History Main / FailedASpotcheck

[[caption-width-right:258:[[TooDumbToLive He's going to have a good]], [[DeadlyEuphemism LONG sleep]].]]

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/IrreversibleDamage'': Chirag's father mistakes post-GenderBender Greg for his mother, despite his still being at middle school age.
[[/folder]]

* A common fandom joke in ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' is "''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' players can't read". Due to the oftentimes staggering amount of text on an individual card, most players will either skim over the text or just refuse to read the card outright to save time when confronted by a card(s) that they are unfamiliar with, leading to those same players being bewildered when a card does something that they didn't expect it to do. Lingering effects are even worse about this as they are not activated and thus players can tend to forget that their effects are still active if they are already aware of how the cards work, such as the on-field effect of the card "Infinite Impermanence".

* A common fandom joke in ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' is "''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' players can't read". Due to the oftentimes staggering amount of text on an individual card, most players will either skim over the text or just refuse to read the card outright to save time, leading to those same players being bewildered when a card does something that they didn't expect it to do. Lingering effects are even worse about this as they are not activated and thus players can tend to forget that their effects are still active, such as the on-field effect of the card "Infinite Impermanence".

May relate to GenreBlindness and ForgotAboutHisPowers. May be a sign of a character carrying the IdiotBall or being an UnwittingPawn. When the character's ''creator'' explicitly decides what he can and cannot notice, it may lead to PlotSensitiveSnoopingSkills. In cases of characters consistently failing spot checks to penetrate a PaperThinDisguise, we have ClarkKenting. Someone who does this too often may be TooDumbToLive, or it may be a case of ObfuscatingStupidity, especially if the spot check failures suddenly stop at a crucial point. Can result in the characters realizing that CampUnsafeIsntSafeAnymore. Also, this ''is'' TruthInTelevision, as anyone who lost his keys in the open middle of his desk can say. BehindTheBlack or NoPeripheralVision is when the character ''should'' be able to see it from his vantage point, but doesn't because the audience can't from their angle. The ChasteHero is a character (usually male) who consistently rolls "1"s where romance is concerned. If the thing they're failing to notice is a breaking news story, that's IgnoredVitalNewsReports. If ''everyone'' fails to notice a creature that's big and dumb enough that its presence ought to be obvious, it's SuspiciouslyStealthyPredator. If one person is looking for another person but constantly fails Spot Checks when they are close to the person they're searching for, it's MissedHimByThatMuch. This is usually the reason why {{Jump Scare}}s happen. {{Banana peel}}s, however, ''thrive'' on this trope.

* There is an episode of ''Animation/HappyHeroes'' where Smart S. encounters and chases after a monster that changes its appearance to match whatever object it touches. It touches a street light and turns into said object; Careless S. notices Smart S. chasing after the street lamp while crying that it's a monster, at which point he gets confused since he doesn't realize it's a monster and therefore doesn't see it. You'd think the fact that a ''street lamp'' of all things is even moving by itself at all would tip him off that something's going on.

* In ''ComicBook/DeathOfTheFamily'', [[spoiler: Catwoman finds herself trying to move giant chess pieces containing people around. She fails to notice a person's head sticking out of a pawn]].

* The opening arc of ''ComicBook/{{Witchblade}}'' has Kenneth Irons doing all he can to trick Sara into giving him the Witchblade. He shows his collection of artwork of the Witchblade's history and how an earlier attempt cost him a hand. In their battle, Sara openly laughs on how, in all that time, Irons could have missed the key detail that guarantees he can ''never'' hold the Witchblade.

* Given the number of times she has fooled them, one would think the ComicBook/XMen would have figured out a way to look out for shape-shifter Mystique. One of the worst cases is a 2019 story where she poses as Captain America for ''weeks'' to trick the X-Men into handing over mutant prisoners to "turn over to the government" and assuring them they have leeway to operate without oversight. It takes the real Cap showing up to chastise them over a blunder for the X-Men to realize the truth when a simple call to Avengers Mansion at any time would have exposed Mystique's scam.

* In Machinima series ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' Badass ActionGirl heroine Tex at one point says she is going to go take out a small army of mooks. Knowing that she is a StealthExpert the audience naturally expects her to move in ninja style and take them on one at a time. Instead, she picks a single target and starts thrashing him loudly and in full view. The sentries watching guard continue their inane conversation, even raising their voices to be heard over the screams of their distressed comrade who is right behind them. Lampshaded by Tucker, of course:

* Being intended as a guide for ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'', ''Machinima/TeamServiceAnnouncement'' often warns about doing this.

[[caption-width-right:258:[[TooDumbToLive He's going to have a good]], [[StealthPun LONG sleep]].]]

* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': In ''Killer Blonde'', [=SueEllen=] was so self absorbed, she didn't notice the maid Conchi [[spoiler:was actually her own sister, Carolee. Carolee did usually keep her head down and put on a black wig, but still...]]

** Taken UpToEleven by Steve Dallas' mother, who thought Steve's father (her first husband) had been dead for twenty years, and married and divorced six other men during that time. After aliens made Steve a kind, sensitive person using the "Gephardtization" process, he told her that not only was his father alive, he was where he had always been, reading the sports section of the paper in the den at their house (next to the ceramic poinsettias). His mom said she had honestly just never noticed him there.

* In ''Zombie Plague'', players may search any spot they haven't searched, even if others have searched it, and what one player finds is completely independent of what another might find. It's entirely possible for one player to search a locker and find nothing but car keys, then have the next player search the same locker and find ''[[ChainsawGood a chainsaw]]''. The expansion turns the whole game UpToEleven, making the possibilities even wilder.

* ''Franchise/AceAttorney'': You could be forgiven for thinking that the prosecutor's office and the police force both go out of their way to hire people who are guaranteed to fail spot checks, as the only way to win is to find evidence that the prosecution missed or a conflict between testimony given and evidence. Sometimes {{justified|Trope}}, but it can reach the ridiculous: at various points, you'll wind up retrieving murder weapons, security camera footage, and evidence left for over a month that's immediately visible as crucial to the case. In the second case of the first game, you will have to remind a ''detective'' of the victim's cause of death and the fact that the death was immediate (to be fair, this is Gumshoe we're talking about). Later games [[LampshadeHanging lampshade the process]]. The series takes an aversion in ''Apollo Justice'' when both the new prosecutor and detective begin by taking a [[DumbassNoMore level up]] before [[UpToEleven advancing]].

** Heck, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AydkhtMl4nQ "Attention and Initiative"]] is [[UpToEleven built around]] a particularly brutal DoubleSubversion, because it shows RED Team not responding to any threat to their progress, noticing the problems just in time to help but not actually helping.

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* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':

* ''[[TabletopGame/ProseDescriptiveQualities Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies]]'' suggests the GM tells the players what their characters are checking to spot, and if players then fail the check, the player gets to explain why. For example, the GM will call for a check to notice an assassin sneaking into the team's home, and a player who fails might say they were busy cleaning their gear... meaning they're armed when they do finally notice.

''[an Invader throws a car off the bridge and heads for Michael]''\\

---> "Relax, Jerry!... He probably didn't know you were an elephant when he told that last joke."

---> "Wait a minute here, Mr Crumbly. ...Maybe it isn't kidney stones after all."

[[folder:Films — Animation]]

** This is as nothing to the time Mr. Benevolent holds Pip captive in his own house, for ''months'', and his family don't notice, even though his best friend admits they could ''hear'' Pip crying for help. Pip's wife at least has the slight excuse that she was outside, oogling construction workers, but that's nothing compared to Pip's sister, who repeatedly went into the room Pip was being held in, but just convinced herself she was hallucinating. Not surprising then that Pip is '''epically''' pissed when it's all over.

The name comes from a typical mechanic from RPG games, dating back from the arch-RPG ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. A character's success on various tasks is determined by a die roll combined in some way with base statistics (such as strength or intelligence) and some skill. The skills in question include several that require substantial luck, like Appraise, Use Magic Device, Hide, or the various Perform skills, but also such mundane tasks as Listen and Spot. Indeed, the Spot skill, which determines whether someone notices events around them in time to react, is often very dependent on luck, even if it's something any idiot should be able to see.

Because things like searching for hidden objects/doors/clues, "noticing what's going on out of the ordinary" or good old ambushes are all very common events in most RPG games, Spot Checks tend to be among, if not THE most common die rolls being done. A single failed Spot Check can put the whole party at a disadvantage, and if you're not lucky you can miss something vital, even while looking for it. Considering the number of Spot Checks a typical game involves, there always are instances of missing out on something because of One Bad Roll, which naturally frustrated people about Spot Checks for literally decades.