Hoist by His Own Petard/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The villain is defeated and killed by his own weapon or plan.

  • Straight: The villain produces a grenade and prepares to throw it at the hero, but it explodes and kills him instead.
  • Exaggerated: The villain has constructed a death ray on another planet and is planning to destroy Earth, but it explodes, destroying the planet he is on.
  • Justified: The weapon has some kind of defect the villain didn't anticipate.
    • The weapon had an inherit flaw that the villain could not fix.
  • Inverted: The hero's weapon backfires, killing him. The villain is completely unharmed.
  • Subverted: The villain's weapon backfires, but he is Not Quite Dead and uses it again to kill the hero.
  • Doubly Subverted: The hero is also Not Quite Dead and manages to use the villain's weapon to kill the villain, for good this time.
  • Zig Zagged: The villain actually intends for the weapon to kill him because he's planning for a suicide attack or take the hero with him, but it explodes at the wrong time or when the hero has made his escape.
  • Parodied: The villain's weapon kills him... because he had his head stuck down the barrel trying to see why it wasn't working.
  • Deconstruction: The villain's weaponry comes complete with inherent flaws and is highly unstable, meaning that it could kill anyone at any time; it's a turkey shoot whether it'll even work properly. The villain is aware of this, but the villain is willing to take that chance.
  • Reconstruction: Unfortunately for him, the villain is just highly incompetent at using it.
  • Averted: The villain eschews weaponry, preferring to kill his victims with his bare hands.
  • Enforced: "We've got to have the villain beaten somehow! Let's just make his machinery backfire."
  • Lampshaded: "I knew... I should have gone... with the extended warranty..." [Villain dies]
  • Invoked: The heroes provoke the villain into firing his weapon repeatedly, knowing that it'll eventually overheat and explode, killing him.
  • Defied: "Minion, make sure that the engineers double, triple and quadruple check that device. I don't want it to blow up in my face when I'm using it."
    • Alternatively: All dangerous machinery is operated by redshirts. All powerful weaponry is built so that it can only aim outside the fortress.
  • Discussed: "How come these villains always make their machines so shoddy? You'd think they'd learn from all the bad guys who've blown up using their own devices before them."
  • Conversed: "Wow, the villains in these stories really need to institute some tighter quality control checks."

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