Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Anime and Manga


 * In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the first part of the story is about the struggle for humans to return to the surface by killing the evil overlord keeping them underground...  Oops.
 * Turns out that the "Something worse" is
 * Some have theorized the opening takes this even farther,
 * And Rossiu, in an attempt to figure out how close "something worse" is to happening,
 * Magic Knight Rayearth. Save the princess, kill her kidnapper, Save Both Worlds, right? Uh...  After the resulting psychological trauma of The Reveal
 * That isn't even all of it. Nice Job Breaking It, Heroines.
 * Arguably, this is also the result of Nice job breaking it, Cephiro.
 * Occurs on a spectacular scale in Neon Genesis Evangelion. While Gendo and SEELE propagate the general purpose and technically true cover story that their mission is to prevent the Angels from initiating Third Impact (which would kill the entire human race), the reason for killing the Angels is in actuality so that they don't interfere in the Human Instrumentality Project, which is a fancy name for SEELE-controlled Third Impact.
 * Played straight in Rebuild 2.0: Oh Shinji, in the short span of 90 minutes you've managed to make yourself likeable again, have reached out to other people, grown a bit of a spine, and even got to kick a gargantuan amount of ass... Too bad saving the girl results in
 * In Pokémon Special, one of the first things Yellow does is breaking up an attempt by an apparently resurfacing Team Rocket to hijack the ship S.S. Anne..
 * During the Platinum arc, Buck figures that he has to protect the Magma Stone from Team Galactic, so he moves it, intending to bring it home with him. This action in fact awakens the legendary Pokemon Heatran, Team Galactic's true target, and Buck has unwittingly brought them right to it.
 * Digimon Adventure, after which Joe hangs a lampshade on this trope..
 * Frequently implied to occur whenever the Dirty Pair are on the job (it's the reason for their Embarrassing Nickname), but one OVA episode spells it out plainly. The Angels are investigating the mysterious deaths of several hundred mining employees on a planet run as a religious colony; they find that the religion's leadership has evolved into a murdering cult that, with the help of a ring of weather satellites, is capable of calling down Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style devastation down in a specific location. After they destroy the cult's station in orbit, they assume correctly that the cult's reign of terror is ended. Unfortunately, the space station was also the control for the weather satellites, and the weather satellites weren't just used for destructive purposes; the Angels look down from orbit and see about nineteen hurricanes beginning to form, with no weather-control system left to prevent them...
 * All over the place in Dragon Ball Z:
 * Cell was on the receiving end of a long string of these. He reached his Perfect form because Krillin was infatuated with Android 18 and thus didn't activate her self-destruct, and because Vegeta, looking for a better fight, was actively helping him absorb her. Gohan didn't kill Cell when he had the chance because he didn't feel Cell had suffered enough, allowing him to use his self-destructing attack, leading to a Senseless Sacrifice by Goku and Cell becoming even more powerful after he recovered.
 * According to the OVAs, said Senseless Sacrifice was an even bigger example, as Cell's explosion freed Bojack from imprisonment.
 * Buu was even worse, and would never have gotten as far as he did without the heroes. The Supreme Kai allowed Gohan to be drained of his energy, vastly underestimated how much of the necessary energy would be extracted. The battle between Vegeta and Goku produced so much power it accelerated Buu's awakening even more. Piccolo's attempt to buy more time for Goten and Trunks prompted Buu to kill every person on Earth except for the main cast with one attack. Gotenks acts like he's completely outmatched and that he's going to be defeated as a setup for his Super Saiyan 3 transformation, but Piccolo takes him seriously and destroys the door to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, leaving them trapped forever after Buu escapes anyway. And finally, Goku and Vegeta successfully rescue their sons and Piccolo from within Super Buu, causing the monster to revert into Kid Buu, who was almost as powerful as Super Buu but even more monstrous.
 * How about GT? It turns out that the heroes can only make one wish with the Dragon Balls for only a year. Thanks to overusing it from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Z, that's how the Shadow Dragons came into existence.
 * It's become a Running Gag on the Guilty Crown page to begin every entry under Nice Job Breaking It, Hero as "Good job, character!" and to follow with an explanation on the plan and how it wound up backfiring.
 * Princess Tutu: In order to prevent Mytho from destroying his own emotion of love, Fakir cuts the mythical sword capable of doing so in half. It also ensured that his heart could not be shattered again. Now how could this possibly be a bad thing?  Whoopsie...
 * This type of thing happens a lot in Princess Tutu. Mostly because the characters are  and Drosselmeyer gets his kicks from making a person's good intentions be catalysts for the demise of those they're trying to help. The main character frequently makes everything worse courtesy of her humble attempts to help Mytho.
 * Code Geass: In the first season, facing obliteration, Lelouch/Zero geasses Suzaku to "Live!" One year later...
 * Suzaku is just as complicit in the latter, as.
 * Suzaku himself is a walking catalog of this trope, trying to be the hero but screwing things up due to his own masochism and that he's playing for the wrong team.
 * Lelouch uses a particularly grim example of his Mind Control power:
 * Of course, he already did that to the inside of one of them enough so that it would collapse. So, nice job not breaking it hard enough, anti-hero.
 * This trope could also be attributed to Ohgi and his culpability in.
 * In Hell Girl: The Cauldron of Three, Mikage is able to sense when someone nearby may soon be a client of Enma Ai. In one episode, she stops one such person and urges her not to use the Hotline to Hell... which she had never heard of until then. Smooth.
 * In the Season 2 finale of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Kenzan tries to stop a brainwashed minion from firing the Earthshattering Kaboom by smashing the laptop computer that controls the satellite cannon. As soon as he does this, he learns the missile was just fired, and he's just destroyed the only means of stopping it!
 * The hero wasn't immune to this either. When Judai was little, he had a card named Yubel that was very protective of him. Whoever Judai dueled or was close to, Yubel would cause harm to them and made them fall into a coma. By Judai's request, Yubel was sent into outer space by Kaibacorp hoping it would absorb "the powers of justice" like his Elemental Hero Neos would. But instead it absorb powers the Light of Destruction and was driven insane. After landing back on Earth, it became Season Three's Big Bad and orchestrated the events that happen to Judai and his friends.
 * The biggest and baddest of the Big Bads in the Zatch Bell! manga by name of Clear Note, was powerful enough that it took Zatch and Brago's strongest spells to beat him. And what happens next? It somehow enables him to become powerful enough that Makoto Raiku had to intervene. What's worse, Kiyo somewhat knew what would happen if they did what they did, but if they hadn't, Clear would have won anyway.
 * In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Sakura leaves one of her memory-feathers behind in Acid Tokyo to keep the reservoir pure and the inhabitants alive.
 * Also, . If only he could turn back time, everything would be okay and he could save her, right? WRONG!
 * This is clearly becoming a theme, since it turns out that the entire frickin' plot was set into motion by split-second wish that  wouldn't die, though he didn't intend for it to turn out quite that way and the Big Bad just happened to feel the same way, and believe strongly in the tenet of Screw Destiny.
 * The entire plot of Inuyasha is based on this. Kagome kills a demon that stole the Shikon Jewel and in the process shatters the aforementioned MacGuffin. This kicks off an incredibly drawn-out plot where the main characters have to fix the jewel and fight evil demons who want its power for themselves. Nice job breaking it, Miko.
 * Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru has the characters discover Kukuri's birthplace where items for her use had been left behind. The bad news is the items had been collected by monsters called Gimu Gimu. Good news is they're tame and don't object to people taking back what's theirs. Unfortunately, they also don't object to people taking items and selling them, which is exactly what Nike, Kukuri, and Toma did prior to reaching the ruins. To make it worse, a necklace meant specifically for Kukuri was lost when Toma earlier used the item it was kept in as an impromptu rocket launcher. Poor Kukuri simply snaps at this point and regresses to a four-year old for a few moments. For the record, they did find the necklace soon after.
 * Manga example from Basara: when Momonoi is killed and the Red King retakes his city, Tatara and his rebel army plan on using the leftovers of Momonoi's gunpowder to blow up the water supply of the palace, making the Red King suffer. Too bad it results in the whole city having no water left and the citizens, formerly happy to be freed from their king turn against the rebels. A desert city cut off from water, good way to get their support hero.
 * In the Berserk manga, Skull Knight manages to slash Femto from behind at the very moment of his apparent ascension, using his dimension-crossing sword to teleport and get the drop on him.
 * An earlier Berserk example: when the King of Midland has Griffith jailed and tortured for deflowering his daughter Princess Charlotte, Griffith accuses him of being attracted to her, since she looks just like his dead wife. Now, if those desires did exist, they were only subconscious -- the king would probably never have realized they were there. But Griffith's accusation makes him dwell on his daughter to the point of madness, and in one horrible moment he forces himself on her. She stops him and he regains his senses, but the damage is done. Charlotte is traumatized; the king sinks into despair and insanity; and the Band of the Hawk, now the king's only targets for revenge, are hunted for years by Midland's army and worse. Good one, Griff.
 * As the Godhand Void would say, "everything happens within the flow of causality".
 * Mobile Suit Gundam 00 gives us a Nice Job Breaking It Villain. Near the end of Season 1, the Big Bad's assassination of triggers a Dead-Man Switch which  With this advantage, the good guys have a fighting chance in what had previously been an all but impossible battle. Thus, in the first season finale,
 * Celestial Being had an unintentional variant of this. Their plan in Season One involved getting the whole world to quit shooting each other, and unite them towards a common enemy (them). Unfortunately, this works far too well.
 * In a way similar to the Magic Knight Rayearth example above, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne was this.
 * The sum result of the  in Bleach.   Give yourselves a pat on the back, heroes. You really earned it.
 * Of course, the Big Bad of Bleach was previously established as a World-Champion Grandmaster of Xanatos Speed Chess, so something like this was probably inevitable...
 * More recently, the villain of a filler arc, Muramasa, WHOOPS.
 * Most Filler Villain Big Bads often take advantage of either Ichigo's habit of running into things blindly or his power in order to utilize them for hiding their schemes or activating a secret forbidden power.
 * Come think of it, since Ichigo's growth is a part of Aizen's scheme, wouldn't the fact that Ichigo is born and becoming one of the most powerful shinigami — and by extension, the fact the SS kidnapped Rukia and plan to execute her, which triggered the growth of Ichigo, and the training of hallowfication by the vizard — all considered as "Nice Job breaking it Heroes"?
 * Nice Job breaking the Manga, Captain Broken and Kubo.
 * We saw this yet again when  Damn Plot Coupon. Which leads to even more epic
 * In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, part of the events from before the show starts involves The Federation diverting a Colony Drop from hitting their incredibly well armored fortress in the middle of the mostly uninhabited Amazon rain forest. The problem is, a piece of it hit the very much inhabited Sydney Australia. Oops. To be fair, the chances of it hitting not only a continent, but a major city at that, rather than splashing down in the ocean, are probably pretty slim.
 * In Kinnikuman, all the choujin were celebrating Kinnikuman's victory in the Choujin Olympics. At one point, they toss him so high into the air he goes flying into outer space and bumps into a satellite. As it turned out, that satellite was a prison for the Devil Choujin and that bump hit the release button.
 * The Patlabor TV series features a pretty epic one, with a simple Honor Before Reason decision in an early throwaway episode snowballing into an increasingly deadly story arc that would dominate the later half of the show. Captain Nagumo is opposed to using the prototype Patlabor SRX-70 Saturn created by Schaft Enterprises because she knows they're going to use the motion data from the police's skirmishes to develop military mechs. All well & good, but because Nagumo threw the Saturn away, Corrupt Corporate Executive Utsumi decided to get the Patlabors' data another way, namely smuggling pre-production military Labors into Tokyo & causing havoc in the streets to draw the Patlabors out.
 * In Mahou Sensei Negima, all of Ala Alba went to the Magical World, including the . Asuna is then kidnapped by Fate and the Cosmo Entelecheia remnant, who do... something very ominous relating to her Anti-Magic powers. The going theory is that by bringing the Princess to where the bad guys can get her, they directly caused the revival of the Big Bad. Good going.
 * In the Ark arc of D.Gray-man, Wide-Eyed Idealist Allen Walker is facing off against Tyki Mikk. During the fight, Tyki accidentally pushes him into a Shonen Upgrade, and his Empathic Weapon turns into that can't damage humans- only Akuma and Noah. Tyki had been relying on Allen's reluctance to kill another human, so he was a bit surprised when Allen  It seems to have worked for a while... but then it turns out that  Woops.
 * He makes a very similar (and also understandable) mistake later:
 * Kanda, in the most recent chapters, when he Oops....
 * In Gundam Seed Destiny, one might say this trope occurs throughout the series with the Freedom and Archangel interfering with the war. But at the Second Battle of Onogoro,
 * In Deadman Wonderland, Ganta stops the Deadmen from wiping out the Forgeries because one of his friends was among them. In doing so, he inadvertently incapacitates all of the prison's strongest Deadmen leaving the Forgeries free to start picking them off one by one. As a result, Ganta is completely alienated by his friends.
 * In Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, the audience doesn't find out until that  actions during  were basically part and parcel of this. Granted, stuff was broken. Just different stuff.
 * Way to go, Nausicaa. In the manga version, you've saved your people, but you've also She believes in the natural cycles, but what she fails to realize is that
 * In the Eureka Seven movie, nice job flooding the entire Earth, destoying everything and drowning humanity in the process of saving your beloved Renton, Eureka. Good thing that
 * In the anime:
 * In Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa,
 * In Yu Yu Hakusho, the Chapter Black saga, Yusuke allowed Shinobu Sensui to fully power up so they could have a good battle. This ended up getting him killed. Dangit, Yusuke, you made Kuwabara cry again!
 * Of course this led to a Nice Job Fixing It, Villain moment as Yusuke was resurrected as a mega-kickass demon, but he didn't know he was a hidden demon at that time.
 * Don't forget that the whole arc was just Sensui's plan Nice job, dimwit.
 * In Naruto,, ordered to kill his entire clan , couldn't bring himself to kill  . As a result, he spared said person, and tried to enact a Xanatos Gambit that would end with that person a hero beloved by Konoha, and capable of defending himself and it against the Big Bad. Instead, it ended with him as The Dragon to the Big Bad, swearing to destroy Konoha. Oopsie!
 * Itachi's entire plan for Sasuke is a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.  If he didn't intervene or interfere with Sasuke's life at all,
 * The Uchiha's in the first place could have only ended in tears. And assuming that  is not lying through his teeth about wanting to restore his clan's position of power and prominence, it's hard to see how reducing the clan to a few hated, emotionally broken criminals could result in this, though I suppose it's stretch to apply "Hero" here.
 * And then there's the Sage of the Six Paths, in his day he saved the entire world from a monstrous threat, founded the Shinobi way, and was pretty much revered as a Messiah and Physical God. . Nice guy. Unfortunately he's also indirectly responsible for
 * Gaara probably wouldn't be half as screwed up as he is if his father had not only had him turned into a Jinchuriki, killing his mother in the process, but also . OK, so the Fourth Kazekage was doing it to protect his village in desperate times, but he ended up with an unstable, Ax Crazy child who kills people left, right and centre, is treated like a monster, has his own siblings terrified of him, and probably would have gotten a lot worse if Naruto hadn't showed up.
 * EL takes place After the End, which happened because some of the worlds major powers decided to put an end to environmental pollution... by nuking most of humanity, and nearly all other life on earth, out of existence.
 * In episode one of To Aru Majutsu no Index, Touma destroys Index's magically Made of Indestructium cloak to prove he has Anti-Magic. This leaves her defenseless and she becomes grievously wounded later.
 * In The World God Only Knows manga,
 * Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: The five Signers think they've successfully stopped the season's Big Bad and saved the world by defeating him in a duel, only to shortly realize they've brought a Xanatos Gambit to fruition, as, regardless of their victory, the duel completed "the Circuit," allowing the Arc Cradle to descend over New Domino and begin the countdown to the city's destruction.
 * Shiranui suffers through a particularly horrific one in the early chapters of Kagerou Nostalgia. He and Kazuma are staying with a woman whose husband left, planning to travel to the capital and assassinate General Kiyotaka Kuroda, leaving her and their daughter behind. The husband subsequently returns with a band of mercenaries and massacres the town; when his wife confronts him and accuses him of People Hunting (a form of massacre endorsed by Kuroda), he does not seem to understand what she is talking about. Shiranui realises that the man has been tainted by the darkness in the capital and purifies him. Nice job breaking it, priest.
 * While they can't be fully considered "Heroes" the Marines in One Piece cause this following
 * The actual protagonists fall into this on occasion as well. Luffy's jailbreak at Impel Down let a bunch of inmates out of prison. Granted, it's reasonable to assume that a fraction of them were actually decent guys like Mr. 2, Jimbei, and the Newkama pirates, but the majority was made up of dangerous criminals. Also, Franky blew up the labrotory of the greatest scientist in the world... twice. He saw the Big Red Button with the skull 'n crossbones on it and thought that it must be a pirate button.
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If Puella Magi Oriko Magica is to be believed, then if Madoka didn't try to cheer Mami up in Episode 3, Way to go to pick a time for You Are Not Alone speech, Madoka.
 * Not to mention Madoka nearly killed  by throwing her soul gem down the bridge in episode 6, and Homura had to clean up after her mess.
 * How about the reason why Madoka is so powerful and Kyubee wants to contract her is because  I'd say this one is the biggest of the series.
 * Early in Summer Wars Kenji gets a text message with a math algorithm challenging him to solve it. He spends all night doing so, and when he wakes up finds that the online world OZ used by most of the world has gone haywire and that the algorithm he solved was in fact the company's strongest security code.
 * Doraemon should have a lot of examples throughout the show's run. It at least happened in the movie, "Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey". Nobita finds stray dogs and cats and wants them to have a home. The gang time traveled them back 300 million years and providing them with evolution and a food making machine. When they visit them again, they encounter a time disturbance causing them to be stranded in a different year in that era with advanced sentient dogs and cats, thus started the movie.
 * In Tsukihime, if it weren't for Shiki "killing" Arcueid, Arcueid could effortlessly defeat all her enemies and Shiki himself wouldn't be dragged into her business.
 * Several of Makoto's leaps in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would unintentionally break something else while trying to undo something she had broke due to leaping for her personal gain. One example is Makoto swapping places with another classmate in Home EC, causing him to cause the accident in the room that Makoto would have caused. However, this accident would make said classmate a target to bullies. When her friend Chiaki confesses to her, she uses her time leaps to avoid talking to him and he became frustrated with her and eventually decided to date Makoto's friend Yuri. Which would incidentally lead to  Later, when the bullied classmate snaps and throws a fire extinguisher at Makoto, Chiaki attempts to shield her. Makoto then time leaps to tackle him out of the way ... only for the fire extinguisher to hit her friend Yuri instead.
 * Uhm, Saint Seiya? Better said, um, ? Oh all the places to   in as punishment for his evil, you shouldn't have chosen  ! Because if you had not done that, then   ... Ooops.
 * Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has Caren refusing to join the mermaid trio. Good idea for her, but it's a bad idea since that allows the Black Beauty Sisters to capture her.
 * In Tsukihime, if it weren't for Shiki "killing" Arcueid, Arcueid could effortlessly defeat all her enemies and Shiki himself wouldn't be dragged into her business.
 * Several of Makoto's leaps in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would unintentionally break something else while trying to undo something she had broke due to leaping for her personal gain. One example is Makoto swapping places with another classmate in Home EC, causing him to cause the accident in the room that Makoto would have caused. However, this accident would make said classmate a target to bullies. When her friend Chiaki confesses to her, she uses her time leaps to avoid talking to him and he became frustrated with her and eventually decided to date Makoto's friend Yuri. Which would incidentally lead to  Later, when the bullied classmate snaps and throws a fire extinguisher at Makoto, Chiaki attempts to shield her. Makoto then time leaps to tackle him out of the way ... only for the fire extinguisher to hit her friend Yuri instead.
 * Uhm, Saint Seiya? Better said, um, ? Oh all the places to   in as punishment for his evil, you shouldn't have chosen  ! Because if you had not done that, then   ... Ooops.
 * Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has Caren refusing to join the mermaid trio. Good idea for her, but it's a bad idea since that allows the Black Beauty Sisters to capture her.