Sometimes, it hurts to do the right thing. Sometimes, it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. And sometimes, what seemed a good idea at the time turns out to be not quite the right thing. May lead to Heel Realization and My God, What Have I Done?.
Whenever a device like this is used in a plotline, it's sometimes used to provide some sort of moral ambiguity to the situation (in which case, there truly wasn't a right thing). Usually leads to a Downer Ending or a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!, and is a major part of shows with Black-and-Gray Morality. It can get messy when mixed with a good/evil Karma Meter. A lot of the time, however, this just means that they have to learn from their mistakes and find out the real Right Thing.
Unfortunately, all too often Truth in Television. There's a reason they say No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
When everyone involved is aware that all options are bad and that there's no right answer, it's a Morton's Fork instead. If a character tries to learn from these mistakes and do the correct thing after, they might be a Moral Pragmatist. If this happens because they're deceived into believing that it was the right thing, they may be in the Wrong Side All Along courtesy of the Manipulative Bastard (especially the Treacherous Quest Giver).
Contrast The Extremist Was Right. Characters who don't realize they've been doing the wrong thing may also be Obliviously Evil.
Not to be confused with Not Always Right.
Examples subpages:
Other examples:
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Comic Books
- Operation: Galactic Storm: Wonder Man and Vision successfully persuade the Starjammers not to tow the nega-bomb to Hala, but they leave it floating around where the Skrulls can grab it and get it to Hala anyway.
- Sins of Sinister: Storm and her Brotherhood sabotage Destiny's attempt to find the Moira Engine and press the Reset Button because Storm feels that as miserable as the universe has become, there's still hope. Storm dies, and the universe continues on for another thousand years. And in that grim, dark future, there is no hope.
- Even after the timeline is reset in Immortal X-Men, the risk of Sinister's machinations having infected the Quiet Council prompts Ororo to remove Charles, Emma, Hope and Bennet from the Council. Unfortunately, with Nightcrawler also taking time off from Krakoa over in Sons of X and Colossus still being The Mole, this leaves Ororo up against Mystique, Destiny and Shaw with only Kate on her side.
- Venom (2021): After Carnage near-fatally wounds Dylan, Venom fixes his injuries and leaves, figuring Dylan's safer without it, even though the lack of a host will eventually kill Venom. Venom's wrong, as it leaves Dylan confused and relatively powerless just as a massive vampire invasion occurs.
Films — Animated
- In Encanto, it's revealed that Bruno has been secretly patching cracks in Casita's walls for a long time to keep his family from worrying. It is a noble intention but those were Casita's warnings of internal problems with the family. Hiding it just kept the family oblivious to it until it was too late.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games: Upon witnessing the human Twilight Sparkle drain Rainbow Dash of her magic and create a dimensional rift, Sunset Shimmer rushes to intervene, slamming Twilight's device shut. While Twilight pleads innocence and claims to not have realized what her pendant was doing, Sunset delivers a blistering "The Reason You Suck" Speech in defense of her friends, accusing Twilight of endangering their lives and being extremely reckless. Unfortunately, Twilight's too distraught to realize what Sunset is trying to say through her anger and runs away in despair, which leaves her easy prey for Principal Cinch to manipulate into committing even more dangerous actions. Sunset quickly realizes where she went wrong and becomes ashamed, but Twilight had already fled before she could calm down.
Films — Live-Action
- The Batman (2022): Bruce's activities as the Batman and devotion to living out this persona 24/7 mean that he's created a mythical figure that haunts the nighttime of Gotham and curbs criminals' impulses to break the law, but it's pointed out that he's fighting a losing battle against the never-ending crime rates, which have actually been escalating ever since he started his crusade. Both Alfred and Bella Reál point out that as billionaire Bruce Wayne he could be using his company to help the city on a larger scale, rather than devoting time to his solitary personal activities. Eventually, it's revealed that Bruce's single-minded obsession with being Batman blinded him to the fact that the Wayne Renewal fund was supporting criminal activity in Gotham, and his actions as a Terror Hero have instead inspired copycats who seek to emulate his 'example' with much more lethal and destructive methods and none of his moral standards This makes him realize that in order to really make the city a better place, he needs to be something much greater than just a nightmarish warning to the criminals and downtrodden who might turn to crime. He resolves to alter his methods so that he can become a genuine symbol of hope to the people of Gotham.
- Black Adam (2022): In Adam's backstory, Adam's son Hurut was chosen by the Council of Wizards as their Champion, with him using his powers to defy the tyrannical Ahk-Ton. In response, the king ordered Hurut's family killed, resulting in Adam being fatally injured. To save his father's life, Hurut gave Adam his powers. Unfortunately, this ends up causing a chain of disastrous events as Hurut ended up being easily killed by Ahk-Ton's assassins without his powers, and Adam, in response, would use his new powers to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, culminating with him killing Ahk-Ton and nearly destroying Kahndaq. Appalled at Adam's actions, the Council of Wizards would then confront and imprison him, but not before he massacred them to a single man, Shazam.
- The officers of the USN Caine from The Caine Mutiny get a big dose of this from Lieutenant Greenwald, the defense attorney that get Keith and Maryk off for relieving Captain Queeg of command. Queeg was incompetent and paranoid, but Greenwald points out that he was like that from years of serving on active duty in the Atlantic. Instead of bearing with their captain and helping him out, (which Queeg had actually asked them to do and like decent officers should) they scorned, mocked, and undermined him until a dangerous situation came up and the captain broke down at a critical moment, putting everyone's lives in danger. He tells them that Queeg has been serving the Navy faithfully for far longer than any of them, and all they did was bitch and complain about the man and then have the nerve to try to act like what happened was on Queeg's shoulders alone. He's disgusted with them (and himself) since he knows for a fact they just ruined the guy. Lieutenant Maryk, really the only officer among them who tried to help Queeg out, has had his own naval career likewise destroyed.
- Cape Fear (1991): Fourteen years before the beginning of the story, Samuel Bowden was acting as defence attorney for psychotic Serial Rapist Max Cady. Rather than pile on humiliation onto a traumatized and maimed sixteen year old girl by releasing a report into her sexual promiscuity, one that could have gotten Cady a lighter sentence or even acquittal if it ever came to light, Bowden said "Fuck that" and intentionally buried the report. On one hand, Cady's depravity is truly horrifying (he even bragged privately about getting away with raping two other women before, and shows absolutely no remorse for any his crimes whatsoever) and the law Sam broke was itself unjust to rape victims. On the other hand, as several characters point out to Bowden, knowingly and deliberately sabotaging your client's own defence case by hiding evidence is a severe violation of your legal duty as a lawyer under US federal law and can have grave repercussions—conspiracy, tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice; all crimes that could land Bowden himself in prison if uncovered.
- Courage Under Fire features this in the form of Karen Walden. While she was well within her rights as an officer to threaten her men with court-martial and even summary execution for refusing to obey orders in the field, she insists on invoking With Us or Against Us and promising that she would make them pay for their previous actions even after they rally behind her after all. This proves to be exactly the wrong way to motivate them at the critical moment. When faced with the decision of trying to rescue her or evacuating, they promptly leave her behind to die.
- Escape Room (2019): In the hospital room, because of a clue that the optimal EKG rate will open the way out, Jason defibrillates Michael in order to artificially raise his heart rate. Not only does this accidentally kill Michael, but it turns out what actually opens the escape route is a low heart rate instead of a high one. The correct solution is for Jason to attach the electrodes to himself, and then allow himself to be poisoned just enough to lower his heart rate and open the escape route.
- For One Night: a young student tries to stop segregated proms at her school, causing racial tensions to explode in town. To be fair, though, the reporter Desiree Howard added fuel to the fire by breaking the story.
- The ending of the movie Gone Baby Gone totally qualifies with Patrick's final choice. He takes the little girl back to her mother, who is horribly neglectful, and away from the police who had kidnapped her for her own good and killed several people to cover it up. Patrick ends up losing his fiancée as a result, and the ending of the book sees the girl back with her mother in the same situation. It's generally agreed that there wasn't a right choice by the girl,note so he took the lawful route: the crime couldn't stand, regardless of other circumstances.
- Joe Dirt: While looking for his long-lost parents in a Louisiana town, Joe gets a part-time job as an assistant janitor at a local high school, where he meets the janitor, Clem. One day, Clem saves an entire class, but tells the press that Joe saved them, prompting Joe to explain that the true hero is Clem. However, Joe is unaware that Clem was actually a gangster hiding with the witness protection program, so shortly afterwards, some gangsters go to his house and shoot him. Joe feels guilty about unknowingly getting him killed. Subverted when he realizes Clem survived and is now moving away under another alias.
- John Carter bravely saves the wounded Colonel Powell from a probable quick death at the hands of the Apache and thereby (unintentionally) condemns him to die a lingering and lonely death from exposure and blood loss in a cave. Even worse if you consider the battle with the Apache took place out in the open probably close to the cavalry camp meaning rescue - though unlikely - might have been possible if Carter had left Powell for dead.
- A Most Violent Year: Cutting Julian loose after the shoot-out on the bridge. If Abel had kept him around, he'd have endangered the terminal deal further and put himself in the distinctly unlawful position of protecting a fugitive — but firing him and turning him over to the hands of the police ultimately shatters Julian's already fragile mental health, resulting in his suicide. Given Abel's motto of always doing the most right thing, this possibility seems to weigh heavily on him.
- Olympus Has Fallen: President Ben Asher has the South Korean diplomats brought with them to the bunker against protocol, to protect them from the terrorist attack. Most of them are in on it, and they quickly take over the bunker.
- The ending to the Richard Gere/Edward Norton film Primal Fear (1996), where it is revealed that while Edward Norton's character truly was horribly abused and was striking back at said abuser, he is also a murderous sociopath who faked his mental illness. Gere's character, who had just succeeded in defending Norton's character via an insanity plea at his murder trial, is left shellshocked by the revelation.
Literature
- In Always Coming Home, that's how the people of the Valley viewed four men who spent a month carrying home four corpses of their friends who died in a poisoned land. Nice, but the effort is excessive; however important proper burial is, it did not justify going to such risks.
- In Cloud Atlas, Rafael, a teenaged sailor, approaches Adam, a devout Christian, and asks him if God can forgive any sinner as long as they're truly sorry. Adam assures him that this is the case, and realizes something is troubling him, but decides not to pry too much, figuring Rafael knows where to find him if he wants to talk further. The next day, he finds out that Rafael hanged himself, in large part due to being repeatedly raped by other men on the crew. Adam is horrified, both by what Rafael went through, and by the idea that he may have inadvertanently given him the push he needed to take his own life—made worse by the fact that Adam considers suicide a mortal sin, one God can't forgive. He agonizes over what he could've done to stop him, and what he would've said if he'd known things were that bad.
- This crops up in The Dresden Files all the time, especially for the main character Harry Dresden:
- In Changes, he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped by the Red Court of vampires. He goes nuts, calls in every ally he can get, makes a dangerous deal with the Faerie Queen Mab, and then kills the entire Red Court, stopping a dangerous war that had killed thousands of humans and wiping out an entire nation of nasty monsters. Then he arranges his own death so he can't be used by Mab and turned into a monster himself. In the sequel, Ghost Story, Harry learns the fall-out of those decisions. (Deep breath)
- The destruction of the Red Court has created a colossal power vacuum which many power-hungry factions are eager to fill, creating even more conflict and chaos.
- Eradicating the Red Court also killed many members of the Fellowship of St. Giles, an organization made up primarily of people who were infected with vampirism by the Red Court but had not completed the change. These half-vampires resisted the compulsion to drink human blood and worked to fight the Red Court and help their victims, often for decades, only to end up as collateral damage when Harry turns the bloodline curse against the Red Court. This also left a number of other people who were being helped and supported by the Fellowship suddenly abandoned, as Hannah Ascher relates in Skin Game.
- Harry's death has left Chicago without a supernatural protector, and now numerous monsters prowl its streets.
- His friends have almost all been badly affected by his disappearance, especially Murphy, who was fired from her job on the police and is now forced to work with a major crime lord in order to get the resources necessary to protect the city.
- His apprentice Molly, who had flirted with the Dark Side and whose survival depended on Harry being there to teach until such time as the council deemed her no longer a threat, is so torn up by his death and her part in it that she's gone renegade, withdrawing from almost all human contact and killing people left and right. The White Council of Wizards has issued a kill-on-sight.
- All in all, Harry MAY have done the right thing, but he did it in the worst possible way, with colossal political fallout that affected the entire planet. Still, at least he saved his daughter, so that's something.
- In Changes, he discovers his daughter has been kidnapped by the Red Court of vampires. He goes nuts, calls in every ally he can get, makes a dangerous deal with the Faerie Queen Mab, and then kills the entire Red Court, stopping a dangerous war that had killed thousands of humans and wiping out an entire nation of nasty monsters. Then he arranges his own death so he can't be used by Mab and turned into a monster himself. In the sequel, Ghost Story, Harry learns the fall-out of those decisions. (Deep breath)
- The Elenium: Looking for a cure for Ehlana's poisoning, Sparhawk and Sephrenia find a doctor who had once miraculously healed several patients with a magical gemstone. Unfortunately, he did it by grinding the gem up and feeding it to them, whereas anyone with a bit of magical know-how could have invoked the gem's powers over and over.
Sephrenia: You destroyed a stone that might have healed thousands for the sake of just a few!
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: The same night that Professor Trelawney delivers a genuine prophecy about a servant of Voldemort returning to his master, Harry persuades Remus and Sirius to send Wormtail to prison instead of killing him, only for him to escape. Harry is horrified at the idea that he might have helped Voldemort on his way back to power, but Dumbledore consoles him that he only did the best he could at the time. He also notes that Wormtail owes Harry his life, which may come in useful in the future. Sure enough, it finally pays off in Deathly Hallows: when Wormtail tries to strangle Harry, the latter reminds him that he owes Harry his life. This causes Wormtail to hesitate... and his magical hand to strangle Wormtail instead.
- Inheritance Cycle: In the first book, Eragon uses the Language of Magic to bless an orphaned baby, saying "May you be shielded from misfortune." In the next book, when he learns more about the language, he realizes that he accidentally said "May you be a shield from misfortune." Upon meeting the child again, he finds that being Blessed with Suck has made her sense threats to people around her and be physically compelled to prevent as much harm as possible (this has also forced her to undergo Rapid Aging, since a baby can't do much to prevent harm to others). To Eragon's credit, he swears to fix his mistake, and does a reasonable job of doing so. Although he's unable to fully remove the curse, he is able to remove the compulsion to prevent the impending harm, leaving her with just the ability to sense impending danger to others.
- The Mistborn trilogy has a doozy — heroine Vin thinks she's making the right (if terribly painful) choice when she releases the power at the Well of Ascension instead of using it to heal her mortally wounded husband. What she doesn't know is that releasing the power was exactly what the Big Bad wanted her to do, as it would also release the apocalyptic Sealed Evil in a Can, although given it was powerful enough even while sealed to rewrite anything not etched in steel and only hinted at, it could be forgiven.
- This happens repeatedly when Bastian recklessly makes wishes using the AURYN in the original novel of The Neverending Story. Perhaps the best example is when he finds a race of beings so utterly ugly that they constantly weep. He wishes for them to become beautiful and always laugh, but it turns out that their tears are necessary for their art. Without art, and with constant laughter, they're just ghastly clowns that despise their new state. The narrator points out that some of Bastian's wishes, while seemingly benevolent in nature, are motivated more by a desire to look good rather than do good, or because he thinks he'll benefit in some way from it. The narration notes that a person's reasons for an act can be just as important as the act itself.
- Persuasion is founded on sensible advice that proved incorrect in hindsight. Anne Elliot was persuaded by her Parental Substitute, Lady Russell, to break an engagement to a dashing but poor young naval officer named Wentworth. On the face of it, Lady Russell's objections were solid: Wentworth was impetuous, had failed to save any of the money he'd already made, and had an unfounded optimism about the success of his future, on top of which Sir Walter Elliot had promised to cut Anne off if she went through with it. Lady Russell had a reasonable fear that Anne would be relegated to poverty and early widowhood, and Anne, though able to ignore her arrogant father, couldn't dismiss the advice of a woman she looked up to as a mother. As it turned out, Wentworth quickly fulfilled all his optimistic hopes and became a very rich man. In the seven years since, and still as in love with Wentworth as ever, Anne has decided that such advice can only be as good as the events that follow it—it may have been prudent, but she would rather have spent the past seven years poorer and happy.
- The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins: The protagonist, Lucy, sees a man with a gun chasing two homeless men with the intent to kill them, so she intervenes and saves the homeless men's lives, only to later find out that the two homeless men were child molesters and the gunman was one of their victims.
- Given that A Song of Ice and Fire is Black-and-Gray Morality verging on Evil Versus Evil at times, it's unsurprising that this happens a lot:
- Ned Stark finds himself in several situations in which being just slightly less scrupulously moral could have had things turn out much better for him. Among them:
- When he warns Cersei that he has discovered that her children are bastards and plans to tell King Robert. His intention is to give her the chance to flee with her children, since he (almost certainly correctly) believes that Robert will kill the children when he finds out. Instead, it simply gives her ample warning and time to move her own plans forward.
- Later, shortly after Robert's death, Renly Baratheon offers to support him as Lord Regent if he'll take Cersei's children hostage to ensure that she doesn't move against them (and strongly implies that he expects Ned's support for his claim to the throne in return). Ned might have accepted Renly's help and supported his claim, accepted his help and then later refused his claim in favor of Stannis, accepted his help on the condition that he renounce his claim, or refused his help but taken his advice to seize the children. Instead, he refuses the help, the claim, and the advice, meaning that he has no support and no leverage when Littlefinger betrays him and sides with the Lannisters.
- One of the more tragic examples is Robb Stark's downfall; he has been an unstoppable military threat in the War of Five Kings, and the Lannisters are at their wits' end trying to figure out any way to take him on in the battlefield, but then he is "comforted" by a young noble girl while recovering from a wound after one of his conquests. Robb is immediately caught in a dilemma between "doing the right thing" and marrying the girl whose virginity he just took (as he is in a medieval-style world, where without her virginity a girl will, at best, have much lower prospects for marriage and be judged her whole life, or be tremendously shamed and shipped out to a nunnery at worst), or "doing the right thing" and honoring his betrothal to a Frey girl. Robb decides the girl's honor takes precedence over his own and marries her, which results in the Freys betraying him, murdering him and most of his followers, and desecrating his corpse.
- Daenerys Targaryen breathes this trope. She desperately wants to be the best kind of Targaryen, and she makes many decisions that are, at root, both heartfelt and from the moral highlands by many readers' lights. Heck, from an outside perspective, more than a few could arguably lead to a better-run, more economically viable region, if properly researched, planned, implemented and integrated. Unfortunately, Targaryens have this noted... tilt... towards a "go now, go big or go home", The Madness Place/Mad Science approach when it comes to politics, economics and social engineering, and Dany is also having to play a lot by ear from a moment-to-moment basis both just to stay alive and to get anywhere while doing so. So, yeah: understandable levels of insufficient risk assessment occur. On top of that, both Westeros and Essos are too culturally different (and her worldview is also initially too Black-and-White-and-sheltered-all-over when contrasted with the more nuanced, sociopolitical Grayscale around her) for almost anything she does to try pushing her agendas to have even close to the expected outcomes in either the medium or longer terms. And, it rarely goes well: for example, you'd think trying to rid Slaver's Bay of slavery to be a fundamentally good thing all around, right? Nope: the resulting economic and social collapse that leads to several bloodbaths, what amounts to a budding world war and a pandemic later when trying to do it in only a few months with little-to-no cross-class backing... is kind of hinted at in the millennia-old name of the place. Slave liberation by an outsider needs way more prep work than she put in, in short.
- Jaime Lannister has a long, complicated and incredibly painful relationship with this trope, one about as much of a rollercoaster as the one with with his sister (who often has something to do with the complexities in both). A Master Swordsman joining the Kingsguard against his father's wishes, but to "do the right/honourable thing" by both his king and maybe-future queen (and beloved sister)? That... backfired. Killing the Mad King for what basically was the greater good? Oh, boy; what a mess. Protecting his lover and kids by throwing a preteen boy off a tower? Duuuuuuuuude. Trying to protect the Stark girls... while still backing his father (who would rather they conveniently died after getting used to cement alliances)? Um. Finally coming clean to his brother about a huge family secret at the worst emotional and political point imaginable? Oops. Cleaning up the Riverlands and reinstating the rule of law (or what passes for it) on behalf of the Iron Throne; you know, this being the same place you earlier actively helped to destabilize on behalf of said Throne? Good luck with that!
- In the backstory, Prince Viserys (later Viserys II) took a look at the regency council that plagued his big brother Aegon III, which including petty in-fighting, repeated overruling of Aegon's attempts to rules and at least one direct attempt at a coup, and said Aegon's son Daeron wouldn't have one. Daeron then declared war on Dorne and got himself killed (causing yet more bad blood between Dorne and the rest of Westeros).
- Ned Stark finds himself in several situations in which being just slightly less scrupulously moral could have had things turn out much better for him. Among them:
- The Stormlight Archive: Highprince Dalinar spends the first two books gently, then not so gently, trying to help his Paranoid Autocrat nephew Elhokar become a better king, once going so far as to beat him into submission in a show of "If I Wanted You Dead...". Elhokar does his best to improve in the third book, showing considerable Character Development, but joins a dangerous mission and gets killed. Looking back via Pensieve Flashback in Wind and Truth, Dalinar realizes how badly he'd bungled the situation by trying to whip Elhokar into shape with no awareness of his Hidden Depths or the problems he was genuinely struggling to deal with.
- Directly invoked in To Kill a Mockingbird. After Boo Radley kills a drunken, murderous Bob Ewell in defense of Atticus's children, Atticus Finch is all set to get the authorities involved and begin processing the matter by-the-book. The local sheriff, however, warns him that it's an Open-and-Shut Case of self defense, Bob Ewell is widely known and hated, and Boo Radley's extreme social phobias would make the resulting trial absolute hell for him, however pure and innocent Atticus's intentions might be. The sheriff therefore 'officially concludes' that Bob Ewell got drunk, slipped, and fell on his own knife.
- Tolkien's Legendarium:
- The Valar were motivated to things like bringing the Elves to the Undying Lands or rewarding the Edain with Númenor entirely by good intentions. The text still takes the time to strongly imply that doing so was ultimately the wrong thing to do.
- In Tolkien's legendarium, trying to impose any vision or much of anything else on the world is likely to end badly, because the free wills and free choices of Elves and Men are so vital, and because no finite entity comprehends enough of How Things Work in the universe to be able to predict the consequences of their actions outside their purview. Tolkien had a low opinion both of reactionaries ('Embalmers') and progressives ('Reformers'), Sauron started out as a Reformer, the Elves of Eregion who made the Rings were Embalmers. Both were Not Quite the Right Thing.
- The Silmarillion brings this into play a lot. The whole family of Húrin, but especially Túrin's life is this (although Morgoth cursed the whole family into this) for example.
- Harry Turtledove's World War series puts the Jews in this position. After Warsaw is freed by the Race, the Jews cooperate with them in order to survive, and are seen as traitors to humanity by doing so. The fact that attempts to condemn the Race for their actions such as destroying Washington D.C. are altered and turned into praises don't help.
- In the Warrior Cats books, occasionally cats do the wrong thing morally in order to follow the warrior code, and later accept that they were wrong. For instance, it's part of the warrior code to defend your Clan and their territory, and in Redtail's Debt, Tigerclaw orders Redtail to brutally attack a trespassing apprentice. Redtail does it, wondering afterward why doing the right thing feels so wrong. He comes to accept that two full-grown warriors attacking a lone apprentice who'd made a mistake wasn't the right course of action after all.
- Wax and Wayne: Wayne has spent his entire career personally delivering half his earnings to the daughter of the man he killed in a botched robbery as a young delinquent. While the money is helpful, the daughter would much prefer that he stop using her to punish himself and just leave her alone.
- What Feasts at Night: After locating the vampiric Moroi's original body, Alex unblocks the stream that had previously prevented its spirit from traveling. Unfortunately, they do it while the spirit is within a victim's dreams, cutting it off from its body and greatly complicating the business of fighting it.
Podcast
- During a Behind the Bastards episode "The Non-Nazi Bastards Who Helped Them Rise to Power", host Robert Evans relates a story of how Adolf Hitler, after fleeing the failed Beer Hall Putsch, was cornered by the police in a friend's apartment and threatened to shoot himself. Said friend's wife, whom Hitler regarded highly, successfully managed to talk him down and Hitler was arrested relatively peacefully. The rest, as they say, is history.
Evans: It's, like, she did the right thing, and we got Hitler.
- The Magnus Archives: Gertrude Robinson dedicated her life to stopping The Fears; to her, believing that she was preventing The End of the World as We Know It several times over, her actions seemed fully justified. Unfortunately, her actions merely hastend everything along.
Tabletop Games
- Shows up a few places in Exalted. The Usurpation, several actions of the Scarlet Empress, and even occasionally the Primordial War had results that were kind of good in the long run but the methods to achieve them and their (undecided) ultimate consequences are still a bit... iffy.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Declaring Exterminatus on a planet is generally a delicate matter, as it involves the total and complete annihilation of an entire planet's population. In theory, it's used when they cannot be saved from Chaos or genestealer infection, and this outweighs the planet's benefits (in terms of providing men, materiel or resources), but unfortunately what with Chaos plots and Inquisitors going rogue/falling to Chaos, there are quite a few occasions where Exterminatus merely furthered the enemy's plans.
- Kryptmann's Gambit: an extreme version of the above dilemma, in which Inquisitor Kryptmann managed to bait an entire Hive Fleet away from countless inhabited worlds by... getting them to go for other inhabited worlds which he Exterminus'ed before they fell, denying the Tyranids the biomass they needed to replenish their losses. Finally the fleet was weak enough that it could be stuck in a stalemate with the ork system of Octarius, at the cost of Kryptmann's standing (he's been declared Excommunicate Traitoris), several trillion people and (much more importantly) several inhabitable planets. Also, the fact that Octarius is now in a Forever War between the two species with the most to gain from it: tyranids devour biomass to create new lifeforms (usually better adapted to whatever they're fighting), while orks create spores when they die that mature into more orks. And orks pour into the system all the time, having heard about the fight to be had. Whichever side wins the war will be essentially unstoppable. This later gets another wrinkle when Ghazgul joins the fight and his leadership turns it into another Armageddon-style eternal stalemate; these massive battles become foci of energy, and every Ork in the galaxy is being empowered by it.
Web Comics
- A curious inversion in Looking for Group; when Richard is brought to demon court for not engaging in evil lately, the prosecution brings up how, whilst time traveling to the past, Richard slaughtered an entire village, which confuses Richard... until the prosecution continues to explain that said village would've aided the local Evil Empire in a way that would've ensured the coming war would've dragged on longer.
- The Order of the Stick
- Roy made the decision to destroy Girard's Gate in order to prevent Xykon, who was on his way, from getting his hands on it, since the heroes couldn't feasibly protect the gate with Xykon closing in on it. While this does delay the villains' plans, it ends up being the biggest mistake he could make as it destabilizes the prison holding the Snarl enough that the gods begin to consider destroying the world to create a new prison.
- Later, the Monster in the Darkness began deliberately marking doors they hadn't explored yet to sabotage Team Evil's attempts to find the gate sealed in Kraagor's Tomb, a clever plan that pairs well with his teammates' low opinion of his intelligence and cunning. Unfortunately, after circumstances he couldn't have foreseen (Team Evil chasing the Order of the Stick through a marked door and finding plenty of monsters inside), it combines horribly with Redcloak's egotism and paranoia, causing the goblin cleric to conclude not that the Monster in the Darkness made a simple mistake (let alone was actively sabotaging them) but that the gods themselves must be intervening to prevent their victory, leading him to take dangerous and self-destructive steps to accelerate the search.
- In Pandora's Tale, Isabelle is the most insistent about freeing Pandora from slavery... only for her actions to result in Pandora imprinting on her, effectively making her Pandora's "owner".
- Stand Still, Stay Silent: The aftermath of one of the battles causes Onni to fall into a coma after magically helping the crew long-distance, while his younger sister among the crew, Tuuri, ends up in a situation that could potentially be bad news for her. Knowing Onni doesn't deal well with uncertainity, she asks the other members of Mission Control to not tell Onni about it if he wakes up, planning to do so herself over the radio. However, Reynir, another member of the crew, can still communicate with Onni via Talking in Your Dreams, and ends up checking on Onni as soon as he gets the opportunity to do so. Onni's first instinct is of course to ask Reynir how Tuuri is doing, and Reynir lies to him to respect Tuuri's wishes. However, that battle also left the crew's vehicle in a very precarious state, and it ends up breaking down, dooming the radio in the process, before Onni recovers. Tuuri's situation changes from "possibly bad" to "certainly bad" that very evening. Tuuri's reaction is ultimately to commit suicide, which lets her inform Onni on the way to the afterlife. She however uses phrasing that makes it sound like it's Reynir's fault that Onni wasn't informed earlier.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, religious nut Reverend Englund becomes aware that there is a half-demon student at the school who he thinks will Take Over the World by enslaving people, killing others and using her mind slaves to breed demon spawn. While the Reverend has fought otherworldly invaders and all manner of creatures who did harm, in this case he's actually wrong: Sara/Kellith has actually decided that she's going to do good for the world and promote peace and love. So the Reverend gets the Syndicate (i.e. the organized bad guys) to help him kill her… and what would have been a controlled attempt to kill just one person gets hijacked by the Chessmaster, resulting in a large part of the school getting blown up, a number of security personnel and teachers getting maimed and/or killed and all the students being incredibly traumatised.
Web Videos
- At the end of the Briawoods arc in Critical Role, Percy's Revenge Before Reason has gone into overdrive and Orthax, the shadow demon he made a pact with, is starting to outright possess him, demanding he murder Delilah Briawood, the last on his list of targets. Thanks to an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight by the party and a struggle of wills, Orthax is expelled from Percy's body and defeated, and he gives Delilah Restrained Revenge. She's killed by his sister Cassandra instead, and the party throws her body in a vat of acid to hopefully prevent her coming back as an undead. Many episodes later, at the start of the final arc, the party finds Delilah's patron God of Evil was able to resurrect her anyway in a clone body. In a later discussion, they realize that had they let Percy kill her while under Orthax's influence, the demon would have devoured her soul, preventing her from ever returning (though Percy himself would have been lost forever).
Western Animation
- An early episode of Adventure Time mixes this with Secret Test of Character. While seeking out the heroes' Enchiridion, Finn finds a trio of fairies trapped in quicksand. Naturally, he frees them, only to find that they're evil and quickly use everything he does to justify destroying old ladies. Finn nearly has a Heroic BSoD until Jake reminds him that A. it was still the right decision to make at the time and B. there's no logical reason for all these old ladies to be here, so they have to be illusions and Finn hasn't actually caused any harm.
- Arcane: Episode Three is absolutely rife with this.
- Powder tries for a Big Damn Heroes moment. If she hadn't intervened, her family would probably have escaped by the skin of their teeth. Instead, they get blown up by her uncontrolled bomb.
- A livid Vi hits and blames Powder for the bomb that killed their foster family, which she immediately regrets. When she leaves to calm down and avoid hurting Powder more, this only breaks her sister further because of the perceived abandonment. Silco winds up taking in the resentful Powder himself and Vi is drugged and dragged away by Marcus, confirming Powder's belief that Vi abandoned her and destroying their relationship for good.
- During Act 2 and 3, it's a recurring theme that while both of them love Jinx, neither Silco nor Vi can really help her with her mental health issues and their attempts to do so just make things worse, Silco by invalidating her former identity as Powder and Vi by invalidating her current identity as Jinx. It culminates in the final episode, when them fighting over her pushes her further and further into a breakdown and Jinx snaps and fires wildly, accidentally killing Silco and then abandoning Vi entirely once he dies.
- In the Carmen Sandiego episode "The Stockholm Syndrome Caper", Ivy gets captured at the exact time Carmen crashes in the middle of a forest. With Shadow-san occupied elsewhere, Player has to make the call about who to send Zack after first; since Ivy is less trained and skilled than Carmen and she's actively the prisoner of people who A) think she's Carmen and B) wouldn't hesitate to hurt her either way, Player decides to prioritize her over Carmen. This ends up causing Carmen to nearly freeze to death because while Ivy escaped her captors, making her rescue unnecessary, Carmen was injured in her crash and couldn't make it to shelter before succumbing to the elements.
- Futurama:
- "Jurassic Bark": Fry changes his mind about resurrecting his dog when he found out Seymour lived far longer without Fry than he did with him, so Fry figured that meant he had a long fulfilling life. Long? Yes. Fulfilling? No — he never got over Fry's disappearance, and spent the rest of his life waiting in front of Fry's old workplace. Fry never finds out about this. We call that a Downer Ending.
- Thanks to Time Travel in Bender's Big Score this ended up becoming the right thing again. A copy of Fry is sent back in time and lived the other 12 years of Seymour's life with him in the 21st centurynote . This was probably done because the original ending crushed souls with its sadness.
- During the Flashback B-Plot in "Quids Game", Fry’s parents, wanting their son to feel like a winner, rig the games at his 8th birthday party. The guests assume he's cheating and angrily leave. The episode ends with Fry's mom seeing him holding a trophy, oblivious that her son is crying over losing his friends.
- Gargoyles: In Macbeth's backstory, he was officially killed by Canmore, who was unaware that his pact with Demona meant that neither of them could die until one killed the other. After Macbeth's son Luach took the crown and went into battle against Canmore, rather than reveal to everyone that he was still alive, Macbeth decided that the best way for his son to win was for everyone to believe he was dead, with him slipping into obscurity throughout the ages. However, in the present, we get a Wham Line when the Weird Sisters deliver an Armor-Piercing Question to Macbeth:
Phoebe: Did your own death save your son Luach from Canmore?
Macbeth: No. - In ''What New Scooby Doo Pompeii And Circumstance'' When the zombie gladiator almost attacks Shaggy while he's posing as him, Fred jumps the gladiator and knocks him out. However, it turns out the gladiator was the mechanical mastermind. Without his help, the other culprit doesn't know how to fix the overloading lava level controller.
- The fourth season of The Legend of Korra is filled with this, as many characters act according to what they believe is the right thing, but due to various factors including miscommunication, lacking critical information, or not being willing to listen to the point of view of other people, they wind up taking actions or saying things that become detrimental.
- Suyin refused pleas from world leaders to help reform the Earth Kingdom in the wake of the Earth Queen's death at the end of the previous season, believing that it was time for the Earth Kingdom to evolve past its monarchy (and likely thinking that she would simply wind up perpetuating the monarchy by helping to hold the Kingdom together until a relative of the Queen assumed the throne), and worrying that bringing her forces from her city-state of Zaofu to the capital of Ba Sing Se would be met with resentment by the locals of Ba Sing Se and be seen as a foreign occupying force. Fair enough, but her seeming intent to take no action whatsoever while most of the country besides Zaofu descendes into chaos infuriates a number of her followers, most notably the Captain of Zaofu's City Guards, Kuvira, and Suyin's oldest son, Bataar Junior. Those two and many like-minded people in Zaofu and its security forces leave Zaofu to try and bring order and peace back to Ba Sing Se, and after their success there, the rest of the Earth Kingdom.
- Kuvira's achievements in bringing order back to the Earth Kingdom, reuniting the different states and defeating the rampant banditry, are good. Her brutal methods are not. Similarly, her distrust of the Earth Kingdom's royal family, which for generations have produced either weak and ineffective kings or petty tyrants is perfectly understandable, especially when the heir apparent is a Sheltered Aristocrat Manchild like Prince Wu. The decision to usurp Wu by placing herself in charge of a military junta, especially one that is aggressively antagonistic towards all outside powers (who just wanted to put Wu on the throne as a figurehead while letting the country be run by more experienced advisors), is definitely not the right solution.
- Bolin initially joins Kuvira's forces out of a desire to help restore Ba Sing Se, the home of his extended family, and to do good. However, he is so focused on that he completely blinds himself to Kuvira's true nature or the drastic and authoritarian methods she uses to achieve her goals and reunite the different Earth Kingdom states, including unquestionably accepting all her stories and ways that she spins her actions. Despite constant interactions with her, Bolin might be the single most shocked person in the world when Kuvira reveals her true colors.
- Opal, Suyin's daughter, accurately sees Kuvira's ruthlessness and how she is becoming a dictator, but adopts a With Us or Against Us mentality when it comes to Kuvira, which results in her lashing out when anyone suggests doing anything less than taking immediate direct action against Kuvira. Even things as simple as suggesting a temporary truce or an attempt at dialog are met with a furious "I can't believe you're on her side," without even attempting to convince potential allies of why another course of action might be better.
- When Kuvira moves to assimilate Zaofu into her new Earth Empire, a desperate Suyin attempts a Decapitation Strike by attempting to take out Kuvira. Considering Kuvira had previously said that she isn't going to back down from attempting to conquer Zaofu, has shown herself to be a dictator, and is at the head of massive army that can easily overcome Zaofu's defenses, this is an appropriate if risky move. Attempting to do it while a neutral third party like the Avatar is frantically trying to negotiate a peaceful resolution and had gotten Kuvira to agree to a temporary truce... not so much.
- Korra herself stumbles into the Kuvira situation intent on attempting to resolve things peacefully and through dialog (normally good, and a departure from Korra's Hot-Blooded mistakes of the past), but she comes into the picture after being out of touch with world affairs for three years, and as such is ignorant of situation on the ground and doesn't take the time to learn the context. (It doesn't help that characters who are against Kuvira, like Su and Opal, either fail to adequately explain why peaceful resolution won't work or they don't explain their point of view at all, making Korra think that they're the ones being unreasonable when they jump straight to "Use your power to defeat Kuvira now.") Due to her ignorance about Kuvira's recent actions, Korra's attempts to negotiate are doomed from the start, and Kuvira is only too happy to manipulate Korra's good intentions for her own advantage.
- Star Wars Resistance: In "Signal from Sector Six", Kaz and Poe rescue a woman, Synara, from a derelict freighter, and she's taken to the Colossus and registered. Unfortunately, she's actually one of the pirates who attacked the ship, and the gang she's part of has been hired to take down the Colossus, so all this does is give her the perfect inroad as a spy. However, Synara eventually ends up Becoming the Mask and becoming a useful hero, so maybe it was the right thing in the end.
- The Weekenders, "Band": Carver writes a note to Chum Bukkit, his favorite band, on a napkin. His handwriting is so terrible that, when the band reads them, they come up with song lyrics which they incorrectly attribute to Carver. Eventually he admits the truth, simply because he thinks that lying about the band dedicating their local show to them was enough lies. Turns out that because of that, Chumbucket doesn't have to pay royalties. Carver is seething.
- In W.I.T.C.H., the main characters ultimately agree that the best thing to do regarding their friend Elyon being the Princess of Meridian is to not tell her, believing that doing so would cause her unnecessary stress and panic while trying to deal with the Big Bad. This works...until said villain, who is Elyon's older brother, realizes that they're doing this and decides to tell her everything himself, causing her to despise her friends and join his side, making everything worse.
