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Self-Defeating Prophecy: Difference between revisions

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Self-Defeating Prophecy (view source)

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== Literature ==
* In the ''[[Temps (Literature)|Temps]]'' [[Shared Universe]], this is called the "Oedipus paradox", which researcher Simon Sweetland notes is completely wrong, because that was a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]].
* In the ''[[The Bible (Literature)|Book of Jonah]]'' the prophet announces that the city of Nineveh will be destroyed. People of the city repent, so the destruction doesn't takes place (at least not immediately).
 
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* The premise of many early ''[[Angel]]'' episodes.
* The premise of most ''[[Early Edition (TV)|Early Edition]]'' episodes. The hero gets tomorrow's newspaper, which generally seems to predict the day as it would have gone had the newspaper not existed.
* A regular occurrence on ''[[Eli Stone]]'': Eli would get visions and try to prevent them from happening - like, his vision said a building was going to get bombed with his boss in it, so he tried to get his boss to leave the building before that happened. Sometimes it worked out in his favor, sometimes not.
* ''[[Eureka]]'' does this with [[Mental Time Travel]] rather than prophecies. The season 1 finale has Carter travel back in time from a point where he's married to Allison. As a result, in the season 2 opener, he acts overly familiar with her, she's mildly put off, and they don't go on their first date as he remembers it; in the end that first date doesn't happen for almost three more years.
* Whether or not this is possible is a major question for the characters of [[Flash Forward 2009|Flash Forward]].
* In ''[[Charmed]]'', Phoebe's premonitions allow the sisters to prevent almost all of the tragedies she sees. It tends to be a real [[Tear Jerker]] on those rare occasions when they can't.
* ''[[The Fades (TV)|The Fades]]'' has two:
** Paul twice has a [[Dreaming of Things to Come|prophetic dream]] in which he sees his loved ones dead; he's able to avert this because, when the time comes, he recognises the dream's circumstances and is able to check on them before the killer can get to them.
** Part of the apocalyptic prophecy Paul and Sarah have been seeing involves Paul being stabbed to death at the end of a fight with John, the [[Big Bad]]. However, when the fight with John actually comes, Sarah [[Taking the Bullet|takes the stab wound instead]] to allow Paul enough time to save the day, having only known to do this because of her visions.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* The Dark Prognosticus in ''[[Super Paper Mario (Video Game)|Super Paper Mario]]'' is a book that details a series of events that would come to destroy all universes. The Ancients, in response, created a counter-prophecy in the Light Prognosticus.
* [[Xenoblade]] ''revolves'' around this-not only do Shulk's Monando-born visions allow him to change the course of the study, it's actually ''[[Gameplay and Story Integration|a system in game]]'': An enemy charging a powerful attack will provoke the Monando to show you ahead of time what happens, so you can prepare for it or even stop it from happening in the first place.
 
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