Gone Horribly Wrong: Difference between revisions

[[Pride|Well,]] [[Tempting Fate|let's]] [[Phlebotinum Rebel|see]] [[Turned Against Their Masters|here.]]

 

 

The variations are limitless. Perhaps the non-polluting energy source [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|actually]] taps into the delicately balanced forces locked in a [[Cosmic Keystone]] or drains the planet's [[Life Energy]]. Or the hunger-killing super-wheat is actually [http://www.exitmundi.nl/gmfood.htm a super-weed that destroys all ecosystems]. And that's for purely ''peaceful'' things. Weapons of any sort will have things go horribly wrong on a [[Apocalypse How|cataclysmic scale]]. The "completely loyal" robot workforce has a [[Isaac Asimov|programming flaw]] that makes them [[Turned Against Their Masters|revolt]]. Maybe the [[Super Soldier]] program [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|inherently causes insanity]], [[Mutants|mutation]], or plain old [[What Measure Is a Non Super|megalomania.]]

Expect these people to send out a [[Distress Call]] or chronicle the debacle in an [[Apocalyptic Log]], be visited by a group [[Closed Circle|whose car broke down,]] or have things go wrong when the stockholders/government oversight committee comes to shut them down.

 

 

 

[[Godzilla Threshold|Of course,]] it can [[From Bad to Worse|always get worse.]]

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* [[Daitarn 3]] and [[Neo-Human Casshern]]. Creating cyborgs who are superior in every way to normal humans? [[Sarcasm Mode|There is absolutely no way]] [[Turned Against Their Masters|this is going to backfire]].

* [[Franken Fran]]: Fran really just wants to help people, but she seldom thinks through the non-biological consequences of her operations.

** Though, admittedly, only half the time. {{spoiler|The rest [[Gone Horribly Right|goes horribly right.]]}}

* In [[Neon Genesis Evangelion]], the Second Impact (a cataclysmic event which changed the world forever) is strongly implied to have been caused by an experiment on a huge god-like being Gone Horribly Wrong.

** This begs the question of what kind of result did they think they would get. "I'll just stick this thingy into the huge god-like being that we don't under..."(Recording irreparably damaged from this point on)

*** Actually, it's probable that SEELE knew that {{spoiler|the awakening of Adam}} was inevitable from the Dead Sea Scrolls so they {{spoiler|set off Second Impact intentionally as the damage would have been much greater had contact with an Angel awakened him.}}

* Apparently getting used in experiments too much in [[Ginga Densetsu Weed]] caused Kaibutsu to be the monster he had become when we first see him.

 

== Comic Books ==

* Responsible for quite a few supervillian origins. For example:

* ''[[Empowered]]'''s superteam was looking for an easy win for the PR, so they try to bring down the obscure villain [[Complete Monster|Willy Pete]]. It doesn't go well. It doesn't go well ''at all''.

* [[Daredevil]]'s attempt to reform the Hand as its new leader in the ''Shadowlands'' storyline failed horribly {{spoiler|after the Hand's ''true'' leader, the demon known as The Beast, possessed him.}}

* In DC's ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'' event, {{spoiler|Barry Allen's attempt to recreate the [[Freak Lab Accident]] that made him [[The Flash]]}} goes horribly wrong and burns all of his skin off.

** The entire event happened because {{spoiler|[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Barry's attempt to save his mother from Zoom]] caused a [[Time Crash]].}}

* In the [[Marvel Universe]], there have been attempts to recreate Project Rebirth for decades ever since Dr. Erksine was killed just after enhancing Steve Rogers into [[Captain America (comics)]]. Unfortunately, they have all backfired, most often creating supervillain maniacs and monsters like the 1950s Captain America and Nuke.

 

 

== Film ==

* In the [[Dale Brown]] novel ''Wings of Fire'', the Night Stalkers were supposed to only go into Libya to destroy some missiles. Then {{spoiler|Paul dies in the process of stopping the missiles and Wendy goes missing fending off a Libyan retaliation.}}

** In ''Executive Intent'', a [[Kill Sat]] is used in an attempt to destroy a bunch of terrorist and the missiles they hijacked. {{spoiler|It misses and kills many civilians.}} Things get worse from there.

* In [[John Brunner]]'s book ''The Dramaturges of Yan'', a race of lonely aliens decided to convert their planet into a spaceship, using the rotary force of the planets moon. Guess what: {{spoiler|It shattered}} When they get a chance, they try again. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]]: {{spoiler|This time the planet its destroyed.}}

* ''Distant Rainbow'' by Strugatski Brothers: Rainbow is a name of lush planet which is used for experiments with teleportation. But one day the experiments {{spoiler|create the Deadly Wave, which begins to consume alll organics on planet from poles onwards, dooming it.}}

* In the children's book ''Fish Out of Water'' by Helen Palmer and P.D. Eastman, a boy is instructed to feed his goldfish only a certain amount of food, and no more. But the goldfish still looks hungry, so he gives him a little more, and then the fish starts growing and growing....

 

* ''Doctor Who'' has naturally dabbled in this, with a key example being the classic Third Doctor story ''Inferno''. A scientist team attempts to drill through the Earth's crust to access an energy pocket to be used for fuel, but the pocket happens to come with nasty side-effects; namely a toxic slime that reduces humans to primitive ape-men and a [[Apocalypse How|colossal volcanic explosion that will roast the entire planet]]. The episode mostly takes place in an parallel universe, so we get to see the Earth (well, a fascist-controlled version of it, but Earth nonetheless) get destroyed in real-time with loving [[Tear Jerker|detail]]. Thankfully the Doctor was able to stop it before the cataclysm came to pass in his world.

* This trope is used in a light, funny way in the episode of ''[[The Big Bang Theory]]'' entitled "The Vengeance Formulation." To get back at Kripke for humiliating him on NPR, Sheldon devises a scheme. He concocts a solution with the help of Leonard and Raj that has the ability to slowly expand and get all foamy, and puts some in the ceiling tiles of Kripke's office. However, the plan goes horribly wrong when Kripke enters his office accompanied by the president of the university and the board of directors. The foam breaks through the ceiling and drenches all of them. [[It Got Worse|It gets even worse]] when a pre-made video of Sheldon [[Evil Gloating|gloating evilly]] comes on Kripke's monitor, so the bigwigs now all know that he did it. He also names Leonard and Raj as accomplices.

** ''Epitaph One'' is a bonus episode set in a future where ''everything'' has gone horribly horribly wrong.

* Pretty much all science on ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' with the possible exception of Warren's robots. Whether it's mutant steroid fish men, demonic Frankensteinian cyborgs, the animated dead looking for a girlfriend, or just the plan to collect the school library info on a database, if it's on the Hellmouth it will work and then start killing people.

** "Half a Life": They attempt to revitalise a star, and instead it goes supernova.

** "New Ground": the test a "soliton wave", which will allow ships a warp without a need for a warp drive, but {{spoiler|it destroys the test ship and threatens to destroy the target planet as well.}}

 

== Music. ==

* Sting's ''Something the Boy Said.'' At the end of the song, all the characters who started out so blithely and fearlessly are dead except for the singer {{spoiler|and even he is too terrified to look behind him as he leaves the scene of the disaster, in case he sees his own corpse.}}

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* Happens all the time in ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]''.

* Each Lineage in ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'' started with one human trying to raise the dead for whatever reason - companionship, curiosity, slavery - and getting bitten hard in the ass by this trope. Prometheans themselves can fall prey to this trope, as they need to produce another Promethean in order to complete their [[To Become Human|Pilgrimage]]—and if they screw it up, they spawn a number of [[Came Back Wrong|Pandorans]] that will turn on them and try to eat them alive.

** Someone asked along the line why, 40,000 years in the future, the Imperium seems to not have any robots at all, at most an automated defense array or like that. Because, tens of thousands of years in "the past", they DID have robots all over the galaxy.. Until they [[Turned Against Their Masters|decided they didn't want to be slaves any more]] and started a war that almost decimated the human race. Thus started a ban that, millenia later, has been incorporated as sacred law into the tech-worshiping religion of the Mechanicum. That's basically the [[Crapsack World|best case scenario]] when something goes wrong here.

* Everything wrong with the universe in ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' is a result of someone lighting some blue touch paper he shouldn't have, and breaking the universe as a result. The False Awakening is a good example - it resulted from an impatient mage's attempt to ''force'' her Sleeper boyfriend to Awaken, and exists as a contagious form of twisted ascension that drives its bearers to destroy themselves and large chunks of the scenery. It can be cured by a true Awakening, but if these were ''easy'' to induce, there wouldn't ''be'' False Awakenings...

 

* This is the plot of a lot of the thrill rides at [[Disney Theme Parks]]. It started with [[Star Wars|Star Tours]], [[Newer Than They Think|which opened in 1987]]. Before that, the "plot" was to just explore the place. When Star Tours opened, almost every ride afterwards followed the same concept.

 

== Video Games ==

*** [[Badass Normal|Leo]] wasn't part of the experiment. That gives it a 50% Omnicidal Maniac output.

*** And they learned how to do it right after they tried it on Kefka, anyway.

* In the ''[[Geneforge]]'' world, experiments go wrong so often that laboratories, workshops, and schools are designed with the expectation that this will happen sooner or later. Some are built on uninhabited island, some are [[Collapsing Lair|built underground]], and some just rely on thick doors to [[Sealed Evil in a Can|seal the place off]].

** Which makes the Shapers the most [[Genre Savvy]] and sensible group on this page, since they know what they do is dangerous and try to control the experiments and consequences as much as possible. Almost all the strife and catastrophes in the series come from intentional misuse of Shaping.

** And some of those Shapers used their [[Genre Savvy]] to contribute to making things worse. The Geneforge itself is a history of things gone horribly right, from Trakov to the latest Ur-monsters. Even the rebels most interested in applying its powers admit that its as terrible as it is successful.

* ''[[Half Life]].'' A routine... [[Buffy-Speak|whatever-it-was-they-were-trying-to-do]] procedure, but "Unforeseen Consequences" happen.

** [[Concerned|FROHMAN!]]

** In the same universe, [[Portal (series)|GLaDOS]] can be considered an experiment Gone Horribly Wrong.

* In the ''[[Fallout]]'' series, most of the underground Vaults seemingly designed to spare the population were in fact huge-scale social experiments designed to test their residents in order to determine their suitability and effectiveness in the event of the populace escaping the war on ''starships''. As the player character, you can locate and explore several of these vaults... most of which are abandoned, in ruins, littered with skeletal corpses and containing plenty of evidence to suggest that these experiments went very ''very'' badly wrong. Considering that the nature of most of these experiments took the form of sadistic and largely pointless psychological torture, [[Foregone Conclusion|this is not entirely surprising]]. And then there's the ones that had [[Gone Horribly Right]] instead...

* ''[[Star Control]] 2'' has several examples: first, the Slylandro Probes. The Slylandro meant to program the Probes to go out and make contact with other alien species, and in the meantime, self-replicate using nearby raw materials. They accidentally set the priority for "self-replicate" above "make contact", unfortunately, meaning that the Probes see ''everything'' as raw materials to be used in self-replicating (the Slylandro are horrified when they learn of this). The other example is the Mycon, a race of sentient fungi engineered by the [[Precursors]] as a terraforming system... that, due to several millenia of being left to its own devices with no input, now terraforms in reverse, seeking out fertile, beautiful planets and turning them into hellish firestorms in which to make more Mycon.

* ''[[Portal 2]]'' halfway through the game introduces the origins of GLaDOS and how she became the overhead of Aperture Science. {{spoiler|1=Cave Johnson had his secretary, Caroline, be uploaded to a computer should he die before he could be uploaded. Caroline didn't want this at all, but she was forced against her will and essentially became immortal and stuck running the facility forever as GLaDOS. She then proceeded to kill all the scientists that tried to control her and make test chambers full of death traps.}}

 

* [[The Good Witch]]: [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]] when you give magic powers to a transgirl who's bullied by apparently everyone in town? Her turning into a psychopath that makes [[No More Heroes|Travis Touchdown,]] [[Villain Protagonist|of all people,]] look like a candidate for sainthood!

* Pretty much anytime Riff begins playing around with [[Time Travel]] or [[Another Dimension|dimensional portals]] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', things go horribly wrong ''fast''.

* ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'': {{spoiler|Turning Xykon into a lich was partially done to give Redcloak some leverage on Xykon. It didn't work.}}

* ''[[Homestuck]]'': Jade gave John four [[Infinity+1 Sword|Infinity Plus One Swords]] attached to an Infinity Plus One Bunny for his birthday. She didn't count on it falling into the hands of [[Omnicidal Maniac|Jack Noir]], giving him the firepower to become [[The Starscream]] and promptly [[One-Man Army|tear their Sburb session to shreds]]. And that's just the beginning of what led to their game session becoming [[Unwinnable By Mistake|unwinnable]].

 

== Web Original ==

* In Episode 666 of ''[[Bowser's Kingdom]]'', [[Super Mario RPG|Geno]] believes that the Zombie Apocalypse occurred because of the [[Resident Evil|Parasol Corporation]]'s attempts to create an unbreakable umbrella.

* Agent Fix from the [[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]] originated in a story where he was part of a [[Super Soldier]] program where the participants had their minds wiped in an attempt to ensure their loyalty to the corrupt and evil government. Unfortunately, there was one side-effect to the drugs... it didn't wipe residual emotions, meaning that when a bunch of super soldiers similar to Wolverine woke up with no memories but surrounded by people they hated, the result was a massacre.

 

== Western Animation ==

* The Nanites in ''[[Generator Rex]]'' were created to improve life on Earth and the human condition. Then something happened at the primary Nanite research facility that released a batch of Nanites w/ incomplete programming, infecting ''every living thing on Earth''. Now every living thing on Earth, from people to bunny rabbits has a chance of spontaneously mutating into a horrible monster.

* ''[[Adventure Time]]'' has Princess Bubblegum and her Frankenstein's Idiot, Lemongrab. She created him in her laboratory as the heir to the throne, in case something happened to her. Well... he didn't turn out as planned. Instead of a proper, reasonable heir, she ended up with a screaming, brain-damaged, mentally challenged, borderline autistic sourpuss with a pathological obsession with sending people to the dungeon. She stuck him in a castle outside of the kingdom, but he came back with she was transformed into a child, as she was "too young" to rule the kingdom. He ended up screaming at everybody and sending all of the candy people to the dungeon for one million years. All of this because something went wrong with that life serum...

 

== Real Life ==

** Actually, guys responsible for the cataclysm wanted to modernize the reactor without shutting it down, so they turned off automatic safety measures which would turn reactor off if it would ever go critical.

** Chernobyl was actually an attempt to test safety measures, but in order to do so, they turned off the automatic safeties and violated their own safety procedures multiple times. And the reactor was poorly designed to boot, so the power actually increased momentarily during the emergency shutdown, which stopped it from shutting down fully because the control rods got stuck by temperature warped channels.

* [[Church of Happyology|Scientology]], according to some ex-Scientologists has gone horribly, ''horribly'' wrong since Dave Miscavage took over. Ex-members say things have been steadily going downhill since the death of [[wikipedia:Lisa McPherson|Lisa McPherson]] caused Dave Miscavage to become an [[Domestic Abuser|abusive]] [[Paranoia Fuel|paranoid]] [[Small Name, Big Ego|dictator]] and it pains them to see the religion that helped them through some very dark times become a [[Black and Gray Morality|dark and twisted]] parody of itself.

** For example, the infamous practice of "disconnecting" or completely cutting all ties with people who are critical of Scientology originally meant to sever ties with ''abusive and controlling influences'', the equally infamous "SPs" or Suppressive Persons.

** Stalin also had the biggest seed deposit in the world destroyed in the 1930s and thousands of Russian biologists executed or sent to gulags in his attempt to promote Lysenkoism, a form of the already long discredited Lamarckism that should be the Socialist rival to "Burgeoise" Darwinism. In the next decades Soviet crop production plunged so hard that the USSR had to import foreign wheat, despite controlling one of the most extensive and fertile wheat fields (the Ukraine's) in the world. Proof you can't force politics on Mother Nature. (The story of the scientists at one of these seed deposits, in Leningrad, during that city's 900-day siege during [[World War II]], is told in [[The Decemberists]]' song "When the War Came," off of ''The Crane Wife'').

* Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.

* [[wikipedia:Olestra|Olestra]], a fat substitute created in the late nineties, infamously used in WOW! brand potato chips. By "infamously", we mean it was found to have certain side effects, including stomach cramps, and "[[Bring My Brown Pants|anal leakage]]."

** [[Jeff Foxworthy]] talked about this in his bit about [[Side Effects Include|side effects]] of popular drugs and other products. "Anal seepage! That's not even fun to ''say''!"

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:This Index Is Cursed]]

[[Category:Stock Phrases]]

[[Category:Make My Index Live]]

[[Category:Index Failure]]