Diabolus Ex Machina/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A happy ending is ruined by a last-second plot twist.

  • Straight: Bob stops the Big Bad and marries Alice, but Alice dies in a car accident after the wedding.
  • Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are about to get married when a huge asteroid crashes into Earth directly above their wedding, killing everyone in a 200 mile radius.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: Deus Ex Machina
  • Subverted: Alice gets in a car accident after the wedding, but goes to the hospital and makes a full recovery.
  • Double Subverted: ...but the hospital catches on fire, and she burns to death.
  • Parodied: The series is an extremely dark Black Comedy, and whenever something good is about to happen, something ridiculously horrifying happens to the protagonist for no particular reason.
  • Deconstructed: People start to lose faith in Life, The Universe, and Everything as more and more horrifying things happen to undeserving people.
  • Reconstructed: But they get better.
  • Zig Zagged: During the final showdown with the Big Bad, the villain and the hero take turns pulling lots of new powers out of nowhere and appearing to curb stomp each other until one of them eventually runs out of new powers.
  • Averted: The story ends without any unexpected plot twists.
  • Enforced:
    • Alice's actress isn't coming back for the second season, so they have to get rid of her to make room for the new girl.
    • The writer wanted to have An Aesop about how life is fragile and that you can die at any time.
  • Lampshaded: "Hey, what were the odds that Alice was just going to die just after the wedding?"
  • Invoked: "Make sure you buckle your seat belts, in stories like this something always ruins the ending."
  • Defied:
    • On the way home from the wedding, Alice drives more carefully than usual, and avoids an accident by a few seconds.
    • The Big Bad saves Alice from the asteroid, wanting to kill her himself.
  • Discussed: "Don't think you're safe just because you stopped the mafia boss. There are still a lot of drunk drivers on the road."
  • Conversed: "Alice dies in a car accident? What a stupid ending."

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