Oh Crap/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

* In ''[[Animorphs]]'', the final book has two great ones in a scene. {{spoiler|The first is Visser One, when he realizes he's lost. He doesn't say anything, he just slumps, and for the first time in the series, isn't angry. The second is Tom, when he realizes that Jake is alive.}}

** Probably {{spoiler|The One, upon hearing: "Ram the Blade Ship".}}

*** Three such characters, two shiplords and an artillery supervisor, are used for the sole purpose of screaming OH CRAP before the Germans or the Americans kill them.

** The career of Flight Captain Teerts is a series of these events. First, his jet is shot down behind Japanese lines due to the world's luckiest bullet hitting his engine. Not knowing how the Japanese treat their prisoners, he surrenders. He's hauled over to Tokyo and interrogated on how to build a nuke. He tries to confuse the Japanese scientists by telling them things like "Nukes use hydrogen and plutonium", only to discover that they already knew about fusion reactions. He is eventually rescued, only to nearly die when {{spoiler|America nukes Miami}}, finally {{spoiler|dying when caught in a similar blast outside Denver}}.

* ''[[Hand of Thrawn|Vision of the Future]]'', a [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] novel, had a great one, where one of the bad guys, described as a "liar, embezzler, and probable traitor... went white" in shock and fear.

* Cersei Lannister's response to disagreement from the new High Septon in "[[A Song of Ice and Fire|A Feast For Crows]]".

** And, in ''A Storm of Swords'', the end of the duel between the Red Viper and the Mountain.

'''Everyone:''' Oh shit!]] }}

** The most epic/tragic one is provided by Catelyn Stark in ''A Storm of Swords'' {{spoiler|at the Red Wedding, when she grabs Edwyn Frey's arm and feels the armour beneath his sleeve, thus realizing exactly what is about to happen.}}

** Sauron, when {{spoiler|he realizes just what the heroes' plan was.}} Transferred surprisingly well to film (see above).

** One that didn't make the adaptation:

* Vordarian in ''[[Lois McMaster Bujold|Barrayar]]'' probably counts. His last words are, "What? You're a Betan! You can't do--" [[Mama Bear|Except she could. And did.]]

** The [[Vorkosigan Saga|Vorkosigan Universe]] likes this. In "A Civil Campaign," Richars Vorruyter is preparing to taunt Miles as Count Vorhalas and the other conservatives arrive to give him a majority of votes, when {{spoiler|Vorhalas tells Richars that he knows what a douche he's been and is thus not going to vote for him}}. Later in the same scene, {{spoiler|Richars tries to accuse Miles of shenanigans with Ekaterin, who proceeds to stand up from the balcony and propose to Miles in one of her Crowning Moments of Awesome}}.

*** For that matter, Miles causes another one of these in ''The Warrior's Apprentice'', where he {{spoiler|arrives just in time to testify on his own behalf in a treason trial, and splits up the pair of villainous ringleaders by outlining how one is planning to betray the other. The first gets an Oh Crap moment as the second begins spilling the beans}}.

** This being ''Discworld'', he got a chance to finish it, as his ride to the afterlife shows up. "--t."

** Later in the series, Greebo the cat invokes an identical half-line of dialogue -- the latter when he finishes becoming human, the former when he starts reverting to cat -- when he suffers an involuntary shapechange.

** OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT I'M GONNA DI! is Rincewind's catchphrase.

** It is frequent to hear OH SHIT whenever anyone realizes they've just said Monkey around the Librarian.

* In [[David Eddings]]' ''Enchanter's End Game'' (5th book of the ''[[Belgariad]]''), one can easily imagine Zedar's face when {{spoiler|Belgarath re-enters the room after Zedar kills Durnik in Torak's tower, performing the one act that left him with no chance of redemption and a one way ticket to [[And I Must Scream]] territory, being buried in the earth alive}}.

** Earlier in ''Magician's Gambit'' Ctuchik, in a moment of desperation, tried to use [[Functional Magic|sorcery]] to destroy the Orb with the command "Be not!" His terror caused him to forget that was one thing the universe itself would not allow, and he had a single moment to remember before ''he'' was not.

* In ''[[Island in The Sea of Time]]'', the character Swindapa is captured, brutally raped, and given nasty STDs by her culture's enemies, then given as a present to the Nantucketer admiral, {{spoiler|who is an utter badass black lesbian coast guard officer and martial artist, who frees her and teaches her how to use a katana.}} In the climactic battle, {{spoiler|Swindapa ambushes her erstwhile tormentors, who barely have the time for an Oh Crap moment before they're beheaded/disemboweled}}. In the same battle, {{spoiler|the Big Bad William Walker has one when the Nantucketers manage to blow up his supply of gunpowder, which fueled the only 3 cannons in the world which had been busily enfilading the Nantucket lines}}.

* ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]'': In the immortal words of a bowl of petunias:

* In the book ''[[Fool]]'', whenever the fool's plans are derailed (about once a chapter, till in the end when his whole [[Plan]] pays off. IN SPADES!) or on the last page when the witches show up to claim their price, which turns out to be Spain, his automatic response is a simple "Fuckstockings."

* Happens to Freddy twice in the book ''[[A Nightmare on Elm Street]]: The Dream Dealers''. The first time, Freddy wakes up after being briefly knocked out and spots a bomb (which kept showing up in dreams) lying next to him, seconds before it explodes. Later on, when Freddy pulls himself back together, he finds himself confronted by the escaped souls of his recent victims, who decided to pay him a little visit before crossing over to the great beyond. Freddy is pretty much left speechless:

* [[Evil Chancellor]] Wienis goes through several of these in ''[[Foundation]]''.

* [[Invoked Trope|A rare sighting of the invoked "Oh Crap"]] in Isaac Asimov's ''[[Foundation|Second Foundation]]''. You really don't want to read this if you have not read the book, though. Really. {{spoiler|When the Mule realizes what the plan of the Second Foundation is, and how he has been duped, he despairs for a brief moment. This is exactly what the First Speaker was counting on, and during that fraction of a second he went into the Mule's mind and destroyed his hostility towards the Second Foundation and ambition to conquer the galaxy, as well as erasing all memory of the encounter.}}

* Many of the [[Big Bad|villains]] in the ''[[Redwall]]'' books have [[Oh Crap]] moments before their inevitably gruesome deaths.

** ''The Bellmaker'' has one for the heroes;

'''Rufe''': "[[Everything's Even Worse with Sharks|Does it look like this one circling our ship, sir?]]" }}

* Opal from ''[[Artemis Fowl]]: The Opal Deception''. Her master plan, like many, involves a massive bomb. Suddenly, her thugs notice the bomb has gone missing, and receives a taunt from the heroes, who have just snuck into, and out of, her shuttle. However, she still has the detonator and the opposing shuttle is in the right place, so she presses it. Only then does she realize they didn't ''steal'' the bomb, just ''hid'' it.

* [[Jim Butcher]] must love this trope. Practically every single one of his books ([[The Dresden Files|both]] [[Codex Alera|series]]) features one of these, usually as the main characters realize that the situation, already sucky, just went from worse to "OMFG".

** Done at least once per book in ''[[The Dresden Files]].'' Almost each instance requires multiple books of [[Info Dump]] and backstory, plus a few [[Noodle Incident|Noodle Incidents]] thrown in for flavor, to really understand the full power and scope of exactly how screwed Harry is, though.

*** In ''Changes'', the thing that lets Harry know just how bad things are is when he talks to Mac, the usually monosyllabic bartender, at the beginning of the book. Harry's reaction to Mac speaking for a good paragraph is this:

** In the ''[[Codex Alera]]'', this is usually caused by an enormous army appearing out of nowhere. The Vord in particular are so good at causing this that even a fairly small group turned large portions of the second book into a string of such moments as Bernard and company fall into trap after trap.

* In ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four|1984]]'', this is pretty much how Winston and Julia react when {{spoiler|the telescreen that was concealed in their hiding place the whole time makes itself known -- moments before the Thought Police show up and arrest them both.}}

*** Also becomes a [[Break the Cutie]] moment when she realizes that [[The Captain|Captain McTavish]] {{spoiler|may be the next corpse to come ashore.}}

* There's a great one in [[The Culture/Excession|Excession]] when the ship that's been following the ''Sleeper Service'' realizes that it's converted ''all'' its internal volume into engines.

* In ''Bloodstone,'' part of the Stones of Power series by [[David Gemmell]], the [[Big Bad]] realizes that the legendary "Sword of God" {{spoiler|is a nuke, and he's been transported to the site of the first testing of one. We get the immortal line "On wings of fear Sarento ran." He is annihilated soon after.}}

* This happens to Weed from [[The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor]] a lot

* The [[Robert E. Howard]] short story "The Extermination of Yellow Donory" is a series of [[Oh Crap]] moments. {{spoiler|The titular character, sick of being pushed around for being a coward, decides to commit "suicide by gunslinger" by seeking out and loudly berating a well-known, greatly feared gunslick. However, his plans go awry; the gunslinger's utterly spooked by this apparition, and thinks it's some sort of a trap for him, so he runs out of the tavern and high-tails it out of town...and "Yellow" Donory looks around to find that now everybody in that tavern is scared of ''him''.}}