History WhatAnIdiot / YuGiOh

* An example of the IdiotBall being dropped to keep consistent to the manga: in the middle of the ocean, the main characters' airship is attracted by a new villain totally out of the blue who demands that they defeat him in a virtual reality game thing ([[FillerArc filler, anime-exclusive arc]]). They do it; but by doing so they left Evil Marik, the villain, unsupervised; and Odion/Rishid, the guy he's trying to kill, at his mercy. (He is currently in a coma and cannot defend himself.)\\

'''Instead:''' He breaks the stupidity scale and does.\\

'''Result:''' He leaves before the finals start, forcing Girag to fill in for him. Yuma still has in mind to lose the Duel on purpose, which could kill Girag (or send him back to Barian World and blow his cover in the English dub. Later information about the Over-Hundred numbers reveals they can't be lost as Ante, which means Girag lacks Astral's weakness of dying from losing his number - but it was a logical inference at the time). Amongst all his moments of stupidity, Girag briefly grabs the SmartBall and decides to destroy Rank-Up-Magic Barian's Force before Kotori gets a chance to play it. To do this, he combos Spell Search (which lets Kotori draw Barian's Force) and Magic Hand (which can destroy what was just drawn). Yuma suggests Girag chain his (Yuma's) Memory Loss Trap Card.\\

'''Result:''' He leaves before the finals start, forcing Girag to fill in for him. Yuma still has in mind to lose the Duel on purpose, which, at the time, could kill Girag (or send him back to Barian World and blow his cover in the English dub). Amongst all his moments of stupidity, Girag briefly grabs the SmartBall and decides to destroy Rank-Up-Magic Barian's Force before Kotori gets a chance to play it. To do this, he combos Spell Search (which lets Kotori draw Barian's Force) and Magic Hand (which can destroy what was just drawn). Yuma suggests Girag chain his (Yuma's) Memory Loss Trap Card.\\

* During the duel between Jaden and Sartorius, Jaden manages to bring out Shining Flare Wingman on his second turn and, with one attack, manages to bring Sartorius down to 300 LP. Prior to this, he had also drawn Neo-Spacian Air Hummingbird and Neo-Spacian Aqua Dolphin in his opening hand.

'''You’d Expect:''' For Jaden to summon Aqua Dolphin in his main phase 2 and activate its effect[[note]]He would be allowed to look at Sartorius’s hand, and if there’s a monster within that has less or equal attack than a monster Jaden controls, it would get destroyed and Sartorius would take 500 points of damage[[/note]]; unless Sartorius had already drawn something like Arcana Force EX — The Light Ruler already, the best case scenario would be for there to be a weak monster in his hand, thus letting Jaden win via an OTK and stop the former’s plot outright.
'''Instead:''' He summons '''Air Hummingbird''' to buff his own points instead of wiping Sartorius’s out and '''''saving the freaking world like he’s supposed to.'''''

'''Result:''' He leaves before the finals start, forcing Girag to fill in for him. Yuma still has in mind to lose the Duel on purpose, which, at the time, could kill Girag (or send him back to Barian World and blow his cover in the English dub).\\
'''In Addition:''' Whether Shark left or not, Girag should have known that Yuma would never lose on purpose to someone who played Barian's Force. [[ForegoneConclusion Girag was never in any danger at all when he was forced to fill in for Shark]].

'''Even Worse:''' If he really wanted it to be absolutely busted, he would have forced the cards out of play instead or supplemented a strategy to turn Leon's deck into a deck destruction style to win via deck out. Instead, Yugi manages to get his Dark Magician out of his graveyard and onto the field, giving Yugi the opening he needs, which wouldn't have happened had it not gotten discarded in the first place. Yes, Seigfried is so incompetent at the game, [[EpicFail he managed to ruin Leon's duel by giving him ''one card'']].

'''Or:''' Cut out the middleman and just go for the automatic win via gathering all five Exodia pieces in his hand. It wouldn’t be the first time Seto lost this way.\\

'''Result:''' Yugi activates Soul Rope[[note]]A Trap Card that can be activated when a monster you control is destroyed, and Special Summons 1 Level 4 or lower monster from your hand or Deck at the cost of 1000 Life Points[[/note]] to Special Summon King's Knight from his Deck, whose effect in turn Special Summons Jack's Knight, which allows Yugi to Tribute the three Poker Knights for Osiris, which he does promptly.

'''Result:''' He's destroyed in a duel that Yubel could have won twice over,[[note]]Once through Raviel's effect and once through Yubel's own.[[/note]] and only played out as long as it did because Yubel wanted to draw out Adrian's inner darkness and feed on it.

* Sure, Adrian, take on Yubel with the very cards they willingly gave you in favour of the Deck they're running now. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong\\
'''Result:''' He's destroyed in a duel that Yubel could have won twice over[[note]]Once through Raviel's effect and once through Yubel's own.[[/note]] and only played out as long as it did because Yubel wanted to draw out Adrian's inner darkness and feed on it.

'''You'd Expect:''' Yusei to realize that his Deck already has plenty of cards that can counter Wisel. He used Savior Star Dragon to defeat it, but even without relying on supernatural power, Junk Archer could banish Wisel and destroy its parts, Turret Warrior isn't a Synchro, and Turbo Warrior could ignore its effects and rip it apart at its leisure. And even then, he has plenty of Spells and Traps that shut it down, like Scrap-Iron Scarecrow or Panic Wave. The upgraded Wisel parts could handle a few of these strategies, but Yusei doesn't know about it. It's not like Synchros are the ''only'' worthwhile cards in-universe; plenty of Duelists don't use them significantly or at all. If Assault Modes exist in the anime canon (they do in an OVA), he could even try those out.\\
'''Instead:''' He lives in complete fear of Wisel for about forty episodes, having nightmares about it and trying out terrible non-Synchro strategies before seizing on the idea of using the Fusion Draco-Equiste. When he finally goes in for Round 2 against Wisel, he tries neither any of the above tactics (bar a single failed Scrap-Iron Scarecrow activation) nor Draco-Equiste, and only survives because of a literal DeusExMachina handing him a super-card.

'''You’d expect:''' Jack would make the pit stop. He knows Bruno and Yusei are monitoring his D-Wheel, and thus would notice any unforeseen problem. Racing is ''dangerous'', so if your vehicle has a problem, you get it fixed. Sure, Jack is extremely proud, but if his {{pride}} caused him to ignore safety precautions, he’d no doubt have been seriously injured or even killed long before this, so his pride shouldn’t prevent him from taking the pit stop. \\

'''Result:''' Breo fails to deplete Yusei's remaining 2000 LP, inflicting minimal damage over the course of the Duel. As a result, Jean ends up fighting Yusei basically fresh--if anything, Breo helps Yusei by giving him a ton of Graveyard resources.

'''You'd Expect:''' Ms. Chono would not quibble over who actually did it. she could expel all of them and make an example of them. Yami Yugi doesn't come out at this juncture and would probably accept this as a violation of the rules.\\

'''The Result:''' Everyone is staring daggers at her, and Yami Yugi emerges. In the manga, he doesn't think she's worthy of challenging her to a Shadow Game and just makes the puzzle one, which removes her makeup as soon as she put the last piece in, so that everyone sees her true face.

'''Instead:''' For no good reason, Yami Bakura activates Just Desserts prematurely--when Yami Yugi has Summoned three of the monsters containing his friends' souls--leaving Yami Yugi hanging on with 500 Life Points. Maybe Yami Bakura wanted to [[{{Sadist}} extend Yami Yugi's suffering]] (which would be in-character for him), but it's still impractical.\\

'''You'd Expect:''' Joey would simply put monsters in defense mode or if he doesn't know how on the new system, ask Kaiba how to do it. In case you didn't know, a monster in defense that's destroyed in battle deals no damage to the player's life points (with a handful of monsters having an aversion to this being their effect). It's been used before and after this duel.\\
'''Instead:''' [[AttackAttackAttack Joey keeps summoning them in attack mode]]. The monsters don't have HP like an RPG or anything, so attacking a stronger monster does nothing but cost yourself life points. Back when this duel took place, the rules were sort of different in a way that would have given Joey an advantage. There was no attacking directly, you could only attack as many times as there were monsters to hit. Joey could have simply put his cards on defense until he drew something strong enough to do something. Had Joey dueled correctly using the rules at the time, he likely would have only taken a total of 800 LP, out of a total (at the time) 2000. It would have kept going, but the idiot move was treated like Kaiba was genuinely skilled. And by the time Joey summoned his Red-Eyes Black Dragon, it was too little too late as Kaiba draws his Blue-Eyes and destroys it.

'''Result:''' He's destroyed in a duel that Yubel could have won twice over[[note]]Once through Raviel's effect and once through Yubel's[[/note]] and only played out as long as it did because Yubel wanted to draw out Adrian's inner darkness and feed on it.

* Speaking of Battle City, a powerful card that was used several times in the story was Exchange. This is a card that allows the players to take one card from each other's hands. When used correctly, it can easily cripple the opponent.
'''You'd Expect:''' For the one who is playing it to set all their powerful cards facedown or use them first before playing it and leaving only weak or useless cards for the opponent to take.

'''Instead:''' They always leave behind a powerful staple card for their opponent to take. This makes it such that it becomes a case of DiscardAndDraw, where even though they lose a powerful card, they just get another equally powerful card in return making the whole thing near pointless.

'''Worse Yet:''' One of Girag's plans was to host a Sports Duel Tournament. He had the intention of brainwashing Kotori and Cathy so that Yuma and Shark would lose to them on purpose. Ignoring the fact for a moment that Shark fled before the finals, Girag should have known that Yuma would never lose on purpose to someone who played Barian's Force. [[ForegoneConclusion Girag was never in any danger at all when he was forced to fill in for Shark]].

* Sure Adrian, take on Yubel with the very cards they willingly gave you in favour of the Deck they're running now. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong\\

* Just three days before the WRGP, Crow tests out the improvements made to his Blackbird on the highway, exhilarated by how much faster it can move now.\\
'''You’d expect:''' No matter how exhilarated Crow feels, he would obey the rules of the road, follow the speed limit, and never take his eyes off the road even for a second.\\
'''Instead:''' He doesn’t look where he is going and crashes into another motorist. \\
'''The result:''' He is badly injured and can’t compete in the tournament, and that’s the lucky outcome. [[TooDumbToLive Had the crash killed him, it would have been his own fault.]]

* The final duel of the KC Cup is here and we have just learned about Seigfried being the brother of Leon, a talented duelist who has made it to the final fight against Yugi. Kaiba can't just opt to disqualify Leon as it would cause a PR problem. In the meantime, Seigfried has given Leon the Golden Castle of Stromberg, a card that Pegasus created but never actually finished, so Seigfried has made up his own rules and added them to the card data in the duel disk servers. Primarily, the card is indestructible and unaffected by card effects. In addition, as long as it is in play, it's erasing all the data on the Kaiba Corp. mainframe.\\