History Main / CorruptedContingency

* ''VideoGame/Hitman3'': The targets in the first level are Carl Ingram and Marcus Stuyvesant who are holed up in a massive skyscraper in Dubai. In the event of a security alert, they are to be evacuated by helicopter; if the helicopter becomes useless due to the pilot being incapacitated or dead, the two men will instead parachute off the building to safety. Should the player decide to make the assassination as subtle and as [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident seemingly accidental as possible]], they can knock out the pilot and [[ChuteSabotage sabotage the parachutes]] well in advance, ''deliberately'' trigger a security alert, and then sit back and watch as Ingram and Stuyvesant unwittingly fling themselves to their deaths.

** The Precrime police program prevents homicides and murders by using three [[{{Seers}} precogs]] to predict the killings before they happen. John Anderton strongly believes in the program's validity until it is predicted that he will kill a man he is never even met before in the next 36 hours. [[spoiler:It turns out that all of this is the plan of Precrime's founder Lamar Burgess who wanted to keep Anderton from looking into the death of Anne Lively which would result in Precrime being shut down. Burgess used his own knowledge of how Precrime works to commit the murder and set Anderton up.]]
** In theory, the Precrime system should make it impossible for anyone to even consider a murder without being detected by the Precogs, making it the ultimate contingency in law enforcement. [[spoiler:The film's ultimate twist is that Lamar Burgess exploited a loophole in the system to get away with murdering Anne Lively, the mother of one of the Precogs who wanted her daughter back and could potentially bring the program down by revealing damning information about the program's origins. First, Burgess hired an assassin to kill her, resulting in the crime being instantly predicted and the killer being arrested. Then, as soon as Lively was thought to be safe, Lamar dressed up in the hitman's mask and clothes, and drowned her in the nearby lake exactly as the assassin would have. The Precogs predicted this as well, but because the incident looked virtually identical to the already-averted murder, the Precrime technician assumed that the Precogs were just having nightmares about past visions -- a common occurrence called an "echo" -- and disregarded the vision.]]

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/DeadEstate https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2023_01_28_at_14_21_21_dead_estate_cordelia_the_witch_ending.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:This is read right after you finish killing said protector as the FinalBoss after he [[AxCrazy lost his mind]].]]

** ''Literature/HandOfThrawn'': Grand Admiral Thrawn is revealed to have seeded various planets with clone {{Deep Cover Operative}}s during [[Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy his invasion a decade earlier]], intended as a hedge against potential defeat. The Devist family, discovered by Han and Leia, is one such group of operatives, cloned from [[ComicBook/XWingRogueSquadron Baron Soontir Fel]]. However, the Devists unexpectedly [[LamarckWasRight inherited the template's]] CallToAgriculture and [[GoingNative went native]], more loyal to their farms than to the Empire, and assist the New Republic in exchange for a guarantee of being left alone.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in the ''Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries''. Order 66, the command for the clones to [[UnfriendlyFire turn on and kill their Jedi officers]], is shown in the novel named for it to be part of a SparseListOfRules covering over 150 GodzillaThreshold scenarios for the Grand Army of the Republic: the one right before it requires the army to remove Supreme Chancellor Palpatine instead. [[ExactWords A careful reading]] shows that while Order 65 permits lethal force against the sitting chancellor ''if necessary'', Order 66 ''commands'' the clone army to use lethal force against the Jedi. This difference went unnoticed by anyone but Palpatine, who had created the army of SlaveMooks in the first place as a trap for the Jedi, until it was too late.

** [[spoiler:A similar thing occurred with HEPHAESTUS as explained in ''The Frozen Wilds'' and ''[[VideoGame/HorizonForbiddenWest Forbidden West]]''; it was designed as the subfunction that would build and control the machines necessary for terraforming the world on a minute scale. However, when it became sentient, HEPHAESTUS decided to build bigger and stronger machines, resulting in [[EliteMooks Hunter-killers]] and [[BearsAreBadNews Fireclaws]].]]

** ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'': In ''JLA: Year One'' shows that shows that before he joined the League, the ComicBook/MartianManhunter didn't really know who to trust and compiled data on every hero on Earth with the intent of using them to defend himself from them if they proved hostile to him. These plans are stolen by the invading aliens who use them to ambush and capture several heroes.

*** During the argument about whether or not Batman should be expelled from the League, Aquaman brings up an incident in the past in which defense plans created by Martian Manhunter (who was new to Earth and didn't know who to trust) fell into the wrong hands and were used against the heroes.

** The episode "Dark Heart" reveals that the League's new [[SpaceBase Watchtower]] has a laser cannon which they use while fighting off the attacking GreyGoo. Despite the League arguing that the cannon is necessary to prevent situations like the Thanagarian Invasion from happening again, its existence is one of many reasons CADMUS is mistrustful of the League. CADMUS's fears about the weapon are proven to be justified when Lex Luthor hacks the Watchtower and uses the cannon to fire on a city, an act for which the League is blamed.

** ''ComicBook/BlackPanther'': Issue #11 of John Ridley's run kicks off an arc in which Wakandan villains hold the world hostage by taking control of data centers in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan. When the Avengers try to stop them, the villains defeat them using technology and tactics specifically designed to counter the heroes' powers and fighting styles. [[spoiler:It is revealed that these tactics and weapons were created by T'Challa when he was spied on the Avengers to determine if they were threats to Wakanda and have been accessed by his friend Jhai, who was initially thought to be dead.]]

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': The Xavier Protocols are a set of plans designed by Xavier to take out the world's most powerful mutants (including himself) in the event they become a threat to the world. X-Men Volume 2, #84 has Cerebro [[AIIsACrapshoot gaining sentience and carrying out its purpose of scanning for and cataloguing mutants in a harmful manner]]. When the X-Men try to stop it, Cerebro intends to use the Xavier Protocols against them.

*** ''ComicBook/BatmanChipZdarsky'': As it turns out, Batman has created a contingency against ''himself'' in case he ever went rogue: Failsafe, a nearly unstoppable android based on Amazo tech. And because it's [[CrazyPrepared Batman]] we are talking about, it wasn't technically him, but rather the Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh, himself a [[HeroicSafeMode backup personality]] contingency created for when Batman suffers a psychic attack. And Zurr-En-Arrh also erased his own memory of how to stop Failsafe for good measure. Unfortunately, Failsafe was erroneously activated by the Penguin deciding to frame Batman for murder...

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in ''Film/{{Valkyrie}}''. The plotters of the planned MilitaryCoup against UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler submit updates to Valkyrie, the preexisting GodzillaThreshold scenario for the sudden death of the Führer. These changes are intended to make it easier for them to secure power after they have assassinated Hitler. Ironically, Hitler himself has to sign off on their changes, but doesn't even read the document before signing it, assuming his officers know what they're doing.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS01E05Babel Babel]]", a repair to a malfunctioning MatterReplicator accidentally triggers a BoobyTrap left by LaResistance during the recently ended Occupation of Bajor, causing it to begin replicating a biological weapon into the food it produces and causing an epidemic on the station.
** "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E07CivilDefense Civil Defense]]" concerns the accidental activation of a Cardassian counterinsurgency protocol in Deep Space 9's computer that was to be triggered in the event of an uprising by the Bajorans formerly enslaved on the station. This locks the new Starfleet-led crew out of the station's systems, and due to the CrazyPrepared nature of the program, every attempt to deactivate it makes things worse until the station is on the verge of [[SelfDestructMechanism self-destructing]].

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars'': Order 66 was programmed into the clone troopers by their Kaminoan creators using {{Restraining Bolt}} biochips under the belief that it was a safety measure to deal with individual Jedi going rogue. Unknown to all but [[BigBad Palpatine]] and his fellow Sith, the programming was ultimately meant to set the clones to massacre ''all'' the Jedi in one fell swoop -- though Palpatine did meticulously set up the Jedi to look like traitors to cover up the nefarious motives behind it.\\
\\
Additionally, in a season 6 StoryArc, several clones suffer glitches with their biochips, causing them to be triggered to kill Jedi well ahead of Palpatine's schedule and causing a GambitPileup between him and the 501st Legion and their attached Jedi.

* ''ComicBook/TheBoys'': [[spoiler:Black Noir is a clone of Homelander, created for the purpose of stopping the latter if he were to go rogue. Unfortunately, Black Noir grew bored with waiting for a reason to take Homelander out and decided to engineer the scenario he was designed to prevent by committing a spree of horrible crimes and gaslighting Homelander into thinking he was the one who committed them. This resulted in Homelander further embracing his already cruel and depraved nature, escalating to him leading an attempted coup.]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'': This is what resulted in Jon Osterman becoming Dr. Manhattan. When he entered a test chamber to retrieve his lab coat which contained a watch, the doors automatically locked behind him while the automatic timer started up the generators for that afternoon's experiment. As a safety feature, the researchers were unable to open the door or override the countdown and could only watch helplessly as Jon was torn apart by the generators' blast.

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeagueDoom'': Vandal Savage learns that Batman had created contingency plans to neutralize each member of the Justice League in case they became evil. Under orders from Savage, the Legion of Doom takes control of these plans, modifies them to be lethal, and uses them to attack the League.

* {{Invoked|Trope}} in the ''Literature/RepublicCommandoSeries''. Order 66, the command for the clones to [[UnfriendlyFire turn on and kill their Jedi officers]], is shown in the novel named for it to be part of a SparseListOfRules covering over 150 GodzillaThreshold scenarios for the Grand Army of the Republic: the one right before it requires the army to remove Supreme Chancellor Palpatine instead. [[ExactWords A careful reading]] shows that while Order 65 permits lethal force ''if necessary'', Order 66 ''commands'' the clone army to use lethal force against the Jedi. This difference went unnoticed by anyone but Palpatine, who had created the army of SlaveMooks in the first place as a trap for the Jedi, until it was too late.

* ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'': According to ExpandedUniverse material, Order 66 was programmed into the clone troopers by their Kaminoan creators under the belief that it was a safety measure to deal with individual Jedi going rogue. Unknown to all but [[BigBad Palpatine]] and his fellow Sith, the programming was ultimately meant to set the clones to massacre ''all'' the Jedi in one fell swoop -- though Palpatine did meticulously set up the Jedi to look like traitors to cover up the nefarious motives behind it.

* ''[[Literature/{{Hagwood}} Thorn Ogres Of Hagwood]]'': Early in the novel, it's mentioned that the art of [[VoluntaryShapeshifting wergling]] has a secret MagicalIncantation to be used in case any Werling suffers a ShapeshifterModeLock, complete with a simplified form for young students. All very useful... but then the Thorn Ogres begin scouring the forest in pursuit of the stolen SoulJar and capture [[SadistTeacher Terser Gibble the wergle master]]; in his terror, he gives them the incantation... meaning that when the Thorn Ogres attack the Werling village en masse, any attempts to escape by shapeshifting are ''immediately'' countered, forcing the Werlings to stand and fight.

* ''ComicBook/XMen'': The Xavier Protocols are a set of plans designed by Xavier to take out the most powerful mutants in the event they become a threat to the world. X-Men Volume 2, #84 has Cerebro [[AIIsACrapshoot gaining sentience and carrying out its purpose of scanning for and cataloguing mutants in a harmful manner]]. When the X-Men try to stop it, Cerebro intends to use the Xavier Protocols against them.