Bond Villain Stupidity / Western Animation

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• Played straight in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. In the James Bond parody "Operation: Rescue Jet Fusion", Jimmy and Jet are left in an elaborate death trap... and manage to escape.
• Maximus was prone to this in Atomic Betty, although his excuse for why he didn't stay to watch the heroes drown in his flooding room trap was "you know how I feel about water". (Which indeed was the case in several episodes.)
• Avengers Assemble: One of several points of disagreement between Baron Zemo and his dad, Baron Zemo. Helmut wants to keep Captain America alive so he can suffer, whereas Heinrich thinks this and Helmut are stupid and it's a far better idea to just shoot Steve dead now.
• Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse has Closet, the Affably Evil Master Computer, exhibit this twice. First, he neglects to keep an eye on Barbie, Midge, and Summer while gloating to Ken, allowing the three of them to ditch him through an Air-Vent Passageway. Later, Closet threatens to fry Barbie and her friends in a giant drier, only to hear the oven's timer go off. In response, he tells the girls not to move, then leaves to check on the crème brulee he's baking. The girls seize the opportunity to remove the Dreamhouse's CPU.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • Poison Ivy fouls up in her debut episode by slowly taking her time taunting and flirting with Batman, rather than kissing him the same length she did Harvey Dent earlier, inadvertently ensuring he had enough strength to pull off a Playing Possum maneuver to escape her jumbo monster flytrap's Vine Tentacles.
  • Double Subversion with Roland Daggett when he had Batgirl and Catwoman at his mercy. When Batgirl taunted him with the suggestion that he leave them trussed up over one of his vats of deadly chemicals with acid burning through the rope, he pointed out how often this method had failed him before, and announced he was just going to have his men shoot them and toss their bodies into those vats instead. In the end, however, his stopping to tell them this gave them just enough time to get loose and take him down anyway.
  • In the episode "The Clock King", Fugate, the Clock King, gets Batman in a Death Trap. But he can't resist pulling a Just Between You and Me with a mocking taped message left behind that Batman manages to repurpose into the tools with which to escape. Had he left no message at all, it's likely the Death Trap would have worked, as Batman was ready to try getting out with a cutting torch until Fugate's message informed him that he'd deliberately thought of that already and made sure there wasn't enough time.
  • In "Trial", Batman's enemies have captured and restrained him, but instead of just killing him decide to put him on trial. With the Joker as the judge and Mad Hatter, Harley, and Croc as the Jury. The DA who stated that Batman should be put on trial was his defense, and if she got him acquitted they'd both be set free, if she failed they'd both be killed. But then, what else would you expect from Batman's enemies? Two-Face at least did want to just shoot him, but lost the coin toss. They do try to kill him after the trial, but by then Batman and the DA manage to escape.
• Ben 10: Omniverse is filled with these:
  • Dr. Psychobos manages to temporarily get Ben in his grasp in "Outbreak" when he comes to steal a piece of the Omnitrix from him, but chooses to let him live and just leaves once he gets said piece (which is replaced by the end of the episode). When called out for it by Malware, he justifies his decision by saying Ben isn't the real threat.
  • In "Vilgax Must Croak", Vilgax has Ben at his mercy, unconscious, in human form and defenseless, with everybody around unable to assist. He still decides to just escape his jail and leave Ben alive, even though it would have probably taken him a second at best to kill him.
  • In "Frogs of War", the Inkurseans manage to conquer Earth with pure military might and force Ben into surrendering. Yet, rather than executing and putting him out of the picture permanently, they just exile him and send him into space, allowing him to come back later and infiltrate them to end their invasion from the inside. Arguably justified in that Attea was counting on it, but still, you gotta wonder why Emperor Milleus couldn't be more pragmatic.
  • A particularly ridiculous offender with the Rooters, seeing how their whole goal focuses around killing Ben to begin with. They had him as their prisoner, in human form and unconscious right in their first episode, but Proctor Servantis decides to let him go and stick with his ridiculously convoluted plan (which by the way was developed to kill Ben five years ago, and Ben has become much more powerful since then) on the argument that "he is tougher than he looks".
• This is a signature trait of Black Heron in DuckTales, largely due to her borderline parodical status as a Card-Carrying Villain:
  • In the past, she was too focused on filming her "declaration of ill-intent" to take a young Beakley and Scrooge seriously, and she later is almost tricked into giving an evil monologue (but manages to catch herself).
  • It's not really her fault that she leaked Bradford's true allegiance to the triplets since Bradford did not enact radio silence, and she was just doing her job trying to find him for extraction. Flying a helicopter with their organization's logo on the side clear and visible so that Scrooge himself can see? Absolutely. What's worse is that when Bradford expressed indignation at the screw-up, Heron sarcastically asked if he would've preferred she fly in an unmarked helicopter. Bradford, naturally, retorts with a big fat "YES!"
• Shown clearly in The Fairly OddParents! when Mr. Crocker meets Norm the Genie. They both hold a deep hatred for Timmy Turner, and Norm suggests sending him to Mars, while Crocker tries out a horde of elaborate impractical traps.
• Futurama pulls this with the Slurm Queen during the 'Fry and the Slurm Factory' episode. She has Leela in a vat of goo that will mutate her into another Slurm Queen, Bender on a conveyor belt headed for a metal recycler, and Fry stuck gobbling up a tub full of addictive soda, and then she and her guards leave them to their fates. Fry saves Leela by simply dragging the tub over to where she's being held and releasing her, then she saves Bender from being turned into soda cans. Luckily for the Slurm Queen, they don't end up telling the world where Slurm soda really comes from.
• Lampshaded and averted in the first season finale of Generator Rex. When Van Kleiss gives the order for Biowolf to dispose of a depowered Rex. Rex asks him if he'd rather lock him a cage or tie him to a slab and use a slow moving laser on him, Biowolf simply says "No", and tosses him out the window of the Keep. Interestingly enough, this is played straight later in the episode by the Big "Good" of all people, who chooses not to turn his electromagnet defense system high enough to tear the nanites out of Biowolf's body, but simply to immobilize him for a good old fashioned beat down.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero:
  • COBRA does this a lot, but one that stands out as especially stupid was the Christmas Episode. It started out like a good idea; Cobra Commander thought he'd attack the Joes' headquarters on Christmas Eve (worked for George Washington, right?) and it actually worked — he and his men took the whole team of Joes hostage. Then the Commander got a good idea, maybe. He had his men handcuff the prisoners and lock them up in their own meat locker, suspended from the hooks by their cuffs, then decided to take the Joes' vehicles for a joyride and attack a nearby city, maybe get the Joes in trouble. Then, however, Cobra Commander's last attempt at Evil Gloating ruins the plan royally. He tells his prisoners he's leaving them a "Christmas present" and puts the keys to their handcuffs on a hook by the door before he leaves to taunt them, confident they can't possibly reach it. Unbeknownst to him, Shipwreck has already partially freed himself, getting down from the hook (he leaps up and grabs hold of it when they hear the Commander coming) so when the villain leaves again, freeing himself and the other is a simple matter. Even worse, when the villains leave with the Joes' vehicles, they leave their own vehicles behind (and apparently leave the keys in the ignitions, for that matter). Did the villains think the Joes wouldn't shoot down their own crafts? Wild Bill did say he felt "like [he] shot his own horse" when he did, but he still did, and so did the others. (So all this botched plan accomplished was to prove that COBRA can't claim that the Joes have better equipment as an excuse for their failures...)
  • Ironically, during the five-part "Arise Serpentor Arise", when the villains took Sergeant Slaughter (likely one of the biggest thorns in their side) hostage, Cobra Commander was the smart one, wanting to kill him right away. Unfortunately for him, he had little control of the organization at the time, and Dr. Mindbender wanted to use Slaughter's DNA to supply the fighting expertise of his creation. It turned out very bad for them, and would be the biggest factor in the experiment creating just another failure of a leader.
• What costs Bill his defeat in Gravity Falls where Bill, rather than turning him into a tapestry like the other chosen ones, chooses to imprison Stan while he threatens the kids to blackmail Ford into giving him the equation that will break the barrier. To Bill, Ford won't give a damn if his brother gets tortured to death because Ford supposedly blamed Stan for screwing up the Zodiac, so there isn't any reason for him to keep Stanley. This bites him even harder because it's ultimately Stanley Pines who comes up with the idea to erase himself, along with Bill, once and for all.
• Possibly the biggest case of Near-Villain Victory in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002) was the three-part "Council of Evil" episode. Skeletor's plan had worked almost perfectly, had most of the heroes at his mercy and bringing Eternia to its Darkest Hour to date. But his overconfidence and ego did him in. He specifically said that the reason he wasn't killing them right away was so they could witness his true victory, seizing Grayskull and the Elders' power. Not only did this mistake cost him, it served as a serious "wake up call" to the heroes, and paved the way for the plot of second (and unfortunately, last) season.
• All the time in Inspector Gadget. The plot of any given episode has the villain du jour trying to put the titular inspector through increasingly elaborate death traps instead of, ya know, just shooting him. This was subverted in an episode once, where they attempt to simply poison him. However Brain, Gadget's dog, has discovered the plan and keeps him from eating anything.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: Tso Lan the Moon Demon has two examples of this trope in his Monster of the Week episode. When he has Jackie and Jade at his mercy in the space station, he makes no haste in finishing them off, allowing them to launch a torpedo at him (though this immediately works against Jackie and Jade when it forces him out of the station and gives him a clear path to the Moon, which he takes right away, prompting an Oh, Crap! from Jade). Later, he overpowers Jackie just as the Moon is nearly covered by his magic. At the same time, Uncle is chanting the banishing spell, but it won't work due to the symbol of He Xiangu (the lotus pod) being inside Jackie's spacesuit. Tso Lan says out loud that Jackie has to remove his helmet, prompting Jackie to get the pod out by unplugging his air hose for a moment.
• Justice League:
  • Played straight in "The Enemy Below" when Aquaman's brother, Orm leaves Aquaman and his baby son pinned to a large piece of rock slowly sinking into lava rather than just killing them both outright.
  • During "Injustice For All" Luthor and his group of Super Villains capture Batman, but instead of killing him right then they leave him tied up, which he uses to screw with them all and even finds a way to tell the League where they are. Joker even lampshades the fact that they should no doubt kill Batman right away before he gets out, even pointing out how he himself has fallen into this trope himself several times and had it backfire. Naturally, it turns out Batman could have gotten out at any time though how he does is never explained.
    Joker: And they say I'm crazy.
  • Lampshaded in "The Secret Society," where the members of the League are kept in stasis after being defeated by Grodd's Legion of Doom. Clayface, a former actor, asks why they don't just kill the captive heroes right now, and compares the situation to the mistakes made by the villains in the spy films he used to appear in. Note that Clayface is asking this while staring at Martian Manhunter. This is especially unusual because Clayface and Martian Manhunter are both Shapeshifters and the villains froze the wrong shifter by mistake. This means that Martian Manhunter in this scene is asking why the bad guys don't kill his allies. It could be he already knew this, as Martian Manhunter is also a telepath and probably got the plan from Grodd's thoughts, and is only asking out loud because Clayface isn't a telepath and would ask this. This gets Grodd to unwittingly spill his plans to the heroes before the plan is set into motion.
• In Kim Possible, this trope is part of the Tradition.
  • Discussed in the episode "Rufus in Show".
    Kim Possible: Um... Aren't you going to leave now?
    Falsetto Jones: Leave? What do you mean?
    Ron Stoppable: Well, usually the bad guy says his lame pun and then walks out, you know, leaving us to our doom.
    Falsetto Jones: But then I'd miss the whole thing! Where's the fun in that? I'm not going anywhere!
    Kim Possible: Okay, but I feel I must warn you, you're really breaking a super-villain tradition here.
  • Lampshaded in "Animal Attraction":
    Señor Senior Sr: A proper villain always leaves his foe when he's about to expire.
    Señor Senior Jr: Why?
    Señor Senior Sr: Well, it would be bad form just to loll about, waiting for it.
    Señor Senior Jr: Why?
    Señor Senior Sr: Tradition!
• In The Legend of Korra, Amon has Korra completely at his mercy with about two dozen of his chi-blockers restraining her and looks like he's about to take her bending away and... doesn't. However, he justifies it and only comes across as even smarter because of it. He needs support for his plan to succeed and this early in the game, taking her bending away would only turn her into a martyr banding everyone not already on his side against him.
• The Legend of Zelda (1989): Ganon has both played this trope straight and subverted it more than once:
  • "Kiss N' Tell": Link (in anthropomorphic frog form) hits his head on a tree branch while dodging one of Ganon's magic blasts and is knocked out cold. Instead of finishing him off directly, Ganon summons two giant Deeler spiders to do it before taking Zelda to the Underworld without waiting. But when Link wakes up shortly afterwards, his newfound frog instincts unexpectedly take over and he eats them, much to his disgust.
  • "Stinging a Stinger": After Ganon captures Link, Zelda, and one-off Con Man Sleezenose (whom the former stole Link's already-stolen sword from), he has them thrown into a large cell to be eaten by Gohma before leaving to conquer Hyrule. He didn't count on them being able to incapacitate Gohma and break out of the cell with Sleezenose's lockpicks.
  • Subverted in "Cold Spells" when Link and Zelda fall into Ganon's giant zap-proof holding jar after a shortcut. Ganon summons Gohma to eat them and sticks around to watch, but Link and Zelda manage to get out anyway with Spryte's help.
  • He attempts to subvert this again in "That Sinking Feeling" by magically tying Link up in chains and immediately preparing to blast him. Lucky for Link, Zelda blasted Ganon with magic before he could do it. In addition, Link remembers the magic bracelet he picked up from a Darknut that he uses to free himself.
• In the Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) cartoon, Dr. Wily and his Robot Masters have several moments where he could easily have destroyed Mega Man and/or his friends, but fails due to opting for an excessively elaborate plan:
  • In "20,000 Leaks Under the Sea", after pulling off a clever Evil Plan, he managed to trap our heroes in a fake laboratory building that was in fact an enormous robot which then took them underwater. We later find out that he had a self-destruct for the building that he could've just used right at the start to kill them all before they even realized anything was wrong. Instead, he trapped them in an Agony Beam while gloating about his plan, eventually leaving them to their fate, enabling them to make their escape. Not only that, but he apparently left some tools behind that Dr. Light was able to use to help them escape.
  • In "Showdown at Red Gulch" the Robot Masters had Mega Man completely at their mercy after they knocked him out, but instead of finishing him off, they tied him to a horse and sent him off into the desert.
  • In "Campus Commandos" the Robot Masters had Mega Man at their mercy, twice. The first time they locked him in a closet and the second time they tied him to gears in a clock and left him alone.
  • In "Brain Bot" they handcuffed Mega Man to the floor and were going to crush him, but left him alone instead of staying to make sure he died.
  • In "Curse of The Lion Men", they trap Mega Man in a net that's immune to his Arm Cannon. They then proceed to drag him all the way to a cannery which doesn't seem to be near the beach they were at before, then place him on the conveyor belt that leads to a meat grinder, before just leaving the scene. This gives Mega Man plenty of time to realise the net can still be cut, so he shoots a fan out from an air vent, and uses it to cut the net and escape.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: Smytus's Fatal Flaw is his obsession with Evil Gloating and grand theatrical schemes, such as constantly putting time-wasting countdowns on his weapons for the sake of his ego. He more or less grows out of it of it by the time of Big Damn Movie and nearly takes over the Earth as a result, only to be undone by one last bit of Bond-Villain Stupidity when he tries to use his Self-Destruct Mechanism to kill Jenny... only for her to safely hurl him far away from her because his self-destruct had yet another pointless time delay.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Discord, the second-season villain, makes this mistake twice. He allows Twilight Sparkle to get her hooves on the Elements of Harmony, since he's corrupted the bearers and rendered them unable to use the Elements, and he leaves Twilight to her own devices in the unraveling Ponyville because he delights in her misery and helplessness. As such, when she regains her confidence, gets her friends back and fighting, and unleashes a devastatingly harmonious rainbow on his face, he's very much taken by surprise.
  • In the episode "Read It and Weep", we are introduced to the Daring Do novels, which are mainly patterned after Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider. As such, the main villain in the books, Ahuizotl, will often put the hero Daring Do into a clichéd Death Trap. The example we see is of an ancient over-the-top execution machine involving spikes, encroaching walls, rising sand, and snakes and spiders. While it seems that Ahuizotl's confidence in Daring's demise is well-founded, he makes the classic mistake of leaving her to her doom, which allows her to use her pith helmet and some Improbable Aiming Skills to reverse the trap.
  • In the season 4 episode "Daring Don't", Ahuizotl does it again by suspending Daring over a slowly rising pit of water filled with piranhas. Given that the episode's premise is that everything in the Daring Do novels is actually real (including Daring's previous escapes), he comes off less of a real threat and more of a villain with terrible amnesia.
• Nexo Knights: In Episode 9, Jestro has his monsters split the Nexo Knights up and then capture and tie them up before setting off to take over the capital city. The monsters not only don't kill the now defenseless knights, they don't even dispose of their weapons, though at least plenty of them stay to guard the heroes. And then it turns out Aaron still has the remote control for his hover shield with him...
• In The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, the Hooded Claw constantly tries to murder the eponymous heroine(ish) so that he inherits her fortune instead of her. The entire episodes are devised of the heroes foiling his extremely elaborate and overly complex homicide attempts. Probably the biggest reason he never succeeded was his enjoyment at explaining every little detail of each plan to Penelope herself; it always took at least three minutes, and it would either reveal a flaw in the design to her or give her some time to either free herself or get saved by the Ant Hill Mob. Subverted in several episodes, in which the Hooded Claw admits he enjoys setting up and explaining his death traps so much that he really isn't very interested in whether or not Penelope manages to escape: if she dies, he inherits the fortune, and if she escapes, he gets to set up another death trap, so for him, it's a win-win situation.
• Used and lampshaded in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Nerdy Dancin'": Dr. Doofenshmirtz leaves Perry the Platypus shackled to a table with a slowly approaching laser beam, claiming, "I saw this in a movie once. I didn't catch the ending, 'cause I had other things to do, but it seemed pretty foolproof." Perry escapes as soon as Doof leaves, simply by slipping his small hands and feet out of the shackles.
• Aku in Samurai Jack, has acted in a Stupid Evil manner a lot, so it stands to reason that his stupidest involves this trope, which comes in the Grand Finale. He has Jack at his mercy and seems ready to kill him before the entire world via broadcast... only to waste time deciding what weapon to use. Jack's sword, the single instrument capable of killing Aku, is also still sitting in plain sight instead of being taken away or destroyed, meaning that even if Jack was killed, someone could still take it and finish the job for him.
• The Simpsons:
  • Subverted in "You Only Move Twice" where Homer's new employer, a megalomaniac, tries to kill Mr. Bont with such a deathtrap, and Bont escapes, only to be promptly tackled by Homer. Wising up, the guards just shoot him.
  • In a Deleted Scene from "$pringfield" (first shown widely in "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular"), Homer's incompetence at the blackjack table gets James Bond captured by Blofeld. Bond asks Blofeld to at least tell him his Evil Plan but the villain said he wasn't going to fall for that again.
  • In "The Great Louse Detective", Sideshow Bob was allowed out of prison to help the police to find out who's been trying to kill Homer. During a scene, somebody asked him why doesn't he simply shoot Bart. The topic wasn't discussed again until the epilogue, when Sideshow Bob did try to follow the advice but found out he grew accustomed to Bart's face.
  • The "Treehouse Of Horror XXXIV" segment "Ei8ht" takes place in an Alternate Continuity in which Sideshow Bob averted this trope and successfully murdered Bart in "Cape Feare". The segment begins with the scene of Bob singing "For He Is An Englishman", but rather than finishing the song, he sees that he'd gotten tricked and starts stabbing Bart as the tied-up Lisa helplessly watches.
• Skull Island (2023): In Episode 7, the Skullcrawler, upon cornering the Island Girl at a rock face, takes its sweet-ass time stalking ever so slowly towards her for the kill, which buys enough time for Kong to turn up and get the drop on it.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: General Grievous has the heroes cornered, so naturally, being the Combat Pragmatist he is (in this series, at least), he kills them, right? Nope. He instead launches into a dramatic speech about the futility of their persistence against him, which Shaak Ti ignores and ties his cape to a nearby train with the Force. Grievous is swiftly pulled away from the scene and has to expend extra effort trying to catch up.
• Lex Luthor (often regarded as one of the worst offenders) actually subverts this in one Superfriends episode. He manages to subdue all the heroes except Superman in inescapable deathtraps that actually seem genuinely inescapable. (Even Batman is close to giving up). Then he reveals to his accomplice that this was part of his deal with a group of aliens that live in the sun itself; he gets rid of them, and they turn the sun red, leaving Superman powerless. They do so, and Superman is led to a nasty surprise, and Lex uses his final deathtrap on him. Thing is, Luthor is not being stupid this time. When the aliens double-cross him — as he clearly feared they would — he deactivates all the death traps with a single button on his vehicle, unleashing the heroes to deal with them. (Unfortunately for Lex, he's not as Crazy-Prepared as he'd like; they still find him and haul him to jail after doing so.)
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • In the episode "Where there's Smoke", one of the corrupt government agents seems to have the right idea at first, arming himself with a weapon that might hurt Superman. Unfortunately for him he feels the need to explain how it works and both threaten and insult the already pissed Man of Steel, painfully finding out — when the incredibly fast hero crushes his wrist, disarming him — that he really should have just fired it when he had the chance.
  • In the three-part crossover with Batman: The Animated Series, "World's Finest", the Joker comes to Gotham with a large chunk of Kryptonite, with a proposition for Luthor to kill Superman for a billion dollars. He manages to lure Superman into his trap, and even destroys his lead suit that shields him from the radiation, but then he leaves Superman alone to die, not realizing that Batman had followed him to Metropolis, who then saves Superman by destroying the Kryptonite.
• Played straight in the SWAT Kats episode "Night of the Dark Kat", where Dark Kat and Hard Drive have managed to capture the eponymous heroes, but instead of summarily executing them, set them on the end of a long Conveyor Belt o' Doom that leads to a rock crushing machine, a machine which is wired to blow up the warehouse if shut down, leading to predictable consequences. Dark Kat usually proves smarter than that, too. Hard Drive even lampshades it: "I still say you should have let me fry those two!"
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • In the episode "X", Professor Chang's minions actually defeat Super Hero team leader Robin. But, not only do they not kill him, they don't even bother taking him prisoner! Instead, they just pass on a message that Chang has kidnapped the rest of the Teen Titans and will kill them if Robin interferes with Chang's plans. They might as well have been daring Robin to swoop in and save the day at the last minute. (Chang apparently didn't understand things like loyalty very well, and didn't think Robin would risk it while he was holding the other Titans hostage, something Starfire angrily called him out on.)
  • In the two-part First Season finale, Slade blackmails Robin into being his apprentice by infecting the other Titans with nanomachines that can kill them literally with a push of a button. Robin gets around this by infecting HIMSELF with the nanomachines, thus giving Slade the choice between killing all the Titans thus removing them as a threat but losing Robin as his apprentice, or potentially getting Robin as his apprentice at a later date, but leaving the Titans around to get in the way of his plans. Naturally as per this trope, he does the latter instead of the much more sensible former.
• Lampshaded with Dr. Gene Splicer in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Hare Raising Night". After he has a trap set up to lower the main cast into a vat of chemicals, he heads out to get a camera so he can photograph the Mix-and-Match Critter he intends them to become, and briefly sticks his head back into the room to comment on how villains always leave at such critical moments.
  Splicer: Do you ever notice how bad guys always leave at these critical moments? Oh, well.
• Played straight in almost every episode of Totally Spies! or its follow-up The Amazing Spiez!. Instead of actually spying as their occupations imply, it is always the sequence: get tiny bit of info, get captured, villain explains evil plot, leaves before making sure they die, escape, foil.
• The Venture Bros. features Red Death leaving rival supervillain Blind Rage Chained to a Railway, while explicitly lecturing him about how part of what he likes about that particular killing method is that it leaves a small possibility of escape, meaning that the person will spend the whole time struggling in fear rather than resigning themselves to their fate. However, in this case, it's rather thoroughly justified, as Red Death's motivation isn't to kill Blind Rage (who is no real threat to him), but rather to send a message to his bosses—something that can be accomplished equally well by Blind Rage reporting back scared shitless or Blind Rage's corpse being splattered across the tracks.
• Wakfu:
  • Rushu. Wanting to play games with the heroes gives them a chance to escape, although Remington and Grany don't quite make it.
  • Evil All Along antagonist Qilby has quite a bit of Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? tendency, but the prize winner is when he has Yugo at his mercy in the White Dimension and can easily leave him trapped there while he moves on to Emrub, but instead he offers to take Yugo with him to Emrub to meet his people and then trap him back in the White Dimension afterwards. Doing this only lowered Qilby's chances of convincing the Eliatropes to join him, to say nothing of how Yugo is the Eliatropes' rightful king.
• Deconstructed in Wander over Yonder. Wander realizes that the reason Lord Dominator keeps succumbing to Bond Villain Stupidity and letting the heroes escape is because she's suffering from crippling loneliness and an inability to connect with others. She desperately seeks companionship but doesn't understand how to make it work, so she goes around bullying and dominating people as a supervillain, desperate to feel a connection. When her victims inevitably flee or fight back, she lets them do so because that means she'll get to fight them more later.

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