Prophetic Fallacy: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* In ''[[Basara]]'', male and female twins are born, and it is prophesised that one of them will overthrow the evil kings that rule post-apocalyptic Japan. The villages automatically assume that the boy is the saviour... but he gets killed, leading the girl to disguise herself as him and lead the rebellion. The village wise man comments that she noticed without realising it that she was in fact the saviour.

* In ''[[Rave Master]]'', a seer sees Haru (hero) stabbing Elie (heroine) with his sword. Turn out, Elie's magic was going to go crazy and Haru activated the next form of his sword that can cut magic but nothing of substance, thus sealing her nearly-rampaging magic and saving everyone. After this, he waves the sword through his arms a few times to demonstrate.

 

== Comic Books ==

* In the graphic novel ''[[Top Ten]] -- The Forty-Niners'', two characters see part of a newspaper headline from the future that suggests Nazis have taken over America. However, the headline is later shown in full and revealed to be celebrating the Nazis' ''failure''.

* This was the basis of Dream Girl's use in the ''[[Legion of Super-Heroes]]''. Her prophecies were always completely accurate but often misinterpreted.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[The Matrix]]'' takes this to rather insane extremes as Neo and his friends deal with apparently contradicting prophecies from the Oracle that work themselves out in the end.

** The trick, though, is that the Oracle isn't really telling Neo or the other Zionites what her prophecies actually ''are''. She tells them, "exactly what they need to hear" in order for her prophecies to come true.

*** It's even more detailed than that - Oracle: "You got the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something." Neo: "What?" Oracle: "Your next life, maybe. Who knows?" {{spoiler|Neo only really unlocks his One-ness after being shot and apparently killed by the Agents, then coming back to life}}.

**** Although it IS his love for Trinity that allows him to save the day anyway.

 

== Literature ==

* In the ''[[Harry Potter]]'' books, Voldemort hears half of a prophecy about a boy about to be born who will be his nemesis. With two possible choices, he chooses Harry, but in the process of trying to kill him, gives Harry both the power and a reason to defy him, which was the half of the prophesy that he missed. Also a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]].

** It's implied that the prophesy still would have been true if he had attacked the other boy, in a bit of a [[Schrödinger's Gun]].

** It's also clear that Voldemort intended to kill both children, just to be sure. But once Harry survived the attempt and Voldemort was temporarily reduced to a near-death state, it became obvious that he was the one the prophecy referred to and thus Voldemort lost interest in the other child. He didn't realize, {{spoiler|and never did figure out}}, that Harry was only [[The Chosen One]] of the prophecy because ''[[Hoist by His Own Petard|Voldemort was the one who chose him]]''. As mentioned above, that's the Fallacy part of the Prophetic Fallacy.

** Even then, he almost doesn't get away with it; Lord Hong demands to know if he's sure, and he only manages to escape by pretending to get indignant: "What, so you're the seer now? You can see what the liver means just here? I suppose you know all about this green wobbly bit over here!"

* In the ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'', Denethor sees the coming of the Black Fleet in the Palantir, and loses hope for Gondor defending itself against the onslaught from Mordor. Aragorn saw the same and went on to commandeer said ships, fill them with the now-unoccupied soldiers from southern Gondor, and helps turning the tide in Gondor's favor.

*** [[Word of God]] claimed that this was inspired by [[Macbeth]]: Tolkien always thought that the quibble about Macduff not being "a man of woman born" was too inelegant, and it would have been much more satisfying if Macbeth had simply been killed by a woman. Similarly, the Last March of the Ents comes from Tolkien's disappointment that Birnham Wood didn't ''literally'' march on Macbeth's castle.

* A sort-of example: in the [[Expanded Universe]] series of ''[[Star Wars]]'' novels called the ''[[New Jedi Order]]'', the enemy are [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]], the Yuuzhan Vong. One note about the Vong is that twins are exceedingly rare—and their religious beliefs indicate that one will always kill the other. They are intrigued not only by Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Solo, but by Leia's children, Jacen and Jaina. To that end, they attempt to ''make'' it happen, by capturing one and them inducing them to kill the other. This in fact leads to their downfall, as with a little help from a spy, Jacen, not only is able to fake loyalty to the Yuuzhan Vong, but learns a number of Force uses that become instrumental in the war, but also that he corrupts a critical piece of Vong biotech.

* In the story ''An Appointment in Samarra'', a servant is sent to a Baghdad marketplace where he sees Death make a threatening gesture. His master lends him a horse to flee to the town of Samarra. When the master finds Death, and asks why she made the gesture, she replies that it was only a start of surprise at seeing him in Baghdad, since their appointment was that night in Samarra.

** As a parody on this, Death's introduction as a character in the very first ''[[Discworld]]'' novel goes like this: Rincewind runs into Death, who comments that they have an appointment soon somewhere else and asks if Rincewind would mind going there. Rincewind declines.

*** In the same novel, a fortune-teller sees her own death in a crystal ball, panics, sells all her possessions and sets off for a far away city. She is killed by a freak avalanche at the ''exact same instant'' that her house collapses into a pile of ashes. The narrator informs us that this just goes to show that Death has a sense of humor too.

* [[China Mieville]]'s ''[[Un Lun Dun]]'' plays around with this trope: a young girl named Zanna is prophesied by an living book of prophecy to be the Shwazzy, the saviour of UnLondon, a fantasy counterpart to London, from the evil sentient smog that threatens the city. When Zanna and her best friend Deeba accidentally travel to UnLondon, Zanna attempts to fight the Smog...and is almost immediately put out of commission. Deeba, however, proves to be much more effective at combating the Smog, and she rapidly becomes the hero of the story. This is only the first of MANY plot twists in this novel. Also, the book of prophecy that predicted incorrectly? It spends quite a lot of the rest of the book being depressed and thinking that it is useless.

** All this results in the one thing the Book was certain was a misprint being absolutely correct and the key to stopping the Smog.

* Done quite impressively in the ''[[Mistborn]]'' books. The [[God of Evil]] Ruin is [[Sealed Evil in a Can|imprisoned]] in the Well of Ascension, but can still effect the world in subtle ways, especially changing writing, so he carefully reworded the prophecies about [[The Chosen One|the Hero of Ages]] to say that they need to do the exact ''opposite'' of what they're supposed to. The first time round he was foiled by a man with a [[Photographic Memory]], but [[Unwitting Pawn|it worked spectacularly the second time]].

 

* On one episode of ''[[Taxi]]'', Reverend Jim gives a number of prophecies that seem to come true. When Jim declares that Alex Rieger will die the following Thursday at 7pm, Rieger is skeptical. One the night of the prophecy, Louie goes to visit Rieger to keep him company and to help avert whatever tragedy is to fall him. As the highly improbable prophesied chain of events leading up to Rieger's death start to come true, Louie grows more concerned and Alex grows more incredulous. He finally decides to tempt fate by acting out the more ridiculous of Jim's prophecies, just to prove to Louie that it's all a bunch of hogwash. Finally, at 7pm, there's a knock on the door. Louie hesitantly opens the door, and sees {{spoiler|a girl scout selling cookies. Louie screams, the girl scout screams and flees, and Louie slams the door in terror: "Did you see it, Rieger? It was ''hideous!!''"}}

* ''[[Medium]]'' uses this a lot. The main character {{spoiler|and her three daughters}} has lots of visions that often take days to figure out what those visions really are saying.

* This happens a fair bit in [[The Dead Zone]], with Johnny getting visions where the intended target/victim is unclear or he jumps to the wrong conclusion about what he is seeing because he doesn't know what he's seeing is incomplete. A particularly good example occurs when he has a vision of himself {{spoiler|killing a stranger}} and the clues lead him to believe Sarah or JJ are in danger ( {{spoiler|the victim is really Bruce and it's a complete accident.}}) At the end of the episode, Johnny laments that he just sees flashes of events out of context which makes trying to predict (and prevent) the future very difficult.

 

* Early in ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'', Elphaba predicts her future greatness, saying "When people see me, they will scream" and "There'll be a celebration throughout Oz, all to do with me." However, as it turns out, people scream out of fear, and the celebration is about her death.

* Being killed by a creature who was already dead seemed rather unlikely to Herakles until the end of ''[[The Women of Trachis|The Trachiniae]]'', where it is revealed that his wife (who has since also killed herself) accidentally poisoned him with a purported love potion given to her by a centaur he killed on his deathbed.

 

== Video Games ==

* In ''[[The Curse of Monkey Island]]'', the Voodoo Lady warns Threepwood that she has seen that Blood Island will be the place where he dies. When he actually reaches Blood Island, he [[Fainting Seer|draws 5 Death cards from a single Tarot deck]]. Turns out, everyone ''does'' see him die there: He fakes his death, multiple times, in order to gain access to certain crypts.

* In ''[[Star Wars]] [[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', Jolee Bindo recounts the tale of an old Jedi comrade of his, whom other Jedi believed to have a great destiny. Jolee and this Jedi were later captured by a warlord, but the other Jedi raving about his destiny annoyed the warlord so much that he threw him into the ship's engines. Jolee notes that the Jedi's must've damaged something during his fall, as the ship blew up, the warlord was killed, and the political system of the entire sector was radically changed.

* ''[[Little Big Adventure|Little Big Adventure II/Twinsen's Odyssey]]'' has an old prophecy hijacked by a character who removed the final part of it, since it predicted the downfall of a deity he was impersonating. Naturally, his actions eventually made the full version of the prophecy self-fulfilling (and it ''did'' turn out to be true in the end).

 

* In ''[[The Last Days of Foxhound]]'', Vulcan Raven, having the gift of future sight, is puzzled when he is unable to see past his upcoming encounter with Solid Snake. Somewhat inverted when, near the end, he guesses that the reason he can't see past that point is that he will die in that battle. Since the webcomic is based off of the game [[Metal Gear Solid]] and Raven had a role as a simple boss and only appeared in that one game, [[Doomed by Canon|one can guess how this prophecy plays out]].

* In ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'', Merlin tells King Rience that if he attacks Arthur a great king will fall. [[Author Catchphrase|You can't beat the classics]].

 

== Western Animation ==

* Iroh from ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' had a vision when he was young that he'd be the one successfully claim the city of Ba Sing Se for the Fire Nation—only to end the siege in his grief at his son's death. Years later, he finally did claim the city -- ''from'' the Fire Nation, in the name of the Earth Kingdom. As he says "Destiny is a funny thing".

 

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[[Category:Plot Twist]]

[[Category:Fate and Prophecy Tropes]]