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Deus Exit Machina: Difference between revisions
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An alternative approach is to have an ''[[Game Breaker|insanely]]'' overpowered character actually join the plucky underdog's team for the [[Climactic Battle Resurrection|big epic battle]]. He could easily [[Anticlimax|save the day with a snap of his fingers]]...and then that character is immediately knocked out or otherwise disabled so that the story can actually be interesting. (This can also have the side effect of [[The Worf Effect|making the villain that much more threatening]].)
On rare occasions, it may be a villain far higher up the [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil]] who drops by for a [[Final Boss Preview]] to foreshadow the difficulty of future encounters before giving the weaker villain back his Worf Effect. Such a villain may be [[Too Powerful to Live]]. Don't [[Orcus on His Throne|expect to see him again]] outside [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon|his lair]]. If it's a [[Stealth Hi Bye]] then you have a simple case of [[Villain Teleportation]] by a [[Mobile Menace]]. Contrast [[Villain Exit Stage Left]], [[But Now I Must Go]].
Any given [[Deus Exit Machina]] may or may not end with the character returning [[Just in Time|in the nick of time]] to [[Big Damn Heroes|save the day]].
An especially common way to deal with [[Reality Warper|Reality Warpers]] or [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] (especially if they [[Can't Catch Up]]).
Subtropes include [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]] and [[Achilles in His Tent]]. See also [[Filler]], [[Padding]], [[Put on a Bus]], [[Trapped by Mountain Lions]], and [[Wacky Wayside Tribe]]. For more on this topic, see [[How to Stop the Deus Ex Machina]].
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** When {{spoiler|Pain attacks Konoha, Danzo}} tries to prevent Naruto from joining the battle so that he can keep the Nine-Tailed Fox out of the Akatsuki's hands. Although he kills the frog that was supposed to let Naruto know he was needed, its death alerts Mount Myoboku, and Naruto joins the fight, {{spoiler|but unfortunately, not before Konoha is leveled.}}
** In the Land of Waves Arc, Naruto oversleeps, then arrives late to the battle against Zabuza and Haku because he has to save Inari and Tsunami from Gato's thugs. He defeated the goons in about 5 seconds.
** Jiraiya was busy flirting with a woman while Itachi and Kisame appeared to capture Naruto. He returns just in time to scare away those two.
* {{spoiler|Claire Stanfield}} of ''[[Baccano]]'' isn't quite written out of the light novels, so much as [[Word of God]] has stated he'll never get his own story arc or book since he'd just [[Ax Crazy|solo the entire cast]] in under thirty pages.
* In ''[[Slayers]]'', the ridiculously powerful Xellos always seems to disappear at the most inconvenient times...or, even worse, is deliberately unhelpful. This is initially justified by his apparently flighty and unreliable personality, and later even more justified by the revelation that {{spoiler|he is actually a very loyal and reliable agent...''to the other side''. Likewise he can only be as helpful as he wishes as long as he doesn't arouse suspicion.}}
** That and Xellos just really enjoys dicking people around.
* Goku, despite being the hero, often plays this role in ''[[Dragon Ball]]'', particularly the early seasons of ''Dragonball Z''. Since he'll almost inevitably win the battle once he joins in, circumstances always conspire to keep Goku on the sidelines just long enough for all the other heroes to get beaten up first. When Vegeta and Nappa arrive on Earth, he's still in the afterlife and is only revived once all the others have been thoroughly defeated. When everyone goes to Namek, his spaceship's the last to arrive, and soon after landing, he's critically injured and spends several more episodes floating in a regenerative tank. When Doctor Gero begins his rampage, Goku's too busy fighting off a heart illness to help. And so on...
** In fact, ''Dragon Ball Z'' distinguishes itself for having multiple tiers of the trope - a really long fight will probably start with [[Overshadowed by Awesome|Yamcha or Krillin]], then bring in [[The Worf Barrage]] of Tien/Piccolo/Trunks/Vegeta, and finally let Goku or Gohan show up to finish things...and at least one fight (versus Cell) takes this even further, for a grand total of eight fighters in sequence facing off against him in a row, without any other villains participating. Naturally there were very good, impressively coincidental reasons they couldn't all have attacked at once.
** ''Vegeta'' gets the "honor" of doing this on the second Broly movie. There's zero reason as to why he didn't rush in the instant he detected Broly's ki (And he ''should'' have detected it), and at this point in the timeline, Vegeta had [[Super Mode|Super Saiyan 2]], which could have trounced the pile of muscles easily (Or at least be actually helpful, as long he didn't [[Forgot About His Powers]] like Gohan who didn't go beyond regular Super Saiyan). Maybe [[Out-of-Character Moment|he crapped his pants when he detected Broly like in the first movie]]?.
** This trope is the entire reason why Vegetto de-fused once he entered Buu's guts. He outclassed him so much that the fight wouldn't have had ANY tension whatsoever if Vegetto finished it. Also, GT would've never happened.
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* [[Chivalrous Pervert|Miroku]] of ''[[Inuyasha]]'' has a powerful attack called the Wind Tunnel, which can suck anything into a void. This is ''anything'', so in his debut appearance when he is opposing the eponymous character, he issues a warning to villagers to put some distance from him, leading to his [[Defeat Means Friendship]]. In addition, if he sucks in anything poisonous, he gets poisoned, and [[Big Bad|Naraku]] has plenty of poisonous wasps to give as support. Also, overuse and [[Cursed with Awesome|even having the ability at all for too long]] will eventually [[Deadly Upgrade|lead to his death]].
** You can almost sense that the author regrets giving Miroku such a powerful ability in the first place. After a certain point in the series, EVERY battle includes a token scene where Miroku tries to use Wind Tunnel only to have Naraku's poison bees show up out of nowhere, preventing him from using it. This has the ironic side-effect of making him the most powerful character on paper, but the most useless in practice.
* In ''[[Muhyo and Roji's Bureau of Supernatural Investigation]]'', Page sets up [[Training From Hell]] for Roji and other magic law practitioners by locking them in a house and sending real haunts after them. Unfortunately, one particularly dangerous haunt, Bellocent of Mist Mountain, sneaks into the test and cuts the power, preventing Page and the other powerful magical law practitioners outside from opening the gates when they realize that the test has become far more dangerous than it should be, and they only get in after Roji has already won.
* ''[[Rave Master]]'s'' Elie could have easily used her magic to wipe Demon Card off the map, blow Lucia into the next century (maybe even literally {{spoiler|given how she blew herself half a century forward}}) and cream Doryu and Ogre, which would have kept Hardner from ever attempting his fusion gambit. Naturally, she had to go and get amnesia so she wouldn't know how to do all this.
* [[Badass Grandpa|Makarov]] of ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' has his magic drained at the beginning of the Fairy Tail vs. Phantom conflict when distracted by hearing that they kidnapped Lucy, putting them at a severe disadvantage. {{spoiler|Of course, once he gets back it he just [[Curb Stomp Battle|takes down what's left of the enemy all at once]].}}
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** There was a Superman story published during [[World War II]] in which Superman told thousands of cheering GIs: "You fellows don't need my help!" This was of course to explain why Superman didn't end the war in five seconds. And of course, during the Golden Age, Superman's powers were much weaker than they were later on: it's possible that he wasn't even able to fly across the Atlantic.
* Yet another Superman example: There was a much-hyped JLA story arc by Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Superman gets sidelined in the very first issue, and stays that way pretty much throughout the arc. Since it was Claremont, Superman was ([[Author Appeal|of course]]) sidelined through [[Mind Control]].
* In [[Super Dinosaur]] Tricerachops is laid up and The Exile is preoccupied during Maximus' Project X.
* In the Belgium comic book series Suske & Wiske (Spike & Suzy) , this frequently happens to Jerom because his superhuman strength would otherwise make the situations the characters encounter less of a challenge.
* Done multiple times in [[Marvel Comics]]. The [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]] are usually in space or another dimension while [[The Avengers (Comic Book)|The Avengers]] are on a mission. They really should coordinate this. [[Spider-Man]] has noted that 99 times out of 100, when he goes to ask another hero for help, they will ''never'' be there. [[Doctor Strange]]'s servant, Wong, replied that this was true, but so far, Spidey was good enough to not really need that help.
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*** However, it is implied at the end of that book {{spoiler|and more or less stated in}} ''[[Harry Potter/Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows|Deathly Hallows]]'' that Dumbledore {{spoiler|knew what was going on, and let Harry fight.}}
** ''Chamber of Secrets'': By the time Harry and Ron {{spoiler|discover the entrance to the Chamber}}, Dumbledore has been suspended by the school governors.
** ''Prisoner of Azkaban'': Played with, since it's Dumbledore himself who tells Harry and Hermione [[Time Travel|what to do]], because they were the only ones who could.
** ''Goblet of Fire'': The bad guys [[Genre Savvy|pluck Harry off Hogwarts' grounds]] and deposit him miles away.
** ''Order of the Phoenix'': Dumbledore is [[Tyrant Takes the Helm|replaced by]] [[Harry Potter/Characters/Ministry of Magic|Dolores Umbridge]] thanks to a [[Government Conspiracy]]. Averted in the end, though, {{spoiler|since Dumbledore does show up, pwns the Death Eaters, and fights Voldemort one-on-one for the final battle}}.
** ''Half-Blood Prince'': Exception, Dumbledore takes part in the climax {{spoiler|and is killed}}.
*** Which also works as this trope for the series as a whole, since {{spoiler|it was Voldemort's plan to [[Genre Savvy|get rid of Dumbledore first]], and then try and take over the world.}}
** It is eventually explained in book seven that {{spoiler|Harry needed to defeat Voldemort himself in the end, so Dumbledore had to let Harry build up enough skill over the years to do it. Unless he absolutely had to intervene, or if something happened he hadn't planned for, he let Harry do it, giving him just enough skills and information before hand to let him succeed.}}
* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', Gandalf combines this with standard [[Deus Ex Machina]] heroics when he leaves Helm's Deep to fend for itself against the Uruk-Hai siege so he can gather troops for a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment. Not really unexpected, given that he also left Thorin's party to check Dol Guldur in the middle of ''[[The Hobbit (novel)|The Hobbit]]''. Part of this is the [[All There in the Manual|implicit idea]] Gandalf is conflicted on how much to affect events, which would make him too much like Saruman.
** This happened in the first book too, when a Balrog dragged him into a chasm in Moria.
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** Buffy runs away from her friends and mother after having to kill her lover. They manage to hold down the fort, though not nearly as well without Buffy. Some spend an entire summer wishing she was back or actively trying to find her.
** In Season Eight, during the first arc, evil witch Amy traps Buffy in a nightmare while she attacks the Scooby Gang's new castle HQ with an army of zombies. {{spoiler|They are saved by [[Deus Ex Machina|Willow]]. However, this was Amy's plan; she is able to capture Willow for her boyfriend, who wanted revenge on Dark Willow almost killing him, and also to lure Buffy into the grasp of the [[General Ripper]] hunting her. However, Amy's plan backfires when Buffy is able to use what in the dream Amy trapped her in to defeat Amy}}.
** Several times in season 3, Faith disappeared for an episode so that the presence of a second Slayer didn't make the Threat of the Week to easy to beat. Most notable is "[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S3 E12 Helpless|Helpless]]", where Buffy is robbed of her powers by the Council; there's a brief line at the start saying that Faith is "on one of her unannounced walkabouts", and no more mention is made of her.
*** That one may have an in-universe explanation; {{spoiler|Giles}} was the one giving Buffy the stuff that took her powers away, and for the Cruciamentum to work, Buffy had to do it alone without another slayer to help her. [[Fridge Logic]] would suggest that it was {{spoiler|him}} who sent Faith away in the first place, probably on a wild-goose chase, and just didn't tell Buffy. It still counts as this trope, but the Council needed Faith out of the way just as much as the writers did.
* Rare [[Sixth Ranger|Sixth Rangers]] in ''[[Power Rangers]]'' who don't suffer depowering courtesy of [[Good Is Dumb]] get saddled with this instead, with the exception of the even-rarer [[Ineffectual Loner]] Ranger. This is usually the case with team additions who start out evil; once they turn good, excuses are made for them not to be on the field of battle rather than run the risk of suffering [[Badass Decay]]. These excuses can go as far as half-season absences while they're off researching enemy motives, to as little as being so constantly late they couldn't hold a proper job if they ever tried to get one.
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** And in the two part "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood", he spends all of the first episode and nearly all of the second as a powerless human, without even memories of his days as a Time Lord (sorta). It is later revealed that he did this on purpose, to give the family of aliens chasing him an opportunity to simply walk away safely. When he is forced to turn Time Lord again, he easily dishes out horrible punishments to all of the family.
*** So easily, in fact, that it happens off-screen. After he is restored and effortlessly blows up their spaceship, the epilogue is narrated by the bad guy, explaining the [[And I Must Scream|horrible fates]] visited upon his family.
** And in "Turn Left", he's not around on account of {{spoiler|being dead}}, because it takes place in an alternate [[Crapsack World]] where, because Donna never met him, he {{spoiler|died during his [[What the Hell, Hero?]] moment with the Racnoss}}.
** Inverted in "Midnight". The sidekick is removed from the picture, and as a result the Doctor {{spoiler|''fails'' to save the day}}.
** Occasionally happened in the original series when an actor went on vacation.
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== Mythology ==
* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: Done in the ''[[Jason and the Argonauts|Argonautica]]'' by Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century BCE), when the Argonauts accidentally leave [[Classical Mythology/Characters|Heracles]] behind in the land of Kios, while he looks for his lost ward/lover, Hylas. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in that same work, when Apollonius mentions that had Heracles stayed with the group, all of their challenges would have become trivial.
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** Especially noticeable in ''[[Mega Man X Command Mission]]'', where you literally lose him for nearly 1/3 of the game right after the very beginning, considering he's easily the most overpowered character in your party at that point in the game.
** Ditto X in ''[[Mega Man Zero]],'' and of course his absence has allowed all hell to break loose. It makes sense that his body isn't up trying to blow away enemies; what goes unexplained is why in the hell he never talks sense into [[Quirky Miniboss Squad|the Guardians]]. And in the Drama Tracks, he even does this - but not until the third game is well underway. Much trouble could have been avoided. Thanks for nothing!
* In ''[[Fire Emblem]]: Radiant Dawn'', there is a major war between the Laguz alliance (several countries populated by people who [[Animorphism|have animal forms]]) and Begnion (the most powerful empire on the game), embroiling most of the continent and exposing the Laguz to great risk, yet both the king of beasts ''and'' his second-in-line are not there. The army is going to be marching through a lot of rough terrain and they simply can't afford to have their king that far away from his country. If what happened in the Hawk Nation had happened in the Beast Nation, there's no way he could have gotten back there in time.
* In ''[[Star Wars: Dark Forces|Jedi Outcast]]'', Luke Skywalker fights the [[Big Bad]] to a draw, then is trapped after taking a sucker punch, delaying his procession to the final battleground for the [[Climactic Battle Resurrection]], leaving it up to hero Kyle Katarn to fight the bad guy one-on-one.
** Likewise, in ''Jedi Academy'', Kyle Katarn misses out on the final battle because he has to stay behind and save [[More Than Mind Control]] victim Rosh, leaving it up to newbie hero Jaden Korr to face Tavion/Marka Ragnos.
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** It falls to Joker, the least able-bodied person on the Normandy, to {{spoiler|reactivate the systems and unshackle EDI.}}
* Saber in ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'' is essentially immune to all magic. The plot of most of the second route, UBW, is about dealing with Caster. Well, we can't have our main fight be completely immune to the bad guy's power, can we? So the contract between Shirou and Saber is cut, Caster captures her and tries to make her kill Shirou. However, she conveniently resists long enough for Caster to die to someone else entirely and then suddenly a new contract is made with Tohsaka!
* Raiden, dear lord, in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]''. You see, By that point, Raiden has gone from complete wimp to ''even stronger than the legendary Gray Fox''...and he spends most of the game disabled. It begins with his first fight against [[Good Thing You Can Heal|Vamp]], making him absent for one quarter of the game. Then, he's back... in time to make logic defying decisions that will leave him even more crippled (Raiden: "I'll cover your back" ...WHAT? I'm riding the ultimate machine of destruction. If anything, you need ''me'' to cover ''your'' back...) and slightly more ridiculous (Don't worry Snake, I'll save you from this giant submarine by making the reversal of what any sane man would do! I will hold back the giant thingie! GO ME!). As a result, Raiden is, by the climax, little more than a tragic version of ''[[Monty Python]]'''s [[Monty Python and
* Conversely, this is done to a point in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]''. Solid Snake, still in his prime, is "killed" when the tanker is ripped apart by Revolver Ocelot. This accident is considered an environmental disaster and Snake is vilified. This is the whole reason for the introduction of Raiden in the first place.
* Probably the most annoying quest (out of many) in ''[[Star Control]] 3'' involves saving the Chmrr {{spoiler|after the Daktaklakpak successfully commit genocide against them}}. The probable reason for including it? To sideline the Chmrr's super-powerful fleet until the war is pretty much already over.
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** And [[Shazzan]].
* In the Season 3 finale of ''[[ReBoot]]'', the home world of the main characters is being destroyed by [[Big Bad|Megabyte]], who is attempting to escape the dying system. In an effort to save his friends and family, as well as countless others, Enzo squares off against Megabyte with nothing but his girlfriend's trident (he threw aside his gun). Sounds great and suspenseful...until you realize that Bob, the [[Flying Brick|Guardian-Keytool Combo Hero]] is chilling with [[Cloudcuckoolander|Hexadecimal]] in her lair (okay, not so much chilling, as her prisoner). {{spoiler|He manages to get back just in time to miss Megabyte's defeat.}} It's even punctuated by the standard "[[Lampshade Hanging|What'd I miss?]]"
* In ''[[WITCH (animation)|WITCH]]'', once Queen Elyon realizes her true powers and comes to the side of good, she should be able to make fights a lot easier, right? After all, she can warp reality and is probably more powerful than the five Guardians put together. However, during the first part of the second season, she's stuck taking care of the daily affairs of Meridian, and during the second half of the season, she's stuck inside the Seal of Nerissa.
* ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'' had Skipper {{spoiler|Eaten By A Snakehead}} once to shift focus onto the rest of the [[Badass Crew]] dealing with his absence.
** And he was also poisoned on another occasion. {{spoiler|The whole thing was a setup for their [[Secret Test of Character]].}}
* When the 90's [[X-Men (animation)|X-Men]] cartoon adapted ''The Phoenix Saga,'' the writers had to get rid of Rogue for the first episode (Xavier mentioned that she was away on a mission), since her [[Power Copying]] and [[Flying Brick]] powers would have solved the atmospheric-reentry problem far too easily. This is lampshaded when she returns, where the first thing she says is that she should have been there since she could have handled it. In the comics, she didn't exist as a character yet, and so she wasn't around to absorb the rescued astronaut's piloting skills and calmly bring down the shuttle as the solar radiation harmlessly bounced off her invulnerable body, with the astronauts and other X-Men safely in the shielded area. No fuss, no muss, no unstable cosmic entity.
** [[Wolverine]] was subject to this in two occasions in the series ("Reunion (Part 2)", and "The Dark Phoenix Saga (Part 1): Dazzled"). In both cases, the X-Men were defeated in battle and imprisoned and had their powers nullified in some way (the nature of the savage lands in the former and through special handcuffs in the latter). For Wolverine, this would make the inevitable breakout easy due to his adamantium claws since even in todays comics his claws are unaffected by power nullifiers and could cut through anything including the prison bars for the former and the handcuffs in the latter. Hence why at the beginning of each fight Wolverine would be taken out quite early (thrown off a waterfall in "Reunion (Part 2)" and smashed 5 floors into a sewer by Harry Leland in "The Dark Phoenix Saga (Part 1): Dazzled".) Arguably, this helped his character as it gave him a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment.
* In the ''[[Adventure Time]]'' episode "It Came From the Nightosphere," Jake is entirely absent. {{spoiler|That is, until the end, when it is revealed that he was shrunken down and residing inside a pocket of Finn's shirt the whole time for some reason.}}
* In ''[[Ben 10: Alien Force|Ben 10 Alien Force]]'' {{spoiler|Alien X is basically god. They write him out by making him unable to use his powers without a quorum from Ben and two very opposed personalities.}}
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