Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Whenever anyone tries to avert a prophecy, for good or ill, the end result of their actions is to bring the prophecy about. The harder he struggles to prevent it, the more inescapable his destiny becomes. Fate, it seems, loves irony. Strangely, the other side of this, where the prophecy is fulfilled because someone ''wants'' to fulfill it, is rarely explored in fiction.

 

Compare [[Prophetic Fallacy]], [[Nice Job Breaking It, Herod]], [[The Firefly Effect]], [[Streisand Effect]], and [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]] and/or [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain]] (depending on who did it). Often an integral part of [[Tragedy]]. May cause a [[Clingy MacGuffin]]. For the [[Time Travel]] version, see [[You Already Changed the Past]] and [[Stable Time Loop]]. See also Situational [[Irony]].

 

* ''[[Slayers Try]]'' has a town that fears dragons because one of them destroyed the town. They manage (along with Xelloss) to make Filia angry enough that she does just that.

* In ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'', Fei Wong Reed goes through a ridiculously complex [[Xanatos Roulette]] to prevent {{spoiler|Yuko}}'s death from catching up with her, in the process creating two clones, then discarding them (essentially killing them). The woman he was trying to save then embraces her long-delayed death as payment to bring the two clones into the cycle of reincarnation. In other words, had he not tried to save {{spoiler|Yuko}}, she never would have died.

* In ''[[Eureka Seven]]'', Holland learned from Norbu 3 years ago prior to the series that whoever makes Eureka smile and happy is her destined partner, who turns out to be the protagonist Renton. Holland's efforts to deny their relationship and trying to win Eureka's favour only seeks to setup a chain of events that made Renton and Eureka officially into a couple. Holland even [[Face Palm]] on his efforts after his quarrel with Eureka in episode 26.

* In ''[[Dog Days]]'', Leonmichelle's attempts to {{spoiler|stop the foretold deaths of Milhiore and Shinku ends up summoning the beast that will presumably kill them}}.

 

== Comic Books ==

* According to a [[Retcon]] in ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'', Boliver Trask was inspired to create the Sentinels because his son was having visions of a [[Bad Future]], and he assumed this meant a mutant-controlled one. The visions were actually of the "Days of Future Past", a Sentinel-controlled future.

* In the classic [[Judge Dredd (comics)|Judge Dredd]] storyline ''The Judge Child Quest'', the Judge Child makes predictions that make the people who hear them cause the accidents that they just heard predicted.

 

== Fairy Tales ==

* In "[[Sun, Moon, and Talia|Sun Moon and Talia]]", an older variant of "[[Sleeping Beauty]]", wise men prophesy that Talia will be harmed by flax. Her father therefore orders it all kept of the castle—which means Talia doesn't know what it is and finds it intriguing.

 

== Film ==

* In ''[[Wanted (film)|Wanted]]'' the Loom of Fate causes Sloan to fall into this. {{spoiler|The loom marks Sloan for death, but Sloan is the only one who interprets the loom's coded marks, so he simply hides it away and manufactures targets to make money as well as shape the world as he sees fit. In the end, the loom also marks the entire Chicago Fraternity for death; one tries to say [[Screw Destiny]], but is killed by the [[Action Girl]] just after, who kills herself with the same bullet, in the same shot, as her name is on the list. Though Sloan survives this scene, his attempt to turn the Fraternity into assassins for money and his failure to succeed allow the main character to survive and kill him in the very next scene.}}

** In ''Weapons of Fate,'' Wesley shows some [[Genre Savvy]] and ridicules the Immortal for the Fraternity's reliance on the concept of fate; his mother {{spoiler|died by his father's hand, ''at her own insistence,'' because the loom of fate marked her, and he went along with it.}} Wesley finds this absurd and doesn't think the problem is self-fulfilling prophecy so much as members of the Fraternity having serious problems with common sense and a lack thereof.

** ...and ''La jetéee'', the short French New Wave film it was based on.

* ''[[Paycheck]]''. And not ''[[Paycheck]]''. Depending on the scene more than depending on logic.

* In ''[[Riddick|The Chronicles of Riddick]]'', the [[Big Bad]] experiences [[Genocide Backfire]] when he kills off the entire Furyan Race to avoid death by one of their hands. Except he misses one, who later comes back and bites him in the arse. Hard. His name is Riddick. {{spoiler|He actually missed two, and the other one saves Riddick's life.}}

* in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: On Stranger Tides'' Black Beard journeyed to the Fountain of Youth to "cheat death". Guess where he died.

 

== Folk Tales ==

** And by Italian singer Roberto Vecchioni in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM06J-dthGo "Samarcanda"]

** Also used as a [[Title Drop]] in the TV adaptation of [[Agatha Christie]]'s ''Appointment with Death''.

** The Jewish version of this story has King Solomon meeting the angel of death, who looks sad. Upon being asked why he is sad, the angel replies that he is supposed to take the lives of two of Solomon's advisers but can't. Solomon, worried for his advisers, sends them off to the city of Luz, famous for the fact that all who live within have immortality so long as they remain in that city. The following day Solomon sees the angel of death again, who is happy this time. Why was he sad yesterday, and why is he now happy? Because he was supposed to take the lives of those advisers just before the entrance to the city of Luz, and couldn't do so so long as they weren't there yet...

* There was a small town. One day, an old lady said something bad was going to happen that day. Word gets out, and then every person is so paranoid that the townspeople burn it down and run.

* Of course, as mentioned above, the ancient Greek fable of Oedipus Rex (later made into a play by Sophocles), which ended in Oedipus gouging out his own eyes and his wife/mother hanging herself.

 

== Literature ==

* In [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''[[Apprentice Adept|Blue Adept]]'', in [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle|(what they thought was)]] their big showdown, protagonist Stile asks the Red Adept why she was gunning for him. She replies a prophecy had foretold of her destruction at his hands, so she decided to strike first. Stile points out that he never would've heard of her, magic, or the world of Phaze (let alone been able to enter it) if Red hadn't murdered Adept Blue (Stile's Phaze self) and tried to kill him. Turns out the Oracle set Red on his trail intentionally, to get Stile into Phaze to play his part to [[Save Both Worlds]].

* Done with a [[Prophecy Twist]] in [[Peter David]]'s ''[[Star Trek: New Frontier]]'' novel ''Martyr''. A prophet 500 years in the past predicts the savior of his people will come when certain events happen. When those events do happen, Captain Calhoun is revered as that Savior. The Twist? {{spoiler|The actual Savior is the man who thinks he's appointed to kill the Savior, whose traits include a scar (which Calhoun has...and gives the appointee while he's struggling). He does kill the Savior--himself--accidentally.}} And then it's subverted by the fact that {{spoiler|The prophet was cheating by using Advanced Alien Technology to look into the future.}}

* Inverted in ''[[I, Claudius]]''. A prophecy is made that Caligula (yup, [[The Caligula|that one]]) can "no more become Emperor that he can ride across the bay from Baiae to Puteoli". One of Caligula's first acts as Emperor involves a very long bridge...

* Subverted and lampshaded in Calderon's ''Life is a Dream'', where Segismund - subject of an [[Oedipus the King|Oedipus Rex]] type prophecy - points out that it ''would'' be a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, while [[Screw Destiny|preventing it from getting fulfilled]].

{{quote|''My father, who is here to evade the fury

* ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'' is built around one, as explained by Dumbledore in book six. 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 him both the power to defy him and a reason to. What's the best way to turn an otherwise unimportant young wizard into your mortal enemy who's well-equipped to defeat you? Well, murdering his parents and spending the better part of a decade sticking him in convoluted death traps is not a bad start.

** What's more, Dumbledore hints that not all prophecies have to be fulfilled. The only reason Harry is going to fulfill the prophecy is because [[The Unchosen One|he would never rest until Voldemort was dead]], and the same goes for Voldemort. The only way to avoid it coming true is if they both stop, which certainly won't happen.

** Played for laughs with some of Trelawney's "predictions". The first time we see her, she asks Neville to use one of the blue cups for tea-leaves-reading after he breaks his first one. Neville, already nervous at the best of time, promptly breaks the first cup he uses. She ends the lesson by telling him he'll be late next time, "so mind you work extra hard to catch up". Hermione believes this is why people die when they see "the Grim".

* In ''[[The Wheel of Time]]'' series Mat learns he would marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Much later, she comes across him trying to flee from a city and has to be tied up. When Mat finds out what she is, having already learned the hard way that [[You Can't Fight Fate]], he changes his mind about hiding her in the lofts and kidnaps her instead. And much later, {{spoiler|Tuon only completes the marriage ceremony Mat accidentally started because of the marriage prophecy ''she'' got}}.

** Many, perhaps most, prophecies in WoT seem to work this way. For example, one well-known prophecy states that the Stone of Tear (a fortress in the middle of a major city) would never fall until Callandor (a super-powerful ancient sword held in the Stone) was wielded by the hand of the Dragon (the [[Chosen One]]). When the main character was told that he was the Dragon by what he considered untrustworthy sources and wanted to know for sure, he snuck into the Stone and yanked Callandor. Sure enough, he was the Dragon, but he probably never would even have heard of Callandor let alone decided to try to claim it if not for the prophecy.

*** Memorably, Moiraine (Rand's personal [[The Obi-Wan|Obi-Wan]]) was ''pissed'' that he had decided to go for Callandor so quickly, as he was most definitively ''not ready''. We can only imagine her reaction if she knew what had happened on his trip there.

* [[Classical Mythology|Greek Mythology]] ''adores'' this trope. A prophecy that Paris will cause Troy to burn down? His parents abandon him in a remote area, but he gets found and raised by someone else, eventually returns home by which time his parents have forgotten the prophecy, and due to things he did when abandoned, causes a long chain of events that ends with Troy burning. Many times this trope in Greek Mythology results in an [[Idiot Plot]]; for example, Cronus (father of many of the Greek gods, such as Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades), in an attempt to avert the prophecy that one of his children will overcome him, decides to swallow them as soon as they're born. His wife finally gets tired of it and smuggles the sixth (Zeus) off after he's born, tricking Cronus into swallowing a rock instead. After growing up, Zeus defeats Cronus and frees his siblings. Now, rather than eating the children when they're born, wouldn't it have been far more logical to just ''not have any children in the first place''?

** Given the lack of contraceptives, even divine ones, that would entail keeping it in his chiton—which not too many of the Greek gods were any good at. Especially Zeus.

* In [[The Bible]], Joseph has prophetic dreams saying he will one day rule his older brothers - so they fake his death and sell him into slavery. But this then starts a chain of events which lead to him becoming prime minister of Egypt and controlling the only source of stored food when a famine hits, leading to his brothers having

* ''[[Dune]]'' uses this trope in an interesting way. Instead of the [[Seers]] giving a prophecy and leaving others to fulfill it, the seer '''is''' [[The Messiah]] who tries to find the best possible path for the future and enact it himself. The problem is that once humanity is set on a certain path in the present, the number of possible futures diminish and it becomes impossible to switch to a different path for the future without dealing with the effects of the prior path.

** (This is also true in [[Real Life]]. It's just that real prophecies have a lower success rate.)

* The Clayr in ''[[Old Kingdom|The Abhorsen Trilogy]]'' apparently see nothing odd about inducting a member into their ranks because they Saw themselves inducting her into their ranks.

* ''The Nice And Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch'', from ''[[Good Omens]]'' work a bit like this:

* Mr. Casaubon's posthumous attempt in ''[[Middlemarch]]'' to prevent his widow, Dorothea, from marrying Will Ladislaw using a codicil in his will that removes her inheritance if she does so. At the time of Casaubon's death they have no serious involvement and certainly no plans to marry, but Dorothea's sense of injustice helps to attract her to Will, and in fact her money is one of the things standing in the way of the relationship...

* In ''[[The Graveyard Book]]'', if the Jacks had never taken it upon themselves to kill Bod's family, Bod would never even have made it to the graveyard in the first place.

* In ''[[Castle in the Air]]'', Flower-In-the-Night's father locked her up since her birth, after hearing a prophecy that the first man she sees will become her husband. If he hadn't done that, she would have never met the main protagonist Abdullah ...

* In ''Through a Brazen Mirror: The Famous Flower of Servingmen'', the sorceress Margaret is haunted by a vision that her daughter and an unknown man will kill her; since the laws of magic prevent her from killing family without magical backlash, she tries to break the prediction by getting rid of the likeliest candidates for the man. {{spoiler|These candidates are her daughter's husband and son. She doesn't realize the son also counts as her family, and his death sets her up for failure for the rest of the book. She is eventually executed for the deaths of her grandson and son-in-law, as well as all the people she kills trying to indirectly kill her daughter afterward.}}

* In ''[[Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]'' the title character is asked by a mother to bless her child. He scrapes together some magic words, and does. Then his dragon kisses the child, leaving a mark on their forehead. When Eragon protests that he didn't really do anything, someone points out that the kid has both the blessing of a dragon rider, and the mark of a kiss from a dragon. They're probably not going to be satisfied as, say, a grocer or blacksmith. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, Eragon screwed up the wording, and accidentally cursed [http://inheritance.wikia.com/wiki/Elva Elva].}}

** Later in the series, it's stated that there ''is'' one way to prevent a self-fulfilling prophecy: killing yourself immediately after the prophecy is made. Any other attempt to avoid it will play the trope straight.

* In [[Shannon Hale]]'s ''[[Princess Academy]]'', the priests of a country traditionally predict what city the prince's future wife will come from, and then the prince goes there to meet all the local girls and get married. The current prince is told that his bride will come from the remote village of Mount Eskel, so the kingdom hurriedly sets up the titular academy to give the local peasant girls a decent education before one of them becomes queen. The prince ends up proposing to {{spoiler|Britta,}} a girl he knew from back in the capital, whose parents had shipped her off to Mount Eskel to get her into the pool of potential brides. The priests are quick to close this loophole for future prophecies, and the main character later wonders why the prophecy didn't point to the city that {{spoiler|Britta}} was originally from, but decides that it was because Mount Eskel "needed an academy more than a princess".

* Played with in the Tim Pratt short story "Another End of the Empire": a [[Genre Savvy]] [[Evil Overlord]] receives a prophecy that a child from a certain village will grow up to bring an end to his empire. Rather than wipe them out (he knows how these things work; there will be survivors), he instead uses the village as a test bed for social and political reform, improving education and the general quality of life, hoping to eliminate any possible motive anyone would have for trying to overthrow him. He even adopts the three most likely candidates as his sons, and allows them to pursue their own agendas to keep them happy. The twist is that {{spoiler|in making all these changes, he has made his empire peaceful and prosperous, his subjects actually like him now rather than simply fear him, and he can even retire happily and pass on rule to one of his more progressive-minded sons.}} So his empire does come to end, just not the way he expected.

** The wording of the prophecy was "If allowed to grow to manhood, he will take over your empire, overthrow your ways and means, and send you from the halls of your palace forever", which ''almost'' (one can quibble about one part of it) happened, just not in the way the evil overlord thought: the Empire is taken over by one of the children... because he adopted the child (all of them, but only one wanted to rule) and later abdicated and gave the throne to that child, his ways and means were overthrown... because, in the process of allowing them to indulge in their agendas, that child had introduced extensive but effective reforms far beyond anything the overlord had considered, and while the one that took over the Empire didn't exactly ''send'' the overlord from the halls of the palace forever, he did see the overlord do so - because the overlord felt useless and didn't ''want'' to stay around after having abdicated.

* In [[Glen Cook]]'s ''Dread Empire'' trilogy, this was the doom of the Empire of Ilkazar. A prophecy said the empire would be brought down through the agency of a woman. Figuring she'd be a sorceress, the cruel rulers persecuted women who showed signs of magical power. The last King burned a certain woman at the stake. Her young son (later revealed to also be the King's son) in time made his way to Shinsan, where the Dread Empire's wizard lords trained him to be one of the mightiest mages in the world. And then he [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|came back to Ilkazar]] ... and Ilkazar, a prosperous land, became a desert. That's the trilogy's [[Backstory]], told in a few short chapters of the first book.

 

== Live Action TV ==

** Granted, the tabloid gave her the idea, and she never "fell in love" with Hogan (and, in fact, in the video he played a "Goldust"-style wrestler named "Starlight Starbright" instead of himself), but was this her having fun with a tabloid or an actual, but faulty, prediction of the future? Hmmm?

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', "[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S1/E12 Prophecy Girl|Prophecy Girl]]": The Master is freed by drinking Buffy's blood, but she went to fight him only because of the prophecy.

** Before that, he reads a comic in which he saves a little girl. He does, but only after putting her in danger in the first place.

** Even Sylar, after he steals Isaac's precognition power, does things like {{spoiler|killing Ted and impersonating Nathan to get the presidency}} solely because he had painted himself doing it.

* Done, though never identified as such, on ''[[Angel]]'' in the case of Sahjan and Connor. Sahjan read a prophecy that Angel's son would grow up and kill him. He tried to get rid of him by sealing him in an inescapable Hell Dimension, where time moved faster so that after only a few weeks on earth, Connor would have died of old age there. [[Like a Badass Out of Hell|He escaped]] grown up, a few days later, and killed him a year on earth after that. Additionally, because of his meddling he spent the intervening time [[Sealed Evil in a Can|locked in an urn]].

** The {{spoiler|false}} prophecy that Angel [[Offing the Offspring|would kill Connor]] that prompted {{spoiler|Wesley}} to kidnap then infant Connor from Angel in the first place is also an example. The kidnapping was the event that triggered the tragic chain of events that made up most of season 4, culminated in {{spoiler|Angel killing Connor to save a bunch of hostages}}. Thanks to a [[Deal with the Devil]], {{spoiler|Connor came back.}} In short, Sahjahn's meddling to try and avoid his fate created the circumstances that led to his fate being fulfilled.

** By the end of the series, it's been shown that the future seen in flash-forwards can be changed, but doing so required great effort to fight the inertia of the timestream.

* There's a sort-of case in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' season five, when The Alliance, consisting of pretty much every villain the Doctor ever faced, band together to lock the Doctor way in order to prevent him destroying the universe (it's [[It Makes Sense in Context|complicated]]). Unfortunately locking him away meant he couldn't do anything to ''prevent'' the universe's destruction in the first place. Oops. {{spoiler|That said, because he is in a perfect prison that isn't affected by the Universe ending, it gave the Doctor an opportunity to restart the universe with a Big Bang 2.0 by using the very prison he was put into.}}

** Later, the one who gave Mitchell the prophecy in the first place, admits that she completely made it up to screw with his head, and specifically calls this out. Quoth, "there is a wolf-shaped bullet. That he carved his name on."

** {{spoiler|The prophecy does fulfill it self in the end, Mitchell's paranoia leads him to aid the monstrous Herrick in attempt to learn how to survive death-by-wolf, the consequences of such are so terrible that he decided he needs to end his life, and had his werewolf best friend George stake him.}} But not only that {{spoiler|The prophecy almost unfolds exactly as the would-be prophet intended; on hearing Herrick has put George's girlfriend Nina in hospital, George almost kills Mitchell there and then.}}

* In ''[[Community]]'' episode "[[Community/Recap/S1/E09 Debate 109|Debate 109]]" Shirley comes in to tell Jeff and Annie about the crazy idea Abed had that they would kiss. Thus giving Annie the thought to use this as a ploy to win a round of debate.

 

== Plays ==

* Shakespeare's ''[[Macbeth]]'' revolves around this trope. In the beginning, Macbeth is greeted by three witches: one who hails him as Thane of Glamis, the place he's always ruled, one who hails him as Thane of Cawdor, whose previous holder had just been executed, and one who hails him as king. Right after that, he discovers that he's just become the Thane of Cawdor, which prompts him and his wife to start plotting how to steal the kingship. {{spoiler|They succeed, but through paranoia caused by more Self Fulfilling Prophecies - not to mention some [[No Man of Woman Born|misinterpretation]] - Macbeth is eventually killed.}}

* Shakespeare's ''[[Henry IV]]'' also has this, in its own way. King Henry's refusal to ransom Mortimer under the fear that he might lead a rebellion eventually causes Hotspur to lead a rebellion of his own.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** Which is also deliciously (especially from the Chaos Gods' perspective) ironic, because the Emperor had been an opponent of religious dogma.

** Of course, this depends on the edition and writer: In some works, any guardsman knows of Horus and his betrayal, as it's why Chaos Space Marines exist.

*** They know who he is, but Horus was upset by the lack of monuments to him, unlike the Emperor and loyalist Primarchs. Not quite the same thing.

 

== Video Games ==