History Main / NeverTellMeTheOdds

* ''Franchise/starWars'':

->'''C-3PO:''' Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand, seven hundred twenty to one!\\

* ''Anime/CodeGeass''' penultimate episode has a countermeasure for the [[SphereOfDestruction FLEIJA superweapon]]; however, in order to work properly the user needs to input critical information 19 seconds before the explosion, and activated, the window of opportunity is only four-hundredths of a second. [[spoiler:Lelouch and Suzaku, working together, manage to pull it off.]]
** Also in ''Code Geass'' in episode 2 Cecile says to Suzaku that "It's possible, but the chances are close to zero." In one of the previous scenes he asked Cecile if his friend Lelouch can be alive. Unsurprisingly it turns out that he is alive [[spoiler: and leads terrorist force against Britanian army.]]

* Inverted in ''Manga/{{Eyeshield 21}}'', where not only does everyone ''want'' to know the odds, at one point Hiruma reminds the team that 99% chance of winning is still 1% chance of losing.

* Averted in ''Manga/{{Kaiji}}'', which is about gambling - the path to success is to find a strategy or cheat that leaves as little as possible to chance. In the first season finale, [[spoiler: Kaiji's rigged lottery fails and he panics, taking a blind chance for the first time and missing an opening purposefully left him by the BigBad. He suffers a humiliating defeat]].

[[folder:Films]]
* ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'' is the trope namer here, although it happens elsewhere in the ''Franchise/StarWars'' works.
* ''Film/RogueOne''. K-2SO is always able to provide the unfavorable odds. Unlike 3PO, he's able to understand people don't want to hear them.

-->'''CASE:''' ''"It is not possible."''\\
'''Cooper:''' ''"No. It's necessary."''
* ''Film/IronMan'' features this exchange between Tony and his onboard AI during the final fight:

''' [[FunWithAcronyms JARVIS]]:''' With only 15% power, the odds of reaching that altitude are--\\
''' Tony:''' I ''know'' the math! Do it!
* In ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings: The Return Of The King'', when Aragorn suggests that Gondor march against Mordor as a diversion, Gimli comments, "Certainty of death, ''small'' chance of success... What are we waiting for?"
** On the other hand, Gimli is almost definitely well-aware of their history of not only surviving such odds, but winning outright, so he may just be working off a different set of statistics.

* In ''Film/{{Apollo 13}}'' When President Nixon starts asking for odds on the astronauts' safe return, Gene Kranz simply says, "We're not losing those men!" Inverted, in that he already knows the odds, but refuses to give them out.

** In ''Discworld/GuardsGuards'', the [[GenreSavvy characters note that saying "It's a million to one chance but it just might work" practically guarantees success]]. Needless to say, this leads to the comic relief team engaging in a painstaking process of rebalancing their odds of success to be EXACTLY one in a million. By the time they're done, the archer who's supposed to hit the dragon's weak point as it flies overhead has been handicapped to truly amazing levels. [[spoiler: He then misses, naturally]].
** In ''Discworld/EqualRites'' Esk tries a feat of magic which, if she'd actually studied magic, she'd know is impossible. [[AchievementsInIgnorance As she hasn't and doesn't, she succeeds]]. (It does have consequences later, though.)
* ''Franchuse/StarWarsExpandedUniverse'':

** Inverted in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E10TheDoctorDances "The Doctor Dances"]], where Captain Jack actually asks for his odds of survival (and then, of course, defies them anyway). Notably, he doesn't try to fight them. Having been told he is dead, he has a drink and then gets rescued.
** From [[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E4TheDoctorsWife "The Doctor's Wife"]]:

* Lampshaded in ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'', Seven of Nine and Tuvok are discussing the captain's latest plan, Tuvok points out it isn't the first time the captain has beaten the odds. To which Seven replies "She does seem to succeed more than random chance would allow. I'll add that to my calculations."
** In the episode "Scientific Method" where the crew discovers they have been boarded by cloaked aliens performing medical experiments. Captain Janeway, has the ship fly into a binary pulsar (two stars close together) to force the aliens to evacuate before their cloaked ships are destroyed along with Voyager, despite Tuvok's warning that their odds of escaping certain death is 1 in 20.

-->'''Big Al''': I estimate our odds at approximately 1 in 63 Million..give or take.\\
'''Ratchet''': Hey, that's uhh..well you know, not so bad.
* ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' gives us this charmer:
--> '''Elite XO:''' "Brute Ships! Staggered Line. Ship Master! They outnumber us 3 to 1!"
-->'''Ship Master:''' "Then it is an even fight. All ships fire at will! Burn their mongrel hides!"
** The Elites naturally win this fight in a landslide, likely applying the same tactics they've been using against the UNSC for decades against the Brutes.

[[folder:Webcomics]]

* Forgath lifts the exact quote in [[http://www.goblinscomic.com/01152013/ this page]] of [[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/Goblins Goblins]]

** Interestingly enough, the exact quote suggests a very high probability of success. 3720 chances to succeed versus one chance to fail... [[TheAsteroidThicket Oh, right.]]
** The Expanded Universe also defines this as a [[PlanetOfCopyhats universal Corellian trait]]. Any Corellian character will most likely not care about the odds of success, or having been informed will take the odds as a challenge to be beaten.
** Another bit of EU fluff has Leia finding out exactly why he doesn't want people to tell him the odds. ''He has no idea what they mean''.

* ''Film/{{Barbarella}}''. Barbarella's spaceship is damaged in a [[SpaceX space]] hurricane. The computer tells her that chances of survival are 0 point 0000[[ElectronicSpeechImpediment 0h..0h...0h...]][[OhCrap 0hhhhh....]] Our heroine, of course, survives unharmed.

* This exchange between Spock and Kirk in ''Film/StarTrek'':

** In the episode "Scientific Method" where the crew discovers they have been boarded by cloaked aliens performing medical experiments. Captain Janeway, in a [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moment of Awesome]], has the ship fly into a binary pulsar (two stars close together) to force the aliens to evacuate before their cloaked ships are destroyed along with Voyager, despite Tuvok's warning that their odds of escaping certain death is 1 in 20.

--->'''Idris:''' You were thinking you could build a working TARDIS console out of broken remnants of a hundred different models and you don't care that it's impossible.\\

->'''C-3PO''': Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand, seven hundred twenty to one!\\
'''Han Solo''': Never tell me the odds!

** From ''The Doctor's Wife''

* In the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Solitudes", Jack and Sam are stranded on a glacier on an unknown planet, and Sam starts calculating the odds that another team will find them before they freeze to death. Jack cuts her off before she can actually get to a number, and she sheepishly admits, "I think too much." [[spoiler: It turns out she's right -- going through all the possible gate addresses wouldn't have been helpful. Fortunately, they're actually in Antarctica...]]
* Averted in ''Series/BlakesSeven'' where battle computers are consulted as a routine strategy, especially by [[TheSpock stoic computer expert Avon]]. In "Horizon", when Avon considers abandoning his colleagues and fleeing with the Liberator, he has Orac calculate the odds of succeeding with a CrewOfOne. Sometimes though he is disappointed.
-->'''Avon:''' Zen, can we withstand an attack of this magnitude?
-->'''[[MasterComputer Zen]]:''' No information.
-->'''Avon:''' [[SarcasmMode Thank you, that's very helpful.]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated,'' Sentinel Prime orders Jazz to bring the ship to full power and take the route through an ion storm, as it is the quickest way back to Cybertron. Jazz states why both reasons are a bad idea. His response: He pulls rank on him and threatens to throw him into the brig with the Decepticons imprisoned on the ship. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well. But for different reasons...]]

* ''WesternAnimation/StarWarsRebels'': Variant.
-->'''AP-5''': I am estimating mission success at 38.5%.\\
'''Kanan''': 38.5%? This was ''your'' plan!\\
'''AP-5''': I know; I calculated that without me, this mission would be at 0%.

[[/folder]]

* {{Inverted}} in the author's notes of [[http://leftoversoup.com/archive.php?num=201 this]] ''Webcomic/LeftoverSoup'' comic.

* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. Averted by Avon, who prefers to know the odds.

'''Han Solo''': [[TropeNamers Never tell me the odds!]]

TheOtherWiki calls this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglect_of_probability "neglect of probability"]]. Contrast ILikeThoseOdds, which have a similarly badass sentiment.

* ''Film/IRobot'' has the premise of WillSmith as a robot-hating cop, due to a traffic accident in which a robot chose to save him instead of a small girl, simply because his chances of survival were better.[[note]]The robot was forced to do so based on The First Law of Robotics ("A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") -- Will Smith's character had the highest probability of survival, and logically the better choice to save first.[[/note]] In a flashback, Smith's character can be seen begging the NS-4 to save the girl instead of him.

* ''Film/{{Barbarella}}''. Barbarella's spaceship is damaged in a [[SpaceX space]] hurricane. The computer tells her that chances of survival are 0 point 0000[[ElectronicSpeechImpediment 0h..0h...0h...]][[OhCrap 0hhhhh....]]

->'''C-3PO''': Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand, seven hundred twenty to one.\\

* At one point, Belgarion, the rather impetuous hero (and newly empowered sorcerer) of David Eddings' ''Belgariad,'' attempts to bring a stillborn colt back to life. His grandfather, the ancient sorcerer Belgarath, tries to stop him, but he won't listen. When it works, his grandfather explains to him that he could have hurt or killed himself (which is what often happens to sorcerers who try to do the impossible,) because to bring something back to life ''you have to understand Death''. Up to now, it's turned out nobody understood Death ''that'' well. This becomes important later.

* Star Wars again: Rogue Squadron (mostly in the [[Literature/XWingSeries X-Wing novels]], but also everywhere else) succeeds in so many "impossible" and "one-in-a-million" missions that their unofficial motto is, "Impossible is our stock in trade". Given that they were founded by the only two X-Wing pilots to survive the first Death Star...

*** In ''[[ComicBook/XWingSeries Isard's Revenge]]'', it's revealed that this has even rubbed off on Wedge's ''astromech droid'', who considers calculation of odds to be a waste of its valuable microprocessor time. Ironically, Corran's own droid "Whistler" (which was built and programmed on Corellia), is the one who received this response from Wedge's droid.

* In ''[[TheWheelOfTime Towers of Midnight]]'' Birgette tells Mat that the odds of getting back from the Tower of Ghenji are one in a thousand. Mat responds by taking out ten coins and predicting that when he throws them every single one will land heads up (1/1024 chance if you were wondering). They do, and Mat remarks that "for me, one in a thousand is good odds." Being ta'veren means that when Mat is around one in a thousand actually IS good odds.
* ''ThePhantomTollbooth'': [[spoiler:Milo's quest was ''impossible'', but he did it anyway, because nobody told him it was impossible until after he was done.]]

-->'''AP''': I am estimating mission success at 38.5%.\\

'''AP''': I know; I calculated that without me, this mission would be at 0%.

-->'''Palmer:''' "Willie! What are the odds [Titan] Maximum could make it through that beam without all our genitals fusing into glass?"\\
'''Willie:''' "Um... zero percent."\\
'''Palmer:''' "Zero zero? Or 'I'm a wah wah sissy baby and I want my blankie and my baa-baa' zero? Which one, I'm just curious."\\

'''Willie:''' "Point zero zero three percent."\\
'''Palmer:''' "Sweet!"

* Parodied in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'':
-->'''Inara:''' Any chance [Jubal Early] might survive?\\
'''Mal:''' Air he had left, chance'd be one in about... a very big number.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/18_33.jpg]]

TheOtherWiki calls this [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglect_of_probability "neglect of probability"]]. Contrast ILikeThoseOdds, which have a similarly {{Badass}} sentiment.

* Before the Battle of Beruna in [[TheChroniclesofNarnia ''The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe'']], a Narnian soldier informs Peter and his centaur general Orious that the enemy has greater numbers.