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Gone Horribly Wrong: Difference between revisions
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In their quest to advance human understanding, make a profit, help humanity, design a doomsday device, or otherwise undertake a high risk, high payoff enterprise, these people will have something '''Go Horribly Wrong!'''
The variations are limitless. Perhaps the non-polluting energy source [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|actually]] taps into the delicately balanced forces locked in a [[Cosmic Keystone]] or drains the planet's [[Life Energy]]. Or the hunger-killing super-wheat is actually [http://www.exitmundi.nl/gmfood.htm a super-weed that destroys all ecosystems]. And that's for purely ''peaceful'' things. Weapons of any sort will have things go horribly wrong on a [[Apocalypse How|cataclysmic scale]]. The "completely loyal" robot workforce has a [[Isaac Asimov|programming flaw]] that makes them [[Turned Against Their Masters|revolt]]. Maybe the [[Super Soldier]] program [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|inherently causes insanity]], [[Mutants|mutation]], or plain old [[What Measure Is a Non Super|megalomania.]]
These researchers will observe [[No OSHA Compliance|lax safety standards]], laxer morals, and be prone to [[Professor Guinea Pig|test things out on themselves]] or [[Strapped to An Operating Table|unwilling visitors]]. The [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] will callously and maliciously disregard all warnings, even for basic safety and good PR.
Expect these people to send out a [[Distress Call]] or chronicle the debacle in an [[Apocalyptic Log]], be visited by a group [[Closed Circle|whose car broke down,]] or have things go wrong when the stockholders/government oversight committee comes to shut them down.
This is comparable to a [[Freak Lab Accident]], except at the beginning of a story. Heck, a lot of [[Speculative Fiction]] serves no purpose ''but'' to have something [[Go Horribly Wrong]].
See also [[Came Back Wrong]] for when an attempt at bringing someone [[Back From the Dead]] Goes Horribly Wrong. For when the experiment would be successful but is deliberately sabotaged, see [[Spanner in the Works]]. Contrast [[Gone Horribly Right]], for when a project succeeds ''too well'' and the result is far worse than any accident could have been. When [[Gone Horribly Wrong]] results in a project or product being scrapped
immediately after its debut, it's a [[Disastrous Demonstration]].
[[Godzilla Threshold|Of course,]] it can [[From Bad to Worse|always get worse.]]
{{examples}}
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* In DC's ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'' event, {{spoiler|Barry Allen's attempt to recreate the [[Freak Lab Accident]] that made him [[The Flash]]}} goes horribly wrong and burns all of his skin off.
** The entire event happened because {{spoiler|[[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Barry's attempt to save his mother from Zoom]] caused a [[Time Crash]].}}
* In the [[Marvel Universe]], there have been attempts to recreate Project Rebirth for decades ever since Dr. Erksine was killed just after enhancing Steve Rogers into [[Captain America (comics)]]. Unfortunately, they have all backfired, most often creating supervillain maniacs and monsters like the 1950s Captain America and Nuke.
== Film ==
* The film ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]] Resurrection'' had scientists clone Ripley in hopes of creating a Xenomorph for [[Just Think of the Potential|potential military applications]]. Needless to say, things go horribly wrong when the cloning gave the aliens more grey matter than the scientists, allowing them to escape and wreak havoc.
* The ''[[Terminator]]'' series. Because it's SUCH a good idea to make computers smarter than you then hand them military control. How come the only one smart enough to keep the Terminators from learning too much is Skynet?
** And yet ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'' reveals the existence of machines who have decided to fight Skynet on their own.
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* In ''[[Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs]]'', Flint Lockwood creates a device that makes it rain food. At first, everything is fine, but through constant overwork, the machine develops a mind of its own, and starts sending down bigger and bigger food, threatening to destroy the world.
* ''[[Battlefield Earth]]''. Beyond the obvious reference, how else can you describe the plot [[Alternate Character Interpretation|from the Psychlo perspective]]? You have a planet completely under your thumb, and one greedy mid-manager does an experiment on a subjugated race, which ultimately results in it gaining the knowledge and power to wipe out your home world and all of the occupying forces.
* In the 2008 ''[[The Incredible Hulk (film)|The Incredible Hulk]]'' film, the army's experiments with Gamma radiation gives birth to the Hulk, and {{spoiler|[[General Ripper|Thunderbolt Ross]] and [[Psycho for Hire|Emil Blonsky's]] experiments with the [[Captain America (comics)|super-soldier serum]] leads to Blonsky becoming the Abomination}}.
== Literature ==
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* In [[John Brunner]]'s book ''The Dramaturges of Yan'', a race of lonely aliens decided to convert their planet into a spaceship, using the rotary force of the planets moon. Guess what: {{spoiler|It shattered}} When they get a chance, they try again. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]]: {{spoiler|This time the planet its destroyed.}}
* ''Distant Rainbow'' by Strugatski Brothers: Rainbow is a name of lush planet which is used for experiments with teleportation. But one day the experiments {{spoiler|create the Deadly Wave, which begins to consume alll organics on planet from poles onwards, dooming it.}}
* In Robert Jordan's [[Wheel of Time]] series one man's plan to seal away [[Ultimate Evil|the Dark One]] ends up causing every man who uses magic go horribly insane and rot while still alive. This continues indefinitely into the future as well... {{spoiler|until [[The Chosen One|the Dragon Reborn]], our protagonist, restores the magic to its' prior purity.}}
** An even more extreme example in the same series happens before this, when all the trouble began when the greatest magic users in history discover a new and amazing source of power, without realizing that they are tapping into [[Ultimate Evil|the Dark One's]] prison, thus unleashing [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] and destroying civilization.
* In [[Alastair Reynolds]]'s ''[[Revelation Space]]'' universe, while the origin of [[Planet Eater|Greenfly]] is never explicitly revealed, it's strongly implied to have originated as some ancient race's (or distant future humans'... don't ask) terraforming device of sorts (as the artificial planetoids it transforms all planetary matter into are technically habitable).
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== Tabletop Games ==
* Happens all the time in ''[[Genius: The Transgression]]''.
* Each Lineage in ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'' started with one human trying to raise the dead for whatever reason - companionship, curiosity, slavery - and getting bitten hard in the ass by this trope. Prometheans themselves can fall prey to this trope, as they need to produce another Promethean in order to complete their [[To Become Human|Pilgrimage]] -- and if they screw it up, they spawn a number of [[Came Back Wrong|Pandorans]] that will turn on them and try to eat them alive.
* Happens every now and then in the backstory of ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. Not infrequently, the result is the Imperium destroying the planet where it has gone wrong.
** Someone asked along the line why, 40,000 years in the future, the Imperium seems to not have any robots at all, at most an automated defense array or like that. Because, tens of thousands of years in "the past", they DID have robots all over the galaxy.. Until they [[Turned Against Their Masters|decided they didn't want to be slaves any more]] and started a war that almost decimated the human race. Thus started a ban that, millenia later, has been incorporated as sacred law into the tech-worshiping religion of the Mechanicum. That's basically the [[Crapsack World|best case scenario]] when something goes wrong here.
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* In ''[[Quake 4|Quake IV]]'' every mission seem to do this {{spoiler|first your drop ship get shot down nearly killing you,then the EMP bomb plan fails, then you get turned into a Stroog, then you get shot into battle in a flying coffin (drop pod)which crashes.}} Basically then entire game is a series of plans gone wrong that somehow works out in the end.
* In ''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect'', {{spoiler|Jacob Crow's attempts at eternal life result in zombies and the Timesplitters.}}
* ''[[Transarctica]]'''s backstory for the new [[Ice Age]] is "[[Meaningful Name|Operation Blind]]", a plan to cool global warming by kicking up dust with [[Deus Ex Nukina|nuclear weapons]] at the poles.
* Let's just say that [[System Shock|SHODAN]] wasn't designed to do what she did.
** {{spoiler|SHODAN was messed with before things got worse, though.}}
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* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series|Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series]]''
{{quote|'''Shadi''': ''But then something go horribly wrong.''}}
* Lampshaded in [[MSF High Forum]], as Michelle quotes it word for word. [[One of Us|"If I'm in hand-to-hand combat, things]] [[Pothole|have gone horribly wrong."]]
* In Episode 666 of ''[[Bowser's Kingdom]]'', [[Super Mario RPG|Geno]] believes that the Zombie Apocalypse occurred because of the [[Resident Evil|Parasol Corporation]]'s attempts to create an unbreakable umbrella.
* Agent Fix from the [[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]] originated in a story where he was part of a [[Super Soldier]] program where the participants had their minds wiped in an attempt to ensure their loyalty to the corrupt and evil government. Unfortunately, there was one side-effect to the drugs... it didn't wipe residual emotions, meaning that when a bunch of super soldiers similar to Wolverine woke up with no memories but surrounded by people they hated, the result was a massacre.
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* The explosion on Chernobyl nuclear power plant was caused by an experiment to test a new '''[[Irony|safety measure]]'''
** Actually, guys responsible for the cataclysm wanted to modernize the reactor without shutting it down, so they turned off automatic safety measures which would turn reactor off if it would ever go critical.
** Chernobyl was actually an attempt to test safety measures, but in order to do so, they turned off the automatic safeties and violated their own safety procedures multiple times. And the reactor was poorly designed to boot, so the power actually increased momentarily during the emergency shutdown, which stopped it from shutting down fully because the control rods got stuck by temperature warped channels.
* [[Church of Happyology|Scientology]], according to some ex-Scientologists has gone horribly, ''horribly'' wrong since Dave Miscavage took over. Ex-members say things have been steadily going downhill since the death of [[wikipedia:Lisa McPherson|Lisa McPherson]] caused Dave Miscavage to become an [[Domestic Abuser|abusive]] [[Paranoia Fuel|paranoid]] [[Small Name, Big Ego|dictator]] and it pains them to see the religion that helped them through some very dark times become a [[Black and Gray Morality|dark and twisted]] parody of itself.
** For example, the infamous practice of "disconnecting" or completely cutting all ties with people who are critical of Scientology originally meant to sever ties with ''abusive and controlling influences'', the equally infamous "SPs" or Suppressive Persons.
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