Prophetic Fallacy: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
A variation on the [[Prophecy Twist]] and, sometimes, the [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|Self Fulfilling Prophecies]], the '''Prophetic Fallacy''' is different in that the prophecy itself - typically a prophetic dream or glimpse through a time window - is incomplete or deceptive in some way rather than simply vague.
For example, a man might see himself being knocked down by a car and note that the time on a digital display is 10:51, then spend the entire episode trying to avoid going near a road, despite various events conspiring to put him in danger. He eventually makes it to 10:52 and thinks he is safe, but is knocked down an hour later and discovers that he saw the digital clock in a mirror and his actual time of death is 12:01.
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* ''[[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.
** There's also a trick to the wording. She said Neo wasn't The
*** 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.
* ''[[The Scorpion King]]'' includes a vision by the female lead where Mathayus gets shot in the back, at which point it ends. Said prophecy happens, then {{spoiler|Mathayus gets back up, [[Annoying Arrows|pulls the arrow out of his back]], and shoots it back at the [[Big Bad]], killing him}}.
* ''[[Inglourious Basterds]]'' pulls this on the VIEWER {{spoiler|by making it seem like a World War 2 history movie... until the end, when you discover it's an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE World War 2 history movie where 3 different plans succeed in killing Hitler at the same time}}.
* The main plot of ''[[The Smurfs (film)|The Smurfs]]'' is driven by Papa Smurf misreading an attempt to foretell the outcome of the Blue Moon Festival thanks to having the critical part of the vision interrupted by Clumsy
* ''[[Willow]]'' sees the [[God Save Us From the Queen|evil Queen]] Bavmorda come across the prophecy of a child bearing a mark, who will lead to her destruction. Naturally, she scours the land capturing all pregnant women in search for this child. When Elora Dannan is born, all those people who have heard of the prophecy rally to protect the newborn so she can fulfill her destiny... accidentally bringing together a force that can storm Bavmorda's castle, while the queen herself is destroyed by the very spell she intended to kill baby Elora with.
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* 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 [[Schrodinger'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
* The ''[[Discworld]]'' book ''[[Discworld/Interesting Times|Interesting Times]]'' references Croesus (below). A seer, who, as he's on the Discworld probably has a decent batting average, is completely flummoxed by a demand to predict the outcome of a battle, which is understandable as Lady Luck, several billion chaotic-system-generating butterflies, and Rincewind ("With him here, even uncertainty is uncertain") are all in the immediate vicinity. Knowing that he would be put to death for admitting it, he says only that "a decisive victory would be won"
** 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.
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** Even the elves get in on this. Glorfindel foresees that the Witch-King will fall "not by the hand of man," without mentioning that he will fall by the hand of a woman.
*** [[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
** Disturbingly, they seem to {{spoiler|have actually ''succeeded'' in the long run, as that training becomes a step along his path to becoming a Sith Lord, which drives Jaina to kill him}}.
* The ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' "[[The Thrawn Trilogy|Thrawn]]" trilogy has this kind of prophecy from the insane Jedi Master Joruus C'Baoth. He prophecied that Mara Jade would become his apprentice because he saw a vision of her [[Kneel Before Zod|kneeling before him]]. Turns out that Mara "kneels" in order to duck under C'Baoth's Force Lightning and chop him in half with her lightsaber.
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* In the first season finale of ''[[Angel]]'', Wes translates a prophecy to say that Angel will die. In the end it is revealed that {{spoiler|Wes mistranslated it, and the real prophecy said that he would "live and die" (the language of the prophecy uses the same word for both); in other words, become human}}. Of course, {{spoiler|the prophecy only said "the vampire with a soul," so in the fifth season, a conflict is introduced that it could have been Spike they were talking about. At the time the prophecy was translated, Angel was not only the only vampire with a soul, but the only one that had ''ever'' existed, nobody had even considered the idea that it could refer to someone else}}.
** Also the prophecy {{spoiler|"the father will kill the son"}}, which drove multiple episodes in the back half of the third season, was {{spoiler|faked by the demon Sahjhan (who, upon revealing this, taunts "read any good prophecies lately?")}}. When Wesley goes to one of the Loa for clarification, he is told that the vampire will certainly devour his child. {{spoiler|Angel's blood supply from the butcher had been spiked with Connor's blood by Wolfram & Hart and at the season 4 finale, Angel 'kills' Connor: he destroys Connor's true identity, giving him a fake one to save his sanity by giving him a normal family life, one that carries no memory of his real lifel}}.
* Used many, ''many'' times on the TV version of ''[[Flash Forward 2009|Flash Forward]]'', but here's one example: Demetri's fiancee doesn't believe that Demetri's blackout means he's going to die, as she had a vision of herself walking down a beach to greet Demtri's family while dressed in
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the [[The Nth Doctor|Tenth Doctor]] is told that before he regenerates, "he will knock four times." Considering the last episode was set to feature the return of [[The Master]] (who, in the new series, constantly hears [[Terrible Ticking|four drum-beats in his head]]), many presumed the seemingly obvious. Turns out {{spoiler|it wasn't the Master, nor was it the power-mad President of the Time Lords...it was Wilf, after all the trouble had been sorted, knocking quietly on the door of the broken containment chamber that's about to be flooded with radiation}}.
* This was a staple of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' throughout the 1st season thanks to future-painter Isaac Mendez. Everything he painted came true, except that none of them came true in quite the same way everyone interpreted them. Some examples:
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* Happens in ''[[Kim Possible]]'' with a prophecy about how the leader of the monkey ninjas will be unstoppable. At the end of the episode the prophecy spirit rather sheepishly shows up to explain to the disgruntled monkey ninjas that due to a typo he actually meant something else ({{spoiler|[[Sidekick|Ron Stoppable]]}}).
* 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
** There's also the entirety of the Fortune Teller episode, which SEEMS to be leading this way. Everything she prophesises is either incredibly vague or self fulfilling ("I'll meet my wife on the day I wear red shoes, so every day I wear red shoes!" type of self-fulfilling.) Then she makes a series of predictions that not only fly in the face of logic concerning the local about-to-erupt volcano, and everyone adopts a very [[Dying Like Animals]] approach, namely sheep. It gets so bad that the Gaang has to fly up and literally rearrange the clouds to get her to change her prophecy, which FINALLY gets everyone off their asses, proving that her initial prediction was the wrong one.... The subversion, pointed out explicitly by her, is that it ended up that everything turned out literally as she predicted (the village itself was ''not'' destroyed by the volcano).
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