- The 120 Days of Blood - A Crossed TL
: With a Crossed outbreak having overrun most of south-East England and the New York boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, Russian Foreign Intelligence devise a plan to further destabilize the United States by having an undercover agent secure two samples of the virus. One is to be delivered to a waiting submarine crew where it would be taken back to Russia for study. With the other, the agent is to travel to a densely populated and lightly defended area of the US, use the other sample to deliberately infect himself and start a second outbreak. It is hoped that with both Britain and America wrapped up trying to contain their respective outbreaks, they would provide minimal opposition to Russian strategic moves in Eastern Europe and the Pacific. Unfortunately, the nature of the Crossed virus means that any loyalties, beliefs, codes or secrets that any individual had prior to being infected no longer mean a damn thing to them; all that matters is causing as much chaos, carnage and suffering as possible. Thus, after having his fill of torture and mayhem, the most evil thing said agent believes he can do is launch a livestream confessing Russia's role in the outbreak and offer to turn himself into the American authorities for questioning. It is bad enough that Russian and American relations have reached a new low with this revelation but then the submarine crew ends up infecting themselves by accident, crashes their sub into Holland and spreads the virus to continental Europe. Russia is now not only at risk of the Crossed eventually reaching their borders and have become a pariah state due to their hare-branned scheme but the economic and political fallout includes renewed internal opposition to Putin's regime that eventually escalates into civil war. - Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): Alan Jonah evidently hasn't learned anything from the events of the Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) movie. His experiments on Ghidorah's DNA from San's original severed head end up semi-unintentionally creating the Many, to say nothing of how spending months in the same building as the Ghidorah head ends up inducing Not Himself and ultimately reduces Jonah and half his troops to nothing more than Ghidorah's puppets, with Word of God noting that Jonah's overconfidence he was in control likely helped to seal his fate.
- Adventures of a Line Hopper:
- In The Bringer of Death, the ex-vampires are genuinely expecting they can bargain with conscience-less vampires by offering the Doctor in exchange for being turned back into vampires. The vampires just massacre them all once they see the Doctor, with Ed being the only one who manages to survive because he can make himself useful to the vampires with his tech expertise.
- In We Must Survive, this goes both ways with the Weapon-Seo's deal with the Cyberplanner. Seo wants the Cyberplanner to remove her grief, only for the Cyberplanner to remove the last small part of her that can love normally in order to take control of the Weapon. This however allows the now-uncontrolled Weapon to take control of the Cyberplanner instead.
- Avengers: Infinite Wars: Because Palpatine's plans have been constantly going down the gutter (trying to corrupt Anakin, turning the clones against the Jedi, etc.), he's started taking riskier and riskier decisions. First off, he's starting gaining access to the World Between Worlds, which contains an entity that even Celestials fear. And second, he's discovered an old stasis pod with a being inside that he has decided will be his new apprentice — a being that is 'heavily implied to be Tenebrae, The First Sith Emperor. In short, he is playing with fire so badly that he may end up annihilating the entire universe out of cocky greed.
- A Crooked Man: Sublime, Cornelius, Risman, and Colcord got their hands on the Fury and have it fused with Master Mold technology to be use against Johann. Unbeknownst to them, the Fury was made to be loyal to Mad Jim Jaspers and therefore cannot be reprogrammed to obey Sublime and his unwitting pawns. Furthermore, as Jim Jaspers was dead for years, the Fury has no reins at all. Lastly, thanks to Master Mold's programs, the Fury is made to hate everything. After the Fury was activated, it start killing Sublime and the rest.
- Face the Truth, a Recursive Fanfiction to Two Letters, revolves around the Retroactive Idiot Ball caused by this. In the latter fic, Marinette Dupain-Cheng quits being Ladybug because of all the Ungrateful Townsfolk (and her own increasing madness) and schemes to ruin Paris by handing the Ladybug Miraculous to Lila Rossi, a hard-core sociopath and Manipulative Bitch and thus "the hero Paris deserves". Marinette forgot about the itsy-bitsy detail that Lila is one of her most insidious bullies and there was no way that she would not try to find the method and moment to exploit the power and fame Marinette just handed to her on a silver platter to destroy her, no matter what Marinette had devised to try to keep her in line. And so she does, by forcing Marinette to reveal her scheme, her hatred for the people of Paris and the fact she used to be Ladybug through truth-revealing Akuma magic and hijacking all of the televisions in Paris. The story ends with a Bolivian Army Ending for Marinette, the "army" in question being an entire enraged city, her betrayed friends knowing who to blame for their distress (or getting their desire to get revenge reignited) and Marinette trying to punch Lila, in Ladybug mode, in the face.
- Fruit of Madness: The Straw Hats come to the conclusion that there are certain Devil Fruits that cannot and should not be eaten after they learn that the Rot-Rot Fruit is the reason why the Argentinosaurus is a rampaging revenant, as it being able to hijack its users outweighs any benefits it may bring.
- King Explosion Murder the Shield Hero: King Ransha of the Tortoise Kingdom desired to rule the world by awakening the Spirit Tortoise and lay waste to most of it. When it gets free, the first thing the abomination does is beam the king to death.
- Mischief (MHA): Much like Hank Pym before him, David Shield attempted to use Ultron as a means to preserve the world's peace once All Might is gone. As soon as the scientist activates it to save him and his friends from the Brotherhood mercenaries attacking I-Expo, the malevolent A.I. immediately betrays his resurrector and sets in motion his plan for the extinction of humankind.
- Nymph and the Corrupted Miraculous: Xue Ying has a Villainous Breakdown after Lady Nymph, Belle Aube, and Chat Noir manage to defeat her and reclaim all of the Miraculouses. Thus, she decides to use the one ancient artifact that could possibly defeat them: the Null (a type of Anti-Miraculous that the original Guardians warned was too dangerous to use). She believes her magic skills are strong enough for her to control the Null instead of the other way around, and wields it to try and get Revenge. This bites her in the butt when the one artifact she was using to keep the Null under her control breaks, causing the Null to absorb her before trying to destroy reality itself. Fortunately, and 11th-Hour Superpower combined with The Power of Friendship overwhelms the Null and forces it back into a dormant state.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Whispers implies that Princess Luna transformed into Nightmare Moon by intentionally tapping into evil magic out of bitter jealousy, apparently overestimating her ability to handle it.
- Child of the Storm has the Darkhold, an incredibly powerful book of black magic, which can grant the user all sorts of powers. There's just one small problem: using it opens the reader up to possession by the book's author, the Elder God of Chaos and Black Magic Chthon, since it's basically his Soul Jar. Oh, and it's sentient, and returning its master is its sole goal.
- Dark magic in general works like this; even if used with the very best of intentions and in total ignorance, it will drive you insane and turn you into a twisted monster, unless you either have an artefact that blocks the side-effects, or - in very, very rare instances - you've mastered the ability to use it without being corrupted. It is explicitly described as the last test of an Apprentice Sorcerer Supreme, and one that many Apprentices have failed, leading to some of the worst and most powerful Dark Lords and Ladies in history.
- While not evil, more incredibly volatile, using Phoenix Fire is usually a very, very bad idea. Unless you have absolute mental discipline and can keep your emotions in check, it will corrupt you and turn you into a Humanoid Abomination bent on destroying everything (one previous example destroyed a galaxy and was only getting warmed up). As a result, hosts for that power are chosen extremely carefully.
- Played for Laughs during Theory of Chaos:Chaos: How is it that I'm supposed to do your schoolwork? I'm CHAOS!! Not some sort of encyclopeadia!
- Facing the Future Series:
- Clockwork lampshades Vlad's many attempts to gain power beyond his control in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him. Vlad is currently trying to steal Clockwork's power over time. Subverted in this instance because Clockwork beats him instantly before Vlad can do any damage.Clockwork: Vortex... the Infi-Map... Pariah Dark. Time and again, you've tried to seize control of powers beyond your meager understanding and time and again, you've met with failure. And now you come into my domain with all the forethought of a teenager looking to steal a car for a joyride and brazenly declare that you will take MY power from ME?
- Showing that he learned absolutely nothing from that total failure, he then promptly proceeds to try and use a Fenton device to steal the power of Dan, Future Danny, and Future Sam. Not only does he get electrocuted multiple times trying to rewire the device, he ends up healing Dan of all the damage the future heroes had managed to inflict on him!
- Clockwork lampshades Vlad's many attempts to gain power beyond his control in his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him. Vlad is currently trying to steal Clockwork's power over time. Subverted in this instance because Clockwork beats him instantly before Vlad can do any damage.
- In Tails of the Old Republic, Tails thinks back on the occasions Eggman fell into this trap
- In Yognapped, Peva frees Herobrine from beneath the bedrock layer, planning to partner up with him and destroy Minecraftia. Herobrine briefly considers this, before scorching Peva's hand, completely obliterating his gathered troops, and going off to fulfill his own agenda.
- Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: Fairy Tale has a very bad habit of trying to take control of powerful beings and artifacts for their own purposes. While they may have no problem controlling them at first, more often than not, it blows up in their faces in the end.
- In Act II, they manage to get their hands on Apoch and Astreal's original summoning spell and use it to create their own personal Clone Army of slaves. By chapter 51, the clones have snapped under the constant abuse and turn on them, helping Tsukune and co. put an end to Fairy Tale's Ashton City branch.
- In Act III, Kiria hopes to harness Tsukune's inner ghoul, planning to infect it with Blackheart and sent back in time to the Battle of Kahdaln to rewrite history in favor of the monsters. In chapter 52, when Tsukune deliberately unleashes it, the ghoul promptly pounces on Kiria and both dismembers and disembowels him with his bare hands while Kiria tries in vain to reason with it. In a double-dose of this trope, it's more-or-less general knowledge that ghouls are nothing but animals who are only concerned with killing everything they see, and Tsukune's ghoul, despite having its own personality and conscious mind, is no exception.
- In Act VI, Gyokuro makes a clone of Luna, enhanced with a quadruple overdose of improved Blackheart, named Discord, intending for it to be a new Alucard under her control. According to the Act VII preview chapter published at the very end of Act VI, when Discord is completed, it will rage out of control and destroy the entire universe.
- In Prison Island Break, Shadow the Hedgehog doesn't like being told what to do. His insanity results in what Knuckles jokingly refers to as 'Shadow Logic' (a combination of Insane Troll Logic and Poe's Law), under which he would start a forest fire to light a cigarette. On top of that, he uses poorly conceived gambits that succeed, but with horrible knock-on effects.
- In Harry Potter and the Ten Years Later, after the villains mostly succeed in transforming Harry into Voldemort, the first thing Harry/Voldemort does is kill one of them. It turns out that he wasn't actually killed, since you have to "mean" Unforgivable curses and Harry didn't.
- This Gravity Falls/My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic crossover comic involves Starlight Glimmer making a deal with none other than Bill Cipher. It's pretty easy to guess what happens afterwards.
- Zigzagged in the The Legend of Zelda fic Wisdom and Courage. Veran finds Majora's Mask and successfully gains its power under her control, but it turns out that Majora only allowed her to do so of its own free will, admitting to Link during their Battle in the Center of the Mind during the final showdown that it had planned to betray Veran and seize control of Hyrule for itself all along.
- Veran actually pulls this off twice. During the final battle, she genuinely believes she can take control of Fierce Deity Link, only to be proven wrong when Link breaks free of her control and defeats her. Doubly so, since Veran had actually fought the Fierce Deity previously and knew that it could potentially defeat her.
- Inverted in Kingdom Hearts fanfic Stygian Solace. Due Riku's unavailability as a host, Ansem, Seeker of Darkness gets the next best person Kairi. However, this results in the creation of Yami as Ansem's heartless is slowly purified by Kairi's pure heart.
- Time Lords and Terror: Hydia spends the entire story trying to free the S'Muz from its can so that she can use it to destroy her enemies. Naturally, she ends up being the first thing it kills.
- A Storm of Chaos: A Doctor Whooves Adventure: Borusa, the true Big Bad, steals Discord's statue and frees him, just so that he can experiment on him for the secrets of immortality. When the Doctor frees Discord during the climax, he proceeds to torture Borusa before turning him to stone.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide:
- Gendo and Ritsuko allow the Emerald Tablet, a mysterious and powerful A.I., to operate without safety protocols in order to allow it to create new Angels for the Evas to fight in order to convince the UN of the necessity of keeping NERV around, with the intention of buying Gendo more time to set up his version of Third Impact. They both manage to underestimate the Tablet's capacity for self-learning, leading to it becoming self-aware and developing a God-complex as well as homicidal tendencies, resulting in a lot of unforeseen damage and Ritsuko must eventually admit to Gendo that the situation is rapidly spinning out of their control.
- SEELE later forms an alliance with the Emerald Tablet and gives it control of a series of Kaworu clones and the Mass Produced Evangelion series believing that they can control it. It quickly ends up betraying them and kills their pawn almost right away.
- Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
- Lothar willingly takes on the Ninja Khan mask to destroy the Guardians and avenge Raythor. This backfires horribly, as the Oni inside the mask, Uta, ends up possessing him.
- Hak Foo keeps Ikki's mask on for so long that it starts devouring his chi. When it's removed, he's left virtually catatonic.
- Aldarn is convinced he's of strong enough will to control Ikazuki's mask. He's wrong, and Ikazuki quickly possesses him.
- A Possible Encounter for a Phantom: Vlad brought a powerful prehistoric monster called a "Terakon" to life and plans to use the beast to take over the world. Even when it's freed from him and goes on a rampage, Kim calls out how he refuses to see how far this has gone out of his control. To make matters worse for him, the Terakon seems smarter than anyone realizes.
- Code Prime: Mao thinks he can play around with the Decepticons by waving vital information in front of their faces so he can get a nice, cozy home for himself and C.C. When Lelouch literally shuts him up in Chapter 23, forcing him to return to the Nemesis empty-handed, Megatron tells him he has a place at the table: Shockwave's dissection table, to be exact.
- In Ido's Kancolle manga, the antagonistic admiral from the later strips thinks he can control his Kirishima when she transforms into a Battleship Water Oni. He can't, and she eats him on the spot. Somehow he survives this, but he's disgraced and missing a hand.
- Fate DxD AU: Rizevim Livan Lucifer resurrects Goetia, thinking the demon god would assist him in his plans. Goetia tortures and kills him while calling him a disgrace to demonkind.
- In Extremis: The leader of Humantown Malloy planned to activate a field that would destroy the consciousness of all sentient beings in the land of Ooo. To do so he believed that using the The Lich as a power source would succeed. This predictably backfires when the Lich escapes and brutally kills him off.
- Invader Zim: A Bad Thing Never Ends: In Chapter 8, Tak agrees to ally with Lex so that she can use his resources to more quickly rebuild her base and have a better chance of defeating Zim. However, by Chapter 15 she's come to realize that those same resources have allowed him to effectively take control of her base away from her, and that he's perfectly willing to get rid of her if he ever decides he doesn't need her anymore.
- A Red Rose in the Blue Wind: It's lampshaded how Eggman has a tendency to try to harness powerful beings and forces, only to bite off more than he can chew and force Sonic to deal with his mess. Sonic even makes it clear to Ozpin that the fact that everyone else knows that controlling the Grimm is a futile effort that will only end in blood and tears will in no way stop him from trying it himself.
- With This Ring (2013): The genomorphs, as synthetic life forms, don't have enough arcane presence by default to use magic. They try to create a new G-Oni variant that can use magic, by infusing small amounts of demon magic during their creation, knowing that humans can handle that much without injury — but a more experienced practitioner could have told them that their lack of native magic means the demonic influence is proportionally far greater. The G-Oni immediately turn against the collective once they leave their growth tanks, going on a destructive rampage.
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