Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Anime and Manga

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the first part of the story is about the struggle for humans to return to the surface by killing the evil overlord keeping them underground... Sadly, the evil overlord was protecting the humans from something worse. Oops.
    • Turns out that the "Something worse" is actually oppressing and destroying sentient races across the universe because if they become too advanced, they could cause existence itself to collapse.
    • Some have theorized the opening takes this even farther, and actually shows an alternate ending right before existence does end.
    • And Rossiu, in an attempt to figure out how close "something worse" is to happening, evacuates humans from their underground cities even when they don't want to leave -- not-quite-unwittingly bringing disaster closer with every person living on the surface.
  • Magic Knight Rayearth. Save the princess, kill her kidnapper, Save Both Worlds, right? Uh... not when he was RESCUING the princess from a life as a Barrier Maiden that can't even think for herself, and, because she knew she was stuck in that role and her happiness and self-fulfillment could kill the whole kingdom, she sent the Magic Knights as unknowing Laser Guided Tykebombs to kill HER, not him. After the resulting psychological trauma of The Reveal and being forced to kill the both of them, that leaves the place without a Barrier Maiden, and guess who has to choose between letting the kingdom suffer and dooming one person to a life of misery? No wonder Hikaru decides to create a kind of Merged Reality instead.
    • That isn't even all of it. The Dragon of the second season is actually the consequence of the events of the first season; Nova is the personification of Hikaru's grief over the fact that they had to kill Emeraude. In effect, Hikaru almost ends up killing the man she loves along with thousands of innocents and destroying the world in the process. Nice Job Breaking It, Heroines.
      • Arguably, this is also the result of the entire world falling into despair because they've relied on Emeraude for so long that they can't imagine life without her. Which coalesces like Nova into Debonair, an immensely god-like power formed from their collective fear, anxiety, and despair. Debonair is, in turn, the one who manipulates Nova into being her Dragon, as well as brutally screwing up her perception of reality, thus causing all the deaths and pain of the second season. Nice job breaking it, Cephiro.
  • Occurs on a spectacular scale in Neon Genesis Evangelion. While Gendo and SEELE propagate the general purpose and technically true cover story that their mission is to prevent the Angels from initiating Third Impact (which would kill the entire human race), the reason for killing the Angels is in actuality so that they don't interfere in the Human Instrumentality Project, which is a fancy name for SEELE-controlled Third Impact.
    • While Gendo has been preparing his own Instrumentality plan for years under the noses of his superiors, one that is arguably a little better than "genocide and hope for the best," Shinji accidentally triggers their original plan at the eleventh hour. Things get better. I guess.
    • Played straight in Rebuild 2.0: Oh Shinji, in the short span of 90 minutes you've managed to make yourself likeable again, have reached out to other people, grown a bit of a spine, and even got to kick a gargantuan amount of ass... Too bad saving the girl results in Third Impact, trapping you and her in your "Giant Robot" while your bishounen counterpart descends from the moon to lance you in the chest!
      • The lancing actually stops Instrumentality dead in its tracks.. After all, they couldn't stretch the final battle over 2 films.
  • In Pokémon Special, one of the first things Yellow does is breaking up an attempt by an apparently resurfacing Team Rocket to hijack the ship S.S. Anne. Said hijacking was part of a plan by a reformed Lt. Surge to lure out the Elite Four with a rumor about finding the one they were looking for.
    • During the Platinum arc, Buck figures that he has to protect the Magma Stone from Team Galactic, so he moves it, intending to bring it home with him. This action in fact awakens the legendary Pokemon Heatran, Team Galactic's true target, and Buck has unwittingly brought them right to it.
  • Digimon Adventure Myotismon leaves the fog that he created behind after he is killed, after which Joe hangs a lampshade on this trope. Venomyotismon shows up just hours later.
  • Frequently implied to occur whenever the Dirty Pair are on the job (it's the reason for their Embarrassing Nickname), but one OVA episode spells it out plainly. The Angels are investigating the mysterious deaths of several hundred mining employees on a planet run as a religious colony; they find that the religion's leadership has evolved into a murdering cult that, with the help of a ring of weather satellites, is capable of calling down Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style devastation down in a specific location. After they destroy the cult's station in orbit, they assume correctly that the cult's reign of terror is ended. Unfortunately, the space station was also the control for the weather satellites, and the weather satellites weren't just used for destructive purposes; the Angels look down from orbit and see about nineteen hurricanes beginning to form, with no weather-control system left to prevent them...
  • All over the place in Dragon Ball Z:
    • Cell was on the receiving end of a long string of these. He reached his Perfect form because Krillin was infatuated with Android 18 and thus didn't activate her self-destruct, and because Vegeta, looking for a better fight, was actively helping him absorb her. Gohan didn't kill Cell when he had the chance because he didn't feel Cell had suffered enough, allowing him to use his self-destructing attack, leading to a Senseless Sacrifice by Goku and Cell becoming even more powerful after he recovered.
    • According to the OVAs, said Senseless Sacrifice was an even bigger example, as Cell's explosion freed Bojack from imprisonment.
    • Buu was even worse, and would never have gotten as far as he did without the heroes. The Supreme Kai allowed Gohan to be drained of his energy, vastly underestimated how much of the necessary energy would be extracted. The battle between Vegeta and Goku produced so much power it accelerated Buu's awakening even more. Piccolo's attempt to buy more time for Goten and Trunks prompted Buu to kill every person on Earth except for the main cast with one attack. Gotenks acts like he's completely outmatched and that he's going to be defeated as a setup for his Super Saiyan 3 transformation, but Piccolo takes him seriously and destroys the door to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, leaving them trapped forever after Buu escapes anyway. And finally, Goku and Vegeta successfully rescue their sons and Piccolo from within Super Buu, causing the monster to revert into Kid Buu, who was almost as powerful as Super Buu but even more monstrous.
    • How about GT? It turns out that the heroes can only make one wish with the Dragon Balls for only a year. Thanks to overusing it from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Z, that's how the Shadow Dragons came into existence.
  • It's become a Running Gag on the Guilty Crown page to begin every entry under Nice Job Breaking It, Hero as "Good job, character!" and to follow with an explanation on the plan and how it wound up backfiring.
  • Princess Tutu: In order to prevent Mytho from destroying his own emotion of love, Fakir cuts the mythical sword capable of doing so in half. It also ensured that his heart could not be shattered again. Now how could this possibly be a bad thing? Well, the piece of Mytho's heart that held love was recently bathed in raven's blood, thus corrupting it -- and now it's corrupting Mytho. The only way to get the thing out? Shattering his heart by using the very sword that Fakir destroyed. Whoopsie...
    • This type of thing happens a lot in Princess Tutu. Mostly because the characters are living in a tragedy and Drosselmeyer gets his kicks from making a person's good intentions be catalysts for the demise of those they're trying to help. The main character frequently makes everything worse courtesy of her humble attempts to help Mytho.
  • Code Geass: In the first season, facing obliteration, Lelouch/Zero geasses Suzaku to "Live!" One year later... Lelouch orders his best pilot Kallen in her new Super Robot to kill Suzaku, which results in the Geass activating, forcing Suzaku to turn to his only remaining weapon: an anti-matter nuke. Nice job nuking Tokyo, anti-hero.
    • Suzaku is just as complicit in the latter, as he was strongly advised by not only Cecile and Lloyd, but also Kallen herself, to retreat. Suzaku chose to remain there and suffer death, which is what led to his Geass command activating and driving him to fire off FLEIJA. Not to mention that Lloyd strongly recommended him to not equip the nuclear weapon to his KMF. Not following this advice led him to using the nuclear weapon as his last resort.
    • Suzaku himself is a walking catalog of this trope, trying to be the hero but screwing things up due to his own masochism and that he's playing for the wrong team.
    • Lelouch uses a particularly grim example of his Mind Control power: "I could tell you to kill all the Japanese, and you would do it". And said power went into Power Incontinence mode right at that moment. Nice job making your sister a mass murderer.
      • Also after Shirley's, Lelouch has the Geass Order exterminated, while it does damper V.V.'s plans, it actually causes the Black Knights to distrust him further. If he really wanted to eliminate the Geass threat, he should destroyed that one island that was implied to one of several special sites to active the Ragnarok/Assimilation plan, which would have really fucked up V.V. and Charles' plans completely.
      • Of course, he already did that to the inside of one of them enough so that it would collapse. So, nice job not breaking it hard enough, anti-hero.
    • This trope could also be attributed to Ohgi and his culpability in convincing the Black Knights to follow his lead in betraying Lelouch due to his gullibility regarding the claims of Schneizel and Villetta, which results in isolating Lelouch once and for all, and him ultimately going down the path of the Zero Requiem, which is largely an excuse for him to die as he has lost all hope, and him causing more destruction than he otherwise would have for a peace that logically won't last very long, as it is built on a flimsy pretext. That the ending is as happy as it is, given the circumstances (Lelouch doing worse things than anyone in history), is pure No Endor Holocaust at its finest.
  • In Hell Girl: The Cauldron of Three, Mikage is able to sense when someone nearby may soon be a client of Enma Ai. In one episode, she stops one such person and urges her not to use the Hotline to Hell... which she had never heard of until then. Smooth.
  • In the Season 2 finale of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Kenzan tries to stop a brainwashed minion from firing the Earthshattering Kaboom by smashing the laptop computer that controls the satellite cannon. As soon as he does this, he learns the missile was just fired, and he's just destroyed the only means of stopping it!
    • The hero wasn't immune to this either. When Judai was little, he had a card named Yubel that was very protective of him. Whoever Judai dueled or was close to, Yubel would cause harm to them and made them fall into a coma. By Judai's request, Yubel was sent into outer space by Kaibacorp hoping it would absorb "the powers of justice" like his Elemental Hero Neos would. But instead it absorb powers the Light of Destruction and was driven insane. After landing back on Earth, it became Season Three's Big Bad and orchestrated the events that happen to Judai and his friends.
  • The biggest and baddest of the Big Bads in the Zatch Bell! manga by name of Clear Note, who planned to use the King's Privilege to bring genocide to the Mamodo, was powerful enough that it took Zatch and Brago's strongest spells to beat him. And what happens next? It somehow enables him to become powerful enough that Makoto Raiku had to intervene. What's worse, Kiyo somewhat knew what would happen if they did what they did thanks to his Answer Talker ability, which allowed him to determine the answer to any question in an instant, but if they hadn't, Clear would have won anyway.
  • In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Sakura leaves one of her memory-feathers behind in Acid Tokyo to keep the reservoir pure and the inhabitants alive. While this act ultimately apparently results in her birth, the aging of the feather also allows the Big Bad to win when he returns it to her body in the "several hundred years later" dimension.
    • Also, Syaoran. If only he could turn back time, everything would be okay and he could save her, right? WRONG!
    • This is clearly becoming a theme, since it turns out that the entire frickin' plot was set into motion by Clow's split-second wish that Yuuko wouldn't die, though he didn't intend for it to turn out quite that way and the Big Bad just happened to feel the same way, and believe strongly in the tenet of Screw Destiny.
  • The entire plot of Inuyasha is based on this. Kagome kills a demon that stole the Shikon Jewel and in the process shatters the aforementioned MacGuffin. This kicks off an incredibly drawn-out plot where the main characters have to fix the jewel and fight evil demons who want its power for themselves. Nice job breaking it, Miko.
  • Doki Doki Densetsu Mahoujin Guru Guru has the characters discover Kukuri's birthplace where items for her use had been left behind. The bad news is the items had been collected by monsters called Gimu Gimu. Good news is they're tame and don't object to people taking back what's theirs. Unfortunately, they also don't object to people taking items and selling them, which is exactly what Nike, Kukuri, and Toma did prior to reaching the ruins. To make it worse, a necklace meant specifically for Kukuri was lost when Toma earlier used the item it was kept in as an impromptu rocket launcher. Poor Kukuri simply snaps at this point and regresses to a four-year old for a few moments. For the record, they did find the necklace soon after.
  • Manga example from Basara: when Momonoi is killed and the Red King retakes his city, Tatara and his rebel army plan on using the leftovers of Momonoi's gunpowder to blow up the water supply of the palace, making the Red King suffer. Too bad it results in the whole city having no water left and the citizens, formerly happy to be freed from their king turn against the rebels. A desert city cut off from water, good way to get their support hero.
  • In the Berserk manga, Skull Knight manages to slash Femto from behind at the very moment of his apparent ascension, using his dimension-crossing sword to teleport and get the drop on him. Unfortunately, Femto then redirects his strike towards the vortex of demonic power they are both standing on, and uses its dimension-bending to bring the unholy nature of that place closer to earth, thus bypassing the walls between Seen and Unseen by folding time and space, resulting in the energies of the Unseen manifesting physically on Earth. You've brought about Hell on Earth, Skull Knight. Whoops. Guess that's what you get for bringing in sci-fi conventions into a Medieval Fantasy world!
    • An earlier Berserk example: when the King of Midland has Griffith jailed and tortured for deflowering his daughter Princess Charlotte, Griffith accuses him of being attracted to her, since she looks just like his dead wife. Now, if those desires did exist, they were only subconscious -- the king would probably never have realized they were there. But Griffith's accusation makes him dwell on his daughter to the point of madness, and in one horrible moment he forces himself on her. She stops him and he regains his senses, but the damage is done. Charlotte is traumatized; the king sinks into despair and insanity; and the Band of the Hawk, now the king's only targets for revenge, are hunted for years by Midland's army and worse. Good one, Griff.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 gives us a Nice Job Breaking It Villain. Near the end of Season 1, the Big Bad's assassination of the hibernating Iolia Shenberg triggers a Dead-Man Switch which unlocks the Gundams' Super Mode. With this advantage, the good guys have a fighting chance in what had previously been an all but impossible battle. Thus, in the first season finale, They manage to kill the Big Bad and fight the remainder of his forces to a bloody stalemate.
    • Celestial Being had an unintentional variant of this. Their plan in Season One involved getting the whole world to quit shooting each other, and unite them towards a common enemy (them). Unfortunately, this works far too well as this results in the creation of the A-LAWS.
  • In a way similar to the Magic Knight Rayearth example above, the entire first half of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne was this. Maron/Jeanne is helping out God by sealing demons to keep Satan at bay and her boyfriend/arch enemy Chiaki/Sinbad is an agent of the devil, right? Bzzt, wrong! It is revealed that Maron's angel sidekick Finn Fish is actually working for the devil and had been lying to Maron the whole time, and Maron was actually helping the devil and Chiaki God, not the other way around. So Maron had actually been helping the devil that whole time, making him stronger than ever.
  • The sum result of the Hueco Mundo arc in Bleach. Orihime left to save her friends, who went after her to save her, who were followed by half of the remaining captains (who, despite at least two of them having their own agendas, did save everyone's favorite group of idiots) and their subordinates... only to find out that that was Aizen's Batman Gambit all along when re-kidnaps the poor Barrier Maiden, closes the Gargantua's that the shinigami had used to get to HM (effectively trapping them all), and merrily skips off to have his way with Karakura Town. And let's not forget how not only did Aizen only find out about Orihime's Reality Warper powers because she tried to help her friends, but that Urahara knew he might go after her and tried to stop her from fighting afterwards (in a way that even he admitted was a mistake), only for Rukia to rebuild her confidence and take her away for training, which ends up leading her to be fantastically exposed when Ulquiorra stops her while she was trying to return to the human world to fight alongside of her friends. Give yourselves a pat on the back, heroes. You really earned it.
    • Of course, the Big Bad of Bleach was previously established as a World-Champion Grandmaster of Xanatos Speed Chess, so something like this was probably inevitable...
    • More recently, the villain of a filler arc, Muramasa, lures Ichigo into his hideout and to where Yamamoto seems to be held prisoner, then goads him into using a full-power Getsuga Tensho on him. The result? Muramasa redirects the attack into the barrier surrounding Yamamoto, breaking it. Seems Yamamoto wasn't so much a prisoner as he was trying to seal himself off from Muramasa, who promptly steals the power of Yamamoto's Game Breaker-level zanpakuto as soon as the barrier falls. WHOOPS.
      • Most Filler Villain Big Bads often take advantage of either Ichigo's habit of running into things blindly or his power in order to utilize them for hiding their schemes or activating a secret forbidden power.
    • Come think of it, since Ichigo's growth is a part of Aizen's scheme, wouldn't the fact that Ichigo is born and becoming one of the most powerful shinigami — and by extension, the fact the SS kidnapped Rukia and plan to execute her, which triggered the growth of Ichigo, and the training of hallowfication by the vizard — all considered as "Nice Job breaking it Heroes"?
      • Nice Job breaking the Manga, Captain Broken and Kubo.
    • We saw this yet again when Gin revealed his hundred-year plot to kill Aizen in epic fashion. ...Then we find out that it was part of Aizen's plan to get even stronger. Damn Plot Coupon. Which leads to even more epic Curb Stomp Battle to which an empowered Ichigo humiliates him completely even after he transforms a third and final time.
    • The Xcution Arc is a short, but elaborate scheme to take advantage of Ichigo's desire to go to a stranger and ask them to make him stronger. Unlike the Vizards, this group actually wanted his power for themselves and didn't mind almost driving him insane.
  • In the original Mobile Suit Gundam, part of the events from before the show starts involves The Federation diverting a Colony Drop from hitting their incredibly well armored fortress in the middle of the mostly uninhabited Amazon rain forest. The problem is, a piece of it hit the very much inhabited Sydney Australia. Oops. To be fair, the chances of it hitting not only a continent, but a major city at that, rather than splashing down in the ocean, are probably pretty slim.
  • In Kinnikuman, all the choujin were celebrating Kinnikuman's victory in the Choujin Olympics. At one point, they toss him so high into the air he goes flying into outer space and bumps into a satellite. As it turned out, that satellite was a prison for the Devil Choujin and that bump hit the release button.
  • The Patlabor TV series features a pretty epic one, with a simple Honor Before Reason decision in an early throwaway episode snowballing into an increasingly deadly story arc that would dominate the later half of the show. Captain Nagumo is opposed to using the prototype Patlabor SRX-70 Saturn created by Schaft Enterprises because she knows they're going to use the motion data from the police's skirmishes to develop military mechs. All well & good, but because Nagumo threw the Saturn away, Corrupt Corporate Executive Utsumi decided to get the Patlabors' data another way, namely smuggling pre-production military Labors into Tokyo & causing havoc in the streets to draw the Patlabors out.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, all of Ala Alba went to the Magical World, including the unbeknownst-to-them-Princess Asuna. Asuna is then kidnapped by Fate and the Cosmo Entelecheia remnant, who do... something very ominous relating to her Anti-Magic powers. The going theory is that by bringing the Princess to where the bad guys can get her, they directly caused the revival of the Big Bad. Good going.
  • In the Ark arc of D.Gray-man, Wide-Eyed Idealist Allen Walker is facing off against Tyki Mikk. During the fight, Tyki accidentally pushes him into a Shonen Upgrade, and his Empathic Weapon turns into a really big sword that can't damage humans- only Akuma and Noah. Tyki had been relying on Allen's reluctance to kill another human, so he was a bit surprised when Allen stabbed him right through the chest in an attempt to remove the Noah from him. It seems to have worked for a while... but then it turns out that all Allen managed was to wake it up, and Tyki goes Body Horror One-Winged Angel. Woops.
    • He makes a very similar (and also understandable) mistake later: While fighting a Level 4 Akuma, in order to trap it, he deliberately makes himself a target, then summons his sword from across the room, impaling both the Level 4 and himself. This would have worked fine if it wasn't for the little snag that he's the host for the Fourteenth Noah. Even the Akuma looked terrified out of its mind before he managed to suppress it.
    • Kanda, in the most recent chapters, when he goes berserk and impales Allen with Mugen (his Innocence-forged sword), which causes Allen to collapse and his skin to change into that telltale Noah gray color. The Millennium Earl is positively dancing with joy when this happens, and gleefully thanks Kanda for fully awakening the Fourteenth. Oops....
  • In Gundam Seed Destiny, one might say this trope occurs throughout the series with the Freedom and Archangel interfering with the war. But at the Second Battle of Onogoro, Kira preventing Shinn from continuing his attack on Orb allowed Djibril to escape, thus letting him fire Requiem and destroying a lot of the PLANTs. Shinn in SEED mode most likely would have stopped Djibril before getting on the shuttle or soon after he launched. Kira and the Archangel would have lost Orb, but considering the only Orb forces they had at the final battle were the ones they had before Onogoro...
  • In Deadman Wonderland, Ganta stops the Deadmen from wiping out the Forgeries because one of his friends was among them. In doing so, he inadvertently incapacitates all of the prison's strongest Deadmen leaving the Forgeries free to start picking them off one by one. As a result, Ganta is completely alienated by his friends.
  • In Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, the audience doesn't find out until Tsumihoroboshi-hen that Keiichi's actions during Onikakushi-hen were basically part and parcel of this. Granted, stuff was broken. Just different stuff.
  • Way to go, Nausicaa. In the manga version, you've saved your people, but you've also doomed humanity by destroying the pure, corruption-free genes that have allowed humanity to survive. She believes in the natural cycles, but what she fails to realize is that there will BE no cycles for mankind if they're all dead.
  • In the Eureka Seven movie, nice job flooding the entire Earth, destoying everything and drowning humanity in the process of saving your beloved Renton, Eureka. Good thing that She lost all her memories aftermath, or else she can't live a guilty conscience free happily ever after life with Renton.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Al opens the gate between his world and ours as the Thule Society does on our side, in an attempt to rescue his brother Ed. Though Ed escapes, it also allows the Thule Society to launch a full scale war on Amestris, and nearly destroys the capitol city
  • In Yu Yu Hakusho, the Chapter Black saga, Yusuke allowed Shinobu Sensui to fully power up so they could have a good battle. This ended up getting him killed. Dangit, Yusuke, you made Kuwabara cry again!
    • Of course this led to a Nice Job Fixing It, Villain moment as Yusuke was resurrected as a mega-kickass demon, but he didn't know he was a hidden demon at that time.
    • Don't forget that the whole arc was just Sensui's plan to get himself killed by a powerful demon as justice for killing countless demons. Unleashing Hell on Earth against what he sees as a corrupt human race is just frosting added by an enraged Kuwabara. Nice job, dimwit.
  • In Naruto, Itachi, ordered to kill his entire clan to prevent a bloody coup that would kill all of Konoha, couldn't bring himself to kill his younger brother, Sasuke. As a result, he spared said person, and tried to enact a Xanatos Gambit that would end with that person a hero beloved by Konoha, and capable of defending himself and it against the Big Bad. Instead, it ended with him as The Dragon to the Big Bad, swearing to destroy Konoha. Oopsie!
    • Itachi's entire plan for Sasuke is a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. It never occurred to him that mind Raping him twice would be detrimental to Sasuke's mental health. Nor occurring to him that beating him half to death twice would make him psychotic. Nor occurring to him that Sasuke might kill Naruto to get the MS. Nor tried to stop Orochimaru from getting Sasuke. If he didn't intervene or interfere with Sasuke's life at all, he would have gotten what he wanted-a Konoha Aligned Sasuke killing him instead of a fucked up mentally Neutral Sasuke.
    • The Uchiha's planned coup in the first place could have only ended in tears. And assuming that Madara is not lying through his teeth about wanting to restore his clan's position of power and prominence, it's hard to see how reducing the clan to a few hated, emotionally broken criminals could result in this, though I suppose it's stretch to apply "Hero" here.
    • And then there's the Sage of the Six Paths, in his day he saved the entire world from a monstrous threat, founded the Shinobi way, and was pretty much revered as a Messiah and Physical God. That isn't an exaggeration, he threat he defeated was a godlike Ten Tailed beast, which he then proceeded to seal into himself, inadvertently giving himself Reality Warping Powers. He then proceeded to use those powers to create the moon in order to seal away the beast's body and then split it's chakra into the nine Tailed Beasts. Nice guy. Unfortunately he's also indirectly responsible for The Uchiha massacre and the Fourth Shinobi World War. Not to mention all the deaths the tailed beasts caused over the centuries.
    • Gaara probably wouldn't be half as screwed up as he is if his father had not only had him turned into a Jinchuriki, killing his mother in the process, but also sent Gaara's uncle on a suicide mission and ordered him to tell Gaara that no-one loved him in order to test Shukaku's power. OK, so the Fourth Kazekage was doing it to protect his village in desperate times, but he ended up with an unstable, Ax Crazy child who kills people left, right and centre, is treated like a monster, has his own siblings terrified of him, and probably would have gotten a lot worse if Naruto hadn't showed up.
  • EL takes place After the End, which happened because some of the worlds major powers decided to put an end to environmental pollution... by nuking most of humanity, and nearly all other life on earth, out of existence.
  • In episode one of A Certain Magical Index, Touma destroys Index's magically Made of Indestructium cloak to prove he has Anti-Magic. This leaves her defenseless and she becomes grievously wounded later.
  • In The World God Only Knows manga, Haqua released Fiore out of mercy when Fiore showed "evidence" that she is innocent. Later on, Nora tries capturing her but both Haqua and Nora were restrained. So yeah, Haqua, maybe you should have followed Keima's instructions. Nice job breaking it, Haqua.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's: The five Signers think they've successfully stopped the season's Big Bad and saved the world by defeating him in a duel, only to shortly realize they've brought a Xanatos Gambit to fruition, as, regardless of their victory, the duel completed "the Circuit," allowing the Arc Cradle to descend over New Domino and begin the countdown to the city's destruction.
  • Shiranui suffers through a particularly horrific one in the early chapters of Kagerou Nostalgia. He and Kazuma are staying with a woman whose husband left, planning to travel to the capital and assassinate General Kiyotaka Kuroda, leaving her and their daughter behind. The husband subsequently returns with a band of mercenaries and massacres the town; when his wife confronts him and accuses him of People Hunting (a form of massacre endorsed by Kuroda), he does not seem to understand what she is talking about. Shiranui realises that the man has been tainted by the darkness in the capital and purifies him. ( Horrified by what he has done the husband promptly murders his wife and daughter, and then commits suicide while Shiranui looks on, unable to bring himself to stop the killing by shooting another human being.) Nice job breaking it, priest.
  • While they can't be fully considered "Heroes" the Marines in One Piece cause this following The Whitebeard War. Their long, elaborate plan to kill Whitebeard worked, and they also killed off the son of the Pirate King (Ace). The only problem is that in doing so, they horribly screwed up the power balance of the New World, causing several towns to get overrun by pirates. Also, since Whitebeard confirmed that One Piece existed with his dying breath, the piracy rates have practically DOUBLED. To make matters worse, Blackbeard managed to free some of the worse criminals in the history of the world, added them to his crew, and has now stolen Whitebeard's Devil Fruit, which is capable of causing untold carnage, before finally declaring war on the World Government. And to top it all off, the Elders decided to censor the escape of even more of the Level 6 prisoners, meaning they can do whatever the hell they want. So basically, they wound up screwing up the Entire World thanks to a horribly short sighted plan. BRAVO. *Clap* *Clap* *Clap*
    • The actual protagonists fall into this on occasion as well. Luffy's jailbreak at Impel Down let a bunch of inmates out of prison. Granted, it's reasonable to assume that a fraction of them were actually decent guys like Mr. 2, Jimbei, and the Newkama pirates, but the majority was made up of dangerous criminals. Also, Franky blew up the labrotory of the greatest scientist in the world... twice. He saw the Big Red Button with the skull 'n crossbones on it and thought that it must be a pirate button.
  • Puella Magi Madoka Magica. If Puella Magi Oriko Magica is to be believed, then if Madoka didn't try to cheer Mami up in Episode 3, she wouldn't end up being horribly headchomped by Charlotte and instead handily beat her. Way to go to pick a time for You Are Not Alone speech, Madoka.
    • Not to mention Madoka nearly killed Sayaka by throwing her soul gem down the bridge in episode 6, and Homura had to clean up after her mess.
      • How about the reason why Madoka is so powerful and Kyubee wants to contract her is because Homura keeps attaching more grief from timelines to Madoka everytime she resets time to save Madoka. I'd say this one is the biggest of the series.
  • Early in Summer Wars Kenji gets a text message with a math algorithm challenging him to solve it. He spends all night doing so, and when he wakes up finds that the online world OZ used by most of the world has gone haywire and that the algorithm he solved was in fact the company's strongest security code. Ultimately subverted, though, in that over fifty other people made successful attempts on the code and Kenji actually made a mistake in his resulting in it being incorrect.
  • Doraemon should have a lot of examples throughout the show's run. It at least happened in the movie, "Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey". Nobita finds stray dogs and cats and wants them to have a home. The gang time traveled them back 300 million years and providing them with evolution and a food making machine. When they visit them again, they encounter a time disturbance causing them to be stranded in a different year in that era with advanced sentient dogs and cats, thus started the movie.
  • In Tsukihime, if it weren't for Shiki "killing" Arcueid, Arcueid could effortlessly defeat all her enemies and Shiki himself wouldn't be dragged into her business.
  • Several of Makoto's leaps in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would unintentionally break something else while trying to undo something she had broke due to leaping for her personal gain. One example is Makoto swapping places with another classmate in Home EC, causing him to cause the accident in the room that Makoto would have caused. However, this accident would make said classmate a target to bullies. When her friend Chiaki confesses to her, she uses her time leaps to avoid talking to him and he became frustrated with her and eventually decided to date Makoto's friend Yuri. Which would incidentally lead to Makoto becoming jealous and realizing her feelings for Chiaki. Later, when the bullied classmate snaps and throws a fire extinguisher at Makoto, Chiaki attempts to shield her. Makoto then time leaps to tackle him out of the way ... only for the fire extinguisher to hit her friend Yuri instead.
  • Uhm, Saint Seiya? Better said, um, Saga? Oh all the places to lock your Evil Twin brother Kanon in as punishment for his evil, you shouldn't have chosen the Drowning Pit under the Sanctuary! Because if you had not done that, then Kanon wouldn't have almost drowned and fallen in a hole thrrough the rock wall... which took him towards Poseidon's realm, and allowed him to become the Man Behind the Man in the Poseidon saga. ... Ooops.
  • Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has Caren refusing to join the mermaid trio. Good idea for her, but it's a bad idea since that allows the Black Beauty Sisters to capture her.
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