Hoist by His Own Petard/Comic Books

• In both the Spider-Man movie and the comic storyline it was based on, the Green Goblin attempts to kill Spider-Man by impaling him with his hovercraft, but Spidey jumps to avoid it and it hits GG instead.
  • Parodied in Spider-Man 3 How It Should Have Ended.

Spidey: I'm just sayin' there's only one way this is gonna go down, it happens every time. We'll fight for a bit, you'll tear my mask, but in the end I'm gonna leap outta the way and you're gonna do something that makes you kill yourself.

• In the limited series The Thanos Quest, the titular supervillain seeks (and ultimately attains) the Infinity Gems in order to become God and thus a worthy mate for Mistress Death. However, he miscalculates spectacularly when he discovers that omnipotence made him not her equal but superior, preventing anything other than a servile relationship; for the extra kick in the teeth, he is now subjected to the (no pun intended) cold shoulder of the cosmic being, who considered his pursuit and attainment of godhood a heinous betrayal, and his subsequent attempts at wooing her back childish and insulting.
  • It doesn't get much better in the follow-up storyline The Infinity Gauntlet, as when Thanos decides to give up on Mistress Death and fully embrace his status as God, eventually defeating Eternity and becoming the very embodiment of the universe, he makes another grievous error (or perhaps not) when by forsaking his body in replacing Eternity, he leaves it (and the Infinity Gems) vulnerable to theft by his upstart "granddaughter" Nebula.
  • Later in the same story, Thanos' friend and eternal nemesis Adam Warlock outright states that Thanos subconsciously sabotages his own schemes for ultimate power, as, in the darkest depths of his soul, he believes he's unworthy of it.
• Subverted with Lex Luthor: the kryptonite ring that he used to bedevil Superman ends up giving him fatal radiation poisoning due to prolonged exposure. However, he cheats death because of his brilliance Joker Immunity.
• Used in the tongue-in-cheek Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe: The Punisher actually manages to kill the nearly unkillable Wolverine. How does he do this? By forcing good ol' Logan into a generator, using his metal bones as a conductor to electrically fry every cell in his body.
  • It is worth noting this wouldn't work these days.
    • It wouldn't have worked back then, either. A similar electrical trap is used in the Havok: Meltdown graphic novel simply to render Logan unconscious.
• Mentioned for being hilarious, the otherwise quite forgettable Superman vs. Dracula comic ended with Dracula draining Superman's blood and absorbing his power - at which point his head exploded. Superman, after all, is solar powered.
  • A similar incident happened in Runaways - the teens discover that one of their newest companion is a vampire and, to save the others, Karolina offers herself to the vampire. When he goes to drain him, he realizes too late that Karolina is solar powered and he promptly explodes.
• After a rooftop battle in the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage, a defeated Shredder is about to use a thermite grenade to kill both the turtles and himself, when he is thrown off the roof by Donatello's bo staff. Boom.
• Unus the Untouchable was a mutant criminal with a force field that protected him from all harm. Eventually, it got so powerful that not even air could get through.
• In Watchmen, Dollar Bill was killed when his cape was caught in a revolving door in a bank, and was shot by some thug. It becomes double when the bank happens to be the one who he worked for, and made him put on a cape
• The Punisher 2099 villain Fearmaster has a hand (later a claw) that can turn anything biological it touches into anything else. When the Punisher finally corners him, he tries to turn Frank's entire body to mud. Too bad he forgot that he chopped off one of the Punisher's hands two issues prior; all Frank has to do is reach out with his prosthetic hand, grab Fearmaster's arm, and shove the claw right back in his face.
• In Teen Titans Terra died by accidental suicide when she imploded the HIVE complex out of sheer rage, trying to kill Deathstroke when she thinks he betrayed her.
• The U-Foes, enemies of the Incredible Hulk, seem to kill themselves off like this the first time they turn up-- their newly gained powers are strong enough to potentially take down the Big Green Machine, but Power Incontinence kicks in. Vapour can turn herself into any gas... but soon cannot keep her molecules together. Ironclad can increase his mass... which keeps increasing so he cannot move and sinks into the ground. And their leader Vector, just like Unus above, can repel things-- eventually he repels the air around him so he suffocates, then he repels Earth itself and shoots out into space. X-Ray's ability to manipulate radiation very nearly causes him explode from absorbing too much energy. They come back.
• In Final Crisis, Batman shoots Darkseid with the same bullet that Darkseid used to kill his son, Orion. Then, Wally West and Barry Allen turn intangible and run through him, causing the Omega Beams that were chasing them to hit the villain and blow him up.
• In one of the later comics, Conan the Barbarian comes across a particularly vile Zingaran noble/religious fanatic who assassinates his rivals by giving them the Ring of Molub, a Clingy MacGuffin that can only be stolen or passed on to others without their knowledge. The ring is connected to an ancient, Nigh Invulnerable demon of the same name who graphically slaughters the bearer of the ring and anyone who tries to stop it. Conan later acquires the ring himself and then passes it to the noble by slipping it on his finger. Then he breaks his finger just to make sure he can't get rid of it.
• When Emperor Palpatine returns from the dead to restore his empire, he captures Luke Skywalker and nearly turns him to the Dark Side. Leia eventually boards Palpatine's flagship to rescue her brother, and the two Skywalkers defeat Palpatine. In retaliation, he summons a devastating storm of dark side energies to lay waste to the New Republic fleet, but Luke and Leia overwhelm him with the Force, causing him to lose control of the storms. His flagship (and he himself) are subsequently torn apart by them. But he is still Not Quite Dead.
• In the Atari Force second series, the Dark Destroyer intended to destroy Martin Champion's New Earth universe with an anti-matter bomb. However, as Dart tried to defuse the bomb, she accidentally deactivated the fail-safe mechanism and caused it to detonate. The Dark Destroyer, who at that point was defeated by Martin Champion in a fistfight, ended up dying in the explosion of his own bomb while the Atari Force team escaped.
• Gorgon, one of the few villains Wolverine has faced that is a better killer than him in every way, also has Taken for Granite powers -- hence the name Gorgon. Wolverine defeated him by popping his reflective claws when Gorgon tried to turn him to stone.
• In one Fantastic Four story, Doctor Doom gloats to an imprisoned Reed Richards about a torture room he designed full of thousands of mirrors arranged in such a way that the myriad reflections are so incomprehensible to the human mind that looking at it without protective goggles can induce a Heroic BSOD. At the end of the story, about five issues later, Doom and Reed's climactic battle leads to Reed chasing Doom into the aforementioned room, where Doom beats the living crap out of Reed and strangles him while screaming about how much he hates him. However, Reed manages to tear off Doom's mask just before he passes out, and the sight of his grotesquely disfigured face reflected at him thousands of times drives Doom completely insane (he gets better).
• In Asterix and the Roman Agent, Magnificent Bastard Tortuous Convolvulus has sown seeds of discord in our heroes' village, and for a time convinced them that Asterix, Obelix, and Getafix have been suborned by the Romans. After our heroes set their differences aside and pwn all four Roman garrisons, Asterix gives Convolvulus a gift and thanks him for "keeping your end of the bargain". Centurion Felix Platypus is enraged and has Convolvulus chained up and taken back to Rome as a traitor. Convolvulus is back up to his old tricks before long, however.
• "You committed a BONER, Joker! You were so busy forcing ME into a boner, you forgot you were committing one yourself!"
• In The Broken Ear, after several failed attempts at assassinating General Alcazar, Corporal Diaz is given a time bomb set to go off at eleven o'clock. Diaz sets his watch by the street clocks, but at ten o'clock, when he thinks he still has time to spare, he is puzzled to see a municipal worker adjusting a street clock to make up for time lost due to an earlier power cut. The corrected time: eleven o'clock. BOOM.
• In the Batman mini-series, The Cult, Bats is able to turn Deacon Blackfire's own doctrine against him when he beats him within an inch of his life, then let him live for his followers to deal with. His followers, who were broken by him into believing that their own suffering meant nothing in the greater scheme of things, were so enraged by his own weakness, they literally tore him apart.
• In Flashpoint, the Reverse Flash had suddenly appeared and began attacking Barry Allen while telling him that the reason this timeline exists was because Barry tried to save his mother from Zoom and suceeded, only to screw up the rest of the world.. As he does, he tells him that, because how things are, Barry could never kill him lest he break time again. As he said that, he learns of a loophole too late as Thomas Wayne!Baman impales him with a sword.
• In the Mickey Mouse comic, "Race To Death Valley", Mickey swipes a map out of Shyster's hand from a window, boating "It's an old Shyster custom I learned from you!".
• General Spears in Aliens: Nightmare Asylum is a General Ripper on a remote colony who does not believe the heroes when they tell him that Earth has been overrun by the Aliens. He has been training Aliens to be his own personal soldiers by training their Queen with Pavlovian responses to fire. The moment they touch down on Earth and he plans to defeat the entrenched natives, the Queen turns her drones on him. She hadn't learned to fear him--she had learned to be clever.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 's Sonic Universe side-series, the demigod Enerjak is invincible, and makes a note to rub this in Silver(who is dueling)'s face. Upon mentioning that Silver is not strong enough, skilled enough, or wise enough to best him, Silver realizes Enerjak is correct. He proceeds to redirect Enerjak's attacks at him, actually cracking his armor and inflicting pain on the demigod for the first time in decades. Enerjak is promptly drained of his powers moments later.