Morton's Fork

"The king is having sex with his daughter, and to keep suitors from marrying her, he asks them to solve a riddle. If they don't solve it, he kills them. If they do solve it, he also kills them, since the answer is 'the king is having sex with his daughter.'" —Narrator, "Pericles, Prince of Tired Plots" by Francis Heaney

A character is presented two alternatives, A and B. If the character chooses A, then something bad happens. If he or she chooses B, a similar or identical bad thing happens — but for a different reason.

The name comes from the tax-collecting practices of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor under Henry VII. He reasoned that anyone who was living extravagantly was rich, and so could afford high taxes, while anyone who was living frugally had saved a lot, and so could afford high taxes. Bear in mind before you get too crazy that this was typically used to keep people well-known to be well-off anyway from trying to weasel their way into not paying; he wasn't exactly trying to collect from peasants in hovels. Instead, he was trying to abolish a then-common excuse for not paying taxes (that is, not having any money to do so).

This is often confused with "Hobson's choice." Thomas Hobson leased horses, and in order to make sure all got used and exercised, he had customers automatically assigned the one nearest the door rather than let them pick which one they wanted; the customer's "choice" was "Take the horse assigned, or don't get any horse." A Hobson's choice is a false choice because although there are two results, one is so empty you must take the other. A Morton's Fork is a false choice because there is only one result to take.

Compare Xanatos Gambit, where this is weaponized in a specific type of Plan and often used by The Chessmaster. See also Sadistic Choice, which similarly forces characters to choose between two untenable choices, except that it's Played for Drama. Characters often attempt to respond by Taking a Third Option, with varying degrees of success. They may instead pick one to Get It Over With. If they get sick of being cheated, see Ballistic Discount. If the fork is deliberately placed into a test, this is Unwinnable Training Simulation.

Examples of Morton's Fork include:

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• Literature
• Video Games
• Real Life

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Anime and Manga

• Utilized to epic proportions in the manga version of the final battle against Chaos in Sailor Moon, in which the main character has the choice of either destroying Chaos utterly and the Cauldron with it, thus dooming their galaxy to a slow extinction as no new lives will be created from it or just possibly momentarily delaying the Ultimate Evil's return resulting in a massive intergalatic war...in which hundreds of billions of people may die anyway but would still end up being reborn because the Cauldron is still there. Guess which option she chooses?
  • That's actually sugar-coating the choice. Chaos would likely return from being "destroyed utterly", too, and the second option listed there is actually the third option. The second option — which was taken by Sailor Cosmos in her original timeline — was simply to flee, leaving the Cauldron intact, but not even delaying Chaos.
• During the fight with Dynamis in Mahou Sensei Negima Dynamis fakes being downed then launches an attack that Negi can make go through him. If he does, his students will be hit and killed. If he doesn't, he takes a huge sword to the stomach, but can heal it off. Not stated but quite probable is that either choice will also probably cause him to go berserk, either due to having to use Magic Erebea for a healing factor or rage at what happened to his students.
• Episode 11 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica comes down to this. An incredibly powerful witch called Walpurgisnacht is coming, and Homura has three choices:
  • Try to stop it without Madoka's help, fail and watch it destroy the world;
  • Stop it with Madoka's help, but watch Madoka become an even stronger witch in the aftermath and destroy the world; or...
  • Essentially flee by going back in time and starting over.
  • The "correct" answer is... Letting Madoka handle it. By that point, all of the time resets have made Madoka's potential powers stronger - and she also grows wise enough to make a 100% Selfless Wish that not only kills Walpurgisnacht, but grants a Mercy Kill to all the Witches that have ever existed. Including herself.

Comic Books

• There's a Chuck Dixon arc wherein Two-Face kidnaps Robin and forces him to choose between hanging Batman and District Attorney Meany. Robin attempts to Take a Third Option and reminds Two-Face of his schtick, Two-Face flips his coin, and Meany's number is up. The trapdoor drops, Meany starts to hang, and Robin, still thinking outside the box, throws a batarang to sever the rope — which causes Meany to drop into the water below, and drown. Two-Face then tries to kill Batman, with predictable results. Morton's Fork applies because not only was Two-Face clearly planning on killing both men no matter who Robin chose, but he also managed to plan for the third option.
  • Two-Face, and occasionally other villains in the Batman mythos (particularly the Joker, depending on what day of the week it is) use stuff like this all the time.
• At one point in Ex Machina, Mayor Hundred is on a talk-radio show and has been asked if he, in the eventuality that Osama bin Laden was captured and put on trial in the US, would support or oppose his execution. Answering yes goes against his own political statements as a firmly anti-death-penalty politician, but answering no makes him sound like he is sympathetic to bin Laden. He instead calls the interviewer a "motherfucker" and walks out, pointing out to his staff that there is absolutely no correct answer to that question.

Film — Live Action

• While in the Saw series, most of the traps essentially did this, traps set by Amanda were inescapable. This left victims the choice of dying horribly from the trap or killing themselves horribly while trying to escape the trap with no option to survive.
• In Life of Brian, Brian doesn't want to be the Messiah. Unfortunately:

Brian: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly! Girl: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity. Brian: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah! Followers: He is! He is the Messiah!

• In Mystic River, Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) confronts Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins) about the murder of Markum's daughter. Markum is wrongfully convinced that Boyle killed her, so he tells him to, "Admit it and I'll let you live." Boyle confesses to save his life, so Markum kills him. In the book this is made a little clearer, and (slightly) justified. Jimmy needs to know WHY his daughter was killed, and he's demanding an honest answer. When Dave answers, Jimmy can tell that he's lying, and kills him for lying about the reason.

Fan Works

• Gensokyo 20XX:
  • Played with and played straight, though being a bit reconstructed, in Gensokyo 20XXI in two instances. One is where Yukari had to leave Reimu behind to ensure her safety but, as we could see, leaving her behind ensured she could have and was virtually dying of starvation and freezing. This is summarized in Ran's narration (from Chapter 11)
    • Also from Chapter 11, Ran thinks of the idea to take Reimu to the hospital but acknowledges that doing so could A) lead them to be captured for being youkai and B) the cold could kill her, so Ran decides to Take a Third Option and place Reimu under a hibernation spell that will not be broken until Yukari returns.
  • This, along was discussed in chapter 23 of 20XXII and was alluded to as a possibility as to why Reimu was returned but Yume wasn't.
• Covered in Kill la Kill AU, Room 002108, where it is brought up that by the test result came back and Ryuuko had not shown signs of improvement before then, she would either be dead or, if her condition was cancer, the disease will have hit terminal, in both cases, it will have been too late.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Important Things with Demetri Martin, a sketch has him choosing whether to sit next to a beautiful young woman or an old man at a wedding reception. Both scenarios end with the same savage beating by the same group of thugs.
• In the final episode of Blackadder II, Blackadder is given a choice: admit to being in love with Satan "and all his little wizards" and get his testicles chopped off with a scythe and roasted over a fire, or don't admit it and be held upside down in a vat of warm marmalade...and get his testicles chopped off with a scythe and roasted over a fire. Naturally he chooses the former, but is "rescued" before the threat can be carried out.
• In the penultimate episode of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, the senshi find themselves facing down Mamoru, who's been possessed and corrupted by Metallia. If they lose the battle, the world will be destroyed, but the only way to win the battle will also trigger the end of the world. They win the battle and the world does end, though a Heroic Sacrifice helps it get better.
• Usually invoked Once an Episode on Allo Allo, where René is constantly put in a position where he can help the resistance and be shot by the Nazis, or collaborate with the Nazis and get shot by the resistance. Rule of Funny keeps him alive.
  • One episode has this happen where he is forced to collaborate with the Nazis, the Resistance, and the Communist Resistance, all who will kill him if they find out he's been working with the other.
• In How I Met Your Mother, Lily and Marshal have a bet to see who can collect 5 people's phone numbers first. If Marshall wins, they have sex in the bathroom. If Lily wins, they have sex in the bathroom. Lily comments that this is their standard wager.
• In an episode of Stargate Atlantis, after everything goes predictably wrong, Rodney is asked what options they have. His response?

Rodney: Let me see, we've got quick death, slow death, painful death, cold, lonely death...

Music

• The Clash, "Should I Stay Or Should I Go":

If I go there will be trouble If I stay it will be double

Mythology and Religion

• Cuchulain in Irish myth would lose his strength if he refused a meal, or consumed dogflesh. His enemies learned this and promptly invited him to dine on dogflesh, meaning he'd lose his powers either way.
• Older Than Feudalism example from the New Testament: The Pharisees tried this trick several times to try and turn Jesus' popularity against him. In Mark 12:13, they asked whether the Jews should pay the oppressive taxes imposed on them by their Caesar. If he said yes, then he was acknowledging that Caesar ruled over the Jews. If he said no, he was guilty of treason. He didn't let this trip him up. The phrase "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's" is familiar enough, but the subtext isn't quite obvious: apparently, when the Pharisees showed him the coin with Caesar's image, they must have realised they were dealing with the (obviously, forbidden) image of a false god, and for that reason were ready to stop arguing about matters of impiety.
  • Another interpretation is that it was an intentional bit of ambiguous wordplay that can go either way. After all, what isn't God's?
• Nasruddin Hodja acted as a Trickster, especially when people pestered him for a piece of wisdom. Once when he had to preach but wasn't in a mood for this, he talked his way out of it... three times in a row:

Nasruddin: O people of Akshahir! Do you know and understand what I am about to say to you? The people: No, we don't. Nasruddin: What?! How can I speak to such ignorant people! (leaves) Nasruddin (one week later): O people of Akshahir! Do you know and understand what I am about to say to you? The people: (remembering what had happened the last time) Yes, we do. Nasruddin: Wonderful! Then there is no need for me to speak to you today. Nasruddin (one more week later): O people of Akshahir! Do you know and understand what I am about to say to you? The people: (Some shout "No", some "Yes") Nasruddin: Wonderful! Now let those who know tell those who do not know.

• Buddha met his death this way when he was kindly offered a meal which unknowingly contained bad food. While Buddha knew the food wasn't safe to eat, the people offering it to him didn't. Either Buddha could have gone against his beliefs and refused hospitality or eaten the food and let his health suffer. He ate the food and died from it, but was fine as it was his time to die.

Tabletop Games

• One issue of Dragon has a list of riddles the gynosphinx might use, with the usual deal that if the PCs fail to answer them correctly, they're lunch. One of them, to be issued when the sphinx's hunger overcomes her fairness, has the solution "Kill me".
• Paranoia is all about setting up situations where The Computer and your secret society both assign you dangerous, mutually contradictory goals, and have the means to punish you if you don't deliver. And then you have to deal with your fellow Troubleshooters and all of their contradictory goals.
  • One of the best examples is from the adventure module Me and My Warbot Mark IV, which includes a "debriefing questionnaire" to be completed at the end of the adventure. Instructions on the form include the line "Answer all questions fully, completely, correctly, and honestly. Failure to do so is treason!". And of course, Question #6 is "YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS INSUFFICIENT TO VIEW THIS QUESTION. HAVE A NICE DAYCYCLE." But it still has a blank for the character to write in his answer...
    • A popular question is "Are you a happy Communist? Yes/No". As long as the player isn't allowed to elaborate, you either say you're a Communist (treason) or you're not happy (also treason). An even more insidious one, which will likely get you even if you elaborate, is "Are Communists happy? Explain why/why not". If you think Communists are happy, you imply Communism is a good way to live (Communist sympathiser!) If not, the Computer will ask why anyone would want to be a commie if it makes them unhappy (it doesn't make sense, and implies you're lying or hiding something).
      • A variation on "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
• This is very common in Chess as a way of gaining advantage over one's opponent. For example, combination attacks such as forks and discovered attacks allow a player to threaten two pieces simultaneously with the idea that their opponent won't be able to protect both of them.
• There's a method of play in bridge called a Morton's Fork Coup, which gives the defender two options, both of which cost him a trick.
• Certain articles on Warhammer 40000 present this as the key to winning. If you have a squad of Devastators positioned to cover an objective, for instance, and your foe has troops sitting on that objective, then you have presented him with two bad options: sit where you are and get blasted to pieces, or abandon a key position to go chasing after the enemy.
• A particularly infamous dilemma in Dungeons&Dragons was the paradox of a Paladin being sent by his lord to kill a succubus and than finding out that the succubus had been summoned by a wizard, both of whom genuinely and mutually loved each other. A paladin, bound by his oath, must protect pure love but also obey commands given by a legitimate authority.
  • Part of the Book of Exalted Deeds was dedicated to providing the Paladin with a third option: when faced with this dilemma, protecting pure love is more important and takes precedence, and therefore you ignore the order. In fact, you are encouraged to figure out whether the 'legitimate' authority might actually be corrupt, because a just leader wouldn't (knowingly) give you such an order.
• Pretty much the only strategy possible in Tic Tac Toe beyond "hope your opponent is an idiot".

Theater

• The page quote is a reasonably accurate summary of act I of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The title character tries to Take a Third Option by stalling; this leads the king becoming suspicious of him and deciding to kill him anyway.
• Nathan the Wise is set in Jerusalem during a ceasefire in the course of the Crusades. In the interest of keeping that peace, Saladin and the Catholic Church have agreed on a law that makes both proselytizing and apostasy punishable by death. The local representative of the Corrupt Church asks the title character to answer which of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is the true religion, knowing that because of those laws, Nathan will be put to death if he chooses any of the three. Nathan takes a third (technically fourth) option.
• Repeatedly played for laughs in The Merchant of Venice.
  • Launcelot, who wants to get out of working for Shylock, reasons that his master is a devil...but still, if he runs away and breaks his contract, he'll commit a sin, and then he'll be working for the devil anyway. He finally makes up his mind to run away, since he figures that the real devil is the lesser of two evils.
  • Later, Launcelot explains to Jessica that because the children suffer for the sins of the parents, she'll go to hell for being Shylock's daughter--the only way out is to turn out not to be his daughter. Jessica points out that, by that logic, she'd go to hell as punishment for her mother's unfaithfulness. Launcelot sums it up: "Truly then I fear you are damned both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother; well, you are gone both ways."
• In As You Like It, Touchstone tries to argue for unchastity in this manner. It doesn't work.

Touchstone : No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. Jacques [Aside]: A material fool! Audrey: Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me honest. Touchstone : Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish.

Webcomics

• This page by Luke Surl.
  • If what happens on page 72 is that he explains why he believes in predestination, that actually makes perfect sense, since of course he's going to do that regardless of what you believe.
• Moloch von Zinzer in Girl Genius has "a remarkably astute grasp of the situation" here. Either he follows Agatha on a suicide mission to save her Love Interest, or he parts ways with her, exposing himself to the castle's destructive sense of humour. His attempt to make her consider finding another boyfriend fails.
• In Xkcd:
  • The classic Knights and Knaves puzzle (one always tells the truth, the other always lies...) is parodied in this strip. What makes this a Morton's Fork is that there's a third guy who "stabs anyone who asks tricky questions", making a three-tined Fork. Answer incorrectly, you are lost forever. Stay silent, you are trapped. The only way to answer correctly is to ask a tricky question, at which point, the third guy would kill you. According to the alt-text, the maze goes nowhere. It's just a trap to kill cunning logicians.
  • This strip makes a similar point about DRM.
• Oglaf pulls a version of this which starts out as a Sadistic Choice (Ivan is presented with either succumbing to poison or licking the antidote off of Sandoval's genitalia), but morphs into a proper Morton's Fork when the antidote turns out to be poison as well. The poor guy can't catch a break.
• In The Order of the Stick, Tarquin explains that he actually wants his son to fight him later on. If Tarquin wins he is a powerful ruler. If he loses then he becomes immortalized in stories, inspiring more to try to reach what he had, spawning more people like him. To quote him;

"If I win, I get to be a king. If I lose, I get to be a legend."

And as he points out, no matter what Elan does he's already lived like a king for years and Elan doesn't have a chance of taking him down for quite some time. Even if he died completely forgotten and anonymous, he still thinks he's won.

• Bun-bun faces this at the top of this Sluggy Freelance strip.
• Nip and Tuck take on headaches feminism can give even its most dedicated supporters.
  • If you use sex appeal, you're pandering to the patriarchy, but you can do what you want with your own body; just don't get on anyone else's case for using sex appeal. If you aren't sexy, you may be repressed, or modest, or poor, or simply not wanting to bother; it all depends on why. Some women can take care of themselves, some can't, and it's irresponsible to treat one as the other. Unless one member of the relationship (male or female) is either fabulously rich or dead broke, it's inappropriate to ALWAYS pay (control freak) or NEVER pay (irresponsible jerk/tightwad); as with all other obligations, a healthy balance works best. The lesson, as always: Use your head and don't listen to ignorant loudmouths (which could apply to several other entries on this page).
• Amazing Super Powers has this one.
• Raven from Dark Wings gets a summons about a prospective job with a meeting at 10:00...with the summons deliberately arriving at 9:30. He has to either ignore it, thereby insulting the powerful nobles who sent it, or else be put at an instant bargaining disadvantage by the near-certainty of being late.
  • Of course, he was wise to that trick and it just made him angry...but they were counting on him getting mad and storming out...

Web Original

• The aftermath of Change the Channel and Not So Awesome was a huge Morton's Fork: those who stayed with Channel Awesome ended up becoming target practice by Linkara and Obscurus Lupa, and pariahs to everyone else who left. Those who left lost the stable income, vast resources and name recognition that came with being part of Channel Awesome, and thus ended up with money problems, their shows having their production values cut down, and being unable to entice new viewers and/or get much recognition outside their established fanbase.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • Lampshaded in one episode, when Bart and Lisa are being hazed by cadets at a military academy:

Cadet: What's the matter? Don't girls like doing push-ups in the mud? Lisa: Is there any answer I can give that won't result in you making me do more push-ups? (Cadets talk amongst themselves for a few seconds) Cadet: No.

• • In a Treehouse of Horror segment set during the Salem witch trials, Marge was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to being thrown off a cliff. If she died, it would be an "honorable Christian death". If she survived, it'd be taken as proof that she's a witch, in which case she would be executed. The whole thing fell apart when she turned out to be a witch after all, and used her powers to escape punishment and exact revenge. The townsfolk were completely unprepared for this, since the witch trials were apparently less about finding actual witches and more about setting innocent people up as scapegoats for every little thing that went wrong.
  • When Homer goes to India and comes to believe himself a god, Lenny and Carl come to visit him and are met by a guard who offers them a choice between two doors, explaining that Homer Simpson is behind one and a Bengal tiger is behind the other. When it turns out that both doors have a tiger behind them, the guard explains "One of these tigers is named Homer Simpson."
• In one of the last episodes of the Rocky and Bullwinkle series, Boris was caught in one where, after stealing a raft-load of goods, the award he received for the deed caused the raft to begin sinking. If the goods sunk, Boris would be shot, and if he threw away the award to stop the raft from sinking, he'd still be shot. Whichever one happened, a shot was heard offscreen by the heroes.

Folklore

• There is a legend that says one of the Han Emperors of China one day met a Silver Lightning Snake. The snake said: If you cut my head off, I will destroy you, if you cut my tail off, I will destroy your empire. The emperor cut her in half. From the remains sprang Wang Mang, the guy who split the Han-Dynasty in half and was later overthrown by Han Guangwu, who founded the Later Han.

Newspaper Comics

• Doonesbury ran a picture of an American flag in response to the proposed anti-flag desecration amendment. Every way of disposing of it would be in violation of the amendment, meaning it had to be kept forever