Deus Exit Machina: Difference between revisions

** Also in ''[[Beyond the Black River]]'', where Conan heads off to make sure one group of civilians are safe, leaving Balthus to do the real heroism as he arranges for people to be evacuated and covers their escape {{with a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}, saving many.

* In the 7th ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' novel, Mikuru gets {{spoiler|kidnapped by some hostile organizations}}. What follows is a {{spoiler|carchase with Mori and Arakawa from the organization.}} Of course, Kyon ''could'' have just {{spoiler|called Yuki for help, since she's just about omnipotent.}} This is justified by a) there was not much time and Kyon was in serious panic and b) He doesn't like to rely on {{spoiler|Yuki}}, because he already owes her enough. The best thing is when Kyon actually ''thinks'' what would have happened if {{spoiler|Yuki was involved.}} To quote the man himself:

* Michael Carpenter in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' gets this a ''lot''. In every appearance he makes Michael gets sidelined for some reason or another. He gets his sword stolen by {{spoiler|Harry's faerie godmother}} in his first ''appearance'', gets arrested for several days in Missouri in his second, and gets stuck in Oregon in his third appearance. It doesn't help that the last two occurrences were ''off-screen''. He did get some badass fight scenes in ''Death Masks'' and ''Small Favor'' to make up for it though. It is also strongly implied that Michael is dramatically more powerful when God himself is giving him the task he's setting his blade to, turning him from a fairly strong hero with a big sword to a righteous force of pure, evil-smiting destruction.

** Displayed in ''Small Favor'' when he singlehandedly clears a train station of hundreds of Hob's. Only after Harry has cleared the myrk though, and Harry is also kind of occupied.

** {{spoiler|The party (or at least Marle) [[Multiple Endings|will do the sidequest for you]] if you beat the game without Crono}}

* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' has {{spoiler|[[And Now for Someone Completely Different|Joker's]] mini-mission}} The Normandy is out of commission for a few hours, and all of its systems are offline, including the [[Wave Motion Gun|huge cannons]] Shepard just installed and the [[Hyperspeed Escape|FTL]] systems. In short, the Normandy is absolutely helpless. So what does Shepard do? Leave the Normandy for his next mission. And take the [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|entire squad]] with them, leaving the crew to fight for themselves for a while. Well, the commander and every one of the best combatants in the galaxy that could quell a boarding action is gone. [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]]

'''Joker''': [[Oh Crap|Oh shit]]. }}

** It falls to Joker, the least able-bodied person on the Normandy, to {{spoiler|reactivate the systems and unshackle EDI.}}

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[DM of the Rings]]'' brilliantly parodies Gandalf's tendency to do this in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' (see Literature). After the entire night of fighting at Helm's Deep Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are all talking about how they will now ''finally'' get some respect from these people. Three guesses who suddenly shows up at the last minute after all the hardest work is over, and is being praised by ''everybody'' else.

'''Aragorn:''' That guy is ''really'' starting to get on my nerves. }}

* Howard Taylor of ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' has mentioned this as a problem for writing when {{spoiler|Petey}} has [[A God Am I|ascended to a higher state of being]] but stuck around with virtually omnipotent powers. However, he's introduced a [[Fridge Horror|horrifying]] limitation that cripples {{spoiler|Petey}}: while he could instantly teraport anything or anyone in the galaxy anywhere he wants at will, {{spoiler|he needs every watt of energy to save trillions of sentient life-forms in the Andromeda galaxy, and each time he meddles with the main characters represents a sacrifice of lives he could have saved.}}

** Lampshaded in the arc that introduced the limitation:

* Andy Weir, writer of ''[[Casey and Andy]]'', has referred to the same problem; since Satan is a regular member of the cast, and on the nominally good side, he needs the find some way to indispose her before any arcs can progress.