Hoist by His Own Petard/Video Games

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Examples of Hoist by His Own Petard in Video Games include:

  • Can occur in a interesting way in Ape Escape 3: Certain monkeys can do a special attack that knocks the player on his/her butt and drop their equipped item. It's limited to the Stun-Club and the Monkey-Net. If, let's say, get's caught by your own monkey-net, what do you think happens? You get sent back to the hub-level. Truly hoisted by the player's own petard!
  • Stross of Dead Space 2 pulls a Face Heel Turn to start the third act of the game. He does so by poking Action Girl Ellie's eye out with a screwdriver. When he goes to do the same thing to Isaac, Stross promptly gets the same screwdriver pierced into his brain.
  • In Age of Empires II (Conqueror's Expansion for sure) there is the Petard unit. It is a large, bulky guy carrying two giant kegs (looks like one in each arm) of gunpowder, it then walks into (say) a wall and explodes, killing the unit and doing a good deal of damage, destroying most weak buildings.
    • Plays the trope straight in that, if the Petard is attacked and killed, the unit explodes anyway, leading to a literal case of Hoist by His Own Petard.
    • Spamming these is a quick way to take down most buildings, and don't worry, We Have Reserves .
  • Many in Bioshock:
    • The first incident, you just hear it in an audio-diary and see the result: sinister detached Mad Scientist Dr. Suchong is killed by one of the Big Daddies he's been working to produce, when his attempts to make them "imprint" on the Little Sisters unexpectedly succeeds. The second time, you're there to see it happen: "Atlas"/Fontaine being mobbed and killed by a whole gang of Little Sisters armed with syringes... Definitely creepy.
    • After you kill Sander Cohen, take his photograph. Since the entire mission for Cohen rests on killing his "apprentices" and taking their photos, the name of the achievement, appropriately enough, is "Irony".
    • In fact the main character, Jack, himself was more or less a creations of Fontaine's meant to help him take over Rapture. In the end he becomes the very thing that leads to Fontaine's downfall. But it gets more ironic - it seems Jack is a Manchurian Agent, programmed to obey any command that starts with the words, "Will you kindly". When Rapture's creator Andrew Ryan tells him to "kill" via this method, Jack obediently does so - beating Ryan to death with a golf club.
    • Nitro Splicers plus the Telekinesis Plasmid is a very literal example of this trope.
  • In Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Dracula's power is borrowed to form the Dominus Glyph. Shanoa kills him with it.
    • This trope is used doubly for Barlowe, as he not only gets killed by his own student/"daughter"/experiment, but ALSO by his own moves if you have the foresight to pull it off of him mid-fight.
    • In one of the bad endings of Dawn of Sorrow, Celia Fortner kills Mina in front of Soma, hoping to trigger his transformation into Dracula. She succeeds. Pity that she then ends up being the first victim of the new Dark Lord.
      • The "Mina" that was killed was actually just a fake. But Soma won't know it unless he satisfies the conditions for the good ending.
  • In Devil May Cry 4, you can catch and throw back Credo's giant throwing spears which not only deals a great deal of damage but also makes him vulnerable for some time.
  • Tekken: When Kazuya Mishima was a kid, his father, Heihachi, tossed him into a ravine so he would man up. He managed to survive and climb out after making a Deal with the Devil, and defeated Heihachi in the first game, then proceeded to throw his father down the same ravine.
  • Far Cry: Instincts has Jack Carver, infected with a beast-man mutagen, face down the Mad Scientist behind the whole project. The scientist has a group of animal-human hybrids at his beck and call, and orders them to attack Jack. By this time, however, Jack's killed so many mooks and bosses that the beasts view him as the alpha, turn on the mad scientist, and tear him to shreds.
  • Done in The King of Fighters '97, in the Sacred Weapons Team ending. Orochi is on the ropes, and uses his power to force Iori into the Blood Riot, commanding him to kill Kyo and Chizuru. This backfires on him when Iori grabs Orochi instead, giving Kyo and Chizuru time to finish Orochi off.
    • Done again in The King of Fighters XI. After you defeat The Dragon Shion, Magaki pulls Shion into a portal and emerges for the final battle. After his defeat, Magaki opens the portal again to escape... and Shion throws a spear into his chest from inside it.
  • There are a number of bosses in the later The Legend of Zelda games that can only be defeated by reflecting their own attacks back at them. One such battle with Ganon resembles a very deadly game of Pong.
  • Most notably in Mega Man 2, wherein Metal Man can be OHKO'ed by his own weapon. For those wondering how you can fight Metal Man with his own weapon, towards the end of the game in Dr. Wily's castle, you re-encounter all of the Boss Robots again in rapid succession.
    • Gate, Big Bad of Mega Man X 6, was literally struck down by Sigma, who he himself resurrected. Whether or not Gate actually survived is never elaborated, as he was either rebuilt (and forgiven) by his former colleague Alia or not.
    • Dr. Weil of Mega Man Zero built a space satellite that will destroy any inhabitable area outside of his empire. Too bad he has a Bastard Understudy that decided to take matters into his own hands. Yet Dr. Weil survives, even though he's the prime target of the Kill Sat that was so powerful, it leveled an entire city. When he merged with Ragnarok's core to destroy Zero, he gained it's weaknesses as well as it's strength. As a result, when the Satellite exploded, Weil perished in the explosion, but the reason all the crap in Mega Man ZX happened was a result of various factions trying to exploit Model W - the remains of the Ragnarok satellite after it was demolished. No points for guessing who's been pulling the strings the whole time.
    • ROM Hack Rock Man 4 Minus Infinity has the Toad Spell, which is two of the bosses' weakness. It turned the debris Dust Man inhaled into toads which damages him when he inhales it in. It also turned Toad Man, who also used it, into a easy to squish toad.
    • In fact, every time you use a robot master's weapon, it's an example of this trope towards Dr. Wily.
  • The entire Kirby franchise falls under this, since you tend to spend almost the entire game hoisting enemies by their own petards by spitting their projectiles back at them, or copying and using their attacks against them. Particularly notable is the Miracle Matter boss in Kirby 64, a transforming 20-sided die lookalike that turns the tables and mimics the abilities you've been copying and using throughout the game, but at the same time can only be damaged by the exact same ability he's using to attack you.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of The Betrayer, Myrkul is either given eternal rest by the spirit eater, or devoured by him, depending on the players choice. The spirit eater is Myrkul's own creation, and for extra irony, the existence of the spirit eater was intended to give him immortality by abusing Gods Need Prayer Badly and ensuring he always had at least one person remember him. This is lampshaded with his last words "A final irony, even in this." (The player can Take a Third Option ensuring he fades away, but where is the fun in that?)
    • Unfortunately, the developers Did Not Do the Research here, as both Akachi's Rebellion and Myrkul's death happened before Ao instated Gods Need Prayer Badly, so he'd have had no way of knowing this would be possible when he created the spirit eater.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Colonel Volgin, who has the ability to course electricity through his body, gets killed by a bolt of lightning. It's lampshaded with Snake saying, "Fried by a bolt of lightning, a fitting end".
    • It's made even more interesting in how, throughout the game, he commonly chants "Kuwabara, kuwabara", a Japanese expression meant to ward off lightning. In the final battle against him, however, when a storm rolls in, he not only neglects to say it, he outright MOCKS the lightning!
  • The final boss in Painkiller is Lucifer, but he is a Puzzle Boss who cannot be directly shot to death. Instead, you have to deflect his thrown sword back to him.
  • In Super Robot Wars, Wilhelm von Juergen committed a mistake by putting Lamia Loveless into the core of ODE. Not only this slows down her assimilation because she's not a complete human, her willpower causes her to refuse being assimilated and pretty much wrecks the harmonious order of Bartolls (this is signified in the game with very high moral drop). It is no wonder that it tried rectifying things by doing a Player Punch.
  • In the Metroid Prime series, the titular Prime can only be destroyed by the very Phazon it produces. In the first game, Samus defeats it by standing in the pools of Phazon it excretes, thus activating the Hyper Beam. In the second, Samus has no compatible suit, but she can absorb motes of free-floating Phazon released by Dark Samus for the same effect. In the third, she's locked into Hypermode by the environment on Phaaze, so blasting Phazon at the enemy is pretty much all she can do. One wonders why a creature that was mutated and enhanced by, which produces, and at one point became composed of the stuff can be hurt lethally by blasts of it.
    • Because the substance is an incredible energy source that supercharges normal weapons. It also helps that it's been described as 'weaponized' phazon.
    • At this point it's safe to say that the main purpose of Samus' hyper-adaptable armorsuit is to find a way of making any gadgetry she stumbles across into implausibly devastating armaments. The grapple-beam gets replaced with industrial lifting equipment in Metroid Prime, but by Metroid Prime 3, it can be adapted to suck the life out of enemies, with a side order of paralysis. As with many examples on this page, 'overloading' something with more of whatever it likes is a popular method of Petard-Hoisting, but Samus Aran could weaponize a Brita filter.
  • Happens many, many times in the Resident Evil series.
    • Wesker is gored by the Tyrant he releases in Resident Evil (This is later retconned) to make it his plan.
    • Carter is killed by the Tyrant he releases in Resident Evil: Outbreak File #2.
    • Ozwell Spencer is murdered by Wesker, the man he genetically engineered to make into a god.
  • In MadWorld, if a boss has a fancy weapon, chances are Jack is going to use that weapon as part of a gruesome and painful finishing move.
    • Also, Leo started the Death Watch competition in order to test his father's new virus and vaccine, choosing this method of testing because he was fascinated by the games and considered them to be fun. He is eventually killed by the winner of the competition, by being cut with a chainsaw and pushed off of the giant floating stadium which was where the final match had taken place. The spoilered section is not because of the death, but because of the plot.
    • Also, the Black Baron (the pimp that introduces the Bloodbath Challenges) is always used by his silent girlfriend to demonstrate the challenge's defining death trap. He comes back every time, of course. After the final boss fight with him, his girlfriend tosses a spike bat at his head, which Jack promptly picks up to bat the Baron flying into the dartboard used in the Man Darts challenges, just as he did to tons of mooks before.
  • In Killer7, Curtis Blackburn is executed when Dan Smith sets off his evisceration machine, which guts him and hangs up his corpse like it did the little girls he was organ-farming.
  • In Gunstar Heroes, the evil Emperor takes the gems to awaken an ancient weapon of destruction, only for said weapon to hit him with an energy beam from the gems, then wipe him and his army out in the final cutscene.
  • Toyed with in any game where one can rocket jump, Team Fortress 2 for example, where one is literally hoisted by one's own explosive weapon. Of course, if your health is too low, your corpse will be making the landing.
    • Engineers can be killed by their own sentry guns if they get in the way of its target.
    • Also, Pyros can airblast several of the projectiles in the game back at the person who shot them (or anybody else, for that matter).
  • Such deaths are Silent Hill's favorite way of doling out Karmic Death. Among other things:
    • In Silent Hill 1, Dahlia gets fried by the very god she was trying to summon, and Kaufman, if you saved him earlier, gets dragged to hell by Lisa.
    • Done rather bizarrely in Silent Hill 2, when the twin Pyramid Heads will commit suicide on their own weapons once James comes to terms with the truth.
    • In Silent Hill 3, Vincent insults Claudia at an inopportune moment and earns a knife in the back.
      • Emphasizing the above example, he turns his back toward Claudia as he tells Heather, who is on his other side, to kill Claudia, who has just hinted (and he seems to get it) that she is willing to kill him if he gets in her way, which seems to guarantee she'd be willing to kill him if he actually tries to go so far as to kill her, which is exactly what he's indirectly trying to do through Heather. He so much brought about his own death that Claudia's action could almost be justified as self-defense, if we didn't know she probably had the situation well under control and didn't have to fear anything from Vincent's threat.
      • Claudia herself, is of course, killed birthing the God.
        • Possibly subverted. Claudia dies similarly to Dahlia, but it's almost more of a suicide than a possibly unexpected side effect. Claudia appears to know for a fact that if she swallows the fetus, she will die, but she's willing to make that sacrifice. Where usually this Trope seems like a type of ironic justice when concerning villains, Claudia's death seems more like an emphasis on what she's willing to sacrifice for her cause. But then, she's not exactly a Card Carrying Villain.
    • And in Silent Hill 4, Andrew DeSalvo is locked into a cell of the prison where he'd acted as its sadistic warden, and later brutally murdered by one of its prisoners, Walter Sullivan.
  • Viking: Battle for Asgard: Freya would have probably lived and managed to avoid screwing over the entire pantheon if she had just lived up to her promise to free Skarin so he could earn entry into Valhalla.
  • In the MMORPG Ragnarok Online, the 3rd Job Class Warlock has a skill called Chain Lightning, which bounces off of enemies. It's quite powerful, but the thing is, if no enemies are left, the Chain Lightning will bounce back on you, even in non Player Versus Player maps. Made funnier by the irony that the passive skill Soul Drain works on yourself if you get killed by your own Chain Lightning.
    • Monks/Champions will never use Extremity Fist on Crusaders/Paladins pre-Renewal. Reflect Shield: 40% damage back to you: a 75000 damage of Extremity Fist will give the Champion 30000 to himself.
  • Used straight twice in Advance Guardian Heroes: Demon ended up manipulating Kanon via Zur in order to force the rebirth of the Soul of Hero, so that he may absorb all of the souls of Kanon's army (including those of the now-mind-controlled Guardian Heroes), thus becoming the perfect warrior, and thus Demon's ultimate soldier. This later backfires when the main character (i.e., you) decide to fight him (or rather, Demon decides that "you'll probably resist"), and Demon's all-powerful body is destroyed. Demon understandably gets pretty cheesed off at Earth, and tries to destroy it with a massive fireball. This leads to ANOTHER incident of being hoisted by one's own petard when you and the rest of the spirits reflect the fireball back at Demon.
  • The Big Bad of Thief 2: The Metal Age dies in classic Bond-Villain fashion when Garrett recalls his poison-gas robots to his citadel. When the Citadel is sealed off, the robots and the gas are trapped inside, rather than rampaging through the local ecosystem while Karras stayed safe and sound.
  • Many RPGs have a game mechanic where a character sacrifices health. Too many of these without healing, and the trope is invoked.
    • Also, special magic/skills/abilities that allow to reflect attacks and magics back at the attacker/caster.Even more effective if the backfiring attack was an instant-kill.
  • A form of this: In the intro to Command & Conquer Red Alert, Einstein uses a time machine to erase Hitler from history. In the intro to Red Alert 3, the Soviets use a time machine to erase Einstein from history.
    • Not a clear-cut example, as the time machines are different. One was developed by Einstein (a different Einstein, though), and the other by Dr. Zelinsky.
  • Final Fantasy games make it possible for characters (be they heroes or villains) to hurt or kill themselves by casting magic on a target with a reflective spell in effect.
    • Emperor Gestahl and President Shinra are notable examples in the series of what happens when you lose control of your genetically-altered human weapons.
    • In Final Fantasy V, Exdeath becomes absorbed by the very cosmic power he was obsessed with controlling, erasing his personality and creating a new entity that wants to completely destroy the world he devoted his existence to conquering.
  • In The Simpsons arcade game, at the end of the battle with Smithers, he opens his cape to use a bomb, only to find that all six fuses are already lit.
  • The potential fates of at least three of Dead Rising's bosses.
  • At the end of Hitman: Codename 47, you kill the Mad Scientist who created you.
    • Also, In Contracts and Blood Money respectively, you can grab a gun that a wounded guard dropped on the floor or snatch it from a guard's hand, and kill them with it.
  • In the first mission of Halo 2, the Covenant sets up you the bomb on Cairo Station, but MC turns the bomb against its setter-uppers.
    • On a bigger scale, the Prophets end up losing the civil war they instigate and are now likely extinct. Granted, there were mitigating factors, but still...
    • MC and Cortana capture a Covenant flagship in the novel Halo: First Strike and use their own weapons against them.
  • In The Godfather, it's dangerously easy to hit yourself with your own Molotov Cocktail. If you don't run fast enough, your own dynamite or bomb can take you out too.
  • Pokémon that can use Explosion and Selfdestruct. Funnier if the opponent uses Protect or is a Ghost-type.
    • Any Ghost-type who uses Curse, which takes off half their total HP to curse its opponent...when they're already at half-health or lower. Or when their opponent's attack has just/is about to take off at least half their HP...
      • In both cases, it becomes an inversion of this trope if the first Pokémon previously used Destiny Bond.
      • Hi Jump Kick is a powerful move, but if it misses, it hurts the user. Guess what happens if you miss with too little HP.
    • Don't forget about Dragon-type and Ghost-type Pokémon, which are weak to their own types.
    • The ability Synchronize also transfers Poison, Paralysis and Burn if they were inflicted by that status themselves. A Pokémon with the ability Guts also has its attack boosted when it has a status effect, but competitively, it's mostly self-inflicted.
    • The move Magic Coat and the new Dream World ability Magic Bounce/Magic Mirror negates Status moves and entry hazards, then throws such effects back at the opponent. You can essentially make them status cripple themselves and get their hazards on their side.
    • Counterattack moves such as Counter, Mirror Coat, and Metal Burst (where the user deals back 1.5/two times the damage, respectively, that the user has sustained from the target's attack of the same turn) can invoke this trope when the target has used a particularly powerful offensive move, especially if the user is wearing a Focus Sash or possesses the Sturdy ability[1].
    • The moves Mirror Move (the user uses the move last used by the target) and Snatch (the user steals the effects of the status move used by the target, usually a healing or stat-changing move) can occasionally lead to this trope.
  • In Mass Effect 2, the Heretic faction of the Geth develops a virus which they intend to use on the main collective, intending to turn them all to Reaper-worship and war against the organics. Apart from simply destroying them, you can choose to turn the same virus on them, restoring them back to the collective.
    • Garrus, while Archangel, apparently enjoyed doing this to criminals. Examples include sabotaging a saboteur's environment suit so he suffocated, smuggling a weapon in to kill a weapons smuggler, overdosing a drug dealer on his own product, and killing a quarian serial killer who murdered people with viruses by coughing at him. The only kill listed in his dossier that he didn't do this to was a slaver - in that case he shot said slaver's fingers and toes off, put a bullet into every primary organ, beat with his rifle butt, and then lit on fire. Either this was extremely cruel or, if he was a Krogan, barely enough.
    • On a more thematic note, the Thanix Cannon upgrade was based on Reaper technology. Said cannon is used against the Collectors in the climax, so you end up using Reaper weaponry against the Reapers' servants. For an added bit of thematic appropriateness, it's Garrus who gives you this upgrade.
    • There's also the Collector Rifle, a reverse-engineered Reaper weapon, that ironically proves to be highly effective at killing Collectors. Particularly ironic if you chose to use this weapon to deliver the killing blow to the Humanoid-Reaper.
    • Henry Lawson created Miranda to be the ultimate human biotic. If she lives, Miranda uses her biotics to throw him out the window to his death when he lets go of Oriana.
  • In God Hand the tall mooks will sometimes try to grab and suplex Gene. Wriggling the left thumbstick to carry out the Action Commands when prompted allows Gene to counter-suplex them for good damage. The gorilla luchador also has a move where it slams Gene into the ground, then attempts to jump on him. Hitting the Action Commands allows Gene to dodge, causing the gorilla to hurt itself more than the initial slam hurt him.
  • In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, at one point in Bang's Story Mode, after beating Jin, Yukianesa proceeds to freeze her own user.
  • In Jade Empire, the true Big Bad, Master Li is defeated by the last spirit monk (AKA the player character) whom he trained to overthrow the Emperor. His last words say it all:

Master Li: I'm a better teacher than I thought.

  • The battle with Hades in God of War III kicks off with Hades telling Kratos "Your Soul Is Mine!" and at one point early in the battle, he attempts to consume Kratos's soul using the Claws of Hades. Kratos takes the Claws away from Hades at one point during the battle, and then proceeds to use them to consume his soul in the battle's finale.
    • From the same game, Kratos steal Hercules' cestus and uses it to cave his skull in, and kills a giant scorpion by impaling it on its own stinger. In the second game, Theseus is stabbed through the guts with his own spear and has his head smashed in with the door he was trying to prevent Kratos from passing through, and the Barbarian King is crushed with his own hammer.
    • And let's not forget Kratos and Ares from the first game.

Ares: That night...I was trying to make you a great warrior!
Kratos: You succeeded. [kills Ares]

  • In The Neverhood, Klogg, after killing Willie Trombone with the giant cannon, gets this when he steps on the cannon's remote as he tries to stab Hoborg from behind, causing the cannon to fire wildly. Naturally, it hits Klogg in the face.
  • Many of the bosses/villains in the Super Mario Bros series. Indeed, you defeat Giga Lakitu and Megahammer by firing their projectiles back at them (spinies and bullet bills respectively), as well as King Kaliente and Prince Pikante by sending back the coconuts fired in Super Mario Galaxy and it's sequel.
    • Bowser's plots in those two games to create an "evil empire" are above his station and full of flaws, but the biggest monkey wrench to his plans is holding Princess Peach in his clutches, as he wants her to rule alongside him. While it used to help the trouble he caused in the classic Super Mario games remain intact as Princess Peach was the only one who could break the spells, now it does nothing but increase Mario's chance of foiling Bowser's self-deluded, inevitably doomed plot.
    • In the Mario & Luigi series, many enemy attacks could be countered by sending their own attacks back to them.
      • The most shining example is probably the Elite Trio in Mario and Luigi Dream Team : 3 mini-bosses that revive each other all the time as long as at least one is still standing, and one of them is constantly surrounded by an army of Goombas, and Mario's options at this stage of the game to damage all 3 mini-bosses at once are limited. Until they decide to get serious and chase Mario with a giant Bob-omb while Goombas try to trip him. Get tripped and you take massive damage. Run for long enough and the Bob-omb explodes prematurely and damages all 3 bosses at once, possibly defeating them all and ending the fight.
  • StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Raynor was able to recover an old recording of Mengsk's " I will rule this sector" speech. Then broadcast it by using Mengsk's own media.
    • Even better: The operation was supported by the Awesome Yet Impractical Odin that Mengsk commissioned as a publicity stunt and was being piloted by Tychus Findley whom Mengsk himself released and sent to Raynor as The Mole to assassinate Kerrigan.
  • In StarCraft the Confederacy used the psi-emitters to lure the Zerg onto their enemies. Sons of Korhal later use those psi-emitters to draw the Zerg into attacking the Confederacy.
    • The unofficial expansion/modpack Huncraft ends with Duran mocking the now infested Raynor, and detonating him. Before exploding, Raynor runs up to Duran and the explosion kills them both.
  • In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio can disarm mooks and One-Hit Kill them with their own weapons.
    • In the first game, Al Mualim is defeated by his own student using the same arts he taught him.
  • In Uplink, this is an Awesome but Impractical way to finish off the evil Mega Corp at the end of the game: the player can destroy the corporation's main computer using a virus developed by the very same corporation. (There are other, more Boring but Practical ways to accomplish the same goal, but hey, Rule of Cool.)
  • In World of Warcraft, one of the bosses in the Stratholm instance has an enrage timer that can be beaten ONLY by having a character pick up his dropped sword (which did much more damage than most weapons available at that level) and using it on him.
    • Similarly, in the Tempest Keep version of the Kael'Thas fight, the weapons dropped by the dead advisers are practically required to defeat him.
    • In the fight against Halfus Wyrmbreaker in the Bastion of Twilight, the players generally need to free the dragons he has imprisoned and defeat them after he bends them to his will in order to counter his abilities (for example, making the Proto-Behemoth's breath do less damage or making his Shadow Novas take long enough to cast that they can be interrupted), and give him a damage buff that will enable you to beat his enrage timer.
    • Several achievements require you to trick bosses into killing their own adds with their area of effect abilities.
    • In Cataclysm, Deathwing is slain by the Dragon Soul, the Artifact of Doom he created long ago to control the other Dragonflights.
  • In Star Wars Battlefront, infantry trying to destroy a tank often throw grenades that stick to it. You can drive this tank up to them so that they're right next to their own grenade when it explodes–making this a literal case of Hoist by His Own Petard.
    • The same principle applies to plasma grenades in the Halo series. First rule of getting stuck: find the one who done it and go Action Bomb on 'em.
  • In Might and Magic IX, the god of chaos, Njam the Meddler, has been driving the plot with the aim of entrapping Krohn, the chief god, in a shell of unbreakable frost. Guess where Njam ends up? Yup.
    • In Might & Magic VIII, the Regnan pirates are taking advantage of the chaos in a major way. You get to Regna by hijacking the submarine they had used to stealthily resupply one of their outposts. Once there, you sink a good chunk of the Regnan fleet while it is in harbour by means of a Regnan prototype super-cannon, intended (once they'd made a version that could fit on a ship) to ensure the Empire of the Endless Ocean's complete dominance over the seas.
  • In Luigi's Mansion, one of the portrait ghosts, Slim Bankshot, is a billiards master. He'll shoot billiards around the room when you enter, and very rarely, one of them will hit him as he walks around the table.
    • In the sequel, Luigi's Mansion 2: Dark Moon, in order to defeat King Boo in the Final Battle, Luigi has to fool him into hurting himself. If Luigi takes advantage of his Boo shyness to position him right under one of the falling spiked balls he summons, King Boo is stunned for a couple of seconds, letting Luigi use the Poltergust 5000 on him.
  • In Wild ARMs, the demon Berserk lures the heroes into some ruins that happen to have a device that amplifies a demon's powers, with the intent of taking out the heroes with the increased power. Unfortunately for him, a rather trigger happy ally of the heroes happens to be in the same room as the device that controls the amplifier, and proceeds to break the crap out of it (despite not knowing what it does). The result: Berserk actually gets WEAKER, allowing the humans to defeat him. As is typical with this trope, he didn't even NEED the power boost; Berserk was more than strong enough to take them as he was, having toyed with them in the previous encounter(s) with him. Had he fought them elsewhere and seriously, he would've killed them easily.
  • In Pikmin 2, a new enemy called the Decorated Cannon Beetle shoots boulders that home in on the current captain. It's entirely possible to manipulate the boulders into hitting the Cannon Beetle or other enemies in the area. See Misguided Missile.
  • In Mario Kart, it is incredibly easy to hit yourself with a Green Shell. What's much harder is getting them to hit your opponents.
    • It's also very easy to skid on your own Banana Peels, or hit your own Fake Item Boxes, especially if you've been around the track a couple of times and have forgotten where you've placed them.
  • Ratchet and Clank: At the end of the first game the eponymous duo sends Drek onto his artificial planet and then destroy it with the laser he intended to destroy Veldin with.
  • In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, there are enemies with shells so strong that the only way to hurt them is to throw one of them at the other.
  • The Vendigroth Device in Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura invokes this; certain powerful mages have the ability to seal themselves in a magical cocoon at the moment of their deaths, regenerating their bodies and increasing their lifespans. Because magick and technology disrupt one another in the Arcanum-verse, the device uses science to turn a mage's own power against them, making the cocoon destroy their bodies.
  • In "While Guthix Sleeps," RuneScape's biggest Big Bad, the lich sorcerer Lucien, empowers himself with two godly artifacts: a staff and a stone. By the end of the sequel quest, "Ritual of the Mahjarrat," he's been Impaled with Extreme Prejudice on the former by the MacGuffin Guardians of the latter. "He tampered in God's domain."
  • In Sonic Generations, when you fight Silver the Hedgehog, he tries to squish Sonic with a giant ball of debris when he's down to his last hit. When Sonic hits him, he's knocked into the ground and promptly ran over.
  • In Fallout: New Vegas, completing the challenge "Talk About Being Owned" (from the Gun Runners Arsenal DLC) requires you to shoot Benny with his own gun, which he shot you with at the beginning of the game. During Old World Blues, Dr Mobius implanted the interest in the three technologies in the Think Tank so they (or rather you) would gather them and bring them to him, so they couldn't use them to leave the Big Empty. This instead resulted in the Think Tank obtaining their designs, and getting closer than ever to escaping. At the end of Lonesome Road, if you manage to settle things peacefully with Ulysses, he finds himself forced to aid you in fighting off the army of Marked Men he originally set upon the temple to finish you off, in case he himself wouldn't succeed in killing you. There's also the option during the final battle for the Dam to have the Boomers bomb the NCR forces on your orders, when the NCR Ambassador was the one who first instructed you to go make contact with the Boomers, and probably up until that very moment thought you had secured their support for the Republic's side.
  • In King's Quest VI Heir Today Gone Tomorrow, if you give the peppermint to Shamir in the final battle, he will get too drunk on mints to concentrate on killing Alexander and accidentally use his own magic on himself, ending his own life.
  • In the remake of Syndicate, you must Breach the missiles Agent Ramon fires at you, turning them against him.
  • Non-villain example: In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a mage named Arniel Gane tries to duplicate the Dwemer's feat in the series' backstory: an ambiguously successful attempt to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. When he sets off the magic by stabbing a warped soul gem (a stand-in for the Heart of Lorkhan) with Keening, it Goes Horribly Wrong: he turns himself into a shade that the Dovahkiin can summon.
  • Tron 2.0: The Terrible Trio of Corrupt Corporate Executives wanted to learn the secrets of digitization in order to shoot a bunch of mercenaries into Cyberspace and Take Over the World. They decide to test this by shooting in Alan, and then having the Datawraiths use him for target practice. However, things rapidly go south from there, seeing as it reunites him with his son, they find a critical flaw in F-con's systems, and are able to de-bug Ma3a to get home. The trio's last ditch effort to digitize themselves in order to stop the Bradleys ends up with them undergoing Body Horror and transforming into a twisted abomination that Jet defeats and Alan traps on a hard disk.
  • At least one example (possibly two, depending on the player's choices) in Alpha Protocol:
    • Early in the game, Mike Thorton is betrayed by his Government Agency of Fiction, Alpha Protocol, which tries to kill him to cover up its dirty deeds. After he escapes, he is able to use Alpha Protocol's own safehouses as his bases while he battles them, because the agency is so compartmentalized that not even the bosses know what all of its resources are.
    • In Moscow, Thorton can forge an alliance with a rival band of covert operatives, G22, who will agree to sell him weapons and intel for his future missions. Very shortly, however, he can decide to go with a different handler for a critical mission, which makes G22 his enemies. This decision, however, will not be made until after Thorton has had the opportunity to buy all of G22's intel for the mission, including a strategically placed sniper rifle that he can use to kill dozens of their agents.
  • In Heroes of Might and Magic VI, Uriel manipulates Anastasya into killing her own father (kicking off the plot of the game) with dark magic through a comb he gave her as a gift. Once Anastasya discovers the truth and masters her powers as a Necromancer, she uses their mental connection to attack his mind. Since Uriel was currently engaged in battle with demons at the time, this leads directly to his death.
  • While it DOESN'T actually kill him, Brian Irons in the Resident Evil 2 remake gets his face badly burned by the formaldehyde he uses for stuffing the bodies of his victims.
  • A common trend in video games where Medusa appears as a boss is for her defeat to result in her getting a taste of her own medicine and turned to stone.
  • In any Fighting Game with both Mirror Match and Fatality mechanics, it's easy to apply this Trope and give any fighter a Karmic Death.
  1. ↑ both of which, provided that the Pokémon in question is at full health, allow a Pokémon to retain one Hit Point and survive what would normally be a one-hit knockout move. However, prior to Generation V, Sturdy's effect was limited in that it only provided immunity to moves that were specifically designated in text as one-hit knockout (OHKO) moves, although no damage at all would be taken from said OHKO attacks.
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