Worst use of Deus Ex Machina you've ever seen

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

White Wolf. We're done here.

Spoiler: Confused?

White Wolf is a tabletop RPG company. They publish Vampire, Mage, Werewolf, Exalted, and a ton of other titles.

Every one of those games is choked with metaplot and rules so convoluted that just about every book release features some prominent retcon, and the only way players have real ability to affect change in the course of a game is if the game goes severely off the rails or the storyteller just throws the metaplot out the window and never looks back. All but perhaps two metaplot resolutions to all of the above-mentioned titles is a variant of "rocks fall everyone dies". This isn't even personal opinion, this is what the books say.

By far the worst, beyond-the-pale use of deus ex machina by White Wolf is one of the Gehenna (end of the world) scenarios for Vampire: the Masquerade. The player characters get locked in a church for 40 days by one of the most annoying metaplot-armor pet characters in the universe -- and that's saying a lot, considering White Wolf is chock full of those and they even managed to make fucking Dracula an annoying wangsty twat. It's supposed to be this deep, introspective character study influenced by Sartre's play No Exit, but ultimately the characters all die and a single dice roll determines whether your character goes to Heaven or Hell.

 

[Yellow Journalist]

The TV tropes entry someone linked to was really interesting. It points out that some supposed dei ex machina are up for debate, since a Chekhov Gun is present, but really hastily or poorly drawn in a way that makes it obvious that the writer saw the impossible situation, pulled a resolution out of his/her ass, and then went back and wedged in the foreshadowing. Not technically a DxM - but clearly a writer's cop-out.

And then on the other hand you've got DxM that actually WORK, like Saving Private Ryan or the Beerfest joke. But interestingly, both of those examples are kind of postmodern in that they reflect an acute awareness of what a Dxm IS. In Beerfest, it's played for laughs. In Saving Private Ryan, it's a commentary on how war doesn't conform to our tidy narrative expectations.

In response to what the OP and another guy said about the gravity gun, I'll clarify: the superpowered GG felt earned and foreshadowed for me because of the GG's centrality in HL2's story, mechanics, and (yes) press materials. The whole game, Valve was teaching us how to use the gravity gun in lots of different ways; a stint in which it temporarily gains incredible power seemed to flow pretty organically from that. And I find the prospect of an mysterious human technology interacting unpredictably with a mysterious alien technology to be fairly plausible, especially in the Half-Life universe. Isn't that what got Gordon into this mess in the first place?

Anyway, I probably shouldn't go on at length - Valve will just end up making us play through Episode 3 with a superpowered quantum crowbar. So - agree to disagree?

+1 to whoever put Battlestar Galactica forward as having the worst deus ex machina ever. Never has something so good ended as such shit.

 

[Sacman]

The mother f$#king eagles in Lord of The Rings!
Seriously!

If I remember correctly those were actually explained in the Hobbit...

OT: Evangelion... just Evangelion...<.<

 

[Flailing Escapist]

The mother f$#king eagles in Lord of The Rings!
Seriously!

If I remember correctly those were actually explained in the Hobbit...

OT: Evangelion... just Evangelion...<.<

They were and they talked about them more in the other books too, I'm just upset that they didn't get that into the movies, not even the extended cuts.

And yes Evangelion.

 

[Jeffster92]

The Odyssey. Odysseus murders a few dozen suitors and, logically, their families get mad and try to kill him. Then Athena drops out of the sky and says "hey, stop it."

 

[Yeager942]

The end for Ghost in The Shell: Standalone Complex was so fucking lazy I wanted to rage. After a legitimately thrilling previous episode, it gets wrapped up with a, "it was their plan the entire time." It's a shame too, such an epic show.

 

[1trakm1nd]

This forum topic. HA. I kid really. Theres a few I can go into a long dissortation about, but I'll keep it to one and brief.
Xenosaga. KOS-MOS. Although I think it's a great game.
KOS-MOS is supposed to be a robot designed to eraticate a specific type of creature, but she suddenly is able to make and do things that were never even built into her. At many points she honestly makes all the other characters, including the ones that designed her, go "wtf".

 

[commodore96]

When Ash fights Brock in pokemon. Pickachu is getting messed up, and then he sets off the fire sprinklers to kill onix. Really? Charzard and other pokemon light whole stadiums on fire without a single fire alarm going off. That was weak.

 

[ultimateownage]

The big in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
He's about to get hung by The Ugly, and then SUDDENLY a canon ball comes out of fucking no where and hits the side of the room he was in. Then he uses the confusion to escape.

 

[Laser Priest]

Hand down the shark-repellant Batspray!

That entire movie, really.

 

[MoNKeyYy]

Macbeth.

Oracle: "You really only have to worry about dying when the forest moves from here to there, and no man born of a mother's womb can kill you."
Macbeth: "Oh lol, looks like I'll have no probl---"
Scout: "Sir, the enemy army is moving the forest by cutting down branches to use as cover (wtf)!"
Macbeth: "Oh, shit. Well, at least no man born of a mother---"
Macduff: "Ohey Macbeth, did I ever tell you I was born from a C-section?"
Macbeth: "FFFffffffffffffffff---"
*head chopped off*

Point A) Witches. Sorry, it just had to be said.
Point B) I think you might be missing the point here. The idea is that Macbeth sees a series of seemingly impossible circumstances and takes them at face value, when really the witches were making a riddle of the conditions of his doom. Macduff isn't some random character that comes from nowhere and says "Hey, I'm a person that fits that description!", he's an established character who's link the Macbeth's demise is well established by other events in the story (See first prophecy, ie. Beware MacDuff). The fact that the prophecy is made in the way it is is meant to solidify MacDuff's position as MacBeth's destroyer.

OT: Hmm, I think Oblivion is pretty bad here. How did Martin know to break the amulet when he had literally found out about being the emperor 3 weeks ago? Oh, you say he read it in one of his books. How did he find that particular book in Cloud Ruler Temple when clearly no one else had ever found it (Including Blades chronicalers and Masters) and know exactly what to do? And for that matter, how did anyone know and put it in a book?

 

[CptRumGuy]

I'll give Ichigo's full Hollow form against Ulquiorra a pass. It was a terrible bit of writing, but it was fairly foreshadowed. It was just really fucking stupid. A straight up Deus was his Final Form Bankai. Not only does it come from nowhere, but he gets it offscreen. Face, meet palm, meet wall.

Agreed. I'll also give Aizen and his Marble-O-Doom a pass as well (sort of) simply because we at least knew Aizen had SOMETHING planned the whole time. Unlike Ichigo whipping all these new powers out of his ass just because he's the protagonist and he has to.

But yeah, all the mentions of Bleach in this thread are completely deserved. It's almost like the writer wanted to see just how many D.E.M. he could get away with.

That said, I don't understand why Deus Ex Machina is always regarded as a bad thing. Most of the time, yes it is, because it's just lazy writing. But I think if presented properly, it can still work as a good plot twist.

 

[Benjamin Moore]

No one has mentioned "War of the Worlds"?

My favourite is technically a Chekhov's Gun: "Night's Dawn" the Naked God.
However, considering it reduces an insanely intricate plot into a fairy-tale ending, and at no point is the actual extent of its power even hinted at, I would consider it Deus ex Machina.

In fact, it is probably a brick joke, as the Naked God is more Deus Machina est! (God is the Machine)

 

[WonderWillard]

The last 10min of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen; Hands Down. End of Thread. Deus ex Machina pun FULLY intended and the irony will make ur head explode.

A boy dies. Talks to the Robot father, son and holy ghost about gayness only to be resurrected by robots to then resurrect dead Optimus with angel dust from a tube sock. But still not enough, a gay version of Jetfire literally rips his heart out to make Optimus Prime a Prime(I guess?!) Optimus now has a jetpack and kills everyone with P.O.K.E. 2.0 and the credits roll.

Na, thats just shitty writing and not DXM

I disagree, it is both.

Indeed. Seriously, the movie would have been tolerable if the last half hour wasn't such a giant WTF moment. Sam is killed.... now he has a destiny, so he literally magically comes back to life, as told to him by ROBOT GODS???

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Yeah...I'm rather glad that I stopped being a fan of Stargate SG-1 after about season... (looks back at the box sets) ...8. And never started watching Atlantis or Universe. Although, there were some funny Deus Ex Machina's in SG-1...most of them O'Neill ideas too...but that's the 'humor use' I think, not the 'terrible' use.

Atlantis isn't too bad. Series 1 is pretty slow, Series 5's only good episode was the 2-parter in which Michael Shanks was in. Series 2, 3 were the better ones. 4 was about 50/50.

Yeah, Universe, barely made it through my "3 episode minimum before judging a series" rule, not worth the time it took to watch those eps.

 

[metacree]

Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Spoiler

Okay, Aang decides to not kill Mark Hamill (Fire Lord). Cool. I have no complaints. Problem is, he has no idea how to disable him otherwise. Them bam, a giant turtle lion thing comes out of nowhere to teach him how to deactivate elemental prowess (off-screen at that) and he disables Mark Hamill's fire out of nowhere.

Maybe not the worst, but it still pisses me off.

Another is Gurren Lagann. All of it. I know Gainax meant to do that, but I still don't like that show because of it. It's called Spiral Power.

Actually the Lion-Turtle is mentioned in season 2.
During the library, Aang sees one in a book. The music even makes that weird "tingle" noise signifying that it may be important.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

The James Bond gadgets.

Seriously, whenever Bond got in trouble (in the good James Bond's that is) he would always have the perfect gadget for the occasion. It got a little old for my tastes. (this is probably gonna recive some hate)

That isn't Deus Ex Machina, it's foreshadowing. In pre-Craig Bonds (ie. the good ones as you rightly point out!) Q would introduce Bond to a handful of gadgets with funny conversation and some verbal reparté. The audience then knows already all the gadgets he has for the film and it is one of the series' hallmarks that we then wonder how and in what circumstances he'll use them as the plot unfolds.

A Deus Ex Machina is a plot device whereby the day is saved by something previously completely unknown or unheard of that comes out of the blue and is almost always considered a cop-out and lazy writing. My example would be the eagles at the end of "Return of the King" to save Frodo and Samwise. If I was Frodo I'd be pretty damn pissed at Gandalf for making me walk all the damned way to Mordor when I could've just jumped on a freaking giant eagle and been there in 10 minutes.

 

[mageroel]

The worst has got to be from Killzone 3's ending.

Spoiler

You are facing down an entire armada with only a few stolen starfighters, then out of nowhere Rico yells "Fire the Nuke!"

What nuke? I didn't see one on the ship when we started. But we suddenly have a nuke, which manages to not only blow up an entire goddamn fleet, but irradiate an ENTIRE planet too.

And then the credits roll. Seriously, it's about as abrupt as the ending of Kane and Lynch 2.

"FIRE ZE MISSILES!"

OT: When properly done, like in comedic sense (Monty Python for example), it can be useful.
Other than that, usually weird and/or bad.

Worst deus ex machina that I ever experienced? Every single House episode. Seriously. Every. Single. One.

 

[mageroel]

The James Bond gadgets.

Seriously, whenever Bond got in trouble (in the good James Bond's that is) he would always have the perfect gadget for the occasion. It got a little old for my tastes. (this is probably gonna recive some hate)

That isn't Deus Ex Machina, it's foreshadowing. In pre-Craig Bonds (ie. the good ones as you rightly point out!) Q would introduce Bond to a handful of gadgets with funny conversation and some verbal reparté. The audience then knows already all the gadgets he has for the film and it is one of the series' hallmarks that we then wonder how and in what circumstances he'll use them as the plot unfolds.

A Deus Ex Machina is a plot device whereby the day is saved by something previously completely unknown or unheard of that comes out of the blue and is almost always considered a cop-out and lazy writing. My example would be the eagles at the end of "Return of the King" to save Frodo and Samwise. If I was Frodo I'd be pretty damn pissed at Gandalf for making me walk all the damned way to Mordor when I could've just jumped on a freaking giant eagle and been there in 10 minutes.

Have you seen the How It Should Have Ended version of LotR? It was awesome.

Captcha: baby boomer. Wth?

.. reads ..
Wow, no more Captcha, it's now SOLVEmedia?

 

[tzimize]

One that comes to mind for me (and please correct me if this doesn't directly fit into the definition of a Deus Ex Machina) is anytime in a action movie, book, game or whatever. During the final battle when the main character is losing horribly to their enemy, they witness their love interest get killed.This then gives said main character a sudden surge of power due to his/her love that gives them the strength to take down their enemy just as they're about to be beaten.

Or is that just a tired cliche that I can't stand? Either way, it's an annoying plot device. >.>

In some cases its actually appropriate. And one of the best uses of this was in the final episodes of the Pain ark of Naruto:Shippuuden

Spoiler

when Pain destroyed Hinata

.

Narutos power is in many ways centered around his Kyuubi. And when he gets angry, it gets released = more power. In this case it kicked all kinds of ass.

But yeah..in most cases...lame.