Diabolus Ex Machina: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"This is not the [[Deus Ex Machina|convenient plot twist that saves our heroes]]. This is the convenient plot twist [[It Got Worse|that makes them even more screwed]]."''|'''[[Word of God|Ryan MC]]''', ''[[Two Evil Scientists]]''}}

Observers of this trope should note three things:

* Firstly, note that the Diabolus Ex Machina is often brought in simply because if the villain were to lose, [[Failure Is the Only Option|the work of fiction would be over]]. Like the Deus Ex Machina, it only applies if it comes out of left field.

* Secondly, like the Deus Ex Machina, a Diabolus Ex Machina does not necessarily occur at the end, but is simply a common find there, and should not be confused for an [[Ending Trope]].

If a movie ends with a [[Death By Sigh of Relief]] of the [[Kill'Em All|last surviving character]], it may be this (depending on sheer unlikelihood). Compare [[Diabolus Ex Nihilo]], [[Ass Pull]], and [[Cruel Twist Ending]]. Obviously, compare and contrast with [[Deus Ex Machina]]. Likely to be employed by writers who believe that [[True Art Is Angsty]].

** Given the number of times Lelouch has horrible events happen right in his moment of triumph, one might expect that he leaves an open place setting at his dinner table just for Diabolus.

** Sometimes it's like Lelouch WANTS something bad to happen [[Tempting Fate|". . . it's like if i told you to kill all the Japanese."]] really? Of all the things you could have said?

* The final sequence of [[Kite]].

* ''[[End of Evangelion]]'', or even ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion|Evangelion]]'' in general loves this. In ''EoE'' {{spoiler|Asuka finally snaps out of her depression coma and gets a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] when she kills nine Mass Produced Evas in three minutes.}} She barely finishes, but it's looking up. The {{spoiler|1=Seele army has been driven out, Rei, Shinji and Asuka are alive, Ritsuko's plan to detonate the entire complex failed, Shinji isn't in his psychopathic mother and [[Instrumentality]] has been averted. Then [[Cruel and Unusual Death|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bpx66Ld-TI Asuka gets speared by a Lance of Longinius, right as her power runs out. Her Eva is then partially EATEN ALIVE by the Mass Production EVAs]]], [[Egregious|who simply regenerated the wounds Asuka inflicted on them]], [[Human Pincushion|and skewered to death by even more fake Lances]]; Shinji gets in Unit 01 and Rei fuses with Lilith, becomes a giant white god and turns all of humanity into orange juice on Shinji's orders.}} You could say [[It Got Worse]].

* A similar scene occurs in ''L/R''. The bad guys are defeated and one of the partners of the title agency has fallen in love and is all set to live happily ever after. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, while walking down the street near his office, one of the villains of the series pops into view and shoots him dead. Instantly. He doesn't even ''get'' a poignant flashback.}}

* A non-death example... ''[[Ojamajo Doremi]] Naisho'': Hazuki has taken an unlikely lead in the final leg of a relay to decide a swim meet... then she suddenly gets a cramp on the way back, allowing the other room to easily win the race.

* The [[Wham! Episode]] in ''[[Mai-Otome]]'' throws one of these in toward the end. At the end of the previous episode, Arika, Nina and Erstin are ready to take on their quests to become great Otomes as a team, even in the wake of Schwarz's [[All Your Base Are Belong to Us|hostile takeover]] of Windbloom. However, there's still air time left to kill, so along comes John Smith to spoil the party by revealing {{spoiler|Erstin as one of their [[The Mole|moles]], and forcing her to fight against her new friends}}. At around the same time, Sergey comes by to congratulate Nina on a stellar year, he drops a custom-made handkerchief given to him by {{spoiler|Arika}}, which sends Nina into a [[Rival Turned Evil|jealous rage]], sparking a fight that ends with {{spoiler|her killing Erstin}}. As later episodes show, it doesn't get much better for Nina from there, either.

* It'd be a shame to leave out ''[[Ga-Rei Zero]]''. Most of the major events that occur only happen in order to screw up everyone's lives even more than they were before. It ''always'' gets worse, save for a little spot of hope that Kagura ends up dealing relatively well with her duty fighting against monsters in the epilogue.

* Used quite well to make a point in ''[[Black Jack]]'' when Dr. Kiriko first appears. A woman with a terminal, inoperable condition has requested that Kiriko euthanize her. As this runs directly counter to Black Jack's principles, he begins meeting with the woman in an attempt to figure out a cure. He and Kiriko meet with each other, and Black Jack delivers a speech about how wrong Kiriko is to do what he does. After the operation goes through, with Kiriko present, Black Jack asks after the patient. {{spoiler|She and her entire family were killed when a car slammed into their ambulance after the surgery. All of Black Jack's work - and all of his sermonizing to Kiriko - means nothing.}}

** Kiriko laughs? Black Jack curses the heavens. In fact, thanks to the new releases of Black Jack manga, it can be seen that just about one fourth of his cases end like this. A running theme seems to be that even the world's best doctor isn't omnipotent.

** This is followed up with a glorious [[Deus Ex Machina]] in the third chapter, when even further into the future, John Freeman descends from the heavens to assist his son in defeating the Combines and sending them back to science and outer space.

* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Voyager]] Virtual Season 8'' uses one of these after the crew is almost home, getting them lost again in order to [[Fix Fic|fix a few plot holes]] as well as to set up a more satisfying climactic battle in Virtual Season 9.

* ''[[City of Angels (film)|City of Angels]]''. Less than a day after a fallen angel has given up his immortality to be with the mortal woman he's fallen in love with, she's inexplicably run over by a truck driven by the Diabolus Ex Machina. One might suspect his fellow angels of having summoned it in order to teach him a lesson...

* The movie-version of [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[The Mist]]'' takes this all the way into [[Deus Angst Machina]] territory.

** Then again, this does seem to follow naturally from the premise that Blofeld, as shown throughout the movie, is an [[Sophisticated As Hell|enormous dick.]]

** Director Peter Hunt said that originally the film was to end with the wedding and then the next would start with the assassination and follow from there. However since Lazenby gave up doing the sequels, it wound up in ''OHMSS''. The following movie, ''[[Diamonds Are Forever]]'', opens with Bond searching for Blofeld, [[Continuity Nod|presumably to avenge the ruined marriage]].

== Literature ==

* ''[[Animorphs]]'' killed a major character in the finale. Fair enough - their lease on survival was [[Good Thing You Can Heal|well overdue.]] But then, not content with successfully leaving realistic loose ends arising from what came before, Applegate brought in a completely unheralded [[Trippy Finale Syndrome|Hindu Borg Collective]] to really ruin her readers' day in the last handful of chapters.

** Some versions of the myth omit the Diabolus and have him lose his nerve for some other reason; thinking that he heard her cry out, for instance, or just plain ol' lack of willpower.

** Eurydice was happy in Hades because she'd had it up here with Orpheus and his penchant for boring her to tears with his songs and poems. Just as they're almost out of Hades, she asks to hear one of his songs, knowing that Orpheus can't resist this appeal to his vanity.

* ''[[Perdido Street Station]]'' by [[China Mieville]]'s summons the Diabolus Ex Machina with an unholy ritual of [[Dungeon Punk]] [[Functional Magic|Thaumaturgy]]. The fact that two completely separate incidents, with no relation between them, ensures that ''all'' the main characters will spend the rest of their days being utterly miserable makes this one of the nastiest examples of the demon's works. [[Deus Angst Machina]] was invited to the party, and danced all night long...

** Mieville's other books, ''[[Iron Council]]'' and ''[[Literature/King Rat|King Rat]]'', do this to a lesser extent. The first involves one of the main characters doing something incomprehensibly stupid that denies the revolution against the tyrannical government of New Crobuzon much-needed reinforcements (though it's implied they wouldn't have won anyway). The second has the reader being informed casually that the children who were the original victims of the [[Big Bad]] of the story were condemned eternally to hell alongside him (and the main character essentially doesn't care). ''Iron Council'' even has the chutzpah to tack on an epilogue that tries to make it not seem like the complete and utter betrayal that it is.

* Diabolus crosses over with [[Chekhov's Gun]] in ''Midnight Tides'' (Book 5 of the ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]''). {{spoiler|The Royal Champion of the Letheri people has just given his life to take down the cursed Tiste Edur emperor (He had to be crippled, not killed, because his cursed sword would resurrect him, stronger and more insane than before, but the sword wouldn't heal physical injuries.). But a demon (that one of the protagonists had befriended earlier) wandered in and finished the Emperor off (thinking it to be an act of mercy). Why they didn't just cut his sword arm off before he revived involves a bit of a cultural [[Idiot Ball]]...}}

* The last 3 chapters of ''[[His Dark Materials|Northern Lights]]'', apparently for the purpose of introducing the rest of the trilogy. Shouldn't the author have been concerned with connecting it to previous events as much as upcoming events? Omitted from [[The Film of the Book]].

* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s ''The Cat Who Walks Through Walls''. All fictional universes are real alternate universes in their reality. One of the characters points out that a hero (a writer) is not permitted to resurrect the [[Big Bad]] of his favorite fictional universe because of this trope. The character asks if the hero can just retire as head of the training school but apparently the risk is that the story will evolve to need a serious villain, who will come into existence if written.

* The end of the ''[[Redwall]]'' series book ''Martin the Warrior'' does this to a degree that the flashback story it's based on ends on a [[Tear Jerker]]. Everything seems great, {{spoiler|Martin gets his father's sword back and kills his enemy Badrang the Tyrant...but right after it's revealed that the mouse Rose, Martin's friend and possible love interest for the entire book, was killed during their fight against Badrang. Martin then leaves his friends and promises never to mention his interactions with them again so they won't be put into danger.}}Of course then it fast forwards to the present day in Redwall where everything is okay and they discuss how Martin founded Redwall and was a great hero. But it still puts a damper on the entire ending and is one of the few Redwall books to do this.

* Arguably one of the worst examples occurs in the book ''[[Final Destination]]: Dead Man's Hand''. After the set up disaster the survivors are being transported by a cop, who dies in a freak traffic light accident (the group manages survive the car going out of control though). At the very end of the book the [[Final Girl]], who thinks she's beat Death and won, gets a call from her doctor, who says she has very advanced HIV, contracted from being splattered in the cop's blood at the beginning of the book.

* Ellen Hopkins's book ''Burned'' throws a ''completely random'' {{spoiler|car crash}} to cause an {{spoiler|inconvenient miscarriage and kill the protagonist's [[Love Interest]].}} The author seems contractually required to provide a [[Downer Ending]] or [[Bittersweet Ending]] because [[True Art Is Angsty]], but all her other protagonists got themselves in trouble with their own actions and not a snowstorm. Note to author: [[Voodoo Shark|It doesn't count as foreshadowing if you don't foreshadow until five pages before the event!]]

** Poor little Cassie from "Help", rescued effortlessly from both an evil cult and arrow booby-trap, only to die from shock due to a heart condition (which was mentioned) as the arrow trap (which one of the villains sets up and discusses) activates. Buffy catches it without even blinking but it is too much for Cassie.

** Tara was lethally shot through a window and died almost instantaneously while in the middle of the room on the second floor. The gunman was outside on the ground shooting a pistol randomly into the air and yet on pure luck managed a hit so precise that a Marine sniper perched on the opposite rooftop with a rifle would have been hard-pressed to match it. Seriously, this one's a [[Trope Codifier]].

** In one of the Buffy comics, Halfrek the vengeance demon has cursed somebody that every descendent of his will die on their 30th birthday, and to ensure this happens she sends a variety of demons and monsters after one particular descendent. Spike wants to stop her mainly out of spite and figures that if he can keep the guy alive until midnight, he's off the hook. Then, after Halfrek has given up, at one minute past midnight, the guy falls out of a window for no reason, and dies anyway...

** Tara's sanity gets sucked out, but despite being attended to by Dawn for some time, waits until Glory punches a hole in her wall to start babbling about how Dawn's the [[MacGuffin Girl|glowing green energy girl]].

** Happened a second time with poor Hiro, albeit this time less touching and more stupid. He goes back sixteen years, and meets his dying mother. She gives him the catalyst, and he vows to keep it safe from Arthur, who wants to use the catalyst to fuel his army of supersoldiers. Somehow, for no explained reason, Arthur knows that Hiro has the catalyst and teleports exactly to where Hiro and Claire are. He steals the catalyst, sends Claire to the present, and almost kills Hiro.

** Sylar has benefited from this trope so many times it's not even funny. He technically "died" in Company custody halfway through the first season, but got a mysterious off-screen resurrection. Eden's [[Compelling Voice]] and Mohinder's power-disabling serum both worked against Sylar at first, but conveniently and inexplicably failed right when they were about to kill him. In the finale of the first season Niki uses her [[Super Strength]] to wail on Sylar with a parking meter, Hiro runs a friggin' ''katana'' through his body, and he ''still'' survives.

* In the seaon two finale ("Twilight") of ''[[NCIS]]'', the team manages to foil a devious terrorist plot. As they are celebrating their success, Diabolus strikes in the form of a high powered sniper rifle fired by the [[Big Bad]] that drills a hole in Kate's head. To add insult to injury, Kate had just taken a bullet for Gibbs and was spared serious injury thanks to her [[Bulletproof Vest]].

{{quote|'''Kate''': I was sure I was going to die before-- ''([[Boom! Headshot!]])''}}

* ''[[Blake's 7]]'' is loaded with Diaboli ex Machina. For example, people who say they hate Servalan, and have no reason to like her, keep betraying the protagonists to her, even though she has never [[Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves|rewarded a traitor and kills them each time]]. In "Rumors of Death," she's been deposed in a revolution, and she's in a dungeon cell, awaiting execution. Avon picks this time to care about anything other than himself, for the first time in the series, avenging his old girlfriend's death. So he frees Servalan in return for information. He makes that a priority over everything else, including winning and safety (usually his highest priority).

* Just think: if it weren't for the miniseries, this is how ''[[Farscape]]'' would've ended: {{spoiler|They're finally safe from the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers, the wormhole to Earth has been closed forever -- but it's okay! Because John is going to marry Aeryn! And then a completely unforeshadowed alien descends from the sky and blasts them into little pebbly bits.}} And vice versa, since the cliffhanger was pretty much why there was such a demand for a miniseries to begin with.

* In ''[[The West Wing]]'' episode "18th and Potomac", the death of Mrs. Landingham, President Bartlet's personal secretary, has Diabolus' fingerprints all over it; after a gentle little running subplot about Mrs. Landingham picking up her first new car, Diabolus arranges for a drunk driver to run a red light and kill her offscreen at the end of the episode with no foreshadowing whatsoever. This also contributes to a bit of [[Deus Angst Machina]], as what with Bartlet's M.S scandal and various other crises and such, it wasn't as if Bartlet didn't already have ''enough'' reasons to be a bit angsty at the time. This example, however, can partially be forgiven in that it leads to Bartlet's excellent [[Smite Me Oh Mighty Smiter|rant against God]] in the next episode, in which he even [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades the trope]] (see the page quote), and his equally awesome [[Redemption in the Rain]] sequence.

* ''[[Good Times]]'', James Evans, Mississippi. For a ''comedy'' titled "Good Times", Diabolus sure was busy [[Yank the Dog's Chain|depriving the Evanses from having any...]]

** [[Executive Meddling]]. The show was originally created to combat stereotypes about African-American families. The Evans started as a solidly middle class, two parent household. Unfortunately, the suits felt this wasn't realistic, so James died, and the Evans ended up becoming a poor and struggling single-mother led family.

* By way of [[Crack Defeat]], an example where the demon is revealed ''after'' the fact: One of ''The Torkelsons'' has made it to the final of a contest whose winner will get to be a foreign exchange student in Paris. After her final interview she comes out and announces that she lost. [[Status Quo Game Show|No biggie, so?]] Well, she recounts her interview and ends with saying that she got the highest score. Why did she lose then? Because the exchange student deal is a homestay (we already knew this), and the French family involved would like a boy ([[Ass Pull|but not this]]). Well, [[Ungvichian|ISTR]] that would have made the final interviews [[Shaggy Dog Story|meaningless]], because there was only one boy amongst the three finalists.

* The ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' franchise loves using this trope to turn a slam-dunk case into an hour-long question of "Will they get away with it". Several [[Egregious]] examples:

** "Suicide Box" (s13e16): A young black male shoots a cop outside of a diner, out of anger that his brother's murder had been swept under the rug. They had him dead to rights... then the mitigating factors rolled in: His brother's death had been ruled a suicide, the man who shot him never denied it (by the cops never looked at him). His and his mother's protests were brushed aside by the cops. And, oh yeah, his brother's body? Gone. The funeral home buried a casket full of trash (an ongoing fraud scheme, it turned out).

** "Screwed" ([[Law and Order Special Victims Unit|SVU]] s8e22)''': The episode features the trial of Tutuola's stepson, Darius (crimes committed in the earlier episode, Venom (s7e18)). Except that ALL the evidence except his confession had been thrown out due to questions about Fin's credibility, also Darius (well played by rapper Ludacris) was only going to trial to hurt and embarrass his mother, Fin's ex (who denied him for most of his life). When Fin's ex got on the stand, Darius (acting as his own council) forced her into dropping her own pain-filled bombshell: Darius was a child of rape... by her father. Acquitted of the murders, in the end, Darius can't even take joy in beating the rap and rubbing Fin and his mother's nose in it.

* ''[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'': The overall finale has Xena execute an ambitiously dangerous plan involving her being killed, so she could go off and fight the spirit [[Big Bad]] in the spirit world. She sets Gabrielle the task of bringing her back afterwards using her ashes, and magic spring water. It's not until Xena's actually won, and Gabs (and by extension the audience) is all ready for that happy ending, that Xena drops the bombshell, that {{spoiler|this time she has to stay dead, or her [[Heroic Sacrifice]] won't mean anything.}} The twist is not hinted at before it happens, is a disproportionate response, and is largely unnecessary since she mostly seems to have a massive [[Guilt Complex]] about the original precipitating incident, which was pretty much an accident. Since Xena claims she knew beforehand, she comes across as something of a [[Jerkass]] for not pre-warning Gabs about it.

** Remedied in the "director's cut" version of the episode, which provides foreshadowing (though still a little too close to the end) and shows us that Xena didn't really know beforehand that she {{spoiler|would have to stay dead.}}

* This is the driving force behind the plot, and the source of much of the humor, in ''[[Curb Your Enthusiasm]]''.

* [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]: In the episode "Duet," Aamin Maritza [[Xanatos Gambit|pretends to be Gul Darhe'el so that a war crimes trial can be put on and Cardassia can admit to the atrocities it committed]]. Kira decides to be the one to try to end the cycle of violence between Bajorans and Cardassians by letting him go and telling everyone that he's actually Maritza, so an innocent man won't be executed for crimes he did not commit. Everything seems to be wrapping up, as Maritza realizes that he can work with the Bajorans to try to atone for the past in a different way. However, [[Chekov's Gun|a Bajoran drunk who we hadn't seen since the beginning of the episode]] comes up behind him and stabs him in the back, killing him, not because he was Darhe'el, but simply because he was a Cardassian.

== Music ==

* [[Depeche Mode]] 's song "Blasphemous Rumors" is about a girl who tried to commit suicide at age sixteen. She fails, and learns to love life again. Then she dies in an accident.

** Ironically, the author's [[Did Not Do the Research|complete ignorance]] on military discharges was such that he overlooked an entirely ''legal'' way to suddenly recall Wally to service. All initial enlistment contracts are for ''eight'' years of service obligation, not four. The typical arrangement is only four years of active duty and then four more years of 'Individual Ready Reserve' status, the practical upshot being that short of medical disability, Bad Conduct Discharge, etc., you can be yanked back in entirely at their discretion up until eight years have passed since your initial enlistment. The recruiter is required to make durn sure you understand this before you sign.

* If you're going into the funny pages, [[Peanuts|Charlie Brown]] learned that the demon of heartbreaking sports losses can attack ''after'' the end of the game, when he had a rare win stripped from him over a "gambling scandal" (Rerun betting Snoopy a nickel that they would win). [[Gretzky Has the Ball|Can they do that? No, seriously, can they?]]

== Professional Wrestling ==

== Tabletop Games ==

* To some ''[[BattleTech]]'' fans, Diabolus is behind the Jihad storyline. Let's see, the Clan invasion is finally called off, the Star League tentatively reestablished, and while there are still loose ends left over (like the threat of the Wolf Khan to come invading anyway once the original truce is up, or the aftermath of a nasty civil war) things finally seem to be ready to calm down a bit...but hey, we can't have that, right? This game isn't called ''[[Status Quo Is God|PeaceTech]]''! So the Star League declares itself a sham and disbands again for no good reason just in time to cause the suddenly uber-powerful pseudo-religious lunatics known as the Word of Blake to go [[Ax Crazy]] and start pulling cyborg super soldiers, nuclear weapons, and other stuff out of their nether regions in an all-out war against everybody...

* The entire universe of [[Warhammer 40000]] was probably made by Diabolus.

* [[Shakespeare]] is a notorious offender. For example, in ''[[King Lear]]'' {{spoiler|Cordelia's death}} comes pretty much out of the blue, transforming the play into a tragedy in its final act.

** ''King Lear'', like many of Shakespeare's other plays, was based on earlier stories that his audience would have been familiar with. {{spoiler|Lear}} and {{spoiler|Cordelia}} don't die in those stories. Shakespeare killed them off because he wanted to surprise the audience. This ending was subject to a lot of [[Fanon Discontinuity]] in later centuries, and many performances ended with {{spoiler|Cordelia}} marrying {{spoiler|Edgar}} instead ... even though she already got married earlier in the play.

*** But that one's kinda okay, considering one choice leads to your group essentially being led by Jack Bauer.

* Not quite the ending, but the climax of World 1 in ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' is rather like this. Against all odds, you finally managed to get to the last elemental crystal in time, unlike all the other ones that ended up breaking. The bad guy's possessed puppet gets beaten back, there's a lovely reunion with one of the characters and his granddaughter, where he gets his memory of her back, and a reunion of two of the characters and their long-lost father... and then the crystal shatters anyway, because if the [[Big Bad]] ''stayed'' [[Sealed Evil in a Can|imprisoned by its power]] there'd be no other 2/3s of the game.

* ''[[TimeShift]]''. You've killed the [[Big Bad]], retrieved the only remaining temporal jump drive in your particular dimension, taken down a planet-wide fascist government, and even saved the girl. {{spoiler|Then you cause a paradox.}}

* Parodied in ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy]]''. At the end of it, you defeat The Guy, take his gun, and return home triumphantly as the credits roll. You also walk under a tree with one of the game's [[Everything Trying to Kill You|deadly]] <s> [[Everything Trying to Kill You|apples]] </s> [[Running Gag|giant cherries]] on it, which falls. If you're not expecting it and don't move, it lands on you, killing you and giving you the standard Game Over screen even though it's ''after the credits''. Fortunately the game still counts you as having beaten it.

** SOMETIMES!

** Remedied in the [[Expansion Pack]] that follows with you waking up afterward, albeit on the opposite side of Faerun, and you spend much of the game trying to figure out how the hell you got there. {{spoiler|Also you wake up with an entirely new Diabolus in the form of the Spirit Eater curse.}}

** The rocks falling is lampshaded later in ''Mask of the Betrayer'' by Ammon Jerro, in a rather hypocritical bit of humor.

** It's put as a rumour, so you can basically decide whether your character would have done that or not.

* The ending to [[Infocom]]'s text adventure ''Infidel'' has always been somewhat controversial with fans because it's a good example of this trope being used to [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]. The protagonist (despite being selfish, greedy, and foolish) makes it to the pyramid's burial chamber to claim the riches ... {{spoiler|only for the walls to collapse and trap him there to die}}. And this, after solving a bunch of very difficult puzzles (including a few 'learn by dying' puzzles).

* Near the end of ''[[Fable II]]'' {{spoiler|Lucien tells you he killed your family. There's no reason for him to do this, other than to set up the neutral choice for the ending}}

** Private Jammy is a soldier stationed at Fort Mourningwood in ''[[Fable III]]'', named such for his good luck (he's been wounded a whopping total of 724 times). {{spoiler|However, once the Hollowmen arrive, he invariably meets his demise no matter what the player does. His ghost then comes back to continue serving as the Hero's loader in the mortar mini-game. What a trooper.}}

* ''[[Free Space]] 2'' does this with a flourish: at the end of an arduous, complicated and desperate campaign to destroy the Shivan dreadnought Sathanas which threatens the (known) galaxy, you learn that the Shivans have about a bazillion more such ships.

* ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak X]]''. Non-fatal example, but after you've won the game, {{spoiler|Rayn is suddenly revealed to have been manipulating you all along, wasn't poisoned, and oh yeah, she's now the biggest crimelord in the world. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Well done, Jak]].}}

* You just wiped all the gangs out of Paragon City and finished ''[[Crackdown]]''. {{spoiler|Now it's a police state run by your employer, which is pretty much another gang.}}.

* In ''[[Saints Row]]'', under gang leader Julius, you destroy the three rival gangs in Stillwater and "unify" the city under the Third Street Saints. {{spoiler|Then, with the help of the undercover cop in the Saints, Julius is captured by the police. They use him to blackmail the Saints into helping an anti-gang mayor get elected. Afterwards, when you confront said mayor to negotiate Julius's release, the two of you are blown up in an assassination attempt.}}

* In the ''[[Diablo]]'' series, this basically explains the sequels, given the numerous ways in which the titular antagonist is apparently [[Killed Off for Real]]. But then, one must look at the [[Meaningful Name]] of the series...

** To be more exact, the first game ends with you killing the Big Bad, Diablo and ramming his soulstone into your own head so you can contain him with your mind. It did not work so well. In fact, Diablo possessed the hero and used his power to strengthen himself so he could escape the dungeon and revive the other Prime Evils. The second game ends with you killing the last of the three Prime Evils, Baal, just ''after'' he corrupted the Worldstone, the thing that keeps the demons out of the world (not that it was doing a good job). Archangel Tyrael goes for the lesser of two evils and destroys the corrupted Worldstone. The one you've fought so hard over to protect. And for ''Diablo 3'', Blizzard has revealed that the destruction of the Worldstone ''also'' blew up the entire mountain, destroyed the barbarian capital and turned the continent into a nuclear wasteland. By the way, the Worldstone not only kept the demons out but also the angels because some of them view humanity as a taint on creation and are quite eager to destroy it. Instead of just the Prime Evils raising an army, a full scale demonic AND angelic invasion involving pretty much every character from either side with a name is about to occur. But hey, congratulations, you won the game.

* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'': After surviving the Reaper's Game, Neku and Shiki discover that {{spoiler|Only Shiki can come back to life.}} Neku is fine with this, until the Conductor hits him with the whammy that {{spoiler|in order to play the next game, the entry fee he has to pay is Shiki herself.}}

** Not Quite! {{spoiler|It's later revealed that the guy responsible for reviving people was absent. In fact, the whole game was invalid because of that; only the GM knew the Composer was gone and would have been shafted if anybody, including his subordinates, knew. Thus, it was just a cheat to keep the two in limbo and prevent from being found out.}}

== Webcomics ==

* Din and Jin from ''[[Las Lindas]]'' seem to be this trope personified. Their latest "prank" rivals the [[Code Geass|Euphinator Incident]] in terms of everything going to hell in the worst way possible just when things were going good for the cast.

* Meta-referenced in [http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3523 this] ''[[Sinfest]]''-strip, courtesy of a semi-sentient, diabolical book.

** Diablous ex Machina struck once before. In ''Sims Big Brother 2'', there was a week in which 6 people were taken into the Solitary chamber, making themselves immune from the vote during Public Voting Week (in which ''everyone'' was up on the block, sans the 6 in the chamber). However, the person who lost all of the challenges was more or less screwed. They couldn't use any of the luxuries, couldn't compete for Head of household, were automatically nominated for three weeks in a row, had to eat an instant meal diet, and if any of those rules were broken, they'd be expelled. Dora unfortunately lost....meaning she had many of the worst weeks of her life in the house. Is it any wonder that after becoming the Unlucky Houseguest, she [[Suicide by Cop|asked everyone to nominate her and vote her out?]]

* [[Parodied]] in [[The Nostalgia Critic]]'s review of ''[[Moulin Rouge]]:'' he spent practically the entire review complaining about the movie before the [[The Nostalgia Chick]] and [[Brental Floss]] convinced him it was fine as a [[Guilty Pleasures|guilty pleasure]]. But this being a review of ''[[Moulin Rouge]],'' it needed to end tragically, so he randomly shot Brental Floss and mourned his loss.

*** Though the fact that it's basically a retelling of La Traviata only with the entire last act and a half condensed into 3 minutes has a fair bit to do with that.

* This trope is a recurring theme in ''[[G.I. Joe: Renegades]]'', where [[Failure Is the Only Option]]. Every time the Joes find something that will clear their names, it's a safe bet it will either get burned, blown up, smashed, stolen, or stabbed. {{spoiler|That is until the season one finale where the Joes returned to the Pentagon with all the evidence they needed to clear their names after destroying Cobra Mansion and defeating Cobra Commander, who survived and is ticked off by the way. The series is now on hiatus until the second live action movie is finished but it's doubtful the Joes will suddenly become wanted crinimals again when it resumes.}}

* During the [[Christmas Episode]] of ''[[Metalocalypse]]'', Doctor Rockzo, The Rock and Roll Clown (he does cocaine) sells all of Toki's Secret Santa gifts, for some cocaine. When Toki finds out, he prepares to give the clown a sound thrashing. Unfortunately, before he can reach him, Murderface's drunk Grandma crashes her scooter into a cross, trapping Toki under it. Rockzo escapes punishment, and even gets a handjob from Skwisgar's mom.