Question to "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!"

The description of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero wants it to apply when the heroes have reached their goal but in doing so have made things worse. The laconic only requires the heroes to try to fix things (not necessarily accomplishing anything) but making things worse in the process.

There is a difference in (a) the heroes celebrating catching the villain and only later realizing it was All According to Plan and (b) getting themselves arrested while trying to catch the villain and hence giving him free reign to activate the Doomsday Device.

Or not? Is this trope for both scenarios or only one of them?

The (a) example seems accurate.

The (b) example isn't Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, since there's no direct relationship between the villain succeeding and the heroes being arrested, but an indirect relationship. If the villain did cause the arrest, it's just the villain succeeding at stopping them. If the villain didn't cause the arrest, the heroes just failed to stop him, but didn't advance his plan.

Yeah, the example for b) wasn't a good one. The actual example I had in mind is listed on Incredibles 2:

• The Incredibles' battle against Underminer causes extensive collateral damage to the city and they still fail to catch the Underminer, causing the police and the government to pin the blame on them.

I don't think it is an example but it made me look closer into Nice Job Breaking It, Hero where I realized that the laconic and description are not aligned. So in general, when the heroes try to fix things and fail and by failing they increase the villain's chance to Take Over the World, is this also covered by the trope or not? Depending on the answer, laconic or description will have to be adjusted.

Edited by eroock on Feb 3rd 2019 at 5:30:11 PM

I would say yes. My sense of the trope is "The heroes try to fix the problem, but they make it worse instead", Pyrrhic Victory optional.