We disprove the four-dimensional disc embedding conjecture without a fundamental-group hypothesis, even when no homotopy classes or output framings are prescribed. We construct a compact oriented smooth four-manifold containing finitely many disc maps with framed algebraic dual spheres whose boundary circles bound no disjoint locally flat discs. Consequently, the free group on two generators is not good in the sense of Freedman–Quinn, and neither is any group containing it as a subgroup.

We disprove the unrestricted four-dimensional disk-embedding conjecture. We construct immersed disks in a compact oriented smooth four-manifold with framed algebraic dual spheres satisfying the usual equivariant intersection and reduced self-intersection conditions, but with no pairwise disjoint locally flat replacements that preserve the boundary maps and induced normal framings. The obstruction holds even when the replacement disks' relative homotopy classes are not prescribed.

We construct a finitely presented integral Poincaré duality group of dimension four that has a finite classifying space but is not the fundamental group of any closed aspherical topological four-manifold. This gives a negative answer to Wall's manifold-realization question in dimension four.