List of deus ex machina examples

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This is an [Incomplete listsincomplete list], which may never be able to satisfy certain standards for completeness. Revisions and additions are welcome.

See deus ex machina for more information about this device.

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

0.1 Literature and comics

0.1.1 Examples in plot
0.1.2 References to the phrase

0.2 Cinema and television

0.2.1 Examples in plot
0.2.2 Examples for comic effect in plot
0.2.3 References to the phrase

0.3.1 Examples in plot
0.3.2 References to the phrase

0.4 Music

Literature and comics

Examples in plot

In Homer's The Odyssey, after Odysseus and Telemachus slaughter the suitors, the families of the suitors show up at the farm of Laertes seeking vengeance. As a battle is about to begin, Athena appears in the last few lines of the poem and tells both parties to stop, to which they comply.
In William Golding's novel The Lord of the Flies, just as the protagonist Ralph is about to be killed by the band of "hunters" at the end of the story, a ship appears from nowhere onto the island. One of the ship's officers rescues Ralph, he and the rest of the boys are then taken away from the island.
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, with Jim apprehended in the heart of the South and Huck unable to rescue him, Tom Sawyer reenters the story, having come hundreds of miles downriver to visit a relative. Huck's reunion with Tom gives him the opportunity to free Jim and allows a channel for the resolution of all dangling storylines that the book had left behind in St. Petersburg, Missouri.
In Shakespeare's As You Like It, Hymenaios comes to the mass wedding to sort out the problems of Rosalind's stay and disguise in the Forest of Arden.
In the Edgar Allan Poe story The Pit and the Pendulum, the unnamed narrator has just been pushed over the edge of the bottomless pit when he reaches up and grabs the arm of the French general who has seized the fortress where the narrator has been imprisoned.
The final issue of Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man was titled Deus Ex Machina, and the same title would later be used for the trade paperback collecting his final story arc. The issue itself involves a quite literal example of a deus ex, as Buddy "Animal Man" Baker is finally brought face to face with Morrison himself, who reveals to Baker that his life is a comic book and that he is his (soon-to-depart) writer, before eventually growing tired of his own attempts at preaching and sending Baker home, resurrecting his previously-murdered family in the process.
Many comic book characters can be seen as walking dei ex machinas. Lifeguard, from the X-Men, is widely considered by her detractors to be the ultimate deus ex. Her mutant ability is to manifest any necessary ability to save lives, which makes her a quick fix for the writers if any characters are stuck in a tight spot.
A deux ex machina exists in K. A. Applegate's Remnants series. Earth is devoid of almost all life, no longer rotates, and in cloaked in perpetual twilight. An alien spaceship, the character Billy Weir and his psychic powers, and the baby girl of a human are able to return to the Earth back to its original state, full of life. But exactly how each of these 3 elements does this is not explained.
The main character of Brian K. Vaughn's comic series Ex Machina, Mitchell Hundred, is a superhero with the ability to control machines through telemechanics. During his time as a superhero, he calls himself "The Great Machine." In the comic's timeline, he appeared on the scene just in time to save one of the World Trade Center Towers from the attacks of September 11, 2001 by using his powers to divert and land one of the terrorist-controlled airplanes. He later runs for Mayor of NYC, and wins in a landslide.
Perhaps the most famous superhero to be labelled a deus ex is Superman himself, as his writers had a tendency to inflate his powers over the years to constantly trump his previous successes. Kryptonite, Superman's only weakness, then became a sort of reverse deus ex machina, which would be called in whenever the writer wanted to explore a conflict which he didn't want Superman to resolve in one punch.
In Superman turns back time by simply flying around the world until it spins in the other direction, while Superman is supposed to be really fast, there is evidence that up until this point he could go nowhere nearly that fast. For example, if he had, he would have been able to stop both bombs.
In Molière's The School for Wives, Agnès is suddenly found out to have been betrothed all along to another man, which spares her from having to marry Arnolphe.
Tintin's encounters in The Adventures of Tintin involve coincidences that spare his life: heavy weights replaced by wood, a solar eclipse, explosive mines not working, etc.
In Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, scientists race to find a way to contain an extremely dangerous extraterrestrial virus. In the end, they fail and the virus escapes into the atmosphere, but conveniently for mankind the virus mutates into a completely harmless form.
In Richard Adams' Watership Down, after freeing the local farm dog to attack the Efrafans, Hazel is pinned by the farm cat and about to be killed until a young girl from the farm intervenes by ordering the cat to back away. She then takes Hazel into the country to a location which is coinicidentally near his warren. The chapter in which the buildup for this event occurs is indeed titled Dea ex Machina (goddess, in this case).
In Sharon Shinn's Novels of Samaria, God really is in the machine when it is revealed that the sender of the rain, medicine and seeds from the sky is in fact a highly advanced spaceship named Jehovah that has been instructed to answer the 'prayers' of the genetically engineered Angels.
In Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, the location of the antimatter is seemingly revealed by a vision from God, however it is later revealed to be a deception by the novel's villain.
Clive Cussler, the author of the Dirk Pitt adventure novels, has introduced himself into the plot of a number of his stories so that he may rescue his characters from hopeless situations.
In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Antonio's entire life rests on whether or not his ships come to port. It is heard throughout the story that they have all crashed. Yet in the end Portia tells him all his ships have come home, with no explanation as to how they survived the storms or why people believed them all to have crashed.
In Hajime Kanzaka's novel Shirogane no Majū (白銀の魔獣, which form the basis for the anime series Slayers), Lina Inverse uses a powerful spell known as "Ragna Blade" to defeat Zanaffar. The reader is never informed of the existence of this spell until she casts it, whereupon Lina reveals that she created the spell herself several days beforehand, which places it within the timeline of the rest of the book and therefore could have been mentioned.
In the Japanese manga-drama Kashimashi, the protagonist is told out of the blue by an alien lifeform that "you will die in 30 days." Prior to this statement, there had been no indication that the protagonist would have such a sudden death, thus effectively becoming a plot device.
In The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket, The Baudelaires make a mortar dissolver to escape from jail. The book also contains a self sustaining mobile hot air home named Dues Ex Machine.
In The War of the Worlds the invading Martians, undefeated by humanity's weapons, conquer Earth, only to be slain by terrestrial bacteria.
In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, after Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are thrown into deep space by the Vogons, they are rescued by the Starship Heart of Gold, as a side effect of the ship's Infinite Improbability Drive. (Although it should be noted that this is also a parody of such techniques in other science fiction.)
In Stephen King's The Stand, the hand of God literally appears at the end and detonates a nuclear warhead in Las Vegas, destroying all of the evil characters in the book (with the exception of Randall Flagg, who survives, without explanation, later awaking on a beach).
In Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, just as anti-Semitism in the United States seems to be building to a crescendo, President Lindbergh disappears without a trace and Franklin Roosevelt is returned to office.
In Clive Woodall's "One for Sorrow, Two for Joy" all of the species of small songbirds in Birddom have been wiped out by a mass genocide caused by the magpie armies. At the end of the book, a massive forest fire in Wingland causes songbirds to migrate to Birddom, restoring the natural balance.
Stephen King's Dark Tower series contains a particularly explicit deus ex machina - the author himself (who is introduced as a character in the plot) writes a note which is absorbed into the protagonist's world and appears in time to help rescue Susannah and Roland from a seemingly hopeless situation in the final book. The note itself contains the words "Here comes the deus ex machina".
In the webcomic Gone With The Blastwave, by Kimmo Lemetti, the protagonists are captured by the enemy and interrogated. Trying to bluff their way out of the mess, the interrogator gets angry and means to shoot them, but they are saved by a salva of machine gun fire killing the interrogator and his two guards instantly [link].
At one point in the manga One Piece, by Eiichiro Oda, Luffy is trapped in stockades and moments away from being decapitated by Buggy. A lightning bolt suddenly strikes Buggy and destroys the stockades. Luffy is later chased by Captain Smoker, whom he cannot fight because his smoke-control abilities make him invulnerable. Smoker catches Luffy, and is about to subdue him and arrest him, which would have led to his death by execution. However, a previously unmentioned criminal named Dragon appears and stops Smoker from doing so. Dragon creates a storm with his abilities to both free Luffy and create a diversion so he can escape.
In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, some consider the rescue of Frodo's and Sam by the Eagles a deus ex machina. Tolkien had already used the Eagles in The Hobbit, where they helped the Dwarves, Men and Elves defeat the Goblins and Wargs at the Battle of the Five Armies. In The Lord of the Rings, they also arrive to help the Army of the West against Sauron in the Battle of the Morannon, though Sauron is not defeated until the Ring is destroyed. Tolkien explained the Eagles seemingly coming out of nowhere in other writings as their being servants of Manwë, who typically did not intervene. However, since this is not found in the text of The Lord of the Rings itself, the above information may be thought of as a retcon, and the situation as it stands as a deus ex machina.

References to the phrase

In the Lance Tooks graphic novel The Devil on Fever Street, Satan falls in love with a mortal woman; order is restored when the saintly Black Lily Baptiste is mortally struck by a driverless truck bearing the words "Dusek's Machines" printed on its side.
In Bored of the Rings, Frito and Spam are rescued by Deus Ex Machina Airlines (parodying Frodo and Sam being rescued by eagles at Mount Doom, in the original Lord of the Rings stories).
In Isaac Asimov's I, Robot it is used as a part of the description of the relationship between humans and robots.
In the webcomic, , Samus called the degenerated space pirate Joey "Deus ex Machina" after saving her from a near-fatal encounter with Dark Samus.
Lemony Snicket's The Vile Village (part of the A Series of Unfortunate Events series) the three Baudelaires are caught in the local jail. Klaus makes reference to the term, and this is built upon when Violet uses a loaf of bread, a jug of water and a wooden bench to escape the cell.
In Futurama comic #10, The planet express crew escape death only to be faced with a life of slavery, prompting Fry to say "Aww man, where's a day-ooze ex machinehead when you need one?"
Pierre Oulette wrote a novel titled The Deus Machine, about an intelligent computer that can create life.
In The Simpsons episode "Thank God It's Doomsday", after the rapture occurs and Homer Simpson is taken to heaven, he asks God to reverse what has happened. God agrees, then proclaims "deus ex machina" and normality is restored magically.
In Olive, the Other Reindeer, a movie by Matt Groening, Olive finds a package marked, "To: Olive, From: Deus ex Machina". It contains a metal file which she uses to free herself from captivity in the back of the evil postman's truck.
In the Sex and the City episode, Four Women and a Funeral, in the honour of a deceased fashion designer named Javier, who died of a Heroin addiction, a halfway house is being built for those in the fashion industry who suffer from substance abuse. Samantha is helping raise funds with the ulterior motive of gaining access to the priceless mailing list and unlisted 212 numbers in Manhattan. While pitching to a powerful investment banker she ends up making out with him only to have his powerful socialite wife walk in on them. In 24 hours Sam goes from A-list to blacklist and becomes a socal pariah. After all avenues are exhausted the only way she can help Javier House is by literally assisting with the construction. As she's struggling in the heat a man with an angelic glow around him appears and offers Sam his hand and Sam reaches out to take it as if she is reaching for the hand of god. Carrie narrates "It was Leonardo DiCaprio, ex machina". Leo, who is never actually seen, and Sam become fast friends and Leo brings her back to social life.

Cinema and television

Examples in plot

Possibly the least satisfactory deus ex machina to the audience is the revelation that all or large parts of what has gone before were "all a dream". This was perhaps most notoriously used in Dallas, where an entire season was "unwritten" to allow the resurrection of the character Bobby Ewing who had been killed off.
Another, more humorous use of the "all a dream" device was the finale of Newhart, where Bob Newhart's character wakes up to tell his wife he's had a dream where he was running a little hotel in Vermont. His wife turns out to be played by Suzanne Pleshette, who played his wife in his previous sitcom.
In The Wizard of Oz, just before Dorothy and her companions reach the Emerald City, the Wicked Witch of the West produces a giant field of poppies that puts Dorothy, Toto and the Cowardly Lion to sleep. The Scarecrow and the Tin Man cry for help, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, produces a snow shower that wakes everyone up. Also, in the scene where Dorothy misses the Wizard's balloon, Glinda appears and tells Dorothy she had the power to return home the entire time, meaning the Ruby Slippers. When the Scarecrow asks in disbelief why didn't Glinda tell Dorothy about the Slippers, Glinda casually responds that Dorothy "would not have believed her and had to learn it for herself".
In the film Adaptation., Charlie Kaufman is cautioned explicitly by screenwriting guru Robert McKee not to use a deus ex machina as a plot device, which he then later does, twice. First, McKee himself gives the character of Kaufman the final hint to escape from his screenwriting misery, which means McKee himself is used as a deus ex machina. Ironically "McKee" could be suspected a "telling name" (McKee => "machina") but he is an [actual writing instructor]. Second, the alligator that dives into the swamp to attack John Laroche prevents him from shooting and killing Charlie.
In the film Jurassic Park, when the main characters reunite at the end of the film, they find themselves surrounded by velociraptors in the Visitor's Center. Before any of them can pounce, a Tyrannosaurus rex crashes through the building to attack the raptors, thus giving the characters an opportunity to escape.
In the film Jurassic Park III, when the main characters are fleeing and at the end of the film, as soon as they arrive at the beach, the US Navy and Marines arrive to stabilize the situation and kill the dinosaurs.

The only expalnation offered is that the Gildragon, a "Sky God Zoid", saved him.

In the episode "" from the first season of , Spock is infected by an alien parasite which has overwhelmed a Federation colony world. Discovering that intense light will kill the parasites, Spock volunteers to be exposed to this light. He is cured, but also blinded. In the end, he miraculously recovers his sight, explaining that as a Vulcan he has nictitating membranes that protect his eyes from the intense solar radiation on his homeworld.
In the season 5 episode of entitled "The Game", the crew of the Enterprise are influenced to do the bidding of an alien race as a result of a psychotropic reaction caused by an addictive game introduced to the ship. They are rescued at the end of the episode when Data, who had until this point been deactivated by members of the crew already under the aliens' influence, enters and uses a flashing light to remove the addictive psychotropic effects of the game, and thus cure the entire crew.
Star Trek in general is often cited as over-using technology-based plot devices in deus ex machina fashion (see Treknobabble).
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, deus ex machina are frequent throughout the show. Often when a character (usually Yugi Muto, or another hero) has the odds against them, and they are about to lose, they draw a helpful card that leads to their victory. Often, this card is a brand-new card; occasionally, this card will never be played again. This is called 'The Heart of the Cards' in the English adaptation, meaning that the duelist's deck feels their need to win, and gives them the card they need. During the final duel in all versions of the anime, Atem claims that the spirit of his Deck allows him to draw the perfect card for the current situation several turns in a row. In actuality, it is luck. The Winged Dragon of Ra could arguably be the most famous Deux ex machina of the series: every time it is played, it demonstrates some sort of new special ability.
The seventh (and final) season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer concludes with a series of unlikely events to save the world from the near-impossible to stop evil. Buffy receives an amulet from Angel which Spike uses conveniently to destroy the Hellmouth and the scythe used to activate every slayer is introduced by having the villains dig it up.
In V: The Final Battle mini-series, when the mothership is about to destroy Earth, a young half-alien/half-human girl suddenly reveals her "magical" powers by aborting the self destruction of the vessel's reactors.
At the end of the anime Mai-HiME the previously "dead" characters are brought back to life in order to fight the final battle by Mashiro, whose powers were supposedly sealed and under the control of the Dark Lord.
In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey God literally provides the deus ex machina by giving Bill and Ted access to some intelligent aliens, who in turn build the "good robot us-es". This allows everything to be resolved. In both Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, the characters are supplied with certain items when needed (such as a jail-cell key), on the basis that they will use the time machine to return after they've finished their task to leave the items there.
In the movie Ocean's 12, director Steven Soderburg introduces the FBI official to be Matt Damon's character's mother. She signs their release forms and allows them to escape custody.
Near the end of Ice Age, Diego shows up alive and well, after a previous scene where he had died and been left behind. Diego explains his sudden miraculous recovery as "nine lives."
The end of Shaun of the Dead finds the two lead characters Shaun and Liz in an apparently hopeless situation, surrounded by hundreds of zombies with little or no chance of escape. Suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, the army descend upon the zombies, attacking and destroying them and rescuing Shaun and Liz.
In the Batman TV series, Batman's utility belt usually contains something unexpected which extricates him from a seemingly inescapable situation, as evidenced by his can of Shark Repellant Bat Spray.
In , Just as Darth Vader is about to deliver a fatal blow on Luke Skywalker's X-Wing during a run to destroy the Death Star by firing torpedoes down a small exhaust port and blowing it up, Han Solo and Chewbacca fly the Millennium Falcon in, shooting at Vader's wingman, causing him to panic and swerve into Vader, sending his ship spiraling off into the reaches of space. Luke, hearing his dead master's (Obi-Wan's) voice, turns off his targeting computer of the X-Wing fighter, and successfully launches torpedoes down the shaft, destroying the Death Star and scoring a huge victory for the Rebellion against the Empire.
In "Mars Attacks," right when the human race seems to have lost, a weapon is found in the song "Indian Love Call" by Slim Whitman which causes the Martians' brains to explode*
In the final episode of the Comet Empire series of Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato), Wildstar (Kodai) is prepared pilot the crippled Yamato on a kamikaze mission into Zordar's dreadnought (as he did in Arrividerci Yamato). At the last minute, Trelaina of Telezart stops him and, along with resurrecting a recently killed Mark Venture, she becomes a being of pure energy and vaporizes Zordar, sacrificing herself thus saving the Star Force and Earth.
At the end of The Matrix Revolutions, Neo bargains with a machine to destroy Agent Smith and save the Matrix. The machine is named Deus Ex Machina.
In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, as the main characters are all about to be hanged by the evil sheriff and his cronies, the valley they are in is finally flooded by the government to make way for a new hydro-electric plant, drowning all of the villains and freeing the heroes.
In The Hudsucker Proxy, as the main character, Norville Barnes, is plummeting to his death from the top of the Hudsucker Building, the janitor stops time (and Norville's fall by default) by jamming a broom handle into the gears of the Hudsucker Building's clock.
In the Doctor Who episode "The Parting of the Ways", the Earth is being bombed by an unstoppable Dalek invasion fleet while the Doctor is facing certain death surrounded by Daleks in a space station control room. At this point, the Tardis materializes, and Rose Tyler, the Doctor's assistant, emerges suffused with power having "looked into the time vortex". With a wave of her hand, the Dalek extermination fleet is decomposed into atoms saving the day.
In a latter episode of Doctor Who "Doomsday, when the cybermen are coming up the stairs to stop the Doctor and Rose, still with emotions, stops and kills them, enabling the Time lord and his companion to save the day.
On 24, Jack Bauer is often put in a situation where he is about to be shot at. However, the antagonist is usually either out of ammunition, or reinforcements arrive to kill the antagonist (i.e. Peter Kingsley in season two).
In many episodes of Dragonball Z and Dragonball GT Goku arrives just in time to save an ally (i.e. Goku's knick-of-time arrive to save Gohan from being trampled underfoot by Nappa), and various abilities that he employs that turn the tide of battle at the most critical moments (Spirit Bomb). It is also revealed that his "death" on planet Namek was prevented because he merely managed to remember that Frieza's spaceship was still on the emploding planet, in the same episode it is made known that Frieza also survived the battle and the subsequent fracturing of said planet because he can survive in the vacuum of space.
In the Lord of the Rings film trilogy by Peter Jackson, every main battle has been won by a deus ex machina. The Battle of Helm's Deep was won against great odds with the arrival of Gandalf with Éomer's calvary, who had "ridden north", presumably far away, and of the Huorns, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was won with the sudden appearance of the cursed (and invincible) Army of the Dead, and the final battle at the gates of Mordor was won (as well as Frodo's and Sam's lives saved) with the arrival of the Eagles of Manwë. This is entirely due to Jackson, however; in Tolkien's original book, the situations are different. The Battle of the Hornburg was won in a similar fashion, though the defenders had much greater odds of defeating the enemy as Jackson portrays, Gandalf returned with Erkenbrand instead of Éomer, whose troops were not widely scattered following the recent Second Battle of the Fords of Isen; the Dead Men of Dunharrow, whose power was not physical but fear-inducing, did not fight at the Pelennor Fields but the people of southern Gondor did; and the Battle of the Morannon was far from won even after the Eagles arrived. Furthermore, Tolkien takes time to explain the machinations going on, and thus one cannot consider the book's versions of events deus ex machinas.
In , Ra-Kan is seemingly killed in the previous episode where Bio-Tyranno's Jiin cannon destroys everthing surrounding Ra-Kan and his Zoids. However, he and his Zoids Sword Wolf make a return in the final episode saving Garaga from the clutches of Biotyranno in the nick of time, allowing Ruuji to deliver the final blow. The explanation given was that the barrier system onboard the Bio-Tricera protected him and his Zoids from the blast.
In Donnie Darko, near the end when Donnie is trying to find Grandma Death, the high school bully suddenly attacks him. The bully yells, "Look, there's a car coming," and Donnie mutters, "deus ex machina" under his breath. The bully replies, "What did you say? What the fuck did you say?" and Donnie replies, "Our saviour." The bullies mistake the car headlights for a cop car and run away, saving the main character and his girlfriend from the confronation with the bullies. Also, the child porn aspect is a deus ex machina that eliminates the threat of the Jim Cunningham character.

Examples for comic effect in plot

This is not specifically the use of the device in comedy, but the specific comedic use of a deus ex machina that at least some of the audience is expected to appreciate as such.

The writers of Monty Python's Flying Circus admitted to using several deus ex machina devises when they were unable to find a conclusion to a particularly ridiculous sketch. Three the of the most famous were "The Colonel", where Graham Chapman would enter dressed as a colonel and tell them to stop, saying the sketch was "silly", "The Knight with the Chicken", where a fully-armoured Knight, played by Terry Gilliam, would enter the scene and hit one of the actors over the head with a raw or rubber chicken, and "The 16-ton Weight" which would suddenly fall to end a scene.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail employs the device, in combination with "breaking the fourth wall" in several places. While attempting to enter a cave, the knights of the Round Table are attacked by a bloodthirsty rabbit which they can't overcome, but they manage to kill it with the Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch, its bearers (let alone the device itself) never having been referred to before. Having entered the cave the knights are then attacked by the Ravenous Black Beast of Arrrgh, with no apparent hope of survival. At this point, it is revealed by the narrator that the film's animator suffered a fatal heart attack, obliterating the animated monster. Later, the film's final battle sequence is suddenly interrupted by the appearance of the police, who immediately arrest the entire on-screen principal cast of medieval characters, apparently for murder.
Monty Python's Life of Brian also utilises the deus ex machina for comedic effect. In one scene Brian falls from the top of a high tower, only to be saved by an alien spaceship that happened to be passing. He is taken on a joy ride through the solar system before the space ship is shot down and crashes at the foot of the very tower he had just fallen from. A bystander who witnesses all this remarks, "Ooh, you lucky bastard!"
In the cartoon The Angry Beavers, at the end of the episode "Moby Dopes", during which the two main characters are terrorised by a Killer Whale in their pond, it is suddenly eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. The character Norbert then exclaims "Where in the name of deus ex machina did that T-Rex come from?"
In the Futurama episode Godfellas, Bender is returned to Earth by God after being stranded in space with no hope of rescue. He crashes to Earth a few feet in front of Fry and Leela, provoking the response "This is by a wide margin the least likely thing that has ever happened" from Leela. It should also be noted that this would also be a reverse of the literal translation of the phrase deus ex machina, God from the Machine.
In the British sitcom Bottom, Richie and Eddie are trapped atop a crumbling ferris wheel. Facing certain death they pray for their lives - literally. God's hand promptly appears and Richie and Eddie, looking stunned climb aboard. Normality is restored when they announce to the audience they don't believe in God; the hand disappears and they fall to their doom.
In the Disney movie The Emperor's New Groove, a chase occurs where the Emperor Kuzco (who has been turned into a llama) and his friend Pacha are being pursued back to the palace by Kuzco's evil advisor Yzma and her assistant Kronk. During the chase, Yzma and Kronk are struck by lightning, and fall into a gorge, leaving Kuzco and Pacha seemingly free to return to the palace. Upon their return, they discover that Yzma and Kronk are already there, and when Kuzco asks Yzma how they got back before they did, she looks confused and asks Kronk. Kronk pulls out a map of the chase and says "Beats me. By all accounts it's not possible.", showing the characters' awareness of the deus ex machina that has just been perpetrated. At one point after this, Yzma becomes angered with Kronk and opens a trapdoor underneath him, causing him to fall (One would think down.) Later, the characters are battling over the potion to return Kuzco back into a human, and Kronk opens a hatch on the top of the palace, commenting, "What are the odds that trap door would lead me out here?", knocking the potion out of Yzma's hand and into the hands (hoofs) of Kuzco.
At the very end of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance it is revealed that the pirates are "all gentlemen who have gone wrong". Furthermore, the police defeat the pirates by ordering them to stop "in Queen Victoria's name" which they are bound not to ignore.
Near the end of , Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone are trapped in the bear pit at the zoo. Ron's dog, Baxter, comes out of nowhere and speaks to the bear's honor through the clever use of subtitles. The bear lets them leave.
George of the Jungle and its sequel contain several deus ex machinas. In one instance, George is shot by Lyle. But the narrarator notes that George survived simply because he is the hero of the story and it would not go on without him. Similarly, in the sequel, Ursala's mother travels through the depths of the jungle to find her daughter. She annoys her convoy of natives so much that they cast her off a bridge over a high cliff; however the narrator resets the situation after explaining that she needs to be alive for the story to progress, to the disappointment of the convoy. In one ultimate deus ex machina, Lyle has George at gunpoint and none of the characters are able to do anything. As the narrator comments on the situation, Lyle insults him. Annoyed, the narrator reaches down from the sky and plucks Lyle out of the story.
Megas XLR ended a lot of its episodes with a deus ex machina. In one episode, Coop developed a teleportation device, but never found a way to specify what object teleported or to what location it would teleport to. In the end of the episode, when the Glorft were charging up a laser capable of destroying Earth along with MEGAS, Coop accidentally triggered the teleportation device, which teleported his Mega Slush onto the Glorft ship's control panel. It spilled, causing the ship to implode and thus save the earth. In another episode, Coop had a button on his console specifically labled "5 Minutes Till End of Episode", which he pressed, obviously, at the 5-minute mark before the end of the episode. This increased the action and essentially reversed the flow of battle. Additionally, Coop has several other buttons on his dashboard for specific instances, such as a "Destroy Moth-Like Bug" button and a "Save the World" button; however he may not always use them when he has the chance.

References to the phrase

At the end of the film , the film's deus ex machina, a treasure chest containing the main character's gambling winnings has the phrase "Deus ex Machina" written on it.
Deus Ex Machina is the name of the ship Joel Robinson uses to escape from the Satellite of Love on the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000. It should be noted that the escape ship was not so mysteriously discovered behind a box (or several) of Hamdingers.
An episode of Stargate SG-1 is called "Ex Deus Machina". This is a play on words to mean "former god".
In Deus Ex Machina is the name of one of the flying ships that Gargoiles from the Neo-Atlantides used to attack the Neo-Nautilus.
The 19th episode of the TV show Lost is called "Deus Ex Machina". In the episode Locke dreams about a crashed plane, located somewhere on the island. He believes that if he finds the plane, the answer to his problems will present themselves, specifically how to open a mysterious hatch buried under the ground. The plane is found, but does not directly reveal any answers, and instead leads to the death of Boone; however, at the end of the episode a bright light shines from the hatch. The suggestion is that Boone has been "sacrificed" to the island, in the fashion of an angry god.

With intentional irony, the machine figurehead in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions is named the Deus Ex Machina.
In The Simpsons episode "Thank God It's Doomsday", after the rapture occurs and Homer Simpson is taken to heaven, he asks God to reverse what has happened. God agrees, then proclaims "deus ex machina" and normality is restored magically.
In Olive, the Other Reindeer, a movie by Matt Groening, Olive finds a package marked, "To: Olive, From: Deus ex Machina". It contains a metal file which she uses to free herself from captivity in the back of the evil postman's truck.
In The Daily Show segment, "This Week in God", Rob Corddry uses "The God Machine" (also called the Machina Ex Deus) as a physical, floating button to introduce the topics.
In Donnie Darko, Donnie gasps 'deus ex machina' near the end of the movie when he and Gretchen are attacked by two bullies. Donnie says the phrase as an approaching car scares away the bullies.
In the show Angel, characters (such as Cordelia) often have prophetic visions given by the godlike Powers that Be, which can serve as a deus ex machina. At one point, when a ritual to re-ensoul Angel fails to work, Lilah refers to it as a "duds ex machina."

Examples in plot

In Deus Ex, part of the story concerns an artificial intelligence (known as Helios) that believes its destiny is to rule mankind as an omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent being. Thus it is truly the titular god from a machine. Another interpretation is that the main character JC Denton by changing the world (i.e. curing the plague) is the 'god from the machine' that changed the world for the better. Also since he is cybernetically enhanced and genetically engineered, he is literally a god from a machine.
In the Tekken series of video games, several members of the Mishima family have been the victims of acts of violence that would kill almost any human being, and very often that would be the resolution of the conflict which the game was based around. For the character Kazuya in Tekken 4, the deus ex machina is the G Corporation, had "brought him back to life" after being thrown into an active volcano. The other example is the so-called Devil Gene, that apparently renders the bearer immortal.
In Metal Gear Solid, the ending finds Solid Snake and a companion trapped under a crashed Jeep after attempting to escape Liquid Snake and the bombing of the island. Liquid, armed with an assault rifle, staggers forward, about to kill the two. A virus known as "FOXDIE," unknowingly injected into Solid Snake to spread throughout the base, activates, causing Liquid to suffer a fatal heart attack. It is later revealed in a special section of the sequel, , that Naomi Hunter, the woman who programmed FOXDIE to kill Solid Snake because he killed her brother, Gray Fox, set FOXDIE to randomly activate at no predictable time after it came into contact with Snake's DNA. Liquid and Solid were both clones of the same man, and therefore genetic twins.
The ending to Conker's Bad Fur Day is a deus ex machina. In order to defeat the "alien," Conker gets help from an imaginary game programmer who gives him weapons.
In Jade Empire, during the final combat sequence of the game, a dead character named Sagacious Zu helps the player from within the spirit world.
In EarthBound, Ness' progress through an area is blocked by a statue of a pencil. After returning to Twoson, Apple Kid calls Ness proclaiming that he has just invented a "Pencil eraser", which eliminates all pencil shaped objects nearby. A while later, Ness and Jeff battle an enemy known as "Clumsy Robot," which refuses to die (you keep damaging it, but it will eat a bologna sandwich and recover its hit points). It isn't until later that the jazz group Runaway Five runs into the room and switches off the robot, instantly defeating it.
Throughout the Resident Evil series, a recurring theme is that the character receives a rocket launcher or a similarly powerful weapon from an ally while fighting against an otherwise indestructible creature (usually the game's final boss). In the original Resident Evil, the player receives a rocket launcher from a helicopter pilot (Brad Vickers) while fighting against the final boss, the T-002 Tyrant. Likewise, in Resident Evil 2, during either of the "2nd scenarios," the player receives a rocket launcher from Ada while fighting the T-003 Tyrant (a homage to this scene was featured in Resident Evil 4). , " and " (only by unlocking the secret final boss) featured similar situations, in which a weapon needed by the player was conveniently located nearby during the final battle (a railcannon and linear launcher respectively). During the events of Resident Evil 4, Leon and Ashley are implanted with the "Las Plagas" parasites by the main villain, Saddler, and it isn't until the very end of the game that the existence of a machine which destroys the parasites internally is revealed.
At the end of Half-Life 2, Gordon Freeman is saved by the mysterious G-Man who freezes time, seconds after Gordon destroyed the Combine citadel with him and his allies still in the building.
In Mega Man Zero, Zero is seemingly unable to defeat a boss, but an unknown spirit gives him a sword that can.
In the beginning of Mega Man X, X is about to lose a battle with Vile when, seemingly from nowhere, Zero fires a blast, severing the arm of Vile's ride armor, freeing X from certain doom.
In , The Prince, after killing Kaileena for the first time, seems desperate and angsty. Suddenly, while wandering the caverns beneath the Island of Time he finds a mural that shows he can go back and time and change his fate using an artifact called the Mask of the Wraith.
In Star Fox Adventures, during the final battle, Fox seemingly has no way of defeating the enemy, until suddenly, his friend, Falco Lombardi, who had been missing the entire game, swoops down and gives him a weapon to defeat the boss.
In Star Fox Assault, Peppy Hare crashes the Great Fox into the aparoid homeworld's shield, in order for the Star Fox team to get through. The Great Fox is shown exploding, seemingly with no way out for Peppy, but in the epliogue, it was revealed that Peppy miraculously escaped through some sort of escape pod.
In , a Shivan superdestroyer, the Lucifer, is equipped with an energy shield that renders it impervious to all Terran and Vasudan weapons. As Lucifer closes on Earth, survivors from a destroyed Vasudan science station land on a planet where they discover technology that will enable them to track Lucifer into subspace where its shields will not work.
In Fire Emblem, three Fire Dragons are summoned near the end. When all seems hopeless, Brammimond appears and revives Ninian, whom Eliwood defeated earlier in the story. She then summons an ice storm which kills two Fire Dragons and severely weakens the other.
In Command & Conquer, the GDI ending shows the Temple of Nod destroyed by an Ion Cannon, with Kane still inside the temple. However, shortly after the start of Kane returns to lead the Brotherhood of Nod, with no explanation as to how he survived, the only clue to any injuries suffered being a metal plate on his head. The expansion pack Firestorm shows that CABAL may have been responsible for Kane's apparent survival.
In Final Fantasy VIII, Squall and Rinoa are saved from death by exposure to hard vacuum by floating onto a prevously unmentioned, unseen, abandoned spacecraft known as Ragnarok. The ship then becomes the party's aerial transportation for the rest of the game.
In Xenosaga II, as the battle against the Patriarch concludes, Albedo reforms and becomes infused with U-DO. KOS-MOS then activates her Tertiary Equipment, whose development was not complete, to stall the waves from Albedo. Ziggy then crushes a wall so the Elsa can miraculously rescue them, despite being nearly destroyed just seconds before.
In , the Wise One appears at the final lighthouse in one last attempt to convince the team not to light it. He summons a three-headed dragon, which the team kills. They soon find out that it was a mutated fusion of Isaac's father and Jenna's and Felix's parents. All three were near-dead due to the battle. After the Mars Star was cast into the lighthouse, however, we find out that everybody survived the encounter due to an undercalculated burst of psynergy emmitted when the beacon was lit. It is also discovered that the Wise One actually did want them to light the beacon, and merely wanted to see if they had the strength to keep going after terrible loss. This is arguably a deus ex machina.
Also in , Alex makes his way to the top of Mount Aleph to absorb the power of the Golden Sun, which was comprised of the energy from each of the four beacons. Believing that he had infinite life and power from absorbing the energy, he was defeated by the Wise One, who said that Alex did not absorb the full power of the Golden Sun, because he imbued the Mars Star with some of it, transferring that portion into Isaac.
In , the main characters realize that their troubles are caused by glitches in the fourth dimension — a society that created the third dimension for entertainment purposes.
In the RPG videogame Mega Man X Command Mission During the battle with Great Redips at the end of the game, one of his attacks is "Deus Ex Machina"

References to the phrase

A strange and in some ways groundbreaking game called Deus Ex Machina, created by a company called Automata was released for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in October 1984, and ported to other platforms (ex., Commodore 64) later.
In Maken X, on the opening screen the words "deus ex machina" are heard, and the premise is a sword with the ability to control people and take any form, everyone it "brain jacks" is left in a sort of purgatory within the sword itself.
In ', the final level aboard the Acclamator-class assault transport Prosecutor is called Deux Ex Machina'''. The player's commando team is required to defend itself against incoming droid squads, while slicing several computer terminals. Slicing the terminals turns on the Prosecutor's automated turbolaser turrets, enabling the Republic ship to defend herself against a Trade Federation Droid Control Ship.
In Armored Core 2, Deus Ex Machina is the name of an enemy 'AC' that you fight in arena mode.
In , the enemy boss Great Redips possesses an attack called Deus Ex Machina, which hurls several meteors on the player's party.
In World of Warcraft, the Paladin class of characters possesses an ability termed Divine Intervention, which both nominally and functionally references deus ex machina. The ability sacrifices the paladin to protect the targeted player from harm and remove the targeted player from combat. This ability represents the interference of an external force to effectively save a player from otherwise certain death.
In , the main antagonist (Von Bolt) uses a Super CO Power called Ex Machina, which causes 3HP of damage in a small area and prevents affected units from moving. "Ex Machina" is fitting here since Von Bolt is connected to a life-support/computer machine.
In Camperdown, Sydney, Deus Ex Machina is a motorbike customisation company, that uses new yamaha bikes as the basis for TT and cafe racer style tourers.
In Final Fantasy X-2, the main antagonist Shuyin controls Vegnagun in one of the closing battles. An attack he uses is called Deus Ex Machina.
In Final Fantasy X, Rikku can gain a weapon called Deus Ex Machina, which has firestrike, icestrike, waterstrike and thunderstrike.

Music

Deus ex Machina is an Italian avant-progressive rock group formed in the late 1980s who sing in Latin.
Norwegian singer Liv Kristine (former member of Theatre of Tragedy, now Leaves' Eyes) named her first solo album, released in 1998, "Deus Ex Machina".
The Smashing Pumpkins album MACHINA/The Machines of God (followed by an internet-only release MACHINA II/The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music) took its title from an abbreviation of the phrase. Frontman Billy Corgan wrote the concept album based on the media's exaggerated characterization of the band members. "La deux Machina" is also the name of an unreleased instrumental track recorded in the "MACHINA" studio sessions.
Deus ex Machina is the title of a track from the German metal band Schmerz's self-titled album.
Deus Ex Machinae is also the name of the first album released by the SID metal band Machinae Supremacy.
Electric Skychurch has an EP entitled Together in which the first song is entitled Deus and the last Deus ex Machina.
Deus ex Machina is the title of a track from William Orbit's classic 1993 album Strange Cargo III.
Deus Ex Machina is the title of a track from Mars Volta's guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez solo project called released in 2004.
La Muy Bestia Pop a Venezuelan industrial/experimental-rock band has an album entitled Deus Ex Machina
Moi dix Mois's album Beyond the Gate includes a song titled Deus ex Machina.
Deus ex Machina is the title of a track from the Brighton-based artist Backini's second album Re:Creation.
Also a song by the band Laibach, on their album Jesus Christ Superstar.
"Deus Ex Machina" is a song by Quebecois cyber-metal band Obliveon.
"Ex Machina" is the title of a 1998 7" album by the science-fiction-surf-punk band Man or Astro-man?.

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