf that Jaune stumbles across on his way to Beacon. The Beowolf chases Jaune into a cavern where he hides out until the Grimm grows bored and leaves. This cavern was the aforementioned hiding place of Nihilus's mask, resulting in Jaune taking the mask with him to Beacon, setting the stage for Darth Nihilus's eventual return.
  • In Justice, after word got out in the underworld that the Straw Hat Pirates refuse to operate in Gotham City (because Luffy heard someone got food poisoning from a spoiled hot dog there and Luffy doesn't trust anything related to bad meat), lesser criminals around the country have decided to invade Gotham in the hopes of prospective business away from a group of Justice League-level outlaws who aren't afraid to pick off other villains. This spike in crime makes Gotham even worse than the two weeks Batman had disappeared in prior.
  • Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!:
    • Izuku had no idea how badly his new "Quirk" was bruising Bakugou's ego until their fateful childhood brawl.
    • Dark Shadow quickly learns Izuku's true nature after feeling him up and decides to blab about it to the other fifth-dimensional beings. This draws Mister Mxyzptlk to Earth, throwing Izuku's morning into chaos.
  • The Thalmor from Rise of the Dragon Child almost doomed the world when they killed the True Dragonborn the week before Alduin was slated to return. Cue Akatosh scrambling to find a replacement and really, really ticked off against them.
  • In Storm on the Horizon, had Max Caulfield never saved Chloe Price's life, Chloe never would've given birth to her daughter Elisabet Sobeck. Without Sobeck's work to propel it into becoming a MegaCorp, Faro Automated Solutions would never have been able to build the Chariot line of robots that destroyed the world. Max realizes quickly that she probably had a hand in destroying the world, though she doesn't tell Aloy exactly what she thinks is going on until much later.
  • The plot of Teen Titans: Together for Tomorrow occurs because Lex Luthor got chummy with Brainiac when he responded to LexCorp's call to intelligent life in space. Luthor mentioning the presence of a Kryptonian on Earth convinced Brainiac to come and collect him and the world's most noteworthy civilization, then blow up the planet. As Lois Lane puts it, "[Lex] doomed the Earth with A PHONE CALL?!"
  • In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing, minor actions by characters often lead to the assaults of others:
    • Wilbur's family had left him home alone to attend a birthday dinner since he was grounded, leading to Ratigan and Goob coming over and assaulting him. Also, Franny told him that it didn't matter if he was gifted or not since she and Cornelius still loved him, so he kept the assault a secret so as not to disappoint them.
    • Dib found out that Zim's uncles, Red and Purple, were abusing him, and he helped get them arrested. Unfortunately, since they were gay, several news media outlets focused on this and stirred up bigotry toward innocent queer parents and kids, which also led to angry parents assaulting Mr. Ratburn.
    • Bataar Jr. called the cops on Huan when he protested at Kuvira's press conference, but when Huan got arrested, the dirty cops assaulted him.
    • Lola decided to get revenge on Lori for slapping her by accusing her of molesting her, thinking that she would just get grounded. Lori was actually arrested, which was made worse when the corrupt cops got to her, so Lola feels extremely guilty about it.
    • When Mew was conducting her psychology thesis, she invited several gifted children to the university. Ratigan and Bill Cipher, two professors at the university that have assaulted several people, would often visit the classroom in order to abuse or manipulate the kids. Mew had no reason to think they would do anything until she found out about Ratigan at the Palace, so she canceled the study just in case (although, by that point, it was too late).
    • Miss Fresno claimed whiplash and sued Mr. Schneider's class when Reggie bumped into her car. The class was instead herded into a solitary confinement cell for four months, didn't have access to proper hygiene and necessities, and had visits from the corrupt cops, who injured Blanche and J.P. and also raped Vinnie.

Arrowverse

  • Blackbird (Arrow): Deconstructed. Oliver's decision to invite Sara onto the Gambit exposes the Lances' Dysfunction Junction and ultimately destroys the family. It's deconstructed in that, again, all Oliver actually did was invite Sara; everything that followed was the result of the Lances' choices, not him, and when it comes down to it he's honestly relatively blameless in comparison. However, the Lances' Selective Obliviousness and Parental Favoritism means that they'd rather use him and Laurel as scapegoats rather than acknowledge their own faults in the situation and try to fix them.

Battlestar Galactica (2003)

  • Did I Make the Most of Loving You? reveals that, in the original timeline, Gaius Baltar told the Cylons about the role Hera’s blood played in curing Roslin’s cancer during their time on New Caprica. As a result, the Cylons conducted experiments on Roslin during her time in captivity, which led to the Cylons basically undoing the cure and causing Roslin’s cancer to return.

Danganronpa

  • In Academy of Discontent from the Danganronpa: The Immersive Learning Program, Aoi Asahina uses the Necronomicon to bring her friend Sakura Oogami from the dead. Unfortuently, Sakura Came Back Wrong as an overprotective friend in constant agony, and goes to kill Kokichi after the latter insults Aoi and Sakura, then kills Hajime for allying with Kokichi against the Mastermind.
  • In System Restore, Togami sees himself as this by virtue of loaning Sonia a book. When Sonia goes to return it to him and ask for the second volume, she witnesses Peko letting Fuyuhiko play the Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery game. Realizing that Pekoyama is likely going to kill Koizumi and that Togami will be unable to stop it, Sonia takes matters into her own hands and kills Pekoyama.
  • Parodied in The Trivial Despairs of Junko Enoshima, where Junko Enoshima finds her craving of despair unsatisfied, and every attempt to induce despair on her classmate fails. After her attempt to shoot and kill Makoto Naegi gets interrupted by a stray pigeon every time, an unaware Makoto tries to cheer her up by telling her that a few weeks ago he made a wish on a shooting star that was equivalent to her never having to feel despair, which while wonderful for normal people is a nightmare for a despair-addict like Junko... until she realizes that living a life without normal despair is despairing for her.
  • Where Talent Goes to Die:
    • In the second Chapter, Monokuma gives each student a "weakness notepad" containing a secret about one of their classmates that either serves to facilitate their murder, or is a secret that they would want to keep under wraps at all costs. A day after the motive is announced, he informs the students that he'll make everyone's "weaknesses" public knowledge unless someone commits murder in 48 hours, and unless the students view their notepads' information, he'll take them away and give them to someone else. Iwasawa, who's Hopeless with Tech, asks Mitamura for help with her notepad, with neither of them realizing that Iwasawa has Mitamura's weakness - that Mitamura cheated on a test. Mitamura, realizing that her reputation would be ruined if this information gets out, then commits murder.
    • An anonymous recruiter for Talent High School Student came across Sousuke Kagami, a promising prospective student with a Photographic Memory, and was so desperate to recruit that student that he ended up blackmailing him. The school's headmistress later sent the student in question to Hope's Peak to steal information on the school's Shelter Plan, where he ended up running into Junko Enoshima, who persuaded him to start up a killing game inside Talent High School, in hopes of inspiring further copycat crimes.

Dragon Ball

  • The Cell example in Dragon Ball Z is ramped up some more in Dragon Ball Z Abridged - it turns out that Trunks had surpassed his father in sheer power and could have killed Cell at any time. However, he held back because he knew that if his father sensed it, it would break him. It's implied that Krillin sensed Trunks' greater power, causing him to destroy the remote that could have blown up Android 18 and kept Cell from reaching Perfect Form.

Girls und Panzer

Harry Potter

  • Ginny in The Very Secret Diary, as she is in canon. She really, really could not have predicted that starting to keep a diary would have such dire consequences. Yes, it's a bit strange that the diary writes back, but, hey, this is the wizarding world. Stranger things have happened, and there's no harm in maintaining a friendship with the "nice boy" who's trapped within the diary's pages... right?

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

  • In Magic Trick from Stars, Eyes of Heaven, Caesar Zeppelin teaches his eight-years-old great-granddaughter Jolyne how to use hamon to put people to sleep. When she sees her father Jotaro is tired from working on paperwork, she uses the trick on him so he can rest. Since she was a child, she ends up applying it incorrectly, she ends up giving him heat exhaustion without realizing what actually happen. Thankfully the rest of her parents arrived before his condition got worse.

Kamen Rider

  • Back in the original series, Yamada Tatsumori/Aries Zodiarts was the one who instigated the Deal with the Devil with Ryusei so Ryusei could revive his friend. What happens in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades? The deal with Gentaro dead gave Ophiuchus a way to wreak his havoc on the world (and bring in other Serpents for the ride) and having nearly every named character from Fourze involved in multiple adventures to stop Gamou's advent of injecting former Switchers with Cosmic Energy, the origins as to why Ophiuchus is causing this madness and Ryusei being brainwashed and transformed into a cyborg. Didn't think this through, did you, Apostle of Sleep?
    • Ryusei also should be blamed for killing Gentaro in the first place considering that Tachibana had stated that there was an alternate and safer way to bring Jiro back to life.

Kung Fu Panda

  • The Vow: While in a sad and angry stupor over his wife's death, Lord Chang tells Lord Shen that he's only living in his parents' shadow and that history shall never remember him for great achievements. Haunted by those words, Shen ends up accidentally inventing black powder, starting his canonical dark path.

Love Live!

Marvel Universe

  • No One Breaks My Heart Like You: Barbara could tell that Mary Jane was unhappy and genuinely wanted to help her, so she talked with Mary Jane about her marriage problems. However, this talk was heard by Peter. Feeling guilty for the problems, Peter decides to end their marriage, feeling Mary Jane can't be happy with him.

Miraculous Ladybug

  • Hawkmoth Gets A Reference has Nadja Chamack mention the existence of an online list of akumatized villains whose designs had to have been made on drugs in the aftermath of a battle on live television. This mention was caught by Hawkmoth, who takes the entire thing personally, does some self-reflection and inspiration searching over a hiatus, and comes back to terrorize Paris with not only more dangerous akumas, but ones whose victims have more distinct memories of their actions while under his control.
  • Played With in The Karma of Lies. Adrien refuses to do anything about Lila conning his classmates, leading to major consequences. However, his unwittingness is largely because he's willfully ignorant: no matter how many times Marinette, Plagg or anyone else tries to explain to him how much Lila is hurting everyone, he refuses to believe it. Since his family is obscenely wealthy, Adrien doesn't understand the value of anything, assuming that anything Lila steals can be replaced — and no amount of pointing out that his friends aren't as well-off as him breaks through his obstience. Adrien wrongly believes that he's a 'good guy' whose actions are Right by default, and that he'll get everything he feels he rightly deserves. Naturally, he's completely unprepared for his Karma Houdini Warranty running out and reaping the rewards of his behavoir.
  • The events of Lenore Raven's Murder Mystery are set into motion by Alix Kubdel when they decide to brutally insult Marinette, giving them a brutal "Reason You Suck" Speech comparing them to Chloé and implying they were the sort who would steal a Miraculous to hurt and harass others. This naturally gets their victim akumatized, with the resultant akuma putting the whole class through a harrowing Secret Test of Character that leaves everyone involved traumatized.
  • The One to Make It Stay:
    • After having his memories Obliviated, Chat Noir believes that he's been hiding his feelings for Ladybug, who appears to have a civilian boyfriend. Before she releases her Miraculous Cure, he takes the opportunity to confess, making clear that he doesn't expect her to return them; he just wants to express them before their memories got fixed. What he's blissfully unaware of is that normally, he has no problem flirting with and pursuing Ladybug, even when she's repeatedly rebuffed him. Alya also secretly films his confession, edits it to make it appear Ladybug accepted, and posts the result to her blog, further emboldening Chat and causing him to step up his harassment.
    • In White Hot Morning, the action figures Juleka has been working so hard on are unintentionally ruined by a hapless intern, who mistook the box they were in for one she needed to throw out. When this causes her akumatization, the one responsible is horrified and guilt-ridden, and later offers herself up to protect Jagged from Reflekdoll.

My Hero Academia

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

  • Villainous Knight: A gamer named Rampart was annoyed that Maria in Fortune Lover never fought back against her tormentors (forgetting that the game is an Otome Genre), and designed a mod where Katarina hires an assassin to kill Maria, only for the heroine to fight back with swordplay. The mod gets reflected into the world of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, only this time the assassin is hired to kill the far kinder Katarina instead, and would have succeeded if Katarina hadn't learned to use a sword to avoid her game counterpart's doom flags.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

  • TCB!Lyra Heartstrings is revealed to be this in The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum. It turns out that the reason why the Mirror Universe Equestria turned into the Solar Empire and is carrying out its ponification crusade against humanity is all because she went on a scuba diving trip with some friends where she happened upon the sunken ship of the KV-62 Archaeological Party coming from Dream Valley. Unfortunately, she also found the Bag of Tirek, which seeks to carry its maker's will out by enslaving every living being in existence and targeted humanity first out of revenge because Tirek himself had been defeated by a human in the past.
  • The timeline of The Dear Sweetie Belle Continuity was triggered when Nevermore saved a foal from a cart crash during a fixed point in time, which first caused the foal's father Feather Duster not to get shocked out of his alcoholism and ultimately led to the destruction of the universe via magical shockwave in an attempt to stop a war- at least before the Guild of Time Defense swore to prevent it.
  • Twilight Sparkle in Divided Rainbow, for causing the Swap.
  • Natural Histories: In "The Quarry", one of the nymph-ponies dives down to the bottom of the lake to retrieve some metal, as has been done countless times before. Unknown to him, the large piece that he finds and pries free is the locking mechanism for one of the sluices originally intended to drain the quarry the lake formed in; by opening it, he drains the entire lake out into the sea, causing his own demise and dooming his society.
  • The Pieces Lie Where They Fell: The Nightmare reveals it and other Champions of Chaos intended Sunset Shimmer to be this, placing a trigger within her to turn her into a demon the instant she put the Element of Magic on her head. It didn't work out as they planned - Sunset transforms, but is reverted to normal by the heroes soon after, without doing any lasting damage.

Naruto

  • In A Case Study in the Sturdiness of the Rookie 9, after Genma exposes how Kakashi has been stealing from Chouji's private snack stash, then swipes his cake during a picnic, Kakashi gives his team a 'special assignment' in the guise of their first C-Rank mission: earn Genma's trust and gather information in preparation for a prank. While the ruse is discovered and called off by Shibi, his students are still left with the impression that there's nothing wrong with betraying their fellow Leaf-nin for the sake of completing their mission. As a result, they exploit Chouji's friendship with Ino to trick Team 10 into trusting them during the Forest of Death trial, then steal their scroll. Amongst the fallout of this betrayal, Orochimaru attacks Team 10 and puts the Curse Mark on Kiba.
  • A Point Of D Ivergence variant in If I Were Me, where Kakashi takes a different path to the memorial stone that brings him near to where Sakura was being bullied. Seeing him, Ino falsely assumes that a responsible adult is going to step in, so she doesn't intervene herself; as a result, she and Sakura don't become friends. Making matters worse, Kakashi makes a half-hearted comment to Sakura, fueled by his belief that she'll either persevere through this or quit. Sakura tragically takes the third option of surviving by suppressing her trauma, creating a volatile Split Personality.
  • Choji's mother in The Last Prayer dodges around her sixteen-year old son's question of what an aphrodisiac pill does, claiming it "allows shinobi and kunoichi to be friendly with each other". Choji gives the pill to Ino in hopes it will make her nicer; this leads to (among other things) Naruto unknowingly taking advantage of the drugged Ino, Ino using Naruto to rape and blackmail Sakura, and Naruto becoming romantically involved with Kurenai. When Kurenai pieces together what happened, Choji's mother is devastated to realize she was indirectly responsible for someone's rape.
  • Obito-Sensei: Jiraiya sees himself as this after Rain's invasion of Konoha. He taught Yahiko and the other Akatsuki founders about Ninjutsu as well as the idealism of Ninjutsu, which they now seek to enforce after getting devasted by Cloud's Tail Beast Canon. Obito argues that everyone who committed atrocities always justifies it with their ideology and that Jiraiya shouldn't blame himself for Rain's actions, but Jiraiya points out that every action, whether benevolent or cruel, will always have a source.
  • Son of the Sannin: Jiraiya tells Naruto about his heritage; as a result, Naruto's usual declarations that he'll become Hokage include his intention to follow in his father's footsteps. This unfortunately causes Fugaku to assume there's a conspiracy to instill Naruto as the next Hokage in order to continue the Master-Apprentice Chain of those raised with the Senju's ideals. While this doesn't outright cause the Uchiha Insurrection, it effectively ensures that it's all but impossible for Hiruzen to talk Fugaku down.
  • Space to Breathe: Originally, Ibiki intends to let his new apprentice Sakura remain part of Team Seven; however, Hiruzen vetoes that idea, claiming that it would be easier on all involved if she's simply replaced outright, so that she can focus entirely on training under Ibiki rather than splitting her focus. Unfortunately, Hiruzen proceeds to replace her with Kabuto, unaware that Kabuto is one of Orochimaru's moles. This makes things significantly worse, especially after the Chunin Exams and Kabuto's inevitable betrayal.

Odd Squad

  • Ships Ahoy! provides a narrow aversion. Old Missie decides to retire in the year 1925 and promotes Olesya to be the new Odd Squad Director of Precinct 13579 in her place. However, she's briefly conflicted on whether Olesya is the right agent to serve as leader, and cycles through a couple more options — Obfusco, whose Word Salad Philosophy makes him too hard to understand well enough for him to be an effective leader, and Osage, who was looking at retirement by the end of the decade after many years working for the organization — before bringing Oprah into consideration. Old Missie admits that Oprah has the passion and loyalty to be a good Director in spite of her relative newbie status, but decides not to promote her because she and O'Donahue work so well together. A couple decades later, Olesya eventually decides to promote Oprah as Director in her place when she decides to retire, and things begin snowballing from there as the promotion puts a strain on the relationship and friendship between Oprah and O'Donahue.

One Piece

  • Marie D. Suesse and the Mystery New Pirate Age!: Eustass Kid wonders aloud in front of Madelyn what would happen if the Straw Hats were delayed, making it possible for the Kid and Heart Pirates to compete for One Piece. The "unwitting" part comes from the fact that he doesn't realize Madelyn, with her powers could make this happen, or that she would want to. Madelyn then concludes that Law has lost his spirit for pursuing One Piece because he thinks Luffy will win, and then wishes for him to get captured to force his crew to go after him; this ends with Luffy's execution and the deaths of all the other Straw Hat pirates, among other events.

Persona

  • Played for Laughs in Choose: Haru vs Ann, when Joker tries to explain his decision in dating both Futaba and Kawakami, he uses an example of his classmate Mishima being unable to pick between two perfect girls (in the analogy case, Ann and Haru) just as Ren couldn't pick between just Futaba or Kawakami. This leads Ann and Haru in a competition to win Mishima's heart, which drives Ann into kissing Mishima and making him faint in shock, sending him to the hospital.

Pokémon

  • In Morphic, Monica Sellers attempts to tell Dave what the Church of Holy Truth's real plans are. Unfortunately, before setting out to find Dave, she also told Isaac Daniels what she was going to do, which directly leads to Gabriel getting kidnapped.
  • Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has a few points where the actions of heroic characters would have ramifications down the line that were far less moral than planned: Cynthia's retrieval of the Adamant Orb as a child would eventually lead to the antagonist William Stronger, the Bloodliner Hunter, while Gligarman's defeat of the criminal Heratia would later lead to the actions of her six criminal sons to go unchecked, though this would later lead to an inverted 'Unwitting Instigator of Hope' trope when the actions of the youngest of her sons fathered Ash, Red, and hundreds of others as part of his criminal activities.

Psychonauts

  • Martyshka: In daring Raz to procure a file from Truman, Norma had unwittingly set Raz down a path of self-discovery and learning that he was technically kidnapped from his real family.

Rosario + Vampire

  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness:
    • The entire Ghoul!Tsukune subplot in Acts II and III occurred because Kokoa failed to perform a vampire blood transfusion to save his life at the end of Act I properly. Not only that, but the entire reason said blood transfusion was needed in the first place is because while sleeping in his room with him, Moka sucked his blood dry and nearly killed him in her sleep.
    • As revealed in Act III chapter 15, while making Yukari a new wand, Apoch and Astreal misread the instructions to do so and make her the wrong one. As a result, Yukari gets Drunk with Power and tries to kill the gang in a fit of rage, causing Tsukune to break two more links on his Holy Lock in order to stop her and destroy the wand. All of that chaos happened simply because Apoch and Astreal misread an instruction booklet.
    • It's also revealed over the course of Act III that Kenzo had had one of his men follow Dark the night he hid Felucia's spirit artifact to ensure it was in a safe place. While he was well-intentioned at first, Hokuto finds this out and sends Kuyou after Kenzo in order to discover its location. The end result: Kenzo ends up dead by Kuyou's hands, and Hokuto gets his hands on Felucia's spirit artifact and uses it to extort Felucia into being his minion.

RWBY

  • Children of Remnant:
    • The Arcs bring Jaune a childhood toy he used to love, a stuffed bunny, in the hopes that it would jog Jaune's memory of them. Instead, it triggers a mental breakdown, causing Jaune to pass out and almost creating an international incident.
    • Blake deciding to try to manipulate her parents fails completely, and all she achieves is convincing Kali and Ghira that she's gone forever and that they need to kill her.
  • Played for Laughs in Dazed and Confuzzled when Ruby reads a romance novel involving men reading a woman's thoughts through The Power of Love and decides to test if it's real by using Jaune. Due to his friendship with her, Jaune correctly answers Ruby's questions of what she's thinking, leading to her believing that men can read minds and spreading the rumor to all of the women of Vale, leading to chaos.
  • Played for Laughs (kind of) in For Want Of A Knight. A pair of Altesian students trick Jaune into thinking that the female of the duo liked him, all so that they can cruelly prank him. Unknown to the pair, however, Jaune has a lot of admirers who signed a peace treaty of sorts regarding him, and their actions broke it, leading to Jaune's admirers officially allowed to romantically pursue him, doing over the top actions along the way. However, this kickstarts a chain of events that leads to Salem ending her war against humanity, so it's not so bad.

A Song of Ice and Fire

  • The King Nobody Wanted:
    • Howland Reed views himself as having caused the chain of events at the Harrenhal tournament that ended in the Rebellion, the deaths of most of Houses Stark and Targaryen, and the continuing civil war as a result of then-innocent curiosity.
      "There was a little man once, who left his home, to see many things, and learn many things. And because he did this, many people died. Not because of his choosing, no, but simply because of the time..."
    • Stannis' requisitioning of merchant ships may have led to Vaes Dothrak being wiped out by the Red Death and Dothraki culture being pushed to the edge of collapse, as the merchants went places they shouldn't have in an attempt to recover their losses and picked up slaves from Sothoryos who carried the disease.

Spongebob Squarepants

  • The Bikini Bottom Horror: Mr. Krabs mutilating the Tortured One to get meat for his Krabby Patties drove the Patrick clone to kill other people with Spongebob insufficiently cooking one such meal for the original Patrick on purpose to ensure the carnage happened. That being said, Krabs very likely did not know that there was a possibility of the Tortured One finding any means of retaliating, let alone his prized star fry cook betraying him in such a horrible way. In fact, he was just as blindsided by the starfish attack as Sandy was.

Sword Art Online

  • Sword Art Online Abridged: Keita of the Black Cats of the Full Moon recruits the tutorial NPC into his guild through an undocumented exploit. As Kayaba reveals in the final episode of Season 1, part of the reason thousands of players died was because they had no idea how the game played due to a missing tutorial NPC, an issue which was part of a massive crunch-caused programming oversight that Keita never got to report because he died back in episode 3; if his debt to the mafia didn't make him commit suicide, the soul-crushing guilt of causing thousands of needless newbie deaths for his own convenience definitely would have.

Touhou Project

  • Fantasy of Utter Ridiculousness: Rumia is this during the Extra Stage. This being one of the more idiotic youkai in Gensokyo and being shrouded in darkness at the time, she didn't know enough to keep from getting near Megas, and even then she was smelling her food of choice close by. Coop and the others were completely unaware of her presence, and when Megas turns to leave the area it accidentally kicks her into the Garden of the Sun, where she collides with and snaps several sunflowers in half. This in turn infuriates Yuuka Kazami, who proceeds to go on the warpath against Megas in the belief that Coop had damaged the flowers on purpose.
  • From the later parts of Gensokyo 20XX, we have an age-regressed Reimu, who was conditioned not to sense danger. This is especially so in 20XXIV, when she crawls out of the house right into danger, which has Ran almost raped by another male kitsune. From 20XXV, we have the unknown and unnamed tenant who left rat poison where the aforementioned could get it and it leading to her suffering brain damage in the aftermath.
  • While most Imperfect Metamorphosis readers quite rightly blame Team 9 for nearly everything, they couldn't have even stolen Rin Satuski's can in the first place if Marisa hadn't stolen it from Patchouli. Marisa's Sticky Fingers are the only reason anything in the story happened.

Underworld (2003)

  • Knowledge Burns: Singe feels like this when he realises that Marcus was transformed into a hybrid through exposure to his blood, as this theoretically grants Marcus access to all of Singe's knowledge, which includes knowledge of various lycan safehouses, although Marcus proves 'willing' to talk in return for Signe's help in devising a possible treatment for William.

Warrior Cats

  • In the Better Bones AU, Billystorm's action of leaving his kits with his human without Leafstar's knowledge leads to Harry getting possession of the kits and managing to kill one of them, Stormkit.

Young Justice (2010)

  • Life Ore Death: Zigzagged. Aqualad brings his teammate Ferris to Atlantis for her birthday. There he is able to settle his inner turmoil between his homesickness and his duties to the team, meaning the Team is better able to defeat Clayface unlike in canon. However, without this event, Aqualad never heads to Atlantis like he did in "Downtime", which leads to Black Manta being able to steal the entirety of Starro's frozen body. This means the Light now can produce more Starro-Tech to control more heroes outside the Justice League, including Ferris herself.


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