Not Quite the Right Thing: Difference between revisions

Sometimes, [[Being Good Sucks|it hurts to do the right thing]]. Sometimes, [[Conflicting Loyalty|it's damned if you do and damned if you don't]]. And [[Senseless Sacrifice|sometimes, what seemed a good idea at the time turns out otherwise]]. It sounded like the right thing... but it turned out to be [[Not Quite the Right Thing]].

 

 

Unfortunately, all too often [[Truth in Television]].

When everyone involved is ''aware'' that all options are bad and that there's no right answer, it's a [[Sadistic Choice]] instead.

 

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

== [[Literature]] ==

* This happens ''repeatedly'' when Bastian recklessly makes wishes using the AURYN in the original novel of ''[[The Neverending Story (Literature)|The Neverending Story]]''. Perhaps the best example is when he finds a race of beings so utterly ugly that they constantly weep. He wishes for them to become beautiful and always laugh, but it turns out that their tears are actually necessary.

* The [[Physical God|Valar]] were motivated to things like bringing the Elves to the Undying Lands or rewarding the Edain with Numenor entirely by good intentions. The text still takes the time to strongly imply that doing so was ultimately the wrong thing to do.

** In Tolkien's legendarium, trying to impose ''any'' vision or much of anything else on the world is likely to end badly, because the free wills and free choices of Elves and Men are so vital, and because no finite entity comprehends enough of How Things Work in the universe to be able to predict the consequences of their actions outside their purview. Tolkien had a low opinion both of reactionaries ('Embalmers') and progressives ('Reformers'), Sauron started out as a Reformer, the Elves of Eregion who made the Rings were Embalmers. Both were [[Not Quite the Right Thing]].

** ''Honest Hearts'' features one of these in both outcomes of the final choice. {{spoiler|Helping Daniel evacuate the Sorrows saves more people from dying, but Zion -- one of the last fertile and non-nuked areas in the world -- is destroyed by the now-unopposed White Legs. Meanwhile, helping Graham exterminate the White Legs saves Zion, but the Sorrows end up breaking their wow of nonviolence that leads to later conflicts with their former allies the Dead Horses.}}

* In [[Knights of the Old Republic]] one mission sees a you tasked with defending in court a renounced republic war hero accused of murdering an agent of the sith forces on a neutral planet. The Sith have clearly tampered with evidence to incriminate him making your job easy enough. Trouble is {{spoiler|you can track down evidence proving that he is actually guilty and killed her out of passion when he found out she was only romantically involved with him to spy for the enemy.}} The correct (i.e. Light side) choice is to point out that the Sith altered the evidence, {{spoiler|but that he's guilty anyway}}.

* ''[[Army of Two]]: The 40th Day'' subverts/deconstructs/parodies video game morality choices with heavy use of this trope. There are a number of points in the game in which the heroes are given a choice of two actions; one obviously "good" and one obviously "bad". The "bad" morality choices usually turn out exactly as you would expected. The subversion/deconstruction comes in the fact that the "good" morality choice almost always has a completely unforseeable, incredibly negative consequence in the future, often as bad or even worse than what would have if you made the "bad" choice, which the heroes never even become aware of and which is only revealed to the player by the narrator.

** As an example, the first morality choice you get in the game is to kill another mercenary who's been helping you, or to pretend to kill him and tell him to disappear. If you kill him, [[Captain Obvious|he dies]]. If you let him live, he escapes Shanghai before all the shit goes down, and moves to a quit tropical island...[[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|where he's killed by an assassin while sleeping on a beach lounger]].