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Is a million to one good odds?

Saying that the odds of something happening are ""a million to one"" is actually equivalent to saying that it's a million times more likely to happen than not. The correct expression for something extremely improbable would be a million to one odds against.

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MillionToOneChance

Elan, The Order of the Stick "A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!" In layman's terms: if there's a million to one chance against something of vital importance happening, then it's that one time rather than the other nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine times. This is Truth in Television in a sense, that if an extremely improbable event occurs to someone, chances are that it's his story that's told. What the trope hinges on is the reality that each audience member is an individual, and, thus, their own "number one": undeniably, each audience member is one in an increasing number from six billion, so, that single chance offers each of them the avenue to imbue it with themselves — "you are the single chance"; if the chance is missed, it can break catharsis for the viewer, as they may feel, in a sense, that they are being left behind. This comes up most frequently when characters say Never Tell Me the Odds!, and occasionally when someone makes a few calculations. A good approximation of these odds is the chance of flipping a coin twenty times and getting heads every time.

It is still played straight, but it is also widely parodied.

Incidentally, in statistics, odds are defined as a ratio of the probability of an event happening to the probability of it not happening. Saying that the odds of something happening are "a million to one" is actually equivalent to saying that it's a million times more likely to happen than not. The correct expression for something extremely improbable would be a million to one odds against. Many examples omit that bit, but given the nature of this trope, they may not be entirely wrong. A corollary of the Theory of Narrative Causality. May involve Finagle's Law, or a Coincidental Broadcast. Not to be confused with One to Million to One, or the web game One Chance.

As a narrative trope, no real life examples.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Comic Books

In Superhero comics, one-in-a-million chance is code for 100% certainty. Increase to 200% for characters like Longshot. In the Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Gladstone Gander's luck usually beats all odds. Huey, Dewey and Louie even tried to use it against him in the Don Rosa story "Oolated Luck". Donald and Gladstone entered a raffle and Donald's nephews had one entry ticket with Donald's name and the others for Gladstone. Donald won the first prize (a trip in a cruise ship) and Gladstone won the second prize (a lifetime supply of oolated squigs). It turned out Gladstone was lucky for not winning the trip since the ship got stuck in an iceberg. The lucky bastard didn't seem to be concerned for his cousin) And one of the squigs had swallowed a diamond.

Fan Works

In Ponies After People, the number of people left behind is between 1/250,000 and 1/1,000,000 depending on the area. However, it is possible for small towns to have multiple ponies, or big cities to have none at all. In the story Yet again, with a little extra help, during a swordsman tournament in the Land of Iron, Sasuke and Tenten are facing each other, and Naruto makes his bet. The two fight out to a tie, and Naruto won all the money on that fight . Scabbard: You flipped a coin when you placed bets on this fight didn't you.

Naruto: Yeah, you got me.

Scabbard: And You flipped a coin when you placed bets on this fight didn't you.Yeah, you got me.And it landed on its side... didn't it?

. The Powers of Harmony: One of the abilities of the Element of Laughter is to invoke this trope to the bearer's advantage or that of their allies. Inversely, it can also be used to cause your enemies bad luck. The odds might be better than a million to one in this example, but in the tournament finals of Yu-Gi-Oh The Thousand Year Door Redux, both Drake and Kyle are in a no-win situation. It became obvious days ago that this was Not Just a Tournament, and whoever wins the duel between them will duel one of the Queen's three Designated Victims, a situation which, judging by what happened in the first three duels of the semi-finals, will be bad for whoever wins their duel, and worse for whoever the winner duels next. But Kyle does have an idea, although he doesn't have much time to explain it to Drake: Drake: This better be a good plan, Kyle.

Kyle: Actually, it's a stupid plan, As in, the type you try when you're desperate, and people tell you 'it would never work', but it's the only thing you can think of because you're in a pretty bad situation?

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Kyle: Exactly. Still, I seem to remember that when Kaiba gave Yugi that Fiend's Sanctuary card before his duel with Marik, he claimed it would improve Yugi's chances from 3% to 20%. Not the best improvement, but it was enough. So start hoping that slightly improving the odds in our favor will help me pull it off Experiments with the Zoolinef drug in Manehattan's Lone Guardian, prior to being used on an actual pony, gave every indication that it would work without fail. Juniper Leaf later admits that they didn't account for the one-in-a-million chance that it would fail, resulting in Gray's mind being tampered with instead of her body .

Films — Animation

In Titan A.E., Cale Tucker space-floats around a docking bay, when his friend warns him against the chance of an actual docking ship. He responds with, "Coward! You know the odds of a ship docking are a thousand-to-one!" Once the Valkyrie shows up, Cale then turns around and utters the line, "...and that would be the one." Played straight by Chicken Run in the spirit of Screw Destiny. Bunty tells Ginger that the chickens ever escaping Tweedy's Farm is a million to one chance, Ginger retorts "Then there's still a chance." Of course, even Ginger is only able to keep up the straight face until she's outside and alone, at which point she cries and rages angrily at the hopelessness of their situation. And there's the sound of far-off thunder or rather cannonfire ... ... The Adventures of Tintin (2011): Tintin: Bad news, Captain. We've only got one bullet.

Haddock: And what's the good news?

Tintin: We've got ONE bullet. Bad news, Captain. We've only got one bullet.And what's the good news?

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said. The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one... but still, they come." If not a trope namer, then surely a trope named-after.

Myth & Religion

In the story of Gideon in the biblical Book of Judges, God instructs Gideon to reduce his army to only 300 men and arm them only with torches and pitchers, just so it would be even more obvious that the battle was won thanks to divine intervention.

Newspaper Comics

In a 1963 Peanuts comic strip , Schroeder says the odds of him marrying Lucy are a googol (10^100) to one. She asks how much that is and the comic actually shows one followed by a hundred zeroes. It's pretty much a Wall of Text.

Pro Wrestling

This trope is very common among the top babyfaces in Professonal Wrestling. So common, in fact, that the fans became very Genre Savvy when WWE attempted to invoke this trope on John Cena. Thanks to this, his already simmering and vocal Hatedom just got louder, citing his status as an Invincible Hero, and each pay per view ended up as a monthly "pay to watch John Cena overcome impossible odds once again" event to them. The culmination was at 2006's New Year's Revolution pay per view, where Cena was the first in the Elimination Chamber, surviving through 5 men while having about 90% of the fans in attendance against him. The crowd seemed ready to riot. Then Edge, one of the most hated men in the company at that time, backdoored his way into a match right after this and subverted this trope, defeating Cena to win his title despite being fresh and Cena having just fought through five men in a steel cage. The crowd was so happy to see this subverted that Edge became one of the biggest stars in the company almost overnight. Cena's hatedom has since cooled down when WWE downplayed him being a one-man odds beating machine. Cena's hatedom has since cooled down when WWE downplayed him being a one-man odds beating machine. Of course, John Cena is far from the worst offender of invoking this trope. Hulk Hogan in WCW was doing this to such a degree that C-3PO's head would explode trying to calculate the odds. The 1996 Uncensored PPV had Hulk Hogan team up with his then buddy Randy Savage to take on the Alliance to End Hulkamania. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Meng, The Barbarian, Lex Luger, Kevin Sullivan, Z-Gangsta (Zeus), and The Ultimate Solution. That's right, an 8 on 2 advantage, in a triple-decker steel cage! Hogan wins.

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Visual Novels

Web Animation

In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device Special 6: Tabletop Adventures, the characters play a Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Naturally, the Player Characters go Off the Rails, ending up in a battle against a way-too-powerful enemy called the Gorger-Lord. One of them tries to attack him, but the Game Master informs him that the Gorger-Lord has a Toughness of 70 — meaning he ignores that much damage from every attack. Since the player character's attack only does damage based on the throw of a ten-sided die plus three, there's no way he can harm the Gorger-Lord. Except, of course, that when you throw a 10, you can throw again for more damage. Still, it would take getting a 10 seven times in a row to get more than 70 damage. Though these numbers are not pointed out in the story, the possibility of that happening is one out of ten multiplied by one out of ten etc. seven times — one out of 10,000,000. So naturally the player rolls a 10 eleven times (chance one in 100,000,000,000).

The video where a guy playing Team Fortress 2 gets killed though a exploit involving a tiny unnoticeable crack in the wall. While he's looking for the crack in the wall a week or so later, the same guy that did that to him randomly joins the game and runs into the correct spot (which should be mentioned needs to be near pixel perfect) seconds after the guy finds the crack for the first time, allowing him to get revenge by killing him in the same exact manner. Seriously... What Are The Odds!?

Webcomics

Web Videos

In TableTop, The odds of Ryan Higa 's feat of rolling ten brains on his first turn in Zombie Dice infinity . Wil Wheaton speculates that, in order to balance his luck out, somewhere in the universe a planet spontaneously imploded. . Wil Wheaton speculates that, in order to balance his luck out, somewhere in the universe a planet spontaneously imploded. Some of Chuggaaconroy's victories throughout his Pokémon LPs definitely count: Finding and catching a shiny Koffing. note Finding a Shiny Pokémon in general is a 1 in 8,192 chance. Catching it is even less likely — thankfully, the Koffing was low enough level to not have Selfdestruct Catching Groudon in a freaking Nest Ball. His reaction certainly says so as well. Likewise, the capture of Latias from the same LP. Given the very improbable conditions at the time (a level 50 Pokémon at full health, also with a Nest Ball) , his odds were just 0.4% . When the Game Grumps played the Playstation 2 Wheel of Fortune game, Danny landed on "Lose a Turn" four times in a row. As one comment points out: Supermutant6112: Alright, there are 24 spaces on the board. Every single turn, there is a 1 in 24 chance of landing on the "Lose a turn" spot. This means that Danny had a (1/24)^4 chance of getting FOUR turns lost. That is one in three-hundred-thirty-three-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-six, or, to put it in simpler terms, Alright, there are 24 spaces on the board. Every single turn, there is a 1 in 24 chance of landing on the "Lose a turn" spot. This means that Danny had a (1/24)^4 chance of getting FOUR turns lost. That is one in three-hundred-thirty-three-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-six, or, to put it in simpler terms, three in a million. During a 2021 Fortune Cookie stream, ProtonJon rolled the same game twice in a row (with a safeguard message noting how lucky that was to roll the same game in a regular cookie poll). This has happened before, but it was when Jon had a fraction of the games he does now (which is still a rather large collection).

Western Animation

tvtropes.org - Million to One Chance - TV Tropes

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