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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]].
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== Anime
* 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.}}
== Comedy ==
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{{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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'''Ultra-Sphinx''': (discomfited pause) ANSWER... ACCEPTABLE.}}
== Fan
* 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: ReDeath|Evangelion Re:Death]]'', this is what happens if you play ''1999'' by [[Prince]] any time on or after January 1, 2000. It's how Gendou intends to trigger the Third Impact and become {{spoiler|the Uber-Pimp}}.
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**** In the games, there's a safety measure installed in the new proton packs that automatically shuts down the neutrona wand if the beams cross. The safety has to be turned off at the end in order for them to defeat the Destructor. Apparently the ghost world just has different laws of physics.
* 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 ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', which [[Time Crash|shattered the whole of recorded history]]. The History Monks just about managed to patch it back together again, leaving behind only a couple of [[Plot Hole|plot holes]].
* 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.
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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 Action TV ==
* ''[[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...
{{quote|'''Crichton''': (commenting on his brand spanking new [[Our Wormholes Are Different|Wormhole]] [[Superweapon Surprise|Weapon]]) ''Okay boys and girls, here are the rules. Find a penny, pick it up. Double it, you've got two pennies. Double it again: four. Double it 27 more times, and you've got a million dollars and the IRS all over your ass. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows, but it all adds up... quick. ...It eats the whole universe, a monumental black hole, a giant whirling headstone marking the spot where we all used to live and play and slaughter the innocent.''}}
* ''[[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.
== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', the classical example is placing [[Bag of Holding]] into a Portable Hole (both are sucked into a rift to the Astral Plane) or vice versa (both are destroyed, everything and everyone around is sucked into the Astral Plane and a gate to another plane is opened).
{{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."]}}
** Much the same happens with any two "extradimensional interfaces", with specific effect defined by the one undergoing the transformation, i.e. "inner", if
*** So of course this was weaponized in various "extradimensional bomb" setups - e.g. [http://www.spelljammer.org/ships/equip/ed_missile.html as described here]. The probable reason why such interactions were not removed as outrageously exploitable is that magical items are very, very expensive and variants created via spells are either inconvenient or temporary and thus limited by the number of high-level spells the offending party can cast in a row.
** Another case is a [[Sphere of Destruction|Sphere of Annihilation]] (permanent or created by spell) meeting a planar gate, except the result is somewhat random - they may pass through each other as empty place or interact violently.
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*** A Sphere of Annihilation on its own should qualify, as it is literally a hole in the continuity of the multiverse.
** There is also the incredibly old demon lord ''Pale Night'' who appears as a female humanoid wrapped in a shroud. The shroud is however not part of herself, but Reality's desperate attempt to hide her true form from the rest of the multiverse. She has the ability to shed the shroud for a short moment and having a very strong [[Weirdness Censor]] is the only thing that prevents everyone from being annihilated by trying to make sense of what they saw.
** The multi-setting crossover AD&D module ''Die Vecna Die!'' justified the changes between 2nd and 3rd Edition in-universe, as a result of Vecna the lich-god Dividing Reality By Zero when he escaped from ''[[Ravenloft]]'' to ''[[Planescape]]''.
* 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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** [[media:DIVISION BY ZERO 4150.jpg|This picture]] brings the pun into [[Diagonal Cut|its logical conclusion.]]
* ''A known [[Flyff]]'' bug: [http://flyff-forum.gpotato.com/viewtopic.php?f=843&t=2751209&sid=83aa6db0c82d59de31e697c1900cc190 Dividing by Zero will crash the game].
* ''[[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.}}
* ''[[EarthBound]]'' has the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yPVBE7BWNU "Simultaneous Defeat Glitch".] It is triggered when, in a party of two or more, all party members are finished off by the damage an exploding enemy inflicts upon death. The game decides you win with zero alive members and, as always after a battle, tries to divide any experience gained between your alive party members - in this case, zero of them, resulting in [[Powers of Two Minus One|4294940287 exp.]] which is unfortunately unobtainable.
* 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]]''.
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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 ==
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'''Princess Bubblegum:''' Finn, that would mean you've created--
'''Finn:''' Yes... '''A BLACK HOLE!''' }}
== Real Life ==
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