History Main / TheGuardsMustbeCrazy

Yes, it causes much annoyance among viewers, but this trope is very handy for a writer because it allows the excitement of a bad guy or good guy to be captured and also leaves it open for said prisoner to escape. If the guards were competent, the story may end up bogged down with important characters stuck in prison.

** The "Patsy" power itself is probably the apogee. A HumanoidAbomination crater-lands in a view of several dosen soldiers, devours the nearby soldier in broad daylight, then displays a number of horrific blade/mace appendages and turns several more to mincemeat. Then it just morphs into a guy it ate seconds ago, points at random soldier and shouts, "[[BlatantLies He did that!]]". The unlucky soldier [[IdiotBall promptly gets shot by everyone]]. After that, someone examines the copse and exclaims that they fucked up ''again''.

*** Improved, but still dumb. There is a section with 8 armed guards in a small enough area that they can hear, but not see each other. It was fairly simple to sneak into a hidden position, head shot one, and wait for a guard to come check it out. At most they would come two at a time. After about 2 minutes, this troper had a pile of bodies, 8 dead guards who had died looking at the corpse of the previously killed one.

* Can occur in ''Videogame/FalloutNewVegas''. Put a few ranks into your character's Sneak skill, then get yourself a silenced weapon (incidently, all melee weapons are treated as silent, including ''chainsaws''). Then go to the nearest Legion/Powder Ganger/NCR camp and start killing. So long as your character is hidden when you kill, and your victim dies in one hit, no-one will ever make the connection between all those corpses with bullet holes in their skulls, and the courier who's sometimes seen sneaking around carrying a silenced sniper rifle.

** By contrast, there are also scenarios where the guards are absurdly and unrealistically alert. In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedI'', galloping on your horse in sight of any Templar soldiers will make them recognize you almost immediately. High Profile actions such as running after killing someone will also alert them, in contrast to strolling casually away, even if all the civilians around you are screaming and panicking. Appearently the guards are also very, very religious. You can walk around unharmed by folding your hands and walking slowly, pretending to be a monk. But the second you let your hands fall you are unveiled to be no monk at all... as you stopped praying for a second.

* The Banana Guards in ''AdventureTime'' completely ignored a resident who claimed Princess Bubblegum had been kidnapped, preferred to watch reality TV shows over the surveillance tapes that clearly showed her being kidnapped, and only responded to the resident when he claimed he was [[DisproportionateRetribution taking a boat out after 8:00]]. [[spoiler:Fortunately, it was all just a test to determine the efficiency of the Banana Guards, and the candy resident, who was the only one following the clues, became the new chief of police.]]

* Allowing prisoners to keep their "harmless trinkets" with them in their cells.

*** Somewhat subverted once the supersoldiers come in, because they can leap and do stuff that you can, except for the fact that those guys are built like tanks with legs. They are also much stronger than any vehicle you fight, able to withstand several blade slices in a row with barely any damage dealt. Their weakness? Being grabbed when block

* [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Not doing an ID check for R-rated movies.]]

* The guards of Swamp Castle in ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'' have a hard time comprehending simple orders. Even if they did, they wouldn't have stood a chance against Lancelot's UnstoppableRage.

** Lampshaded in the epsiode "Deadly Assassin" by Security Chief Spandrell's criticisms of Commander Hilred for allowing the Doctor to escape:

* Many guards in ''VideoGame/SlyCooper'' carry flashlights. If you stand just outside their circle of light, they can not see you at all. There are similar guards with good hearing, which Sly automatically tries to sneak up on/past. Occasionally you run into both.

** Subverted with the prison guards in Death Star. When Luke and Han, dressed as Stormtroopers, comes with Chewbacca as the TrojanPrisoner and says to the guards that they're transmitting him to their prison block, the commander doesn't fall for it, since he wasn't told of it before through the info comm. As he was about to check for confirmation, Han and Chewbacca lose their shit and start shooting around. When Han then tries to contact the command and tell that everything is on control, they immediately demand his serial number, which he can't provide. After Han shoot up the comm link, the command immediately sends Stormtroopers to take care of them.

*** On the higher difficulty levels in MGS1 at least the guards' vision range is dramatically greater, although the field of view is still narrow, making this an AcceptableBreakFromReality on the normal difficulty.

* In 1982, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_incident an unhinged man climbed the wall of Buckingham palace.]] Someone saw him and reported it, but by the time guards came to look, he was gone and they decided he must have left already; they raised no alarm. When he went through a window, the security system alerted a policeman on duty, who assumed it was a malfunction and '''silenced the alarm twice in a row'''. Wandering through the halls, he passed a housekeeper, who '''greeted him'''. He eventually made it to the Queen's chamber, where she was sleeping unguarded, woke her up, and chatted to her as she tried to get help by two different methods (a button and the phone); nobody came for ten minutes. As Hollywood writer WilliamGoldman said it, if you would put this in a movie, people probably would throw rotten eggs at the screen for breaking their SuspensionOfDisbelief.

->'''C-Sec Customs''': "After the [[MechaMooks Geth]] attack, there was a review of security protocol. A few minor changes were made to reduce the risk of Geth infiltration. We apologize for the inconvenience.
->'''[[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch Legion]]''': "Geth do not infiltrate."
->'''C-Sec Customs''': "You should leave your personal synthetic assistant at home. They aren't allowed on the public shuttles any more."
->'''Legion''': "[[DeadpanSnarker Geth do not]] ''[[CrowningMomentOfFunny intentionally]]'' [[DeadpanSnarker infiltrate]]."