Achievements In Ignorance / Fan Works

Examples of Achievements in Ignorance in Fan Works.

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Crossovers

• Blue Moon: During the final battle, as the Cullens and the Watcher's Council face the Volturi's demon army, Edward not only kills a Mohra demon while unaware of the fact that he needs to shatter the jewel to permanently stop it, but also becomes human when he drinks its blood by chance.
• Boldores And Boomsticks: Yang tries a Technical Machine on herself, and discovers that they can in fact work on Humans, if their Aura is unlocked. The few Aura Adepts on Earth never tried it because they already "knew" it wouldn't work on Humans because they had been tested on non-Aura users.
• Child of the Storm has Magneto's teaching style work along these lines - don't tell your student that something is meant to be impossible, and they might just pull it off. His first lesson with Harry, when he drops a (very realistic) hologram of a piece of debris on his head, which Harry instinctively catches with his Psychic Powers, is designed to demonstrate this. Doctor Strange, on the other hand, knows that various things are impossible, then does them anyway.
  • Wielders of chaos magic tend to thrive on this, with Wanda explaining to Hermione in the sequel that chaos magic is only really limited by the wielder's imagination (though willingness to use their power/risk the side-effects and durability both come into play). Since Hermione, who herself has chaos magic (thanks to being Wanda's daughter, and completely unaware of it), is someone who thrives on Rule Magic - learning the rules of magic and mastering the framework they provide - this underlines the fact that this is really not the power-set for her.
  • Steve apparently lifted Mjolnir several times prior to the first book, completely unaware of the significance. This meant that once, he used it as a doorstop.
• The Confectionary Chronicles reveals that, centuries ago, Odin was able to trap Loki without even knowing about his true identity as Gabriel, as Odin created a set of chains that used Loki’s own power to bind him; it took over a century for Gabriel to channel enough of his grace to break them.
• Contact at Kobol: In as much as anyone would consider it an 'achievement',, during the war between the Tau'ri and the Twelve Colonies, a Tau'ri bomb accidentally hits the only piece of naquadah in the Twelve Colonies, in the oceans of Aquaria, escalating the resulting explosion to basically decimate the entire planet.
• Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl: The true extent of earth pony magic is concealed by a massive race-wide conspiracy, causing all non-earth ponies to believe that the earth ponies are limited to enhanced strength and the Cornicopia Effect. Cerea, however, isn't from Equestria, never learned that earth ponies have no true magic, and as such is easily able to figure out what their magic is really capable of.
• The Demon's Contract: Ranma manages to recreate a high-level demonic spell after witnessing Mara perform it once. She rants how impossible that is since he doesn't have any magic, magical training, or demonic/divine heritage to let him use it. Turns out, he taps into the magic of Jusenkyo to utilize magic.
• A Divine (Romantic) Comedy: By publicly supporting both Stolas' relationship with Blitz and Asmodeus' with Fizz, Lucifer completely undercuts Stella's efforts to ruin Stolas in divorce court, and also upends the entire caste system of Hell, all by accident.
• An Extraordinary Journey: While trapped on Kobol and hunted by vampires, Tessa—a Number Eight Cylon—manages to save herself by hiding in a downed Raptor, basically claiming it as her home and thus preventing the vampires from reaching her without an invitation.
• Frozen Turtles: In the one-shot sequel, Frozen Turtle Fever, Elsa unwittingly prevents a Kraang invasion of Arendelle when she blows the horn and sends a massive snowball through a portal the Kraang had just opened, striking their main computer and triggering the self-destruct before the Kraaang can mount their invasion.
• Hero Academia Dx D: Cecilia A. Mercury using her ridiculous No Sense of Direction is able to get second place in the Obstacle Course race without knowing how she did it or leaving the track.
• Hybrid Hive: Eat Shard?, a Worm/Lyrical Nanoha crossover:
  • Most of Hive's memory was destroyed, forcing her and Taylor to build a magic system based on what little she remembers. Not only do the two succeed, they manage to create spells that the Belkan and Midchildan mages would think impossible.
  • Vista, frustrated with the difficulty of constructing spells, accidentally stores a formula in her magical core allowing her to instantly cast it at a later time. Taylor and Hive are both surprised as this is something they can't do.
  • Taylor is an absolute monster when it comes to multi-tasking, on-the-fly spell editing, and magical combat in general. It's only when Vista gains her device that Taylor gets some perspective on how far outside the norm she actually is.
  • Taylor's math tutor tasks her with prime factoring three large numbers. The numbers are too large for even modern systems to factor in a reasonable amount of time; the tutor wanted to teach her a lesson about the limits of mathematics and personal skill. Not knowing this, Taylor uses advanced Belkan mathematics and algorithms to factor all three numbers, potentially kicking off a revolution in modern mathematics.
• Incarnation of Legends: Bell manages to create magic on his first try despite being a complete novice at it. Not only that, but his new spell, Dragon Fang, requires no chant despite having a significant effect that will only grow stronger with falna. He's unaware of how momentous this is until Brunhilde and Hrist explain it to him.
• The Infinite Loops:
  • Billy has managed to kill several omnipotent loopers (Han Solo, Anakin Skywalker (twice), the entire Mane Six, etc.), drive a completely insane person sane who proceeds to shoot him, make Gendo Ikari a looper, and crash three safe-mode punishment loops, through nothing but lethal stupidity. He's also been labeled an MLE, despite having no malicious intentions whatsoever — his idiocy alone is enough to make him a threat to all of Yggdrasil. So many achievements, and Billy's too stupid to realize any of it.
  • Ihy had a drunken bender and ended up bringing the Old Spice Duo into the Loops without realizing it until he sobered up. Ad Space was believed to be something of the last thing to do at best due to the supposed damages it sustained when Yggdrasil broke, so Ihy's accident actually helped make ads into viable Loopers (though not viable Branches to Loop into).
• Infinity Train: Blossomverse
  • Infinity Train: Boiling Point has two notable examples:
    • First, there's the Apex gets dissolved: a small group including the Apex leaders Simon and Grace get attacked by Boscha, who wastes no time massacring them. While they're left alive, the news about the attack quickly spread in the following week, where Boscha keeps gaining a name for herself just by steamrolling anybody who opposes her. The resulting fear and paranoia of meeting her even by accident causes the Apex to split and run for the hills, to the point they start trying to leave the Train. And all the while, Boscha's just minding her own business, barely acting like it even mattered.
    • Chapter 6 has Skara help Willow train her Plant magic, so, to try test it out on a plang-based magical creature, she plays a tune that would summon a Mandragora. Unfortunately, she summoned a bigger, meaner Dire Mandragora instead, which nearly eats her alive before Willow interferes.
  • Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Played for Drama. Chloe Cerise has become so accustomed to her Train-given power fantasy where everybody else has to earn her forgiveness that, while not impossible, it's hard for her to apologize without doing something to rub salt in the wound. Her "apologies" to Ash are the best example: the first fails because she sees fit to chide him for "supposedly" not paying attention to her and how he should've been better, and the second quickly devolves into an overindulgent pity party that requires both Ash and Goh to shut her up and take the reins of the conversation before she digs her own grave further.
• Lighting the Path opens with Kara Thrace (Battlestar Galactica (2003)) becoming a new Green Lantern and being taken to Oa for training. When she provokes a confrontation with Kilowog during her first training session, she immediately catches the yellow disc he throws at her, unaware that yellow was ever an issue for the rings.
• The Lion, the Cat and the Turtles: April O'Neil single-handedly triggers a revolt in Calormen when she picks up a box, as that box contained a genie who had granted her master's wish to become Tisroc; by picking up that box, April immediately becomes the new master of the genie, allowing the genie to expose her previous master's deception to the rest of the country.
• The Last Son: When Teth-Adam questions Billy Batson about the wizard Shazam, the kid doesn't know what he's talking about. By repeating the name, Billy calls the lightning bolt from the sky that transforms him into his Superpowered Alter Ego.
• Mass Effect: Human Revolution: Conrad Verner, resident incompetent Butt-Monkey and fanboy of the main characters, assembles a huge network of freelance mercenaries, repeatedly pulls off dangerous missions, and manages to even infiltrate an enemy frigate, sabotage it from the inside by accident ("I told them I had no business handling Helium-3 cells! But they wouldn't listen!"), and then save everyone on board the ship. How does he do this? He found an original copy of a Shadowrun sourcebook and assumed it was a historical document, and then proceeded to follow it almost to the letter, not realizing it was a role-playing game.
  Jensen: Wait... give me a moment to process this. Are you telling me Conrad LARP'ed his way throughout the Terminus systems and inadvertently created a network for freelance mercenaries?
• My Heroes Reborn: Mashirao Ojiro, who now has No Sense of Direction thanks to a villain reawakening his Past-Life Memories as Ryoga Hibiki, somehow manages to get so lost that he wins second place in the Obstacle Course of the Sports Festival (first place went to Izuku, thanks to being the reincarnation of the relatively overpowered "Black Leg" Sanji).
• Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!: Izuku spends the entirety of the U.A. Entrance Exam's practical portion doing nothing but helping others, resulting in his paltry 15 Villain Points. He's thoroughly convinced that he failed the exam and All Might confirms that 15 points aren't enough to get in even with a flawlessly written score. Then he finds out that he got the highest score in the history of the exam thanks to the 160 rescue points he wracked up, surpassing even All Might's decades-long record. While getting ready for his second day of school, he manages to defeat Mr. Mxyzptlk completely by accident when he misunderstands the rules of the game, inadvertently tricking the imp into yelling "Kltpzyxm" in frustration.
• The Night Unfurls: The reason why Sanakan manages to be the first person to lock eyes with and impress the blood-splattered, humanoid monstrosity that is Sir Kyril the Bloody is because she thinks that the murderous entity in front of her is a random thug who wants to take her alongside the other female villagers all to himself, rather than The Dreaded that the entity is.
• Paradoxical: After Taylor has been resurrected as a Guardian, Taylor's Ghost Kali wonders at one point if Taylor's abilities with the Light, which seem to fall in-between Hunter and Warlock, and confuse people trying to figure them out are because she was never told that it wasn't possible for her to do something.
• Sea of Souls: An Arrancar Luffy finds Aizen's Hogyoko in Las Noches... and eats it.
• Shadows over Meridian: When Jade reshapes the Shadow Realm to give it a physical form instead of just being an endless void, she unknowingly causes Kandrakar to be hit with a massive earthquake as a portal doorway is formed between the two worlds.
• She Who Is Worthy: While the Avengers are visiting her class, Marinette picks up Thor's hammer to move it off of her sketchbook. When this is pointed out to her, she absently comments "So? It was pretty light."
• Teal'c's Wish: Xander accidentally writes down a valid Stargate address to another galaxy because he saw a pattern of symbols that "wasn't complete" and closed the pattern by adding an eighth symbol.
• In “Time’s Razor”, when the USS Defiant (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) becomes involved in the Cylon assault on the Twelve Colonies (Battlestar Galactica (2003)), not only do they swiftly make the Cylons stand down when they identify a Cylon ship with multiple life-signs (unaware that this is the Resurrection Ship or of its importance to the Cylons), but the Defiant's subsequent efforts to jam transmissions also ensures that the Cylons can’t resurrect.
• The Weaver Option: The Black Library of Ceograch is noted to be the most secure and hidden facility in the entire galaxy. Despite this it has been attacked by Orks on multiple occasions because they were so busy rampaging randomly through the Webway they didn't realize they were lost.

Animorphs

• In What Tomorrow Brings, Tom is able to avoid the traumatising experience of the other Animorphs when they morphed ants because he just happened to acquire the Queen of the relevant ant colony, putting him in control of the other ants.

Bleach

• In A Protector's Pride, Rukia gathers the reishi (spirit energy) in the air to power her spells and doesn't think anything of it. Hitsugaya points out that is a technique exclusive to Quincies (Shinigami use the reishi in their own bodies).
• Sight has Ichigo accepting his Inner Hollow as his dark side and choosing to compromise with him instead of fighting his Inner Hollow and locking him away. Ichigo nor his Hollow did all of this without being aware that Ichigo did something very dangerous and not considered possible.

Dinosaur King

• In chapter 7 of Dinosaur King Retold, when rushing for a new Dinosaur the D-Team ends up leaving Spiny behind at the Taylor house, with him deciding to throw a dance party with fireworks so loud it shakes the house. And yet when the team returned they found that the house was spotless, even while the Spinosaurus was still dancing.
  Tank: H-h-how?! You said you had a dance party! You said you used fireworks! How is this place so clean!?"
  Spiny: I must have been cleaning when I was partying.

Dragon Ball

• In Fledgling Deity, Gohan manages to create divine ki on his own a couple of years after the Cell Games and even transform into a Super Saiyan God over a decade before Goku canonically pulls it off. It's not until Gohan meets the Grand Kai that he gets even an inkling of how significant his feat is.

Fate Series

• Dishwashing has Shirou finding the Holy Grail in Ryuudo Temple, then taking back home to clean it thinking it was an ordinary cup. In the process, he washes off the corruption upon the wishing device.
• In Fate Stay/Night fanfic Nerve Damage, Shirou Emiya converted all his nerves into ad-hoc Magic Circuits prior to the story, making him obscenely powerful. When Rin finds out, she tells him that mages have been trying to achieve that very feat for centuries only to fail catastrophically, and even attempting it really should have killed him.

Final Fantasy

• In Off the Line, Cloud Strife/Rainstorm does a lot of things other players or even the game developer didn't know were possible out of ignorance as a newbie player:
  • Rainstorm befriends Red XIII because he assumed that the latter had a unique player class as opposed to most players who assume Red XIII is a mob or a pet.
  • Rainstorm kills players higher leveled than him due him applying real-world logic and physics into the game, which most players don't.
  • Rainstorm finds out that Vincent is a real person and not a boss nor a glitch after a few minutes of talking to him, which Cait Sith didn't know even after ten years of attempting to delete Vincent.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi/The Untamed

• In A Game for the Fool, SI! Wei Wuxian accidentally undermines the sects’ monopoly over talismans and starts a massive black market for them because he had an old woman sell his extras for pocket money.
• In If I Had The Strength, Gusu Lan managed to trap a Heavenly Official for several decades, and their Sect Leader later successfully romanced the goddess. Since she never told anyone of her true nature, they never actually knew what they did.

Harry Potter

• A key element of Apex Predator is that Harry is an appealing potential breeding stud to Veela because he's so fertile that Fleur became pregnant the first time they slept together, when normally Veela pregnancies are very complicated and require a lot of preparation to arrange.
• Played with in Browncoat, Green Eyes, where both Harry and Luna developed a technique of self deception to push past the limitations from certain rules of magic. Notably, he is able to shrink objects enchanted to be larger on the inside, normally impossible, by convincing himself that the spell is actually expanding the universe instead of shrinking the object.
• For The Greater Goof: Fred and George Weasley address Voldemort by his true name of Tom Riddle, enraging the Dark wizard and astonishing many of their professors because the two being the same person isn't public knowledge. When McGonagall asks them how they knew about Voldemort's name, the twins reveal they didn't know they were dealing with Voldemort in the first place; all their research only came up with Tom Riddle because the connection wasn't made public, so they just called him by the only name they knew.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:
  • Inverted, as appropriate for a story where clear thinking rather than ignorance is a source of power. Harry lists out all the laws of wizardry describing things you can't do, and looks for restrictions that would sound plausible to wizards ignorant of science, but make no sense from a scientific standpoint. Harry zeroes in on the law saying that you can't Transfigure parts of whole objects — because as a Muggle knows, every whole object is made of individual atoms!
  • A more standard version of the trope is invoked in Ch. 59, where Harry suddenly realizes that broomsticks run on Aristotelian physics — they just go where you point them, rather than continuing under their prior momentum and accelerating in the new direction pointed — presumably because the witch who invented them had never heard of Newtonian mechanics. (Which is a severe problem if you're an excellent pilot on standard broomsticks, and you've just ignited a powerful rocket, which does run on Newtonian mechanics, attached to your broomstick.)
• My Immortal: At one point Draco Malfoy walks out of the flying car while it is still in the air. He is perfectly fine afterwards.
• Princess of the Blacks:
  • Most transfigurations require a specific spell that's designed to turn one designated object into another designated object. However, there is a type known as "free transfiguration" which is a spell designed to turn anything into anything else but requires in-depth knowledge of both the beginning and end materials. Jen finds out in fifth year she's been doing the latter her whole life.
  • Voldemort swore himself to Nyarlathotep and became a soul mage without any inkling of either, partly because Nyarlathotep is the only Power that doesn't inform his followers of what they've become. He had simply created horcruxes in an attempt to make himself immortal.
• In this fic, THERMOS!, or, How a Muggle-Born Brought a New Age of Spell-Making to Hogwarts (Entirely by Accident), Phoebe brings a Muggle thermos to school with her, and her Pureblood friend Titus misunderstands her when she tries to explain what it is. This results in Titus pointing his wand at a cup and yelling "THERMOS!" in the hopes of making his drink stay warm all day, much to Phoebe's amusement. Phoebe's understandably shocked when it actually works.
• This Means War has Harry knowing lots of impossible magic due to him just not knowing that the things he's doing shouldn't be possible (either because nobody told him it was impossible or because he didn't fully register it).
  • This also deconstructed the concept as well, as this can cut both ways.

Hazbin Hotel

• In Women of Eden, Lucifer managed to outdo Adam in sexually satisfying Lilith without even knowing what sex was.

Jurassic Park

• A Dangerous Curiosity opens with Maisie Lockwood finding the newly-hatched Indoraptor and essentially adopting it, to the extent that the Indoraptor (here named "Indy" after Indiana Jones) actually thinks of Maisie as his mother. Owen Grady later notes that there is a very narrow window in which a human could essentially get a dinosaur to imprint on them as a parental figure, covering just the first twenty-four hours after it's hatched and dependent on the human in question showing no fear of it. With this in mind, they're genuinely fortunate that Maisie found the Indoraptor when she did and was eager to see it rather than afraid.

Lyrical Nanoha

• Tsukuyomi from Infinity has no problems solving impossible theorems, conjectures and postulates of math thanks to advanced technology downloaded into her, and afterward she simply says that she hoped she passed. She can also whip up a mean feast. But her best talent is probably being a painter. Probably, because beautiful paintings appear out of nowhere in her presence, but nobody remembers her painting them, not even her.

Marvel Universe

• Invoked in born of hell('s kitchen) when Frank Castle muses that Matt and Jessica basically created what may be the most powerful superhuman on the planet "by accident", considering that their son Peter Parker has a range of Combo Platter Powers based on his father's enhanced senses and his mother's superior physical abilities.
• Tony Stark in Conversations lifts Mjolnir after asking her permission. It's not until the rest of the Avengers walk in that Tony learns of Mjolnir's Only the Chosen May Wield rule.
• In The Joke, Steve thinks nothing of moving Thor's hammer Mjolnir, unaware that only people that are considered worthy are supposed to be able to do so.
• Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost (But Matt's Not Wandering; He's Just Lost) has Daredevil successfully entering into the Avengers' living space at the top of their Tower... while he is in his civilian identity of Matt Murdock, very blind and only looking for the legal department. The other Avengers immediately start ribbing on Tony Stark for boasting of his high-tech, perfect security which a lost, blind dude waltzed through without even trying.

My Hero Academia

• Apex Predator: As the official summary of the fic points out, in his efforts to protect his classmates from any potential Apex Predators, Izuku becomes the Apex Predator without realizing it (that means becoming the most terrifying and influential person in his environment, which would be the school). He only seems to realize it when Shigaraki corners him at the mall to ask him about the concept.
• Total Command, Mei Hatsume built a robotic All Might that has sophisticated A.I. and similar emotional range to a human. Mei has no idea how she did it as she made it during a period where she didn't sleep for six days straight and can't really remember what happened that week.^note When asked why its voice is so creepy, Mei admits she doesn't even remember installing a speaker on it.
• When Reason Fails:
  • After the group defeats Geten with Izuku's plan, Katsuki notes how Izuku is prone for this.
    Bakugou has long ago realized that Deku is fully capable of performing the impossible for as long as no one told him that it was impossible. The nerd just proved it to some additional people.
  • Izuku somehow manages to "adopt" an Outsider by naming them, causing the Outsider to take the form of a 10-year-old girl. Then said Outsider takes the Cabal to U.A.'s Special Exclusion Zone, which nobody has ever found, would make one of them U.A.'s Fifth Warlord and allows its controller limited Reality Warper powers within it. He essentially got way ahead in the world of Initiates by complete accident. Then again, as it turns out, said Outsider is actually his sister, which makes it much easier to understand.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• Often the case with Ditzy Doo/Derpy Hooves in fan works in general. She has been known to break the irrefutable laws of the universe simply because she didn't know it was impossible to break them.
• In The Changeling of the Guard, the heroic changeling Idol Hooves explores an entire crypt that's stuffed with ancient booby-traps, completely failing to realize that it's supposed to be dangerous. Part of this is thanks to his Nigh Invulnerable carapace protecting him from Annoying Arrows and the like, but still. This comes as a hell of a shock to Daring Do and Ahuizotl, who are having one of their usual battles over a treasure when Idol obliviously wanders into the middle of it and freaks them both out.
• In CRISIS: Equestria, Insipid's magic has elements of this. Insipid has the ability of Power Copying, but is an idiot who doesn't know how the powers she steals are supposed to work. Yet she's usually more powerful than the original because she lacks their limitations. For example, she once beat Shadow Step — who is supposed to be magically invulnerable — by using her Power Copying to take the invulnerability from him entirely, even though that isn't how her powers should have worked.
• In Cultural Artifacts, Derpy is hired by the army to potentially make contact with the Big Guy as she's run into him before. When she realizes she needs a foalsitter, Derpy hires... the Big Guy, to the shock of the watching soldiers.
• In Green, Pinkie Pie invents cold fusion. By accident.
• In Little Deceptions, Celestia causes Master of Disguise and Phantom Thief Blank Slate to undergo a Heel–Face Turn just by having a brief, kindly conversation with him while he's disguised.
• Pony POV Series: Trixie was never taught that using magic on a mane is supposed to be almost impossible. As a result, she can easily repair her mane if it gets damaged. Twilight and Nightmare Nilhus/Nightmare Diamond Tiara are utterly shocked to learn this.
• Starlight Over Detrot has the Detrot Tenth Librum Publicum, which is bigger on the inside only because nobody told the Architect it couldn't be.
• Sunsplit Saga: Sunspawned: The spell that Sunburst used to create Sunset, the Independent Construct Kinesis Equation, was in magical textbooks, but was thought to be purely theoretical, which Sunburst didn't know. Celestia's hair, which Sunburst had unwittingly used in the spell, helped, but it turns out that the reason no one before him succeeded is because they got the math wrong. Sunburst used the math Meadowbrook used for enchanted items, while everyone else (except possibly a hedgewitch who may have created the Mirror Pool) used the "amniomorphic constant".
• On a more "mundane" level, Wild, Sweet and Cool features Twilight and Rainbow Dash learning tandem racing, with Twilight as Rainbow's jockey. They do barrel rolls fine, but aileron rolls cause issues until they work out a system. Then they find out just what other pegasi think. (Or what they think of non-pegasi riders!)

Naruto

• Quite a lot of stories have Naruto accomplishing impossible or exceedingly difficult feats (such as creating a solid transformation technique) simply because he thinks he's doing things right.
• Naru-Hina Chronicles:
  • Naruto surviving Touji's ANBU training is half not realizing he is deliberately being tested to the point of destruction, half his documented inability to give up along with his Healing Factor.
  • A local lord named Hideki shows the team sent to retrieve Mina and her prisoner the one scroll he was never able to read, the Namikaze scroll, sealed with a blood seal preventing anyone not of the Namikaze clan from opening it. He stated it could contain anything from a forbidden ninja technique to poems to a recipe for ramen - whereupon it takes Naruto about half a second to snatch it up and open it.
• In Shards, Naruto learned how to do hand signs with one hand because he was often kicked out of class and had to watch through a window, resulting in him not knowing hand signs used both hands for several months.
• In Team 7's Ascension, Naruto recreates the Nidaime's ability to perform water techniques without a source of water at least partially because he doesn't know he's not supposed to.
• Team 8:
  • While on their first "mission" (cleaning and repairing an injured herbalist's home), Kurenai has a full conversation with (who she thinks is) Naruto. He slips and falls off the roof, and then... he disappears in a cloud of smoke. It was a shadow clone. The strength and self-awareness of each clone are based on how much chakra is put into the technique, which is no problem for the chakra-riddled Naruto. But no one told Naruto that ever.
• Your Heart a Haven of Thorns lets Sakura take a crack at this, combining it with Awesomeness by Analysis: thanks to Kakashi being a Sink or Swim Mentor, he didn't go into much detail about precisely how tree-walking was meant to work. And when Sakura immediately figured out a method that worked for her, Kakashi assumed that she was doing it in the way she was meant to, not realizing that she was forming her chakra into little hooks. With both unaware that the method she's using is not the usual, intended method for tree-walking, it goes uncorrected for several months; Sakura only learns that her approach isn't normal when she attempts to apply that same logic towards chakra flaring and proceeds to accidentally blow a hole in Kabuto's chest. Kikyō finds the whole affair hilarious, while Kakashi is... rather less amused.

One Piece

• Ace in And We Stumble Blindly On unlocked Observation Haki to make up for his extremely poor vision, but didn't even know the ability's name until Marco explained it to him.
• This Bites!:
  • Invoked, then averted in Chapter 32. Cross doesn't tell Zoro that he's trying to cut through a diamond-hard seastone cage, because he thought if Zoro didn't know he couldn't do it, he might be able to. It doesn't work.
  • More deliberately invoked with the Eisen Dial, which produces clouds as hard as iron. In canon, Cloud Dials don't work right outside of Sky Islands, but Cross tells Usopp that there's a way to make them work (going off of his knowledge from the Punk Hazard arc) in the hopes that he can figure one out. Eventually, with Nami's help, he does.
  • Nami accidentally defeats Kizaru this way in Chapter 42. She mistook his light-beam form as the glare of a sniper rifle and threw up a mirage that refracted him head-first into the Red Line.
  • In Chapter 68, Cross and Saint Charloss destroy (or at least drive underground) the modeling industry after the latter's live interview on the SBS explains one of the World Nobles' popular hobbies: using fashion magazines to shop for spouses and murder models for being too good-looking. Cross almost has an aneurysm when he realizes what exactly he just did.
  • In Chapter 83, Cross announces on the SBS that the Straw Hats were about to disband following the Sabaody Revolution in order to train for the New World when the Five Elder Stars sent Kizaru after them and he told them about Ace's pending execution; as Cross points out, had they waited one more day, the Straw Hats would have remained ignorant and the Elder Stars' plans for the Summit War would have probably gone off without a hitch. While Cross is saying all this to essentially flip the Elder Stars off, it has an added benefit unknown to him or anyone else, namely Imu summoning the Elder Stars in order to, at best, chew them out.

Persona

• Start Again series:
  • Downplayed example in the first entry The Count of Monte Cristo, where Haru, after being sent back in time following the Phantom Thieves' defeat by the Holy Grail, blackmails Akechi with the knowledge that he is the bastard son of Masayoshi Shido and that he's performing murders for him to both get the Metaverse App and stop him from killing Wakaba Isshiki, Futaba's mother. What she didn't know was that when she confronted him, Akechi was planning on approaching Shido with his Metaverse abilities, but deemed working him too risky thanks to Haru's knowledge. Haru ended up preventing numerous mental shutdowns and breakdowns that were prevelent in her timeline.
  • Played straight in Escher, where Yusuke, believing he's the only one that remembers the future and trying to adjust to being stuck under Madarame's thrall again, paints a self-portrait of his cognition in the Metaverse. When he is confronted by Hifumi Togo for absentmindedly mentioning how her mother was rigging her shogi game and wanted her to become an idol (at a point of time where it is unknown if she even started yet) he get backed towards his painting until his arm goes into the painting. Hifumi's attempt to pull him out ends up toppling the portrait over and sends them straight into the Metaverse. Futaba even lampshades this after hearing the story.
    Futaba: You're trying to tell me you painted a portal into the Metaverse?!

Pokémon

• In Master, Pokémon?, it's the author's explanation for Ash's occasional feats of inhuman strength. Ash doesn't know how strong humans are supposed to be, so he semi-arbitrarily decided they're as strong as Machamp, and adjusted his human form to match. Hilarity Ensues.
• In Pokémon Reset Bloodlines, Ash has to retrain Pikachu to recover his moves. He succeeds with Thunderbolt, Iron Tail and Quick Attack without much trouble. However, his attempts to relearn Electro Ball result in Pikachu learning Zap Cannon instead.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

• The Sword of Justice and the Shield of Time: Sayaka decides to do Homura a favor after she accidentally broke the latter's katana during training and use her and her Witch Oktavia's magic to repair it and make it stronger. Sayaka thinks she was just doing what Mami did to enhance a bat with her magic, but Homura tells her after the fact that what Mami did was something any Puella Magi can do and it's only temporary since they're just adding magic to the object that eventually dissipates. What Sayaka actually did was not only repair the sword, but altered it down to the sub-atomic level and permanently-infused it with magic, giving it new abilities.

RWBY

• Professor Arc: Jaune managed to greatly impress Cinder during their first official meeting with his complete nonchalance towards her and her implied threats, together with the fact that she just can't figure out his real intentions. This only happened because a) he was too inexperienced with shady deals (to say nothing about women) to pick out most of their conversation's subtext, b) his lack of Huntsman training prevented him from even noticing that Cinder was threatening to attack him in the first place and c) there is no way to figure out a plan that simply doesn't exist.
• Linked in Life and Love: Ruby, when trying to work out Summoning with Weiss' Semblance, accidentally does the exact opposite of what she was supposed to do, only for it to not only work, but have unexpected benefits compare to the normal Summoning method.

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System: Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong

• Care To Find establishes it's impossible to subvert a blood ward even when hitting it with the strongest weapons available, and the only known way to go through one is to be allowed by the guardian. An injured Zhuzhi-lang accidentally is let on the Hua mountain in spite of the protection because he was in his snake form and so focused on resting and healing that he was deemed a harmless animal.
• Shen Yuan in SV Wishes completely derails the story he's trapped in, mostly by following his incomplete knowledge of the story to save his own life. Due to his lack of foreknowledge since he only read the first volume of a multi-book series, he changes the story past the point his character was supposed to die. By deciding to be a kind teacher, he prevents Luo Binghe from becoming the horrible Villain Protagonist he was supposed to be and influenced him to be a geniunely chivalorous and romantic person.

A Song of Ice and Fire

• Bequeathed from Pale Estates: Despite having a crush on Robb Stark, Aislinn Forrester didn't bother pursuing him because she figured her house was too minor for a possible marriage to the heir of Winterfell. One of the reasons Robb ends up falling for her is because she was the one marriageable Northwoman his age that wasn't throwing themselves at him.

Star Wars

• In The Desert Storm, Ben actively exploits this trope during Obi-Wan's training. He keeps Obi-Wan's training private so Obi-Wan won't discover that some of the Force techniques he's training for are considered advanced for even full-fledged Jedi Masters.
  • During her time as a slave, Shmi avoided Gradulla's cruelty by making herself invisible with the Force. This surprises a few Jedi Masters since the Force technique she used was considered difficult to learn and usually reserved for Jedi Shadows.

Subnautica

• Aurora Falls: Selkirk learns about taming the Stalkers through freezing one with the stasis rifle and then placing Peepers in its gaping maw on a whim.

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