Eucatastrophe: Difference between revisions

Compare [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]]. Might overlap with [[Darkest Hour]]. Often used to set up a plot about coming [[Back From the Brink]] when it occurs in video games. If it gets bad enough, then [[Only the Author Can Save Them Now]]. In video games, the [[Instant Win Condition]] can easily result in this trope.

 

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** At around the same time of Vegeta's attack, Goku (who recently [[Heroic Sacrifice|died to save the planet from Cell's self-destruction]]) appeared in spirit form to tell Gohan that he's really still strong enough to kill Cell, because his broken arm doesn't actually do anything to weaken him.

*** Cue a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]]; Seeing both Goku (in spirit form) and Gohan doing the Kamehameha at the same time.

*** But Crow plays [[Game Breaker|Blackfeathers]]...

*** ...Wait, why are security guards playing [[Serious Business|Duel Monsters]]?

** ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds|5Ds]]'' had quite a few [[Near Villain Victory|Near Villain Victories]] at the start of the Dark Signer arc - mostly due to the [[Eldritch Abomination|Jibakushin]]. On two occasions, the protagonists only survived due to timely [[Plot Driven Breakdown|Plot Driven Breakdowns]].

** The "Waking The Dragons" filler arc also had Yugi win his first duel of the season with 1000 Life Points left.

== Fan Fic ==

* All three of Trigger Happy Fanboy's Pokemon fanfics have these. And considering the fact that they're all in the same universe, they live in a pretty deadly world.

** In the [[Forget Shipping]] duology (Let The Flames Begin/And Watch Cities Burn) {{spoiler|Ghetsis has the Griseous, Adamant, and Lustrous Orbs, Brendan has been captured by Giratina in the Distortion World and is about to be eaten, and Lucas has lost to N. Team Plasma has subtly expelled Team Galactic from Shinnoh and pronounced themselves as the saviors of the region, Dawn and May are on the run, and Cynthia is too busy fending off Ghetsis's Hydreigon to do anything to help.}}

** [[Blood in The Water]] has the biggest [[Near Villain Victory]] of them all. Effectively, Josh HAS won. Anna and Siobhan have been stalled by fighting Franz, who is attempting to kill them with his Lugia. Skyla is being deterred by a brainwashed Rico. Giovanni is attacking Mewtwo with Genesect. Josh himself has beaten all of Haleigh's Pokemon and forced Arceus to intervene, pissing it off enough to use Judgment and level the island, exactly what he wanted to happen. Arceus is pulled back into its own dimension thanks to Josh's [[Olympous Mons]], and there is pretty much no way to win. {{spoiler|But then Giratina pulls a [[Heel Face Turn]] and sides with Haleigh, forcing it and Haleigh to engage Josh and his Rayquaza in an aerial battle above the ruined city.}}

** [[Power Rangers in Space]] - The various villains from the previous ranger series team up with Dark Specter and mount simultaneous attacks across the galaxy. They succeed in subduing all the rangers and their various allies. The only thing that prevented them from winning {{spoiler|was a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] by Zordon. sob.}}

** [[Power Rangers Lost Galaxy]] - After Trakeena's fusion with Deviot increased her evil, she launches a massive Sting winger attack on Terra Venture with all of the strapped with bombs. She succeeds in destroying 2 megazords and nearly wipes out the civilians evacuating the colony. The rangers use the [[Power Rangers in Space|Astro Megaship]] to damage the Scorpion Stinger and it crashes on a nearby moon. However Trakeena isn't done yet. With the massive power boost from the cocoon, she is able to energize the ruins of Terra Venture and sends it on a collision course for the civilian colony on {{spoiler|Miranoi}}. The rangers try to defeat her, but to no avail. Leo uses his armor and fires a point blank shot at Trakeena, finally taking her down. But the colony is still in danger. Thankfully, the Galactabeasts are able to shift Terra Venture's trajectory away from the colony.

** [[Power Rangers Operation Overdrive]] - Not actually a season finale. However, when Thrax, {{spoiler|Rita Repulsa's and Lord Zedd's son}}, the rest of this season's villains destroy the ranger's link to the morphing grid, they go on to wreak their rampage on the world and would have done great harm, maybe even succeeded in their goals if Sentinel Knight hadn't {{spoiler|[[Big Damn Heroes|brought five other rangers from their timelines to fight them off]].}}

** [[Power Rangers RPM]] - Not a season finale either, at first. The rangers are fighting against the computer virus Venjix to prevent him from taking over Corinth, {{spoiler|and eventually move onto a grander stage}}. However when we begin the season he has already {{spoiler|succeeded in destroying the rest of the world and Corinth is the only place he hasn't taken over/destroyed. At the finale he has already converted majority of the city's populace into cyborgs and then he killed 2 of the rangers. Luckily the rangers he killed are brought back and succeed in destroying him. [[Bittersweet Ending|Although even after the rangers defeat him and his robots at the end of the season, it still doesn't change the fact that the rest of the world is a wasteland.]] Plus Venjix, might not be gone.}}

 

== [[Music]] ==

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

 

* The second Air Gem test in the [[Fan Remake]] of [[King's Quest II]]. The canonical games glossed over this point, but the kingdom is in ruins, the hero's kids have been condemned to death, and the hero himself is close to breaking...then in walks the [[Big Bad]] offering a [[Deal With the Devil]].

** Canonical ones in the series: walking into the wedding hall in [[King's Quest VI]] to see "Cassima" enthusiastically declaring her intent to marry the [[Grand Vizier]]. And in [[King's Quest IV]] when Lolotte nastily declares that Rosella will have the [[Standard Hero Reward]] of marrying her grotesque "son" {{spoiler|turns out he's just a prisoner, too}}, strips Rosella of all her possessions, and locks her up.

* [[Pokémon]] had been slowly hedging in that direction for a while with the villains of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum coming ever closer to their goals. In Black and White, the bad guys {{spoiler|got their legendary}}. {{spoiler|They proceed to defeat the league champion}}, leaving them with the firepower and the moral authority to get the region {{spoiler|to release their Pokémon}}. In their castle ( {{spoiler|which has risen from the ground to surround the Elite Four headquarter}}, scientists are {{spoiler|hacking into the Pokémon storage system}}, elevating them to global threat. And while {{spoiler|N}} wishes to face you in a one on one battle first, the Sages are a little more pragmatic {{spoiler|and intend to take you six on one and quite likely kill you before you make it that far}}. And even if you do, {{spoiler|you still don't have, or don't know where to find, the opposite legendary, which might even the odds a little in that battle. You have the stone to awaken him, but no idea where or how to use it}}. Then {{spoiler|your childhood friend Bianca rounds up the gym leaders of Unova who hold off the sages, and the stone you've been carrying all along ends up working at the last minute.}} The rest is up to you.

* ''[[Command and Conquer]]'' had a few of these. To take the most telling example, Kane in Tiberian Sun was only three hours from launching his World Altering Missle when [[Mc Niel]] arrived to the battlefield. Said missle would have basically converted all life on the planet into Tiberium-based life.

* [[Beast Wars (Animation)|Beast Wars]] Megatron has been just a hair away from victory ''three times.'' {{spoiler|the first time he nearly erased the Maximals from existance by killing Optimus Prime four million years before he woke up. The second was when he found the repaired Nemesis and tried to use it to kill the Autobots still offline in the Ark. The third time he absorbed nearly all the sparks on Cybertron, became a god, and tried to remake Cybertron in his own image.}}

* Happened alot in ''[[Totally Spies]]'', such as the second episode, "The New Jerry", with the Spies trapped in a space capsule and Tim Scam firing on the Earth with the Evapo-Blaster.

** Happens again in the Season 2 finale. {{spoiler|The Changeling Queen has destroyed the barrier protecting Canterlot, unleashed her hordes upon the city to feed off the love of all the ponies, and has even defeated Celestia in a straight-up fight by tapping into Shining Armor's love for Cadence. Even worse, the Mane 6 fail to reach the Elements of Harmony in time, and are captured by the thousands of changelings that now storm the city. Unfortunately for the queen, she forgot that Cadence and Shining Armor are still in the room, ''and'' that Cadence's magic is [[Heart Is an Awesome Power|the ability to make ponies love each other.]] The result is Shining Armor getting a massive injection of the [[Power of Love]], which gives him enough power to reset the barrier and blast all of the changelings out of Canterlot once and for all.}}

* In the ''[[Superman the Animated Series]]'' episode, World's Finest, [[The Joker]] comes to Metropolis with an enormous amount of kryptonite to make a deal with [[Lex Luthor]] to kill [[Superman]]. Both Luthor and Superman severely underestimate the Joker as just some wacky clown, [[Not So Harmless|until the Joker traps Superman in a room with acid and half of the kryptonite.]] By the end, the Joker is dancing over Superman's nearly lifeless body and is only stopped by Batman's timely intervention, a man who Luthor and Superman also underestimated.