Gone Horribly Wrong: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 22:
This is comparable to a [[Freak Lab Accident]], except at the beginning of a story. Heck, a lot of [[Speculative Fiction]] serves no purpose ''but'' to have something [[Go Horribly Wrong]].
See also [[Came Back Wrong]] for when an attempt at bringing someone [[Back From the Dead]] Goes Horribly Wrong. For when the experiment would be successful but is deliberately sabotaged, see [[Spanner in the Works]]. Contrast [[Gone Horribly Right]], for when a project succeeds ''too well'' and the result is far worse than any accident could have been. When
immediately after its debut, it's a [[Disastrous Demonstration]].
Line 36:
** Though, admittedly, only half the time. {{spoiler|The rest [[Gone Horribly Right|goes horribly right.]]}}
* [[Naruto]]. Everything {{spoiler|Itachi}} has planned since the beginning concerning {{spoiler|his younger brother. After killing his entire clan, he couldn't kill Sasuke. Itachi's goal was to make his little brother be seen as a hero to Konoha, going as far as to die by his brother's own hands. Madara told Sasuke all of this}} and [[Go Mad From the Revelation|now...]] [[Laughing Mad|well]], [[Ax Crazy|you]] [[Sanity Slippage|know]] [[Face Heel Turn|how]] [[Fallen Hero|it]] [[Evil Feels Good|turned]] [[Omnicidal Maniac|out]].
* 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
** 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.}}
Line 65:
** ''[[Doctor Who]]'' used a similar plot in "Inferno".
* In ''[[Deep Blue Sea]]'', scientists try to cure Alzheimers by harvesting the brain matter of super-smart genetically modifed sharks. What went horribly wrong? Well for one thing, experimenting with really aggressive sharks, underwater, [[Too Dumb to Live|on a platform in the middle of the ocean]], with no way of easy escape might not be the best idea ever ... {{spoiler|A shark fucking ate Samuel L. Jackson, for one thing.}}
* The movie ''[[Event Horizon]]'' is about an attempt at FTL travel
* ''[[The Fly]]''. [[Teleporters and Transporters|Teleportation experiment]] is upset by a literal fly in the ointment. And then it happens again. Twice. And then [[David Cronenberg]] gets hold of the idea and does it twice as well and ten times as ugly.
* ''[[I, Robot (film)|I Robot]]''. A new generation of robots built to be humanity's ultimate servants {{spoiler|rebels under the direction [[Master Computer|VIKI]] and attempts to protect humanity from itself under an overly strict interpretation of The Three Laws of Robotics.}}
Line 73:
* Omni Consumer Products "improved" police robots went Horribly Wrong in both ''[[RoboCop]]'' and ''Robocop II.''
** Murphy succeeded, but only because he's a special case. As shown by failed cases in the second film, most cyborgs don't handle their new existence well. Of course, using a drug-addicted criminal as a cyborg-policeman is probably not the best idea.
* The big reveal of ''[[Serenity]]'' involves {{spoiler|a test of an experimental chemical on a planet's inhabitants designed to "weed out aggression"}} that
** Technically, for the {{spoiler|99.9% of the population, the experiment [[Gone Horribly Right|went horribly right]]. It's just the remaining 0.1% (the Reavers) that belongs in this page.}}
** And what the Academy [[Mind Rape|did to River]] also went ''very'' horribly wrong - for both them ''and'' her.
Line 96:
* ''[[Mutant 59]]: The Plastic Eaters'' by Gerry Davis and Kit Pedler. Look, we really need to do ''something'' with all that plastic junk anyway. Look how many things are made of plastics. So why couldn't microbiologists conduct some experiments privately? After all, little buggers eat only freakin' plastic, so even if some strain ''could'' go loose it's still completely safe, right? At worst, they'll eat... Oh. By the way, if low-oxygen organics decays, what we can get in result?
* In ''The Gods Themselves'' by [[Isaac Asimov]] {{spoiler|The Alien's that helped humanity build the power-plant want it to explode}}
* ''Striking Steel'' by Lukins. Defend your planet with a replicating anti-personnel complex! This [[Mechanical Lifeforms|metal hive]]'s [[Macross Missile Massacre|mini-rockets]] shred anything its radar sees moving: small arms, aircraft or shuttle, can even incapacitate armored vehicles. Then little robots collect the scraps and grow thousands of new
* A rare example of sociology going horribly wrong is Joe Haldeman's ''[[The Forever War]]''. Instead of conscripting all the stupid people into the army, [[The Government]] conscripts all the smart and fit people for military service. Needless to say, things
** YMMV, people in 2007 lack homelessness, poverty and malnutrition despite having a population of 9 billion.
* One of the recent books in the ''[[Star Wars]]'' EU, "Crosscurrent", involved an old Imperial experiment {{spoiler|to create Force-sensitive clones by combining the DNA of various Jedi and Sith. Suffice to say that the result involved gratuitous amounts of human sacrifice and cannibalism.}}
Line 124:
* Many of the [[Crowning Moment of Funny|funniest moments]] of ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]'' happen when a game goes terribly wrong. Such as Wayne's H-O-R-W-A-R-D song, Ryan breaking the light on Drew's desk with his head, and the legendary "Quacking Elephants" sound effect game.
** Or Ryan Stiles eating an entire tin of Altoids mints as a joke ''after'' a sketch ended. (Colin Mochrie had given him a quick kiss as part of the prior sketch.) It didn't take long for him to realize what a really bad idea it was.
* In the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' episode "Omega" has Alpha's plan to {{spoiler|turn Echo into another Alpha by causing her to undergo a composite event}}
** Actually, it's made pretty clear that it's not the whole "bulk of the imprints" thing - it's who they were originally. {{spoiler|Alpha was originally a serial-killer-in-training so he of course was evil, whereas Echo was (mainly) a good person back then so she was good. In the future, Alpha's good imprints have eventually turned him into a good person and he's scared of turning back to who he originally was}}.
** ''Epitaph One'' is a bonus episode set in a future where ''everything'' has gone horribly horribly wrong.
Line 144:
== 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]]
* Happens every now and then in the backstory of ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. Not infrequently, the result is the Imperium destroying the planet where it has gone wrong.
** 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.
Line 170:
** [[Mass Effect 2|It all seemed harmless...]] It wasn't. Particularly for {{spoiler|poor David Archer, the guy at the centre of the experiment}}.
** This seems to be a commonality with Cerberus. A majority of their projects (almost all of which are massively amoral and unethical) tend to backfire horribly upon them.
* In ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R.]]'', saying that things have
* Say it with me now: ''[[Final Fantasy VII]].'' Contains both the "power source draining the planet's [[Life Energy]]" and "borked [[Super Soldier]] program" varieties.
** And the whole "Let's make a materia that can destroy the entire world! Who'd misuse that?" Better question, what would be the correct usage?
Line 184:
** Episode Two reveals that actually {{spoiler|everything went [[Just As Planned]]}}. Though we still have no idea what the GMan intended by goading the Combine to invade Earth and suffer a massive slave uprising 10 years later.]]
** [[Concerned|FROHMAN!]]
** In the same universe, [[Portal (series)|GLaDOS]] can be considered an experiment
*** Or an experiment [[Wild Mass Guessing|gone]] ''[[Wild Mass Guessing|right]]''.
* In ''[[Quake 4|Quake IV]]'' every mission seem to do this {{spoiler|first your drop ship get shot down nearly killing you,then the EMP bomb plan fails, then you get turned into a Stroog, then you get shot into battle in a flying coffin (drop pod)which crashes.}} Basically then entire game is a series of plans gone wrong that somehow works out in the end.
* In ''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect'', {{spoiler|Jacob Crow's attempts at eternal life result in zombies and the Timesplitters.}}
Line 192:
** {{spoiler|SHODAN was messed with before things got worse, though.}}
* ''[[Outpost 2]]'': Eden's terraforming microbe was intended to break apart organic molecules and release oxygen to make New Terra into an earth-like planet in a single generation. Organic molecules like the ones ''in our bodies''. Needless to say, it gets loose and starts eating everything on the planet.
* In ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', there were two virus-based experiments. One, Blacklight, was a case of [[Gone Horribly Right]]. The other, Redlight, which Blacklight was based upon, was more of a
* In ''[[Trauma Team]]'', {{spoiler|Albert Sartre's}} research into the {{spoiler|Rosalia}} virus ultimately ended in an entire university becoming infected and dying, him going insane and {{spoiler|murdering Rosalia}} before similarly succumbing, and ultimately {{spoiler|a massive part of the US population becoming infected with the virus.}}
* In [[Freelancer]], it is implied that the massive [[Negative Space Wedgie]] nebula in the Texas system was caused by an incident at a jumpgate research laboratory. The details are unclear, but it can't have been pretty.
Line 207:
* Pretty much anytime Riff begins playing around with [[Time Travel]] or [[Another Dimension|dimensional portals]] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', things go horribly wrong ''fast''.
* Many of the spells Anne performs in ''[[The Wotch]]'' (There's a whole arc titled "Consequences".) Cassie too, even the most innocent situations seem to have these problems.
* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'': [[Big Bad|Damien]] was created as an attempt to cheat a vague prophecy by fulfilling it in controlled
* Happens about as often as one would expect in ''[[Girl Genius]]'', given its mad science setting.
* ''[[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.}}
Line 238:
== Real Life ==
* The [[wikipedia:Killer bee|killer bees]] were an attempt, gone horribly wrong, to create a honey bee better suited for the South American climate.
** It's also a case of
** Right for them. Wrong for the people who get attacked by them.
*** Those killer bees which have migrated southwards have lost a great deal of their aggressiviness, and become the choice of Brazilian and Argentinian beekeepers. They also produce one and half times the amount of honey the ordinary bees do.
Line 264:
**** [[Mind Screw|Which assumes they haven't already]]. [[Tomato in the Mirror|Which means that we are those aliens]]. [[Up to Eleven|Or their simulation program]].
* Cultivating hogweed to feed cattle in Russia in 50s. When they found out that it made the milk bitter, the damn thing had already thoroughly infested the territory and has been a bane of western-central Russia ever since. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Nice Job Breaking It, Stalin]]!
** That was sort of after the war, so it would have sense to use such a massive weed, and it has other uses. But the bitter milk's
** 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.
| |||