Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • At the end of The Ring, we find out that not only has the creepy girl from the well not been defeated, she's actually been released to reign terror upon the rest of the world. Plus she never sleeps, so it's not like we'll be getting a daily eight hour break from the reign of terror. Nice job, hero.
  • In the American/Japanese science fiction/monster flick The Green Slime, the space station becomes infested with monsters made of the titular stuff because a visiting Jerkass/The Kirk had smashed on the ground an unauthorized sample of mold taken from an asteroid. He'd done this within a huddle of other astronauts, so naturally a fragment of the container (complete with a blop of slime) gets caught in one of the astronauts' pant-leg, and it naturally feeds on the radiation during the decontamination process.
  • In Jurassic Park, after Nedry shuts down the fences to steal the embryos and make his escape, the Tyrannosaurus Rex gets out and wreaks havoc. In order to undo what Nedry has done, Hammond wants the computers shut down and restarted. When Ray Arnold initially refuses, Hammond insists: "People are dying. Would you please shut down the system." Arnold does so. Nedry was smart enough to program the raptor fences to stay operational during his sabotage; the total system shutdown releases the Velociraptors. Prior to this, the T. Rex had only killed one person; the raptors kill two, and relentlessly pursue the main characters for the rest of the film. Nice job, Hammond.
    • Also the heroes of the sequel, who are responsible for every single death in the entire movie (even better, this is the Jurassic Park movie with the highest body count).
  • At the end of Hellboy, the titular Anti-Anti-Christ kills the villain Rasputin... only for a very huge and scary tentacle monster to pop out of his dead body.
    • But then Hellboy kills that, so while he may have triggered an early apocalypse, he then stopped it entirely.
  • In Speed, while under the bus in a failed attempt to disarm the bomb, Jack has to punch a hole in the bus's gas tank with his screwdriver as a makeshift grip to keep himself off the ground to avoid being run over when his cart breaks. By causing the leak, Jack has now significantly cut down the time he and the LAPD have in trying to find a solution to end the crisis. When he informs driver Annie about it once safely in the bus, she replies in a panic, "What, did you feel like you needed another challenge?!"
    • Also, when the injured driver is being evacuated, the police on the flatbed try to get an old woman on the bus to come too, despite warnings from the bomber that he won't allow it. She tries to leave, but a bomb is triggered beneath her feet, dropping her under the wheels of the bus.
  • During the climax of Dogma, the fallen angel Bartleby needs to become human so he can take advantage of plenary indulgence in order to return to Heaven. Thus proving God wrong and thereby unmaking all of creation. To do so, he needs to remove his wings... which is promptly done for him with a machine gun by a particularly clueless hero who was trying to kill him.
  • Just about every protagonist from the Saw films (with the exception of Saw, Saw VI, and arguably, Saw II) suffers from this, the worst case being Matt Gibson from Saw 3D.
  • In the Star Wars prequels, the Republic winning the Clone War was an Evil Plan made of a series of Nice Job Breaking It Heroes that no one even realized were such. i.e. Anakin Skywalker leading the counterattack against the Confederacy fleet and freeing the captured Chancellor Palpatine was orchestrated specifically so he could defeat Darth Tyranus and murder him. It might be seen as necessary -- even a handless Sith Lord would be able to escape all but the most secure prisons while awaiting a war crimes or treason trial -- but the fact remains that Anakin killed a badly injured and (at the time) helpless old man because someone told him to.
  • In Immortals, Theseus acquires the Epirus Bow, but shortly after getting it, he drops it. The weapon is then taken by a dog (don't ask) and delivered to the Big Bad, who then uses it to great advantage. Had it not been for the gods' Big Damn Heroes moment at the end, his evil plans would've succeeded entirely.
  • In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo encounters the Architect on his journey to destroy The Matrix. He learns that, if he proceeds, every man, woman, and child connected to the Matrix would die, which, combined with the destruction of the rebellion, would be The End of the World as We Know It. Neo does it anyway. It got better, though.
    • By the way, Neo has destroyed Agent Smith in the first movie; however, the latter came back as a rebellious program. Way to go, Neo.
  • The film version of Order of the Phoenix has a tragic example of this. Harry runs to his godfather's rescue only to be the cause of Sirius's demise. "Nice one, James.".
  • In Frequency, John manages to use the time-travel radio to keep his father, Frank, from dying in the burning building that had claimed his life thirty years ago. And so doing began a chain of events that caused a Serial Killer to live instead of die who then goes on to murder many more women including John's mother. Oh, and did I mention Frank still dies from lung cancer because he smokes?
  • Basically the whole plot of The Butterfly Effect is a series of these.
  • The Dark Knight: Batman's destruction of the Falcone family's dominance of Gotham City leads to not only a myriad of gangs attempting to fill the gap, but also The Joker and other imitation criminals who create far more chaos and destruction. There are obvious real life parallels in international politics (collapse of the Soviet Union leading to rise of nationalism and fundamentalism) and law enforcement (the weakening of the Mafia clearing the way for Chinese, Russian, Columbian, etc, gangs).
    • To be fair, the presence of The Joker, while in many ways a portrayed as a response to Batman's presence, and the general surge in violent crimes (and in later movies, I'm sure, costumed criminals) probably has more to do with the League of Shadows throwing wide the gates of Arkham during Batman Begins.
    • After Reese has run some numbers, Lucius Fox makes him do it all over again to teach him a lesson. This second, closer look leads to Reese discovering the identity of the Batman.
  • Happens in the '89 film Batman as well with the Joker's backstory, though to be fair it really was an accident and Batsy wasn't intentionally trying to push Jack Napier over the railing.
    • Was it? This incarnation of Batman seems a bit more flexible with his code.
  • Planet of the Apes: The original had an astronaut landing in the future from a freak accident. The remake has the hero CAUSING the freak accident that launches his ship even further back in time and giving his mutant lab apes free reign over a primitive world. Changes things considerably.
    • Rise could have been called "Nice Job Breaking It Hero: The Movie". In his attempt to create an Alzheimer's cure, Will sets into motion the eventual dominance of the apes, as well as inadvertently creating the plague that wipes out most of humanity.
  • Layton: "This is an unholy perversion of the balance of nature, Benson! You'll regret this. Needless to say, the defense attorney was absolutely right, as Benson's victory did upset the balance of nature. Fortunately, Benson did fix it before it became irreversible.
  • John Woo's Broken Arrow sees the hero finding a nuclear warhead which the villain has left in a mine. It hasn't been armed yet, so he comes up with the idea to enter the wrong arming code three times, causing a security measure to lock the warhead so it can't be armed. He does so...only for the villain to mockingly inform him that he used uncoded circuit boards, "You have just armed a nuclear warhead, my friend." Oops.
  • At a fairly early point in Return to Oz, Dorothy mentions that the Ruby Slippers fell off her feet during her flight back to Kansas, and apparently thought nothing more of them after that. During the climax, the Nome King takes great delight in telling Dorothy what happened because of this:

Dorothy: My ruby slippers--
The Nome King: No, no, no... My ruby slippers. They just fell out of the sky one day -- you were so anxious to get home! They're very powerful: they made it possible for me to conquer the Emerald City... thank you.

  • From Django Unchained: Let's face it, Calvin J. Candie is complete and utter scum. The viewers knew it, most of the characters in the film know it, even director Quentin Tarantino and actor Leonardo Di Caprio (who portrays Candie) have expressed disgust with the character. You can hardly blame Dr. Schultz for wanting to kill him, but when Schultz actually does so, he only makes the situation much worse, getting himself killed and putting Django and Broomhilda though even more hell than before.
  • In Sunshine, one of the crew members forgets to adjust the heat shield... causing the Icarus II to have a catastrophic fire. Nice job breaking the ship that was supposed to save Earth, hero.
    • Actually the misalignment just causes damage to the hydralics. It is the fact that the communication towers are vaporized in the sunlight that causes the fire and causes the first death.
    • Actually, this isn't even an example of this trope. The trope isn't about mistakes or failures at all, it's about a successful action whose by-product is a failure on a larger scale.
    • True. However, arguably this does happen later in the movie. The Icarus II alters course to intercept the long-gone Icarus I and find out what happened to it. They manage to dock with it, investigate it, and figure out what went wrong. However, in doing so, they allow the deranged lunatic captain who deliberately screwed up the first mission and murdered his crew to board their vessel, which causes pretty much all the problems they have for the rest of the movie and almost ruins their mission, the failure of which will cause the death of everyone and everything on Earth. Nice Job, crew.
  • Near the end of The Haunting in Connecticut, the reverend manages to exorcise the ghost from the house. Too bad he's a benevolent spirit who was preventing the dozens of malicious ghosts from wreaking havoc.
  • In The Monitors, after the heroes drive off the dictatorial machines that enslaved mankind and stopped all human conflict, wars start breaking out all over the place.
  • In the first Fantastic Four movie the team is cheered on for their heroic efforts to save people on the Brooklyn Bridge from a major accident... which they caused. Also, the major supervillain of the film exists because Reed screwed up his calculations when predicting the approach of a cosmic storm. The disaster gave Doom his powers and ruined his company, providing him with the motivation to attack. So the whole movie is about the Fantastic Four cleaning up their own messes.
    • Debatable, Doom was behind the radiation shields when the storm hit, but was still affected. So even if Reed's calculations had been right, the shields (which Victor's company designed) would not have protected them all when the storm DID hit. Had that been the case, Doom would have responsible for the whole thing, instead of just his own transformation. Also, the initial cause of the mayhem on the Brooklyn Bridge was the man who was trying to commit suicide. If he hadn't freaked out when Ben tried to help him, none of the subsequent car crashes would have happened.
  • Sir Galahad wasn't so keen on being rescued from Castle Anthrax, what with the peril of spankings and oral sex and all.

Lancelot: No, it's far too perilous.
Galahad: Well, can't you let me have just a little bit of peril?

  • Although her mother did most of the damage beforehand, Carrie White would never have had her murderous breakdown if Miss Collins hadn't gone overboard in punishing her tormentors, causing them to publicly humiliate Carrie at the prom. As if that weren't enough, Miss Collins then throws out the person who tried to stop it from happening. Way to kill everyone, Miss Collins.
    • Miss Collins isn't the only one to share the blame here either. If it wasn't for Sue Snell, Carrie would have never been at the prom to begin with. Sue felt sorry for teasing Carrie in the locker room, so she convinced her boyfriend, Tommy, into taking her to the prom. So way to kill everyone Miss Collins and Sue Snell.
    • Stephen King seemed to be making a point of this. Literally every single character, whether they're "good" or "bad," is at least partly responsible for what happened at the prom.
  • In Nine, the title character's newfound friends take out the mechanical beast who had been threatening them, only for 9 to realize that the MacGuffin he'd woken up with fit perfectly inside a larger machine nearby. Said machine proceeds to kill 2 immediately, followed by 8, 5, 6, and 1 before it's all done.
    • Not only that, but what he did was exactly what said mechanical beastie was trying to do not five minutes before. Too Dumb to Live.
    • Also, the Stitchpunks blowing up the factory. Beforehand the Fabrication Machine had pretty much been Sealed Evil in a Can, being confined to said factory. However, instead of being destroyed in the explosion, the Fabrication Machine was essentially freed, and proceeded chase after Stitchpunks itself, leading to the deaths of 5, 6, and 1.
  • From the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever:

Tiffany: I did it, I switched the tape in the machine.
Bond: You stupid twit, you put the real one back in!

  • In Friday the 13 th Part VI, Tommy Jarvis, just to be absolutely sure, digs up Jason Voorhees' corpse, and impales it with a steel rod. Cue freak lightning bolt.
  • The Fridge Logic in 10,000 BC sets in that, you know, D'leh and his buddies destroyed one of the only BASTIONS OF CIVILIZATION and set humanity back god knows how long. A few sacrifices isn't that much of a price to pay.
  • At the end of Annihilation: Earth, David is torn between his idea of shutting down the particle colliders to stop the apocalypse or turning them Up to Eleven, as his Middle Eastern colleague Raja suggests, which will (supposedly) force the anomaly to be "snuffed out." His boss makes him doubt Raja's motives, and David ends up going with his original plan. Cue the literal Earthshattering Kaboom. The moral of the story: not all Arabs are terrorists.
  • In Dragonheart, the knight Bowen is reluctant to kill Draco, even though it's the only way to save the kingdom from its Ax Crazy king Einon, because Draco is the last dragon left in the world. Whose fault is that, might you ask? Why, Bowen's, who spent ten years on a personal crusade to wipe out the species!
    • Eh, that was part of it, the other part being that Draco had become his best friend. See how eager you are to kill YOUR best friend when the chips are down. No, the real hero who did the breaking is Draco himself, by giving half his heart to a monomaniacal Jerkass he created an immortal dictator that made life a misery for his subjects.
    • The Chinese in the sequel. First, they slaughter all their dragons because one of them turned out to be bad (whom the others immediately stopped and punished). Then they take the heart of the bad dragon to England, which results in the Big Bad (the same dragon) restoring his original form.
  • This trope kicks off Dracula Has Risen From His Grave, in which a couple of priests go to Dracula's castle to exorcise any lingering evil left over from the previous Christopher Lee Dracula flick. One of the pair slips and falls on some rocks, and blood from his resulting scalp wound drips down to where Dracula's inert body is lying, reviving the vampire for another round of mayhem.
  • Heroic Trio sees an evil sorceror kidnapping babies to raise as an evil army. One of the main characters kidnaps a baby in order to lure the real kidnapper out. This results in a fight between a fellow hero who mistakes her for a villain and to make matters worse, the real kidnapper shows up to fight both of them. The baby ends up dying in the process.
  • Burt Gummer, resident gun nut of the Tremors franchise does this in the sequel. While trying to escape shriekers, the 1st evolution stage of a graboid, they come across one in the way to an escape truck. So Burt whips out a BFG and blows it to bits The problem? He was prepared to shoot at an underground creature, not the small above ground shrieker. The bullet from the gun goes through the shreiker, a wall, several barrels of oil, and finally, the truck's engine. Burt's response? "How could I have known?!"
  • The Mummy: Evy reading from the Book of the Dead awakens Imhotep.
    • Alex does this twice in the second and third films. In the second, he puts on the Scorpion King's bracelet, which almost results in the army of Anubis from sweeping over Earth. In the third, he uncovers the tomb of the Dragon Emperor, resulting in the latter's resurrection.
    • Also in the third movie, Lin, who had been the guardian of the tomb and tried to prevent the emperor from escaping, was responsible for knocking the diamond into the emperor that awakes him as she attempts to attack his decoy.
  • In 28 Days Later morons relase the Rage Virus when attempting to free some filthy monkeys.
    • The rampant idiocy of the cast of 28 Weeks Later makes those guys look intelligent. First the Swiss Cheese Security of the compound allows people to leave the safe zone at will, leading to the discovery of a virus carrier that, for some reason, they bring into the safe zone and leave in an unlocked room with no guards to speak of. When someone inevitably gets infected, their logical decision is to heard the entire population into an poorly guarded room and shut all the lights off. Naturally, it gets worse when it leads to nearly everyone dead or infected. Then at the end, the boy becomes a carrier and his sister neglects to tell anyone, which results in the infection decimating France and possibly all of mainland Europe.
  • The main character in Avatar has the sole mission of trying to get the Na'vi people to evacuate the area within three months before Evil, Inc. clears the area. Of course, he gets emersed into their culture and falls in love with a Green-Skinned Space Babe (or blue skinned space babe, anyway). So now his mission is to try to convince his boss to leave them alone, right? Nope. He continues spying on them anyway. So does he warn the aliens that their home is about to be attatcked? Nope. He just rides around on space-horses and has sex with the alien babe, ignoring the problem all together. Needless to say, it all ends in a big fight where lots of people die. He does help save the day but one can't help but to think he could've done much more to avert disaster.
  • Resident Evil the team of soldiers sent into the research facility are completely uninformed about the work going on, they manage to get infected by the virus, turn off the A.I keeping it quarantined, create a new strain of the virus and fail to destroy everything, which lets the zombie apocalypse happen.
  • In Kung Fu Panda 2, if Po had not entered Lord Shen's weapon foundry against the advice of Tigress, then the Furious Five's plan to blow up Lord Shen's cannons would have succeeded without a hitch. Instead, they had to get rid of their explosives or Po would be blown up along with Shen and the Mooks.
  • If Elizabeth hadn't taken the cursed medallion when she and Will escaped from the Isla de Muerta in Curse of the Black Pearl, then the cursed pirates wouldn't have reason to follow them and get the Interceptor destroyed and the crew nearly killed.
    • Actually, they still would've. After all, they now knew they had the wrong person and needed the right person's blood to break the curse. Taking or not taking the medallion wouldn't've made any difference.
  • If Indy hadn't gotten involved at all in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazis would have brought the Ark back to Germany. Presumably, it would have been opened in front of Hitler and his cronies, killing them and thus preventing WWII, the Holocaust, etc. Thanks Indy!
    • Averted in the film. Belloq tells Indy during their confrontation in the Cairo bar that Hitler will see the Ark when he, Belloq, is done with it. Later, when one of the Nazis objects to the Extremely Jewish ceremonial opening (for obvious reasons), Belloq cuts him off by asking him if he would rather open it in front of der Fuhrer and find it empty. As noted here, "It appears to be a cosmic law that something bad has to go down in the period between 1930 and 1946-47." (This is reinforced by Indy's reaction when he comes face-to-face with Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)
  • In Blade, the "hero" is responsible for the innocent Karen being infected with vampirism and her boyfriend killed, since he knew that setting the vampire Quinn on fire wouldn't kill him, but did it anyway and then just left him there for the cops to find.
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon: If Optimus Prime hadn't discovered the Ark on the moon, he wouldn't have been able to use the Matrix to revive Sentinel, allowing the traitor to kill Ironhide, steal back the Space Bridge Pillars, and join Megatron and work on enslaving humanity as a labor force to rebuild Cybertron.

Charlotte Mearing: (After Sentinel ruins the NEST Base.) "Yeah, take a good look, Optimus! This is all on you!"

  • In Legend, one of the "heroes", Lily, breaks it by touching a unicorn, even after Jack tells her not to, resulting in the ice death of the world.
  • In Insidious, the twist ending is revealed when Elise takes Josh's photo, dooming herself and most likely Renai as well. On second thought, Josh is guilty of this as well.
  • In Memphis Belle, the co-pilot begs for a chance to take some shots at the attacking German fighters, and is elated when he downs one of them ... only to watch in horror as it crashes straight into the tail of the rookie crew's bomber.
  • In I Am Legend, Dr. Alice Kripin creates a mutated strain of the Measles virus which cures cancer ... and then promptly mutates again into a much worse virus that wipes out 90% of the human race and causes 99% of the survivors to be mutated into excessively violent vampire/zombie creatures which then slaughter all but a handful of the remaining uninfected people.
  • The 2012 The Three Stooges film is about the trio trying to raise $830,000 their orphanage is in debt for. It's later revealed that they're in debt because of insurance bills caused by injuries from their antics over the years.
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