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Diabolus Ex Machina

669 statements
112 feature instances
37 referencing feature instances

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Diabolus Ex Machina	type	FeatureClass
Diabolus Ex Machina	label	Diabolus Ex Machina
Diabolus Ex Machina	page	DiabolusExMachina
Diabolus Ex Machina	comment	The ending is rapidly approaching. The forces of darkness are on the run, and the Big Bad is reeling. The heroes have clearly won the day, and are all set to live Happily Ever After. But wait! True Art Is Angsty, so we can't possibly have something as clichéd as a 'Happy Ending'. Enter: Diabolus Ex Machina, the Evil Twin of Deus Ex Machina — a last-second twist designed to ensure, if not a Downer Ending, then certainly an extension in the villain's favor. Drop a bridge on the hero's girlfriend, Shoot The Shaggy Dog, and whip up a good pot of Deus Angst Machina with a side-order of Outer Limits- or Twilight Zone Twist. Do whatever it takes, as long as you make absolutely sure that everyone goes home depressed. Note that the Diabolus Ex Machina doesn't necessarily have to bring about a Downer Ending. Often, it is just brought in because if the villain were to lose, the work of fiction would be over. Also, it doesn't apply when a Downer Ending is used as a natural consequence of the general premise, even an ironically twisted one. It only applies if it comes out of left field. It is often summoned to ensure a Death By Newbery Medal. The Hope Spot is a vital ingredient in the summoning ritual. Often a Last Breath Bullet, if it's the last thing the villain does. Often hands the Idiot Ball to its victims. Has been known to party with the Planet Of The Apes Ending when feeling silly. Has also been employed in pursuit of Oscar or dropped for a similar reason. If you're lucky, it'll be preceded by a Snicket Warning Label. Please note that the examples below will contain lots of ending-spoilers, as a matter of necessity.
Diabolus Ex Machina	fetched	2010-02-08T17:34:30Z
Diabolus Ex Machina	hasLicense	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Diabolus Ex Machina	parsed	2010-03-10T04:06:59.61Z
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Depressing Tropes
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Ending Tropes
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	In Dex Machina
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Older Than Dirt
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Sadness Tropes
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Trope Names From Other Languages
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingCategory	Twist Ending
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to AdaptationDecay: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to AlwaysChaoticEvil: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to AnyoneCanDie: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to AssPull: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to AxCrazy: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to BadBoss: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to BasedOnATrueStory: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to BigBad: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to BonusBoss: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to ButtMonkey: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CabinFever: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CityOfAngels: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CliffHanger: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CompellingVoice: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CrackDefeat: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CrowningMomentOfAwesome: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to DamselScrappy: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to DeusExMachina: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to DidNotDoTheResearch: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to DownerEnding: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to DungeonPunk: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to EasyRider: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to EpicMovie: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to ExecutiveVeto: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to ExpansionPack: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to ForegoneConclusion: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to FunnyAneurysmMoment: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to HappilyEverAfter: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to IdiotHero: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to InfantImmortality: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to KarmaHoudini: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to LateToTheParty: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to MacGuffinGirl: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to MadDoctor: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Metaplot: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to MiracleRally: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to OlderThanDirt: Not an Item - CAT
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to OrIsIt: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Ptitlenhv310a8odku: Not an Item - CAT
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Ptitlethsq3mffp09i: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Ptitlexn9xzsjd5fif: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Ramayana: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to RescueArc: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to RetCon: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to SAW: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TheBlueLagoon: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TheWoobie: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to Timeshift: Not an Item - UNKNOWN
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TitleDrop: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TooDumbToLive: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to TrueArtIsAngsty: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to UnfortunateImplications: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to WhamEpisode: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to WordOfGod: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to YouFailBiologyForever: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to YourMileageMayVary: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingComment	Dropped link to ptitlekmxl4p7e1yni: Not an Item - FEATURE
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	CabinFever
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	CityOfAngels
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	CrackDefeat
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	EasyRider
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	EpicMovie
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	Metaplot
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	Ramayana
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	RescueArc
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	SAW
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	StarOceanTillTheEndOfTime
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	TheBlueLagoon
Diabolus Ex Machina	processingUnknown	Timeshift
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Big Bad
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	DeathByNewberyMedal
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Deus Angst Machina
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Deus Ex Machina
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Downer Ending
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Dropped A Bridge On Him
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Earth All Along
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Evil Twin
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Happily Ever After
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	HappilyEverBefore
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	HappyEnding
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Hope Spot
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Idiot Ball
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	LastBreathBullet
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Nice Job Breaking It Hero
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	OscarBait
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Outer Limits Twist
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Shoot The Shaggy Dog
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Snicket Warning Label
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	TragicDream
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	True Art Is Angsty
Diabolus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Twilight Zone Twist
Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	TVTrope

A list of feature instances declared on this page follows.

DiabolusExMachina/int_10341dc4	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_10341dc4	comment	Pretty much the entire purpose of the Kanker Sisters in Ed Edd N Eddy.They tend to show up anytime somethings actually going right for the titular characters for a change.
DiabolusExMachina/int_10341dc4	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_10341dc4	featureConfidence	1.0
EdEddNEddy	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_10341dc4
DiabolusExMachina/int_10c9b6b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_10c9b6b	comment	The Boondocks episode "Ballin" has Riley coming close to finally winning a game when the mentally challenged replacement center for his main competition turns out to be a child-prodigy at basketball. Of course, he ''really'' deserved that, since he got that far by sending the previous center off crying when told her her mom did cocaine, was cheating on her dad at the country club, and her parent's were waiting until after her birthday to tell her they were getting divorced.
DiabolusExMachina/int_10c9b6b	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_10c9b6b	featureConfidence	1.0
TheBoondocks	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_10c9b6b
DiabolusExMachina/int_10da2b77	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_10da2b77	comment	Doctor Who season finales tend to be based on unfortunate circumstances plunging the state of the world from bad to worse.
DiabolusExMachina/int_10da2b77	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_10da2b77	featureConfidence	1.0
Doctor Who	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_10da2b77
DiabolusExMachina/int_1125a5e8	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1125a5e8	comment	A few arcs of Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni have this tendency, although they always have long threads of justification for it. Particular arcs that come to mind are Onikakushi-hen, in which after finally getting rid of two girls who had been trying to murder him the entire arc, the main character dies by "randomly" clawing his throat out; Watanagashi-hen, in which, after the main character manages to escape two different attempts on his life (one involving a freaking Torture Chamber), finally dies from a heart attack after seeing the girl who tried to kill him and was previously declared dead come back from the dead to kill him by nailing his hands to the bed; and Tsumihoroboshi-hen, in which after preventing one of the girls from blowing up the school and bringing her back from her paranoia, the entire town dies when poisonous gases roll through town. Higurashi Kai does even better than that. In Minagoroshi-hen, Rika has spent more than a hundred years of constantly repeating the same month, knowing that she's going to die a horrendous, bloody death at the end. However, there is one world that Keiichi manages to change in the slightest way. A tiny little change leads to a string of minor miracles, with many a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming. Then, right before the club can finally save Rika, the Big Bad reveals herself and shoots them all in the face. Then she ritualistically disembowels Rika and goes on to initiate the aforementioned poison gas attack on the village. Although that chapter title (It translates to Everyone-killing chapter) is a bit of a tip-off... Palm goes to Higurashi Rei. Rika finally manages to end the endless loops of death. She's so happy that she gets all careless and runs into a truck, dying in the process and ending up in a perfect world where everybody is happy and there is no Watanagashi tragedy, but in which she has no good friends (Satoko is a bitch and Hanyuu just isn't there in that world) and the village will be destroyed due to the dam project. She finally gets back to the old world by killing her own mother. Or Does She?
DiabolusExMachina/int_1125a5e8	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1125a5e8	featureConfidence	1.0
HigurashiNoNakuKoroNi	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1125a5e8
DiabolusExMachina/int_1181847e	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1181847e	comment	Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VII is a Diabolus Ex Machina strewn throughout an entire disc. Aside from Aeris dying at the end of disc 1, The party chases Sephiroth to the Northern Crater, where they prepare to battle him once and for all, until Sephiroth decides to break poor Cloud's mind and force him to believe that he's a failed experiment. This ends in Cloud handing over the Black Materia, and all hell breaking loose. So now, not only is Meteor looming, about to kill the world in one week, but the Planet has released its failsafe, a group of massive biomechanical creatures called the WEAPONs that are capable of wreaking serious destruction. So these monsters are on the rampage, the apocalypse is coming in a week, and the crew is slated for public execution. And the next time we see Cloud? Paraplegic and braindead. Wow...
DiabolusExMachina/int_1181847e	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1181847e	featureConfidence	1.0
Final Fantasy VII	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1181847e
DiabolusExMachina/int_11868bb9	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_11868bb9	comment	World Of Warcraft, the Pit of Saron: when Scourgelord Tyrannus is defeated, the freed slaves run onto his overlook en masse, celebrating. Suddenly, Sindragosa appears and blows nearly everyone to smithereens, the players themselves saved by Sylvanas/Jaina's teleport.
DiabolusExMachina/int_11868bb9	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_11868bb9	featureConfidence	1.0
WorldOfWarcraft	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_11868bb9
DiabolusExMachina/int_11c95147	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_11c95147	comment	Screwed (SVU s8e22): The episode features the trial of Tutuola's stepson, Darius (crimes committed in the earlier episode, Venom (s7e18)). Except that ALL the evidence except his confession had been thrown out due to questions about Fin's credibility, also Darius (well played by rapper Ludacris) was only going to trial to hurt and embarass his mother, Fin's ex (who denied him for most of his life). When Fin's ex got on the stand, Darius (acting as his own council) forced her into dropping her own pain-filled bombshell: Darius was a child of rape... by her father. Acquitted of the murders, in the end, Darius can't even take joy in beating the rap and rubbing Fin and his mother's nose in it.
DiabolusExMachina/int_11c95147	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_11c95147	featureConfidence	1.0
LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_11c95147
DiabolusExMachina/int_162b4a8c	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_162b4a8c	comment	The last 3 chapters of Northern Lights, apparently for the purpose of introducing the rest of the trilogy. Shouldn't the author have been concerned with connecting it to previous events as much as upcoming events? Omitted from The Film Of The Book. Some feel that this is a legitimate twist ending, but the end of the trilogy... the hero and heroine have defeated evil, saved the universe and fallen in love. The universe repays them by suddenly — last-chapter suddenly — straining every sinew to keep them apart forever. And they become too stupid to spot the really fairly obvious ways around the supposed problem.
DiabolusExMachina/int_162b4a8c	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_162b4a8c	featureConfidence	1.0
His Dark Materials	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_162b4a8c
DiabolusExMachina/int_174c2111	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_174c2111	comment	A non-death example... Ojamajo Doremi Naisho: Hazuki has taken an unlikely lead in the final leg of a relay to decide a swim meet... then she suddenly gets a cramp on the way back, allowing the other room to easily win the race.
DiabolusExMachina/int_174c2111	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_174c2111	featureConfidence	1.0
OjamajoDoremi	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_174c2111
DiabolusExMachina/int_1b0ea066	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1b0ea066	comment	Clerks originally ended with a robber killing Dante, but after the distributor complained that this was pointlessly violent and tragic, the scene was removed. A rare example of good Executive Meddling, since "pointless" was the operative word there, as any Diabolus Ex Machina worth its salt would be.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1b0ea066	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1b0ea066	featureConfidence	1.0
Clerks	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1b0ea066
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c4713ea	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c4713ea	comment	The final episode of Series 3 of Primeval where humanity has been saved from evil Helen by a hungry raptor. However the Pliocene anomaly closes, trapping Danny 3 million years in the past.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c4713ea	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c4713ea	featureConfidence	1.0
Primeval	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1c4713ea
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c58812b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c58812b	comment	Hans Christian Andersen, The Flying Trunk: Things are going well for the beggar guy with the titular trunk with his romance with a princess, until the trunk gets destroyed by shrapnel from celebratory fireworks. Seriously. For a Hans story, that's pretty rough. Guess that's why it's not as well known as his other tales... Hey, even his "happy endings" can be pretty depressing. "The Little Match Girl", anyone? A rather large portion of his fairy tales are actually pretty depressing. "The Christmas Tree" and "The Little Mermaid" come to mind.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c58812b	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c58812b	featureConfidence	1.0
HansChristianAndersen	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1c58812b
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c972511	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c972511	comment	In the "Diablo" series, this basically explains the sequels, given the numerous ways in which the titular antagonist is apparently Killed Off For Real. But then, one must look at the Meaningful Name of the series... To be more exact, the first game ends with you killing the Big Bad, Diablo and ramming his soulstone into your own head so you can contain him with your mind. It did not work so well. In fact, Diablo possessed the hero and used his power to strengthen himself so he could escape the dungeon and revive the other Prime Evils. The second game ends with you killing the last of the three Prime Evils, Baal, just after he corrupted the Worldstone, the thing that keeps the demons out of the world (not that it was doing a good job). Archangel Tyrael goes for the lesser of two evils and destroys the corrupted Worldstone. The one you've fought so hard over to protect. And for Diablo 3, Blizzard has revealed that the destruction of the Worldstone also blew up the entire mountain, destroyed the barbarian capital and turned the continent into a nuclear wasteland. By the way, the Worldstone not only kept the demons out but also the angels because some of them view humanity as a taint on creation and are quite eager to destroy it. Instead of just the Prime Evils raising an army, a full scale demonic AND angelic invasion involving pretty much every character from either side with a name is about to occur. But hey, congratulations, you won the game. Oh, and you know how all the player characters of the first game either went insane and / or were possessed in the second? Prepare to be not surprised at the ultimate fate of most of the heroes of Diablo II, or that the three Big Bads were in fact manipulating you all along to do their bidding.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c972511	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1c972511	featureConfidence	1.0
Diablo	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1c972511
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d160bbb	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d160bbb	comment	Apocalypse Bruce Willis/Trey Kincaid has defeated the four horsemen, ie the Dragons, and is about to take down the Big Bad Reverend. Unfortunately, he gets a Demonic Possession ex machina. Downer Ending. Or maybe intended to be a Cliff Hanger leading to a Vapor Ware sequel?
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d160bbb	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d160bbb	featureConfidence	1.0
Dragon	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1d160bbb
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d1dfa6b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d1dfa6b	comment	German World War I Ace Pilot Lothar von Richthofen (brother of the Red Baron) survived the war, than died in a commercial aircraft crash in 1922.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d1dfa6b	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1d1dfa6b	featureConfidence	1.0
WorldWarI	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1d1dfa6b
DiabolusExMachina/int_1f05356c	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_1f05356c	comment	Quick summary of diabolus in Ever 17: Hurray! Everyone else already escaped and we've loads of time to get out plus a submarine! They get out safely, chatting while they go up and the sub's battery dies. What the hell? You'd think it would've been recharging automatically before they called for it. So in order to fix the bouyancy problem, Takeshi distracts Tsugumi with a question about the Archimedes Principle and enters the airlock then jettisons himself out to his apparent death and Tsugumi's eternal loneliness. What. The. Hell. But it gets better.
DiabolusExMachina/int_1f05356c	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_1f05356c	featureConfidence	1.0
Ever17	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_1f05356c
DiabolusExMachina/int_2147bcea	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_2147bcea	comment	The Diabolus has occasionally been employed by The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, as indicated above — they have a healthy partnership. A particularly impressive example of their partnership is the episode where an unfortunate, timid man has locked himself in a bank-vault to get the peace to read his many books — and because of that, survives a nuclear holocaust, leaving him the last man alive in the world. Then he realizes that this gives him plenty of time to read his beloved books, and thus unwittingly invokes the Diabolus Ex Machina, who promptly breaks his glasses.
DiabolusExMachina/int_2147bcea	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_2147bcea	featureConfidence	1.0
TheOuterLimits	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_2147bcea
DiabolusExMachina/int_23d1da1e	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_23d1da1e	comment	Time Bandits delivers this by way of Idiot Ball... on first glance. But if you look closely, the kid's parents, who die from touching the piece of Evil, were assholes anyway; Agamemnon shows up as a firefighter, and the kid's happiest memory was when Agamemnon adopted him, so it's implied he'll go on to a happier life; and he even has proof of his adventures, due to a Polaroid of the dwarves in his pocket. Diabolus still curses about botching that one.
DiabolusExMachina/int_23d1da1e	featureApplicability	1.0
DiabolusExMachina/int_23d1da1e	featureConfidence	1.0
Time Bandits	hasFeature	DiabolusExMachina/int_23d1da1e
DiabolusExMachina/int_2464ead1	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_2464ead1	comment	The Law And Order franchise loves using this trope to turn a slam-dunk case into an hour-long question of "Will they get away with it". Three egregious examples: Marathon (s10e6): Briscoe and Green catch a young latino thug fresh from mugging and shooting a white housewife. Lenny hears the guy admit it. His word against the perp's. They find physical evidence linking him to the shooting. It gets tossed one piece at a time. When they finally corner him in the end, he Karma Houdinis his way out by dropping a dime on a notorious serial rapist, cutting himself a sweet deal in the process. (In a minor Audience Sucker Punch, McCoy gets him to admit what he said to Lenny: "I gave that white bitch what she deserved") Suicide Box (s13e16): A young black male shoots a cop outside of a diner, out of anger that his brother's murder had been swept under the rug. They had him dead to rights... then the mitigating factors rolled in: His brother's death had been ruled a suicide, the man who shot him never denied it (by the cops never looked at him). His and his mother's protests were brushed aside by the cops. And, oh yeah, his brother's body? Gone. The funeral home buried a casket full of trash {an ongoing fraud scheme, it turned out). Screwed (SVU s8e22): The episode features the trial of Tutuola's stepson, Darius (crimes committed in the earlier episode, Venom (s7e18)). Except that ALL the evidence except his confession had been thrown out due to questions about Fin's credibility, also Darius (well played by rapper Ludacris) was only going to trial to hurt and embarass his mother, Fin's ex (who denied him for most of his life). When Fin's ex got on the stand, Darius (acting as his own council) forced her into dropping her own pain-filled bombshell: Darius was a child of rape... by her father. Acquitted of the murders, in the end, Darius can't even take joy in beating the rap and rubbing Fin and his mother's nose in it. "'Zoontic'" (CI). The creepy doctor that had been infecting people with diseases and the sleazeball he hired to rape his old girlfriends are behind bars without a trial. Everything is going swimmingly. And then at the literal last minute, it's revealed that the Doctor got 5 grams of Anthrax from south america, and he only had 3 grams in his apartment. Of course, sometimes the same person will show up a few seasons later where they actually will get what's coming to them.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_299485d6	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_299485d6	comment	Used quite well to make a point in Black Jack when Dr. Kiriko first appears. A woman with a terminal, inoperable condition has requested that Kiriko euthanize her. As this runs directly counter to Black Jack's principles, he begins meeting with the woman in an attempt to figure out a cure. He and Kiriko meet with each other, and Black Jack delivers a speech about how wrong Kiriko is to do what he does. After the operation goes through, with Kiriko present, Black Jack asks after the patient. She and her entire family were killed when a car slammed into their ambulance after the surgery. All of Black Jack's work - and all of his sermonizing to Kiriko - means nothing. Kiriko laughs? Black Jack curses the heavens. In fact, thanks to the new releases of Black Jack manga, it can be seen that just about one fourth of his cases end like this. A running theme seems to be that even the world's best doctor isn't omnipotent. This isn't just restricted to Black Jack, either- many of Osamu Tezuka's works feature such occasions. The 1980 Astro Boy anime, for instance, has many bit characters who exist only to die so that Astro can question why humans made robots this way.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_2ba475e1	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_2ba475e1	comment	Good Times, James Evans, Mississippi. For a comedy titled "Good Times", Diabolus sure was busy depriving the Evanses from having any...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_2d2c0ab4	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_2d2c0ab4	comment	You just wiped all the gangs out of Paragon City and finished Crackdown. Now it's a police state run by your employer, which is pretty much another gang..
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DiabolusExMachina/int_2e980162	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_2e980162	comment	To be fair, the book was based on Real Life, and that's more or less how things actually ended, so they didn't have much choice.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_30803e60	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_30803e60	comment	Even the kid-friendly world of Alvin And The Chipmunks is not safe from the Diabolus Ex Machina. In one episode, involving a new cat dubbed "Cookie Chomper the 3rd", a Death By Newbery Medal comes out of nowhere in the last two minutes of the show.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_33468a9d	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_33468a9d	comment	Parodied in Waynes World. Just as everything is going smoothly, a series of increasingly unlikely disasters occur, culminating in an electrical fire that destroys Wayne's house and kills Garth while the slimeball villain gets the girl. Fortunately, Wayne and Garth turn out to have other ideas...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_39947543	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_39947543	comment	In The West Wing episode "18th and Potomac", the death of Mrs. Landingham, President Bartlet's personal secretary, has Diabolus' fingerprints all over it; after a gentle little running subplot about Mrs. Landingham picking up her first new car, Diablous arranges for a drunk driver to run a red light and kill her offscreen at the end of the episode with no foreshadowing whatsoever. This also contributes to a bit of Deus Angst Machina, as what with Bartlet's M.S scandal and various other crises and such, it wasn't as if Bartlet didn't already have enough reasons to be a bit angsty at the time. This example, however, can partially be forgiven in that it leads to Bartlet's excellent rant against God in the next episode, in which he even lampshades the trope (see the page quote), and his equally awesome Redemption In The Rain sequence. Another example — a lesser one because it's a newly introduced, comparatively minor character, but still a punch in the gut — is in the next season finale, "Posse Comitatus," when C.J.'s stalker is apprehended and she just begins a relationship with the special agent who'd been assigned to protect her... and he leaves her sight for a minute to pick up a candy bar and a flower from a convenience store, finds himself in the middle of an armed robbery and is shot and killed.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_3aedc7f6	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_3aedc7f6	comment	For such an angst-heavy show, Supernatural has only used this once: Playthings. Sam is wanting his turn at being a martyr and, after getting drunk, forces a promise out of Dean that he would kill him when/if he turns evil. He's hungover the next day and we and Dean think he doesn't remember. But at the end of the episode, he brings it up again and they drive off in an uncomfortable silence. Add it on to them not exactly saving the day either and you've got one hell of a downer ending. Three words: "Jus In Bello". "Heart", to an extent. Also, the Season One finale: John's been posessed and shot, Dean's been tortured, but everyone is alive and Sam is driving them to the hospital, and it looks like everything will be fine. Until a huge truck slams into the Impala, totaling the car, and the episode ends with all three men bloody and unconscious. Also, "Mystery Spot" has this trope happen, but it is reversed.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_3bb50fdc	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_3bb50fdc	comment	This happens in quite a bit of Cold Case episodes, like November 22nd, The Crossing, The Letter We're in love, cue KKK rapist/murderers, World's End, Forever Blue We were the lucky ones....
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DiabolusExMachina/int_3f470c26	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_3f470c26	comment	Diabolus' fickle finger can also be detected in the end of Forrest Gump; simple Forrest has finally achieved all he ever wanted in winning the heart of his troubled childhood sweetheart Jenny, who herself has finally fallen in love with a good man who loves her completely and unconditionally and can give her a good life... so Diabolus gives her a terminal illness.. She's perfectly fine at the end of the book, however, though this is remedied in the sequel 'Gump and Co.' And for a while Lieutenant Dan considers Forrest himself as a personification of the trope, denying him the heroic death on the battlefield he always believed was his destiny and forcing him to live on with both legs amputated. He eventually realizes he can still make a good life for himself.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_437fed20	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_437fed20	comment	Total Drama Island: Poor Bunny. He's first eaten by a snake, then Geoff tries to catch the snake in order to get Bunny back, when an eagle swoops in and captures said snake. Geoff gets another chance when the eagle lands at the edge of the dock, when a shark jumps out and snatches up not only the eagle with the snake with Bunny inside, but a sizable portion of the dock as well. All this, in a parody of reality TV. Damn.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_45fb6020	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_45fb6020	comment	In SaintsRow, under gang leader Julius, you destroy the three rival gangs in Stillwater and "unify" the city under the Third Street Saints. Then, with the help of the undercover cop in the Saints, Julius is captured by the police. They use him to blackmail the Saints into helping an anti-gang mayor get elected. Afterwards, when you confront said mayor to negotiate Julius's release, the two of you are blown up in an assassination attempt. In the sequel, it's revealed that Julius set all of it up to dissolve the Saints and gang violence altogether: without his or the player's leadership, he knew the gang would fall apart and things would become more peaceful. Obviously, it didn't work, if only because the man didn't understand the concept of a power vacuum. It's also revealed in the sequel that Dex, an ambitious ex-Saint, orchestrated a similar gambit during the finale, aiming to kill the player to destroy the gang (again), but for less noble reasons.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_48c72060	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_48c72060	comment	Arguably one of the worst examples occurs in the book Final Destination: Dead Man's Hand. After the set up disaster the survivors are being transported by a cop, who dies in a freak traffic light accident (the group manages survive the car going out of control though). At the very end of the book the Final Girl, who thinks she's beat Death and won, gets a call from her doctor, who says she has very advanced HIV, contracted from being splattered in the cop's blood at the beginning of the book.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_4c8e1a16	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_4c8e1a16	comment	Oath of Courage, people. Remember that thing the series has hammered home about courage overcoming everything. A trifling thing like a collapsing pocket dimension isn't enough to stop the 3G. Especially since the tech specs for Genesic Gao Gai Gar note one of it's tools as the very thing they used to get where they were to begin with.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_5357f3a8	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_5357f3a8	comment	This was used in one of the season finales for Alias. The Big Bad of the season is temporarily defeated, Sydney and Vaughn finally get to drive off into the sunset together...only for Vaughn to tell Sydney "I'm not who you think I am," and a semi to come out of absolutely nowhere, slamming into their car and ending the season.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_53995018	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_53995018	comment	Near the end of Fable II Lucien tells you he killed your family. There's no reason for him to do this, other than to set up the neutral choice for the ending Although it's pretty superfluous considering your dog's death already sets up the neutral choice.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_585f1e47	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_585f1e47	comment	The ending of Pitch Black. The out-of-nowhere alien grabbing the female lead just as she's about to escape. It seems like the only reason to do it is to keep her out of the sequel. The saddest thing is, originally she was meant to survive and Vin Diesel's character was meant to die. It still works, though: Riddick doesn't really decide to rejoin the human race until she dies. The idea that someone could value his life, or the lives of the passengers, enough to sacrifice their own for them was proof positive that Riddick's original view of life — that everyone was really a self-centered bastard at heart, some just pretended otherwise — was dead wrong. And Riddick being Riddick, he'd never have entirely believed it unless somebody died proving it. Risk is something he accepts every day, but actually dying is further than he's ever gone. You mean the alien grabbing the female lead after Riddick has stabbed her; it having already been established that they can hunt anything that is bleeding really well? It hardly comes out of nowhere. She insulted a psycho, who stabbed her and consequently the monsters ate her. It's an old discussion: some viewers believe Riddick stabbed her, others claim it's bullshit and she was simply grabbed by the monster. It's somewhat ambiguous, although his reaction (and the DVD commentary by the directer and actors) definitely seems to imply the latter.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_5a5bc276	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_5a5bc276	comment	It didn't involve any dying, but... Codename: Kids Next Door, "Operation Elections": Nigel Uno has just led his school to fend off an attack against a rival middle school, and is making a speech as he's assuming his rightful position as 4th grade president position that was robbed from him by the Delightful Children, who had instigated the attack by the middle school. And then the guy who earlier told him that he had won the election now tells him that he still lost the election to some random guy. Diabolus pours salt into Uno's wounds by suggesting that his fellow operatives also voted for the other guy.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_5d60f2e3	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_5d60f2e3	comment	Blake's 7 is loaded with Diaboli ex Machina. For example, people who say they hate Servalan, and have no reason to like her, keep betraying the protagonists to her, even though she has never rewarded a traitor and kills them each time. In "Rumors of Death," she's been deposed in a revolution, and she's in a dungeon cell, awaiting execution. Avon picks this time to care about anything other than himself, for the first time in the series, avenging his old girlfriend's death. So he frees Servalan in return for information. He makes that a priority over everything else, including winning and safety (usually his highest priority).
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DiabolusExMachina/int_5ea41577	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_5ea41577	comment	Half Life 2 Episode 2: After Gordon has whipped the tripods, and he and Alyx are about to go out to get the rest of the combine, a combine advisor shows up, immobilizes Gordon, Alyx and Alyx's father Eli, flips Eli around, rapes his brain to death by jamming a nozzle up his spine to suck the brains out and eat them, but is then stopped by Dog before he can do the same thing to Alyx or Gordon, leaving the game, instead of a happy ending, on a Kick The Dog moment and an ambiguous ending.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_63400e03	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_63400e03	comment	The Simpsons had the episode "Brother From Another Series", Sideshow Bob appears reformed and gets work release when his brother Cecil offers him a job for a dam project. Bart is convinced that Bob is up to no good, but in the end it turns out Bob really has reformed and Cecil was trying to embezzle millions from the dam project. Bob actually helps stop Cecil and saves Bart and Lisa's lives, but when the police arrive to arrest Cecil, Police Chief Wiggum insists on arresting Bob as well for no good reason.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_63c24cdd	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_63c24cdd	comment	The show Cyberchase LOVED using these to keep the magical cure-all Mac Guffin out of the protagonists hands. Hell, that's how they lost it in the first place.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_647a17	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_647a17	comment	At the end of Cowboy Bebop, Spike finally finds his lost love Julia, only for her to be shot dead hours later, by some random mook.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_6851f010	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_6851f010	comment	Moulin Rouge features Satine's death by tuberculosis RIGHT as everything has turned out fine. Of course, it was established in the first few sentences that she was going to die, but its placement leaves something to be desired. It was stated and restated throughout the entire film that she's dying. Their reconciliation destroys the livelihood of every other person in the film. Turned out FINE??? How many times did you watch the film???
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DiabolusExMachina/int_6995df00	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_6995df00	comment	The allied bombing raid at the end of Das Boot. Sure, it was hardly an Ass Pull, what with World War II going on, but it's still just mean as hell.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_6cd53429	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_6cd53429	comment	Subverted in Fist of the North Star. When Kenshiro gains the upper hand on Shin during their final battle, Shin attempts to discourage him by stabbing Ken's fiancee Yuria on her chest. Later Ken finds out that the Yuria stabbed by Shin was actually a mannequin and that the real Yuria was no longer with him.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_7012c03e	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_7012c03e	comment	Subversion: Halfway through the Marathon Infinity Expansion Pak Marathon: Red, after being hit with several other Diaboli ex machina, the shaggy dog having been shot many times, the Marine meets the Organic Big Bad Cosmic Horror Joshua, who then gives him a monstrous cyber-organic makeover, and sends him to exterminate the remaining humans. This happens to be a blessing in disguise, however, with faster running ability, infinite ammo, a jetpack(later) and many cool weapons, and he turns Phlebotinum Rebel shortly afterward. Ironically, Michael, the Dragon, another Cosmic Horror, Face Heel Turns on and kills Joshua for you, although you still have to defeat him. Like in the later Quake 4, "the only way to defeat the enemy is to become one of them".
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DiabolusExMachina/int_73f75151	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_73f75151	comment	An episode of CSI involves a drunk-driving car accident and the death of the only survior while in the hospital. The killer turns out to be the mother of the (underage) daughter killed in the accident, and thought that the other (legal) girl deserved to die as well. So she suffocated the bed-ridden, just-out-of-an-accident, just-coming-out-of-the-coma girl with a plastic bag from the gift shop. Right before the credits?... find out that, because they switched I Ds if they got pulled over for driving, got misidentified at the crash site, was so cut, brusied, and bloodied that no one made the connection, the mother suffocated her own daughter, out of spite.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_73f77592	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_73f77592	comment	At the beginning of For Your Eyes Only, Bond is visiting his wife's grave, complete with 'We have all the time in the world.' MI 6 pick him up by helicopter, except it's remote controlled by...a bald man with a cat, who tortures Bond the way he tortured Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_742a051a	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_742a051a	comment	Director Peter Hunt said that originally the film was to end with the wedding and then the next would start with the assassination and follow from there. However since Lazenby gave up doing the sequels, it wound up in OHMSS. The following movie, Diamonds Are Forever, opens with Bond searching for Blofeld, presumably to avenge the ruined marriage (this is never stated on-screen, and Blofeld isn't explicitly identified, but the implications at obvious). At the beginning of For Your Eyes Only, Bond is visiting his wife's grave, complete with 'We have all the time in the world.' MI 6 pick him up by helicopter, except it's remote controlled by...a bald man with a cat, who tortures Bond the way he tortured Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. It's very carefully structured to be open to the interpretation that it leads on from either You Only Live Twice or On Her Majestys Secret Service. For one, it opens in Japan, where most of the action of the former occured. Take that as you will.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_751a3dfc	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_751a3dfc	comment	Walk Hard's Dewey Cox dies 3 minutes after his last performance.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_757d4df	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_757d4df	comment	Well, this was foreshadowed earlier in the show, what with Prince Ludwig's title of "The Indestructible", and the creators not assuming that Viewers Are Morons.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_7941fbdc	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_7941fbdc	comment	Dumb And Dumber plays this for laughs. The girl the duo went halfway across the country to return a briefcase to turns out to be married, and in the final scene, when they encounter a bus full of swimsuit models looking for a pair of assistants to travel with them and oil them up for photo sessions, they (being idiots) direct them to the nearest town.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_7efb408c	comment	The finale of Dr Horribles Sing Along Blog. Mad Scientist Dr. Horrible held at gunpoint with his own death ray? The gun explodes and he survives. The Made Of Iron superheroic jerk Captain Hammer who fired it? Injured, but survives. Naive heroine, Penny, on the far side of the room, who has just realized Dr. Horrible and Billy Buddy are one and the same and in love with her? Sorry, Penny. You get Jossed with Penny-seeking shrapnel. Nothing else in the room is damaged. Part of that may be due to budget; they didn't have one. The whole thing was done by people with "free time" during the writers's strike, and was by people who volunteered their time to a fun project. Lack of damage is no worse then anything Sci-fi, sorry "Syfy" puts out as an original movie.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_82f42522	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_82f42522	comment	End Of Evangelion, or even Evangelion in general loves this. in EoE Asuka finally stops Wangsting over her mother and gets a Crowning Moment Of Awesome when she kills nine Mass Produced Evas in three minutes. She barely finishes, but it's looking up. The Seele army has been driven out, Rei, Shinji and Asuka are alive, Ritsuko's plan to detonate the entire complex failed, Shinji isn't in his psychopathic mother and Instrumentality has been averted. Then Asuka gets speared by a fake Lance of Longinus, Shinji gets in Unit 01 and Rei fuses with Lilith, becomes a giant white god and turns all of humanity into orange juice on Shinji's orders. You could say It Got Worse. While in normal Eva, everything is going fine, if not a tad angsty. Shinji's social skills are improving, Asuka's teamwork is going well and Rei is beginning to show some humanity. A few episodes later and Asuka's been Mind Raped, Shinji is catatonic and Rei is dead, replaced by a clone. All so Anno can have his little End Of The World Special.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_84091db5	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_84091db5	comment	Cloverfield. The three surviving protagonists get on an evac helicopter headed out of New York before a massive bombing run to obliterate the beastie, but Clovie takes down the copter, eats Hud, and forces the last two to take shelter under a bridge just before the bombing run goes off. The sight of the two huddled together when the air raid sirens go off, preparing to give their last will and testament before facing annihilation is rather chilling. Indeed, the movie in its entirety is an example of Diabolus. Does anyone else find it odd that no matter where the protagonists go, the monster seems to be right behind them. This is especially apparent when They go to Beth's apartment, which the monster had already trashed and rescue Beth, only to look out the gaping hole in the demolished wall to see Clover coming straight at them. And then, of course, there's the fact that the one helicopter that Clover lunges at just happens to be the one with the cameraman in it. Another theory: The monster just really hates having his picture taken. Just put down the camera, Hud! He'll leave you alone!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_84faeb19	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_84faeb19	comment	It's very carefully structured to be open to the interpretation that it leads on from either You Only Live Twice or On Her Majestys Secret Service. For one, it opens in Japan, where most of the action of the former occured. Take that as you will.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_854720df	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_854720df	comment	This isn't just restricted to Black Jack, either- many of Osamu Tezuka's works feature such occasions. The 1980 Astro Boy anime, for instance, has many bit characters who exist only to die so that Astro can question why humans made robots this way.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_87a11d6b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_87a11d6b	comment	The ending to Infocom's text adventure Infidel has always been somewhat controversial with fans because it's a good example of this trope being used to Shoot The Shaggy Dog. The protagonist (despite being selfish, greedy, and foolish) makes it to the pyramid's burial chamber to claim the riches ... only for the walls to collapse and trap him there to die. And this, after solving a bunch of very difficult puzzles (including a few 'learn by dying' puzzles).
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DiabolusExMachina/int_880ae63e	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_880ae63e	comment	Hey Arnold: The Devil sure loves stalking Eugene Horowitz...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_8a1b7911	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_8a1b7911	comment	In Funky Winkerbean, Wally (younger brother of the title character) had just returned from a trip return trip to Iraq, with his new bride and newly adopted orphaned waif in tow. The future looked bright for the young Winkerbeans... until Wally got a letter from the Army telling him that he was technically A.W.O.L., because his discharge was issued one day too early. As a result, Wally was ordered back to active duty to serve a full year's tour of duty. The readership was pretty sure that discharges don't work like that (even the ones incorrectly filed) and could've fought the order if he wanted (and almost certainly won). But he fought the war instead. As an extra kick in the metaphorical nads, Becky finds out she's pregnant just in time for Wally to get shipped off. An extra EXTRA kick was administered when the second Time Skip came about and Wally was nowhere to be found. We don't even know if Wally ever got to see his son (Wally Jr.) in the flesh. Tom Batiuk said he put a small hint in one of the strips immediately preceding the skip. The hint was Les Moore (the strip's real main character) walking past a newspaper booth with a headline saying something about kidnapped soldiers. Ironically, the author's complete ignorance on military discharges was such that he overlooked an entirely legal way to suddenly recall Wally to service. All initial enlistment contracts are for eight years of service obligation, not four. The typical arrangement is only four years of active duty and then four more years of 'Individual Ready Reserve' status, the practical upshot being that short of medical disability, Bad Conduct Discharge, etc., you can be yanked back in entirely at their discretion up until eight years have passed since your initial enlistment. The recruiter is required to make durn sure you understand this before you sign.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_8c66045f	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_8c66045f	comment	24 season finales used to be made of this trope: Day One: The Drazens are all dead, Senator Palmer is safe, as is Jack Bauer's daughter Kim, and the real mole inside CTU has been caught...but then Jack goes into the CTU server room and finds that Nina, the aforementioned mole, killed Jack's wife, Teri, before she fled and was caught. Day Two: The nuclear disaster has long since been averted, the terrorists' mastermind, while not dead or captured, has been sufficiently scared out of the US, and everything appears to be safe once again...until now-President Palmer makes a public appearance and shakes hands with a random "civilian" who turns out to be a terrorist; with the handshake, she'd infected the President with some sort of biological agent. The episode—and season—ends with Palmer collapsing to the ground, the ending clock replaced with a heartbeat sound effect. Day Five: the conspiracy has been exposed, president logan is arrested, everything seems fine and dandy, until the chinese pop up out of nowhere and haul jack off meaning he has to spend the next six months enduring torture at their hands.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_8d2a12b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_8d2a12b	comment	Done again in Final Fantasy VI. The Evil Emperor has apparently seen the error of his ways after the magical espers he has been expoiting hand his Empire its own ass on a silver platter, Kefka, His Psychotic Monster Clown henchman, has been locked away where he won't do any harm and the heroic rebels manage to reconcile the Espers and humanity. Then Kefka pops up, kills all the Espers and absorbs their power and lifts up a whole continent the size of India (relative to the rest of the world at least) to take over the world with the not-so-repentant-after-all emperor. One failed mission to save the world later, one of the heroines wakes up on a deserted island one year After The End with no one else around but her dying mentor with all her friends scattered to the four winds. Oh, and Kefka's a god now. Ouch...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_951cda09	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_951cda09	comment	Conker's Bad Fur Day ends with a literal Deus Ex Machina as the main character asks the author to wipe off the monster chasing him... except he forgets to ask him to bring back his girlfriend who was killed in the crossfire. Oops.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_95a9d84e	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_95a9d84e	comment	Din and Jin from Las Lindas seem to be this trope personified. Their latest "prank" rivals the Euphinator Incident in terms of everything going to hell in the worst way possible just when things were going good for the cast.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_9892228b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_9892228b	comment	Of course, the sheer randomness is evident because the other angel-turned-human has a successful job, large and healthy family, and in general a gorgeously happy life. Clearly, the Diabolus is not a fan of Nicolas Cage. This just goes to show that Love Hurts, and the writers love to twist the knife.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_99e058b7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_99e058b7	comment	Just think: if it weren't for the miniseries, this is how Farscape would've ended: They're finally safe from the Scarrans and the Peacekeepers, the wormhole to Earth has been closed forever — but it's okay! Because John is going to marry Aeryn! And then a completely unforeshadowed alien descends from the sky and blasts them into little pebbly things. And vice versa, since the cliffhanger was pretty much why there was such a demand for a miniseries to begin with.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_9d218765	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_9d218765	comment	Tsukihime. "And then Arcuied blew Roa into tiny pieces. Her and Shiki have a long, happy life in store as Shiki shows her all of the things she never thought to experiance, and their mutual love is sure to last fore- SLICE." But then it's countered by a deus ex machina where she just says "Yeah, I got better after you killified him." Which doesn't necessarily turn out to be much better, though, depending on Shiki's actions afterward.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_9e7a39d7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_9e7a39d7	comment	Night Of The Living Dead, in which the only survivor of the zombie attack is shot on sight by the rescue party. And with (possibly intentional) Unfortunate Implications, in that the survivor is black and the rescuers are rednecks. Word Of God said it wasn't intentional, but believe whatever you want.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_9e8fbaac	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_9e8fbaac	comment	In any game where a chopper is called in to rescue your party halfway through the game, it will probably get shot down or otherwise destroyed, as in Resident Evil 3 and Dino Crisis. Or Call Of Duty 4.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_a04d2e70	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_a04d2e70	comment	Weiss Kreuz Gluhen never promises better than a Bittersweet Ending, but the final scene of the series is pure Diabolus Ex Machina; having cut ties with everyone he ever knew and left Japan, Aya goes walking down a sidewalk in New York City and Diabolus, in the form of a scruffy little boy, runs up and stabs him in the gut. He ends up collapsed against a mailbox, having a flashback of his former teammates, while the pedestrians walking past pay no attention to the guy apparently bleeding to death all over the sidewalk.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_a11215eb	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_a11215eb	comment	House Of Leaves has the moment that Will Navidson, Tom, and Billy Reston finally come upon poor Jed and wounded Wax in the middle of the labyrinth after two weeks, and after Holloway shot Wax. Jed is so happy. Then Holloway reappears and blows Jed's head off.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_a1c7995	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_a1c7995	comment	The path towards the fourth ending in Drakengard is shaping up to be a Bittersweet Ending, which, given the only other "good" ending is also bittersweet, doesn't seem too bad. After all, after finding out that the Creepy Child Big Bad is irredeemably evil even after the protests of her twin brother, the heroes have finally succeeded in killing her once and for all. Now the world is saved. Except, wait, something's falling out of the sky...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_a275ac45	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_a275ac45	comment	The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has both a Deus Ex Machina and a Diabolus Ex Machina in the end. Martin, the heir to the emperor's throne, who you have spent the entire main quest protecting, manages to close the Oblivion Gates and totally stop the Daedra invasion. He does so by ritually sacrificing his life. A Winner Is You! It seems that the Diabolus hates that family. During the opening sequence, the player is helping the Emperor and his bodyguards escape through underground tunnels. You fight your way through a dozen assassins only to reach a dead end, where one more comes through a hidden door and murders the Emperor. It gets even worse if you read the Emperor's obituary and find out that Martin was his fourth son. His three brothers were killed offstage by the assassins before the opening sequence even started.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_a9278c7b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_a9278c7b	comment	The Order Of The Stick pulls two Diabolus Ex Machinas at various points to save the (un)life of its Big Bad, Xykon - first when Miko Miyazaki unwittingly pulls the rug out from a paladin who's about to smite Xykon and his lieutenant, and second when Xykon's Soul Jar narrowly misses utter and permanent annihilation by falling just short of a portal to another dimension - after the bird that was supposed to drop it in from point-blank range stopped shy for what was then no apparent reason.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_aaa5cb60	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_aaa5cb60	comment	Occurs in the Buu Saga of Dragonball Z, when Mr. Satan/Hercule, of all people, manages to stop Buu by befriending him. Just when things are about to calm down, two gun-toting assholes show up and shoot both Mr. Satan/Hercule and the puppy Buu adopted, pissing him off and forming the Evil Buu, which starts the next part of the arc up. Also, the ending of the Cell Games. Cell is clearly being beaten by Gohan, and puts in a last-ditch effort to destroy earth by preparing to explode. Goku doesn't come up with the idea of using instant transportation to take him to an emptier planet until the very last moment - thus, by doing so, he gets himself killed. The earth dragonballs can't bring him back; any workarounds would've failed, since Goku specifically requested to stay dead and would've resisted any such attempts.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_af35bdd	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_af35bdd	comment	The ending of the Canadian horror film Cube: The female lead, one of two sympathetic characters in the whole movie, evades every trap, figures out how to escape, is right on the threshold of getting out... and is killed by the villain, who is Not Quite Dead. She dies, the villain dies, and only the mentally deficient guy escapes. The moral? Uh... Cube 2 is just as bad. After surviving many perils, the heroine, who turns up to be a special agent, manages to escape the Hypercube and return to the normal world... where her superior has her summarily shot in the back of the head for no apparent reason. The worst is that she obviously knows what's coming, but merely closes her eyes instead of trying anything. If Cube 2 and Cube Zero had not systematically made the world surrounding the cube less mysterious ( In Cube 2 we learn that it's a top secret military project designed to "disappear" people the establishment see as a threat, and in Cube Zero, it turns out that said military are the enforcers of a totalitarian fundamentalist regime), a coherent moral can just about be sorted out: It's a kind of purgatory, and Kazan can escape because his mental state gives him Infant Immortality against sin.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_af79d27	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_af79d27	comment	In one episode of NCIS, the team manages to foil a devious terrorist plot. As they are celebrating their success, Diabolus strikes in the form of a high powered sniper rifle fired by the Big Bad that drills a hole in Kate's head. To add insult to injury, Kate had just taken a bullet for Gibbs and was spared serious injury thanks to her Bulletproof Vest. "I was sure I was going to -SPLAT!-"
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DiabolusExMachina/int_af7d287	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_af7d287	comment	One of the last few episodes of Monk, Monk spends the episode trying to get on the good side of the kid of the only cop against his reinstatement. Then he gets cornered by a bear, saves the kid, solves the crime, and the guy changes his mind. Unfortunately, the two officers who supported him changed their minds after nothing more than going back over his case records. The writers Yanking The Shaggy Dog's Chain resulted in a mildly delusional Heroic BSOD.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_b05017a5	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_b05017a5	comment	In the ending of Star Wars: Republic Commando, your squad has taken out a massive separatist gunship and are ready for evac. Then, out of nowhere (and offscreen), Sev reports he's under attack and you lose contact with him. Despite the protests of you and your squad, your commander refuses to let you rescue him, and you all get on your evac shuttle, leaving him to die. A lot of players hated Yoda for that.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_b1f714d2	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_b1f714d2	comment	Heroes: Charlie is killed by Sylar for her power. Hiro decides to go back in time to save her, but overshoots yesterday and winds up six months in the past. He develops a strong relationship with her, and she becomes his first love interest. Just before leaving with Hiro for Japan, she reveals she has a blood clot in her brain that'll kill her right around the time Sylar kills her anyway. This rips Hiro's heart into peices and makes his power go wonky, accidentally putting him in Japan, far away from her, so she stays at the diner and is killed by Sylar anyway. Happens a second time with poor Hiro, albeit this time is less touching and more stupid. He goes back sixteen years, and meets his dying mother. She gives him the catalyst, and he vows to keep it safe from Arthur, who wants to use the catalyst to fuel his army of supersoldiers. Somehow, for no explained reason, Arthur knows that Hiro has the catalyst and teleports exactly to where Hiro and Claire are. He steals the catalyst, sends Claire to the present, and almost kills Hiro. Sylar has benefited from this trope so many times it's not even funny. He technically "died" in Company custody halfway through the first season, but got a mysterious off-screen resurrection. Eden's Compelling Voice and Mohinder's power-disabling serum both worked against Sylar at first, but conveniently and inexplicably failed right when they were about to kill him. In the finale of the first season Niki uses her Super Strength to wail on Sylar with a parking meter, Hiro runs a friggin' katana through his body, and he still survives. Correction. Sylar prevented Eden from using her voice, by choking her with telekinesis: it's hard to speak when you can't breath. Also, Mohinder's serum didn't fail at all. Mohinder did (as usual). The serum started to have his effect on Sylar, but Mohinder (instead of, say, shooting him right there) started wasting time and gave Sylar time to recover. When Mohinder finally decided to attack him, Sylar was already partially recovered... and partially is all he needed against then powerless Mohinder.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_b267b703	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_b267b703	comment	Raiden's ending in the original Mortal Kombat. Evil vanquished: check. BBEG dead: check. Hey fellas; let's break the world ourselves! And Reptile's ending in Mortal Kombat 4. Go through the entire game, win the tournament, and then your Bad Boss pops your head like a grape for asking for a reward. WTF? Reptile's ending is always a Diabolus ex Machina. The one time that he actually has a happy ending is in Armageddon.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_b6c10672	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_b6c10672	comment	Occurs in the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth, to complete the Hope Spot for Hikaru and Eagle —having defeated Nova and saved Lantis, the Knights and Eagle return to Cephiro only for Debonair to show up out of nowhere to kill the Autozam commander. Especially jarring since Debonair had never actually attacked anyone directly until this moment.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_b96182c6	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_b96182c6	comment	In the second season of Highlander The Series, Duncan Macleod successfully rescued his mortal girlfriend Tessa from a kidnapper ... only for her to be shot dead by a random mugger less than three minutes after the escape.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_bc090e58	comment	The World Ends With You: After surviving the Reaper's Game, Neku and Shiki discover that Only Shiki can come back to life. Neku is fine with this, until the Conductor hits him with the whammy that in order to play the next game, the entry fee he has to pay is Shiki herself.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_bdf5b064	comment	Ellen Hopkins's book Burned throws a completely random car crash to cause an inconvenient miscarriage and kill the protagonist's Love Interest. The author seems contractually required to provide a Downer Ending or Bittersweet Ending because True Art Is Angsty, but all her other protagonists got themselves in trouble with their own actions and not a snowstorm. Note to author: It doesn't count as foreshadowing if you don't foreshadow until five pages before the event!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_c22a1cf7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_c22a1cf7	comment	Fallout 3 is especially guilty of this, capping a briliant game with a totally illogical Wall Banger ending that forces the player to sacrifice his/her own life by entering a radiation-flooded room to save the world... even though your radiation-proof mutant friend is standing right beside you. That character will actually say something like, "This is your journey and I can't take it for you" or something similar. Jesus, Fawkes, just walk in and press the button so I don't have to die!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_c2cfdaf3	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_c2cfdaf3	comment	Halfway through Call Of Duty 4, after you've completed the primary objective in Shock and Awe, there's a Diabolic Nuke Ex Machina, when you get a call that the bad guys have set up a nuke in Asaad's palace, then one of your fellow chopper pilots gets shot down. You land to rescue her, but it's already too late, and the nuke knocks the escaping helicopters out of the sky and kills all of the American main characters. You have a minute of Controllable Helplessness before the protagonist, too, expires from radiation poisoning. As a result, the shaggy dog has not just been shot, but totally annihilated. And during the final mission, after stopping the nuke launch, an invincible Hind gunship appears and lays waste to your squad. Then the Big Bad starts executing the survivors, but before he can get to you, in a semi-Deus Ex Machina, the Russian Loyalists arrive and destroy the Hind, distracting the Big Bad and allowing your CO to pass you a pistol. It's not clear if either of you survive, though. He does The fake-surrendering Japanese soldiers who kill Roebuck/Polonsky at the end of "Breaking Point" in World At War could qualify, too, seeing as the mission had been a success up to that point, and Roebuck even said in the opening narration that they would all go home at the end. But that one's kinda okay, considering it leads to your group essentially being led by Jack Bauer.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_c30e1ec1	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_c30e1ec1	comment	Kurokami ends in that way, in the last minutes of last episode everyone discovers that final sacrifice is required, even if nobody dies.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_c3934954	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_c3934954	comment	The movie-version of Stephen King's The Mist takes this all the way into Deus Angst Machina territory.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_c8801744	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_c8801744	comment	Dragon Age. Alright, we've got our allies together, Loghain has been deposed/executed, everyone's behind us and we're ready to kick some ass. Let's win this thing. Oh, by the way, did we mention that the Grey Warden who kills the archdemon will die? Just thought you'd like to know. Not quite. Morrigan offers you a way to have your cake and eat it, too.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_d147a84b	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_d147a84b	comment	Angel Sanctuary seems to fall into this trope. Especially when Setsuna finally reunites with his loved sister, a wacko angel girl shoots her and enrages Setsuna, causing The End Of The World As We Know It. (The manga goes well past this point. Still plenty of Deus Angst Machina, though.)
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DiabolusExMachina/int_d1b84751	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_d1b84751	comment	Jak X. Non-fatal example, but after you've won the game, Rayn is suddenly revealed to have been manipulating you all along, wasn't poisoned, and oh yeah, she's now the biggest crimelord in the world. Well done, Jak.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_d3acd77f	comment	Even James Bond is not safe from this demonic influence — in On Her Majestys Secret Service, he drops by to ensure that Bond's marriage becomes a SHORT one. Then again, this does seem to follow naturally from the premise that Blofeld, as shown throughout the movie, is an enormous dick. Director Peter Hunt said that originally the film was to end with the wedding and then the next would start with the assassination and follow from there. However since Lazenby gave up doing the sequels, it wound up in OHMSS. The following movie, Diamonds Are Forever, opens with Bond searching for Blofeld, presumably to avenge the ruined marriage (this is never stated on-screen, and Blofeld isn't explicitly identified, but the implications at obvious). At the beginning of For Your Eyes Only, Bond is visiting his wife's grave, complete with 'We have all the time in the world.' MI 6 pick him up by helicopter, except it's remote controlled by...a bald man with a cat, who tortures Bond the way he tortured Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. It's very carefully structured to be open to the interpretation that it leads on from either You Only Live Twice or On Her Majestys Secret Service. For one, it opens in Japan, where most of the action of the former occured. Take that as you will.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_d3c6f1a9	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_d3c6f1a9	comment	Dawsons Creek: in the grand finale, Jen suddenly has, and dies from, a heart condition. It was well done, though.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_d933fcee	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_d933fcee	comment	In Warhammer 40000: Gaunt's Ghosts, Lijah Cuu is effectively a manifestation of Diabolus. At the end of The Guns of Tanith, he kills off "Try Again" Bragg. In Sabbat Martyr, although the fighting is effectively over and the nine chosen assassins have been slain, he is subverted by Chaos psykers into killing Saint Sabbat. Although he does not succeed and dies in the process, he still succeeds in killing Colm Corbec before he gets killed too. What? No love for poor Sehra Muril, the red-haired girl with a "deliciously dirty laugh"? She was going to be first FEMALE VERGHAST SCOUT if it hadn't been for Cuu!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_dd78e04e	comment	Neverwinter Nights 2 has one of the most appalling Diabolus Ex Machina endings ever. Quite literally, Rocks Fall Everyone Dies. Remedied in the Expansion Pack that follows with you waking up afterward, albeit on the opposite side of Faerun, and you spend much of the game trying to figure out how the hell you got there. Also you wake up with an entirely new Diabolus in the form of the Spirit Eater curse. Which, given it's the point of the entire story and is at the beginning of the game, hardly counts. The rocks falling is lampshaded later in Mask of the Betrayer by Ammon Jerro, in a rather hypocritical bit of humor. Fallout 3 is especially guilty of this, capping a briliant game with a totally illogical Wall Banger ending that forces the player to sacrifice his/her own life by entering a radiation-flooded room to save the world... even though your radiation-proof mutant friend is standing right beside you. That character will actually say something like, "This is your journey and I can't take it for you" or something similar. Jesus, Fawkes, just walk in and press the button so I don't have to die!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e03d2882	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e03d2882	comment	"We knew a croc(or something) would get him". Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, after dodging death from crocs, snakes, sharks, etc. for years, was offed by one of the world's least dangerous creatures, a stingray. Moreover, contrary to popular assumption, Irwin was just swimming by it, rather than actively provoking it in any way. He was, in fact, there to save the stingrays. The assumption that he was provoking it is reasonable given that provoking dangerous animals was his entire career. And as yet the REAL footage has not been released, so what he was or was not doing to it remains a mystery.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e10ac9d5	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e10ac9d5	comment	One particular death (Book's) in Serenity is a downer (especially since we never do get to learn what the hell his deal was), but another Wash's death falls right into this. He successfully manages to land Serenity from what is essentially a dead fall, and once he does and pauses to celebrate, his chest is pierced by a random Reaver harpoon. Joss Whedon mentions that he wrote the death scene that way for a specific reason. He wanted to break the PC Shield, and make you worry about everyone else's fate, especially since everyone else looks like they're about to die later. And which led a number of fans to revolt against him, as no one does, making Wash's death doubly pointless. Seeing how suggesting that Anyone Can Die was the point, this last statement makes no sense at all. It's not like killing more characters would have made fans happier, anyway. Yet, the dramatic tension in the last part of the movie is high, which is exactly the effect Whedon wanted to obtain. As for the scene itself, Your Mileage May Vary: this troper found it (cruelly) beautiful, for example.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e28ea2b	comment	Wild Wild West ended with a non-fatal example: The woman they'd been fighting the entire movie over wasn't trying to save her brother or father, but rather her husband. Well, they'll always have that Giant Mechanical Spider. Lampshaded when James West gripes, "You coulda told us before."
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e3d5917c	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e3d5917c	comment	Joss Whedon mentions that he wrote the death scene that way for a specific reason. He wanted to break the PC Shield, and make you worry about everyone else's fate, especially since everyone else looks like they're about to die later. And which led a number of fans to revolt against him, as no one does, making Wash's death doubly pointless. Seeing how suggesting that Anyone Can Die was the point, this last statement makes no sense at all. It's not like killing more characters would have made fans happier, anyway. Yet, the dramatic tension in the last part of the movie is high, which is exactly the effect Whedon wanted to obtain. As for the scene itself, Your Mileage May Vary: this troper found it (cruelly) beautiful, for example.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e5786c82	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e5786c82	comment	Japanese singer Izumi Sakai (of Zard fame, best known for several Detective Conan opening themes) had a weak health for years. Several illnesses forced her to go on an hiatus from 2001 to 2003, but she recovered and went back to work. In 2006 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, when she seemed healed it was discovered the cancer had spread to her lungs. When she finally got better and was planning her comeback, she fell from a three metre high landing in the hospital she was undergoing treatment at. And died.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e610a5b7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e610a5b7	comment	In Robert A Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. All fictional universes are real alternate universes in their reality. One of the characters points out that a hero is not permitted to kill the Big Bad of his universe because of this trope. The character asks if the hero can just retire as head of the training school but apparently the story must go on with more conflict. Fridge Logic in that there is no reason there can't be peace until the hero dies from natural causes and then another Big Bad can appear for the future generation to deal with, if there must be such continuing conflict.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_e6372516	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_e6372516	comment	To some BattleTech fans, Diabolus is behind the Jihad storyline. Let's see, the Clan invasion is finally called off, the Star League tentatively reestablished, and while there are still loose ends left over (like the threat of the Wolf Khan to come invading anyway once the original truce is up, or the aftermath of a nasty civil war) things finally seem to be ready to calm down a bit...but hey, we can't have that, right? This game isn't called PeaceTech! So the Star League declares itself a sham and disbands again for no good reason just in time to cause the suddenly uber-powerful pseudo-religious lunatics known as the Word of Blake to go Ax Crazy and start pulling cyborg super soldiers, nuclear weapons, and other stuff out of their nether regions in an all-out war against everybody...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_ea4a78ea	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_ea4a78ea	comment	''It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown'': Final play of game, and we're looking at either Charlie slotting in the game-winning field goal from short-range, or Lucy humiliating herself in front of the crowd for pulling that trick (you know the one). Even Charlie pulling a John Carney wouldn't have been as bad as Lucy pulling the trick anyway and not getting any of the blame for the loss, not even from poor old Chuck.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_eae4910c	comment	The Sam Raimi film Drag Me To Hell certainly took an almost literal approach to this, for the female protagonist had spent the entire film attempting to beat an ancient gypsy curse to send her to Hell, by means of ownership of a cursed object (in this case, a button). In the end, she seems to have beaten the curse by apparently giving the button back to the gypsy who cursed her, getting the promotion she was hoping for, and was going to join her boyfriend on a relaxing vacation to Santa Barbara, where it was heavily implied he was going to pop the question. Then, at the very end, it turns out that her boyfriend still has the button, she had actually given the gypsy her boyfriend's vintage coin, and the film, of course, ends with her getting dragged to hell.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_eb1a3c82	comment	This almost hit Lamia Loveless as part of a Wall Banger plot just to see Kyosuke Nanbu getting Emo, but she got better eventually. Either her recovery was part of Banpresto's plan all along, or as a reaction of fans outraging at the Diabolus Ex Machina that they set on her just because her default story is done and they want to put some dark and edgy feel on OG.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_ebef8579	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_ebef8579	comment	Let us not forget poor little Cassie from Buffy The Vampire Slayer's "Help", rescued effortlessly from both an evil cult and arrow booby-trap, only to die from shock due to a heart condition (which was mentioned) as the arrow trap (which one of the villains sets up and discusses) activates. Buffy catches it without even blinking but it is too much for Cassie. Or how Tara was lethally shot through a window and died almost instantaneously while in the middle of the room on the second floor. The gunman was outside on the ground shooting randomly into the air. In one of the Buffy comics, Halfrek the vengeance demon has cursed somebody that every descendent of his will die on their 30th birthday, and to ensure this happens she sends a variety of demons and monsters after one particular descendent. Spike wants to stop her mainly out of spite (since he doesn't like Halfrek) and figures that if he can keep the guy alive until midnight, he's off the hook. Then, after Halfrek has given up, at one minute past midnight, the guy falls out of a window for no reason, and dies anyway... Tara's sanity gets sucked out, but despite being attended to by Dawn for some time, waits until Glory punches a hole in her wall to start babbling about how Dawn's the glowing green energy girl. Xander is told a lot of nasty things about his marriage with Anya by an old man who claimed to be Xander himself from the future. He then finds out that "old Xander" is an impostor demon, and that everything it said was a lie. He actually participates in fighting the demon and the Scoobies manage to kill it. Then Xander decides to leave Anya at the altar, anyway.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_efc4bade	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_efc4bade	comment	Not quite the ending, but the climax of World 1 in Final Fantasy V is rather like this. Against all odds, you finally managed to get to the last elemental crystal in time, unlike all the other ones that ended up breaking. The bad guy's possessed puppet gets beaten back, there's a lovely reunion with one of the characters and his granddaughter, where he gets his memory of her back, and a reunion of two of the characters and their long-lost father... and then the crystal shatters anyway, because if the Big Bad stayed imprisoned by its power there'd be no other 2/3s of the game. Done again in Final Fantasy VI. The Evil Emperor has apparently seen the error of his ways after the magical espers he has been expoiting hand his Empire its own ass on a silver platter, Kefka, His Psychotic Monster Clown henchman, has been locked away where he won't do any harm and the heroic rebels manage to reconcile the Espers and humanity. Then Kefka pops up, kills all the Espers and absorbs their power and lifts up a whole continent the size of India (relative to the rest of the world at least) to take over the world with the not-so-repentant-after-all emperor. One failed mission to save the world later, one of the heroines wakes up on a deserted island one year After The End with no one else around but her dying mentor with all her friends scattered to the four winds. Oh, and Kefka's a god now. Ouch... Disc 2 of Final Fantasy VII is a Diabolus Ex Machina strewn throughout an entire disc. Aside from Aeris dying at the end of disc 1, The party chases Sephiroth to the Northern Crater, where they prepare to battle him once and for all, until Sephiroth decides to break poor Cloud's mind and force him to believe that he's a failed experiment. This ends in Cloud handing over the Black Materia, and all hell breaking loose. So now, not only is Meteor looming, about to kill the world in one week, but the Planet has released its failsafe, a group of massive biomechanical creatures called the WEAPONs that are capable of wreaking serious destruction. So these monsters are on the rampage, the apocalypse is coming in a week, and the crew is slated for public execution. And the next time we see Cloud? Paraplegic and braindead. Wow...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_f637a123	comment	A folktale about Zhao Yun's death (of Romance Of The Three Kingdoms fame) begins with him getting undressed for a bath. His wife is impressed by how unscarred his skin is, despite decades of battle. He replies that he's never lost a fight and never even taken a wound. His wife, as a joke, pricks him with a needle. And he starts bleeding. And he doesn't stop. The story ends with him dead from loss of blood and her killing herself with his sword. This may be the reason Luo Guanzhong glosses over Zhao Yun's death in the book.
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DiabolusExMachina/int_f9fbc5b3	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_f9fbc5b3	comment	Parodied in I Wanna Be The Guy. At the end of it, you defeat The Guy, take his gun, and return home triumphantly as the credits roll. You also walk under a tree with one of the game's deadly apples giant cherries on it, which falls. If you're not expecting it and don't move, it lands on you, killing you and giving you the standard Game Over screen even though it's after the credits. Fortunately the game still counts you as having beaten it. SOMETIMES!
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DiabolusExMachina/int_fc4e4aac	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
DiabolusExMachina/int_fc4e4aac	comment	The Epic Of Gilgamesh is another of the Diabolus' old-school performances. After Gilgamesh has gone through unbelievable trials to procure a flower that grants eternal life, it's eaten by a snake on his way home. Proof that even the Diabolus Ex Machina cannot resist the classic appeal of being Scaled Up...
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DiabolusExMachina/int_fdb69ad4	comment	The Phantasm sequels all end with the heroes defeating the Tall Man, only for him to come back and devastate them. In the fourth film, he kills Mike, one of the franchise's two leads... a death followed by a flashback to Mike as a kid, with no idea what's coming.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	Ending Tropes
Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	In Dex Machina
Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	Baldur's Gate
Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	Sadness Tropes
Diabolus Ex Machina	subClassOf	Trope Names From Other Languages
Alien/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Angst Dissonance	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Ass Pull	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
CodeGeass/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Crapsack World	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Cube/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Depressing Tropes	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Deus Angst Machina	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Deus Ex Machina	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Downer Ending	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
DragMeToHell/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
FinalDestination/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
FistOfTheNorthStar/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
HisDarkMaterials/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Hope Spot	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Joss Whedon	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
LastActionHero/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Look Both Ways	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Older Than Dirt	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Outer Limits Twist	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Phantasm/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
PlanescapeTorment/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
ProfessionalWrestling/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Ptitlek4mkmm79/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Ptitlenaugwvhn/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
Shoot The Shaggy Dog	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
Snicket Warning Label	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
TheFountain/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
TheMist/int_d91c2cc7	type	Diabolus Ex Machina
True Art Is Angsty	seeAlso	Diabolus Ex Machina
diabolusexmachina	sameAs	Diabolus Ex Machina

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