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Could Have Avoided This Plot / Western Animation

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Times where characters realized they "Could Have Avoided This!" in Western Animation.

  • Adventure Time: In "Princess Potluck", The Ice King sabotages Princess Bubblegum's party, because he was angry and lonely due to not being invited. When he gets around to asking why he wasn't invited, it turns out he actually was, he just never got the invitation since he never checks his mail.
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
    • In "When Pants Attack", Carl points out that if Jimmy just picked up his pants regularly, none of the events in the episode would have happened.note 
    • In "The Feud", though none of them say so directly, the Neutrons and Wheezers are angry at Sheen since he never told Hugh that Sam at The Candy Bar borrowed Hugh's Lawn Lopper. Now realizing that they started the whole feud for nothing, everybody becomes furious with Sheen and they menacingly advance on him as the episode ends. In Sheen’s defense, he forgot about Sam telling him to send the message.
  • The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: In "Tag Team Trouble", Toad is tasked with bringing a donation to an orphanage. He falls asleep outside of the door and isn't woken up to be informed that the orphanage got the money. Only after the Mario Bros. win the wrestling tournament is he told this which results in the orphanage getting double the original donation.
    Toad: Another bag? Wait a second! Then Koopa didn't steal it! And the orphans had it all along! Then I didn’t need to... AAAAHH!
  • In the Adventures of the Gummi Bears episode "Duel of the Wizards", a wizard gets ticked off because his magic key was stolen by Duke Igthorn, and he gets in a fight with Zummi and Gruffi. After he finally tells Zummi what he was looking for...
    Zummi: If you had just accepted our help when we first offered it, we could have avoided all this trouble.
  • Arthur
    • In "Lost!" (later adapted into the book Arthur's Lost and Found) David does ask why Arthur didn't just tell the bus driver what happened after he woke up before the last stop on the route. Arthur says he was worried the driver would get mad at him for messing up. He finds out from the waitress that Sam is a Nice Guy, who lets Arthur ride the bus without a fare and goes the extra mile to call his parents and the bus company, knowing his "folks" must be worried.
    • "Arthur the Wrecker" (later adapted into the book Arthur's Computer Disaster) sees Arthur wanting to play a game on his mother's computer, despite her telling him not to until after dinner. When Buster persuades him to do it anyway, the boys end up making the screen go black. They can't fix it and assume the worst, so Arthur desperately tries to cover up the mistake and lies to his mother even further. When she finally does find out, though, she fixes the problem in seconds (there's a reset switch on the back of the computer) and tells Arthur that if he'd called her sooner or told the truth, he'd have saved himself a lot of unnecessary grief. As punishment for lying and disobeying her, Jane forbids him from playing any computer games for a week, which only adds to the trope — had Arthur just listened to her instead of letting Buster convince him to break the rules, he would have avoided any kind of punishment.
    • In "Nerves of Steal", after Arthur's parents are called to Jim's Drug Store over the fact that Buster shoplifted a toy from there, they point out that Arthur should have gone to them when he found out what Buster did rather than try to cover up the theft.
    Mrs. Read: You should have come to us when you found out what Buster did.
    Mr. Read: Even if you didn't take the toy, can't you see how covering it up made it worse?
  • At the end of the final episode of Bunnicula:
    Chester: Another terrifying adventure concluded. You guys do know, that if you would listen to me from the beginning, we could have avoided a lot of these things.
    (Beat)
    Harold: Yeah, but where's the fun in that?
  • Danny Phantom: Danny spends one episode fighting a ghost genie, Desiree. He learns about a third of the way in that she must grant wishes asked of her, one wish per asker; she doesn't have a choice. It's the end of the episode before Danny thinks of wishing her into the Fenton Thermos. Danny even lampshades it by commenting on how he should have thought of that a lot sooner.
  • One episode of Doug sees Doug accidentally breaking a ceramic knickknack that his mother Theda owns. Judy witnesses him do it and promises not to tell, but only if Doug will do whatever she says. After slaving away under Judy's demands, Doug angrily reviews the contract she made him sign and discovers that it will be null and void if their mother ever finds out the truth. He promptly confesses what happened to Theda himself, and receives the fair punishment of being grounded for a week. Doug promptly lampshades the trope when he remarks that he would have been punished less had he gone to Theda sooner — she was more upset with him trying to cover up his mistake rather than shattering the knickknack, which she already hated.
  • An episode of Ewoks named "The Haunted Village" features the evil Duloks trying to steal some of the Ewoks' soap in order to chase insects away. By mistake they steal a magic one which shaman Logray has developed to hide the food supply from the dragon-like Mantigrue. This not only allows them to cause all sorts of trouble, but also leaves the Ewoks no way to protect their food. Upon learning of the theft, Logray fumes that the he would have shared the regular soap with the Duloks if they'd only just asked.
  • Gargoyles:
    • The episode "Eye of the Storm" features Odin trying to retrieve the eye of Odin from Goliath. Instead of explaining the situation and asking for it back, Odin leaves Elisa for dead, then tries to steal it before finally trying to kill them all to get it back. If he had just asked Goliath would have returned it, but his actions ensured Goliath would never give it up. Goliath then uses the Eye to stop Odin, and nearly kills everyone. Odin and Goliath then both lament that they could have prevented this if they acted more appropriately.
    • In an earlier Halloween episode (also involving the Eye of Odin), Xanatos reserves asking the gargoyles for help as Plan D, which the clan immediately lampshade. Considering Xanatos was delaying calling them in on a case that involved a human-sized, very fast and strong, magic fox released by the Eye, and Xanatos doesn't want the fox hurt, and the clan were able to take the fox down quickly once they knew of the problem, the lampshading and snarking were thoroughly earned
  • In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), a technomancer named Sortek disrupts all the technology on Eternia in order to force He-Man and Skeletor into assisting him with a task. The task turns out to be so trivial that He-Man tells Sortek he would have helped if he'd just asked nicely.
  • The Jackie Chan Adventures episode "Return of the Pussycat" has Jackie accidentally freeing the evil troll Spring-Heeled Jack, who was turned into a statue centuries ago by Simon Magus. Spring-Heeled Jack sets out to devour Magus's descendants as punishment. As the heroes chase Jack all over the city and wonder who he could possibly be after, they're shocked when he ends up at Jade's school to devour a friend of hers named Simone...which is when Jade realizes that she should have known exactly where the troll was going:
    Jade: Spring-Heeled Jack is after Simone?!...Simone...Magus. Big giant DUH!
  • In the last episode of Jumanji: The Animated Series Alan finds out that to leave the game permanently he had to remove a thorn from the paw of a lion that had been chasing him since the moment he was pulled into the game. He succeeds and is free from the game, but is momentarily stunned that he could have been free within minutes instead of spending most of his life inside if he had confronted the lion instead of running away.
  • King of the Hill: In "Naked Ambition", Boomhauer goes tubing but mistakenly winds up in Houston. Since he's wearing nothing but a speedo, sunburned and has his indecipherable way of speaking, he gets mistaken as a crazy man and taken to a mental hospital. When Boomhauer calls Dale to get him out, rather than walking in and calmly talking to a psychiatrist and explain what happened, Dale decided to "save" Boomhauer by infiltrating the hospital, and both of them sneaking out unnoticed. Unfortunately, Dale gets locked inside, and when he goes to talk to the psychiatrist, Dale simply convinces the doctor, accidentally, that he's just another delusional patient. When they call Bill for help, he starts off trying to tell them there was a mistake before voluntarily admitting himself, later inadvertently blowing an escape plan that they thought up. When the guys finally call Hank, he explains that Boomhauer had fulfilled his 72 hours of observation and was found to be harmless and is allowed to go, Dale is also free to go since he wasn't admitted into the hospital (but the doctor recommends he keeps taking his medication), and Bill is allowed to stay as long as he wants (although Hank still makes Bill leave with them).
  • Looney Tunes: Wile E. Coyote, trying to capture Bugs Bunny, envisions this trope in action after calmly explaining to Bugs why Bugs stands no chance against a powerful and intelligent predator, when Wile E. wonders why "they always want to do it the hard way!"
  • The Loud House:
    • The special "Save Royal Woods!" has the citizens of Royal Woods, Michigan find out their town is about to get destroyed to make way for a new Great Lake. They try to come up with something special about the town to save it from destruction, and after several failures, the citizens end up singing a song, "Right Where We Belong", about how their experiences make Royal Woods special to them. Except midway, Lisa abruptly interrupts the song to point out that Royal Woods is abundantly rich in several minerals and located on a large oil deposit. Lynn Jr. immediately complains that Lisa could have brought that up earlier.
    • "Right Where We Belong" later got an extended version in a short of the same name. This time, there's a construction crew drilling on the streets of Royal Woods, and one of them complains Lisa could have brought up how Royal Woods is over a large oil deposit earlier, with the drilling having awakened an oil geyser that causes trouble.
  • The series finale of Mighty Orbots plays out this way. The Orbots' birthday is approaching and they're wondering what Rob is planning for them. So, they hack into his computer and find plans for robots that look just like them. They set out to prove their worth and interfere with Umbra's latest scheme. After they get in over their heads, Rob comes to help them out and they end up defeating Umbra once and for all. After all is said and done, Rob asks why they did that and Ohno reveals they found the plans. Rob asks them if they checked the date on the file and informs them they were looking at their own plans. He had something more festive in mind for their birthday and had no intention of replacing them.
  • Muppet Babies (1984):
    • One episode opens with the babies playing hide and seek. When they finish, Animal is missing. They go to search for him, but decide not to tell Nanny because they're afraid of getting in trouble. They fail to find Animal before lunch and decide to tell Nanny anyway. It turns out that Animal was with her watching television the whole time.
    • Another episode has Rowlf taking care of a neighbor's pet mouse when the rodent goes missing. Again, they decide not to tell Nanny because they're afraid of getting into trouble and launch a search. The search gets interrupted several times by Animal playing with a toy police car only for the others to stop him. When they fail to find the mouse, Nanny gets involved and asks Animal to find it. He again plays with the toy police car, but this time they let him finish. When he finishes, the mouse comes out of hiding.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "The Ticket Master", after Twilight receives two tickets to the Grand Galloping Gala, all of her friends (and eventually everyone else in Ponyville) attempt to "convince" her to give them the extra ticket. Twilight eventually sends both tickets back to Princess Celestia, saying that if she can't bring all of her friends, then she doesn't want to go either. Celestia's reply is "Why didn't you just say so in the first place?", after which she sends extra tickets for all of the mane cast (and Spike).
    • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Fluttershy, being a Friend to All Living Things decides (without asking permission) to look after Princess Celestia's "sick" bird. Fluttershy struggles to nurse the bird back to health, but apparently "fails" as the bird seemingly turns to ashes. It then turns out that the bird is actually a phoenix, after which Fluttershy learns that if she had just asked Celestia first, she would have known ahead of time.
    • In "Lesson Zero", Twilight's friends realized that if they had taken Twilight's worries seriously from the start (even if they did think she was blowing things out of proportion) they could've acted to help Twilight and avoid the madness that ensued at the episode's end. Celestia also comments on the trope, remarking that had Twilight simply asked her for more time to write a letter or explained the situation, she would have reassured her that it was OK to skip a week.
    • In "Swarm of the Century", after spotting the parasprites for the first time, Pinkie Pie starts scrambling around town for random musical instruments, without telling anyone else why. The rest of the town has been preoccupied with preparing for Celestia's visit, so they chalk it up to Pinkie being Pinkie. Had Pinkie told them ahead of time that music was the only way to stop the parasprites, or had somepony stopped Pinkie to ask her about the instruments, they could've avoided the town getting overrun by the parasprites. Twilight acknowledges as much at the end of the episode, once Pinkie's led the parasprites out of town.
    • The second Season Finale "A Canterlot Wedding — Part 1" combines this with Aesop Amnesia regarding the previously mentioned "Lesson Zero": if everyone else had just paid more attention to Cadance's acting instead of assuming Twilight's outburst was only fueled by jealousy, they might have figured out much sooner that "Princess Cadance" was actually Queen Chrysalis, a shapeshifting succubus plotting to feed on Shining Armor's love for the real Cadance and launch a full-scale invasion on Equestria with her army of Changelings, which she very nearly succeeds at doing in "Part 2", even overpowering Princess Celestia thanks to her love-induced power-up — but not before rubbing this trope in the faces of Twilight's ashamed friends.
      Queen Chrysalis: It's funny, really. Twilight here was suspicious of my behavior all along. Too bad the rest of you were too caught up in your wedding planning to realize those suspicions were correct!
      Applejack: Sorry, Twi. We should have listened to you...
      Twilight: It's not your fault. She fooled everypony.
    • In the third season episode "One Bad Apple," the whole situation regarding Babs Seed could've been resolved if Apple Bloom and Scootaloo had just listened to Sweetie Belle and told Applejack about it. Applejack tells them this at the end of the episode. However, Applejack falls into this as well. A lot of Babs's behavior made sense to the Cutie Mark Crusaders once she told them about what Babs had gone through in Manehattan. She did, however, explain she intentionally chose not to say anything to avoid getting Babs singled out over things the kid would rather forget.
    • The fifth season episode "Brotherhooves Social" has Apple Bloom devastated over not being able to participate with Applejack in the Sisterhooves Social. Big Macintosh overhears Granny Smith telling her that that it shouldn't matter who her partner is as long as they both represent the spirit of the social. He dresses in drag and a wig and pretends to be Apple Bloom's cousin "Orchard Blossom" so he can participate with her. After Big Mac is disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct, the judges point out that his "Orchard Blossom" getup was pointless because there never was a rule barring stallions from the social.
    • In "Grannies Gone Wild", Rainbow Dash is asked to chaperone Granny Smith and her buddies on a trip, while Rainbow desperately wants to go on a roller coaster. Rainbow eventually loses her patience with the old folks and ends up disrupting things. When the old folks find out what Rainbow really wanted, they point out she should have just told them. They would have been happy to go and they have a lot of influence, allowing them to get past the long lines. This was partially Applejack's fault because she assumed the old folks must avoid strenuous activity and told Rainbow this, underestimating their resilience. The episode ends with Rainbow and the old folks enjoying the roller coaster.
    • In "Horse Play," Applejack repeatedly tells Twilight that lying to Celestia about how terrible her acting is will only spell disaster. Twilight ignores the warnings, saying that she wants Celestia's dream of acting in a play to come true. When Twilight eventually snaps about the terrible acting, Celestia is right behind her, and admonishes Twilight not for saying she's a bad actress, but for not knowing to just be honest about it. Celestia even lampshades that Twilight should have listened to Applejack in the first place.
    • In the Season 9 premiere "The Beginning of the End," Discord initially refuses to help the Mane Six deal with the resurrected King Sombra, stating that since Twilight and her friends will be ruling Equestria once the princesses retire they should be able to handle this on their own. He eventually relents and lends a hand when things start getting out of hand, only to apparently be beaten by Sombra when he jumps in the way to protect Fluttershy from him. He gives a Rousing Speech to the Mane Six that gives them the confidence needed to beat Sombra and is seen recovering from his injury afterwards. But once the princesses announce they will wait a little longer before retiring to give Twilight time to prepare, Discord angrily reveals he faked being injured to give everyone the confidence they need to rule Equestria and since it is not happening immediately now he feels his efforts were wasted. The others actually realize this means he could have defeated King Sombra whenever he wanted to, though Fluttershy says he didn't because he cares about them.
  • An episode of Phineas and Ferb, "Fireside Girl Jamboree", features Candace attempting to join the Fireside Girls so that she can go to an exclusive Paisley Sideburn Brothers concert. The only way for her to become a Fireside Girl without having to wait for the next meeting is to earn 50 patches in one day, but Isabella tried to tell beforehand that Candace doesn't have to become a Fireside Girl, but kept getting interrupted. Phineas and Ferb help her by plotting a course that takes Candace across Danville and helps her to earn her patches, ranging from normal items such as senior service and delivering cupcakes to oddities like ice-cream juggling, chainsaw-sculpting, and wrestling an alligator in a sewer. She narrowly succeeds and becomes a Fireside Girl, but it turns out that each of the Fireside Girls could invite guests to the concert (Isabella did such by bringing Phineas and Ferb), which was what Isabella wanted to tell Candace who was insistent on becoming a Fireside Girl to begin with.
  • PJ Masks: In "Owlette's Terrible Pterodactyl Trouble," when Connor scares Amaya as a joke in a school trip, Amaya begins to give him the cold shoulder to the point where she, on a mission, begins to disobey his orders, unless he apologized, but refuses to accept it for not being a "very big sorry", which jeopardized the mission and then put Connor in danger when he lost control of the Pterodactyl model to Romeo, while chasing after her. Amaya feels ashamed of all of that.
  • The Powerpuff Girls has a few episodes where the titular heroes would either jump in a situation without properly observing, or have them overcomplicate a problem when there's a simpler solution the whole time. This doesn't go without notice:
  • Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: At the end of “Helping Hands”, Ella realizes and admits that she could have avoided the entire plot if she had just admitted that she didn’t know the song they were going to perform that night.
  • ReBoot:
    • One episode has Dot partially erased by a magnet and in need of extremely slow food from Al's Diner to reverse the condition, sending Bob on a quest to find some and ultimately ending up in a game cube with the food trying to get out in time to rescue Dot. She shows up in the game cured, though, as she is a business partner with Al and just called him up for an order. Granted she did try to tell him, but in her messed-up condition, he couldn't understand through her stuttering.
    • Played for Laughs in one episode where Hexadecimal is musing over how she could enter the Super Computer with a snap of the finger whenever she feels like it but really can't be bothered, while Megabyte's entire driving motive has been to invade it but has been foiled at every turn. She laughs about how she'd be more than happy to whip up a portal for him if he'd just ask her nicely. Assuming she's not just messing around of course, every plot where Megabyte has tried to get into the Super Computer could be avoided.
  • Rocket Power: In "Big Air Dare", Reggie and Otto compete against each other to see who is better at snowboarding. A guard escorts them off "The Big Air", a slope meant for experienced adult snowboarders only. They return to have the challenge the following morning where Otto breaks his leg. The same guard from before tells Ray that if Otto had listened to him in the first place, he wouldn't have gotten hurt, especially with an imminent hockey game in its sister episode "Otto's Big Break", where the rest of the group needs to find another player to fill in for the injured Otto.
  • In Silverwing, the bat colony loses their home because Shade looked at the sun, a rule that their rivals, the owls, had laid down for the bats to follow. His rival Chinook gets chewed out by his friend Todd for this, saying that if he hadn't insulted Shade and dared him to look at the sun, they would still be at home.
  • South Park:
    • "Coon 2: Hindsight" features Captain Hindsight, a superhero whose superpower is to instantly be able to tell people how they could have avoided something from happening, even if he wasn't there when it happened.
    • "The New Terrance and Phillip Movie Trailer" deals with the boys trying to watch the premiere of the new trailer for the Terrence and Phillip sequel, but Cartman accidentally destroys Stan's TV, leading them to run all over town to try to watch it. Throughout the episode, Butters tells them watching it at his house is an impossibility. When they finally ask why after they've exhausted every other option, he tells them it's because his parents aren't home and he doesn't have a babysitter. Furious that there was a TV with no distractions this entire time, they declare they will kill him after they watch the trailer at his house.
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "I Was a Teenage Gary", Squidward offers to take care of Gary while SpongeBob and Patrick are out of town for the weekend. Squidward neglects Gary the entire time, to the point where he becomes severely emaciated. A doctor gives SpongeBob and Squidward snail plasma, but Squidward accidentally injects SpongeBob with it. When Squidward sees its results, he's horrified and acknowledges that all of this could have been avoided had he just fed Gary.
    • In "Pranks a Lot", SpongeBob and Patrick buy invisible spray and trick Bikini Bottom into thinking they're ghosts. At the end, their ruse is discovered while they're caught naked in front of the entire town, no less. SpongeBob tells Patrick that they should have bought a whoopee cushion instead.
    • In "Tea At The Treedome", after SpongeBob and Patrick are shown looking really dehydrated, Sandy tells SpongeBob and Patrick that they should have asked for water. Subverted in that SpongeBob actually did ask for water earlier, but as he brought Sandy some flowers as a present, she thought he meant he wanted a vase of water to keep the flowers in.
    • In "Party Pooper Pants", Spongebob tries to throw a party but ends up getting locked out, leading to a number of zany schemes to get back inside that culminates in him being thrown in jail for the night. When he returns home the next morning and remembers he's locked out, he automatically grabs the spare key he keeps under the welcome mat, upon which he immediately realizes that he went through all that trouble for no reason.
      Spongebob: Good thing I always keep a spare key- (realizes his mistake, becomes frustrated) -under... the... mat! (Angrish)
    • In "Squid's Day Off", Squidward appoints SpongeBob as the boss of the Krusty Krab so he can enjoy peace and quiet at home. However, he starts fearing that SpongeBob will destroy the place while he's gone, and repeatedly runs back and checks on him, unable to relax, only to find SpongeBob still standing there perfectly fine. At the end of the day, SpongeBob points out that the whole time, the restaurant's "Closed" sign was never changed to "Open", and they both could have had the day off.
    • In "Abandon Twits", SpongeBob and Squidward try to build a ship's frame, leading to many Amusing Injuries on Squidward's part. Krabs points out that there's already a pre-made ship frame they were supposed to use instead; they just didn't search the parts enough to find it.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks:
    • "Envoys": Rutherford cycles through every department on the ship in an effort to make time to watch the pulsar with Tendi, only to realize that he won't be happy anywhere but Engineering. She happily accepts his reasoning and just decides to join him in the Jefferies tubes instead, watching it on a PADD instead of from the observation deck.
      Tendi: I mean, it's not like you were trying all those new jobs just to hang with me, right?
      Rutherford: (awkwardly laughing) Naw, yeah, naw. Could you imagine?
    • "An Embarrassment of Dooplers": Mariner and Boimler go through hell to figure out where the party is being held, only to be told that it's at a fairly obvious location. Mariner even lampshades that it's the most obvious place to hold a party.
    • "I Have No Bones Yet I Must Flee":
      • Boimler spends the episode switching between quarters because his original new quarters have light from the ship shining blindingly into them and ends up sharing quarters with Rutherford that turn out to have the same problem. Rutherford then casually filters out the light with one computer command, leaving him with the frustrating realization he's gone to all the trouble and forgone getting his own quarters for nothing.
      • After his best friends are all promoted, Rutherford runs himself ragged trying to earn his own and eventually mentions to Tendi that he turned down several previous offers of promotion because he didn't want to be separated from them. She asks his boss if he could have one of them now, who agrees instantly.
      Rutherford: Wait, I can just ask for stuff I deserve?
  • Steven Universe: In "Onion Trade", as Onion floods the town with Dave Guy action figures from Pearl's Replicator Wand, Pearl asks Steven why he didn't just use the replicator to duplicate another Ranger Guy instead of trading it to Onion. Cue "Dang it!" from Steven.
  • In "The Flying Saucerers" arc of Underdog, the king of the Saucerers loved cakes, and his desire for them lead him to kidnap beings from other worlds to be his baking slave, with him finally settling on Sweet Polly Purebred as her cakes are delicious. When Underdog eventually saves her, the king moans he won't get any more cakes, so Polly leaves behind a copy of her recipe so his people can make all the cakes they want without kidnapping chefs, something the king says he should've thought of in the first place.

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