Divide by Zero: Difference between revisions

== 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.

* 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.

 

* 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.

* In Aldous Huxley's ''Point Counter Point'' (1928), a [[Upperclass Twit|dilettante marquess]] is attempting to mathematically prove the existence of God:

"Well,"... }}

* The "bubbles of evil" in ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' may count.

* 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...

* ''[[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 and 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).

** Much the same happens with any two "extradimensional interfaces", with specific effect defined by the one undergoing the transformation, i.e. "inner", if appliable. Usually it destroys them both and often does nasty things to everything around as well. AD&D's ''Tome of Magic'' added 3 more - Flatbox always explodes; Warp Marble always safely deactivates, dumping the trapped creature to the Astral Plane (both also do the same when subjected to any form of teleportation); Dimensional Mine does nothing but dumps any extradimensional space in which it's placed into the Astral Plane, which destroys the item creating the pocket, if any - but not the mine ("Hey, guys, I found a cool figurine on the Astral..."). Rulings on non-permanent spells with such effects (Deeppockets, Rope Trick, Extradimensional Pocket, Seclusion) vary.

*** 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.

* In ''[[Gran Turismo]] 3'', if you pop a wheelie with a properly-tuned Escudo, you can reach the speed of 2,147,483,647 mph (that's [[FTL Travel]] there), which crashes the game.

* While it doesn't actually take place in ''[[Portal 2]]'', some dialog plays with it.

* [[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''.

* 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.

'''Princess Bubblegum:''' Finn, that would mean you've created--<br />

'''Finn:''' Yes... '''A BLACK HOLE!''' }}

 

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'''[[The Muppet Show|Statler]]''': Sure! I'm sitting next to one! Do-ho-ho-ho-ho! <br />

<''[[Statler and Waldorf|Waldorf]] [[Vitriolic Best Buds|hits Statler]]''> }}