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Golden Snitch: Difference between revisions
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(Point scoring in Quiddich.) |
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When handled well, the Golden Snitch still awards a significant advantage based on previous points. This is commonly done by either increasing the value of points earned in the last round, making it possible to win despite being completely behind, but very difficult, or else giving the player/team with the most points a head start.
Compare [[One Judge to Rule Them All]], where points are awarded by actual judges (one of whom is the "snitch") rather than the players' own progress during the game. In video games with a [[Karma Meter]], a choice at the end of the game that pretty much decides your final morality is a [[Last
See also [[Instant Win Condition]] (and all of its varieties) for situations where points and scoring are not involved in determining who wins.
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{{examples}}
== Anime
* The first part of the chunin exams in ''[[Naruto]]'' is a 10-question quiz, the last of which is not revealed until just before the end. Those taking the test are told they may forfeit the question (and fail), or take the question... but never be allowed to retake the test if they miss it. Turns out the 10th question is a [[Secret Test of Character]]: Just ''accepting'' it is an instant pass, and the nine other questions are meaningless as far as score is concerned (they're actually there as a Secret Test of Character of a different sort). {{spoiler|Namely, whether or not you can cheat without getting caught. Naruto wins by not even trying to answer any of the other questions, let alone trying to cheat.}}
** Spoofed in ''[[Naruto the Abridged Series]]''.
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* An episode of ''[[Gintama]]'' revolved around a pet competition between Sadaharu and Elizabeth. After Elizabeth gains 1000 points over Sadaharu in the talent portion of the show, the host reveals that the final round—a race to the finish—would earn 20,000 points and the win. Katsura gets annoyed by this and demands the rules be changed to be more fair, but the race continues as planned. {{spoiler|Neither of them win, anyway.}}
** When questioned, the host admitted that the first part of the competition was a ratings booster.
* One of the funnier bits exclusive to the anime version of ''[[Eyeshield 21]]'' takes place during the school festival episode. The white team (containing all the Devil Bats except Hiruma and oddly OOC Mamori and Yukimitsu) are hopelessly behind before the last game... Until they find out the last game is worth more than all the other events put together. They react appropriately. {{spoiler|Of course, in the context of the episode, this makes sense, since the whole thing was set up by Hiruma to force the other Devil Bats to practice/come up with a needed technique.}}
* One chapter of ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]'' centers around a quiz show with a final question worth 10 points instead of 1, and answering wrong disqualifies you. [[Lampshade Hanging|Nobody is surprised by this]].
** Amusing in that the winner gets it '''wrong''', but the hero pushes herself to make it a right answer.
* In the MMORPG-style Greed Island arc of ''[[Hunter X Hunter]]'', there comes a point when the heroes form a 14 man team to participate in a sports competition, the prize being something that effectively causes [[Loot Drama]]. The opposing team's leader is one of the game's admins. 8 wins out of 14 matches will win the competition, but once the heroes start winning, the admin steps in for the next round and announces that his particular round is worth 8 points overall. Meaning that the heroes must beat the ridiculously overpowered admin at his own game, or otherwise start all over from the beginning.
* A quiz show in ''[[Cromartie High School]]'' has four questions. The fourth of which is worth "three million points". The first three were apparently worth ''none''.
== Card Games ==
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** Due to poor wording, a playtest version of the card Time Walk was interpreted this way. What they intended was for the player to get an [[Extra Turn]]; what the card ''said'' was "Opponent loses next turn". This was fixed for release ("Target player takes an extra turn after this one").
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' games have cards that lets you win for completing some of their requirements. Like the Exodia cards when all five cards are collected in the players hand they instantly win the game. Then there's the FINAL cards which are a magic/trap variant of Exodia, when all the cards of FINAL are put into play the player wins. Of course fulfilling these conditions can be difficult and the opponent can prevent the player from acquiring those cards, and finish of the player the old fashion way.
== Comic Books ==
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** A similar example involved Scrooge McDuck engaged in a sporting contest with fellow millionaires. He's won every year because his opponents suck, but in the tournament appearing in the book a new, physically-fit competitor appears and seems ready to sweep the competition. What makes it fit the trope is that the character is so confident of his victory that he volunteers to concede the trophy if Scrooge can win even one event.
** Another competition (oddly enough, also a prospecting contest; possibly a remake?) between Donald, Scrooge and Gladstone where the prize was a valuable gold mine. Gladstone wins the first two (boil a kettle and find a valuable). The third is to catch a burro, and Donald and Scrooge pulls shenanigans that end up gathering every burro in the area. Meanwhile, Gladstone gets lost in the mountains, and finds the mine that's used for a prize... which somehow allows him to claim ownership of it.
== Film ==
* Parodied in ''History Of The World - Part I''. When in a tight spot during a life-size game of chess played in a castle courtyard with people wearing costumes, the King executes "Royal
* In ''[[The Mighty Ducks (film)|The Mighty Ducks]]'', the Ducks lose almost every game, forfeit one because the team revolts, then have a few [[Training Montage]]s in time to sneak into the playoffs with a 2-11 record. Of course, they sweep through and win the Minnesota State Title. (Truth
** Perhaps it was a case of Gordon's motivational speech holding too much weight:
{{quote|'''Gordon''': "District 5 has had some losses... but [[Title Drop|The Ducks]] are undefeated!"}}
* In ''[[Caddyshack]]'', the entire climactic golf match is nullified when Rodney Dangerfield makes a double-or-nothing bet on the very last putt.
* [[Double Subverted]] in the climax of ''[[Dodgeball]]''. {{spoiler|After winning the Dodgeball championship, Peter reveals that he had sold Average Joe's to Globo Gym before the game started for a [[Briefcase Full of Money]] - making the game results (which would have given him enough prize money to keep Average Joe's open) pointless. However, Peter ''then'' reveals that he took the $100,000 in the briefcase and bet it all on his team to win. Since the Vegas odds were 50-1 against his team, he won ''five million dollars''. Peter then notes that since Globo Gym is a publicly traded company, he has enough money to buy all of Globo's shares, which means he now owns ''both'' gyms.}}
== Literature ==▼
* The [[Trope Namer]] comes from the Golden Snitch, a recurring plot device within the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series. While each goal scored in a game of Quidditch is worth 10 points, catching the Snitch scores 150 points and ends the game immediately. It's not a guaranteed win, though; if your team is more than 150 points behind, you'll still lose, and in at least one game this was done deliberately by the losing team to limit the damage. (Also, considering how hard it is to be up by 15 goals, [[Curb Stomp Battle|you're really losing]] if you have to resort to this.)▼
** This also happens in the Triwzard Tournament in the 4th book; Winning the first events doesn't actually give you anything except a head start in the last event, and the first person to make it to the finish in the last event wins the entire tournament. So the first rounds aren't pointless, but proportionate to the time and effort spent on them they come off as quite unnecessary.▼
*** Other than the fact that an early-round screwup could have fatal consequences, of course.▼
** Though the match with Ravenclaw in the third book [[Subverted Trope|did require some strategy for when to catch]]—since the houses that go to the Quidditch Cup are the ones with the most cumulative match points, Gryffindor would win the game but not qualify for the cup if Harry caught the snitch when they weren't far enough ahead.▼
** To be fair, the most Quidditch we see is played at high-school level. The professional matches played in Goblet of Fire (and in the accompanying book "Quidditch Through The Ages") suggest that real Quidditch matches are much more high-scoring and may last several days.▼
** In fairness, consider what happens if two house teams are 2-1 for the year. Then, the efforts of the seekers are meaningless -- equal. It is the points scored by the normal goals that make the difference. If the professional matches are scored on total points, rather than number of wins, then the same principle applies -- the top 2 teams might each have one loss, the seeker's contributions are the same, and the need for the regular players to score lots of points matters. Hence the snitch would become less of an "instant win", and more of a "Do we risk letting the game continue to try to score more points, or do we think we've gotten enough and can end the game?" issue. This gives the multi-day, high-point scoring system (similar to an existing British game, Cricket, without the 2-day play limit.)▼
* In ''[[Redwall|Lord Brocktree]]'', Lord Brocktree needs to win the allegiance of King Bucko and his court. King Bucko always allows anybody to challenge him for his crown. There are three parts to a challenge: the bragging, the feasting, and the fighting. The announcement then adds that "In the event of the first two challenges being won, lost or declared a tie, the third challenge will decide the winner". Brocktree and his entourage realize that Bucko's doing this entirely for his pride, and train Dotti to target that specifically in the challenges. She comes out ahead.▼
* In ''[[Discworld/Unseen Academicals|Unseen Academicals]]'', the old foot-the-ball game apparently scores by counting injuries inflicted, but actually scoring a goal is an automatic win (and very rare - Trev's late father Dave Likely is a hero because he scored four times in his ''entire career''). This is ''very loosely'' based on assorted street football games played in medieval Britain.▼
* Parodied in ''[[Earth (The Book)]]''. The end of each chapter has a scavenger hunt with 5 items in Easy, Medium, and Hard, which are worth 10, 20 and 30 points each, respectively. Below that are the six Super Hard items worth 1,000 points each. The catch, of course, is that these items are all either intangible ("the innocence of youth"), no longer existing, ("the Colossus at Rhodes") or completely fictitious ("Soylent Green Eggs and Ham"). I'll leave it up to your judgment as to which category "God" falls into...▼
* In the short story "Fields" by Desmond Warzel, the last twenty people remaining [[After the End]] divide themselves into two baseball teams as a means of keeping themselves occupied. In a league with only two teams, it is of course a foregone conclusion that those are the two teams which will meet in the World Series; thus, to keep things interesting (and having nothing better to do), they play an entire 162-game season solely to determine which team will have home-field advantage in the Series.▼
== Game Shows ==
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* Spanish TV contest ''[[Gafapastas]]'' is a real-life shining example of this. It has five rounds, the first four are woth 600€ if you manage to do everything perfectly and the last one is ''1200€'' for the same. Not only that, but while the first four are individual rounds (Meaning both players can get the 600€), the last one is head-to-head answer-this-first squareoff, so a losing player can quickly [[Curb Stomp Battle]] their opponent and win by with a huge margin. The current champion has won many games simply because he's really good at the last round. The worst part? Until recently it was 800€ for the first 4 rounds and 800€ for the last. That's right, they changed it to make the rounds MORE unbalanced! [[Sarcasm Mode|Makes perfect sense]].
▲== Literature ==
▲* The [[Trope Namer]] comes from the Golden Snitch, a recurring plot device within the ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' series. While each goal scored in a game of Quidditch is worth 10 points, catching the Snitch scores 150 points and ends the game immediately. It's not a guaranteed win, though; if your team is more than 150 points behind, you'll still lose, and in at least one game this was done deliberately by the losing team to limit the damage. (Also, considering how hard it is to be up by 15 goals, [[Curb Stomp Battle|you're really losing]] if you have to resort to this.)
▲** This also happens in the Triwzard Tournament in the 4th book; Winning the first events doesn't actually give you anything except a head start in the last event, and the first person to make it to the finish in the last event wins the entire tournament. So the first rounds aren't pointless, but proportionate to the time and effort spent on them they come off as quite unnecessary.
▲*** Other than the fact that an early-round screwup could have fatal consequences, of course.
▲** Though the match with Ravenclaw in the third book [[Subverted Trope|did require some strategy for when to catch]]—since the houses that go to the Quidditch Cup are the ones with the most cumulative match points, Gryffindor would win the game but not qualify for the cup if Harry caught the snitch when they weren't far enough ahead.
▲** To be fair, the most Quidditch we see is played at high-school level. The professional matches played in Goblet of Fire (and in the accompanying book "Quidditch Through The Ages") suggest that real Quidditch matches are much more high-scoring and may last several days.
▲** In fairness, consider what happens if two house teams are 2-1 for the year. Then, the efforts of the seekers are meaningless -- equal. It is the points scored by the normal goals that make the difference. If the professional matches are scored on total points, rather than number of wins, then the same principle applies -- the top 2 teams might each have one loss, the seeker's contributions are the same, and the need for the regular players to score lots of points matters. Hence the snitch would become less of an "instant win", and more of a "Do we risk letting the game continue to try to score more points, or do we think we've gotten enough and can end the game?" issue. This gives the multi-day, high-point scoring system (similar to an existing British game, Cricket, without the 2-day play limit.)
▲* In ''[[Redwall|Lord Brocktree]]'', Lord Brocktree needs to win the allegiance of King Bucko and his court. King Bucko always allows anybody to challenge him for his crown. There are three parts to a challenge: the bragging, the feasting, and the fighting. The announcement then adds that "In the event of the first two challenges being won, lost or declared a tie, the third challenge will decide the winner". Brocktree and his entourage realize that Bucko's doing this entirely for his pride, and train Dotti to target that specifically in the challenges. She comes out ahead.
▲* In ''[[Discworld/Unseen Academicals|Unseen Academicals]]'', the old foot-the-ball game apparently scores by counting injuries inflicted, but actually scoring a goal is an automatic win (and very rare - Trev's late father Dave Likely is a hero because he scored four times in his ''entire career''). This is ''very loosely'' based on assorted street football games played in medieval Britain.
▲* Parodied in ''[[Earth (The Book)]]''. The end of each chapter has a scavenger hunt with 5 items in Easy, Medium, and Hard, which are worth 10, 20 and 30 points each, respectively. Below that are the six Super Hard items worth 1,000 points each. The catch, of course, is that these items are all either intangible ("the innocence of youth"), no longer existing, ("the Colossus at Rhodes") or completely fictitious ("Soylent Green Eggs and Ham"). I'll leave it up to your judgment as to which category "God" falls into...
▲* In the short story "Fields" by Desmond Warzel, the last twenty people remaining [[After the End]] divide themselves into two baseball teams as a means of keeping themselves occupied. In a league with only two teams, it is of course a foregone conclusion that those are the two teams which will meet in the World Series; thus, to keep things interesting (and having nothing better to do), they play an entire 162-game season solely to determine which team will have home-field advantage in the Series.
== Live-Action TV ==
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* In ''[[The Finder]]'' Walter needs to take a sanity test from [[Bones|Dr. Sweets]], if he passes he can officially take part in any investigation as a consultant, if he fails Walter would be considered insane. Walter fails, but Sweets can get him to pass if Walter tells him what compelled him to find things.
* ''[[Kamen Rider Fourze]]'' pulls off something similar to ''Naruto''. During an astronaut qualification exam, there is a "bonus" question about describing the test papers (<ref>when the three test papers are held up to the light, an outline of a star is shown</ref>). [[Idiot Hero]] Gentaro and [[Cloudcuckoolander]] Yuki pass the exam answering ''only'' the bonus question, meaning that regardless of score, answering that bonus question is enough of a qualification. The exam proctor mentions that the school board chairman (also the series [[Big Bad]]) only put it in for "[[It Amused Me|a little joke]]".
== Radio ==
* ''[[Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
** In an average game, around 9 points are awarded before the lightning round. Each panelist gets 2 questions worth 1 point each, and 3 more are up for grabs for games like Bluff the Listener. The lightning round consists of 7 questions per panelist (or as many as can fit into 60 seconds, whichever is less), each worth 2 points. Thus, the only impact of the first 50 minutes of the show on the final result is that one contestant might have a one-question lead going into the endgame.
* ''[[Hamish and Andy]]'' Invented a game called random John, in which a random phone number is dialed. There are strict rules about how often a call can be made and what qualifies as random. If the person who answers the phone is called “John” the caller gets 1 john point. If the person who answers the phone is called “John Johnson” the caller gets 50 john points, making it something of a golden snitch. However since they have been playing this game for over three months and still have not gotten a single john point, even getting a “John” could qualify as at least a silver snitch.
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* ''Vampire: Prince Of The City'' (a board game based on [[Vampire: The Requiem]]) has a rule stating that it is impossible to win the game while one's character is in torpor. This basically means that if you play well and rack up a nice, big points lead, the rest of the players will gang up on you and send you into torpor in the last round, effectively handing victory to whoever is in second place at the time.
* ''[[Munchkin]]'' gamers will usually gang up on whoever is highest, especially when that player is trying to score their tenth level (thus winning the game). For this reason, it's preferred to face off against a really weak enemy, so you can win even after everyone else has thrown everything they have to stop you. However, if that player ''is'' stopped, the next player trying to score the tenth level will usually win due to everyone else having run out of curses and monster-boosting cards.
== Video Games ==
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* The Nintendo World Championship 1990 was a gauntlet of three NES games: ''Super Mario Bros.'', ''Rad Racer'', and ''Tetris''. Players were given six minutes and 21 seconds to complete three objectives: get 50 coins in ''SMB'', finish a specially-made course in ''Rad Racer'', then use the remaining time to score as many points as possible in ''Tetris''. The scores were added up when time expires, but the ''Rad Racer'' score is multiplied by 10, and the ''Tetris'' score was multiplied by 25. The contest therefore was determined largely by whoever got the most time saved for ''Tetris'' as well as optimal strategy for that.
== Web Comics ==
* ''[[DM of the Rings]]'', like its [[Lord of the Rings|source material]], essentially ends with the entire fate of the campaign resting on one single die roll for whether or not Frodo manages to cast the ring into Mt. Doom.
** It should be noted that, at that point, Frodo isn't even a player character. He's an ''[[NPC]]''.
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* In [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/080417 this] ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' non-canon parody of [[Harry Potter]], the final event of a competition is worth four billion points. The leader after the previous events had all of ''fifteen'' points. This is lampshaded as "Standard wizard procedure of completely unbalancing all games".
** In [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/020915 an earlier parody], the Golden Snitch in their take on Quidditch is basically the [[Instant Win Condition]]. Torg innocently picks it up to look at it during the rules explanation and wins the game for his team.
== Western Animation ==
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* In one episode of ''[[Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius]],'' Jimmy cheats in a parent-child contest so that he and his father win the earlier rounds. Cindy discovers his ploy, neutralizes it, and then [[Lampshade Hanging|mockingly reminds Jimmy]] that the one remaining contest is worth the majority of the score.
** In another episode, the children in Ms. Fowl's class take their final exam, which, according to Ms. Fowl, is worth 95% of their total grade.
* An episode of ''[[
* In ''[[The Legend of Korra]]'', Pro Bending is a best out of 3 situation. However, if all three members of one team are knocked off the platform in a round, they lose. Thus, all three rounds are always played.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* [[Truth in Television]]: this is essentially the way British university degrees used to work, and occasionally still do. Better really revise for those final exams, because they're the only thing that counts!▼
** Occasionally true for Canadian universities, too. One of the worst scenarios involved an 80% final and 20% for assignments (no midterm).▼
** Universities in general tend to do this; it isn't uncommon for %50 (or more) of the entire grade to rest on a single project or exam, meaning if you screw it up, you fail.▼
*** The reasoning is to check if the student really understands the material, which is especially important for technical subject like math and science. Homework, especially in upper division courses, tend to carry <20% of the grade, because it's more useful as a self-check.▼
** Also, for Bachelor's degrees (well, at some unis, at least), your first two years don't matter at all so long as you do well anough to get into Honours, which is the only thing that counts towards the final degree.▼
** This is still true for many schools and universities in Pakistan. It doesn't matter if you never show up for class, fail all the smaller tests, and never do your homework-so long as you did well on the exams, you passed, as said exams counted for 100% of your final grade.▼
* Until recently GCSEs and A-levels came in "finals" variants (now they are generally delivered in modules). This often resulted in the uncomfortable scenario of getting high marks for a given topic but these not counting for anything, and then not being able to remember it in sufficient detail two years on.▼
* In Scotland, it varies depending on the subjects and level of exams, but it's not uncommon for either all or the majority of your final grade to come from the final exams. Appeals based on earlier 'prelims' (sat under exam conditions but don't affect the final grade) are possible, and because you sit exams three times, getting progressively harder, you'll quite often have ''something'' from earlier years even if you fail the later ones, but an awful lot does depend on your performance in the final exam.▼
** There are also NABs for some exams - tests which are easier than the actual exam (about C-level questions for most), but which ''you must pass'' if you want to sit the final exam. For most subjects, you get a maximum of two resits (officially; you can sit papers under exam conditions which, if you fail, were 'just practice', but were the real thing if you pass - if the teacher's nice), but three fails and you've failed the course. What makes this worse is that for some subjects (maths is the one used here for examples of numbers, but it's not the only one), the NABs are based on a number of outcomes which must be passed individually, and with as few as 8 or 10 marks in some outcomes and a required percentage for each outcome to pass the NAB, you can lose 4 or 5 marks in the whole paper and still fail.▼
* The Irish points system is one of the worst scholarly scoring systems there is. All the work done in five or six years of secondary school mean squat; it all comes down to how well you do in eight to ten 3-hour exams crammed into two weeks at the end of the final year. Just the final year.▼
** You will note, however, that it's a single exam of the course which determines your final grade, not multiple aspects of the course, one of which is disproportionately graded. A straight example would be some of the courses which examine the student differently, but still disproportionately in favour of the exam: language exams require oral and aural examinations, while some courses require projects to be handed in in advance.▼
* The pool game of Nine Ball fits this trope perfectly. Unlike Straight Pool, where the winner needs to pocket 150 balls, or Eight Ball, where the 8 can only be pocketed after several other balls have been pocketed (sinking the 8 before that point results in a loss instead of a win), in Nine Ball, only the 9 ball itself truly matters. It's entirely possible for one player to sink most or all of the other balls, yet lose the game when s/he misses a shot and the other player subsequently pockets the 9 (directly if it's the only non-cue ball left on the table, or with a combination shot if it isn't).▼
* ComedySportz games are like this, especially at the high school league, in which the referee will award an arbitrary number of points to whoever wins the last game. Of course, since the entire point of CSz is the improv skills of the actletes and not who actually wins, [[The Points Mean Nothing|it doesn't really matter]]. They lampshade this for all they are worth, acting as though who wins what decides the fate of the world, and even play the theme to ''Chariots of Fire'' at the end. The trophy is, of course, known as the Meaningless Trophy.▼
** Which takes its lead from both versions of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]?''. The American version even says "Everything's made up and [[The Points Mean Nothing|the points don't matter]]." It's not uncommon for players to get "a billion points" or be awarded with things other than points.▼
* In backgammon, the doubling cube can be used to increase the value of a game. It's basically a "double or nothing" offer: A player offered a double can turn it down, at the cost of losing the current game.▼
* In politics, this too can be the case. 20 years of hard work will still lose to good advertisement more often than not and charisma is a far better tool than achievements. Plus achievements just before the election period seems to count more than achievements done in the start of the term. Let's avoid any particular examples, 'kay?▼
** You can also have the game changers. The ongoing depression is a big one. How well a politician handles it affects people a lot- if the person seems to be saying anything that makes sense, strikes the right tone, people will trust them a lot more, because it's better to show than tell. Your point score before matters a bit, but you might move 10 points up in the votes if you win this final character test.▼
** The "October Surprise" is a traditional version of this in American politics, especially presidential races. Elections are at the start of November; incidents and/or new information in the final month often render the entire race before that point moot.▼
* In many beauty pageants, one round (in reputable pageants it's generally the interview round, but it can also be the talent round - one imagines that in less reputable pageants it may be the swimsuit round) is worth a disproportionate percentage of contestants' final scores. It isn't ''quite'' as bad as the usual Golden Snitch because one contestant acing the important round doesn't prevent the other contestants from acing it too, making the competition hinge on the other rounds; but if one contestant does much better than the others she can win despite doing worse in all the other rounds, and if a contestant bombs in the important round, it doesn't matter if she aced all the others.▼
* In U.S. medical schools, grades in the preclinical years (if the school even uses a grading scheme at all) are worth significantly less than clinical year grades and USMLE national exam scores when applying for residency slots after graduation.▼
=== Sports ===
* Audiences often interpret games in this way, e.g. if a soccer player misses an open goal in the first half, it'll be forgotten, but if he misses an open goal in the last second, he'll be blamed for losing the game. Both misses were equally bad, but only the latter is seen as significant.
** It is very easy for the audience to forget (or simply not care) that in order for the one team to lose the game on the 'last play', the other team had to be good enough to get the game to a state where this matters. ie all that happened in the game up to that point actually matters a lot more than the 'last play'
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** If the caddy puts down ''less'' strokes and the golfer signs for it, the golfer is '''Disqualified'''. A golfer's honesty is [[Serious Business]].
* Who ''hasn't'' played a sports game recreationally where after a long period of forgetting to keep score, someone suggests "next point wins"?
▲== [[Real Life]] ==
▲* [[Truth in Television]]: this is essentially the way British university degrees used to work, and occasionally still do. Better really revise for those final exams, because they're the only thing that counts!
▲** Occasionally true for Canadian universities, too. One of the worst scenarios involved an 80% final and 20% for assignments (no midterm).
▲** Universities in general tend to do this; it isn't uncommon for %50 (or more) of the entire grade to rest on a single project or exam, meaning if you screw it up, you fail.
▲*** The reasoning is to check if the student really understands the material, which is especially important for technical subject like math and science. Homework, especially in upper division courses, tend to carry <20% of the grade, because it's more useful as a self-check.
▲** Also, for Bachelor's degrees (well, at some unis, at least), your first two years don't matter at all so long as you do well anough to get into Honours, which is the only thing that counts towards the final degree.
▲** This is still true for many schools and universities in Pakistan. It doesn't matter if you never show up for class, fail all the smaller tests, and never do your homework-so long as you did well on the exams, you passed, as said exams counted for 100% of your final grade.
▲* Until recently GCSEs and A-levels came in "finals" variants (now they are generally delivered in modules). This often resulted in the uncomfortable scenario of getting high marks for a given topic but these not counting for anything, and then not being able to remember it in sufficient detail two years on.
▲* In Scotland, it varies depending on the subjects and level of exams, but it's not uncommon for either all or the majority of your final grade to come from the final exams. Appeals based on earlier 'prelims' (sat under exam conditions but don't affect the final grade) are possible, and because you sit exams three times, getting progressively harder, you'll quite often have ''something'' from earlier years even if you fail the later ones, but an awful lot does depend on your performance in the final exam.
▲** There are also NABs for some exams - tests which are easier than the actual exam (about C-level questions for most), but which ''you must pass'' if you want to sit the final exam. For most subjects, you get a maximum of two resits (officially; you can sit papers under exam conditions which, if you fail, were 'just practice', but were the real thing if you pass - if the teacher's nice), but three fails and you've failed the course. What makes this worse is that for some subjects (maths is the one used here for examples of numbers, but it's not the only one), the NABs are based on a number of outcomes which must be passed individually, and with as few as 8 or 10 marks in some outcomes and a required percentage for each outcome to pass the NAB, you can lose 4 or 5 marks in the whole paper and still fail.
▲* The Irish points system is one of the worst scholarly scoring systems there is. All the work done in five or six years of secondary school mean squat; it all comes down to how well you do in eight to ten 3-hour exams crammed into two weeks at the end of the final year. Just the final year.
▲** You will note, however, that it's a single exam of the course which determines your final grade, not multiple aspects of the course, one of which is disproportionately graded. A straight example would be some of the courses which examine the student differently, but still disproportionately in favour of the exam: language exams require oral and aural examinations, while some courses require projects to be handed in in advance.
▲* The pool game of Nine Ball fits this trope perfectly. Unlike Straight Pool, where the winner needs to pocket 150 balls, or Eight Ball, where the 8 can only be pocketed after several other balls have been pocketed (sinking the 8 before that point results in a loss instead of a win), in Nine Ball, only the 9 ball itself truly matters. It's entirely possible for one player to sink most or all of the other balls, yet lose the game when s/he misses a shot and the other player subsequently pockets the 9 (directly if it's the only non-cue ball left on the table, or with a combination shot if it isn't).
▲* ComedySportz games are like this, especially at the high school league, in which the referee will award an arbitrary number of points to whoever wins the last game. Of course, since the entire point of CSz is the improv skills of the actletes and not who actually wins, it doesn't really matter. They lampshade this for all they are worth, acting as though who wins what decides the fate of the world, and even play the theme to ''Chariots of Fire'' at the end. The trophy is, of course, known as the Meaningless Trophy.
▲** Which takes its lead from both versions of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]?''. The American version even says "Everything's made up and the points don't matter." It's not uncommon for players to get "a billion points" or be awarded with things other than points.
▲* In backgammon, the doubling cube can be used to increase the value of a game. It's basically a "double or nothing" offer: A player offered a double can turn it down, at the cost of losing the current game.
▲* In politics, this too can be the case. 20 years of hard work will still lose to good advertisement more often than not and charisma is a far better tool than achievements. Plus achievements just before the election period seems to count more than achievements done in the start of the term. Let's avoid any particular examples, 'kay?
▲** You can also have the game changers. The ongoing depression is a big one. How well a politician handles it affects people a lot- if the person seems to be saying anything that makes sense, strikes the right tone, people will trust them a lot more, because it's better to show than tell. Your point score before matters a bit, but you might move 10 points up in the votes if you win this final character test.
▲** The "October Surprise" is a traditional version of this in American politics, especially presidential races. Elections are at the start of November; incidents and/or new information in the final month often render the entire race before that point moot.
▲* In many beauty pageants, one round (in reputable pageants it's generally the interview round, but it can also be the talent round - one imagines that in less reputable pageants it may be the swimsuit round) is worth a disproportionate percentage of contestants' final scores. It isn't ''quite'' as bad as the usual Golden Snitch because one contestant acing the important round doesn't prevent the other contestants from acing it too, making the competition hinge on the other rounds; but if one contestant does much better than the others she can win despite doing worse in all the other rounds, and if a contestant bombs in the important round, it doesn't matter if she aced all the others.
▲* In U.S. medical schools, grades in the preclinical years (if the school even uses a grading scheme at all) are worth significantly less than clinical year grades and USMLE national exam scores when applying for residency slots after graduation.
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[[Category:Narrative Devices]]
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