Tempting Fate / This Bites!

Tropes for This Bites!
Tropes A to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H To L | Tropes M to P | Tropes R To T (A Rare Sentence, Shout Out, Tempting Fate) | Tropes U to Z

Tempting Fate takes place a lot in this story, to the point that it's practically a—no, it is a Running Gag. Let's list the examples, shall we?

• One notable instance in Chapter 9: when Vivi is trying to rouse the crew before dawn, Cross begs to be allowed to sleep if it's anything less than falling off the edge of the earth. Not long after that, the Grand Line draws their ship towards an Inevitable Waterfall.
• In Chapter 11, Dorry avoids drinking the sabotaged ale but still takes an explosion in the face that knocks him out. Broggy assures the Straw Hats that, as a giant, Dorry will be able to recover in a few days as long as he doesn't try to fight. Then Little Garden's volcano explodes, which signals their duel and causes Dorry to enter a berserker rage.
  Broggy: ...sometimes, I respect Elbaf to death and back. Others, I think he simply enjoys picking on us.
• In Chapter 24, much to Sengoku's ire, Tsuru underestimates the damage that the newly created SBS can do. This lasts up until Cross shows that he knows some very damaging secrets, including the layout and staff of Impel Down.
• Cross of all people makes the cardinal sin to Murphy right before the Straw Hats accept an invitation to a certain festive island, when he says, "What's the worst that could happen?"
• Spandam, in Chapter 39. Multiple times.
  Kaku: You had to say it, you absolute fucking idiot.
• Right at the end of Chapter 41, Cross does so and considers afterward that he should have punched himself with his Impact Dial for doing so.
• One not played for laughs: Cross exults after checking Ace's Vivre Card and finding it still intact, and celebrates over successfully stopping the Paramount War. At the end of the same chapter, Ace, Squard, and Whitey have been captured by the Marines courtesy of Aokiji giving Blackbeard an unexpected opening.
• Robin does this near the end of Chapter 25, then again in Chapter 42. Lampshaded on the latter:
  Robin: Why did I open my mouth? I know better by now, so why?
  Lassoo: Infectious insanity?
  Robin: ...yes, that sounds about right.
• In Chapter 42, Miss Valentine says that she feels much better and refreshed after taking a nap due to almost losing her sanity with what Bartolomeo was pulling earlier. Then, she notices the other ship, her petrified crewmates and Boa Hancock holding Bartolomeo by the throat. When Miss Valentine is about to say something, Boa Sandersonia pops up in front of her and casually says it looks like the two crews are going to be friends and wonders if Valentine could tell Sandersonia where the storeroom is. Valentine mentally processes the words, gives an utterly broken smile and falls backwards.
• In a canon Omake, Doflamingo states that after the show the Straw Hats put on at Enies Lobby, even after facing Big Mom and Kaido, and knowing that his underlings threw a party in his castle, he can't be bothered to do anything about it. That quickly changes when he sees that said party's guests are Red-Haired Shanks and his crew.
• Lil Accino declares there's no way the captured Straw Hat pirates would be able to escape their icy prison, let alone find their coffers and loot them. Nami immediately proves her wrong on both counts.
• More than a few times in Chapter 46, from thinking that the wedding would actually go off alright at the start, to commenting that the chapel was still in one piece at the end of it.
• In Chapter 47, Cross gives a lecture on the SBS of everything not to say to tempt Murphy.
• According to Gin, Krieg declared "Nothing can stop us now!" as they reached the peak of Reverse Mountain. Shortly afterward, they ran into Mihawk.
• After recovering from his injuries, Lucci finds himself challenged by Captain T-Bone, for him and CP9 to join the New World Masons if he loses. Lucci accepts, thinking it'll be a short fight. No dice.
• It doesn't take long for Cross to forget his own lecture, though, as he proudly states that after Thriller Bark, his actions had already defused the biggest bomb to come and it'll be relatively smooth sailing from there on out. (Even if he had averted the Summit War, this still wouldn't be the case with Strong World coming up.) Nami and Zoro call him out on it immediately:
  Nami: You, who gave a seminar just yesterday about taunting fate, and who just waved the mother of all red capes in fate's face.
  Zoro: You. Complete. Idiot.
• In Strong World, Robin Face Palms multiple times when Bartolomeo asks how things can get worse.
• After two very unexpected and confusing visitors to Takoyaki 8, the probationary employee Kuroobi utters, "First an old friend and ex-slave who became a Revolutionary, then a high-ranking member of a Warlord's crew, now all we need is a Marine walking in and this day will be perfect!" Guess who ends up walking in shortly after?
• Tashigi declares that so long as she is a Marine, she will not set foot on the new pirate town of Skelter Bite. Cross's answer? Disguise her as a pirate and shanghai her onto the crew!
• Bege invites Nami for a tour of his castle-body, obliquely challenging her by saying that stealing even a spare beri from him is impossible. Nami walks away with a single spare beri, along with Bege's respect.
• Law tells Cross that he is numb to any more news he could drop on him. Cross tells him Sengoku is his grandfather.
• Faced with a blindingly-fast skeleton swordsman and a freaking grizzly bear pirate in a cage match, Cross decides to gamble with Murphy to get him out by saying that things couldn't get worse. Hawkins obliges with a cursed sword combatant that sends everyone running for the hills when Zoro realizes he defeated his friend Saga to get it and decides to fight it himself.
• After Luffy warns Buggy not to do so, Buggy decides to take it up to extremes with yelling that there's no one able to take down Luffy, that no other BioMEGAs will come, that no one else is going to attack Impel Down, and that he's living the best day of his life. The result? Both Saldeath and Smoker discovering him through the security and the Caribou Pirates and the World Pirates breaking into Impel Down.
  • The very next chapter, Luffy mentally likens the whole tirade to 'not just tempting fate, but challenging its manhood'.
• Crocodile purposely invokes this by stating to move before anything else can go wrong, wanting to face the threat now before later while they're ready.
  Squard: Are you trying to make things bite us in the ass?!
  Crocodile: Yes, so that it happens now rather than later.
  Squard: ...fair point.
• Subverted in the last part of Impel Downfall, when the mass jailbreak attempt is underway:
  Buggy: Either way, forget it, we're on our way out!
  (Beat)
  Galdino: That was a perfect opportunity to say 'Nothing can stop us now'.
  Buggy: Straw Hat might not have killed me for that two floors up, but I'm pretty sure literally everyone else here will. More to the point, they're expecting us. If anything can stop us now, we're running straight towards it.
• In the Denouement, Caribou, who has been essentially shanghaied into Blackbeard's crew, pointedly averts this after Blackbeard steals the More-More Fruit and terrifies his crew into submission.
  He wasn't fool enough to say that things couldn't get any worse, but when his idea of improvement was having one boss who punished failure with death instead of two, things had definitely never been worse.

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