Divide by Zero: Difference between revisions
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[[File:dividebyzero.jpg|link=Memetic Mutation|frame|[[Oh Crap|OH]] [[Curse Cut Short|SHI-]]]]
{{quote|"''Long numbers divided by zero spray forth marigolds, goldilocks, foliage unseen in shadowed glades, where treefall and cries of 'wolf' go unheard.''"
|'''[http://uncyclopedia.ca/wiki/The_Aristocrats#Example_I One Example]''' of a "[[The Aristocrats]]" joke}}
The characters did something so incredibly ''wrong'' that reality itself couldn't handle it. Could be the result of a [[Time Paradox]], the result of a [[Yin-Yang Clash]], or an [[Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object|unstoppable force meeting an immovable object]], or the risk behind the [[Forbidden Chekhov's Gun]].
To divide a number by zero is the one thing elementary math teachers tell you<ref>Sometimes, an elementary math teacher will insist that division by zero gives zero. They are wrong, although 0/0 ''is'' different than any other 0-division case.</ref> that you [[Lies to Children|simply cannot do]] (but as usual, Real Life is more complicated than elementary school; see [[Divide by Zero/Trivia|the Trivia section]]). It led to a joke on [[Image Board
Compare [[Awesomeness Is Volatile]], where [[Chuck Norris]] [[Chuck Norris Facts|can divide by zero]]. See also [[Logic Bomb]], which can overlap with this. Not to be confused with [[The Singularity]].
{{examples}}
==
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NojiCsZQSr8 This] Staples Easy Button commercial.
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* The Limit of Questions is a metaphysical concept at play in the world of ''[[Eureka Seven]]'' that essentially sets a limit on the number of sentient lifeforms that can exist in a given space. If the Limit of Questions is exceeded, the fabric of reality starts to break down. {{spoiler|Colonel Dewey's goal with the Ageha Project is actually to ''deliberately'' exceed the Limit of Questions by awakening the scub coral, an enormous mass of a colonial alien life form that covers the planet and, as it turns out, is sentient. At one point in history, the scub by itself exceeded the Limit of Questions, but managed to fix things by going into a state of deep hibernation -- but not before a section of the planet was irrevocably screwed up, resulting in a chaotic region known as the Great Wall.}}
* The Espers are afraid that ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]'' will do this if she learns [[Reality Warper|the truth about herself]].
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* [[Time Crash|Something very close to this]] happens in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]''. If you make a wish with indefinite duration (as opposed to instant wishes like "heal someone's crippled hand" or "save someone from the brink of death"), your wish is somehow tied to the passage of time. {{spoiler|Homura's}} wish to save someone already dead turned her life into a [[Groundhog Day Loop]], although she could control when she went back.
** In the finale, {{spoiler|Madoka}} pulls an even more audacious one. {{spoiler|Backed by the enormous amounts of karma Homura's time-loops have built up, she wishes to personally destroy every Witch, past, present and future - including hers. Cue Ultimate Madoka one-shotting her own evil future self and leaving the normal flow of time.}}
* In the [[Firesign Theatre]]'s album ''Eat Or Be Eaten'', a gamer tries to go to band 100 of a 99 band disk, and is sucked into the game.▼
{{quote|'''Player''': What the FUUUUUUUUU-}}▼
* At the end of [[George Carlin]]'s special ''Life Is Worth Losing'', he talks about a broken water main in [[Los Angeles]] leading to more and more bizarre developments, eventually resulting in a wormhole opening above Earth, and all the dead people flooding out.▼
== Comic Books ==
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* [[The Flash]] once broke the laws of time by traveling back in time to stop Professor Zoom from killing his mother. Reality ''really'' didn't take it well. The result: ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]''.
* ''Transmetropolitan'' at one point featured a man who had found a way to solve all of the world's problems and end all suffering by way of a complex math equation. When he finally solved the equation, it caused his apartment to explode.
* Amusingly averted in "All-Star Superman", where the Ultra-Sphinx ''tries'' to invoke this error on Superman with an impossible riddle, only to be handily defeated.
{{quote|'''Ultra-Sphinx''': WHAT. OCCURS. WHEN. AN. IRRESISTIBLE. FORCE. MEETS. AN. IMMOVABLE. OBJECT?
'''Superman''': They surrender.
'''Ultra-Sphinx''': (discomfited pause) ANSWER... ACCEPTABLE.}}
▲== Fan Work ==
* In the Pokémon fanfic ''[[Ash's Return|Ashs Return]]'', a Pokémon battle is cut abruptly short by the command: "[[wikipedia:Russell's paradox|Make a Pokémon that defeats all Pokémon other than Pokémon that defeat themselves!]]"
* According to ''[[Evangelion:
* In the 'Irritable Jade' LiveJournal, done in the persona of a [[Crazy Awesome]] Twilight Caste from [[Exalted]], we have this:
{{quote|'''Irritable Jade''': I got bored today, so I decided to conquer some of the fundamental principles of mathematics. Division by zero is no longer a dream, but a reality! In completely unrelated news, the horde of soul-hungry many-tentacled chthonic entities now menacing the countryside has ''absolutely nothing to do with me''.}}
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*** This explanation is no longer valid as in the Videogame you continue and expand the story of the movies (and is completely canon) and the main villains, as Gozer, continue existing. So either Egon is a bit exaggerated (sort of like [[Back to The Future|Doc Brown]] with his theories of time crashes) or the Universe has way to deal with this.
*** Of course, in the videogame, crossing the streams just results in painful knock down. Maybe Egon fixed that problem, or it simply wasn't as bad as initially expected?
** In the animated adaptation ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]'', as the four heroes are dropped by a flying enemy over water, Egon tells the others to do this on purpose and aim at the water. It creates a spout which cushions their landing. When asked how he knew that would work, he claims he ''didn't''. He just figured, "what did we have to lose?"
** In ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'', Egon compares what might happen to a nuclear explosion.
* The Nothing has this effect on the imaginary universe of ''[[The Neverending Story (film)|The Neverending Story]]''.
== Literature ==
* Nell uses an actual and deliberate divide by zero in ''[[The Diamond Age]]'' to break one of the Primer's simulations.
* This is slowly happening to ''[[The Dark Tower]]'' multiverse as "thinnies"—rips in the barriers between realities—gobble up space and time because the [[Big Bad]] is {{spoiler|using psychic energy}} to destroy the [[World Tree|titular tower]].
* Parodied in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, where one of Hex's quirky error messages is "Divide by Cucumber Error". Also, "Please reinstall universe and reboot."
** And let's not forget the effect of the first Glass Clock in ''[[
* Ted Chiang's ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130115121005/http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/division/ Division By Zero]'' uses this as an analogy for the central mathematical conceit of the plot.
* In one of the dialogues from ''[[Godel Escher Bach|Gödel, Escher, Bach]]'', Achilles is granted permission by [[God]] to make one infinite-level Typeless Wish. He says, "I wish my wish would not be granted!" After this [[Logic Bomb]] goes off in a way that "cannot possibly be described, and so no attempt will be made to describe it", Achilles and the Tortoise find themselves in a totally unfamiliar environment. Achilles asks, "Did the earth come to a standstill? Did the universe cave in?" The Tortoise explains that they were [[Inside a Computer System|inside "The System"]] and the paradoxical wish crashed it: "I'm sorry, Achilles--you blew it. You crashed the System, and you should thank our lucky stars that we're back at all. Things could have come out a lot worse."
* In ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Life, The Universe And Everything|Life The Universe And Everything]]'', Arthur finds out that if anyone ever simultaneously knows both the answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything ''and'' what that question is, the entirety of existence would cease to exist and be replaced with something even stranger. It's also stated that this may already have happened.
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"Well,"... }}
* The "bubbles of evil" in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' may count.
* ''[[Dragaera]]'': Adron's Disaster
** To say nothing of the disaster that knocked the Jenoine from power.
* In [[Sergey Lukyanenko]]'s ''The Stars Are Cold Toys'', member of the Counter race (living computers) manages to survive the FTL process developed by humans (it kills or drives insane all known aliens, while giving humans pure ecstasy). How does he do that? By dividing by zero in his head, which puts him into a temporary coma until his "systems" restart.
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** To be more precise - the Chainfire spell is so powerful and unstable that it expands exponentially, destroying all memory - creating contradictions and gaps growing ever larger beyond the scope of merely forgetting the original subject of the spell. In addition, the residual effect of the Chimes (entities from the underworld that erode away magic from the world of life simply by existing on this side of the veil) make the effect far more dangerous. Instead of just the Chainfire spell turning every thinking being into a blank, slobbering slate, you have a world soon to be filled with blank, slobbering slates and on the verge of a mass-extinction event.
* The Nothing has this effect on the imaginary universe of ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]''.
* Sort of the case in [[Wen Spencer]]'s ''[[Endless Blue]]'', where the Blue is reached by setting jump coordinates to zero (as far as everyone in-universe knows, setting jump coordinates to zero just means you vanish and never reappear).
* The titular ''Riddle of the Seven Realms'' is simple: Why does no fire burn in the realm of demons? The answer is just as simple: {{spoiler|Fire acts as a passage between other worlds and the demon realm. A fire within the demon realm opens into the void and would [[Apocalypse How|suck all of existence into said void]].}}
* In "The Gate of the Flying Knives", a short story that is part of the ''[[Thieves' World]]'' anthology series, the bard Cappen Varra (who has absolutely no magical abilities whatsoever) permanently destroys a dimensional portal with applied geometry. Specifically, as the portal takes the form of a large scroll that has one side in one dimension and another side in the other dimension, by giving the scroll a half-twist and then sticking the ends together he turns it into a Mobius strip -- which of course only has one side, and thus, can no longer function as a portal. Confronted with this metaphysical paradox, the scroll/portal disintegrates.
== Live
* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'': Using an [[Neglectful Precursors|Ancient Project]] to create a super-energy source, [[Insufferable Genius|Doctor Rodney Mckay]] accidentally makes particles that defy the laws of physics. The result? He [[Never Live It Down|repeatedly gets called out]] for [[Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?|destroying an entire solar system]]!
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', this would be the result of detonating {{spoiler|Davros'}} "reality bomb".
** In series 5 we are seeing "cracks" in time and space in almost every episode which release energy that are un-writing time, erasing things from existence to where they never existed at all. The Doctor implies these cracks are the result of a future event where someone may have divided by zero...{{spoiler|Turns out it was the TARDIS itself, the event in question being the TARDIS exploding, causing all of time and space to explode and cease to exist. Yikes!}}
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* In ''[[Dollhouse]]'' Adelle suggests this would be the result when the Doll Victor's current imprint mentioned the possibility of him paying to get the services of a Doll (he refused the idea, by the way).
* ''[[Mad TV]]'' parody ''I Love the 00's'' has the commentators talk about things in the 00's (like ''[[American Idol]]'', Janet Jackson's boob exposure, ''[[The Passion of the Christ]]'', etc.). Eventually, the show manages to catch up with itself, showing clips from that exact show piling up on top of each other, leaving the commentators screaming and the world blowing up!
** [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] as [[VH-1]] actually ended up doing an ''I Love'' series on the 00's, entitled ''I Love The New
* It's not exactly the end of the world, but on an episode of [[News Radio]], photocopying a mirror causes a building-wide blackout.
* ''[[Farscape]]'' actually has the ''hero'' do this. '''On purpose'''. Well, it's one way to get warmongers to realize that they're playing with fire...
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* ''[[Square One TV]]'' had the [[Show Within a Show]] "Oops!", where a mathematician makes a mistake that causes a certain disaster to happen, eg incorrectly multiplying 603 by 7 causes Galloping Gertie to collapse.
== Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy ==
▲* In the [[Firesign Theatre]]'s album ''Eat Or Be Eaten'', a gamer tries to go to band 100 of a 99 band disk, and is sucked into the game.
▲{{quote|'''Player''': What the FUUUUUUUUU-}}
▲* At the end of [[George Carlin]]'s special ''Life Is Worth Losing'', he talks about a broken water main in [[Los Angeles]] leading to more and more bizarre developments, eventually resulting in a wormhole opening above Earth, and all the dead people flooding out.
== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[Dungeons
{{quote|[http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-221494.html "If at any time you're the last person standing, with absolutely no way to save us, fling the bag of holding into the portable hole and pray."]}}
* This is the premise behind the ''Time Spiral'' block/story arc of ''[[Magic: The
* In the ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' [[Trading Card Game]], hitting The Immovable Object (a shield) with The Unstoppable Force (a 2-handed mace) will destroy both objects.
* The very existence of an afterlife in ''[[Exalted]]'' is one of these. When the Primordials made Creation, they made the cycle of Lethe, wherein mortal souls would pass on once they died and enter the stream of reincarnation, stripped of pretty much all the memories of their past life. This process wasn't meant for the Primordials, though, as they honestly believed they couldn't die. The Exalted proved differently during the Primordial War, creating some of the [[Eldritch Abomination|Neverborn]], from which the wastes of the Underworld and the metaphysical existence of ghosts were born.
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* In a bit of a [[Stealth Pun]] example, bosses and enemies in the ''[[Mega Man Zero]]'' games explode after being [[Incredibly Lame Pun|divided by Zero]] via Z-Saber slashing. Very likely unintentional, but funny nonetheless.
** [[media:DIVISION BY ZERO 4150.jpg|This picture]] brings the pun into [[Diagonal Cut|its logical conclusion.]]
* ''A known [[
* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' calls such events "Dragon Breaks", where the god of time, known by many names and guises, but most prominently as a dragon god "Akatosh", is tampered with.
** In the first era, a remnant of a once-powerful organization of [[Fantastic Racism|anti-elf inquisitors]] carried out a ritual in attempt to purge Akatosh of the elven aspects of the mythological basis that Akatosh was based on, the elven golden eagle god Auri-El. The effort proceeded to break Time for a period of a bit over 1000 years. How could they measure how long that period was? The Khajiit, a cat-like race on Tamriel whose mythology was heavily steeped in the two moons, used those as a basis for time.
** The giant brass golem [[Humongous Mecha|Numidium]] was built by the Dwemer, an extinct race of elves commonly mislabeled as "dwarves" who were essentially [[Flat Earth Atheist|atheists in a world where gods were very real]]. Numidium was essentially their refutation of the gods made material. Numidium had a nasty habit of causing Dragon Breaks because of this, such as the temporal toxic waste dump in Eleswyr where Tiber Septim's mages tried to figure it out after the Dunmer Tribunal gave it to him as a tribute, or the Warp In The West, where all the endings in Daggerfall essentially simultaneously happened and the temporal paradox was so straining on reality that a nuclear-like explosion occurred.
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* While it doesn't actually take place in ''[[Portal 2]]'', some dialog plays with it.
{{quote|'''Cave Johnson:''' This next test may involve trace amounts of time travel. So, word of advice, if you meet yourself on the testing track, don't make eye contract. Lab boys tell me that'll wipe out time. Entirely. Forward and backward.}}
* ''[[
* In ''[[Sonic Shuffle]]'', if you get a Carbuncle item and have no other Force Jewels, it ''eats itself''.
* ''[[System Shock 2]]'' features broken vending machines that cannot be used until repaired using sufficient Repair skill or a repair kit. The glitched interface of the broken machine features "division by zero" among the flood of garbage data, presumably the source of the problem.
* The interactive fiction game ''Lost'' gave the player a box which contained a pocket dimension, eliminating problems of inventory size and weight. It did come with a caution to not put any container inside said box; doing so results in this trope.
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== Web Comics ==
* In the ''[[And Shine Heaven Now]]'' arc crossing over with ''[[Read or Die]]'', abuse of [[Time Travel]] by the heroes and villains ends up creating a literal [[Plot Hole]] which nearly destroys the Universe.
* ''[[8-
** It doesn't get to this point? [[Too Dumb to Live|Black Belt]] '''created a clone of himself''' using this as an excuse. Somehow, he got '''so''' lost that he broke space and time.
*** And do note, he got this
* ''[[Irregular Webcomic
* In the ''[[Problem Sleuth]]'' stories of ''[[MS Paint Adventures]]'', dropping one of a pair of connected portals through its own counterpart causes this.
* And of course, ''[[1/0]]''.
* In ''[[Real Life Comics]]'', Greg Dean parodies the possibilities of rune combinations in ''[[Diablo]] II'' [https://web.archive.org/web/20130525042244/http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/010709.html in this strip] by making a sword with a 10% chance of annihilating the space-time continuum.
* Ennesby of ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' uses this as a curse: "Divide me by zero!"
* ''[[The Unspeakable Vault of Doom]]'' has another literal example of division by zero. The unfortunate mathematician is promptly [[Cthulhu Mythos|introduced to Yog Sogoth]].
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* In [http://www.goblinscomic.com/12062011/ this] [[Goblins]] strip [[Fan Nickname|Psimax]] appears to be deliberately attempting this trope.
* According to ''[[Abstruse Goose]]'', [http://abstrusegoose.com/440 division by zero] is the solution to [[Vaporware]].
* ''[[Vampire Cheerleaders]]'' had a buggy [[Mineral MacGuffin|ceraova]] repeatedly announce [https://web.archive.org/web/20140704061723/http://www.vampirecheerleaders.net/strips-vc/0_1_1_2_3_5_8 divizion by zero], leading to {{spoiler|the start of [[Time Travel]] arc}}. Lita immediately concluded "that's not good" and backed off.
* In ''[[The Noob]]'' one of the effects of a hilariously buggy patch was "[http://
* ''Is It Canon?'' warns us -- "[http://isitcanon.com/index.php?date=2016-04-14 This is the way the world ends:] [[Kirby]] vs. [[Pokemon|Ditto]]".
== Web Original ==
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* In ''[[Fine Structure]]'' this is sometimes done intentionally to attract the attention of the Imprisoning God, which stamps down hard on such violations. However, one particular event -- {{spoiler|dropping the immortal Anne Poole into a black hole}}—breaks physics so badly that even the Imprisoning God goes into failure mode.
* In the [[Things of Interest|Ed stories]], Ed briefly accessing the Root Layer causes a Class X-3 [[Apocalypse How]] on the Andromeda galaxy.
* The time paradox version happens at the end of the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The
* Almost happened in audio format [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqgEm8XWXu8 here].
== Western Animation ==
* One episode of ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy
** [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|And Irwin becomes Mojo Jojo]].
** The scenario was inverted in a much earlier episode, where Mandy very clearly smiled after she made everyone else on Earth vanish instantly.
*** And in the very first episode, where she smiled and winked at the camera.
* ''[[The Real Ghostbusters]]''
** [[The Smart Guy|Egon]]
** In "The Boogeyman Cometh", Ray claims using the throwers ''at all'' in the Boogeyman's pocket dimension could be even ''worse'' than crossing the streams, as the laws of physics are different there.
** There was also the episode "The Hole in the Wall Gang". In a haunted house, ghosts were spawned out of holes in the wall, and how big and powerful the ghost was depended on the size of the hole. (As in, small hole, weak ghost, big hole, strong ghost.) This created a problem when fighting them blew a ''huge'' hole in the wall, with the potential to spawn the worst monster they had ever fought. Egon quickly determined that placing a smaller hole inside the big hole could dispell the effect, but he aborted the plan upon realizing it might also cause a reality breaking paradox situation and cause the entire universe to implode. [[From Bad to Worse| But it only got worse]] when the creature destroyed the whole house, making the hole much bigger, and giving them no choice but to risk the first plan. Fortunately, the risk paid off.
* In the first ''[[Futurama]]'' movie, Bender causes this by gathering a whole bunch of time-duplicates of himself from his many trips back in time and convincing them not to come out when they were supposed to.
* One episode of ''[[Adventure Time]]'' has Finn blowing a ''fourth dimensional bubble'' which caused a black hole to form due to its sheer impossibility.
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'''Princess Bubblegum:''' Finn, that would mean you've created--
'''Finn:''' Yes... '''A BLACK HOLE!''' }}
* From ''[[Extreme Ghostbusters]]'' episode “The Infernal Machine”, Roland is coerced into building the eponymous Machine by the villain, using parts of the team’s equipment. Once Egon finds this out:
{{quote|'''Egon:''' Once the cartridges are depleted, they’ll extract new ions directly from the machine’s electromagnetic domain, greatly increasing the certainty of a transmobile meltdown of disastrous… nay, ''Biblical'' proportions!
'''Eduardo:''' Se hablo ingles?
'''Kylie:''' It’s gonna blow up real good.}}
== Real Life ==
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* Failing to make contingencies for division by zero, then events conspiring to make the program attempt to divide by zero is a very common reason why programs crash.
----
{{quote|'''[[The Stinger|Waldorf]]''': Do you know of any real-life cases of division by zero?
'''[[The Muppet Show|Statler]]''': Sure! I'm sitting next to one! Do-ho-ho-ho-ho!
<''[[Statler and Waldorf|Waldorf]] [[Vitriolic Best Buds|hits Statler]]''> }}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Trope Names From Memes]]
▲[[Category:Divide by Zero]]
[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]
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