History Main / JustEatGilligan

** One relatively newer film that resurrects this subtrope to absurd levels is HalloweenKills, in which the entire city of Haddonfield knows that TheDeterminator killer Michael Myers has been on a murder spree for an entire day now, and yet the best plan they come up with to deal with Myers is to just attack him [[MookChivalry one by one]], armed with nothing but melee weapons and an occasional pistol. Even with hours of prep time, not a single person in entire Haddonfield tries to shoot Myers from afar with a long-barreled firearm or to run him over with a car, even when he’s flagrantly standing in the middle of a street. Interestingly, the original HalloweenII [[NotHisSlead subverted this]] by showing that after the initial murders and Myers’s escape that took everybody by surprise, the protagonists soon found a way to make [[spoiler:Myers DeaderThanDead]].

* ''Manga/MagicKnightRayearth'' would have been over quicker had Clef and co. tried to find the Magic Knights somewhere on Cephiro instead of kidnapping three girls from another dimension [[RecruitTeenagersWithAttitude and forcing them to become the Magic Knights to save Princess Emeraude]]. The manga had a HandWave for this, saying ''nobody from Cephiro'' can harm the Pillar, so there was really was no way to avoid getting complete strangers to be taken to Cephiro to fulfill the duty as Magic Knights.

** In a hotly debated topic, everybody keeps bringing up the eagles. Why don't the Fellowship just use them to fly to someplace near Mordor, and then get to Mount Doom quicker, and then drop the Ring, and end it once and for all? Interestingly, it's a case of this leading to a short story with a DownerEnding; without Gollum's interference, no one would have had the will to destroy the Ring. Also notice that it's not listed under Literature. The films do not explain the role of the eagles in Tolkien's works, but that role makes using them a touchy matter. For one thing, [[HandWave they say]] they're afraid of archers (which Sauron has in spades), they're not subtle (being giant eagles), no one knows how the Fellowship was going to enter Mordor, and to top it all off, the eagles get their marching orders from [[http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Eagles God via His right hand angel]]. Just as His angels, such as Gandalf, are to aid but not dominate the Free Peoples, the eagles answer to a higher power. However, nothing's stopping the Fellowship from getting Gandalf to convince God to let them use the Eagles for their mission, ditching Sauron temporarily, and then [[WebAnimation/HowItShouldHaveEnded blindfolding the Eagles and flying them straight to Mordor]].

** During the third act, Marty learns that Old!Biff gave the almanac to Young!Biff in 1955 and that Young!Biff earned his first million(s) in 1958 by betting on the ponies after turning 21. That gives Doc and Marty about a three-year span of time to steal the almanac back from Young!Biff, rather than going to November 12th, 1955, the day Old!Biff went to to give his younger self the almanac, and risk running into 1955!Doc and Part I!Marty. Alternatively, if they still think it would've been better to get rid of the almanac as soon as possible to minimize any changes to the timeline and because they probably don't know where else Biff is besides that date, they could have just waited until about 3am on the day of the Under the Sea Dance (after the storm had passed) and stolen it while he was asleep or whatever. All of the urgency of the third act in Part II is incredibly forced.

** Many reviews love to point out that since [[Characters/MarvelComicsThanos Thanos]]'s goal is to fix what he perceives to be overpopulation and diminishing resources problems, he could've just used the [[RealityWarper Infinity Gauntlet]] to create never ending resources or alter the universe's fertility rate instead of killing half of the universe. Perhaps the heroes could have even ''aided'' Thanos in assembling the Infinity Stones rather than putting up the ''sheer'' resistance we see in this film. The WordOfGod response is that Thanos is a NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist whose true desire is to prove that his original plan (killing half of his race to prevent overpopulation) would have worked (There's a reason he's called the 'Mad Titan', after all). Indeed when he found out that the heroes are not "grateful" for his actions and are trying to reverse it, Thanos drops his good intentions entirely and declares that he will use the stones to erase the ''whole'' universe before remaking it so that they will be grateful for his actions.
** Another notable case of this trope becomes apparent during the scene where Dr. Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Mantis and Drax attempt to pry the Infinity Gauntlet off Thanos's arm, which ultimately fails when an enraged, grief-stricken Quill wrecks their attempt and allows Thanos to snap out of his Mantis-induced trance. Keep in mind that Dr. Strange is a powerful sorcerer who can open portals leading into nearly anywhere in the universe, which are also shown to inflict clean {{Portal Cut}}s; if he had though of putting Thanos's arm through a portal and closed it while it was halfway through, the team wouldn't have had a hard time preventing the death of half the universe in the first place. Supposedly, this is the only one out of the 14 million outcomes that led to their victory over Thanos but given the fact that said outcome involves Tony & Natasha being dead, other timelines being altered as a result of their TimeTravel or the potential consequences of people suddenly reappearing 5 years later, it's really hard to see it that way when Strange putting more effort into subduing Thanos or Thor finishing him off would have had a far better outcome as far the viewers are concerned.

* In the setting of {{Film/Inception}}, the danger of dream invasions is well enough known that businessmen hire people to do it to their rivals and undergo mental training to defend against it. But given that you need to be hooked up to a bunch of machines in your sleep, a few real bodyguards who clobber anyone who tries would protect you better than the training would, while also protecting you from mundane kidnapping or assassination. Yet neither of the MegaCorp owners have any physical protection.

* {{Literature/Hyouka}} is a series about the protagonists solving mysteries around their school, usually through research and clever deduction. However, many mysteries, including some that form entire arcs) could be solved within a few minutes by questioning people involved. For example, one mystery involved a library book that was constantly being dropped off within hours of being picked up, and there was no known connection between any of the people who borrowed it. Rather than simply asking any of the people involved, they spend half an episode coming up with various theories, analyzing every little detail, and wracking their brains over what could possibly be going on.
* ''Literature/TheShining'': Wendy could have saved herself a lot of hassle if she'd just taken Danny and sucked it up and gone to stay with her bitchy mother in September, when Jack started showing signs of drinking.

** In the second book, Arya, while being held as a prisoner of war, is rewarded by an assassin she had previously saved with her choice of three deaths. She wastes the first two on cruel soldiers and uses the third to help free some of her brother's high ranking soldiers and start an uprising in the camp. She later realizes that she should have used one of the deaths to kill someone important like Tywin Lannister and cripple the Lannister war effort.
** Tyrion and Cersei spend much of the second book competing against one another for control over King's Landing. The thing is, Cersei is Queen Regent and is, on paper at least, the highest authority in the country. There's nothing stopping her from just overruling whatever decision Tyrion makes and she could easily strip him of his position and power if she thinks he's undermining her. Conversely, since he knows that one of her significant personality traits is fear of her rightful power being taken away from her, if he had made more of an attempt to keep her in the loop for his plans there would have been a lot less drama during the book, and would probably have caused him less problems down the road. The worst example is when she tries to smuggle her younger son out of the city for safety, Tyrion ''orders the boy kidnapped'' simply to take him to another safe haven anyway. Of course, it's made pretty evident that Tyrion is getting off on the rush of power through the book.
* Most of the plots in the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' series could have been avoided had the heroes simply killed the villain(s) of the book or neutralized them before they could begin their campaign of evil, or simply fortified the Abbey and made it impossible for villains to raid. Or rather, since the abbey ''is'' already an impressively-walled stronghold, ''keep that damn wicker gate locked so the Abbey children won't go off into the woods again''. It's somewhat justified by each book taking place years apart, so the precautions taken during times of siege are often forgotten or outright unecessary by the time the next vermin army comes rolling up.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': In the first book Harry finds that he has inherited a lot of money, and feels really guilty since his friend Ron Weasley is stuck in PerpetualPoverty. In [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets the second book,]] Ron breaks his wand early on so that it only works some of the time, and is stuck with this for the whole book since his family is too poor to buy a new one. While this [[spoiler: becomes important for a major plot point,]] it's never explained why, if Harry has so much more money, he doesn't just buy Ron a new one. Even if it's somehow embarrassing to have your friend by you a replacement wand, he could just [[AnonymousBenefactor buy it and have it sent to him secretly.]]

** If only [[OnlySaneMan Michael]] had moved away from his incompetent, irresponsible and immoral family, he wouldn't have to deal with their shenanigans. To his credit, he did try to leave in the beginning of season two. But the SEC was extra suspicious at that point.

* ''Series/{{Arrow}}'': Season 3 would be much shorter if at any point of time Oliver would just let the League of Assassins deal with the Magician like they wanted to. Considering that the Magician is a villain himself and Oliver ''himself'' wanted to kill him at two points of time for ''the same reasons'' League hunts him ([[spoiler:the Undertaking]] and [[spoiler:his role in Sara's murder]]) it makes very little sense that he would want to risk conflict with the League(which helped him in the past) just to protect him. Yes, he has a reason to protect him ([[spoiler:he's Thea's father]]) but this falls flat when you remember that [[spoiler:Thea ''herself'' rather sensibly disowned him after she learned that he drugged and brainwashed her to kill Sara]], making it look like Oliver has the ConflictBall super-glued to his hand. The show tries to justify it with the Magician's claim that the League will punish [[spoiler:Thea]], since they're the one who actually fired the arrows, but once Ra's al Ghul makes clear he considers the Magician the real killer, Oliver could have just let the problem resolve itself.
* In ''Series/{{Beetleborgs}}'', a new villain waited until the heroes' base rose out of the ground and then having the monster-planes bomb it while the vehicles were still inside. Though the heroes eventually [[MerchandiseDriven got new, cooler, vehicles]], it was a devastating blow. It also made you wonder why absolutely no-one's ever thought of that before. Which is really strange, because in the rest of the many-parts episode, this monster didn't use savviness. On the contrary, at this point he destroyed all the other weapons playing by the rules, just to show he could do it.

** In truth the only character who hates living in "Californy" is Granny. Jed is bemused by all the strange things he runs into, but he moved them there in the first place because he believed it was the proper place for rich-folk like them to live. There are several cases where they do pack up and move back (and in one case Granny wanted them to move to [[Series/PetticoatJunction Hooterville]]), but always come back because the StatusQuoIsGod.

** Season Five established a) [[BigBad Glory]] can't leave this dimension without [[MacGuffin The Key]]. b) The key has been incarnated as Dawn, written into the timeline as Buffy's sister, c) Glory is much stronger that Buffy, and will stop at nothing to get The Key, d) Willow has the ability to send living beings to other dimensions (though admittedly her ability to choose a specific dimension is in question), and e) Buffy knows she can't take Glory head-on, so she chooses to take Dawn and run, presumably for the rest of their lives. The idea that Willow could have just sent Dawn (and probably Buffy in order to protect her) to another dimension and thus trap Glory here forever is never brought up. Glory has to do her thing in Sunnydale, on a specific date, after which (as far as we can tell) the Key is useless. So why not ship Dawn off to France for a few months? There's no indication that Glory can track her.
** Season Seven would have had far less complications ensue in the second half of the season had the main characters invented some kind of mandatory "touch" system where they would have to make regular physical contact with each other to see if everyone present was corporeal. The First Evil caused so many problems by imitating other characters (but is incorporeal) that it seems odd that no system is invented to regularly verify that everyone there is really who they say they are. In their defense, The First didn't actually trick them this way all that many times. It could only imitate dead people, so besides Buffy and Spike, it could only trick people with a form that had died recently without anyone knowing about it. Most of the time the people it was talking to were well aware it wasn't their dead friend they were talking to, but the First just used the forms to mess with their heads.
** For a villainous example, why there aren't more villains that simply find out where Buffy lives and dealing with her there. This is lampshaded in Season Six when the villain Warren simply gives her address to a monster to deal with her, and later visits her house and shoots her there. Probably the most problematic is in Season Seven, when the First Evil's [[TheDragon minion Caleb]] has killed all of the Watcher's Council using a bomb, later kills MORE Slayer Potentials using a different bomb, simply never bombs Buffy's house where she and all of her army are living.
** Slayers rarely ever use fire when hunting vampires, despite it proving one of their greatest weaknesses, even to the oldest and strongest vampires? Particularly noticeable with the introduction of the Turok-Han, the uber-vampires from Season Seven who prove more resistant to stakes and holy water, are not affected by crosses and do not need invitations to enter homes. Yet at no point does anyone suggest the possibility of testing their [[KillItWithFire resistance to fire?]]

** You'd think after Jay [[spoiler:was expelled for being one of the leading causes of the school shooting]] that people would stop hanging around him, but Alex, Amy, Emma and J.T. still thought he was cool, and just look at what happened to all of them.
* ''Series/DennisTheMenace''. Mr. Wilson's life would be much better if the Mitchells would move away. The worst part is that the man knows this, and his warnings to the other characters are tragically ignored. An episode of the animated series dealt with this. Dennis breaks Mr. Wilson's window and he boards it up, and tells Dennis to just ''pretend'' that he has moved away from now on, in an attempt to get some peace. A pair of movers show up, having gotten lost while on their way to move an entire house, and ask Dennis if he knows anyone who is moving. [[LiteralMinded Dennis points them toward Mr. Wilson's house]], and they take the boarded up window as a sign that he is right. They lift the entire home onto a truck and take it away, with Mr. Wilson trying desperately to stop them. Eventually his house ends up in a nice coastal area, and he realizes that not only is his new location better, but ''no Dennis''. But the movers figure out their mistake and [[StatusQuoIsGod take the house back over his protests]].

* For ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'', it's generally "[[YouAreGrounded Just Ground Megan]]", or "Just Take Away Megan's Prank Supplies", or "Just Counter-Prank Megan". Many of the shenanigans Drake and Josh get into could have been avoided had they told their parents of Megan's misdeeds and gotten her punished. Since she acts as a DeliberatelyCuteChild in front of her parents to remain a KarmaHoudini, this is more difficult than it sounds.

** Episode "the Flash is born" would've been over in five minutes flat if ''anyone'' thought of exploiting [[VillainOfTheWeek Girder's]] LogicalWeakness. Bad guy in question can turn his skin to metal protecting him from practically anything Flash can throw at him. However, this wouldn't protect him from electricity. Solution: Buy a stun gun or ask local GadgeteerGenius for an electric weapon to deal with him. No one from the Team Flash thinks of this.
** Inverted in "Rogue Time". Barry ''does'' have a way to quickly deal with Weather Wizard ([[spoiler:after traveling back in time episode earlier he knows exactly where Weather Wizard is, and can catch him immediately]]) and he does so, despite being advised otherwise by Dr. Wells. This however ends up ''massively'' backfiring causing problems, among others, with recurring villain Captain Cold. The rest of the episode is pretty much cleaning up the after-effects of eating said Gilligan.

** Cicada quickly became a [[TheScrappy Scrappy]] among the series [[BigBad Big Bads]] by combining this trope with InformedAbility. According to Nora, no superhero can stop him (or at least the original timeline version, which isn’t indicated to be different in any meaningful way), but his main powers are enhanced physical abilities, an energy shield (that he rarely uses) and a dagger that nullifies (most) nearby meta’s powers and he can control telekinetically. Even setting aside using lethal force to stop him from killing a member of Team Flash or escaping to inevitably kill again, or [[SupermanStaysOutOfGotham getting Supergirl, The Legends or Team Arrow]] to hand him his ass with powers, magic or tech that he can’t nullify, they almost never attack him with ranged weaponry, and when they do (or otherwise temporarily incapacitate him), they never simply beat him into unconsciousness to have Barry run him into the pipeline or slap him in meta cuffs, allowing him to recover and either attack or pull a VillainExitStageLeft.

** After Daenerys conquers the cities of Slaver’s Bay and frees the slaves, an elderly freedman asks her to let him voluntarily sell himself back to his old master, since he was well treated in the household as a tutor to his master’s children, and his life as a homeless unemployed freedman is materially worse then his life as a slave. He also states that there are many former slaves who feel the same way he does. This is intended to show that a charismatic leader cannot resolve structural societal ills overnight, that there are no easy solutions to complex problems, and that Dany’s idealism and good intentions may need to be compromised to keep society running smoothly. The idea that the man and people like him could simply work for pay with some legal protections, particularly the right to leave their current employers if they choose, is never considered or even mentioned. Even if the idea of a wage is too advance for a medieval-like society, there's feudalism. Not good by modern standards but much better than slavery. Daenerys actually comes from a Feudal society, and even if she was too young to remember she seems to be well informed about the country she pretends to rule.
** Book!Littlefinger is surprisingly good at [[DefiedTrope defying this trope,]] as for all his ChronicBackstabbingDisorder, he's quite charming and useful in his own ways. Series!Littlefinger, however, is a DevilInPlainSight and AdaptationalWimp, but it takes seven seasons and a convoluted gambit before anyone with power over him simply decides to [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim kill him]] for his many betrayals and the obvious threat he poses.

** The title character of ''Series/DustysTrail'', a ''Gilligan's Island'' rip off also made by Sherwood Schwartz, was just as bad as the ''Minnow'''s first mate. As the show's own theme song explained, Dusty got his group separated from their wagon train going to California and nothing ever goes right because of him.

* ''Franchise/KamenRider'' usually avoids this trope by not using the same "BigBad sends a minion to defeat the hero each week" format as Franchise/SuperSentai, but there are exceptions. More recent series (notably ''[[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]]'' and ''[[Series/KamenRiderKiva Kiva]]'') have the villains start using mass produced [[MonsterOfTheWeek MotWs]] as {{Mooks}}, but by that point Wataru's gotten his SuperMode and they're no challenge (as seen when Kiva takes out six with a single FinishingMove). Meanwhile, in ''Series/KamenRiderDouble,'' the villains of the week don't actually work for the BigBad, whose plan just requires ''observing'' the thugs he's sold powers to, and he is perfectly happy to have Kamen Riders fighting them and getting them to show their true strength.

** ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'' has one that affects the whole plot. The BigBad, the Ark, is an AI satellite sitting immobile at the bottom of a lake, unguarded. You'd think it would be easy for our heroes to find where the Ark is and blow it up, since they know it's sunken somewhere in Daybreak Town, but this option is never brought up or even considered. And when they do decide to do something about it, instead of doing that they give it a physical body. Because apparently it having a body makes it easier to destroy it? That's... [[NiceJobBreakingItHero not what happens]].

** That's not even the half of it. He kidnapped three sailors and used them as hostages to get the Colorado to run a blockade. When they are late, he murders one of the sailors and it is implied that he rapes another (she later disclaims this, but the rest of the crew doesn't know that). He participates in the CIA strike team raid, helping them poison ''everyone'', which leads to two more sailors' deaths. He then straps a bomb vest to another sailor, which King barely defuses, then halfheartedly offers up a scapegoat. Then he starts selling drugs to the sailors, and tortures the COB when he tries to intervene. It would be justified if the islanders loved him, but they don't, they know he's an exploitative thug. It could also be justified if he was well-protected, but he isn't; King and another SEAL sneak right into his living room without difficulty. He's just wearing PlotArmor.
* One episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' centers around a teenage girl who comes to New York to get an abortion, because the state she's from requires parental consent and her father had previously thrown out her older sister for an unintended pregnancy. She went to the first clinic in the phone book, but the doctor there turns out to be against abortion, and manages to delay her until she's past the legal limit for the procedure; as a result, the girl and her boyfriend end up battering the unborn child to death. But the entire thing would have been avoided if the teens had just ''gone to a different clinic''.

** In the original pilot (and the first few episodes) Dr. Smith was a scarily competent, utterly ruthless spy and saboteur who sneaks aboard the ship, [[spoiler:disables (or kills) a guard with his bare hands, reprograms the robot to sabotage the ship]], and only stays aboard because he miscalculates the amount of time he has to get off (he may have been set up by his controllers so he wouldn't still be around to answer any embarrassing questions). He was changed into the bumbling, cowardly character we all love to hate because the producers (and Johnathan Harris himself) realized that otherwise, ''they couldn't possibly justify the rest of the crew '''not''' getting rid of him somehow''. In fact, Irwin Allen originally planned to kill off the character for exactly that reason, but was convinced it would be better to use him as comic relief.
* Alexander Fitzhugh on ''Series/LandOfTheGiants'' is basically an {{Expy}} of Dr. Smith – at least in that it's another Irwin Allen show and he fills the [[TheComplainerIsAlwaysWrong Complainer Is Always Wrong]] niche in the cast. Really though, he isn't nearly so hopelessly awful as Smith, and generally proves himself to be a JerkWithAHeartOfGold and CowardlyLion who will come through in the end, ''after'' spending half the episode loudly proclaiming that he'll do no such thing. And his fast-talking skills are consistently actually ''useful'' for the heroes. Which isn't to say that he doesn't make trouble for the others, but he's not a complete [[TheLoad Load]] like Smith.
* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' perhaps has it worse than [[Series/TheFlash2014 other]] Arrowverse shows, due to being a SpiritualSuccessor to Series/DoctorWho. While there are stated limits as to the team’s ability to change history with the Waverider, such as [[DependingOnTheWriter sometimes]] being unable to interfere with events they were already a part of and certain events [[YouCantFightFate being fated to happen,]] [[KilledOffForReal character deaths]] tend to have this. Rip Hunter’s entire arc in the first season is wanting to save his family by preventing Vandal Savage’s rise to power, and later moving on. It’s never explained why he can’t just resurrect them by taking the Waverider back to pick them up before Savage killed them (presumably at a point where Past!Rip wasn’t with them). And when Laurel dies in Arrow, Rip explains that he deliberately dropped them off after the events of season 4 of Arrow because if Sarah was with Laurel at the time, she, Laurel, and their father would all be fated to die (and presumably taking Laurel with them wasn’t an option). But because there was a significant interval between Laurel being mortally wounded and dying, and the Waverider is established to have advanced medical technolgy, why not pick Laurel up and heal her right after she’s been stabbed and Darkh has left? Strangely, this is exactly what [[BigBad Prometheus]] and [[EvilTwin Black Siren]] trick Team Arrow into thinking happened at the beginning of Arrow’s 5th season.

** As of Series 5, this has turned into "just kill Morgana". Sure, he can't track her down, but he has so many opportunities to just snap her neck with magic and yet he doesn't. Why? Just... why? She's way beyond redemption by now, and is probably too insane to even be bargained with. And yet in "Another's Sorrow", he doesn't even kill her when she's strangling him, even though his life is in danger and it would be painfully easy for him to explode her head. You could say that he still feels sorry for her, but he doesn't seem to have any problem with attempting to kill Mordred, who is an InUniverse DesignatedVillain. Killing Morgana might actually be explained in the finale as it's established there (and no earlier), that Morgana is really hard to kill.
** Merlin is screwed either way. No matter if he decides to ignore fate and help Morgana or Mordred or if he tries to avoid it and by killing either one of them, the result is always the worst possible outcome. The real useless character is the dragon, because Merlin fares way better whenever he makes his decisions without being influenced by him or any other kind of prophecy. As soon as he knows what will come, he is doomed.

** It's hardly suggested that Frankie would be a little less stressed out if Mike would offer to take up some of her duties or if she would call him out for just staying out of the way. Then again, it also depending on the issue as BothSidesHaveAPoint about Frankie worrying about things she shouldn't and expecting quick fixes, and there are times Mike has helped out.

* ''Series/MissionImpossible'' actually has this inverted. Whenever there seems to be an easier, alternate way to accomplish the goal for the episode, one of the characters will bring it up in the pre-mission briefing and then an explanation as to why that can't work is given. (In "Trial By Fury," where the mission is to re-establish a convict's good name in a prison so he can continue to serve as liaison for another prisoner who's the face of his country's democracy movement, Barney asks why they can't just free them both; Phelps replies that they both know they're of far more value where they are.) In fact, the standing reason why the Impossible Mission Force can't just assassinate targets (which is obviously much easier than the convoluted schemes on the show) is because of a "policy decision" on behalf of the higher-ups in the United States.
* On ''Series/OneTreeHill'', plenty of the show's characters, especially Lucas, Nathan and Keith, spend much of their time trying to show up or prove themselves to main villain Dan Scott. As obnoxious as he is and as small as a town of Tree Hill is, a logical yet overlooked solution to just cut him off/ignore him; although understandably Lucas wants him to acknowledge him financially and paternally, seeing what a ManipulativeBastard he is and how little he changed over the first four seasons, they would have saved themselves ''a lot'' of headaches by choosing to no longer associate with him and his toxicity.

** Many a fan has wondered why the BigBad never just sends all the monsters at once instead of doing it one at a time, or simply launched an attack themselves if they were so powerful. Immediately, that is, not at the final episode where the heroes get an inexplicable power boost either. Similarly, more than a few seasons had the Rangers know exactly where the villain's base was located, but it never occurred to them to take three or four HumongousMecha to the location and stomp on stuff until a final battle was forced.

** Explained in ''Shin Kenjushi'' (''New/Heart Gunman'') (Née ''Jushi Sentai'' [''Musketeer Squadron'']) ''WebVideo/FranceFive'', an AffectionateParody of Franchise/SuperSentai and French culture. The Eiffel Tower projects a forcefield around planet Earth, meaning that the BigBad can only send small squadrons of troops to Earth at a time, including a monster, some [[{{Mooks}} Panous-panous]] and his two lieutenants.

** The Zords couldn't be sent "all at once" because the "laws of Good" prevent Good from "escalating" the violence. The bad guys, especially in ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' most likely have limits such as the magic taking a heavy toll on the user. In fact Ivan Ooze in ''TheMovie'' needed to hypnotize people to build the technology so that he could use it.
** It's also {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in the ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' comic -- one of the team asks why they don't just go straight to their [[CombiningMecha Megazords]] and squish the villain while he's still small. The response is that Zordon has instructed them to only match force for force against their enemies, due to some pseudo-Eastern mystic from space logic about fair play... of course this means that the enemy will cause ''more'' suffering, death, destruction and damage than if they'd fought ''un''fairly...

** Almost invariably in the early seasons, the MonsterOfTheWeek would be trashing the Power Rangers, and Rita would declare, "If you think you're having it rough now, wait until you see this!" before making the monster [[MakeMyMonsterGrow grow to a preposterous size]]. At this point the ''Power Rangers'' would use their cool toys and destroy the monster, every single time. If only Rita had left the monster at its original size, she could have won easily. For that matter, why didn't the Power Rangers just use their giant mechas on the "human-sized" monster? Another thing: every villain in ''Power Rangers'' ever has had the ability to teleport at will, anywhere, through walls, and even bring along passengers or cargo. Picture the cataclysmic implications if they were to use this power intelligently. In the Alien Rangers arc of MMPR, Goldar and Rito did ''just that,'' only with a bomb of the usual villains' making.
* ''Series/{{Revenge}}'' revolves around Emily Thorne's quest to take down the Grayson family and exonerate her framed father. This is something she easily could have accomplished in the first season as Emily effortlessly bugs Grayson manor and quickly collects a dossier of incriminating video evidence. But instead of simply turning this over to the police or public, Emily throws the laptop full of evidence into the ocean claiming that it was a "distraction". She then proceeds to execute an elaborate 3-year-long plan where she seduces Daniel Grayson, marries into his family and [[spoiler:attempts to frame Victoria for her faked murder]]. Over the course of this plan she loses [[spoiler:her best friend, her lover's brother, her fiance and her ability to bear children, all at the hands of the Graysons. Her eventual takedown of the Graysons only takes one episode and involves a fairly simple EngineeredPublicConfession,]] raising the question of why she didn't just do this to begin with.
* Played hilariously straight twice in ''Series/RobinHood'' with [[TheSmurfettePrinciple the obligatory female]] Kate, though both times it happened without the writers noticing what they'd done. That this girl is a liability to the team is undeniable; she's constantly getting kidnapped, injured and sabotaging outlaw plans thanks to her [[strike:reckless]] stupid behaviour. Therefore, it's rather amusing in the episode "Too Hot to Handle" that Kate is kidnapped (again) while the outlaws are en route to the River Trent. Instead of organising a rescue, they just continue on their way without any attempt made to go after her. Later in "Something Worth Fighting For" she marches off in a huff after being tricked into believing that Robin is cheating on her. Despite the amount of [[CreatorsPet shilling]] that goes on, nobody seems to care about or even really notice her absence -- though [[SarcasmMode luckily she arrives back]] just in time to completely ruin their successful attempt at a peaceful sit-in protest.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''. Neelix originally was a competent character. He owned and operated a single-ship, knew the territory, was just ruthless enough to survive, and made his living as a grifter, a pirate, and a salvager. A few episodes later and suddenly he's a [[TheLoad useless, obnoxious, egocentric buffoon]] with the intellect and emotional capacity of a toddler. At his worst, he's [[TheMillstone gotten several crew members killed and endangered the entire ship]] on multiple occasions. In one VerySpecialEpisode, he went beyond reckless endangerment and committed ''bona fide'', premeditated treason. Not only does he never earn anything worse than a stern reprimand for the multiple fatalities he causes, he actually gets ''put in charge of people''. Despite not being an officer, or even a member of Starfleet, nor having any noteworthy abilities beyond the sheer gall to appoint himself "morale officer". To top it off ''while he is in charge'' his leadership is directly the cause of one death while marooned on an alien planet. All because he has no concept of the buddy system. Even his [[LethalChef cooking causes problems]].

* In ''Series/{{Survivor}}'', several seasons had people shouting, "Just vote out ''x''!" at their [=TV=]s. Especially recent seasons, wherein players seemed to have become afraid to rock the boat and try taking control of their alliances and vote out the designated "leader".
** ''All-Stars'': By the time that Chaboga Mogo realizes that Rob and Amber have no intention of bringing them to the final Tribal Council, they're down to four people and Rob is still carrying the Immunity Necklace. This comes after Rob has repeatedly told the other members of the group that he won't break his alliance[=/=]relationship with Amber for any reason. This later leads to a series of [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech "Reason You Suck" speeches]] at the final Tribal Council ... which rings hollow once the contestants realized that Rob proposed to her and that the engaged couple would win either way.

** ''One World''. Viewers very quickly began to expect that everyone would just let Colton walk all over everybody. He did- until he was medevaced.

** The argument has been made many times for detractors of the game that the only way to have a successful character in the RPG is to ''never follow any clues''. Being based on the themes and moods of [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraftian]] [[CosmicHorrorStory stories]], curiosity has less of a tendency to kill the cat as it does to [[ExaggeratedTrope trepan it, rearrange its anatomy as much as possible without killing it]], [[SerialEscalation magically reversing the labotomy and then suspending it in complete darkness while an unseen dog barks at it for all eternity]]. Then again, in ''[=CoC=]'' getting killed in new and exciting ways (or going permanently insane) is ''kinda the point''.

* Villainous example: In ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'', it takes the villains until the second-to-last non-postgame cut scene in the series to realize that three adults taking on KidHero Lan in real life is a better idea than taking on [[ShowyInvincibleHero MegaMan]] in {{cyberspace}}. Only [=BubbleMan=] uses a dangerous machine with no access ports. This prevents anyone from getting their [[{{Mon}} Navis]] in and hacking the machine to stop. [=BubbleMan=]'s plan failed because defeating him also shuts down the machines. But the clear point remains, the ONLY way the majority of the cast can combat the bad guys is by sending Navis into their machines, so if the villains just used machines with no access ports, or used more real world obstacles, the heroes would be powerless to stop them. Lan isn't even armed, defeating him in person is literally as easy as walking over and subduing a school kid.

* {{Subverted|Trope}} in ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys''. According to the former employee leaving you voice mail messages, the killer animatrons in the game will attack you because they don't know what humans are - they think you're an animatronic endoskeleton without your costume, and will try to force a costume onto you, killing you in the process. At one point he suggests the obvious answer of playing dead, so they think you're an empty costume instead. He quickly thinks better of it, saying that if they think you're an empty costume they'll try to shove a metal endoskeleton inside you, which would be even worse.

** In ''Justice For All'', the murderer of the final case hires a professional assassin to kidnap Maya and hold her hostage in order to coerce Phoenix into getting [[spoiler:Matt Engarde]] acquitted. In other words, instead of threatening the prosecution or the judge, he goes after the one person in the court who's job it is to keep him out of jail.
** In ''Apollo Justice'', one case involves a young boy allegedly killing a man at a concert using a gun with recoil too strong for him to wield without severely injuring himself before dragging the 250 pound corpse to the middle of the stage for no apparent reason and the prosecution puts forth the idea that the teenage boy was able to accomplish all this by secretly being an Interpol agent with the defense never pointing out the ridiculousness of the accusations being presented.

* In ''Webcomic/ClownCorps'', the agents of the titular organization dress as clowns to protect their identities from their many enemies. Detective Soto, a police officer who's heavily critical of the Corps and their insistence of maintaining their clown motif, remarks they could get similar results by just wearing sunglasses.
* ''Webcomic/RedString'' had [[spoiler:Reika think she was pregnant after she and Eiji have sex for the first time (with protection). She never says ''why'' she thinks she is, for all we know Reika might just think that sex = babies no matter what. Instead of people telling her to go get a pregnancy test or getting one herself, a majority of Chapter 51 is spent with Reika, Eiji and Miharu thinking that she's pregnant and the consequences thereof. We find out that no, she wasn't pregnant at all. Had Reika just sucked up and took a test, all the very unnecessary angst and worry would have been avoided]].

* This gets lampshaded for an off-screen plotline that happened between ''Series/{{Noob}}'' and ''[[Film/NoobLeConseilDesTroisFactions Noob: Le conseil des trois factions]]''. Long time enemies Tenshirock [[TheCracker the hacker]] and Judge Dead the Game Master have decided that if the latter catches the former in-game, both of them retire. A third party made aware of the situation points out that Tenshirock could simply let himself get caught.

* ''WesternAnimation/DastardlyAndMuttleyInTheirFlyingMachines'' suffers from a worser example of this trope than ''Wacky Races'': the Vulture Squadron destroyed 182 planes, 2 balloons, 1 ship, 1 Zeppelin, 1 gas station and 1 train throughout their quest to "Stop the Pigeon" but never caught Yankee Doodle Pigeon. It never occurs to Dick Distardly that he could just shoot Yankee Doodle to bits with a gun-equipped fighter plane.

'''Cosmo:''' Well, duh! [[LampshadeHanging I was just wondering why he hadn't asked.]] [[labelnote:Explanation]]There used to be an age old question on this very page wondering why heroes in ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' couldn't just wish away foes, with a somewhat flimsy reason (but a reason nonetheless InUniverse) being that the Dragon Balls' creator was weaker than the villains.[[/labelnote]]\\

** Anyone who's watched the show for so long can tell you that many conflicts in many episodes are started by [[TheMillstone Peter's]] anti-social behavior, lack of intelligence or any kind of common sense, or straight up recklessness. One episode parodying ''Film/HomeAlone'' actually contains a scene where Lois calls out Peter for all of his meddling interfering with her getting home to her child. Outside from that, Peter's incompetence is rarely, if ever, brought into question.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Jem}}'', the rival band of Jem and the Holograms (The Misfits) would often indulge in felonies such as kidnapping, blackmail, sabotage, slander and even attempted murder in order to boost their own sales and discredit their opponents. A simple phone call to the police would have seen them locked up for a very long time. Made worse by the fact that Jerrica ''owns Starlight Music'' and could probably do a lot more to ensure that Eric Raymond would stop causing trouble as a record executive than a pop idol. Raymond had his own army of lawyers and mega corp resources, plus Pizzazz's wealthy father and all ''his'' connections. The pilot episode also stated the reason for the Jem persona in the first place was due to some first-rate legal and financial blackmail Raymond was laying on Starlight Records (he had a stake in the company as Benton's business partner and was trying to screw Jerica and Kimber out of their shares). Worse, most of the Holograms' royalties got folded back into the business and orphanage. Raymond wasn't bothering with side ventures.
* In ''WesternAnimation/JosieAndThePussycats'' you have to wonder why do they even put up with Alexandra, who is nothing more but TheMillstone to the group. In their outer space series they could have gotten home if they had just pushed her out the airlock or left her on the next planet they landed.

* The subplot in one ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode involved the characters being assigned lab partners for a school science project (and Mr. Barkin wouldn't allow them to switch). Kim is paired with a genius scientist who neither needs nor wants her help, and as a result Kim is left bored and unsatisfied because she has nothing to do. Kim's friend Monique is paired with Ron, and she is over-stressed because Ron just doesn't care and leaves her to do all the work herself. Kim and Monique could have simply worked together on Monique's project unofficially (most of the project seemed to take place outside of school) and that way all four parties would have got a decent grade and a workload that suited them. Of course if [[SternTeacher Mr. Barkin]] ever found out, this would likely result in 4 F's given the stern way he implied that any requests for a new partner would be turned down.
* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': At least a partial amount of the power [[ConsummateLiar Lila Rossi]] has over her classmates because of her constant lying would be gone if someone made some fact-checking (she says she got tinnitus because she saved Jagged Stone's cat - a Wikipedia search would have revealed that Stone has always been allergic to pet fur since he was a ''child'' (hence why he owns a freaking ''alligator''), which would make her attempt at MovingTheGoalposts when Marinette calls her out on it even more blatant) or had common sense (Lila lies about having conditions (like the aforementioned tinnitus) that would demand for the school's administration to ask her to hand over her medical records, and escalates to the point she flat-out says that she has a psych condition that makes her lie all the time... which is accepted, with no psych confirming it ''or'' having anybody question any of her previous statements, if she now is a ''certified'' pathological liar).
** On a broader scale, almost all the series supervillains are normal people "Akumatized" by [[BigBad Hawk-Moth,]] and the heroes' SOP for defeating a villain is to find some way to destroy the [[CursedObject akumatized object,]] usually involving Ladybug using her Lucky Charm power to create some seemingly random object that allows her to execute a complex scheme to get at the object, and/or Cat Noir using his Cataclysm powers, which can destroy almost anything, on the object. But almost all the villains wear the object on their person, and while almost all powered beings in the show are implicitly super-durable, the objects don't appear any harder to destroy after an Akuma enters them, so using a regular firearm (or a [[FamilyFriendlyFirearms family-friendly equivalent, which the Lucky Charm can create)]] to shoot at the villain with the same precision and reflexes the heroes display doing everything else until you hit their Akumatized object seems like a much simpler way to beat most villains.

* Why doesn't Bluto just eat spinach to beat WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}}? There was one cartoon in which they were [[SpringTimeForHitler trying to be hospitalized]], and Bluto did indeed eat spinach and beat up Popeye. However, Bluto didn't so much "eat" the spinach as have it forced down his throat by Popeye. At a guess, Bluto hates spinach even more than he hates Popeye, underscored by one cartoon where Bluto invents a powerful herbicide to destroy all of the world's spinach to incapacitate Popeye. Popeye pleads to the audience, and some kid with a grocery bag throws it into the screen. Popeye beats Bluto, and cures all the spinach. The movie at least {{HandWave}}s this by implying that it was not that spinach itself had magical power-up properties, but that Popeye's family had long drawn strength from a diet of spinach.

* Nicely subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Squidbillies}}'' episode "A Sober Sunday." Early Cuyler spends the episode trying to lift the banning of liquor sales on Sunday, but is unable to do so. At the end of the episode Granny asks why he doesn't just buy his Sunday liquor on Saturday. He throws her in a fire and claims that it's too inconvenient.

* Speaking of ''[=ThunderCats=]'', every animation where we see heroes wielding swords, guns or every obviously dangerous weapons, shows which also include ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983'', ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'', ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeARealAmericanHero'', etc. Every kid who watched those shows has asked at least once in their lives, "Why don't they simply use their weapons to kill the bad guys?" Or vice versa. The real reason for this is, of course, that the Standards and Practices of the time did not allow such direct violence to be shown on cartoons.
* Entire episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TaleSpin'' are often driven by Baloo's incompetence, laziness or [[RefugeInAudacity audacity]], or Rebecca's hardheadedness, blind ambition or naivete. One wonders why Rebecca just doesn't let Baloo run the company instead of her.

** Good thing the Decepticons never thought of getting rid of [[TheStarscream Starscream]]. He's the only reason the Autobots kept surviving, or even [[http://www.cracked.com/article_16954_5-reasons-megatron-should-have-fired-starscream-years-ago.html woke up in the first place]]. One time he even saved the cornered Autobots just for the sake of ruining Megatron's plans. Right in front of him, complete with a [[{{Pun}} smug one-liner]]. The first episode had a scene where he seemed to have the right idea for once (suggesting blowing up the Ark instead of boarding it; [[CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot the attempted boarding is what leads to the Ark crashing to begin with]]), but then a DeletedScene was uncovered years later where Megatron [[DoubleSubversion spells out why Starscream's idea was horrible]] (Megatron knew the Autobots were heading to an energy-rich planet, but didn't know its exact location, hence why he wanted to follow or commandeer their ship, and why blowing them up would be counterproductive to his long-term goals).

** There are also times where Starscream points out glaring flaws in Megatron's plans (i.e. the dangerous instability of their latest energy source). Megatron will invariably respond by mocking and insulting him and ignoring his advice, only to be surprised when the plan blows up in his face in exactly the way Starscream predicted. The real solution would be for them to just work together rather than constantly try to one-up each other, then worry about fighting for control after the Autobots are out of the way.

* In ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', Benson would really save himself an awful lot of headaches (and risking of life, limb, reputation and sanity) if he followed through with [[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity his constant threatening to fire Mordecai and Rigby]] and actually did it. Even when several episodes show that everybody else in the cast is capable of pulling off a faux-pas that causes absurd and ''apocalyptic'' chaos just as well as those two (and thus they need to save the day), from a strictly statistical point of view it would have been much safer. Notably, Benson hires replacements [[Recap/RegularShowS03Ep22Replaced in one episode]], and they are definitely better at doing their jobs, but they quit before even a single day is over because they refused to deal with all of the [[DangerousWorkplace craziness that regularly happens in the park]], forcing Benson to rehire Mordecai and Rigby.

** In the shorts where Wile E. is pitted against WesternAnimation/BugsBunny, it's made clear that he's in it for the intellectual challenge as much as for a meal. One would assume this is probably the case in the Road Runner shorts as well. Not to mention that, due to his being an InsufferableGenius[[note]]He's even got it on business cards[[/note]], being unable to capture a bird would be a blow to his pride, so he refuses to give up.
** Lampshaded in one of the leftover shorts from the failed pilot ''Adventures of the Road Runner''. Wile E. explains that the reason he compulsively chases the Road Runner is because road runners are the most friggin' delicious things on Earth, including a meat chart with all the flavors of a road runner's various cuts laid out.
** A ''ComicBook/LooneyTunes'' comic book does actually establish that Wile E. gets his food via mail order, and that catching Road Runner is just his hobby.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'': One of the biggest plot points in the game is that Edelgard and Dimitri's complicated relationship, and Dimitri's descent into AxCrazy, occurs when it is revealed Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, the ArcVillain of the first half of the game, and who Dimitri thinks is behind the Tragedy of Duscur, an incident that horrible traumatized him. It gets to the point that on all routes, Dimitri would rather risk his life, and his nation, just to try and kill her, and in three of the four routes, he dies horribly trying to do so. Despite this, it is made clear Edelgard had nothing to do with it, as she had been essentially kidnapped during the time it happened. Despite this, nobody in game ever asks Edelgard about this, Edelgard never tells Dimitri her side of the story, and nobody ever points out the fact that Edelgard was a essentially child when it happened. It gets to the point of seeming like almost a plothole because if any of these details were mentioned, or Edelgard just told Dimitri what happened, much of the drama would be avoided, even if Dimitri may still be vengeful.

* One of the criticisms from Bronycon 2013 while watching the first of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTVSpecials'' is a case of this. Tirek's plan is to use his Rainbow of Darkness [[ReforgedIntoAMinion to turn ponies into demonic dragons]] to drive his Chariot of Darkness to cause TheNightThatNeverEnds, even though the Rainbow of Darkness can also turn non-sentient animals such as butterflies and birds into dragons that appear more than capable of driving the chariot. There was no particular reason why Tirek needs ponies-turned-dragons to drive his chariot; if he stuck to the dragons resulting from other animals, he wouldn't have to deal with the surviving ponies at his doorstep who wound up killing him during the rescue of their friends.

* ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'':
** One of the criticisms from Bronycon 2013 while watching the first of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTVSpecials'' is a case of this. Tirek's plan is to use his Rainbow of Darkness [[ReforgedIntoAMinion to turn ponies into demonic dragons]] to drive his Chariot of Darkness to cause TheNightThatNeverEnds, even though the Rainbow of Darkness can also turn non-sentient animals such as butterflies and birds into dragons that appear more than capable of driving the chariot. There was no particular reason why Tirek needs ponies-turned-dragons to drive his chariot; if he stuck to the dragons resulting from other animals, he wouldn't have to deal with the surviving ponies at his doorstep who wound up killing him during the rescue of their friends.
** Villainous example in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': Considering that Twilight was able to block Discord's magic near the end of Season 2's premiere, there's no reason for the Mane Six to ''not'' use AntiMagic on the other villains as well, since the villains rely exclusively on their magic.

* ''Film/MiracleOnThirtyFourthStreet'' features a guy being put on trial because the adults think he's insane for claiming to be Santa. If he wanted to prove that Santa was real, why didn't he just ask the adults where they think the presents are coming from? This could apply to literally any scenario where Santa needs people to believe in him.

* The [=INCspotlight=] review of ''Film/TheAdventuresOfCaptainMarvel'' points out that if there are no repercussions for destroying the Golden Scorpion at the end of the serial, it should have been destroyed long ago so that more people wouldn't die over it.
* The ''WebVideo/BumReviews'' video for ''Film/AliceInWonderland2010'' has the Bum question why they didn't have the Cheshire Cat snap the Red Queen's neck while she isn't looking instead of having Alice scar herself for life by beheading the Jabberwocky and nearly lose her life attempting it, or better yet, use the cakes that turn people into giants to the resistance's advantage and flatten the Red Queen into a pancake?

* A common criticism of ''WesternAnimation/ShadowRaiders'' revolves around how our heroes try to destroy the Beast Planet... constantly. It never works as the Beast is (supposedly) indestructible. The show would have been over quicker had our heroes just simply done something like going inside the Beast Planet without getting killed and looking for some way to destroy it from the inside, or had simply killed the Beast Generals, thus causing some sort of link to the Beast Planet to be taken away and cause it to stop working. Hell, [[Series/{{LazyTown}} Robbie Rotten]] defeated it easily [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI23rx53lPo with only a curtain]].

* Charlie Brown's baseball team in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', which never wins a single game with him as the regular pitcher, almost always wins whenever he has to step down and let someone else pitch (one strip even [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome had the team obtain a 12-game undefeated streak while Charlie was sick]] [[YankTheDogsChain only for it to be ruined when Charlie came back]]). Somehow it never seems to occur to him or anyone else to have him play some other position, or even kick him out of the team.

* Charlie Brown's baseball team in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', which never wins a single game with him as the regular pitcher, invariably wins whenever he has to step down and let someone else pitch (one strip even [[OffscreenMomentOfAwesome had the team obtain a 12-game undefeated streak while Charlie was sick]] [[YankTheDogsChain only for it to be ruined when Charlie came back]]). Somehow it never seems to occur to him or anyone else to have him play some other position, or even kick him out of the team.

* Charlie Brown's baseball team in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'', which never wins a single game with him as the regular pitcher, invariably wins whenever he has to step down and let someone else pitch. Somehow it never seems to occur to him or anyone else to have him play some other position.

Even a useless character can have his place in a show: as ComicRelief, a KidAppealCharacter, or even a HateSink. But sometimes one person is [[TheMillstone so repeatedly and hopelessly incompetent]] that even the audience takes notice. If one character (or some other factor) is the main reason for ''every'' failure, why does the rest of the cast not account for that? Why do the rest of the castaways keep Gilligan around? [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Why don't they just shoot him?]] (or lock him in his room, have a volunteer take him somewhere out of the way, or send him on a SnipeHunt?)

* Charlie Brown's baseball team in ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}, which never wins a single game with him as the regular pitcher, invariably wins whenever he has to step down and let someone else pitch. Somehow it never seems to occur to him or anyone else to have him play some other position.

* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', after Daenerys conquers the cities of Slaver’s Bay and frees the slaves, an elderly freedman asks her to let him voluntarily sell himself back to his old master, since he was well treated in the household as a tutor to his master’s children, and his life as a homeless unemployed freedman is materially worse then his life as a slave. He also states that there are many former slaves who feel the same way he does. This is intended to show that a charismatic leader cannot resolve structural societal ills overnight, that there are no easy solutions to complex problems, and that Dany’s idealism and good intentions may need to be compromised to keep society running smoothly. The idea that the man and people like him could simply work for pay with some legal protections, particularly the right to leave their current employers if they choose, is never considered or even mentioned.
** Heck, even without pay. If the idea of a wage is too advance for a medieval-like society, fine. But there's feudalism. Not good for our standards but much better than slavery. There's a documentary series hosted by Creator/TerryJones on how Feudalism wasn't really as nasty as modern audiences understand it and if fact was a win/win situation for everyone involved for the conditions of the time. The surprising part if that Daenerys actually comes from a Feudal society, and even if she was too young to remember she seems to be well informed about the country she pretends to rule.

* ''Series/StrangerThings'': Why can't the residents of Hawkins, Indiana take a hint and move as far away from it as possible to avoid all the paranormal and supernatural happenings and to also avoid making any further contact with the Upside Down? That way, the kids wouldn't have to investigate these happenings and wind up in therapy for the rest of their lives. [[spoiler:Amusingly enough, at the end of season three, the Byers family and Eleven actually ''do'' [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere move out of Hawkins]]. Then season four starts and for a variety of reasons, [[InescapableHorror it does not helps]].]]

** If Ned Stark had held off confronting Cersei until after he had gathered a force of trustworthy soldiers and made sure his daughters safety was secured, then [[spoiler:he wouldn't have been betrayed and executed, and Sansa and Arya wouldn't have been at his enemies' mercy]].

* Similarly, the [[WesternAnimation/Flintstones Cocoa and Fruity Pebbles commercials]]. Barney steals cereal from Fred, who then chases after him angrily for it. Barney could spare himself from Fred's wrath if he just bought a box of the cereal himself instead of stealing Fred's.

--->'''Taikoubou''': "If you take care of things, everything will go just fine!"\\

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' is widely known for his PerpetualPoverty even though both fans and writers often point out many ways he could make plenty of cash.

* Bob Denver, a.k.a. Gilligan, [[LampshadeHanging hung a lampshade]] on ''Series/GilligansIsland'' himself in the film ''Film/BackToTheBeach''.

** ''Film/TheLastJedi'' has an entire chunk of the movie revolve around a dangerous plan by the heroes involving getting a code-breaker so Finn and Rose can sneak aboard one of the First Order's ships and disable a Hyperspace Tracker, all because the Resistances current leader, Holdo, is giving them no indication of a plan, leaving them desperate enough to go behind her back in order to try and save the Resistance. It later turns out she did have a plan, and never told anyone for reasons never made fully clear, which became criticized because the entire plot, and her death later, could have been avoided if she simply told the heroes she had a plan, rather than her refusal to just tell people she had a plan. Detractors often point out that if she simply said she had a plan, but wasn't explaining further to avoid it being leaked, than the heroes would have been safe in the end, but because that wouldn't have made the story more dramatic, nor let the movies themes be spelt out, this very obvious point is never acknowledged even when Poe flat out begs out to just ''say'' she had a plan.

* ''Film/AvengersEndgame'': When the remaining heroes decide to go back in time to get the Infinity Stones before they were destroyed by Thanos, they go for a very convoluted plan to go to various points in the timeline (namely, the events of ''Film/TheAvengers2012'', ''Film/ThorTheDarkWorld'', and ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'') to retrieve the stones. However, they never think of going to between when Thanos did the Snap and escaped to The Garden planet and the day he used the Infinity Stones to destroy themselves (two days before their raid on Thanos's place with Captain Marvel) and taking him down there and retrieving all the stones in one fell swoop.

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'': In the first book Harry finds that he has inherited a lot of money, and feels really guilty since his friend Ron Weasley is stuck in PerpetualPoverty. In [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheChamberOfSecrets second book,]] Ron breaks his wand early on so that it only works some of the time, and is stuck with this for the whole book since his family is too poor to buy a new one. While this [[spoiler: becomes important for a major plot point,]] it's never explained why, if Harry has so much more money, he doesn't just buy Ron a new one. Even if it's somehow embarrassing to have your friend by you a replacement wand, he could just [[AnonymousBenefactor buy it and have it sent to him secretly.]]

* ''Series/GilligansIsland'':
** The title character is the {{Trope Namer|s}}, whose bungling so often sabotaged the rest of the cast's attempts to get back to civilization, that one has to wonder why they simply didn't [[ImAHumanitarian eat him]] -- ''or'' at least [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident arrange for some sort of "accident" to happen to him]]. Or if they didn't want to be killers, they could've just locked him up until they got off the island (which would likely only take a week), then send someone back for him afterwards. Or they simply could have given Gilligan a less critical role in the plan.
** Evidence from the show itself actually helps Gilligan's case. [[http://captaincomics.ning.com/forum/topics/the-baron-watches-gilligans?id=3370054%3ATopic%3A27071&page=29#comments Statistically speaking]], out of 98 episodes, only 37 involved a direct possibility of escaping the island. Of those 37, only 17 potential rescues were foiled as a result of Gilligan's actions. Admittedly, that's still a lot of rescues for one man to screw up, but the series also has a large number of episodes where Gilligan's actions ''save'' everybody -- from death, enslavement, imprisonment, etc.
** They did throw a lampshade on this in one escape attempt, in which they'd found gold on the island but the weight limit on the escape craft could only hold so much. [[NotMeThisTime Gilligan was the only one]] to actually abide by the limit, with the others attempting to smuggle more along with them than they were allowed, including the Professor.
** Invoked hard in one episode. The castaways hear a radio broadcast where an investigation of the disappearance of the Minnow concludes that their disappearance was due to the negligence of the crew. In order to see if this was the case they recreate the day the shipwreck happened, with everyone involved repeating exactly what they did that day. It's discovered that as soon as the Skipper realized the storm was blowing them off course, he ordered Gilligan to drop anchor. Gilligan, however, hadn't bothered to tie a rope around the anchor, making it worse than useless. Therefore it really is Gilligan's fault that they were shipwrecked.
** The title character of ''Series/DustysTrail'', a ''Gilligan's Island'' rip off also made by Sherwood Schwartz, was just as bad as the ''Minnow'''s first mate. As the show's own theme song explained, Dusty got his group separated from their wagon train going to California and nothing ever goes right because of him.

* In ''Series/{{Beetleborgs}}'', a new villain waited until the heroes' base rose out of the ground and then having the monster-planes bomb it while the vehicles were still inside. Though the heroes eventually [[MerchandiseDriven got new, cooler, vehicles]], it was a devastating blow. It also made you wonder why absolutely no-one's ever thought of that before. Which is really strange, because in the rest of the many-parts episode, this monster didn't use savviness. On the contrary, at this point he destroyed all the other weapons playing by the rules, just to show he could do it.
* Of course, ''Franchise/KamenRider'' usually avoids this trope by not using the same "BigBad sends a minion to defeat the hero each week" format as Franchise/SuperSentai, but there are exceptions. More recent series (notably ''[[Series/KamenRiderDenO Den-O]]'' and ''[[Series/KamenRiderKiva Kiva]]'') have the villains start using mass produced [[MonsterOfTheWeek MotWs]] as {{Mooks}}, but by that point Wataru's gotten his SuperMode and they're no challenge (as seen when Kiva takes out six with a single FinishingMove). Meanwhile, in ''Series/KamenRiderDouble,'' the villains of the week don't actually work for the BigBad, whose plan just requires ''observing'' the thugs he's sold powers to, and he is perfectly happy to have Kamen Riders fighting them and getting them to show their true strength.
** ''Series/KamenRiderWizard'' has one particularly egregious case. Nitou/Kamen Rider Beast is powered by a Chimera who requires mana to survive lest he consume his host; he gets this by consuming defeated Phantoms. One of the Phantoms and major villains of the series, Phoenix, has the ability to be reborn every time he dies. So naturally, Beast devouring Phoenix would have resolved two problems at once: how to keep Chimera from not devour Nitou AND how to ensure Phoenix wouldn't come back.
** ''Series/KamenRiderZeroOne'' has one that affects the whole plot. The BigBad, the Ark, is an AI satellite sitting immobile at the bottom of a lake, unguarded. You'd think it would be easy for our heroes to find where the Ark is and blow it up, since they know it's sunken somewhere in Daybreak Town, but this option is never brought up or even considered. And when they do decide to do something about it, instead of doing that they give it a physical body. Because apparently it having a body makes it easier to destroy it? That's... [[NiceJobBreakingItHero not what happens]].
* ''Series/DegrassiTheNextGeneration'':
** In the third, fourth, and fifth seasons, more than half of the plots could have been resolved in ten seconds if the characters had chosen not to associate with Jay Hogart. He started off with a bad reputation, yet nobody even gives a second thought above how "cool" they'd look being his friend. What did his victims do when they finally realized he was manipulating them? They glared at him really angrily, and sometimes even spoke harsh words. Some of these kids have beaten each other up because of his tricks, but when they find out the brawl was his fault, they don't even throw a punch at him. However, he does become a semi-helpful member of the cast in the sixth and seventh seasons. He still manages to do the wrong things on several occasions there as well.
** You'd think after Jay [[spoiler:was expelled for being one of the leading causes of the school shooting]] that people would stop hanging around him, but Alex, Amy, Emma and J.T. still thought he was cool, and just look at what happened to all of them.

* ''Series/ArrestedDevelopment'':
** GOB routinely screws up Michael's plans to save the company, week after week after week, even to the point of undoing what good Michael has achieved. Given how often this occurs, it is surprising that Michael always has a change of heart right after he decides to finally get rid of GOB for good. Indeed, the humor of the series mainly stems from the HardTruthAesop that Michael should stop caring about his family, but he is unable to.
** If only [[OnlySaneMan Michael]] had moved away from his incompetent, irresponsible and immoral family, he wouldn't have to deal with their shenanigans. To his credit, he did try to leave in the beginning of season two. But the SEC was extra suspicious at that point.
** The Creator/{{Fox}} run of the show actually ends with the SEC coming after the Bluths again and Michael finally going, "Y'know what? ''Fuck this.''" One of the first things in the order of business of the Creator/{{Netflix}} season was getting Michael back into his family's life.
** On the other hand, [[JustifiedTrope Michael can be just as bad and self-centered as the rest of the Bluths]] and one of the reasons why he hangs around is because he genuinely gets off on his own feeling of self-importance and needing to be relied on by the rest of the family. Him leaving the family to fend for themselves in order to spend time with his son he previously spent the entire series neglecting is arguably positive character development in the context.
* Played hilariously straight twice in ''Series/RobinHood'' with [[TheSmurfettePrinciple the obligatory female]] Kate, though both times it happened without the writers noticing what they'd done. That this girl is a liability to the team is undeniable; she's constantly getting kidnapped, injured and sabotaging outlaw plans thanks to her [[strike:reckless]] stupid behaviour. Therefore, it's rather amusing in the episode "Too Hot to Handle" that Kate is kidnapped (again) while the outlaws are en route to the River Trent. Instead of organising a rescue, they just continue on their way without any attempt made to go after her. Later in "Something Worth Fighting For" she marches off in a huff after being tricked into believing that Robin is cheating on her. Despite the amount of [[CreatorsPet shilling]] that goes on, nobody seems to care about or even really notice her absence -- though [[SarcasmMode luckily she arrives back]] just in time to completely ruin their successful attempt at a peaceful sit-in protest.
* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' thrived on this, which is not surprising considering the connections to ''Gilligan's Island''.
** All the survivors of 815 had to do was to ''hold a big meeting and compare notes about this VERY odd island'' to keep their cool and work more as a cohesive group. This is what the survivors tried to do initially. Except there were people trying to act in the best interests of the group, such as Sayid and co. keeping the French transmission a secret. And then people acting in their own interests, like Kate trying to keep her past a secret or Sawyer making everyone hate him because he's a JerkassWoobie. And then there's Locke, who... is Locke. Arguably, part of the show's point is that when left to their own devices, people are prone to conflict and self-destruction.
--->''They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.''
** Part of the show's point is also that people only come to work together when all [[FireForgedFriends threatened by the same thing]] (Smokey, Others, No-Food/Water/Meds, wtf) but when they ain't, it's ''every man for himself''.
** Ben has random people kidnapped and murdered at his own whim, manipulates the protagonists continually, and is a flat-out bastard with only a ''few'' sympathetic traits (which he is quick to exploit for his own means) is constantly put into scenarios where the protagonists can kill him... and they don't. Every time this happens, it bites them in the ass later.
** By season six they do stop going along with any plan of Ben's. Anyone who was ever thinking 'Stop listening to Ben!' had to laugh when Sun knocked him unconscious and stole the boat he had led her to, and the last season continued in that vein, with all other characters completely ignoring anything Ben said or wanted to do.
* ''Series/{{Farscape}}'' gave Rygel a great many opportunities to prove himself a life-endangering nuisance in the first season: at one point, trying to fool a gang of mercenaries into believing that he still holds a position of authority, he "borrows" a critical part of Moya's circuitry to decorate his sceptre- and almost gets the entire crew killed when the mercenaries kidnap him, sceptre and all. And after almost erasing Moya's data banks in an attempt to get home, releasing a virus on the crew, he eventually goes on to sell out his shipmates to Scorpius... only for the crew to begrudgingly accept his return when the attempted betrayal goes sour. Even the second season took a while to actually transform him into a useful character, revealing that they kept him around solely because while a useless, greedy, selfish idiot under normal circumstances, put him in a situation where intrigue and/or bartering are necessary and he suddenly turns into [[Literature/TheBelgariad Prince Kheldar]], which is quite handy when your budget closely resembles a shoestring.
* For some reason, the characters in ''Series/KeepingUpAppearances'' never just ''refuse'' to do whatever Hyacinth says. When Hyacinth ignores a "No", the characters appear resigned to obey her. It gets turned into a running gag when Emmet tries to coach Liz into refusing coffee with Hyacinthe. She's ''just. that.'' SCARY.
* ''Series/McHalesNavy:'' [=McHale=] and his men would find themselves at risk of being court-martialed a ''lot'' less often if they'd transfer the greedy and conniving Torpedoman's Mate Lester Gruber to a different boat.
* ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}'':
** You could make a case for it, but the title character's steadfast refusal to tell ''anyone'' about the fact that he has magic has caused more problems than it has solved. In particular, his treatment of Morgana led at least partially to her FaceHeelTurn. Particularly as she likewise discovers she has magic in the second series. Her neck is on the line just as much as his, as it doesn't seem like that Uther would have been merciful.
** As of Series 5, this has turned into "just kill Morgana". Sure, he can't track her down, but he has so many opportunities to just snap her neck with magic and yet he doesn't. Why? Just... why? She's way beyond redemption by now, and is probably too insane to even be bargained with. And yet in "Another's Sorrow", he doesn't even kill her when she's strangling him, even though his life is in danger and it would be painfully easy for him to explode her head. You could say that he still feels sorry for her, but he doesn't seem to have any problem with attempting to kill Mordred, who is an InUniverse DesignatedVillain. Killing Morgana might actually be explained in the finale as it's established there (and no earlier), that Morgana is really hard to kill.
** Merlin is screwed either way. No matter if he decides to ignore fate and help Morgana or Mordred or if he tries to avoid it and by killing either one of them, the result is always the worst possible outcome. The real useless character is the dragon, because Merlin fares way better whenever he makes his decisions without being influenced by him or any other kind of prophecy. As soon as he knows what will come, he is doomed.
* ''Series/{{Revenge}}'' revolves around Emily Thorne's quest to take down the Grayson family and exonerate her framed father. This is something she easily could have accomplished in the first season as Emily effortlessly bugs Grayson manor and quickly collects a dossier of incriminating video evidence. But instead of simply turning this over to the police or public, Emily throws the laptop full of evidence into the ocean claiming that it was a "distraction". She then proceeds to execute an elaborate 3-year-long plan where she seduces Daniel Grayson, marries into his family and [[spoiler:attempts to frame Victoria for her faked murder]]. Over the course of this plan she loses [[spoiler:her best friend, her lover's brother, her fiance and her ability to bear children, all at the hands of the Graysons. Her eventual takedown of the Graysons only takes one episode and involves a fairly simple EngineeredPublicConfession,]] raising the question of why she didn't just do this to begin with.
* In ''Series/GameOfThrones'', after Daenerys conquers the cities of Slaver’s Bay and frees the slaves, an elderly freedman asks her to let him voluntarily sell himself back to his old master, since he was well treated in the household as a tutor to his master’s children, and his life as a homeless unemployed freedman is materially worse then his life as a slave. He also states that there are many former slaves who feel the same way he does. This is intended to show that a charismatic leader cannot resolve structural societal ills overnight, that there are no easy solutions to complex problems, and that Dany’s idealism and good intentions may need to be compromised to keep society running smoothly. The idea that the man and people like him could simply work for pay with some legal protections, particularly the right to leave their current employers if they choose, is never considered or even mentioned.
** Heck, even without pay. If the idea of a wage is too advance for a medieval-like society, fine. But there's feudalism. Not good for our standards but much better than slavery. There's a documentary series hosted by Creator/TerryJones on how Feudalism wasn't really as nasty as modern audiences understand it and if fact was a win/win situation for everyone involved for the conditions of the time. The surprising part if that Daenerys actually comes from a Feudal society, and even if she was too young to remember she seems to be well informed about the country she pretends to rule.
* ''Series/MissionImpossible'' actually has this inverted. Whenever there seems to be an easier, alternate way to accomplish the goal for the episode, one of the characters will bring it up in the pre-mission briefing and then an explanation as to why that can't work is given. (In "Trial By Fury," where the mission is to re-establish a convict's good name in a prison so he can continue to serve as liaison for another prisoner who's the face of his country's democracy movement, Barney asks why they can't just free them both; Phelps replies that they both know they're of far more value where they are.) In fact, the standing reason why the Impossible Mission Force can't just assassinate targets (which is obviously much easier than the convoluted schemes on the show) is because of a "policy decision" on behalf of the higher-ups in the United States.
* ''Series/DennisTheMenace''. Mr. Wilson's life would be much better if the Mitchells would move away. The worst part is that the man knows this, and his warnings to the other characters are tragically ignored. An episode of the animated series dealt with this. Dennis breaks Mr. Wilson's window and he boards it up, and tells Dennis to just ''pretend'' that he has moved away from now on, in an attempt to get some peace. A pair of movers show up, having gotten lost while on their way to move an entire house, and ask Dennis if he knows anyone who is moving. [[LiteralMinded Dennis points them toward Mr. Wilson's house]], and they take the boarded up window as a sign that he is right. They lift the entire home onto a truck and take it away, with Mr. Wilson trying desperately to stop them. Eventually his house ends up in a nice coastal area, and he realizes that not only is his new location better, but ''no Dennis''. But the movers figure out their mistake and [[StatusQuoIsGod take the house back over his protests]].
* ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' perhaps has it worse than [[Series/TheFlash2014 other]] Arrowverse shows, due to being a SpiritualSuccessor to Series/DoctorWho. While there are stated limits as to the team’s ability to change history with the Waverider, such as [[DependingOnTheWriter sometimes]] being unable to interfere with events they were already a part of and certain events [[YouCantFightFate being fated to happen,]] [[KilledOffForReal character deaths]] tend to have this. Rip Hunter’s entire arc in the first season is wanting to save his family by preventing Vandal Savage’s rise to power, and later moving on. It’s never explained why he can’t just resurrect them by taking the Waverider back to pick them up before Savage killed them (presumably at a point where Past!Rip wasn’t with them). And when Laurel dies in Arrow, Rip explains that he deliberately dropped them off after the events of season 4 of Arrow because if Sarah was with Laurel at the time, she, Laurel, and their father would all be fated to die (and presumably taking Laurel with them wasn’t an option). But because there was a significant interval between Laurel being mortally wounded and dying, and the Waverider is established to have advanced medical technolgy, why not pick Laurel up and heal her right after she’s been stabbed and Darkh has left? Strangely, this is exactly what [[BigBad Prometheus]] and [[EvilTwin Black Siren]] trick Team Arrow into thinking happened at the beginning of Arrow’s 5th season.

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** Season Four has a particularly annoying example. Xander hands Buffy a flare gun, and she replies "We're fighting vampires, not signaling ships at sea". The characters haven't had a problem with using flaming arrows to great effect on vampires, so why wouldn't a flare gun be just as effective? She uses it later which obscures the vision of her enemies, but seriously, a flare gun would be a great weapon against any vampire. A big incendiary projectile.
** Season Five established a) [[BigBad Glory]] can't leave this dimension without [[MacGuffin The Key]]. b) The key has been incarnated as Dawn, written into the timeline as Buffy's sister, c) Glory is much stronger that Buffy, and will stop at nothing to get The Key, d) Willow has the ability to send living beings to other dimensions (though admittedly her ability to choose a specific dimension is in question), and e) Buffy knows she can't take Glory head-on, so she chooses to take Dawn and run, presumably for the rest of their lives. The idea that Willow could have just sent Dawn (and probably Buffy in order to protect her) to another dimension and thus trap Glory here forever is never brought up. Glory has to do her thing in Sunnydale, on a specific date, after which (as far as we can tell) the Key is useless. So why not ship Dawn off to France for a few months? There's no indication that Glory can track her.
** Season Seven would have had far less complications ensue in the second half of the season had the main characters invented some kind of mandatory "touch" system where they would have to make regular physical contact with each other to see if everyone present was corporeal. The First Evil caused so many problems by imitating other characters (but is incorporeal) that it seems odd that no system is invented to regularly verify that everyone there is really who they say they are. In their defense, The First didn't actually trick them this way all that many times. It could only imitate dead people, so besides Buffy and Spike, it could only trick people with a form that had died recently without anyone knowing about it. Most of the time the people it was talking to were well aware it wasn't their dead friend they were talking to, but the First just used the forms to mess with their heads.
** For a villainous example, why there aren't more villains that simply find out where Buffy lives and dealing with her there. This is lampshaded in Season Six when the villain Warren simply gives her address to a monster to deal with her, and later visits her house and shoots her there. Probably the most problematic is in Season Seven, when the First Evil's [[TheDragon minion Caleb]] has killed all of the Watcher's Council using a bomb, later kills MORE Slayer Potentials using a different bomb, simply never bombs Buffy's house where she and all of her army are living.
** Slayers rarely ever use fire when hunting vampires, despite it proving one of their greatest weaknesses, even to the oldest and strongest vampires? Particularly noticeable with the introduction of the Turok-Han, the uber-vampires from Season Seven who prove more resistant to stakes and holy water, are not affected by crosses and do not need invitations to enter homes. Yet at no point does anyone suggest the possibility of testing their [[KillItWithFire resistance to fire?]]
** In Season 9, Andrew had set up a DeusExMachina to deal with Simone: it involved creating another Buffybot, getting the real Buffy stoned, putting Buffy's mind in the bot (and making her think she's pregnant), then setting up the real Buffy with the bot's brain to think it lives a different life in a suburban home Andrew had set up, so when the assassin strikes, bot!Buffy might be ready for it, maybe, possibly. Andrew being Andrew, he was being far too clever for his own good; a much simpler solution would have been to use the bot to lure out Simone.
* Sort of a meta example for ''Series/GrowingPains'', but after Creator/KirkCameron became a born-again Christian, everyone else in the cast suffered for it (see #2 in [[http://www.cracked.com/article_135_6-beloved-tv-shows-that-traumatized-cast-members-life.html this article]]). The simple solution would've been to [[PutOnABus write off]] (or more cathartically, [[DroppedABridgeOnHim kill off]]) Cameron's character or replace the actor with a less religiously zealous one. But that thought apparently never occurred to anyone when other cast members were kicked off because Cameron thought they were too "sinful". Well, as the Cracked article states: Cameron was the teenage heartthrob whose face was on the cover of ''Tiger Beat''. Kirk Cameron made ABC money.
* ''Series/LastResort:''
** Sainte Marina's resident gang leader, Serrat, causes so much trouble for the ''Colorado'' sailors (particularly through manipulative actions, such as in the episode "Big Chicken Dinner" [[spoiler:where he successfully gets a sailor [[RapeAsBackstory correctly accused of rape]] found not guilty so the islanders will get angry and riot in protest against the sailors]]) that one has to wonder how he hasn't been summarily executed by now. Then again, the sailors (especially Captain Chaplin) seem to be trying to [[AlwaysLawfulGood keep up a reputation of honor and justice]] - also particularly noticeable in "Big Chicken Dinner."
** That's not even the half of it. He kidnapped three sailors and used them as hostages to get the Colorado to run a blockade. When they are late, he murders one of the sailors and it is implied that he rapes another (she later disclaims this, but the rest of the crew doesn't know that). He participates in the CIA strike team raid, helping them poison ''everyone'', which leads to two more sailors' deaths. He then straps a bomb vest to another sailor, which King barely defuses, then halfheartedly offers up a scapegoat. Then he starts selling drugs to the sailors, and tortures the COB when he tries to intervene. It would be justified if the islanders loved him, but they don't, they know he's an exploitative thug. It could also be justified if he was well-protected, but he isn't; King and another SEAL sneak right into his living room without difficulty. He's just wearing PlotArmor.
* Just about any series (''Series/FamilyMatters'', ''Series/ThreesCompany'', etc.) with an "Annoying Next Door Neighbor." If said neighbor's constant presence bothers the family, then why don't they just lock their doors and/or get a restraining order?
* Early in ''Series/BreakingBad'', Walter White is offered a job with excellent health insurance by a wealthy friend. [[JustifiedTrope Of course,]] his FatalFlaw is pride, so he rejects this "charity" out of hand, but if he'd simply accepted with good grace, it would have been a very short show. His {{pride}} continues to be a crippling problem for the rest of the series.
** It's implied that a similar incident made him abandon his research and become a low-paid science teacher in the first place. Heisenberg's meth trade may be new, but Walt's anger issues have always been there.
** The same friend also offers to pay for Walt's treatment in full. If Walt's true motivation really was paying for his treatment and not leaving his family in debt, as he claimed it was, he would have been an idiot to say no. It isn't until the finale that he admits that he enjoyed cooking meth for its own sake.
* ''Series/EarthFinalConflict'' has the alien Zo'or as the primary antagonist, meaning their death would end much of the show's conflict and as a result, numerous opportunities that would allow Zo'or's death or assassination by [[LaResistance the resistance]] are prevented by {{Contrived Coincidence}}s and {{Idiot Ball}}s.
* ''Series/TheMiddle'' has two such problems:
** It's hardly suggested that Frankie would be a little less stressed out if Mike would offer to take up some of her duties or if she would call him out for just staying out of the way. Then again, it also depending on the issue as BothSidesHaveAPoint about Frankie worrying about things she shouldn't and expecting quick fixes, and there are times Mike has helped out.
** It's also never suggested that the problems with the resident bad family, the Glossners, would be solved if someone would just call the police or social services and report them. The closest is Rita herself threatening to do so to Frankie after the latter notices a bunch of stolen stuff in the family's garage.
* In ''Series/FallingSkies'', Pope has caused a lot of trouble to the 2nd Mass, and has mostly been the TheLoad or TheMillstone to the resistance, and is a leader to a group of killers. You have to wonder why they even put up with him for 5 seasons, rather than just shooting him for insubordination, or at least leaving him for dead, after he hindered their cause so many times.
* Most of the problems caused in almost every episode of ''Series/ElChavoDelOcho'' could be avoided if the eponymous Chavo didn't screw something up with Don Ramon and Señor Barriga as the most common victims of Chavo’s thoughtlessness. Worst thing is that Chavo is allowed to live free in Vecindad just because of Señor Barriga’s kindness.
* One episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'' centers around a teenage girl who comes to New York to get an abortion, because the state she's from requires parental consent and her father had previously thrown out her older sister for an unintended pregnancy. She went to the first clinic in the phone book, but the doctor there turns out to be against abortion, and manages to delay her until she's past the legal limit for the procedure; as a result, the girl and her boyfriend end up battering the unborn child to death. But the entire thing would have been avoided if the teens had just ''gone to a different clinic''.

* In ''Series/TheBeverlyHillbillies'', the Clampetts could have used their millions to buy a large farm ranch, like many oil barons in fiction do, instead of moving into a mansion in California. This would mean that they could enjoy their wealth while still living the rural life they were accustomed to and not have to deal with the many FishOutOfWater situations they had in Beverly Hills.
** In truth the only character who hates living in "Californy" is Granny. Jed is bemused by all the strange things he runs into, but he moved them there in the first place because he believed it was the proper place for rich-folk like them to live. There are several cases where they do pack up and move back (and in one case Granny wanted them to move to [[Series/PetticoatJunction Hooterville]]), but always come back because the StatusQuoIsGod.
* ''Series/StrangerThings'': Why can't the residents of Hawkins, Indiana take a hint and move as far away from it as possible to avoid all the paranormal and supernatural happenings and to also avoid making any further contact with the Upside Down? That way, the kids wouldn't have to investigate these happenings and wind up in therapy for the rest of their lives. [[spoiler:Amusingly enough, at the end of season three, the Byers family and Eleven actually ''do'' [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere move out of Hawkins]]. Then season four starts and for a variety of reasons, [[InescapableHorror it does not helps]].]]
* In ''Series/{{House}}'', it's never fully explained why, even as a "oh there'd be phantom pain, oh it'd stop me trying to dress like I'm a guy in my twenties" HandWave, he doesn't cut off the leg that causes him almost unending misery to the point of having to admit he's thought about killing himself multiple times cause it hurts so much. House is established to be violently resistant to any semblance of change to his routine, and he's shown dismissing amputation when he's first injured, but that was before he had time to realize how miserable the constant pain and ensuing drug-addiction would make him (and, via [[ImagineSpot Imagine Spots]] and [[StatusQuoIsGod temporary fixes)]] how much happier he'd be without it.

* For ''Series/DrakeAndJosh'', it's generally "[[YouAreGrounded Just Ground Megan]]", or "Just Take Away Megan's Prank Supplies", or "Just Counter-Prank Megan". Many of the shenanigans Drake and Josh get into could have been avoided had they told their parents of Megan's misdeeds and gotten her punished. Since she acts as a DeliberatelyCuteChild in front of her parents to remain a KarmaHoudini, this is more difficult than it sounds.
* On ''Series/OneTreeHill'', plenty of the show's characters, especially Lucas, Nathan and Keith, spend much of their time trying to show up or prove themselves to main villain Dan Scott. As obnoxious as he is and as small as a town of Tree Hill is, a logical yet overlooked solution to just cut him off/ignore him; although understandably Lucas wants him to acknowledge him financially and paternally, seeing what a ManipulativeBastard he is and how little he changed over the first four seasons, they would have saved themselves ''a lot'' of headaches by choosing to no longer associate with him and his toxicity.

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'': One of the biggest plot points in the game is that Edelgard and Dimitri's complicated relationship, and Dimitri's descent into AxeCrazy, occurs when it is revealed Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, the ArcVillain of the first half of the game, and who Dimitri thinks is behind the Tragedy of Duscur, an incident that horrible traumatized him. It gets to the point that on all routes, Dimitri would rather risk his life, and his nation, just to try and kill her, and in three of the four routes, he dies horribly trying to do so. Despite this, it is made clear Edelgard had nothing to do with it, as she had been essentially kidnapped during the time it happened. Despite this, nobody in game ever asks Edelgard about this, Edelgard never tells Dimitri her side of the story, and nobody ever points out the fact that Edelgard was a essentially child when it happened. It gets to the point of seeming like almost a plothole because if any of these details were mentioned, or Edelgard just told Dimitri what happened, much of the drama would be avoided, even if Dimitri may still be vengeful.

* ''Series/TheSuperMarioBrosSuperShow'', ''WesternAnimation/TheAdventuresOfSuperMarioBros3'', and ''WesternAnimation/SuperMarioWorld''. No one ever thinks to just follow Bowser whenever he invokes VillainExitStageLeft. Likewise, despite the existence of quite a few {{Reality Warp|er}}ing {{MacGuffin}}s, anyone who has one tends to suffer from ComplexityAddiction and/or ForgotAboutHisPowers.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibleHulk1996'', the military would invariably show up and ruin everything at the exact moment Bruce Banner was undergoing a procedure that would eliminate the Hulk once and for all. If they wanted to get rid of the Hulk so badly, they could have left him alone. Or simply put a bullet into Banner's brain from a mile away while he's still human. Sniper rifles were invented to kill people that it would be too dangerous to approach directly, Banner probably qualifies.

* [[WesternAnimation/WileECoyoteAndTheRoadrunner Wile E. Coyote]] seems to have the ability and resources available to send away for any sort of gizmo he desires, and have it arrive immediately to aid him in his quest to catch the Road Runner. It never occurs to him to simply order some food.
** Creator Creator/ChuckJones liked to quote George Santayana's observation, "A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." Meaning, to Wile E., eating the Road Runner is largely not the point anymore. Indeed, as Cliff Claven pointed out on ''Series/{{Cheers}}'', "What he wants is to eat that ''particular'' Road Runner. Very existential."
** Lampshaded in ''Series/NightCourt'' of all places, with Judge Stone presiding over Wile E. Coyote and telling him that next time he's hungry he should just go to a restaurant or supermarket.
** In the shorts where Wile E. is pitted against WesternAnimation/BugsBunny, it's made clear that he's in it for the intellectual challenge as much as for a meal. One would assume this is probably the case in the Road Runner shorts as well. Not to mention that, due to his being an InsufferableGenius[[note]]He's even got it on business cards[[/note]], being unable to capture a bird would be a blow to his pride, so he refuses to give up.
** Lampshaded in one of the leftover shorts from the failed pilot ''Adventures of the Road Runner''. Wile E. explains that the reason he compulsively chases the Road Runner is because road runners are the most friggin' delicious things on Earth, including a meat chart with all the flavors of a road runner's various cuts laid out.
** A ''ComicBook/LooneyTunes'' comic book does actually establish that Wile E. gets his food via mail order, and that catching Road Runner is just his hobby.
** This is hilariously lampshaded in a short in which Wile E. [[TeamRocketWins is successful in his attempts to capture the Road Runner.]] Of course, he's now a comically puny size thanks to RuleOfFunny so the Road Runner is much...'''much''' bigger than him. Wile E. then [[NoFourthWall points out to the audience]] that he's [[SoWhatDoWeDoNow absolutely clueless as to what to do next.]]
** The heights of Wile E.'s obsession is underscored by the large number of his plans that, had they succeeded, would have ''destroyed'' the Road Runner, or at least rendered its carcass inedible.
** Really one of his main problems is that he keeps buying shoddy products from ACME. Which one episode reveals as being ''owned and operated'' by the Road Runner!
** Spoofed in [[http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2009/08/31/0090-the-hunting-methods-of-procyon-lotor/ this strip]] from the webcomic ''WebComic/SandraAndWoo'', with Woo the talking raccoon standing in for Wile E Coyote. Woo, upon failing to catch the Road Runner, does the logical thing.
** ''Film/LooneyTunesBackInAction'' seemed to justify this by revealing that he's some sort of "quality control" product tester/ACME agent.
** There's also a Creator/CartoonNetwork commercial that shows him being asked why he keeps using Acme products when they always backfire or blow up on him, to which he [[TalkingWithSigns says with a sign]], "Good line of credit".
** {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in the ''WebAnimation/SethMacfarlanesCavalcadeOfCartoonComedy'' short "Die, Sweet Roadrunner, Die", which shows that were Wile E. Coyote to actually catch the Road Runner, his life would go into a downward spiral because he never considered what he would do ''after'' finally catching him.
* Every episode of ''WesternAnimation/ScoobyDooWhereAreYou'' has Mystery Inc. looking for clues in order to deduce who the villain is, then they catch him in a trap and unmask him. However, they don't actually reveal who the villain is until after they're unmasked. This means that they could avoid doing an episode's worth of detective work and just build the trap at the episode's beginning to catch the villain. In ''WesternAnimation/WhatsNewScoobyDoo'' they try this for the exact stated reason, and it works! The villain is locked in a jail cell to wait for the police. Then the villain attacks ''again,'' and when they check again he's right back in his cell ... [[spoiler:because, of course, the mastermind was actually a set of twins and they only caught one.]] This does not, of course, explain why they never try it again.
* Over the course of ''WesternAnimation/ThunderCats1985'' Mumm-Ra was revealed to have an incredible array of powers and resources at his disposal. If he had used several of these at once instead of one per episode, he could have won. Possibly {{justified|Trope}} by the risk of over-using powers and rendering himself weakened and easily defeated in the next episode. Also, he's ever-living. If he had been willing to just wait the [=ThunderCats=] out, they would have gone extinct in a generation (there's nowhere near enough for a breeding population). Any progress they could have made in freeing the world from his tyranny could easily be undone afterward.
* Speaking of ''[=ThunderCats=]'', every animation where we see heroes wielding swords, guns or every obviously dangerous weapons, shows which also include ''WesternAnimation/HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse1983'', ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'', ''WesternAnimation/GIJoeARealAmericanHero'', etc. Every kid who watched those shows has asked at least once in their lives, "Why don't they simply use their weapons to kill the bad guys?" Or vice versa. The real reason for this is, of course, that the Standards and Practices of the time did not allow such direct violence to be shown on cartoons.
* Why doesn't Bluto just eat spinach to beat WesternAnimation/{{Popeye}}? There was one cartoon in which they were [[SpringTimeForHitler trying to be hospitalized]], and Bluto did indeed eat spinach and beat up Popeye. However, Bluto didn't so much "eat" the spinach as have it forced down his throat by Popeye. At a guess, Bluto hates spinach even more than he hates Popeye, underscored by one cartoon where Bluto invents a powerful herbicide to destroy all of the world's spinach to incapacitate Popeye. Popeye pleads to the audience, and some kid with a grocery bag throws it into the screen. Popeye beats Bluto, and cures all the spinach. The movie at least {{HandWave}}s this by implying that it was not that spinach itself had magical power-up properties, but that Popeye's family had long drawn strength from a diet of spinach.
** Bluto DOES eat the spinach willingly in an attempt to beat Popeye at baseball in "The Twisker Pitcher".
* ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'': Did it never occur to Candace that there's a more likely chance that her Mom would believe her if she took photos of whatever activity her brothers were taking part in?[[labelnote:note]]It actually did a few times, but each of those times something went wrong for her.[[/labelnote]]
* Entire episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TaleSpin'' are often driven by Baloo's incompetence, laziness or [[RefugeInAudacity audacity]], or Rebecca's hardheadedness, blind ambition or naivete. One wonders why Rebecca just doesn't let Baloo run the company instead of her.
** What could be solved simply with some logical thinking often [[DisasterDominoes snowballs]] into a very big problem. Sometimes Kit or Molly's recklessness or need for adventure complicates matters, too, though not as often as Baloo and Rebecca's character flaws do.
** Played with in one episode, where Rebecca wins a contest and needs to get her winning entry to a radio station on time to get a large sum, but she's too busy to get it mailed herself. She knows that Baloo is lazy except when something doesn't matter, so she tries to use ReversePsychology, telling him that she'd appreciate it if he could take care of mailing it out for her, but that it wasn't important. Unfortunately for her, Baloo, already experienced with how much trouble arises from her hardheadedness and blind ambition, figures that her ''laissez-faire'' attitude means it really isn't important, so he spends the fare for the letter on himself (after Rebecca said he could keep the change) and sends it via the cheapest possible postage. Cue scramble when both parties realize what they had done.
* Ulysses Feral from ''WesternAnimation/SWATKats'' invokes this for the title heroes' ''origin''; despite clearly being told they had a target lock, his stubborn obsession to be [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou the only one allowed to bring Dark Kat down]] not only caused the Enforcers to ''lose'' the villain (which the aforementioned target lock ''would've'' likely prevented), but also forced Jake and Chance into the crash that ended their Enforcer career and began their career as the titular gang. True, there would be no cartoon, but at least they would've been able to bring a dangerous criminal to justice. Even after the incident, Feral insists on fighting against the SWAT Kats and bringing them to "justice", even though it's been shown time and time again [[ShootingSuperman the supervillains they deal with are more than the Enforcers can handle, on their own]], and other, more reasonable members of his force (like his niece Felina) can see the benefit of allying themselves with them.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'':
** Good thing the Decepticons never thought of getting rid of [[TheStarscream Starscream]]. He's the only reason the Autobots kept surviving, or even [[http://www.cracked.com/article_16954_5-reasons-megatron-should-have-fired-starscream-years-ago.html woke up in the first place]]. One time he even saved the cornered Autobots just for the sake of ruining Megatron's plans. Right in front of him, complete with a [[{{Pun}} smug one-liner]]. The first episode had a scene where he seemed to have the right idea for once (suggesting blowing up the Ark instead of boarding it; [[CouldHaveAvoidedThisPlot the attempted boarding is what leads to the Ark crashing to begin with]]), but then a DeletedScene was uncovered years later where Megatron [[DoubleSubversion spells out why Starscream's idea was horrible]] (Megatron knew the Autobots were heading to an energy-rich planet, but didn't know its exact location, hence why he wanted to follow or commandeer their ship, and why blowing them up would be counterproductive to his long-term goals).
** In the episode referenced in the above example, Megatron ''did'' actually say "No, I want to know what [the Autobots] are after." in response to Starscream's hasty and reckless suggestion.
** There are also times where Starscream points out glaring flaws in Megatron's plans (i.e. the dangerous instability of their latest energy source). Megatron will invariably respond by mocking and insulting him and ignoring his advice, only to be surprised when the plan blows up in his face in exactly the way Starscream predicted. The real solution would be for them to just work together rather than constantly try to one-up each other, then worry about fighting for control after the Autobots are out of the way.
** Thanks to the [[DependingOnTheWriter extremely varied nature of the franchise and its many continuities]], how much this trope applies depends on the series. Sometimes, Megatron does sum up the intellect to kill Starscream; he does so in [[WesternAnimation/TransformersTheMovie the movie]] after one betrayal nearly succeeds, in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersCyberverse'' [[spoiler:he kills Starscream after the ''first'' backstab]], and in ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' [[BackFromTheDead he practically makes killing Starscream a habit.]] In other series, Megatron has good reason to keep Starscream around, such as wanting an incompetent backstabber as his second-in-command, rather than risk having a ''competent'' one who might actually depose him, or feeling that [[BunnyEarsLawyer Starscream's skill as an Air Commander makes up for his eccentricities]].

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles1987'', almost every time Shredder and Krang fail it is because of Bebop and Rocksteady's bumbling. Simply getting rid of the two or at least locking them up would result in far less humiliation for Shredd-Head and Krang.
** In one episode Krang points out that Shredder firing them is a bad idea, as they don't have a lot of options in the help department for their schemes. Their attempt to solve this problem blows up in their faces.
** This gets taken to the logical conclusion in ''WesternAnimation/TurtlesForever'', in which [[spoiler:Utrom Shredder, AKA a villain that was besting three separate generations of Turtles as well as fairly powerful allies, has already ''destroyed entire universes,'' and is ''scarily competent...'' is defeated by their screwing up]].
** Building the universe-conquering superweapon with a working power source would have done it. Given some of the stuff they used to get it temporarily working, it probably could have run at full power on a diesel engine.
* Nicely subverted in the ''WesternAnimation/{{Squidbillies}}'' episode "A Sober Sunday." Early Cuyler spends the episode trying to lift the banning of liquor sales on Sunday, but is unable to do so. At the end of the episode Granny asks why he doesn't just buy his Sunday liquor on Saturday. He throws her in a fire and claims that it's too inconvenient.
* In ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'', [[SpannerInTheWorks considering how many times he screws them up,]] if Brain got rid of Pinky or at least kept him as far away from his plans as he could manage, he'd rule the world within a week, if that.
** It would seem so - but in "That Smarts," Pinky becomes as intelligent as Brain, to the delight of the latter... until a) Pinky starts indicating flaws in every single planet-conquering scheme and b) Brain realizes that the ''only'' way any of his plans will succeed is if one of them is an idiot. So he makes himself as "smart" (i.e. as stupid) as Pinky normally is... unfortunately, Pinky's seen how miserable Brain is now that the balance of power has shifted, and he makes himself as stupid as he was before! Needless to say, [[StatusQuoIsGod this doesn't stick]] for the rest of the series.
** It's been established in several episodes that Brain's plans are precisely what keeps them from succeeding. Pinky has come extremely close several times just by doing all the random things that come naturally to him, only for Brain to ruin it when he tries to use their position of power to his advantage for one of his schemes. Then there's the time they took a night off, and unknowingly ended up with a large group of people who wanted to find Brain and put him in charge. Basically, they'd rule the world already if they didn't keep trying to force it.
* The subplot in one ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' episode involved the characters being assigned lab partners for a school science project (and Mr. Barkin wouldn't allow them to switch). Kim is paired with a genius scientist who neither needs nor wants her help, and as a result Kim is left bored and unsatisfied because she has nothing to do. Kim's friend Monique is paired with Ron, and she is over-stressed because Ron just doesn't care and leaves her to do all the work herself. Kim and Monique could have simply worked together on Monique's project unofficially (most of the project seemed to take place outside of school) and that way all four parties would have got a decent grade and a workload that suited them. Of course if [[SternTeacher Mr. Barkin]] ever found out, this would likely result in 4 F's given the stern way he implied that any requests for a new partner would be turned down.

* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'': Numbuh 13 is TheFriendNobodyLikes within the organization because he's TheJinx and a WalkingDisasterArea in the vein of [[Series/FamilyMatters Steve Urkel]] and [[Film/PoliceAcademy Douglas Fackler]]. No less than four episodes revolve around his epic capacity to cause chaos with his stupid yet well-meaning bumbling (one of which even ends with the kids in Sector Five [[YouCanKeepHer leaving him with the enemy]] the moment they discover that the "kidnapped agent" they were assigned to save is him [[PityTheKidnapper knowing that this is far worse than anything they could do themselves]]) and when the KND hold an election for their new leader (by way of [[SeriousBusiness a game of tag]]), everybody gangs up to take out Numbuh 13 because as much as nobody wants the job, '''nobody''' wants him in charge even more. Why the hell he hasn't been decommissioned is never explained.
* In ''WesternAnimation/JosieAndThePussycats'' you have to wonder why do they even put up with Alexandra, who is nothing more but TheMillstone to the group. In their outer space series they could have gotten home if they had just pushed her out the airlock or left her on the next planet they landed.
* One of the criticisms from Bronycon 2013 while watching the first of the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyTVSpecials'' is a case of this. Tirek's plan is to use his Rainbow of Darkness [[ReforgedIntoAMinion to turn ponies into demonic dragons]] to drive his Chariot of Darkness to cause TheNightThatNeverEnds, even though the Rainbow of Darkness can also turn non-sentient animals such as butterflies and birds into dragons that appear more than capable of driving the chariot. There was no particular reason why Tirek needs ponies-turned-dragons to drive his chariot; if he stuck to the dragons resulting from other animals, he wouldn't have to deal with the surviving ponies at his doorstep who wound up killing him during the rescue of their friends.
* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'':
** Anyone who's watched the show for so long can tell you that many conflicts in many episodes are started by [[TheMillstone Peter's]] anti-social behavior, lack of intelligence or any kind of common sense, or straight up recklessness. One episode parodying ''Film/HomeAlone'' actually contains a scene where Lois calls out Peter for all of his meddling interfering with her getting home to her child. Outside from that, Peter's incompetence is rarely, if ever, brought into question.
** There was, of course, the episode "Seahorse Seashell Party" with Meg finally [[CallingTheOldManOut giving it to Peter]] with both barrels about [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech what a shitty father and overall person he really is]]. She then has to sit back and accept her role as the family's BullyMagnet because without her to act as a "lightning rod", the Griffins would turn their horribleness on each other and escalate to the point of ''mutual death''.
* ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'': Tom chooses to eliminate Jerry by simply hiring an exterminator to kill him, instead of futilely chasing him. Tom actually ''does'' hire an exterminator (Butch) to help him get rid of Jerry in at least one short. The result is not only Jerry outsmarting both of them, but Tom's constant bumbling of Butch's plans angering the latter so much that he starts trying to exterminate ''Tom'' by the episode's end.

* A lot of the time in ''WesternAnimation/TheDreamstone'', it seems most of [[TrappedInVillainy the Urpneys]] would have quite gladly accepted being liberated by the heroes. At least one episode also shows the Wut army could very easily neutralise Zordrak in battle. As such most episodes revolve around the heroes dishing out DisproportionateRetribution to ''only'' the Urpneys and sending them back to begin another scheme. Similarly, [[InvincibleHero the Wuts and the Dream Maker]] would remain dormant or [[ForgotAboutHisPowers Forget About Their Powers]] until the final climax, always sending the more fallible Noops to fumble for the first twenty minutes of the episode. Or the heroes could TakeAThirdOption and kill Zordrak by leading him into a trap or something.

* Villainous example in ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'': Considering that Twilight was able to block Discord's magic near the end of Season 2's premiere, there's no reason for the Mane Six to ''not'' use AntiMagic on the other villains as well, since the villains rely exclusively on their magic.
* Virtually every episode of ''WesternAnimation/FantasticFourWorldsGreatestHeroes'' involves a catastrophe either A. started when Reed Richards' latest invention malfunctions, B. [[IdiotBall triggered by Johnny Storm's stupidity]], or C. [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs set off when Johnny Storm's stupidity causes Reed Richards' latest invention to malfunction]]. Yes, it shows how the Fantastic Four aren't superheroes, but a superpowered family who gets into trouble, but it still applies.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Wunschpunsch}}'': With Bubonic and Tyrannia's spells caused by the [=Wunschpunsch=] constantly broken, Maledictus T. Maggot doesn't realize that firing them is easier than repeatedly punishing them each time they fail (then again, GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity might be in effect).

* ''WesternAnimation/DastardlyAndMuttleyInTheirFlyingMachines'' suffers from a worser example of this trope than ''Wacky Races'': the Vulture Squadron destroyed 182 planes, 2 balloons, 1 ship, 1 Zeppelin, 1 gas station and 1 train throughout their quest to "Stop the Pigeon" but never caught Yankee Doodle Pigeon. It never occurs to Dick Distardly that he could just shoot Yankee Doodle to bits with a gun-equipped fighter plane.
* ''WesternAnimation/SonicUnderground'': Most of the events could have been avoided had Queen Aleena ignored the Oracle's words and then had Robotnik killed before he could try to remove her from the throne (hence all "the Oracle is the actual villain" [=WMG=] theories).
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'':
** Plankton would be better off creating his own burger instead of constantly trying to steal the Krabby Patty Secret Formula. Or better yet, close the Chum Bucket and take up a different profession.
*** He managed to create an AI from scratch. He could be a respected computer scientist with no extra trouble at all.
** Plankton could also just get someone to secretly buy him a Krabby Patty instead of trying to steal it.
*** Or he could take an unfinished Krabby Patty from the trash in the Krusty Krab dumpster.
** In the episode "The Algae's Always Greener", Plankton creates a machine that puts him in a reality where he owns the Krusty Krab. Rather than use the opportunity to learn the secret formula completely unopposed, he instead chooses to just bask in the glory of owning a successful restaurant.
** Ms. Puff swore to herself when she opened her boating school that [[NonGivingUpSchoolGuy she would never give up on a student, ever]]. As a result, Spongebob has remained a constant thorn at her side because he not only DrivesLikeCrazy but he becomes a titanic WalkingDisasterArea every time he sits behind a wheel and it has driven her so far up the wall with the misfortunes he's forced her to endure that she has become physically ill from all the stress and she has actually tried to '''kill him''' repeatedly in order to try to get rid of him. By this point, it's pretty clear that [[HonorBeforeReason she probably would have a better life if she made an exception to her promise, just this once, and kicked him out of her school]].
** Another idea would be to simply have her confess to Spongebob that she hates him. If she sincerely tried to ''kill him'', you'd think she'd at least do something to try to hurt his feelings.
** If Squidward hates his job at the Krusty Krab, hates his two neighbors even more, and openly admits to hating everyone in Bikini Bottom, why couldn’t he just move out of Bikini Bottom to go someplace else? He tried this in "[[Recap/SpongeBobSquarePantsS2E6GrandmasKissesSquidville Squidville]]", but [[StatusQuoIsGod ended up getting bored and moving back by the episode's end]].
* A common criticism of ''WesternAnimation/ShadowRaiders'' revolves around how our heroes try to destroy the Beast Planet... constantly. It never works as the Beast is (supposedly) indestructible. The show would have been over quicker had our heroes just simply done something like going inside the Beast Planet without getting killed and looking for some way to destroy it from the inside, or had simply killed the Beast Generals, thus causing some sort of link to the Beast Planet to be taken away and cause it to stop working. Hell, [[Series/{{LazyTown}} Robbie Rotten]] defeated it easily [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI23rx53lPo with only a curtain]].
* In ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'', Benson would really save himself an awful lot of headaches (and risking of life, limb, reputation and sanity) if he followed through with [[GeorgeJetsonJobSecurity his constant threatening to fire Mordecai and Rigby]] and actually did it. Even when several episodes show that everybody else in the cast is capable of pulling off a faux-pas that causes absurd and ''apocalyptic'' chaos just as well as those two (and thus they need to save the day), from a strictly statistical point of view it would have been much safer. Notably, Benson do hires replacements [[Recap/RegularShowS03Ep22Replaced in one episode]], and they are definitely better at doing their jobs, but they quit before even a single day is over because they refused to deal with all of the [[DangerousWorkplace craziness that regularly happens in the park]], forcing Benson to rehire Mordecai and Rigby.
* Many plots in ''WesternAnimation/{{Hurricanes}}'' could have been avoided had Amanda and co. simply made a phone call to the police to get Stavros Garkos locked up for good.
* ''WesternAnimation/DextersLaboratory'' is one of the biggest examples of this trope in animation. For all his genius, Dexter is never able to keep Dee-Dee out of his laboratory. It never occurs to him that he could just use an [=ID=] checkup system for the entrance to his lab and keep Dee-Dee out for good.
* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'': At least a partial amount of the power [[ConsummateLiar Lila Rossi]] has over her classmates because of her constant lying would be gone if someone made some fact-checking (she says she got tinnitus because she saved Jagged Stone's cat - a Wikipedia search would have revealed that Stone has always been allergic to pet fur since he was a ''child'' (hence why he owns a freaking ''alligator''), which would make her attempt at MovingTheGoalposts when Marinette calls her out on it even more blatant) or had common sense (Lila lies about having conditions (like the aforementioned tinnitus) that would demand for the school's administration to ask her to hand over her medical records, and escalates to the point she flat-out says that she has a psych condition that makes her lie all the time... which is accepted, with no psych confirming it ''or'' having anybody question any of her previous statements, if she now is a ''certified'' pathological liar).
** On a broader scale, almost all the series supervillains are normal people "Akumatized" by [[BigBad Hawk-Moth,]] and the heroes' SOP for defeating a villain is to find some way to destroy the [[CursedObject akumatized object,]] usually involving Ladybug using her Lucky Charm power to create some seemingly random object that allows her to execute a complex scheme to get at the object, and/or Cat Noir using his Cataclysm powers, which can destroy almost anything, on the object. But almost all the villains wear the object on their person, and while almost all powered beings in the show are implicitly super-durable, the objects don't appear any harder to destroy after an Akuma enters them, so using a regular firearm (or a [[FamilyFriendlyFirearms family-friendly equivalent, which the Lucky Charm can create)]] to shoot at the villain with the same precision and reflexes the heroes display doing everything else until you hit their Akumatized object seems like a much simpler way to beat most villains.
* ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack'': Aku tries to invoke this with a simple yet remarkably effective plan. He destroys every single time portal in existence so that Jack can't make it back to his own time and then retreats into hiding to wait out the years until Jack dies of old age. The problem? When Aku first flung Jack into the past, he accidentally made Jack TheAgeless without realizing it, so now Jack ''can't'' die of old age. Oops.
* ''WesternAnimation/CaptainNTheGameMaster'': It never occurs to Captain N and our heroes that he could teleport to [[BigBad Mother Brain]]'s lair and shoot her with his Zapper, thus resolving the plot and allowing him to go home.
* ''WesternAnimation/KiddVideo'': Kidd Video and his band try to find a way out of the Flip Side, but they have to deal with Master Blaster and the Copy Cats, ''and'' the fact that '''everyone''' in the Flip Side loves Kidd Video's music. It never occurs to them that they could find more powerful weapons than music, for example, laser guns, and simply kill Master Blaster, then pretend to "break up", allowing them to flee the Flip Side as everybody will be disappointed by their "break up".
* ''WesternAnimation/MyGoldfishIsEvil'': It never once occurs to Beanie to just flush Admiral Bubbles or feed him to predators and his problems would be over. '''On the other hand''', Admiral Bubbles ''is'' an evil genius, so he could probably find his way back and develop something to get back for it too.
* ''WesternAnimation/MonaTheVampire'': Mona is almost never portrayed in the wrong despite being quite delusional and getting people into trouble because of her crazy beliefs that they're supernatural beings, and the adults are somehow stupid enough to believe her and her friends. It never occurs to anyone that Mona might require [[ThereAreNoTherapists some counseling]].
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxbusters'': It never occurs ''once'' to the titular team that they could just find another predator and convince them to wipe out the evil foxes for good. On the other hand, the surviving foxes could probably re-populate their species and continue their campaign of evil once that's happened.
* In the Disney short "Old Sequoia," WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck as a park ranger had plenty of perfect opportunities to off the beavers that sought to down the titular tree, but is distracted by the ringing of the telephone in his outlook post, despite being super-fast when it came to travel up and down it.
** In another Disney short, "No Sail", has Donald Duck and Goofy use a coin-operated sailboat that lets out its sail for a limited time if you drop in a nickel. The problem comes when they run out of nickels; they could not have been stranded at sea for so long if they had even thought of paddling the boat using their hands and/or feet.

* ''Series/StrangerThings'': Why can't the residents of Hawkins, Indiana take a hint and move as far away from it as possible to avoid all the paranormal and supernatural happenings and to also avoid making any further contact with the Upside Down? That way, the kids wouldn't have to investigate these happenings and wind up in therapy for the rest of their lives. [[spoiler:Amusingly enough, at the end of season three, the Byers family and Eleven actually ''do'' [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere move out of Hawkins]].]]

* The series ''WebAnimation/HowItShouldHaveEnded'' is pretty much dedicated to pointing these out. Examples are ''Film/TheLordOfTheRings'' (blindfold the eagles and fly them straight from Rivendell into Mordor), ''Film/{{Predator}}'' (if the Predator doesn't attack unarmed people because it's not good sport, just ditch all the weapons) and ''Franchise/StarWars'' (don't wait until the Death Star has gone all the way around the planet that the rebel base orbits, just blow up the planet and you'll have a clear shot at the base).

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'': One of the biggest plot points in the game is that Edelgard and Dimitri's complicated relationship, and Dimitri's rage, are because he thinks Edelgard is the one behind the Tragedy of Duscur, an incident that horrible traumatized him, and has become almost an obssession of his in regards to avenging it. It gets to the point that on all routes, Dimitri would rather risk his life, and his nation, just to try and kill her, and in three of the four routes, he dies horribly doing so. Despite this, it is made clear Edelgard had nothing to do with it, instead being essentially kidnapped, and yet she never tells Dimitri that, nor does Dimitri ever think about the logic of her being roughly his age, meaning somehow a barely teenager Edelgard somehow could plot an assassination attempt like that. For Dimitri, it at least is understandable he'd not think on that, but nobody ever acknowledges or points this out to Dimitri, to the point that it comes across as a clunky attempt to justify their bitter relationship more than it already can be after the timeskip.

** In their takedown of this movie, the [[Podcast/TheScathingAtheist God Awful Movies]] crew stage a mock trailer for a shark movie where the shark is just not a problem:
--> '''Noah:''' (Announcer Voice) This Summer... '''JUST THE LAND.'''\\
'''Heath:''' So, you wanna go skiing?\\
'''Eli:''' Skiing, nice! Yeah, no sharks there!\\
'''Heath:''' No Sharks, exactly! Solved!

* ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'': One of the biggest plot points in the game is that Edelgard and Dimitri's complicated relationship, and Dimitri's rage, are because he thinks Edelgard is the one behind the Tragedy of Duscr, an incident that horrible traumatized him, and has become almost an obssession of his in regards to avenging it. It gets to the point that on all routes, Dimitri would rather risk his life, and his nation, just to try and kill her, and in three of the four routes, he always dies horribly doing so. Despite this, it is made clear Edelgard had nothing to do with it, instead being essentially kidnapped, and yet she never tells Dimitri that, nor does Dimitri ever think about the logic of her being roughly his age, meaning somehow a barely teenager Edelgard somehow could plot an assassination attempt like that. For Dimitri, it at least is understandable he'd not think on that, but nobody ever acknowledges or points this out to Dimitri, to the point that it comes across as a clunky attempt to justify their bitter relationship more than it already can be after the timeskip.