Diabolus Ex Machina: Difference between revisions

* A pretty stupid one from [[W.I.T.C.H.|WITCH]]. Early in the series, the team's defeated Nerissa and, as an added bonus, made sure Will's deadbeat dad doesn't try to swindle money from her or her mom. As Will and her mother go to celebrate being safe from the latter, Will's dormouse races out of the house and gets ran over by a car. It's kind of hard to not presume Will's next quote, "Why does this keep happening?" wasn't a massive [[Lampshade Hanging]] to [[Butt Monkey|all of her problems at the time]].

* Remember at the end of ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'' when {{spoiler|the good guys have Ozymandias cornered?}}

* Messiah Complex. The ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' have finally defeated all of their enemies and {{spoiler|Scott has given the mutant baby to Cable to take into the future.}} Everything seems great. {{spoiler|Until Bishop, who's been trying to kill the baby to prevent his horrible future, shoots at the baby and Cable.}} And {{spoiler|Cable is already disappearing from that point in time, leaving the shot to go through and hit Professor X in the head.}} It really sucks to be a mutant. Granted he got better since this is a comic book and {{spoiler|Professor X missing at the end was a hint.}}

 

* The ''[[Phantasm (Film)|Phantasm]]'' sequels ''all'' end with the heroes defeating the Tall Man, only for him to come back and devastate them. {{spoiler|In [[Phantasm Oblivion|the fourth film]], he kills Mike, one of the franchise's two leads... a death followed by a flashback to Mike as a kid, with no idea what's coming.}}

* ''[[Dumb and Dumber]]'' plays this for laughs. The girl the duo went halfway across the country to return a briefcase to turns out to be married, and in the final scene, when they encounter a bus full of swimsuit models looking for a pair of assistants to travel with them and oil them up for photo sessions, they (being idiots) direct them to the nearest town.

* ''2012'': Tamara and Gordon: After all the sexual tension, the hinted pairings and each of their respective [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Crowning Moments of Awesome]], {{spoiler|Gordon is pulled into the Arc's gears, and Tamara is drowned when water floods into a room she's trapped in, even though the room next door (the one with the main characters! [[Sarcasm Mode|Imagine]] [[Deadpan Snarker|that]]!) has an air pocket, and yet everyone else lives. Gordon gets forgotten quickly (did anyone actually ask about him?), though Tamara kinda [[Heroic Sacrifice|saves the girl and her dog]], but other than that, they are both just killed and forgotten about}}.

** Just to make it worse, {{spoiler|Tamara's death}} doesn't make any ''sense''. The reason she gets trapped is that water is pouring into the ship through the stern hatch, and several bulkhead doors slide shut to contain the flooding. Given that there is only one way for water to get into the ship and the watertight bulkheads are working properly, ''there is no reason for her compartment to keep filling up.''

** A particularly impressive example of their partnership is the episode where an unfortunate, timid man has locked himself in a bank-vault to get the peace to read his many books -- and because of that, survives a [[The End of the World as We Know It|nuclear holocaust]], leaving him the last man alive in the world. Then he realizes that this gives him plenty of time to read his beloved books, and thus unwittingly invokes the [[Diabolus Ex Machina]], who promptly breaks his glasses.

* 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]].

* ''[[Blake's Seven|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).

** Servalan is some form of walking [[Diabolus Ex Machina]] generator - most grievous example is what was meant to be the finale, her trapped on a ship on the edge of the galaxy that was about to explode, orbiting a planet that was also ''soon going to explode''. Come next season, it is confusingly revealed that somehow the fact that the ship was being eaten apart by a ravenous space virus made the teleport TEN THOUSAND TIMES STRONGER than ever before, and even though she had no idea how to operate it by pure luck managed to land herself NOT in empty space for a start (because the teleport had no safety mechanism to prevent that), and then of all the thousands of possible planets not only a habitable one, not only a populated one, but one governed by her own people... COME ON!!!

** In [[Serious Sam]] 3, after seeing at least two choppers get shot down, (one of which he was ON at the time), Sam decides he's not going to get on any more choppers.

** [[The Conduit]] actually jokes about it, where Ford's way off an oil rig is supposedly a Leviathan. The Leviathan destroys a helicopter flying over the base:

Prometheus: Well, there ''was'' a helicopter... }}

* The path towards the fourth ending in ''[[Drakengard]]'' is shaping up to be a [[Bittersweet Ending]], which, given the only other "good" ending is also bittersweet, doesn't seem too bad. After all, after finding out that the [[Creepy Child]] [[Big Bad]] is [[Complete Monster|irredeemably evil]] even after the protests of her twin brother, the heroes have finally succeeded in killing her once and for all. Now the world is saved. Except, wait, [[Eldritch Abomination|something's falling out of the sky...]]

** 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.

'''Ammon Jerro''': Yes. That powerful and evil beings insist on causing destruction even as the die is an unfortunate habit. }}

* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' is especially guilty of this, capping a brilliant game with a totally illogical ending that forces the player to {{spoiler|sacrifice his/her own life by entering a radiation-flooded room to save the world... even though your radiation-proof mutant friend is standing right beside you. That character will actually say something like, "This is your journey and I can't take it for you" or something similar. Jesus, Fawkes, just walk in and press the button so I don't have to die!}}

* In other election news, a lizard-suit wearing [[The Simpsons (animation)|Homer Simpson]] seems well positioned to win a mayor recall election to replace Quimby, since no one else seems to be good enough. The suit turns out to be his downfall when it shrinks in the wash, and suddenly no one likes him, and since no one gets enough of the vote, Quimby stays in office.

** In another ''Simpsons'' episode, "Brother From Another Series", Sideshow Bob appears reformed and gets work release when his brother Cecil offers him a job for a dam project. Bart is convinced that Bob is up to no good, but in the end it turns out Bob really ''has'' reformed and Cecil was trying to embezzle millions from the dam project. Bob actually helps stop Cecil and saves Bart and Lisa's lives, but when the police arrive to arrest Cecil, Police Chief Wiggum insists on arresting Bob as well for no good reason.

'''Cecil''': [[Shmuck Bait|Tell them they'll live to regret this]].<br />

'''Bob''': ''You'll live to regret this!'' ...Oh, great. Now ''I'' sound crazy. }}