Those who display Pride Before a Fall at or near the beginning of their story in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- In the epilogue of The Chronicles of Tanya the Holy
, it's mentioned that the Horde and Night Elves eventually went to war over resources and the Horde absolutely crushed the Night Elves, partially due to the latter's refusal to call upon their numerous allies even when they were obviously losing. - Colours Of The World: Draco goes through this after the failed attack on the Ministry of Magic. Just the day before, he'd been a leader of the Inquisitorial Squad, enjoying the full backing of his family and favored by the Dark Lord himself. Afterwards, the Squad is dissolved in disgrace, his father has been arrested, Voldemort is furious with everyone, and everyone in Hogwarts hates Draco.
- Constellations: When a parahuman Miko starts caring for her Kami's shrine, Lung swaggers in to attack them for supposedly encroaching on ABB territory. But the shrine is the Kami's territory, and said Kami makes their displeasure very clear.
- In Hear Me Roar, Tywin leads a host to Osgiliath in order to meet the forces of Mordor in battle, arrogantly thinking "And they will see what fate awaits any who will trouble the Lion." Instead, he learns the hard way just what he is dealing with.
- Metal Gear: Green: Fudaki, thanks to Aizawa's refusal to rein in his more problematic students (and Ocelot knows there's a few problematic students), arrogantly believes that he can take on all the villains by himself, much to Ochako's shock. This short-sighted view culminates in him deciding to take on the USJ Nomu and dying as a result.
- Pokémon: Harmony and Chaos: Wingill is supremely confident that he and Fin, his Reptidal, are more than capable of handling any challenge before them. Faced with Flash and Riptide as opponents, he mocks how they lost against Lightning in the Hoofington Battle Tournament, bragging about how it will be a total cinch to beat them and become Ocean Champions. Over the course of the battle, Wingill grows increasingly frustrated by their refusal to go down — and once he loses, he's so stunned that he calls Fin back and leaves without another word.
- This trope is commonly found in many Prince Hans redemption fanfics. Because he tried to kill Anna and Elsa in a selfish bid to become the king of Arendelle, he's sent back to Arendelle to be an unpaid servant for the sisters. He starts out grouchy about this initially, but eventually mellows out after a long lesson on how being selfish made him an enemy of the sisters. Sometimes, the sisters and Kristoff will give a lengthy Kirk Summation to him, with his standard response being a lame I Did What I Had to Do excuse. It takes an adventure for Hans to realize how being deceptive and greedy made him an enemy of the sisters, that Love Redeems, and that he should enjoy life rather than just being obsessed with power in general.
- The Fall of Lord Frieza: The first half of the story is an extended Break the Haughty sequence for Frieza, who winds up losing his planet and his entire race in the process.
- Savior of Demons: King Kold arrogantly assumes that his opponent was too far away to deal any damage to him. He then finds out that he was wrong the hard way.
- Chapter 16 of Daydreams And Nightmares features Shanz gleefully boasting about how incredibly overpowered she and Sumia are. Moments later, they encounter Validar, with said encounter proving to be fatal for Sumia.
- Weight Off Your Shoulder: Bunnyx's Establishing Character Moment has her arrive in the present and start harassing Marinette about her plan to find a Superior Successor, declaring that she needs to "suck it up" and stick it out... before accidentally revealing that the future Bunnyx is supposedly trying to preserve gets much, MUCH worse. When she refuses to help Marinette prevent those horrors from happening, Marinette decides to Screw Destiny without her, stripping Bunnyx of the Rabbit Miraculous and leaving her stranded in the present, unable to prevent Marinette from putting her plan into action.
- Dekiru: The Fusion Hero!: During the Heroes vs. Villains exercise, Shoto arrogantly assumes that his ice will be powerful enough to win the match for his team within a minute of it starting. When Momo and Izuku manage to bypass it, he sends Tenya out to fight them while he creates a massive ice room around himself and the bomb. But his opponents fuse into Moku, defeat Tenya, then destroy the top floor's supports so that his ice room goes flying through the air and smashes apart on the ground.
- Failure to Explode: Katsuki is so absolutely certain that he's going to get into U.A.'s Hero Course that he doesn't bother making any backup plans. He doesn't even apply to Gen Ed or any of the other programs U.A. offers; as far as he's concerned, it's the Hero Course or nothing! ...And nothing it is, thanks to his failure to earn even a single Rescue Point during the exam. With nothing to fall back upon, he finds himself forced to enroll in Aldera High, facing a significantly harsher atmosphere after Aldera's bid to ride his coattails to success failed so completely.
- Juxtapose: Without Izuku in their class, Todoroki singles out Bakugou as his greatest competition. After Bakugou loses, Todoroki stops taking his opponents seriously and starts toying with them instead, wanting to drive home how much more powerful he is. This ultimately leads to his own defeat.
- Think Before You Speak:
- During the Heroes vs. Villains exercise, Katsuki gloated about how much his gauntlets enhanced his powers, then ignored All Might's frantic orders to stand down, declaring that his target "won't die if he dodges!" When this results in Tenya being seriously injured, Katsuki finds himself facing serious punishment, as he's forced to take lessons about control, regulations, and other vital topics while attending detention, and is barred from participating in the Sports Festival that year. On top of all that, he becomes a social pariah, with his classmates and other peers avoiding him.
- Aizawa is used to being able to expel any student he pleases at his leisure, as well as blatantly lying and manipulating them under the guise of 'logical ruses'. When Nedzu tells him that he isn't allowed to kick anyone out this year, he arrogantly assumes that he can manipulate public opinion through Malicious Slander, aiming to get Izuku Convicted by Public Opinion and see his reputation destroyed, all so he can still ensure that he won't become a hero. This blows up in his face; instead of Izuku losing his spot in Class 1-A, it's Aizawa who loses his job, as well as the respect of many of his friends and peers while he's busted back to a probitionary license.
- Son of the Sannin:
- This is what caused the downfall of Uzushiogakure. During the Second War, the leader of the village, Kuniotoko Uzumaki, took advantage of a dispute between Kumo and Kiri, declared himself Uzukage, and tried invading Kiri to replace it as a Great Village, despite Konoha's warnings. The act was so egregious and insulting that Kumo and Kiri buried the hatchet and not only repelled the invasion, but counter-invaded Uzushio and crushed it to the last man.
- Konan suggests that this happened to Hanzo as well. He was able to defeat the three Sannin together during his prime, but not being on the battlefield for years caused his abilities to rust, and he coasted on his fearsome reputation to remain as Amegakure's leader until Pain killed him off.
- Suzumebachi reminds her brothers that their clan's fall from grace was caused by pride, so she's willing to swallow it as much as it takes to restore it to its former glory.
- A Year To Fill An Empty Home: Fukuyama starts out as an ambitious upstart who openly treats his superior Takeshi with contempt, attempts to undermine him as project leader, and goes behind his back to do the project his way. Then he causes a fire on site by screwing up, and his boss furiously rips him a new one.
- Another Road: Pikachu becomes extremely overconfident when Ash challenges Lieutenant Surge, deciding to tackle what was meant to be a three-versus-three match entirely by himself. Ash gets caught up in his partner's arrogance, causing them to lose a massive amount of momentum and the match along with it.
- In Traveler, Clair's Shelgon ignores her orders to retreat, charging right towards Bruiser. Bruiser then dodges its attacks and pummels it into the ground.
- Ride The AI Dungeon: Ocean spends her song "What the World Needs" bragging about how much better she is than the others, insulting and belittling them... before learning from Karnak that the vote to bring somebody back to life has to be unanimous. Her cousin Astrid blithely rubs in her face how Ocean just blew her chances with her bragging.
- Linked in Life and Love: This was the fate of Team STRQ. Hailed as the best Beacon Academy had to offer, they decided to celebrate their graduation by accepting a mission that entailed facing an entire horde of Grimm. Rather than calling in backup, they arrogantly assumed they could handle the horde all by themselves. Ultimately, it took a literal miracle for them to make it out alive.
- Occurs thrice in A Young Woman's Political Record, though one instance is only an omake.
- Albion prides itself on having the best football teams in the world. During their first match at the World Cup, they lose 5-4 and at halftime had been losing 4-1, because they were so confident of their victory that they went pub-crawling the night before the game and had to play the game while hung over.
- The Parisee chief of police sees the Francois Republic's swift defeat by Germanianote this way, declaring that God was punishing them for their hubris.
- In the Albish Foreign Policy omake where Albion goes to war against Germania, the higher-ups in both the Albish military and government are confident that the Germanian military "can't scratch their navy". Their first battle against Germania results in losing all but one in five battleships and half a carrier of their Grand Fleet, while only taking out two destroyers and a handful of aircraft due to Germania's advanced submarines.
- In Brockton's Celestial Forge, Victor unintentionally sets himself up to experience this due to working on experiments in human transmutation.
- Copacetic:
- Taylor briefly considers becoming Super-Eidolon before catching herself, not wanting to risk running headlong into this trope.
- Taylor winds up with the Shard Leet had canonically, and eventually learns its Backstory: once, it was sapient much like Tales, and excessively arrogant. It's since been reduced to a mindless bobble who barely makes any impression.
- Beneath a Phrygian Sky incorporates this into Dylan's Backstory. For all his skill at the card game, Dylan could never beat Travis. As he'd invested so much into Duel Monsters, having no other talents or drive to hone other skills, Dylan spiraled into a Heroic BSoD.Raymond: (describing Dylan) No direction. No talents. Only the game. Travis demolished more than Dylan's win streak, he demolished Dylan's pride. Dylan's only pride, his greatest accomplishment he had so far in his life. Steal a dollar from a rich man and he wouldn't care. Steal a dollar from a homeless man and he would go hungry for a night, possibly even die. That was, of course, assuming the poor man didn't fight to the death to reclaim that single note.
