History GoneHorriblyRight / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/DarkDesire'': Lys's plan to spite Darío is to ruin his engagement with Julieta by sending her the sex video of him and Alma. The plan works as Julieta is understandably furious at Darío. However, it takes a turn for the worse as Darío, in a fit of rage, throws his fianceé of the roof to her death when she attempts to call the police on him.

* On ''Series/Famous In Love'', Alexis is tired of the reality TV show that is costing her friends and affecting her acting career. So she decides to fake a mental breakdown, pretending to shave her head and then breaking into a house that's owned by a family who knows her friend Sloane (who helps in the scheme). This puts her in a mental ward where her agent shows up to rant the show has been canceled. Alexis figures she can just check herself out until she's informed that she's under a 72-hour hold until a doctor can examine her. Meaning it will be on record that she spent the weekend in a mental ward which will affect her career majorly.

* On ''Famous In Love'', Alexis is tired of the reality TV show that is costing her friends and affecting her acting career. So she decides to fake a mental breakdown, pretending to shave her head and then breaking into a house that's owned by a family who knows her friend Sloane (who helps in the scheme). This puts her in a mental ward where her agent shows up to rant the show has been canceled. Alexis figures she can just check herself out until she's informed that she's under a 72 hour hold until a doctor can examine her. Meaning it will be on record that she spent the weekend in a mental ward which will affect her career majorly.

* ''Series/KamenRider had an episode where the MonsterOfTheWeek attacks a bus and tests a poisonous gas that reduces people to skeletons. The gas proves so effective [[HoistByHisOwnPetard the monster dies from it]].

* On ''Series/CornerGas'', Lacey adds a new sandwich called the Ruby Club to her menu, and browbeats a few of the other characters into trying it. Eventually, the Ruby Club is the only thing that anyone ever wants to order, and Lacey is just plain sick of making nothing else but Ruby Clubs all day. Eventually she exploits the town's resistance to any sort of change by claiming that all Ruby Club purchases will help fund the new traffic light the mayor wants to add to the town, which immediately gets the townsfolk to stop ordering it (despite still considering it delicious).

* In one episode of ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'', The Waitress finally gets Charlie to stop stalking her, only for the plan to completely backfire when a series of horrible events ends up putting her in the hospital. Turns out Charlie's constant interference was the one thing keeping her from harm, and by the end of the episode she begrudgingly asks him to start stalking her again.

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'':
** [[spoiler:A Nazi escaped justice by pretending to be Jewish, even getting a concentration camp tattoo. Things probably got a bit awkward when his son wanted to "rediscover" his family's faith and became very involved with his father's "lapsed" religion...]] Assuming he married a Jewish woman, his son was, in fact, Jewish however.
** "[[Recap/CSINYS08E10 Clean Sweep]]": A cage fighter is so afraid of a stalker harming his family that when his friend, a homeless veteran, dies after an accident, he decides to set the body on fire and fake his own death. The fighter is eventually found, but he burned the body so thoroughly that there's no proof the homeless vet wasn't murdered, and the DA considers charging him. His fate is left up in the air.

** A better example is the cage fighter who was so afraid of a stalker harming his family that when his friend, a homeless veteran, died after an accident he decided to set the body on fire and fake his own death. The fighter is eventually found, but he burned the body so thoroughly that there's no proof the homeless vet wasn't murdered and the DA was forced to charge him. Although Mac told him he might not be found guilty...and worked to get the veteran the proper burial he deserved.

* At the end of ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'''s Season 6, [[spoiler:Castiel's actions throughout the season -- ]] working with [[DealWithTheDevil Crowley]], [[WellIntentionedExtremist betraying]] and [[MoralEventHorizon killing friends]][[spoiler:, and [[KickTheDog breaking Sam's mind]] as a distraction all so he can gain the [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power]] from purgatory's souls -- ]], ''does'' give him the power to prevent the apocalypse from being restarted. In Season 7, it turns out this power [[spoiler:leads him to [[AGodAmI declare himself the new god]], smite ''all'' [[JumpedOffTheSlipperySlope angels who sided against him]] and [[DisproportionateRetribution humans he disapproves of]], and]] has the side effect of unleashing [[EldritchAbomination unkillable monsters]] on the world.

** In "Television Terror", a TV show host decides to enter an HauntedHouse that has been rumored to harbor sinister paranormal activities in order to boost his show ratings, dismissing the warning of a psychic, who REFUSES to enter the house, that the spirits within the house are bad news. He realizes that EvilIsNotAToy only after discovering his camera man being the latest victim of the ghosts inside the house, with himself falling victim not long afterwards -- the episode ends with him [[CruelAndUnusualDeath being disemboweled and hung right outside the house in question]], [[AllPartOfTheShow broadcast on live TV]]. The show ratings get a big boost, all right, but he won't be able to capitalize from it.
** The episode "The Trap" has a man working to [[FakingTheDead fake his murder]] with his coroner brother so he can cash in on his $500,000 life insurance policy. He gets plastic surgery to change his features, heads to an island, expecting his wife to join him with the rest of the money, but she doesn't. As his small amount of cash runs out, he heads home to find her now married to his brother and living off his settlement. When the man tries to get them arrested for insurance fraud, he realizes too late that he did such a good job faking his death that he can't prove he's still alive. [[MistakenForOwnMurderer In fact, the police are convinced the only way he could know these details is if he's the killer and the man thus ends up arrested, tried, convicted and sent to the electric chair]] ''[[MistakenForOwnMurderer for his own murder]]!''

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E07CivilDefense Civil Defense]]" has the crew trigger an emergency program which set up auto-defenses to stop Bajorans taking over the station. Said program had not been informed that the Cardassians later handed the station over to Bajor and Starfleet peacefully. Dukat then shows up to "help", only to find ''his'' commanders had also built in failsafes to stop him aiding the Bajorans... or from abandoning his post in the event of a successful Bajoran takeover.

*** Two episodes in the series demonstrate this as a reason why [[NoTranshumanismAllowed genetic enhancements are banned in the Federation]] with a quartet of Augments known as the Jack Pack. All four had undergone genetic alterations to make them super-geniuses, but those very alterations also gave them extreme personalities that leave them unable to function in society: Jack is a violent sociopath, Lauren has an insatiable sex drive, Patrick has the personality of a preschooler, and Sarina's brain processes information so quickly that her senses can't keep up, leaving her practically catatonic. In the first episode featuring them, "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E09StatisticalProbabilities Statistical Possibilities]]", they're allowed to analyze the Dominion War and come up with any suggestions... and they determine that the Dominion winning the war is inevitable and that the Federation should surrender immediately; when that option is rejected, they try to give the classified information they were given for their analysis to the Dominion.

*** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS06E09StatisticalProbabilities Statistical Possibilities]]" demonstrates this as a reason why [[NoTranshumanismAllowed genetic enhancements are banned in the Federation]] with a quartet of Augments known as the Jack Pack. All four had undergone genetic alterations to make them super-geniuses, but those very alterations also gave them extreme personalities that leave them unable to function in society: Jack is a violent sociopath, Lauren has an insatiable sex drive, Patrick has the personality of a preschooler, and Sarina's brain processes information so quickly that her senses can't keep up, leaving her practically catatonic. In the first episode featuring them, they were allowed to analyze the Dominion War and come up with any suggestions... and they determined that the Dominion winning the war was inevitable and that the Federation should surrender immediately; when that option was rejected, they tried to give the classified information they were given for their analysis to the Dominion.

*** "The Doomsday Machine". An ancient civilization built a war-ending weapon that was invulnerable, warp-capable, and refueled itself from the rubble of planets it destroyed. An unguessable time later, it was still reliably destroying planets.
*** In the [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG]] novels Vendetta, they deal with a second version of the Doomsday Machine and discover that it (and the TOS era one) wasn't actually a case of Gone Horribly Right, it was functioning ''exactly as intended.'' Which made it [[RevengeBeforeReason all that much scarier]]. Its original goal was to eradicate the Borg, regardless of the cost incurred while getting to that goal.
*** Then there's Khan and his followers. They were only the products of 20th century eugenics, created to be the ultimate representation of the human race [[note]]a legion of Napoleons and Alexander the Greats as Kirk explained [[/note]] and to establish a new world order by conquering the rest of humanity. The only flub was that they were [[AmbitionIsEvil all ambitious]] and simultaneously wanted the GodEmperor slot, which resulted in their fighting one another and therefore allowing "normal" humanity to rally against them.
*** Similarly, several episodes feature computer-controlled civilizations where the ancient computer is still doing a bang-up job of keeping its people fed, happy and shut up in a bottle.
*** And in "A Taste of Armageddon", computerized warfare has enabled two neighboring planets to carry on for centuries in an unending conflict that causes no biohazards, no damage to infrastructure, and hardly even any economic inconvenience...just a few hundred million painless deaths every year.
*** Following the events of "Mirror, Mirror," the alternate Spock rises in command and eventually manages to reform the violent Terran Empire into a more peaceful one. Unfortunately, this makes them an easy target for the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance.
*** In "The Changeling", Nomad upgrades the ''Enterprise''[='=]s engines to travel to speeds of over warp 10. Unfortunately, such speeds are beyond the ship's never-exceed speed, causing it to start breaking down. Kirk convinces it to reverse the engine upgrades.
** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''
*** Played to a similar tack in the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Arsenal of Freedom". The crew encounters an automated merchant that sold intelligent, adaptable war machines that came in two sizes: anti-personnel and anti-ship. When one was destroyed, the information from that battle was used to automatically build a better one to come at the assailants next. No one appeared to be alive on the planet's surface, leading to the suspicion the machines did their job ''too'' well. [[note]]Funny thing is, it was all just a demonstration of the weapon's effectiveness. All the people on the planet had to do is [[spoiler:agree to buy, thus putting an end to the demonstration]].[[/note]]
*** In "Ship in a Bottle", to provide Data with a challenge for a Sherlock Holmes mystery, Le Forge asks the ship's computer to create an opponent that could outwit even Data. This resulted in Moriarty, Holmes's archnemesis created as a holodeck character, inadvertently gaining sentience and the ability to act independently, allowing him to manipulate the holodeck simulation to try and free himself. This accident, in turn, later served as the basis for more advanced AI such as the Doctor from ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''.
*** In "The Hunted", the Angosians (a ProudScholarRace) turned several of their young men into {{Super Soldier}}s so they could fight in a war. They won the war -- and then the Angosians lost control of them.

*** "Tapestry". Picard wishes he'd played it safe in his youth, so he replays a couple days of the beginning of his career [[note]]with Q's "help"[[/note]]. This changes the present so he's only a junior lieutenant, because he NEVER took risks.
*** In the episode "Evolution", Wesley's school project involved putting two nanites together to see what would happen. Result: He created a new species that started to consume the ''Enterprise'', jeopardizing a science mission.

*** "In the Pale Moonlight". Sisko starts a personal log and describes his attempt to bring the Romulans into the Dominion War as a Federation ally. We spend the whole episode waiting to see how it had GoneHorriblyWrong, only to find that [[spoiler:it ''worked'' -- but the plan became such a game of XanatosSpeedChess that in the end, it required fabricating evidence, bribing criminals, lying to enemies and allies alike, and eventually killing three innocent men [[note]] The senator and his two aides -- Garak and Sisko apparently completely forgot that the latter two were on the shuttle after finding out that the plan succeeded [[/note]] and one guilty one [[note]] The criminal who forged the evidence for them [[/note]].]]
*** An earlier episode of ''Deep Space Nine'' had the crew trigger an emergency program which set up auto-defenses to stop Bajorans taking over the station. Said program had not been informed that the Cardassians later handed the station over to Bajor and Starfleet peacefully. Dukat then shows up to "help," only to find ''his'' commanders had also built in failsafes to stop him aiding the Bajorans. Or from abandoning his post in the event of a successful Bajoran takeover.
*** Two episodes in the series demonstrate this as a reason why [[NoTranshumanismAllowed genetic enhancements are banned in the Federation]] with a quartet of Augments known as the Jack Pack. All four had undergone genetic alterations to make them supergeniuses, but those very alterations also gave them extreme personalities that leave them unable to function in society: Jack is a violent sociopath, Lauren has an insatiable sex drive, Patrick has the personality of a preschooler, and Sarina's brain processes information so quickly that her senses can't keep up, leaving her practically catatonic. In the first episode featuring them, they were allowed to analyze the Dominion War and come up with any suggestions...and they determined that the Dominion winning the war was inevitable and that the Federation should surrender immediately; when that option was rejected, they tried to give the classified information they were given for their analysis to the Dominion.

*** "Prototype". Two races at war built robots, and programmed the bots to allow nothing to keep them from fighting each other. Then the races decided that actually, they'd like to end the war and try peace. Both civilizations were wiped out by their own robots.
*** "Scientific Method": Invisible aliens board ''Voyager'' and perform medical experiments on the crew, one of which is to ramp up Captain Janeway's dopamine levels to push her to the edge of her sanity. It works so well that she decides to fly ''Voyager'' into a binary pulsar in a desperate attempt to get rid of them (which succeeds).
** ''Series/StarTrekDiscovery'':
*** [[spoiler:Section 31 created the AI Control and gave it the directive to protect all sentient life by any means necessary. Unfortunately, it came to the conclusion that protecting all sentient life is impossible as long as ''other'' life exists. So Control decides to [[BecomeARealBoy attempt to become sentient]] and then [[OmnicidalManiac kill all other life in the galaxy]].]]

*** Two episodes in the series demonstrate this as a reason why [[NoTranshumanismAllowed genetic enhancements are banned in the Federation]] with a quartet of Augments known as the Jack Pack. All four had undergone genetic alterations to make them supergeniuses, but those very alterations also gave them extreme personalities that leave them unable to function in society: Jack is a violent sociopath, Lauren has an insatiable sex drive, Patrick has the personality of a preschooler, and Sarina's brain processes information so quickly that her senses can't keep up, leaving her practically catatonic.

** "[[Recap/BabylonFiveS01E04Infection Infection]]" features an unstoppable {{Super Soldier}}s that was created by a fallen civilization, and set to destroy those who weren't "pure" enough, because their planet was frequently invaded by alien aggressors. Apparently, the criteria were set by religious and ideological fanatics, and proved to be so strict that ''nobody'' fit them, not even their own species.

** An early episode featured a group of unstoppable {{Super Soldier}}s that were created by a fallen civilization, and set to destroy those who weren't "pure" enough, because their planet was frequently invaded by alien aggressors. Apparently, the criteria were set by religious and ideological fanatics, and proved to be so strict that ''nobody'' fit them, not even their own species.
** In the future, the evil Earth secessionists decided they wanted some extremely accurate sentient holograms to help them convincingly smear the founders of the Interstellar Alliance. Unfortunately for them, [[CopiedTheMoralsToo the extremely accurate Garibaldi]] hacked the computer and broadcast the whole recording to the non-secessionist humans, including the part where the secessionists would blitzkrieg their civilian populations. And just to top it off, he also transmitted the secessionist base's location.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E4TheGirlintheFireplace "The Girl in the Fireplace]]:The clockwork repair droids have the simple instruction. "Repair any damage the ship suffers" Unfortunately, the programmers hadn't read Asimov's Laws of Robotics, leading to this conversation.

** In the future, the evil Earth secessionists decided they wanted some extremely accurate sentient holograms to help them convincingly smear the founders of the Interstellar Alliance. Unfortunately for them, the extremely accurate Garibaldi hacked the computer and broadcast the whole recording to the non-secessionist humans, including the part where the secessionists would blitzkrieg their civilian populations. And just to top it off, he also transmitted the secessionist base's location.