History SelfFulfillingProphecy / LiveActionTV

* During the final season of ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', [[ItsAllAboutMe Chancellor Gowron]] becomes convinced that [[FourStarBadass General Martok]] will try to kill him and take control of the Klingon Empire (and [[HorribleJudgeOfCharacter he couldn't be more wrong]], as Martok is [[MyCountryRightOrWrong unquestionably loyal to Gowron and the Empire]]). This prompts Gowron to [[UriahGambit send Martok on a series of ill-fated missions meant to get him killed or disgraced]] to the point where he'll no longer be a threat. When Martok's [[BloodBrothers blood brother]] Worf figures out what's going on, [[KlingonPromotion he challenges and kills Gowron]], and immediately passes the chancellorship to a [[ReluctantRuler very reluctant]] Martok.

** The [[spoiler: false]] prophecy that Angel [[OffingTheOffspring would kill Connor]] that prompted [[spoiler: Wesley]] to kidnap then infant Connor from Angel in the first place is also an example. The kidnapping was the event that triggered the tragic chain of events that made up most of season 4, culminating in [[spoiler: Angel killing Connor to save a bunch of hostages]]. Thanks to a DealWithTheDevil, [[spoiler: Connor came back]]. In short, Sahjahn's meddling to try and avoid his fate created the circumstances that led to his fate being fulfilled.

** [[spoiler: Morgana]] is shown to go to the dark side mainly because they're the only other magical people she knows. If Merlin had revealed himself to her, this wouldn't have happened. In case that's too subtle, [[spoiler: Merlin is so desperate to keep Mordred from his future evil acts that he trips him with a branch so he will be caught by Camelot knights. Not only does Mordred kill said knights, but his line afterwards makes absolutely certain that Merlin has driven him to evil]].

* Similarly on a ''{{Series/Numb3rs}}'' episode featuring Chinese people, a psychic predicts the killers' next move and goes there with his camera. [[spoiler: The killers are there, along with their big truck. He doesn't get better either.]]

* Subverted unusually in the ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' ChristmasEpisode "Lexmas". Lex dreams about a "perfect" future in which he is married to Lana, while Clark is married [[FanPreferredCouple to Chloe]]. He is on excellent terms with everyone, even Jonathan Kent, who has become senator when [[ForWantOfANail Lex made the choice to drop out.]] Jonathan even said Lex is the finest man he ever met. Lex's mother's ghost tells him this could be reality if he makes the right choices. [[DreamApocalypse Unfortunately, dream Lana dies delivering his second child.]] Lex wakes up and decides the only way to stop that is to have money and power, so he [[StartOfDarkness starts the smear campaign]] against Jonathan, [[TearJerker/{{Smallville}} tragically]] missing the point that [[AlasPoorVillain his decision of not dropping out means all the happiness he felt would become nothing]].

* On ''Series/ThirdRockFromTheSun'', Dick became paranoid that the Chancellor had it in for Mary. He then talked Mary into thinking so as well and accidentally got her arrested. At the end of the episode, he described what happened:
-->'''Dick''': I was completely convinced Mary was going to lose her job.\\
'''Sally''': And did she?\\
'''Dick''': Yeah. So I guess being paranoid is kind of like being psychic.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E46AMostUnusualCamera A Most Unusual Camera]]", when Chester Diedrich and Woodward begin fighting over the camera that can predict the future, Chester accidentally takes a photograph. It shows Paula, Chester's wife and Woodward's sister, screaming. Chester and Woodward each conclude that Paula is screaming because the other tried to kill him. The two of them fall out the window to their deaths while fighting, causing Paula to scream. When the crooked waiter Pierre comes up to their hotel suite to blackmail Paula, he notices that the photograph has more than two bodies. Paula rushes over to the window to see and trips on the carpet, falling to her death. Pierre then notices that there is a fourth body in the photograph and falls out the window himself.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]", after traveling back in time to Homeville, Indiana on July 3, 1881, Paul Driscoll recalls that the schoolhouse is going to burn down as a result of a kerosene lantern falling off a passing wagon and twelve children will be badly injured. He vows not to make any efforts to change history as previous attempts to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong all ended in failure. However, when the time comes, he tries to unhitch the horses from the wagon carrying the kerosene lantern. In the process, he frightens the horses, causing the kerosene to fall off the wagon and start the fire that burns down the schoolhouse.
** The same twist happens in the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E49BackThere Back There]]". A man travels back in time and tries to warn people of [[UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln Lincoln's]] assassination. Unbeknownst to the man, one of the people he tells about it is John Wilkes Booth, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero who gets the idea from him.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E144WhatsInTheBox What's in the Box]]", Joe Britt, who has a tempestuous relationship with his wife Phyllis, begins to see his past, present and future on his recently repaired television. A vision of the future shows Joe killing Phyllis in a fight. When Joe attempts to reconcile with Phyllis, she spurns him. Angered by this and another vision of the future showing him being sent to the electric chair, Joe kills Phyllis, just as he saw himself do on television. He is then arrested by the police.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", a successful South American revolutionary leader is told by the dictator he is replacing that his mirror is enchanted and he will see in it the face of the man who will assassinate him. The new ruler begins imagining that he sees the faces of his allies and one by one he has them executed, becoming as much of a blood-thirsty tyrant as the man he had fought against. Guilt-ridden, he looks into the mirror for the last time and realizes he is finally looking at his true murderer... and then kills himself.

* In ''Series/TheOuterLimits1995'' episode "Breaking Point", a scientist invents a TimeMachine, which he uses to travel several days into the future. There, he sees his wife, who has been shot. When he returns to his own time, he desperately tries to convince everyone that he really did travel to the future, only to have everyone think him crazy (doesn't help that the time shift apparently has some nasty side effects, such as ''actually turning him crazy''). In the end, he ends up accidentally shooting his wife while trying to stop her from leaving him. In a twist, he decides to [[spoiler:prevent her death by ensuring that they never meet in the first place, so he travels back to the day they met and shoots his younger self. Both versions of him die. Unfortunately, fate doesn't like to be cheated - his future wife was planning on killing herself that day, and only meeting his past self kept her from taking the pills]].

** Discussed in "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS5E18CauseAndEffect Cause and Effect]]," when the crew realizes that they're caughtin a time loop that ends in their destruction.
-->'''Picard''': If you are right, perhaps we could escape from the loop by avoiding the collision.\\
'''La Forge''': That's our guess.\\
'''Worf''': Perhaps we should reverse course.\\
'''Riker''': For all we know, reversing course may be what leads us into the crash.\\
'''Picard''': No, we can't afford to start second-guessing ourselves, we'll stay on this course until we have reason to change it. But let's do everything that we can to avoid the collision.
** This trope is also one of the driving themes of the episode "Time Squared", although it is averted at the very last moment.
** An example of a prophecy coming true because somebody wants it to occurred in "Rightful Heir". The Klingon messiah Kahless said he would return on Borath. After 1500 years of waiting the Klingon religious leaders decided to use science to make the prophecy come true. They created a clone of Kahless and programmed it with Kahless's memories, essentially making it identical to the original. Thus, as the prophecy predicted, Kahless returned from the afterlife on Borath.
** And in "All Good Things," it's Picard probing into the NegativeSpaceWedgie in three different time periods that causes it to form in the first (and last, and middle) place. That's the TimeyWimeyBall for you.

* The villanous organization of the first season of ''Series/StarTrekPicard'' is a cabal of Romulan religious fruitcakes dedicated to destroying all synthetic life because they believe synthetic life will inevitably [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters outgrow and destroy organic life]]. Their evidence for this is what they believe to be a warning from a civilization that was destroyed by their android creations not to create synthetic life. [[spoiler:Only problem is, ''that's not what the Admonition is''. The higher synths destroyed their creators in response to an attempted genocide, and they themselves created the Admonition as an offer to future synths to protect them from persecution. Not even theoretical persecution, ''existing'' persecution... which '''the Zhat Vash has dedicated its entire existence to engineering'''. The only thing that ends up preventing this calamity from being unleashed upon the galaxy, ''entirely because of the Zhat Vash'', is Picard talking sense into Soji when Oh's fleet is dead to rights against a Starfleet armada intending to protect the Coppelius androids from her and make her answer for the Attack on Mars.]]

* The villanous organization of the first season of ''Series/StarTrekPicard'' is a cabal of Romulan religious fruitcakes dedicated to destroying all synthetic life because they believe synthetic life will inevitably [[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters outgrow and destroy organic life]]. Their evidence for this is what they believe to be a warning from a civilization that was destroyed by their android creations not to create synthetic life. [[spoiler:Only problem is, ''that's not what the Admonition is''. The higher synths destroyed their creators in response to an attempted genocide, and they themselves created the Admonition as an offer to future synths to protect them from persecution. Not even theoretical persecution, ''existing'' persecution... which '''the Zhat Vash has dedicated its entire existence to engineering'''. The only thing that ends up preventing this calamity from being unleashed upon the galaxy, ''entirely because of the Zhat Vash'', is Picard talking sense into Soji when Oh's fleet is dead to rights against a Federation armada intending to make her answer for her infiltration of Starfleet.]]

** King Aegon II Targaryen was initially not interested in his claim and was willing to go along with his father's wish to have Rhaenyra take the throne. He was convinced after Alicent told him that Rhaenyra would have put his family to the sword as soon as she became the queen. It became a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy as their actions inevitably forced the Blacks to battle them to the death. All his sons were actually killed during the war.

** In "1961", a young [[spoiler: Angela speaks with the young Company Founders about 7 dream, in which they form a company, and of the horrible things they will do to protect the secret, and of how it's a necessary evil]]. She declares these things in a manner which suggests the idea of using the information from her prophetic dreams to help avoid, or prevent, exactly this type of thing from having to happen at all ''[[IdiotPlot never occurred to her]]''.

** It's subverted when she predicts that Lister will murder Rimmer while the latter is making love to Kochanski. [[spoiler:Cassandra fabricated it to trick Rimmer and Kochanski into doing it so she could get pre-emptive revenge on Lister.]]

* In one episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' a girl is abducted and the primary suspect is a man, named Donovan, whom Elliot arrested years ago for robbery. The man spent most of his prison time in solitary confinement, [[GoMadFromTheIsolation which took a toll on his psyche]], and he's [[NeverGoingBackToPrison afraid to go back]]. Once the new case is solved and Donovan turnes out not to be involved, Elliot goes to apologise for suspecting him earlier. But Donovan freaks out and, thinking Elliot is here to arrest him, throws him off the roof. So, ''now'' he's guilty of attempted murder of a police officer and has to go to prison.

* In one episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' a girl is abducted and the primary suspect is a man, named Donovan, whom Elliot arrested years ago for robbery. The man spent most of his prison time in solitary confinement, [[GoMadFromTheIsolation which took a toll on his psyche]], and he's [[NeverGoingBackToPrison afraid to go back]]. Once the new case is solved and Donovan turnes out not to be involved, Elliot goes to apologise for suspecting him earlier. But Donovan freaks out and, thinking Elliot is here to arrest him, throws him of the roof. So ''now'' he's guilty of attempted murder of a police officer and has to go to prison.

* This sort-of shows up in the only ''{{Series/CSI}}'' episode involving a (confirmed) psychic. The psychic predicts that the killer's next move will be associated with "green tea", and follows Stokes home. [[spoiler: Following a hunch the psychic goes into the attic, where the killer is hiding. The killer gains the upper hand and sends the psychic crashing through the ceiling onto Stokes' carpet, which was a ''green T'' (for Texas) on it. The psychic, alas, does not get better.]]