Yet another boner for the Joker.
Sonic: I was just trying to protect you!
Tails: How? By putting me in more danger?
Sonic: The plan had holes!
Tails: How? By putting me in more danger?
Sonic: The plan had holes!
— Sonic Boom, "The Sidekick"
A situational trope. One character will develop a plan designed to solve a certain problem they're encountering. However, due to their failure to plan ahead, there is a massive gaping flaw in their plan that they — and perhaps the audience — missed. As a result, they are now in a situation where, rather than winning, they are stuck with either a stalemate or an outright loss. Sometimes this may occur because the character never thought that their plan would actually progress as far as it did in the first place. Other times they were in a rush to make the plan and so didn't have time to think about downsides. It frequently results in Blatantly Self-Defeating situations.
A more comedic, simple version of Didn't See That Coming. See also And Then What?, when the flaw is not knowing what to do if the plan succeeds, and Who Will Bell the Cat?, when the flaw is that a vital step of the plan is something no one wants to do. May be the result of What Could Possibly Go Wrong? if the character is overconfident in their plan's success. If the person pointing this out is sufficiently annoyed, this can lead to What Were You Thinking?. May also lead to a This Is Gonna Suck or an Oh, Crap! for the schemer when he realizes how screwed he really is. The audience's usual reaction to this is "What an Idiot!" Compare It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Missing Steps Plan, and Be Careful What You Wish For. May overlap with a "Gift of the Magi" Plot or But Not Too Challenging.
Often overlaps with The Troublemaker. May be caused by someone offering Proof of Commitment.
No Real Life Examples, Please! People have far too commonly ran into a problem like this at least once or twice, so said examples would most likely be redundant.
Example subpages:
- Anime & Manga
- Comic Books
- Fan Works
- Film
- Literature
- Live-Action TV
- Video Games
- Web Animation
- Webcomics
- Web Original
- Western Animation
Works with their own subpages:
- Bone of My Sword
- Calvin and Hobbes
- The Chosen Six
- Harry Potter and the Magic of the Beasts
- Manga Soprano
- Mayday
- Metal Gear: Green (Metal Gear and My Hero Academia)
- MoniRobo
- MoringMark - TOH Comics
- The Odds Were Never In My Favour
- Refreshing Stories
- Revenge Films
- SparkTales
- Scarlet Lady
- A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon)
- Trouble Busters
Other examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- One of Michael Jordan's commercials for his Air Jordan 11 shoes had him facing off against a 100+ foot basketball hoop. This being Jordan, he succeeds in dunking the ball so high up... only to realize too late he had no safe way back down, and spends the rest of the commercial hanging onto the hoop for dear life, even looking at the viewer as if to say, "Uh, a little help?"
- In one Shaw Delivery Bots ad, Bit suggests they create a commercial that's as fast as Shaw's internet. It turns out Shaw's internet service is so fast, no time is left for the bots to address the viewer, leaving Bit to say such a fast commercial may not be such a good idea after all.
- In this commercial for Steri Stumpie
, a boy tells his mother about the urban legend that if a boy and his mother drink a Steri Stumpie at the same time, it will make them both ten years younger. He then goes for a drink when he sees his mom taking a sip. Unfortunately, the boy didn't think about what might happen if he happened to be younger than ten years old when he tested the legend. The result is the boy's Steri Stumpie spilled on the floor and the mother now more youthful, but also visibly pregnant.
- "Victory by Computer": Luthor's gang manages to imprison Supergirl in a locked room in a mob's lair... forgetting that room has a door that leads to their storage room, where they built an emergency escape tunnel.
Asian Animation
- BoBoiBoy:
- BoBoiBoy Fire is prone to not being so bright due to his reckless behaviour. He accidentally causes several burning incidents out of carelessness, and he once attempted to form a combo attack with BoBoiBoy Water, who is quick to point out how combining a fireball with water was never going to work after the attack fails.
- BoBoiBoy Leaf is casually subject to making daft decisions due to being a naive Cloud Cuckoolander, such as trying to eat a space mosquito with fly traps that are much smaller than the bug itself.
- The Lamput episode "Houdini" has the docs coming up with plans to catch Lamput that all fall flat. First, they trap him in a cage, but Lamput is small enough to pass through the gaps in the cage. Then, they lock him in a chest, only for Lamput to morph into a key to free himself. After that they stuff him into a big sack, but Lamput shapeshifts into a pair of scissors and cuts through the sack. It's only when they trap Lamput in a big jar that the docs finally have him... but even then Lamput seemingly dies of suffocation due to the jar lacking air holes, only for him to turn out fine once he's out of the jar.
- Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: In Flying Island: The Sky Adventure episode 32, Sixie asks Wolffy to train him on how to run in a marathon. Wolffy just wants Sixie out of his way, so he asks him to buy a long list of items from a store... but Sixie purchases them online instead of actually going to a store as Wolffy expected. Wolffy then asks Sixie to run over to a faraway car he claims is his, since he apparently lost an item in it. Sixie calls the car driver to bring the car over, at which point Wolffy asks him not to use his phone to complete the tasks.
Comedy
- A routine by Australian comedian Adam Hills highlights the absurdity of his driving licence stating that he must wear his artificial foot.
Hills: I can't reach the pedals without it! What am I gonna do, get in the car, yeah, screw you, coppers, I'm driving without my foot on today! *kicking the air* Oh... Oh... Haven't thought this through at all, have I?
- 1973's The Watergate Comedy Hour starts with President Nixon doing a press conference à la The Tonight Show. When a reporter gets too close for comfort asking about the Watergate break-in, Nixon confers with his second banana, "Doc" Kissinger:
Nixon: Doc...Doc...it looks like I'm up against it. What do we do?
Doc: Well, Mein Herr, it looks like we need a fall guy.
Nixon: But I've used up so many already.
Doc: We need someone in the public interest. Someone close to you, yet someone they would never suspect.
Nixon: Yes, but who?
Doc: Your wife Pat.
Nixon: My wife Pat?! You can't be serious. You don't think for a moment that I would ever entertain the thought of sacrificing someone near and dear to me for the sake of political expediency. No, no. There must be someone else.
Doc: Only you.
Nixon: [after a beat] Uh, it can now be revealed that my wife Pat conceived and led the Watergate affair. I am truly shocked and saddened. Of course, I had no prior knowledge of this illegal act—for you see, Pat and I have never spoken. - Two drunks are fishing when one drags up a Genie in a Bottle, who is ready to grant him one wish. He wishes for the ocean to turn into beer, which is granted. As he looks ecstatically at his companion, he gets slapped upside the head and is told: "You idiot, now we have to piss in the boat!"
- Comedian Mark Forward had a bit complaining about shopping carts that are locked and cannot be used until a quarter is inserted. He asked an employee why they're like that and was told that it's to keep homeless people from stealing them. A baffled Mark then points out the obvious flaw in this plan. Namely, that a lock that is unlocked with spare change will hardly do anything to deter homeless people. "That's the one thing they have an abundance of!"
Comic Strips
- Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes is quite prone to this, enough for its own page — although in his defense, he is only 6 years old.
- Dilbert:
- The October 22, 2011 strip has someone order Dogbert to bribe an Elbonian leader and also get rid of any evidence directing the crime to their company. Dogbert replies that it can only be possible by bribing and killing the Elbonian leader at the same time. And do the CEO first...
- In the November 16, 2016 strip, the CEO announces Employee Fitness Month and says whoever loses the most weight will get a week's paid vacation. He likely shouldn't have given them a three-week warning before the first weigh-in, as everyone bulks up during that time in order to lose more pounds during the month.
- Garfield:
- Garfield once caught a bird and attempted to throw it up in the air and catch it in his mouth, completely forgetting that birds can fly.
- One strip has Jon leaving a pie on the windowsill to cool. Garfield, who is walking outside, sees it and naturally tries to go after it. Jon sees him in time and slams the window shut with a grin... without taking the pie off in the first place, resulting in destroying the pie and smashing its contents over himself.
- When one of Garfield's shows is interrupted for breaking news, he calls a television station to give them a piece of his mind. The plan goes sour when he forgets that all he can say is "Meow".
- In a similar strip, Garfield hears about a radio station contest offering a new house for the first caller to answer a question. When he discovers that "Meow" is the answer, he gets through and wins the prize. Garfield is thrilled... until he finds that he has to give his name and address over the phone as well.
Announcer: Uh, and how do you spell your name, Mr. AAARRRGGHH?
- In the 2006-10-22 strip, when Garfield is about to eat a fish, it warns him that it'll call reinforcements if he comes closer. When he does, the fish calls a bunch of other fish in bowls. Garfield only considers this a sushi bar.
Fish: That didn't have quite the effect I was hoping for.
- In the 2018-07-08 strip, two alien snowmen invade Earth and, before finishing their threat to "puny Earthling" Garfield, melt.
Garfield: Who schedules your invasions?
Alien: Oh, shut up. - The 2020-08-15 strip, a bird tries to attack Garfield from behind and ends up in Garfield's mouth.
Garfield: I don't think he thought that through.
- The 2024-05-26 strip, Garfield took the TV outside so he can watch it while on his hammock. After calling himself a genius, he realizes there's no place to plug it in.
- Bucky in Get Fuzzy has an obsession with eating chickens and monkeys, and an arrogance to match. Multiple story arcs have Rob get sick of Bucky's arrogance and set up "meetings" with said animals. The results predictably end badly for Bucky, who had no idea what to do once faced with — what he later claimed wasn't even a real chicken.
- In one Nancy strip, Nancy decides to set free a bunch of fishing worms Sluggo had. Unfortunately, she ended up tossing them into the water.
Sluggo: That's a lot of happy fish!
Nancy: What have I done?? - In the Zits comic seen here, Jeremy's parents buy a "teen tracker" app, forgetting, apparently, that they don't know jack about how to use them, and have to ask Jeremy to activate it.
- FoxTrot: A lot of Jason's pranks on Paige end out this way. In a Christmas strip, Jason telling Paige he put a mealworm in her eggnog. He then laments telling her as she had a mouthful.
Fairy Tales
- "Hans the Hedgehog": The first king tricks Hans by giving him a signed promise that Hans should get nothing in return for showing him the way through the woods, whereas Hans had demanded that, in exchange for this service, he sign an affidavit to the effect that the king should give him the first thing that greets him when he comes home. The king assumed that Hans was illiterate, which may not have been the case nor particularly relevant in the end. Neither did he consider the possibility that, if he met an anthropomorphic hedgehog, it might just have special powers of which to beware.
- Alexander Afanasyev's "The Soldier and Death": The soldier attempts to trick his way into Heaven by handing his magic sack to one of the souls waiting to enter Heaven and asking the soul to call him into the sack once he is within Heaven. However, the soul is so happy to walk into Heaven that he forgets why he has a sack or what he is supposed to do with it. So, the soldier is left to wander the Earth without his magic sack.
Manhua
- In Goddess Creation System, Xiaxi assumed she'd be whisked out of the feudal Chinese world she found herself in as soon as Mingluan fell for her, so she poisons herself and makes it look like Mingyi first blackmailed her and then did the poisoning to earn back his trust after he catches her faking concern for him. It works, but then the mission continues and she's still poisoned.
- In My Wife Is a Demon Queen, Prince Lolan expects the demon tribe to keep their agreement with him after they broke their agreement with Kahn and Barte. What he hasn't considered is that Kahn and Barte can fight back, but he can't.
Music
- Have you heard the story of Bottleneck Bob? He tried to rob the train with cattle, but evidently forgot they needed to be corralled somehow: "The cattle ran all over the place/And there was Bob with the longest face..."
- In Eminem's "Stan", the title character, furious that his idol Eminem still hasn't responded to any of his letters, is about to drive off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend locked in the trunk of his car and drown them all, and is narrating these events into a tape recorder as a final letter to Eminem. The obvious flaw in his plan — namely, that he can't mail the tape to Eminem if he's dead — doesn't occur to him until just as he's going over the edge.
Well, gotta go, I'm almost at the bridge now.
Oh, shit! I forgot! How am I supposed to send this shit out?! - Kids Praise: The seventh album begins with two separate instances of this trope in action:
- First, Psalty agreed to a history-of-hymns project that would take weeks of research, and would be due in two days. He even admits that he agreed without realizing how long it would take.
- Second, he tries to invent a machine that stretches time to allow himself and the kids to do those weeks of research in under 24 hours. However, he shows it to the kids before he tests it, and is swiftly reminded that kids will be kids..
- The children's song There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. She keeps swallowing creatures to catch the last thing she swallowed.
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat, she swallowed the goat to catch the dog, she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider that wriggled and wriggled and tickled inside her. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly, but I don't know why she swallowed the fly. I guess she'll die.There was an old lady who swallowed a horse. (Beat) She's dead, of course!
- The Dethklok song "Bloodrocuted" tells of an electrician being chased through the woods by bounty hunters because he just so happens to look exactly like a wanted criminal with a large bounty on his head. He stumbles upon an electrical substation and manages to kill the bounty hunters by cutting his arms and electrifying a puddle of his own blood for them to step in. He then realizes that he has no way to patch himself up and will therefore bleed to death very soon.
- Smash Mouth’s Everyday Superhero:
I try to hide my true identity
But no-one knows it's only me. - In the Lemon Demon song Knife Fight, the song ends with the 2 characters realizing how dangerous fighting with knives really is, and they quickly switch to a safer route.
- Hey, wait a minute here!
Oh, what is it?
Knifes are dangerous, we could get hurt!
Hurt? I don't want to get hurt.
Who does?
Okay well, in that case, I challenge you to a...
Tickle fight!
- Stevie Wonder’s song “Please Don’t Hurt My Baby” from A Time To Love portrays a man cheating on his wife, feeling guilty, and trying to escape, only for the woman to threaten to tell his wife. Later, a married woman finds herself in the same situation. Backing vocalists quickly blame the unfaithful for acting so quickly.
- “You shoulda thought about that, boy
Before you were usin’ it like a toy
You shoulda thought about that, boy
Before you did the ooh, aah, ooh aah, ooh ooh aah”
“You shoulda thought about that, girl
Before you were givin’ up that pearl
You shoulda thought about that, girl
Before you did the ooh, aah, ooh aah, ooh ooh aah”
Myths & Religion
- At their peak in The Book of Mormon, the Gadianton Robbers have enough numbers to challenge the combined armies of the Nephite and Lamanite civilisations in open battle. However, their first attempt, though hard-fought, ends in defeat. So, they instead attempt to surround and besiege the Nephite-Lamanite fortress. Except that that fortress has seven years of food stockpiled, while the robbers are supporting themselves purely by hunting wild animals and don't dare start farming for fear of being ambushed. Before long, the besieging robbers are near-starving and are sitting ducks for regular sorties.
- In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods created humanity so that they would work and feed the gods, allowing them to live in leisure. Then the gods couldn't stand the noise people made, so they tried to exterminate them a few times, culminating with The Great Flood. It was apparently successful...until they realized that there was no one left to feed them, nor anything to eat...
- Classical Mythology:
- A greedy king named Midas makes a wish to Dionysus that everything he touches would turn to gold. He gets the wish, and is overjoyed... Until he realizes too late that this means he can no longer eat or drink anything...or touch his daughter. If he had thought more carefully (or just listened to Dionysus' warning that it was a stupid wish), he might have instead just wished for the ability to turn stuff into gold (but not every single thing he touched). Fortunately for Midas, Dionysus took pity on him and showed him how to remove his golden touch and turn his daughter and everything else back to normal. (At least in the original. Many people are told the story as a classic Jerkass Genie story).
- The gods themselves weren't immune to this trope, as seen in the story of the Apple of Discord. The deities of Olympus throw a massive party to celebrate the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, but very deliberately leave Eris, the goddess of chaos, off the guest list for fear that she'll cause trouble. Eris naturally finds out about the bash, crashes it, and throws a golden apple marked "To The Fairest" into the crowd, knowing full well that Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite will get into a massive argument over it; that argument eventually leads to the Trojan War, as Aphrodite bribes Paris, the mortal summoned to choose the fairest goddess, with the promise of Helen of Troy. Apparently the gods didn't consider that Eris would learn about the party—which, to reiterate, the entirety of Olympus went to—or that had they simply invited her in the first place, they would at least not risk making her angry.
Podcasts
- In episode four of Mystery Show, Starlee and a friend attempt a stakeout that fails for a couple of reasons, one of them being that Starlee didn't plan on it being so dark at eight-thirty at night. When she returns to the house later, she finds herself unprepared to explain the situation to the person at the door.
- Red Panda Adventures:
- The Fatal Flaw of the Man of a Thousand Faces, whether it be Alternate Time traveler Baboon McSmoothie or his main universe counterpart Brian McSweenie. They use their shapeshifting powers to impersonate an individual on the spot, but often without first doing any research about who they're impersonating. They are, however, very good at improvising. In "The World Next Door" McSmoothie is spotted trying to break into a building. He tries to blend in with the group of the Red Panda's agents pursuing him, but he's busted only because Harry Kelly realized he wasn't part of the group that came into the building with him. He later tries impersonating the Red Panda, but does so without realizing the main Red Panda's costume is different from his Red Panda's, which gets him caught quickly. When all else fails, and he realizes how different this universe is from his own, he drops the act and simply asks for help.
- In "Eyes of the Idol", he impersonates Dr. Chronopolis's daughter Anna to get hold of a gemstone Dr. Chronopolis was studying. However, he knows nothing about Anna or her relationship to the doctor, only that she has access to an area he needs to enter. As the Red Panda later notes, he did very good at playing along. Specifically he did not say much because he didn't know everyone's relationships, did not react to the Red Panda in case they'd already met, and claimed simply to have heard of him if they hadn't, and calls Dr. Chronopolis "Daddy" once he introduces her as his daughter. Unfortunately inconsistencies add up quickly enough for the Red Panda to trick him into revealing himself.
- In Trials & Trebuchets, Winsler Wallaby is great at coming up with inventive solutions to problems, but extremely impulsive and terrible at considering the repercussions of his actions, and as a result he frequently causes new problems for himself thanks to his half-baked plans.
- In Distractible, Markiplier's Render Farm Arc serves as a shining example of Mark being too excited about technology to realize the repercussions. Throughout the arc, Mark updates the listeners on his status of building a render farm in his house, from setting up the cooling and configuring them. The arc culminates with Mark revealing that he has received a US$3000 bill for just using the render farm for a few days. Because a bunch of beefed up servers set up in a cluster running full load at 24/7 is certainly going to use a lot of power, and he had not considered that fact.
Professional Wrestling
- The matches regarding the Pure Wrestling Title belt in Ring of Honor were often anything but, as the rules were loose enough for wrestlers to do many, many unintended things. It did achieve the goal of having matches unlike any other promotion was having at the time, though, so they just went with it.
- CM Punk's dormant "feud" with Delirious started back up in IWA Mid-South with Punk in pursuit of Delirious's Light Heavyweight Title, but when Punk challenged and beat Delirious, he didn't win the belt because he was above the weight limit.
- Chris Hero mocked Bryan Danielson for this in 2005 when he answered Hero's challenge for an ROH World Title match by signing a contract and then sending it to Hero at CZW so he could sign it too. See, Hero could have just as well have had anybody sign the contract.
- At the 2009 Slammiversary, Jeff Jarrett said he had no desire to win any TNA titles, he only cared about making sure Mick Foley dropped his. Yet Jarrett repeatedly sabotaged AJ Styles' efforts to defeat Mick Foley, even though AJ winning would have meant Mick would have lost his title.
- At nCw Femme Fatales, Mary Lee Rose had been very open about having no desire to wrestle Cheerleader Melissa, which is understandable. However, she still spent a lot of time harassing Melissa, interfering in her matches and such. Mary Lee Rose did want to wrestle someone eventually, so she issued an open challenge. Not only was Cheerleader Melissa the first person to accept, but she couldn't help but point out how dumb Rose was for not realizing that would happen. Unfortunately for Melissa, Mary Lee Rose's manager, Mademoiselle Rachelle, lobbied to stop the match from happening and pitted Melissa against Yumi Ohka instead.
- Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels are accusing AJ Styles of getting a binge drinking crackhead pregnant. Well, the show is called TNA, but what is AJ's response to this? Challenge Christopher Daniels to a match on the stipulation he will admit to being the father if Daniels can beat him, but will take a paternity test to find out for sure if he beats Daniels.
- In WWE, Seth Rollins made the exact same "open challenge even though I've been antagonizing someone I have no desire to wrestle" mistake. In this case, it was Dean Ambrose who answered.
Radio
- Bleak Expectations: This trope describes many of Harry Biscuit's ideas, and Pip Bin's. The fact the two live long enough to reach adulthood is astounding. At one point, the latter falls foul of Admiral Hardthrasher, when Pip lets loose he's responsible for the death of the admiral's brothers — specifically the ones he liked. In order to defend himself, Pip sets Hardthrasher on fire and sinks his ships... despite not knowing how to swim. And the ships are out at sea. This prompts Pip, in a very rare moment of self-awareness to admit he hadn't thought this through.
- In the first episode of the Radio 4 sitcom The Train at Platform 4, a new train company decides at the last minute to celebrate its first journey by putting up a large sign saying "Free coffee on board". Not only do they fail to clear this with the train manager, they neglect to put any disclaimers on the sign such as "limit one per customer" or "while stocks last". The train manager immediately realises they're going to run out of coffee before the first stop, but doesn't realise how badly they're screwed until a passenger who's a lawyer points out that if the advertised product is unavailable, substitutions may be offered at the same price, meaning that they'll then have to start offering free tea, hot chocolate or Bovril until they run out of those as well.
Tabletop Games
- In BattleTech, there was an incident known as the “Goulash Guns”. An artillery unit commander was investigated for what was believed to either be a friendly fire incident or even a false flag operation when almost three dozen artillery missiles were fired into a besieged compound. Upon investigation, however, it was revealed to be a wellmeaning but utterly boneheaded humanitarian gesture, as the missiles had their warheads replaced with food and medical supplies. The rations and blood packs, however, were not rated for hypersonic speeds and the resulting impacts left the besieged soldiers covered in blood and soup.
- One Paranoia mission introduces the new Mandatory Bonus Duty of Executive Officer, who (in addition to being the Team Leader's Number Two) gets a brevet promotion for the purpose of wearing a higher-clearance uniform — the idea is that Commies will mistake him for the Team Leader and concentrate their fire on him instead. As usual for Paranoia, The Computer failed to consider what might happen when others made the same mistake:
Green-clearance Team Leader: All right, men, let's go!
Random bystander: Hey, why are you letting him boss you around?
"Blue"-clearance Executive Officer: Hey, yeah! [shoots the Team Leader] All right, men, let's go! - In one Time of Judgment scenario in Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Silent Striders decide to join the Wyrm's forces and goad the Wyrm's servants into attacking Grandmother, in the hopes of weakening both the Wyrm and Grandmother. They do so by passing through the Black Spiral Labyrinth, which hopelessly corrupts them. Instead of fighting Grandmother, the corrupted Silent Striders attack the Garou Nation.
- Vampire: The Masquerade includes teleportation via blood magic, and tells the story of one vampire who figured out how to teleport all the way to the moon, only to learn too late that people can see the moon because it's reflecting light from the sun...
- Betrayal at House on the Hill: One scenario involves the traitor attempting to send the house and everyone in it, including themself, to hell. If they win, in the end text they realise too late that this probably wasn't such a good idea.
- Another scenario has the traitor making voodoo dolls of the other players. If they win, they destroy the dolls — and then realize that destroying a voodoo doll of yourself is quite possibly a terrible, terrible idea.
- The inside title page of Autoduel Champions has all three participants in the cover scene having this same regret: the super who thought it was a good idea to lift a car over his head, the driver of the car who decided to take a shot at him with a pistol, and the driver of the other car who decided to ram the super from behind. (They all wind up in a "sandwich".)
- The Doomsday Dawn playtest adventure for the early release of Second Edition Pathfinder actually required this. The PCs have to break into a party and steal a valuable item from a pirate lord. The item will enable them to teleport away once recovered — but the PCs aren't told this. If the players stop to think about how to get the item out, the adventure becomes practically impossible, as they'd have to carry the item back through the party and then somehow get passage on a ship away from a town with shipping run by a pirate lord who's just had something go missing.
- Warhammer: Eltharion, the Warden of Tor Yvresse, leads a war to wipe out the Greenskins of the Badlands when they sailed to Ulthuan and ransacked the city. But he forgot that Greenskins are both plentiful and Blood Knights to the nth degree, and word of the "one pointy 'ead (elf) who could put up a propa fight" spreads as Eltharion's armies smash Greenskin warbands and fortresses in an effort to wipe the race out entirely. Soon, Tor Yvresse becomes a veritable Mecca for invading Greenskins coming from far and wide, not just from the Badlands. Whoops.
Theatre
- In The Abduction from the Seraglio, the hero Belmonte gets captured by the Pasha, who already holds his betrothed Constanza captive. He says that his father can pay a generous ransom for them, only to be informed that said father is a mortal enemy of the Pasha. Oops.
- The title character of Hamilton has been accused of embezzling money from the U.S. government. In fact, what he's doing is totally legal, just not exactly ethical: he has been having an affair and the payments are to the woman's husband, who's been blackmailing him for some time. In order to refute the accusation, he confesses to the affair and the payments. True, his political rivals stop accusing him of embezzlement, but to the voting public of 1800s America, adultery isn't much better. In a Cut Song, his wife's sister tears him a new one for this:
Congratulations. You have invented a new kind of stupid / A damage you can never undo kind of stupid / An "open all the cages at the zoo" kind of stupid / Clearly, you didn't think this through / Kinda stupid!
- In Pokémon Live!, one trainer that challenges MechaMew2 has his Electrode use Self Destruct in the hopes that the move would be returned... overlooking the fact that using the move made his Electrode faint.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- A funny moment in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney's third case when the culprit has almost won:
Edgeworth: Objection!
Edgeworth: ...
Judge: Yes, Mr. Edgeworth?
Edgeworth: I was hoping to come up with a question while objecting, Your Honor.
Edgeworth: I didn't.- In The Great Ace Attorney, Ryunosuke uses Herlock Sholmes' and Iris Wilson's inventions in his investigations multiple times, but can't use the results themselves in court since it is untested theory that is accordingly inadmissible. Herlock eventually admits that the reason this keeps happening is because he forgets to patent the inventions! (Which stops the scientific world from testing them to make sure they work and gain legitimacy, since that is part of the patenting process).
- AQUARIUM (2022): Fubuki specifically hired Aqua because Theo talked about a girl in his nightmares, and she wasn't hard to find. She thought this would finally make him feel better, but didn't consider much they may view each other romantically, which isn't allowed.
- Blood Lily Loop: Shadow slits her wrists to cover Nya's son in blood, exposing him through his invisibility. Unfortunately, this leaves her too weakened to fight properly. In the next loop, she uses flour to mark him instead.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Chapter 2's murder plan is extremely badly thought out for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that Fuyuhiko never realizes that either he or his childhood friend Peko would die in the class trial no matter what, because Monokuma doesn't allow accomplices to graduate. Fuyuhiko also never thought that since everyone saw the 'motive' video game (which insinuated that Mahiru had wronged Fuyuhiko by covering for his sister's murder), everyone would easily be able to connect the dots and realize Fuyuhiko clearly has the biggest motive, though as events had it, this is nullified by Peko doing the actual dirty work when no one knew that she is Fuyuhiko's childhood friend and thinks of herself as his tool, and so is willing to kill for him even if it would cost her own life. Fuyuhiko even admits afterwards that they were blinded by revenge and their plan was terrible.
Fuyuhiko: (pensive sprite) I blindly rushed into revenge...without thinking things through, with no concern for anything else... And in the end...I can't take back the consequences of that decision.
- In Daughter for Dessert, for the first attempt to talk to Amanda at Cecilia’s hotel room, the protagonist, Kathy, Heidi, and Lily have no plan for what to do after getting to the hotel, and the security guard won’t let them through. The protagonist can even try seducing him to get through.
- Hotel Dusk: Room 215: Jeff Angel turns out to be the one who stole $20,000 and a handgun from Larry Damon, with his plan being to use them to expose his ties to Nile to the press. Kyle calls him out on how bad of an idea this is, pointing out that Nile would be more likely to kill both of them instead of letting something like that slide.
- The Many Deaths of Lily Kosen: The protagonists all attempt to summon a demon to cure their friend's illness. All of them are sceptical that it will work, but even if it were to work, nobody considers that their friend will then be a victim of Demonic Possession.
- A bunch of examples in Melody:
- On Amy's romantic path, Amy wants to have a dinner with the protagonist and Melody to reveal her relationship with the MC to her niece. However, if he is also in a relationship with Melody at the time, neither woman will appreciate what he’s done. Melody will run out of the restaurant, and Amy will tell him never to come near either of them again.
- A different one can lead to another bad ending near the end of the story. When the protagonist goes up to his room, a little sick from drinking absinthe, Jade comes upstairs to check on him. While the two of them are alone together, Jade admits that she’s always had a crush on him, and starts coming on to him. If it gets as far as the two of them having sex, Melody will catch them in the act.
- Melody also has a couple of these moments:
- Stealing some entrees when at the karaoke bar. She and the protagonist were told that they couldn’t order food in the singing booths, so she steals food from the kitchen. To her horror, it ends up getting Xianne, who was their waitress for the night, fired from her job there.
- Drag racing with Arnold’s “borrowed” car. Besides getting chased by the police, she dents the rear bumper. Arnold sees the car, and angrily kicks her out of the house.
- In Reflections on the River, the plot is triggered by the player character, Zheng the Witch, kidnapping a prince or princess to use as leverage (the king having refused to pay the actual agreed price for a witch's service). As even the captives can see, however, it's really just going to make things worse.
Prince Shun: That did not go as smoothly as it could have. [...] I once believed witches to be quite wise.
Zheng: What's that supposed to mean?
Prince Shun: How would kidnapping me help you in any way?
[...]
Zheng: Look, I was in a hurry, and I had to think on my feet. - Shinrai: Broken Beyond Despair:
- Played for Laughs with Rie's costume. In the hopes of winning over Taiko, the guy she likes, she wears a revealing zombie costume with a lot of fake blood. Unfortunately, the zombie makeup is rather uncomfortable, and the costume is disgusting, so Rie realizes, with Raiko's help, that this is a bad idea and goes to wash the blood off.
- Played more seriously when the denouement reveals that Hiro was planning on cheating on his girlfriend Momoko with her best friend Kamen. Even if he had no way of knowing that Kamen is a lesbian, he should have realized that Kamen wouldn't willingly get together with a guy who'd cheat on her best friend, even if she was heterosexual.
- When They Cry:
- Episode 7 of Umineko: When They Cry reveals a glaring case of this in the entire premise of the story: members of a rich family gather on an island. Some of these people are having issues with their businesses, but luckily, there's a riddle that, if solved, will reveal the location of 10 tons of gold worth 20 billion yen hidden somewhere on the island. Except 20 billion yen's worth of gold isn't the same thing as 20 billion yen - it needs to be sold before it's of any use to the finders, and actually selling gold is going to be very difficult without black market connections, since it was stolen from a Fascist Italian submarine, so it doesn't legally belong to Kinzo or any other Ushiromiya, which makes it hard to sell on any legitimate market. The one finder who does have the necessary connections uses this to negotiate for a bigger share of the profits, which the others disagree with. And so the murders began.
- In the first arc of Ciconia: When They Cry, Miyao becomes friends with many Gauntlet Knights from all over the world. When World War IV starts and these friends are all forced to battle each other, Miyao comes up with the idea of intentionally fighting as badly as possible so nobody dies, which everyone agrees to. Good idea, until their superiors start chewing them out for this gross misuse of extremely powerful military technology, leading to the final battle where they are forced to kill each other.
