So... how exactly are you gonna get out now with that Goomba in the way, genius?
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.
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. (Also an issue for Who Will Bell the Cat?) 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 and Missing Steps Plan. May overlap with a Gift of the Magi Plot.
No Real Life Examples, Please. Everyone has run into a problem like this at least once or twice, so said examples would most likely be redundant.
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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... 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
- 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
- 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!"
Comic Strips
- Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes is quite prone to this, enough for its own page — although in his defense, he is only six-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.
- 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 one 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.
- Two alien snowmen invade Earth and melt before finishing their threat to "puny Earthling" Garfield.
Garfield: Who schedules your invasions?
Alien: Oh, shut up. - A bird tries to attack Garfield from behind and ends up being eaten by him.
Garfield: I don't think he thought that through.
- 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.
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?! - In the Mozart opera 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.
- 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 kids will be kids..
- 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..."
- 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!
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 from 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).
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.
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
- 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. Unfortunately, he was a better magician than he was an astronomer, failing to realize that you 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.
Theatre
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- 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 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 was a lesbian, he should have realized that Kamen wouldn't willingly get together with a guy who'd cheat on her best friend.
Web Animation
- 1/1 Heroine: The Overworld Not to Scale trope is parodied, and characters really are as big as that trope makes them appear. The video "Boss Battle" shows what happens when this isn't accounted for; the titular boss, Momocchi, is inside a castle on the overworld, but once she leaves it to enter the overworld proper and engage the protagonist, she also becomes giant... and promptly destroys her castle in the process, which she fails to realize until after it's happened.
- Animator vs. Animation: This has happened a few times.
- In 2, The Animator names his stick figure "The Chosen One". This gives him a wide assortment of powers that allows him to start breaking the computer.
- In 3, The Animator creates "The Dark Lord" in a desperate attempt to deal with The Chosen One. He didn't consider the possibility of the two teaming up to destroy his computer.
- In the AVA short "The Virus", Second Coming uses a drawn hammer in an attempt to destroy the virus program. This just causes it to hatch, releasing a powerful spider-like monster that actively starts destroying the computer and attacking the stick figures.
- In the AVM short "The Rollercoaster", Yellow builds an intricate roller coaster... But fails to account for Minecraft physics. Instead of gracefully flying off a ramp and to the finish line, the minecarts just drop off the edge.
- Burakku Channel: In this video, Akane uses a pair of magical handcuffs to handcuff herself and Burakku together for about one day. She somehow doesn’t realise until the handcuffs are already on that this also means that she will be attached to him.
- Dinosaurs: The True Story: Evidently, no one considered the shortness of tyrannosaur arms when designing the controls for the asteroid defenses.
- Dork Souls 3: Like any other player new to Dark Souls III, Shez never considered the consequences of leveling up for free from Yoel.
- Dr. Havoc's Diary: In Episode 17, Brock sneaks onto Havoc's submarine by cutting a hole in the side with a welding gun. Guess what eventually happens?
- DSBT InsaniT:
- Happens in the first episode when Koden sends Killer to kick Bear, Snake, Duck, and Balloon out of his house.
- Also in "Beach Brawl" when Kerry impulsively throws Shovel at frozen Cell, thinking that would shatter him.
Bear: Even I saw that one coming a mile away.
- Dave smashing the chains to free an elephant in 'Carneelval', which startles it and causes it to rampage.
Asia: Why would you think smashing its harness with a boulder was a good idea?
- In episode 4 of Every Faggot Ever, the faggot starts making claims of how he and his army of atheists are going to shoot up the school, which a student tells him sounds like a legitimate threat. The faggot tries hiding behind the First Amendment to justify his saying such things, and it just gets him in trouble with the school security guard.
- In episode 5, after returning a woman's purse after she dropped it, the faggot then starts coming on to her. When she rejects him, he accuses her of being a "friend-zoning slut" and starts protesting in the (largely empty) cafeteria. The woman reports him to a policeman, who hauls him off for sexual harassment.
- In Hazbin Hotel where the Princess of Hell Charlie decided to go on the news to reveal her plan of The Happy Hotel: the hotel that reform sinners. There was many things she didn’t think of like:
- When she first talks about her plans, she sees how nobody has a reaction for it and, having not anticipated no interest at all, keeps awkwardly explaining it.
- Trying to drum up interest and also against her girlfriend Vaggie’s wishes, she decides to sing out her idea. After singing her idea, everybody in the studio laughs at Charlie. Charlie sadly realizes not even singing her idea would make people interested. Even Katie Killjoy points out nobody in Hell cares about being a good person.
- When Charlie tries to brag that their first client Angel Dust has been going clean for two weeks, she doesn't realize that a demon redeeming themself would take more than two weeks because the news station finds out that Angel joined a turf war.
- When Alastor comes to help, he asks Charlie about the hotel staff. Charlie points to Vaggie being the manager and staff. Alastor tells Charlie that she needs more than Vaggie to run the hotel.
- Helluva Boss
- When Stella learns about Stolas' affair with Blitzo, she puts a hit on him as revenge for his infidelity and so she can get his assets without having to struggle to win them over through the divorce. However, what she didn't take into account was that if she did manage to somehow kill him, then all of Stolas' assets would go to their daughter Via, who very much prefers her father over her mother. This puts her in a lose-lose situation where she either gets divorced and is left with nothing or she kills Stolas and is left with nothing.
- Later, there's Chaz, a Con Man who tries to convince Moxxie's Mob Boss father that he's struck it rich so that he can marry Moxxie. The issue, however, is that Chaz is actually flat broke, and his Missing Steps Plan didn't take into account that he would eventually have to put up the money.
- Nomad of Nowhere: In the first episode, Toth and her team (sans Skout) decide to set the forest on fire to flush out and capture the titular Nomad for good... while they're still in it. They would have been toast in both senses of the word if Nomad hadn't actually been an All-Loving Hero.
- Happens so often that it's hard to list them all in Puffin Forest, but a few particularily egregious ones:
- In "Everybody Died in Call of Cthulhu" a player character killed himself by setting everything in the room he was in on fire, including the only door out of the room. This same player character had in a previous game collapsed the entrance to a mine with dynamite while he still in it, which Ben let him live from.
- In "The Hero of Parnast: Part 2", the group wanted Wallace out of the group as swiftly as possible, so at the end of the adventure, they sent him ahead on a mount with the villain in tow. They realized too late that this would, again, cast Wallace as the true hero of Parnast.
- In "Read your spell BEFORE you cast it" a player cast the spell Darkness on a dragon without reading what the spell does. Instead of making it so that dragon couldn't see them, it made it so they couldn't see the dragon.
- In "PEE IN MY BUCKET!" a player cast the spell Flaming Sphere, while they were on a wooden ship that was stuck in some trees, which set the ship on fire, and resulted in most of the remaining crew falling to their deaths escaping from the flames.
- Ben himself in 'Whoops! Guess everyone has to die now!'. He wanted to DM an Adventurers League, which resulted in him having to DM for an already in progress campaign for a module he hadn't read yet. As a result, he had to skim through most of it, resulting in him skipping how the party is supposed to get into the fortress and only finding that out after the party had already gone in guns blazing. The end result? What should have been a simple stealth mission turned into a massive blood bath that contrary to the title, the party barely survived.
- In "D&D Stories: funny moments from my campaign", the party rogue cut's off the blacksmith's hand arbitrarily. For the rest of the story the blacksmith refuses to do work for the party again, and only the inexperienced blacksmith's apprentice will work for them.
- Later in that episode, when the party was ambushing Orcs in a Church Steeple, they forgot until after they set the explosive trap that they were in the building. Cue a Super Window Jump and broken legs for the party members.
- In one of the real life videos, Ben was surprised that nobody recognized him from his show at a gaming convention. Then he remembered he had never shown his face in his videos...
- In the first Covenant campaign video, it is revealed that the monk lost the Mournblade because he thought that a sandbox in a public park was a good place to hide it.
- When Ben got to play in an evil The Lord of the Rings campaign where the player characters were villains brought back from the dead, he eagerly chose to play as Sauron... only to realize that he had no idea how to roleplay as Sauron or what Sauron's abilities were (his backstory, motivations, and abilities are only really expanded upon in The Silmarillion) and thus he had to make up Sauron's personality and guess his abilities, which may have explained why nobody else picked Sauron.
- There is also the GM who told Ben that he trusted him to know how the game worked so he would sign off on whatever character Ben made without checking, not considering that this was Ben he was talking to, who of course brought a ridiculous character to the table.
- In DM.exe has crashed! || Attack at the school, an idiotic samurai player tries to calm down a bunch of frightened students by firing a pistol, which of course has the exact opposite effect and ends with him in a confrontation with the police which he keeps on making worse with one bad decision after another, eventually resulting in him getting thrown in prison.
- In part 11 of the Curse of Strahd replay, the werewolf Emil plans to build an army of werewolves against Strahd by attacking the town of Vallaki and turning all of its inhabitants. It is subsequently pointed out that his plan is doomed to fail on many fronts. First, if they succeeded this would mean there would be hundreds of feral werewolves attacking anything they saw; they wouldn't be sane again until it was too late. Second, even then the werewolves would hate Emil and the party for the death and destruction of such an attack. Third, most of Vallaki doesn't want to fight Strahd. Fourth, Emil, the guy who wants to lead them, is a pretty shitty werewolf who would likely be kicked out of the new pack.
- In the same episode Krusk agrees to become a werewolf, also not thinking about the consequences. Luckily he is quickly cured and reminded about the going feral part.
- Red vs. Blue: Family Shatters: In "The Unbearable Lightness of Zero", Raymond hacks Zero's calendar, from which One figures out the best time to hit Viper. They're about to prepare to head out when they realize that they don't actually know where Viper's base is.
Raymond: I'll go prep the Warthogs!
East: Though, I can't help but feel like we're forgetting something...
West: What's this about the Warthogs?
One: Oh, West. We're about to go take down Viper! I just came up with the perfect plan.
West: Oh. Great job, Agent One. I must admit, I'm impressed that you were able to pinpoint the base's location.
[The word "location" echoes repeatedly]
East: There it is.
One: FUCK— - Revenge Films:
- "My dad was screwing my wife. My mom was congratulating them...": Jill willingly sleeps with her father-in-law in a desperate attempt to have a baby, even hoping her husband Jack would happily raise the resulting child even after he catches them red-handed. Understandably, he throws her out even when her in-laws reject her after finding out she's infertile. After his father is arrested for attempting to rape his other daughter-in-law, Jill tries to get her ex back by claiming the man raped her, but Jack recorded her previous statement of deliberately cheating on him. In the end, Jill's wish for a baby ruined her life due to her failure to realize her husband wouldn't go along with her plans but instead would be disgusted with her.
- "She ruined her own wedding by revealing all sorts of stories about her past": Taylor exposes her entire past (where she was sexually assaulted when she was 12, had multiple affairs and abortions as a high schooler and had another affair before meeting her groom) at her own wedding, hoping everyone would feel sympathetic for her. Needless to say, the groom immediately tore up their marriage certificate and filed for alimony.
- "My dad was screwing my wife. My mom was congratulating them...
- RWBY:
- Jaune Arc using fake transcripts to enter Beacon Academy in a misguided attempt to become a hero despite having zero training or experience. If Pyrrha Nikos did not go out of her way to help him, he would have died on the first day.
- In the Volume 1 episode "Players and Pieces", Weiss Schnee falls out of the sky. Jaune Arc leaps up and catches her in his arms. He manages to look badass for a moment, then realizes that they are now both in midair with no landing strategy. He crashes into the ground, but at least cushions Weiss on the way down.
- The reason why Team RNJR spends Volume 4 walking from Vale to Haven Academy is because Ruby Rose naïvely thinks the journey will only take a couple of weeks. This is a journey that takes them across the sea and requires them to walk across a continent. With her companions realising this, Ruby says she has no idea how big Remnant really is, since she's lived her life within a very small geographic area.
- At the end of Volume 5, Yang Xiao Long tells Raven Branwen that her plan to protect the Branwen tribe from Salem puts them in even more danger, and convinces her to abandon it. Raven thinks stealing the Relic of Knowledge will convince Salem to leave the Branwen tribe alone, which is in danger because Salem thinks she's hiding the Spring Maiden. However, since Salem only needs the Maidens to obtain the Relics, she will be even more motivated to hunt down Raven's tribe if it's hiding both. Thus, Raven abandons the Relic to Yang.
- In Volume 7, Jacques Schnee participates in the council elections, but he doesn't spot the key flaw in his plan until James Ironwood points it out to him. He negotiates a deal with Arthur Watts to give up his account log-in details in exchange for rigging the election to win. However, Jacques's council meeting to discredit Ironwood backfires when he's outed; Ironwood observes that it didn't occur to him that a councilman's upgraded network permissions gives Watts full access to Atlas' security systems, allowing Mantle's heating grid to be shut down; by the time the truth is uncovered, they're locked out of the system and unable to stop Watts.
- Since the events of Volume 3, Neo has been single-mindedly gunning for Ruby, trying to kill her for killing Torchwick. In Volume 9, Chapter 8, she finally pushes Ruby across the Despair Event Horizon and gets her to ascend (both Ruby and Neo believe this means killing oneself), but when the voice of Torchwick suggests that Neo uses her expanded power set to take over the Ever After, she refuses. Surprised, the voice asks if trying to kill Ruby was all she ever thought of... which she had. With Ruby dead, she has no idea what to do with herself.
- RWBY Chibi: In one skit, Cinder demonstrates a Dynamite Candle for her "evil class" (consisting of Roman, Neo, Emerald, and Mercury). When Emerald points out that the trap is too obvious, Cinder misinterprets it as her henchwoman not understanding the concept and lights the dynamite right then and there to demonstrate. She has just enough time to realize what a bad move that was before the dynamite explodes, leaving her covered in cake.
- Sonic for Hire: In Season 2, Sonic is asked by Ghosts to take out Pac-Man. After bashing himself into a rock and becoming a ghost, Sonic does the job until he's told the Ghosts can't change him back, leaving him a ghost along with his own corpse, lamenting how taking the job was poorly thought out.
Web Comics
- 8-Bit Theater: During their battle with the Lich King, the Light Warriors manage to remove his soul from the earth orb — and then realize they have to get it back in him.
Red Mage: In other words, we've only succeeded in making the invincible king of death even angrier at us.
Thief: Y'know, I really hadn't planned this far ahead in the scenario. I presumed we were going to be dead about five minutes ago. - The Adventures of Dr. McNinja:
- Dr. McNinja realizes only after the fact that someone on a murder spree for unknown reasons just contacted him to make a particular substance and he proceeded to make exactly what she was asking for and give it to her.
- Concatenated example, as that, in turn, was just the excuse his brain came up with to turn against the person in question who he approached without any kind of protection... to deliver a medicine made to prevent her from releasing chemicals that made everybody who gets near her want to kill her.
- Bowsette Saga: Jugem says he bred Chain Chomps to get rid of a rat infestation, but didn't anticipate that now he would have to deal with the much more dangerous Chain Chomps.
- In Commander Kitty, Nin Wah tries to turn herself over to the Triple-I by teleporting herself to one of their ships...while CK is busy shooting them down.
- DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Sooyoung traps Mio underground and thinks his goons have her cornered. The subway proves to be a labyrinth that lets her hide long enough for the backup to arrive.
- Far to the North: Kelu charges up the side of a mountain, without a coat, to vent her Mama Bear rage on the goblin that almost killed her nephew. Only when it appears right behind her does she realize she never figured out what she was going to do when it showed up.
- Fontes' Rants: Fontes uses the Life Note, a parody of the Death Note, which creates a life form he writes in it, to create an Axe-Crazy Marty Stu character. When he recovers after inevitably being knocked out:
Fontes: ...I really shouldn't have made him able to summon firearms...
- Girl Genius got a few examples.
- Like this guy who neglected to think about why everyone was in an oubliette.
- Zeetha also got a major one — killing everyone on the pirate base and then blowing it up was all well and good, but it did mean that there wasn't anyone left alive to tell her where her homeland is. She's been wandering around Europa for several years now, trying to find anyone who might have any idea.
- Agatha and her friends fought their way across a town that was doubling as a war zone to reach a tower that was tall enough to be able to blast the Castle with enough lightning to recharge it. Along the way, she rebuilds — with improvements — the lightning generator, so that it will be even stronger for when she needs to use it. She decides that destroying all the enemies that stand in the way between her and the observation tower would be a good trial run. She's improved it so much that it destroys the tower that they were trying to get to in the first place.
- Krosp's creator was intending him to be the Emperor of All Cats, and to use this authority to create a cat spy network that could infiltrate anywhere. Turns out, regular cats just aren't smart enough to be spies. The uplifted bear army he also created to serve Krosp works out a lot better, making this a possible subversion, depending on whether that was the plan all along or just a very good recovery.
- Like this
- El Goonish Shive:
- Referenced but averted by discussing the plan before trying it, allowing someone else to point out the flaw ahead of time.
Female Immortal: I hate being invisible and intangible; it feels like cheating.
Male Immortal: We can't exactly claim to be "everyday students" and expect to pass unnoticed in Elliot's house.
Female Immortal: We could pretend to be burglars! That would make sense, right?
Male Immortal: ...I don't think you've thought this through... - Abraham. Almost everything he ever did and we know about, starting from an enchantment Gone Horribly Wrong for which he became infamous. He (among other things) swore to destroy every creature created by his botched enchantment, the Dewitchery Diamond, on the assumption that the Diamond would be used against curses, thus creating monsters. He hadn't accounted for the Diamond being used to rid people of harmless conditions, like Elliot's Gender Bender problem, and so ends up compelled by his oath to kill Ellen, who is hardly a monster (even when she tries).
- Abraham also claims to Raven that he tried everything he could to destroy the Diamond. Right away, Raven suggests he throw it in a volcano, and Abraham's reaction shows that he clearly didn't try everything.
- When Tedd proclaims the use of his Battle Mode Gauntlet and finds an entity he might be overpowered by, and is utterly unprepared to face.
Tedd: Oh man I did not think this through.
Tedd: Just to, ah, clarify, "battle mode"? Just the name of the setting. It doesn't necessarily imply that I want to—
DM - The Emissary of Magic. While you could argue that trying to communicate through Grace's dreams (if you didn't know, it's really hard to remember dreams even if you're actively trying to) was on orders from The Will Of Magic, his reaction to Pandora's entry was entirely his own doing. The first thing he does is threaten her. The first thing he should have done was ask her why she was there. Lampshaded in The Rant:
Imagine if it had worked. "She's gone! VICTORY IS MINE! And I have no idea why she was here in the first place! Or if she'll come back! Or if maybe her intentions were as noble as I believe mine! Or... Huh." - Referenced but averted by discussing the plan
- The first story arc of The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! climaxes with Bob volunteering to save Ahem by fighting a monster. He reassures Voluptua: "Trust me, I know what I'm doing!" The monster appears, and it's a horrific thing with mandibles bigger than his whole body, and he realizes suddenly, "No I don't!"
- In Jupiter-Men, Quintin picks a fight with Rick, who's a member of the rugby team and twice Quintin's size. Quintin hopes that he could stand a chance of Rick's victim teams up with him, but said victim instead flees for the hills, leaving Quintin to face Rick alone. Quintin admits that this situation played out a lot differently in his head. Rick even says this trope verbatim while pushing Quintin's head against the wall.
- In Latchkey Kingdom, the book "Titans and You" states: "Use thy bow and arrow to gain the giant's attention...". Willa obeys. The building-sized Titan then notices her and starts chasing her.
- Living with Insanity: The third volume features two characters adapting their comic into a movie they financed themselves. Quickly it becomes apparent they did little to no research and have no idea what they're doing, to the point where they book a school to shoot in without a final script or a cast. Everything falls apart very quickly after that.
- In Maliki, as Fang and Electro are bored, Maliki hands them a magnet to play with. She realizes a second too late that letting Electro hold a magnet is a pretty bad idea, since she literally electrifies everything she touches.
- In Ménage à 3, during a Girls' Night Out, Zii notices that every man in the bar is buying DiDi drinks, and decides to intercept them. Problem is that she does so by drinking them down herself — not the best move, especially considering that DiDi has at least 50 pounds on her.
- In the Oglaf story "Chronotherapy", a wizard agrees to go back in time and avert a deadly plague before it's even got started. He is successful; so successful that the people who hired him to do it, although well-intentioned, don't believe he did it.
Wizard: [suddenly appearing] I have reached through time itself to cure the plague before it has even got started. The thousands who fell to its taint now live, as if it never was.
Queen: Sorry, what plague is this?
Wizard: I...fuck. Shit. ...There was a plague and you were going to give me a reward if I could cure it.
Queen: Well... I don't really...
Wizard: [crestfallen] No, that's fine. I wouldn't believe me either.
Queen: What was the reward?
Wizard: [Facepalm] Marriage to the princess and a dukedom.
Queen: Well, that's not possible. But I can arrange for a handjob and a hot meal if you like.
Wizard: That'd be great, thanks. - The Order of the Stick:
- Belkar in this appropriately-titled strip. He's spent a lot of time trying to goad the Knight Templar paladin Miko to kill him, as doing so would make her Fall from paladinhood. He assumed that his teammates would resurrect him afterwards. V then points out that the Raise Dead spell requires 5,000 GP of diamonds to work — diamonds that they don't actually have.
- Redcloak's backup, in case the Plan to control the Snarl through the Gates backfires and gets the world undone, is that the Dark One, the god he's serving, will be there to have a say in the creation of the next world, ensuring better rights for goblins. Thor tells Durkon that because God Needs Prayer Badly, there's a good chance that as a relatively new god, the Dark One won't last long enough until the Snarl calms down enough to be trapped in a new world. Later on, Durkon tells Redcloak that there's no guarantee that the hypothetical next world would have any kind of humanoids, throwing the goblin off a bit.
- Belkar in this
- In Questionable Content, Angus, Marigold, and Faye get drunk together. Faye asks Marigold if she has ever dated anyone (she hasn't). She says that she think she has a chance with someone and looks at Angus as he returns to the couch. Faye, feeling incredibly awkward, walks out and goes home. Thing is, Angus likes Faye (which Faye knows) and Faye may like Angus. Angus doesn't like Marigold like that, but she left them together drunk and alone. When Dora points out the obvious, Faye has the appropriate reaction.
- In Schlock Mercenary, the UNS tries to use a court case to trick a nearly-all-powerful AI into admitting that he has been performing morally-questionable actions (specifically, "disappearing" problematic people).
Kerchak: And then what?
Breya: I...haven't thought that far ahead.
Kerchak: I'll bet you a bushel of pureed bananas he has.- AIs Ennesby and Tagii try to convince a space station's AI that Tagii is from a ship built by the same species, hoping to rely on Tagii's isolation trauma to explain any discrepancies. Nigh-instantly after establishing contact, Tagii sends a Distress Call.
Tagii: AAAAIIIEEENNESBY! We are fools! We thought isolation trauma might be a good excuse, a ploy. We did not follow the thread of our own logic to its terrifying end! (terrified whisper) T'kkkuts Afa has been alone for ten million years.
- AIs Ennesby and Tagii try to convince a space station's AI that Tagii is from a ship built by the same species, hoping to rely on Tagii's isolation trauma to explain any discrepancies. Nigh-instantly after establishing contact, Tagii sends a Distress Call.
- An early strip of Sluggy Freelance starts off with Riff and Torg talking about how Zoe has a date with this guy she has a huge crush on. Riff then mentions that he is going to visit his ex-girlfriend Gwynn at her apartment, which she shares with Zoe. Torg is surprised that Riff going to see her alone like that. Riff insists that they're not alone, that Zoe will be there...at which point he realizes that even though he was aware of both of these pieces of information he only just now realized that they were related.
- Spinnerette has two groups trying to clone Adolf Hitler and Robert E. Lee so they can lead their respective people again. Dr. Universe, the scientist who promised to do the cloning, only did so because he knew the plan would fail because nobody would follow a clone of Adolf Hitler or Robert E. Lee and that they wouldn't be raised under the same circumstances as the originals and would therefore grow to be different people.
- Stand Still, Stay Silent:
- After hiding in a crate of tuna cans to smuggle himself to a place in which he was hoping to have a vacation of sorts, Reynir starts wondering if someone is going to need the tuna cans he took out of the crate to be able to fit in it. He honestly should also be wondering if the crate is actually going to his intended vacation spot. Mostly because unbeknownst to him, the ship he's riding has been blackmailed into making a detour to deliver food to an underfunded crew exploring a Death World Forbidden Zone.
- In a following chapter, a bunch of deer run through the book salvaging spot Sigrun and Emil are visiting. Sigrun keeps Emil from shooting them because they are healthy and only zombie animals need to be shot on sight, so they just let the deer go by and enjoy the show. Right after the last deer leaves, Sigrun realizes it would actually have been a good idea to let Emil shoot one of them so they'd have extra food.
- From Super Stupor, this strip◊, after Punchline explains why The Anarch's plan is really just Suicide by Superhero:
The Anarch: I may have made a slight error in my calculations.
Punchline: When you were adding up the numbers, did you remember to carry the stupid?
The Anarch: Yes!... no. - The Whiteboard:
- In this strip, Sandy reveals that she is having automobile issues. Doc promptly responds. Sandy promptly facepalms and lampshades this trope.
- Doc himself lampshades the trope more than once during his experience with bullet time.
- In this strip
- Webcomic/webgame Wicked Awesome Adventure points out how often this befalls adventurers in the course of escape and exploration.
- J.E.T. enlists the help of a wounded and unwilling Candimp to disarm a trap.
- Rhys solves a puzzle to access a new area of the Haunted House for exploration — opening a trap door, too.
- In Wilde Life Oscar texts Cliff for help. Cliff can turn into a wolf and has enhanced physical abilities even in human form, none of which is terribly useful for resolving a problem with an incorporeal telekinetic ghost that can drain the heat from people with a touch.
Cliff: What did you want me to do? Turn into a wolf at it?
- In The Wotch, the Uricarn Demon killed all the other members of his species. He didn't think it through.
Uricarn: I enjoy being your bit of controlled chaos. Beats just wandering aimlessly finding cheap thrills like I was doing after exterminating the rest of my kind...which was kinda stupid in retrospect. Probably should have let myself grow up a bit before making that decision.
Web Original
- At the beginning of Achievement Hunter's GO! series, Geoff reveals that he would pay for a pizza party for every person who gets five wins. By the end of the twelfth episode, the scoreboard is reading 3/3/2/2/2 and Michael points out that, pretty soon, he's gonna be hosting back-to-back pizza parties. Geoff just looks at the scoreboard in total disbelief.
- After Ray won the first pizza party, Geoff decided that the scoreboard would be reset every time someone in the group gets five wins, which became effective the first episode after the first pizza party.
- In the first Heist in their Let's Play Grand Theft Auto series, Ryan tried to pull a Joker and killed Geoff when the Fake AH Crew had been whittled down to just the two of them so he could take all the money for himself. It was only after he killed Geoff that he realized Geoff was the one that was carrying the money, and "took it to the grave" when he died.
- Best of the Worst: In "Black Spine Edition #3," Mike and Jay establish the rules of playing Jenga with mystery VHS cassettes: Each player keeps the tapes he pulls from the tower, and the gang will watch the loser's collection of tapes after the tower falls. As the game drags on and the tapes begin to mount in each player's collection, a worried Rich can be heard off-screen asking if they'd thought the rules out properly. Ultimately the gang watches about a dozen videos in one sitting, though they turn off several prematurely and select only a handful to actually discuss.
- Bleach (S) Abridged: Kusaka's plan to frame Hitsugaya for attacking Kyoraku fails partially because Hitsugaya happened to verifiably be elsewhere at the time (he was in a fight with other Soul Reapers), and partially because he failed to consider the plausibility of his frame job; Hitsugaya putting Kyoraku in the hospital would require Hitsugaya (a newbie who is talented but still has yet to fully master his power) to be able to beat up Kyoraku (the second-strongest Shinigami after Yamamoto). Naturally, everyone calls shenanigans the instant they hear of it.
- Break It to Make It: Whenever contestants are allowed to pick their tool of choice to break the target item with, there is a chance of them picking something without considering how effective it would truly be.
- The CollegeHumor video "The iPhone 7 is Just Worse" skewers Apple's introduction of iPhone 7, specifically how it removes the 3.5 mm headphone jack, without realizing that this creates many new problems for users.
Tim Cook: It's all about simplicity, everything will run through one port. Now, you might be asking yourself, "What if I want to charge my phone... (in realization) while listening to music?" Shit!
- Critical Role: During the second campaign, Jester gets bored during a long sea voyage and decides to pass the time by scrying on the Traveler... AKA the deity that grants her her power, and personally guides her to the right place when she scries.
The Traveler: ...Curious.
Jester: Oh shit... I wasn't really thinking about that one.
The Traveler: No, you were not. (cuts the divine connection) - This post on Facts from a Cardboard Box. The writer had gotten a Vaporeon, a Jolteon, a Flareon, a Leafeon, and a Glaceon and he was training the three Eevees he had left...on Route 20. For context, in Pokémon X and Y, that's where the Moss Rock is. If an Eevee levels up near a Moss Rock, it evolves into a Leafeon. Luckily, getting new Eevees isn't particularly hard in that game (assuming you know where to look) and Wonder Trade meant they weren't outright wasted.
- In Farce of the Three Kingdoms, Jiang Wei makes a plan to capture Deng Ai that involves giving a known double agent command of Shu's entire commissariat train and placing said double agent between the army and their home base. This obviously doesn't end well.
- FoxTale2614: In "jays last wish", Captain Soto wishes that any pain he feels is dealt upon Nadakhan a hundredfold, and he then asks Echo Zane to injure him to critically damage Nadakhan. When he asks Echo to break his leg, it doesn't work because Nadakhan doesn't have legs.
- Gary: Landlord of the Flies: Gary has a habit of failing to think ahead before he acts.
- When the police come to investigate a report of him stealing a tenant's luxury goods, he continuously lies and says he has no clue where they went – even after the police begin finding them, one by one.
"This is the first, and a prime example, of Gary’s inability to plan for future events. One could assume that after finding the TV, they would likely continue to search. Unless you have thought of a really unique hiding place, just fess up, because they’re probably going to check your desk and under your bed."
- Gary attempts to screw the house's door shut to prevent Dan from retrieving his belongings, failing to consider that he could call the police and get in through a window.
- Gabe's account of his trial notes that Gary's defense for his actions never amounted to much more than "I was angry at the time", without any logical explanation for why he would act unnecessarily belligerent towards Gabe and the police.
"The whole trial reminded me of when you get in trouble as a little kid, and an adult asks, 'What were you thinking? No really, I want to know what you were thinking.' And you never had an answer other than 'I don’t know/I was angry/I was really drunk.'"
- When the police come to investigate a report of him stealing a tenant's luxury goods
- The plan that Leeroy's raid group comes up with for taking on the Rookery in the Leeroy Jenkins Video fails to account for two key facts (aside from Leeroy charging in and rendering the whole thing pointless):
- Scattering the whelps of the Rookery only keeps them off you for a few seconds and will likely bring more to bear on you — you really want to hatch as few of them as possible. Fear rotation is rather pointless in the Rookery anyway due to the rate at which the eggs respawn.
- The paladin ability Divine Intervention does not allow a protected character to use any skills and is very much wasted on mages (who primarily rely on skills such as AOE attacks) and has the added "bonus" of killing the paladin who uses it, removing a character with the ability to tank and heal from the general fight.
- Marble Hornets: Half of what Jay does. For example, breaking into Alex's home. He drops his flashlight, and then runs into the Operator.
- Jay never considers that near-constantly posting videos about his investigation online where literally anyone can see them might get him negative attention, or sabotage any attempts at subterfuge.
- This trope is lampshaded in the The Music Video Show's Cobra Starship Snakes on a Plane episode:
"Alright. All the snakes are been released. Now to get off this plane." (looks around with an Oh, Crap! face)
- In the NFL Quarterbacks On Facebook convo "The Fantasy Draft," Tom Brady establishes the rule that the draft order is established by going from least handsome to most handsome. This comes back to bite him as he gives himself the last pick, by which point the only starting QB remaining is... Mark Sanchez.
- In Noob, there was a period during which the guild's Only Sane Man leader decided to basically take time off and gave command to the guild's de facto Lancer. Unfortunately, the guy is a misogynist who can't stand stupid people and all the other members of the guild are three women and a not very bright guy. When complaints arise, temporary command gets transferred to the senior member of the women...AKA the guild's Manipulative Bitch and The Scrooge.
- Not Always Legal has this story of a security firm springing an unscheduled training drill, with an actor in a fake explosive vest, at a nuclear containment facility guarded by armed military police with shoot-to-kill orders.
- Not Always Working has at least three stories of workers making demands and threatening to quit if they don't receive them, only for the boss to accept their resignation and show them the door. Quitting voluntarily also disqualifies them for severance or unemployment pay, and the first quitter is specifically shown discovering and regretting this.
- In Resident Evil 2 Abridged, Claire finds her brother, Chris's, diary, where he explains that he can't tell Claire about his plans to go fight Umbrella, as doing so could put her in danger. Claire reads this after coming to Raccoon City, which is now overrun with zombies and various Umbrella-made monsters, to look for him after he mysteriously disappeared.
- Kevin Murphy puts the exact phrase into the mouth of the Scott Ian-looking Geat who makes a spectacularly failed attempt to charge Grendel in the 2007 Beowulf RiffTrax.
- In The Salvation War, after the demonic general Abigor hears of the defeat of (most of) his cavalry attempting to charge a ridge line with "cowardly mages throwing mage bolts, with mage-bars in the ground and silvery snakes in the ground that cut up demons and their steeds alike" (paraphrasing here), his plan for the second day of fighting is to extend his lines by thinning them — by the time he was done, an almost fifteen-mile-long front! — so as to outflank and envelope the enemy, while ordering the massed use of demonic bolt "fire" to suppress the mages. Too bad he didn't realize that he would only be able to see a small portion of the battle at any one time and thus would have to keep riding back and forth along the lines until he was already on the front lines in the midst of the carnage, with multiple rockets headed his way... they missed him, but he immediately and correctly intuited that he had been personally targeted.
- The Spoony One puts this in the mouth of the main villain of Highlander: The Source when he gets the Quickening at the top of a tall tower.
- Happened to Spoony himself. He declared on his Patreon page that if a $5K threshold is reached, he would start working on a feature Spoony movie. Once it did, he confessed that he'd never expected it to do and actually had no idea on how to proceed with the movie.
- StacheBros: In "Bowser Loses His Memory", Bowser tries to get rid of Mario by flushing him down a toilet, but Goomba reminds him that Mario is a plumber and he could easily find his way out of the pipes. He makes the same mistake in "Petey Piranha Gets Kicked Out".
- In Ten Little Roosters, Ryan is nearly attacked by a puma, but then Lindsay distracts the puma by calling to it like a cat. As the puma gets closer to her, Lindsay realizes that it's a really big predator and it's moving quite quickly towards her. She ends up getting mauled for her troubles.
- This happens on a fairly regular basis in the Yogscast Minecraft Series. Examples include Duncan Jones not planning for a return trip from the Moon to the Overworld (causing Lewis Brindley to loudly berate him), Duncan trying to build an in-game golf course despite not knowing how it would be played (causing Simon Lane to then berate him), Simon building TNT bridges over lava, and many more.
- In the "puppy bloopers" of a YouTube video about entitled parents, the narrator's takes keep getting interrupted by his dog, so he gives the dog a squeaky toy to distract the dog from whining. The following blooper is a take interrupted by the dog squeaking the toy.
- An episode of What the Fuck Is Wrong with You?, appropriately titled "Bad Idea Bonanza" featured stories of people in situations where their actions lacked any foresight, such as using a smoke bomb to root out squirrels, slapping a child while on probation, using oneself as a bungee cord to hold down a mattress on a mobile vehicle, or worse yet, cycling in the middle of the road with a tube of cocaine where the sun doesn't shine, wrapping the episode up with the last story featuring a similar situation as the previous one, but with numerous items. Nash's comment near the end of the episode sums it up:
Nash: All these are bad ideas, but these folks went with them because the part of their brain that was supposed to say "no, you're not the exception to reality" was on a coffee break!
