Didnt Think This Through / Film

People not thinking things through in movies.

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Animated

• In Aladdin:
  • Jafar is defeated when Aladdin tricks him into wishing to become an all-powerful genie. Jafar either forgot or was not aware that genies in this setting are bound to a magic lamp and obliged to grant wishes by nature unless someone wishes them free.
    Genie: It's all part and parcel of the whole "genie" gig. PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER!...itty-bitty living space.
  • Aladdin too. He gets the genie to turn him into a prince and win the heart of Princess Jasmine. He didn't think about the fact that with Jasmine came the throne of Agrabah. The look on his face says it all.
  • Earlier in the film, Jasmine goes into the marketplace disguised as a peasant; she didn't think to bring money with her- especially in a time and a region of the world where you can lose your hand for stealing- which almost leads to her getting her hand chopped off by a street merchant after she gives an apple to a little boy, without paying for it.
• In Beauty and the Beast, when Gaston gets a mob of villagers to take Belle's father Maurice to a lunatic asylum for saying Belle was being held in a castle by a Beast, Belle desperately uses the Magic Mirror to prove the Beast exists... which then makes Gaston rile up the villagers to kill him. Admittedly, there was no other way to prove her father’s sanity, so if she had known what the result would be there would have been a three-way Morton's Fork of either letting her father get locked up, marrying Gaston against her will, or putting the Beast’s life in danger.
• Brave: Merida makes an incredibly vague spell request to a witch with an obvious bear obsession who initially refuses because of "too many unsatisfied customers".
• A Bug's Life: The colony exiles Flik and the circus bugs after their ruse is discovered, abandoning the plan they devised in the process. The problem being that the colony spent pretty much all of their time on this plan and didn't gather any food for the grasshoppers in case it fell through, leaving them with nothing to fall back on when Hopper arrives to collect. Atta is soon forced to admit that maybe abandoning their only plan just because Flik lied about one part of it wasn't the best move.
• In Cars, Lightning McQueen is sentenced to community service for destroying the road in Radiator Springs by paving over the road with Bessie. When Doc asks Mater to hook McQueen up to Bessie, he takes the parking boot off McQueen without hooking him up first, causing him to immediately speed off and leave town. ^note Though, McQueen doesn't get very far, as his gas was siphoned while he was asleep, causing him to run out of gas by the town's sign.
  Mater: Maybe I should've, uh... hooked him up to Bessie... and then, uh... then took the boot off.
• Cinderella II: Dreams Come True: In the b-plot of the "An Uncommon Romance" segment, Lucifer falls in love with the king's cat Pom-Pom, and Jaq and Gus strike a deal with him: if they can help Lucifer win Pom-Pom's heart, then he won't have to hunt the mice anymore. The plan works, but the mice didn't realize that now the cats can hunt them together, thus they shoo Pom-Pom away and Jaq declares the deal is off.
• The last line on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, spoken by the Mayor, who is adrift at sea after eating the food boat he was escaping in.
  • Also, Flint's invention of Spray-On Shoes. It seems like a great solution to the epidemic of untied shoes until he's asked how he'd be able to take them off. In an unspoken answer to that question, he spends the rest of the movie wearing them, which includes a Time Skip.
• Gill's plan to escape to the sea in Finding Nemo succeeds past the audience's expectations. Too bad he didn't account for the fact that they'd all be stuck in plastic bags when they got there.
  Bloat: Now what?
• There's a lot of this in play when Anna hastily leaves Arendelle to find Elsa in Frozen. She doesn't account for the fact that she's alone, nobody in the kingdom knows where she's gone, she has no idea where Elsa is, it's freezing cold everywhere, she's not wearing weather-appropriate clothing, and Elsa has shown herself to be unstable when provoked. That last one almost does Anna in.
• In Frozen II, Anna grabs an ice sword from one of the ice sculptures around them when they find themselves threatened in the forest, and brandishes it defiantly. When Kristoff asks her what she intends to do with that sword, she answers she has no idea.
• The Incredibles:
  • The public whose opinion forced the government to put the Super Relocation Act in place did not consider fully all the good the supers were also accomplishing. Fifteen years later, crime rates are at an all-time high according to the newspaper Bob is reading when he leaves the family dinner. Doubles as a Freeze-Frame Bonus.
  • Syndrome's Evil Plan involved the Omnidroid, a robot programmed to adapt to techniques used to defeat it in order to beat opponents. The plan was that he would order the Omnidroid to attack a city, and then defeat it in order to set himself up as a superhero. He fought the robot using a remote control. Unfortunately for him, the Omnidroid, following its programming, realized that the remote was a threat and immediately acted to remove it. Without the remote, Syndrome went down pretty fast, leaving the real heroes to stop the Omnidroid.
• In Incredibles 2, Bob only thought of Tony's mind-wipe in terms of preserving Violet's Super identity. He didn't stop to consider how the mind-wipe could affect Tony's budding relationship with Violet so he didn't inform Agent Dicker that Tony was anyone important to Violet.
• The Iron Giant: Mansley, singlemindedly obsessed with destroying the Giant, personally orders the Nautilus to launch a nuke at the Giant after his lies are exposed, failing to realize at that moment that the missile was locked on to the Giant's current location as the Giant is standing right in the middle of Rockwell — about 5 feet away from Mansley. Thus, the nuke will vaporize not only the Giant, but also the entire town, including Mansley himself. Fortunately, the Giant intercepts the nuke and saves the town, seemingly at the cost of his life. It eventually turns out the Giant is still alive, and reassembling himself in Iceland.
• Kung Fu Panda 2: Po's plan to rescue the Furious Five where he admits he hadn't thought what he would do when he got close enough to do that. Mainly due to the fact he didn't expect to make it this far.
• Lady and the Tramp: Tramp attempts to free Lady of her muzzle by letting an alligator at the zoo bite it off. Tramp realizes it's a bad idea when he sees the size of its jaws and has to pull Lady to safety.
• The Lion King (1994): In the elephant graveyard scene, Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed stuff Zazu into a steam vent which blasts him to kingdom come. Simba offers to teach them a lesson. Keep in mind, he is a cub at this point.
  Simba: Hey! Why don't you pick on somebody your own size?
  Shenzi: Like... you?
  Simba: Oops.
• Mavka: The Forest Song: Kylina, in The Stinger at the end. She reaches the Fountain of Youth in the Heart of the Forest and bathes entirely in it... which makes her regress to baby stage. There's a reason only small quantities of the liquid are enough for her and Lukash's uncle early on.
• A Running Gag in Meet the Robinsons is that people keep saying this to Bowler Hat Guy. When a CEO, a frog, and a Tyrannosaurus rex think your evil plans need work, you aren't doing that well.
  Bowler Hat Guy: Why aren't you seizing the boy?!
  Tiny: I have a big head and little arms. I'm just not sure how well this plan was thought through.
• In The Nightmare Before Christmas, the entire plot kicks off because of Jack's well meaning plan to celebrate Christmas. He did not realize how badly this would go because he and the town have only ever known how to scare people and they are taking over a cheerful holiday that they barely understand.
• Quest for Camelot: After finally obtaining Excalibur, Ruber fuses it with his arm to make sure nobody would take it from him — despite knowing that Excalibur is a sword that, once stuck into a certain stone, cannot be removed from it by anyone other than the rightful King.
• In Ratatouille, this is the cause of the Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure between Rémy and Linguini in both sides. Linguini kicks Rémy out of the restaurant so he can focus on pleasing Ego, only to find out the next day that he is being bombarded by special orders for unique dishes that only Rémy knows how to make. Rémy, meanwhile, is upset that Linguini won't reveal him to the public, ignoring how the entire kitchen and the health inspector would react to this.
• Recess: School's Out: Why did Prickly call Dr. Benedict insane? Maybe because creating another ice age to end summer vacation forever would bring forth The End of the World as We Know It?
  • Or because of the fact that nobody told him about snow days, which would probably become the new summer vacation anyway.
  • Or that summer itself isn't the primary cause of summer vacation, at best those vacation days would be rearranged, not removed. In fact, TJ outright says this to him as "You might get rid of summer, but you'll never get rid of summer vacation", but by that point, Benedict had gone so far without realizing the pointlessness that he just went ahead anyway.
  • Or that the real reason for the so-called anemic test scores is not summer vacation, but a lack of motivation and incentive. Eliminating summer vacation would instead worsen test scores due to a decrease in student morale as a result of them becoming even more apathetic.
• Robin Hood (1973): For the archery tournament, Robin pretty convincingly disguises himself as a stork, cockily saying it would fool his own mother. He failed to realize that it didn't matter how good his disguise was, as his skill with a bow and arrow would give him away...which was Prince John's plan.
• Shark Tale: Oscar is prone to making foolish decisions without thinking of the consequences:
  • Takes credit for killing a shark without realizing the following:
    1. People would expect him to fight sharks from now on.
    2. Said shark likely has family and friends who won't take kindly to his death.
    3. He is clearly not a fighter. He keeps it going even after he finds out Frankie was the son of Don Lino (y'know, the guy who rules the Reef with a criminal empire of sharks) and decides to pretend to kill Lino's other son. Even if that decision was made under Lenny's advisement, Oscar doesn't get any points for being surprised when the Don responds to the loss of both his sons by taking Angie hostage.
  • He bets the money he owes Sykes (which Angie gave him her grandmother's pearl to get) on a rigged seahorse race, not even considering the idea of his horse losing. Sure enough, when it happens, he's unable to pay the money he owes Sykes, which results in Ernie and Bernie almost killing him on Sykes' orders.
  • He breaks up with Lola and doesn't think anything bad will come from it.
• Shrek 2 Harold's promise to the Fairy Godmother that his daughter would marry her son so he could become king. However, when they are brought together, he sees that Fiona is genuinely in love with Shrek and that nothing is going to change her mind. He even laughs at how absurd it is to think you can force someone to fall in love.
• Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas: After braving many dangers, Sinbad and Marina finally make it to Tartarus and come face to face with Eris, the goddess of discord. The faces they make really show that they didn't have any plan whatsoever past that point.
• Snoopy, Come Home: Lila entices Snoopy to leave Charlie Brown and live with her again. The one problem: a sign on her home reading "No dogs allowed in building", which Snoopy is more than happy to point out. Cue Face Palm from Lila.
• Storks: Junior says it word for word after he stuffs the baby machine full of letters, thus creating millions of babies.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie:
  • The penguin kingdom did not prepare to fight a fire-breathing dragon/turtle tyrant in the slightest, even disregarding the fact that their only weapons are snowballs and a massive block of ice. Even worse, their castle is made out of ice, making it easy for Bowser to just burn it down.
  • Bowser's own entire plan to invade kingdoms, steal priceless artifacts and murder a whole lot of people in order to propose to Peach is...flawed, to put it mildly. Even his own minions point out that Peach hates his guts, which he flagrantly ignores in his lovey-dovey daze. Of course, it doesn't go well. He has to resort to hostage-taking to get his wedding, and when that goes awry too, he doesn't take it well.
• Teen Titans Go! To the Movies: When Jade Wilson says that, unless Robin has an arch-enemy, she won't make a movie of him even if he's the last superhero on Earth. He decides to tamper with the origins of Superman, Aquaman, Batman and Wonder Woman with help from the other Titans. They don't realize it's a bad idea until they see a reality with villains going around without anyone to stop them.
• In Toy Story, Woody lights the rocket strapped to Buzz as a last resort to get back to Andy and this realization hits him seconds before it goes off.
  Woody: Wait a minute, I just lit a rocket. Rockets EXPLODE!
• The Transformers: The Movie:
  • When Hot Rod sees Megatron feigning surrender while reaching for a hidden pistol he impulsively tackles the Decepticon leader. He didn't take into account that the much stronger Megatron could overpower him, take him as a hostage, and grab the pistol in the confusion. He also failed to account for the fact that Optimus Prime was standing close by, a gun pointed at Megatron's head and finger on the trigger as if anticipating that Megatron would make an aggressive move.
  • After taking the Matrix of Leadership for himself, Galvatron tries to threaten his master, Unicron. He only realizes after making his demands that he doesn't actually know how to wield the Matrix (or rather, he seems to have the general idea that it needs to be opened, but it doesn't budge to brute force, and that's all he has) and is promptly swallowed whole.

Live-Action

• In Alien Nation, Detective Matt Sykes decides to question a Newcomer named Trent Porter at a bar using the same techniques he would on a human, not knowing much of anything about Newcomer biology or customs and not thinking of how Newcomers would react to an aggressive human. This includes kicking Porter in the groin, but as Newcomers have different weak spots than humans it's ineffective. Sykes almost becomes the victim of a Newcomer beatdown before his partner George Francisco intervenes.
• Similar to the animated version, the Jafar of the live-action Aladdin movie is done in by being transformed into a genie himself. However, unlike the animated version, where he specifically says he wants to be a genie, he wants to be "the most powerful being in the universe. More powerful than" the Genie. Genie quickly points out there's a lot of gray area in that wish, but obliges and turns him into a powerful genie.
• In Andhadhun, the plan for the drop-off didn't consider the possibility of Manohar dropping the Duffel Bag Full of Money into the elevator and taking the stairs himself. This gets Murli killed.
• In Ashens And The Polybius Heist, Stuart and Benny successfully bypass security guards, facial scanners, a laser grid and a central locking system to access the Polybius machine.. and then realize that at no point did they consider how they were going to get the large, heavy, upright arcade cabinet out past all of those things. Quickly subverted as Stuart soon figures out to remove the main chip only, as the other parts are just standard components.
• In Assassin's Creed, Present Day Templars hold several men captive. Said men are the descendants of Assassins, and the Templars need them to explore their Genetic Memory through the Animus to find clues about an Apple of Eden. Quite rapidly, the "Bleeding Effect" from the use of the Animus grants the descendants of Assassins the combat skills of their predecessors, so much so that they eventually manage to overwhelm their Templar jailers, who somehow didn't see this effect develop under their own eyes.
• Back to the Future: Marty comes up with a truly brilliant plan to get his mother Lorraine to fall in love with his father George. It involves Marty staging an Attempted Rape with George stepping in, grabbing Marty and "saving" her. Marty realizes far too late that, even if it is an act, molesting his own mother is something much easier said than done; he can only nervously ask if she wants to "park". Marty gets a bigger Oh, Crap! moment when not only does she say yes but in fact she is actually far more eager to get down with it than he is - meaning George could never have been her "saviour". Which leads to Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Biff enters the scene, gets his goons to drag Marty away and tries to rape Lorraine for real. When George opens the door and sees Biff over her instead of Marty, at first he is horrified but it leads to George standing up to his long-time bully for the first time in his life, and the encounter ends with Lorraine falling in love with him because the skinny dork was her hero rather than because she pitied him or because of some trick.
  • Also, this tends to be Marty's Fatal Flaw: in the two sequels. As he shows a "Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!" attitude where he accepts a challenge if he gets called a chicken. However, Part II shows that if he raced Needles he would've hit a Rolls Royce that would've injured his hand. Thus, preventing him from ever playing guitar again and putting him in financial troubles the rest of his life. He also gets fired from his job in the future after a little wager with Needles during a video call as well. Part III takes it up rather extremely, as when he's called Yellow by Buford Tannen, he agrees to challenge him to a western showdown. However, Marty would've been killed by his own impulsiveness during the standoff, had he not learned his lesson, or used the bulletproof vest.
• In Batman & Robin:
  • After Robin and Poison Ivy share a kiss and Ivy reveals her true colors to Robin, expecting him to die, Robin reveals that he was wearing rubber lips and is therefore immune to her deadly kiss. However, he does this by taking off the lips while laying right next to Ivy, their faces still only inches apart, instead of leaving them on and tackling her when she doesn't expect it. This leaves him wide open for what comes next (see below).
  • Poison Ivy doesn't do much better. After realizing Robin has tricked her, she stares in shock for a moment and angrily shoves Robin off her throne and into the lily pond to have her vines drown him. She does this instead of simply grabbing Robin and forcing a second kiss on him, which would have guaranteed his death. Instead, she leaves him to drown and taunts him as if she's breaking up with him over a bad kiss. Robin ends up surviving and now knows what Freeze is planning thanks to Ivy.
  • Freeze's ultimate plan is to freeze the entire world using a telescope-turned-cryocannon. Even if, theoretically, its freezing ray could've reached anywhere in the world by reflecting it from orbital satellites (comic book science here), it stretches belief that he would've been able to work undisturbed for any significant amount of time (it took him several minutes to freeze a single city in his immediate vicinity) before the authorities found the source of the attack and simply blew him up with a bomber or a missile.
• Birds of Prey (2020):
  • Harley decides to make a clean break from the Joker by blowing up Ace Chemicals and dropping her iconic "J" necklace on the ground outside. Meaning that everyone knows they broke up, so the many people she's pissed off over the years can finally get their revenge now that the Joker isn't protecting her. She was drunk at the time.
  • Cassandra's final resort to hide the diamond even after everyone knows she stole it is to swallow the diamond whole. Of course that just angers everyone who wants the diamond and now wants to cut her open.
• Bit: Laurel is initially glad she can live forever as a vampire. This entails feeding on people's blood though, which repels her, but by then it's too late.
• A subplot of BlackBerry is Jim Blasillie obsessed with buying the Pittsburgh Penguins and moving them to Hamilton, Ontario. Before the deal is authorized, Blasillie sets out to buy the Copps Coliseum and orders them to remove the courts/stages so it's "hockey only." That ignores not only having to pay out fines for all the cancelled contracts with the other sports/entertainment companies that use the place but also how Blasillie is giving up scores of revenue for basketball, concerts, etc that can make him more than just hockey would. Blasillie then calls up Carl Yankowski (who he only knows by the news) to offer box seats to the first Hamilton Penguins game. It never occurs to Blasillie that just maybe all these moves will get back to the NHL, who will be obviously upset he's planning to move a major franchise to another country without their knowledge or permission and so cancel the entire deal.
  Gary Bettman: You know, it’s funny. It’s one thing to have a secret plan to fuck over the NHL and move a team to Canada. It’s another thing to brag to your rich friends before you actually do it.
• Boogie Nights: Todd, Dirk and Reed plan to rip off Rahad by selling a kilo of baking soda as cocaine. Which would have worked out fine if Todd hadn't a) decided to try to rob Rahad of money and drugs without telling his partners about the plan, b) let the victim use the gun he had just shown them to shoot Todd, c) forgotten that there is an armed bodyguard in the room, and d) allowed the victim to go to his bedroom and get a shotgun. Needless to say, it didn't work out.
• Booksmart: Amy and Molly hide in the back of a pizza delivery man's car and then try to "mug" him of a house address he's delivered to that night. The pizza delivery man starts yelling at them for how stupid their plan is. As teen girls in a stranger's car with no weapon or way to protect themselves, they could very easily get themselves raped or killed. After he takes pity on them and gives them the address, they ask if he can drive them there, causing him to again yell at them for not heeding his warnings. And he's right to warn them, since later they realize that he's a wanted serial killer.
• In Cinderella (2015), when the Fairy Godmother decides to transform a pumpkin into a carriage, Cinderella has about enough time to point out they are inside a shed before the expanding pumpkin pins them against the wall. They manage to escape just as the completed carriage destroys the shed. Ditto for turning a goose into a coachman for the carriage; as the goose quickly points out, he has no experience when it comes to driving.
• In Clue, butler Wadsworth brings the six people Boddy is blackmailing together to join against him. Boddy, however, points out that if he goes down, he'll make sure every one of them has their dirty secrets exposed in court. "But...if one of you were to kill Wadsworth right now..." The screenplay sums up Wadsworth's wide-eyed reaction with "clearly, this option hadn't occurred to him."
  • However, the trope then applies to Boddy as he gives each of them a deadly weapon and turns off the lights... never considering that it's possible at least one of them will decide it's a much better idea to kill the guy blackmailing them rather than the butler.
  • The third ending possibly subverts both, as Wadsworth is the real Mr. Boddy, the "Boddy" they knew is his butler, and he set this all up anticipating that one of the party would take out an expendable pawn... Then promptly double subverts it, as it never occurs to him that phone call from J. Edgar Hoover means that one of the guests is actually an undercover FBI agent sent in to take him down, and pointing a gun at them would mean killing him would count as self-defense... as said agent (Mr Green) demonstrates.
• Cocaine Bear: Detective Bob manages to recover a bag of cocaine and get the drop on drug henchmen Daveed and Eddie after climbing a tree and jumping on top of a gazebo. As he's about to arrest the others, Bob realizes he doesn't have a safe way back down to the ground.
• Dad's Army (1971): When Lance Corporal Jones shows the platoon his improvised anti-bomber rocket, Captain Mainwaring gladly fires it to test it out. It's only once the rocket begins hurtling back to earth that they all realise what a mistake they've made, and the rocket ends up setting a barn on fire.
• The Dark Knight: When Wayne Enterprises employee Coleman Reese tries to blackmail Lucius Fox with Batman's identity, Fox replies, "Let Me Get This Straight.... You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men on the planet, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person?...Good luck." Reese immediately backs down.
  • Reese falls victim to this again when he attempts to go public with Batman's identity via a talk show, hoping that it will end Joker's rampage on the city by giving the villain what he wants, which is Batman unmasked. Unfortunately for Reese, Joker decides he doesn't want Batman's identity revealed after all, since it would make Joker's reign in Gotham "boring". Instead, he puts a bounty on Reese's life to silence him, declaring a hospital will be blown up if Reese isn't killed within the hour, forcing Bruce Wayne and the police to thwart immediate assassination attempts on Reese's life.
• Dave:
  • When the President has a massive stroke, Chief of Staff Bob Alexander refuses to give up his own position and thus gets Dave to impersonate the President full time. Bob naturally thinks he can easily manipulate Dave. However, he quickly realizes it's not so easy to publicly contradict the man everyone else accepts as the leader of the free world.
  • When Bob finally has enough, he tries to fire Dave. He's utterly confused when Dave says "fine"... then horrified as Dave dryly asks which one of them will tell the media how an impostor has been posing as the President of the United States. Too late, Bob realizes there's no way he can expose the truth without going to jail for a very long time.
  • It happens a third time when Bob tried to expose multiple felonies that the comatose President committed, framing both Dave and the Vice President. During the press conference Bob was thrilled that Dave admitted to them until Dave provided the evidence that Bob was also guilty of the crime and the Vice President was innocent. Right then did he realize that his former henchman would have the evidence and that Dave was able to walk away a free man.
• Deadpool 2:
  • Deadpool's plan to save Russell from Cable is to have his newly formed X-Force team dive in from a plane and parachute to the cargo truck. However, everyone else points out the dangerously strong winds he's clearly ignoring. Deadpool himself would have no problems with the wind thanks to his regenerative abilities, but the rest of his team probably wouldn't be as lucky; his team consists of a mutant who is always invisible, someone who has acidic vomit, and a man whose only major qualities is that he has Type-1 and Type-2 diabetes. Unsurprisingly, only Domino, who has the power of good luck, survives a gruesome death. Not to mention, the wind blew everyone away from the truck and Cable.
    Deadpool: I'll be the first to admit: this did not go according to plan. I'll also be the first to admit that that plan was written in crayon.
  • During the mid-credits scene, Negasonic Teenage Warhead and Yukio repair Cable's now powerless time machine for Deadpool. NST admits she's only doing it in hopes Cable will find out and tear Wade apart for it. It's only after they give it to him does the realization of what they did hit them: they gave Deadpool of all people a working time machine.
    Yukio: (Stops smiling) That was probably a bad idea.
    NST: What have we done...
• Near the end of Desperate Living, Mole, Muffy, Princess Coo Coo, and their friends retaliate against Queen Carlotta. First, they infect her with rabies by having Princess Coo Coo bite her mother. Then, they cook her and serve her corpse to everyone in Mortsville as a "celebratory feast". What they did not realize was that everyone in Mortsville would be infected with rabies having eaten the former Queen.
• In The Devil and Miss Jones, Joe O'Brien protests inside his former place of work, and handcuffs himself around some pipes convinced that security will have to cut through them to get him out. But they easily slide the handcuffs up, freeing Joe; the pipe has an end to it, not continuing to curve around somewhere else like the others. Should've looked, Joe.
• The Devil's Messenger: In "The Girl in the Glacier", Dr. Seastrom is attempting to thaw Human Popsicle Angelica from her block of ice. Too late he realises that the inside of the block is melting faster than the outside and that she is going to drown before he can get her out.
• Dog Day Afternoon practically runs on this. It was supposed to be just a quick bank robbery. But Sonny — the so-called mastermind — never thought to double-check the information about the cash shipments. The vault's supply has already left for the day, and there's almost nothing left. Sonny attempts to black out the security cameras (he was too short to really reach them) only after the robbers had been inside, unmasked, and glove-less for nearly five minutes. Then he tries to cover his paper trail by lighting the traveler's check register on fire...which causes enough smoke to alert people outside that something strange is going on. He didn't think far enough ahead to consider hostages, getting a full layout of the building, the possibility of one of his cohorts backing out of the plan a few minutes in, or that his remaining partner was too psychologically unstable to handle the ensuing standoff with the authorities. He even tells people his real name, his background as a bank teller, and his service in Vietnam, thus making it very easy for the authorities to figure him out. These problems are just the start of Sonny's horrendously-botched heist and his desperate attempts to get everyone out of it alive.
• In The Doorman, during the final confrontation, Borz (part of the gang stealing valuable paintings) shoots gang leader Dubois with the intention of selling the paintings himself, even though Dubois had previously made the valid point that Borz didn’t know how to fence art on this scale.
• In typical Coen style, Fargo's plot revolves around Jerry Lundegaard's plan to hire two criminals to kidnap his wife so his wealthy father-in-law will pay the ransom money. Half will go to the criminals, and half will go to Jerry to get him out of an unspecified tight spot. He failed to consider that the criminals might try to blackmail him for more money, his wife might be hurt or killed, his stingy, distrustful father-in-law (who, by the way, doesn't like Jerry at all) might not listen to Jerry's directions and try to repeatedly interfere, and his teenage son might be traumatized by his mother being kidnapped and held for ransom.
• Flodder in Amerika!: Son Kees notices the cheaper gas prices in the United States vs. Europe and figures a scheme to siphon gasoline from the parked cars at Mr. Rosenbaum's club and collects it in a water tank on the roof of the club. However, Johnnie points out that Kees cannot ship the water tank back to the Netherlands so there is no profit in it. Kees becomes sad, but Johnnie assures him that there are plenty more Get-Rich-Quick Schemes in the US.
• At the climax of Ghost Rider (2007), Blackheart absorbs the souls of the damned of San Venganza, which makes him incredibly powerful and incredibly susceptible to the Ghost Rider's Penance Stare (which he had shrugged off in their previous encounter).
• Godzilla (2014):
  • Some soldiers open fire on Godzilla in Honolulu. They quickly realize the pointlessness and give a face that says this trope.
  • The female cocoon is taken to a nuclear deposit. Serizawa realizes that was a mistake when checking the data for the male's communication.
  • The military underestimates the speed of the male and it makes it to the nuke well before it goes off. The nuke is taken to the middle of the city and a plan has to be hatched to get it out.
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019):
  • Emma Russell and Alan Jonah want to awaken the Titans to give back the planet to them. However, they chose King Ghidorah to be their "champion", who wants to terraform the Earth to his own liking and kill every human while at it. Ghidorah is all but stated to be an alien, meaning he even has less rightful claim to Earth than humans.
    • Subverted in Jonah’s case, as it turns out he wants Ghidorah to destroy humanity. Jonah even chastises Emma at one point for even thinking humanity would survive.
  • The ORCA works by communicating an Alpha Frequency rather than some magic that compels obedience. Despite being aware that Ghidorah is most likely an Alpha rival to Godzilla, it didn't occur to Emma that Ghidorah may have a "different" response than the Titans in general. Oh he hears and understands it, he just thinks it should be killed.
• Subverted in Goldfinger. 007 thinks that Goldfinger hasn't thought his plan through, and points out to him that even if he used his nerve gas on the whole population of Fort Knox, he'd never have enough time to transport the gold from the vaults before military reinforcements came. What he doesn't know is, as Goldfinger explains to him, stealing it isn't part of the plan; his true goal involves detonating a bomb to render the gold in Fort Knox radioactive and unusable, thereby making the value of his personal foreign holdings in gold skyrocket. (In short, Goldfinger's scheme was intended to be an insider trading scam, taken to the next level.)
• In Gourmet Detective: Roux the Day, titular character Henry Ross- a food critic who also acts as a consultant for the San Francisco police- is participating in a sting operation to buy a stolen rare chef's book. Having received the book from the seller, he becomes so caught up in his observation that the book is a fake that the seller is able to escape. When Henry argues that he was thinking in terms of ensuring that the criminal didn't get away with the money, the police captain points out that if Henry had given the man the money, they could have legitimately arrested him and questioned him in depth at the station, which they are now unable to do.
• The Grand Seduction: The townspeople pretend to be cricket buffs to try to form a Commonality Connection with cricket fan Dr. Lewis and stage a game for him. It is only after they get started that they realize that none of them know the rules of the game
• The Hangover III has Chow parachuting out of the hotel in order to escape the Wolf Pack. He says this trope by name when he lands on Phil's limo.
  • Alan secretly let Chow of the trunk in order to save him from Marshall, but he didn't think about taking his gun away. He had to pull a Go Through Me to stop him from shooting Phil.
• Hermione says this very thing to Harry in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie when she saves their past selves from the werewolf... by luring it over to their current selves.
• House Shark: While Frank, Zachary, and Abraham are nailing wooden boards to all the doors and windows of Frank's house to the outside, one of them asks how they'll get inside of the house to deal with the shark.
• Interstellar has NASA choose astronauts for the long-term Lazarus missions that have no strong relationships with people on earth, so they aren't leaving anyone behind when they leave and potentially never come back. This results in one such astronaut, Doctor Mann, being willing to endanger the mission, and by extension all of humanity, because he has no one he values over his own survival.
• Into the Wild: Based on a true story, Christopher Johnson McCandless decides he hates modern society and that he will live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. He arrogantly goes without any provisions, doesn't train in survival, and does not bring adequate equipment, believing he can simply live off the land. He has a miserable time, slowly starves because he cannot find adequate prey animals (he managed to kill a moose at one point, but because he didn't do survival training, he doesn't know how to preserve the meat and it spoils quickly, forcing him to discard it), and eventually dies when he mistakes a poisonous plant for an edible one.
• Carried over from the Grimm version of the story, in Into the Woods, Cinderella's stepmother mutilates her daughter's feet to fit the golden slipper. Really? You think your daughter's future husband — or anyone else, for that matter — won't notice at some point, or care? Worse, she repeats the process with the second daughter after the first one is caught.
• In It's a Boy Girl Thing, Woody (in Nell's body) decides to get her a reputation for being easy. So he decides to have her sleep with this really sleazy guy. Just before the deed is to be done, Woody realizes that he is going to be the one to experience the drunken sex with a guy. Also counts as an Oh, Crap! moment.
• In John Wick: Chapter 2, Winston gets to explain two instances of this:
  • Firstly, he calls out John for giving a marker to Santino as part of getting out, meaning his plan to permanently leave the assassination business involved giving an unscrupulous man the ability to call him back into it whenever he feels like. Santino claims he wouldn't have used it if John hadn't somewhat returned in the previous movie, but the marker means he's considered totally within his rights and can torment John with impunity for refusing to comply.
  • Secondly, he points out to Santino that royally pissing John off by blowing up his house, forcing him back to work, and trying to kill him when the job is done (when John being the best was why he wanted him in the first place) while expending his only means to control him was obviously going to result in him being the next target.
  Winston: You stabbed the Devil in the back ... now he's free of the marker, what do you think he'll do?
• Jurassic Park: Grant grabs a road flare to distract the T. rex that is attacking the kids' car. The T. rex roars at Grant in response, which causes him to falter slightly. He recovers quickly when he realizes that the T. rex is seeing the flare and throws it off and watches as she follows the thrown flare.
  • Which was his plan, knowing the T. rex would follow the movement. What he didn't think about was Ian grabbing another flare and leading her away. By the time Ian threw his flare away, he was running so the T. rex ignored the smaller moving target to get the larger one (Ian).
• Knives Out: Walt Thrombey threatens to get Marta's mother deported, but promises to use his family's resources to protect her if she renounces the inheritance left to her by the Thrombey family patriarch (something she was very seriously considering doing already). But she was left the entire family fortune and assets, meaning "their" resources are now her resources, and realizes he's not offering anything she can't do herself.
• Played for Laughs in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist: Master Betty confronts and battles Master Tang, leading into a Curb-Stomp Battle. As Tang is pulled into Betty's claw, we get this exchange:
  Master Tang: So, here were my options: A) Quickly duck sideways, dodge the claw and take him out with a spinning back kick or B) Take the claw in the face, then roll around on the ground and die. (Takes the claw in the face, rolls around in the ground, starts to die) Mmmm... shoulda gone with "A".
• Little Giants: Danny actually thought he could keep Spike and his Dad from finding out he's not the "Coach O'Shea" they're looking for.
• Looper: Loopers all know that, once their contract is expired, they have 30 years to spend their earnings before they'll be assassinated. Joe notes that most Loopers aren’t forward-thinkers; if they were, they probably wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
• in The Man in the Iron Mask there is a scene where Aramis tries to prevent Porthos from committing suicide by sawing through the wooden beam in the barn so that it wouldn't support Porthos' weight. However, he hadn't realised that the beam was an important support beam which holds the barn roof up, said roof then collapses on Porthos.
  Aramis: I'm a genius, not an engineer.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man, Donning the Mk. III suit is done by having an assembler hidden in Tony's basement workshop assemble it around him, leading to one of the most beautiful Technology Porn shots in cinematic history. Without any experience in combat using the Mk. III suit, Tony failed to account for combat damage when designing it and its assembler. After taking heavy damage in Gulmira, the suit can no longer be disassembled as easily and cleanly as it was assembled. Pepper Potts walks in on Tony squirming in pain and J.A.R.V.I.S. struggling through damaged hardware to get the suit off.
  • The Avengers. Tony Stark slaps around a gigantic killer flying alien lizard thing by detonating a bunch of small missiles in its face, getting it to attack HIM instead of the innocent bystanders below.
    Tony Stark: Okay, we've got its attention. What the hell was step two?
  • Avengers: Endgame: The main flaw with Thanos' plan is that he seems to think that after it's in motion, and half of everyone is dead, they'd all see his point and the remaining half would immediately prosper without trouble. Maybe even thank him in time, when they saw he was right. He never did stop to think that maybe people wouldn't take that lying down and would miss their loved ones that died. He does realize this once he notices they're trying to undo it all with time travel, but his reaction is... less than ideal.
    • Not to mention if you want to control overpopulation you have to change the rate of growth, not total numbers. When was the population of Earth half of what it is today? 1970.
  • Almost every problem Scott and his friends face in Ant-Man and the Wasp are the direct result of his carelessness in Captain America: Civil War, where he jumped at the chance to help Captain America without considering what would happen after he revealed himself and the existence of Hank Pym's shrinking technology to the world.
  • The plot of Spider-Man: No Way Home is kicked off because of this - due to the troubles caused by Mysterio and J. Jonah Jameson revealing his identity to the world at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter ends up asking Dr. Strange if he has a spell that can erase that knowledge. However, as Strange is casting it, Peter realizes that, oops, he doesn't want Ned, MJ or Aunt May to forget and keeps talking, ruining the spell. And this is Strange's fault as much as Peter's, as he didn't even bother to explain to Peter the details of what the spell does.
• Played for Laughs in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. At the start, Bulk and Skull declare their intention on being the first to skydive and Aisha goads them on. They get cold feet before Kimberly points out the glaring flaw in their plan: they forgot their parachutes.
• In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when King Arthur's knights attempt to copy the Trojan Horse ploy with a giant wooden rabbit, Bedevere (who came up with the plan) doesn't remember to mention that they're supposed to get inside the rabbit until after it's been taken into the castle. Of course, given the French knights' predilection for catapulting every animal they can find, actually getting into the rabbit might have been even worse.
• In Mr. Right, while fighting Francis, a mook pulls the pin on a grenade and prepares to throw it. Francis points out they are in a small room so if he throws it, he'll be caught in the explosion. The mook panics and asks what to do. Francis puts the pin back in, puts the grenade away, and allows the man to live.
• Murders in the Zoo: While trying to escape from the zoo, Eric pulls the switch that opens all of the cages in the carnivore house; releasing all of the big cats. This does cause his pursuers to hurriedly back off. However, only after he has done this does he seem to realise that he is now inside the building with all of the escaped predators.
• Hilariously subverted in Mystery Science Theater 3000 The Movie with Crow's plan to tunnel out of the Satellite while it's in orbit. As it turns out, Crow did think it through, but as he puts it: "I calculated the odds of this succeeding against the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid and... I went ahead anyway."
  Crow: Oh, wow, this is confusing! Hey, Mike! Can you hand me my calculations? [paper flies into his mouth] Thank you! Oh, well, look at that: "Breach hull, all die!" Even had it underlined!
• The entire plot of Operation: Dumbo Drop. A group of American soldiers accidentally get a village’s prized elephant shot by the Vietcong. Feeling responsible, they promise to reimburse the village by getting a new elephant and bringing it to them. It’s only after they make this agreement that they realize that they have absolutely no idea how they’re going to wrangle and deliver an elephant. Hilarity Ensues.
• Pacific Rim: Newton's harebrained idea of performing a Drift with a Kaiju brain turned out to be an invaluable source of intel they had no other way to acquire and seeking out an intact brain to repeat the process with in order to get a complete picture was also sensible... but when he explained it to Hannibal who was making a living out of trading in Kaiju body parts and thus actually knew how Kaiju physiology and everything related to it worked and mentioned that the Kaiju have a Hive Mind, Hannibal immediately realized the implications and verbally ripped into Newton for having forgotten that Driting with a Kaiju to see into the hive mind meant that the hive mind also saw into his head and not only have insider knowledge on humanity, but know that he knows what the Kaiju really are and are targeting him for it.
  • Pacific Rim: Uprising further shows that Newton did not learn his lesson because he continued to Drift with Kaiju brains left over from the war throughout the years to refine his knowledge on the Kaijus to tailor newer Jaegers, which allowed the Kaijus' creators to gradually turn him into a Manchurian Agent through the connection without anyone realizing.
• Panic Room: On top of all the other mistakes he made, Junior tells his fellow burglars that there is 3 million in the safe despite knowing it to be 22 million. It's not stated how much he promised Burnham for his services (he would have probably been content with just covering the legal costs of his custody dispute), but he promised Raoul a paltry 100k for being his hired muscle before the latter negotiates it up to 1/3 of whatever they find. There is no conceivable way he could have kept the loot's true value hidden from them if they succeeded, ensuring that they will turn on him when they do.
  Burnham: You tried to fuck us?! Are you stupid?! What did you think was gonna happen, me and Raoul were just going to wait in the other room while you grabbed your share?
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Elizabeth stabs her host/captor Captain Barbossa with a knife. He survives by virtue of being a Ghost Pirate, but in the heat of the moment it slipped her mind that even if she'd succeeded she would've still been on a ship full of vicious pirates whose captain she'd just killed, in the middle of the raging sea.
  Barbossa: I'm curious. After killin' me, what was it you were plannin' on doin' next?
• In Plan B, Bruno tries to break up his ex-girlfriend's new relationship by seducing her boyfriend Pablo but apparently doesn't consider that Pablo might want to have actual sex with him as a result of said seduction. When he responds to Pablo saying he wants them to try out sex by claiming that it'd be too weird, Pablo gives him an incredulous look and says, "Weird? Did you read the [love] letter you gave me?"
• In RoboCop (1987), Dick Jones programs Directive 4 into Murphy to make it impossible for him to arrest an officer of the OCP, to prevent Robocop from turning on his corporate masters. When he later walks into the OCP boardroom and presents a video of Dick confessing his murder of Bob Morton, Dick panics and takes the Old Man at gunpoint, not realizing that the Old Man is the one person in the room who has the authority to terminate his employment. "Dick, you're fired!" Bye bye Directive 4, and bye bye Dick.
• In The Rundown, the sidekick's "Thunder and Lightning" attack never works. He becomes dumbfounded when it does work and needs a moment to think up the next stage of the attack.
• The Running Man sets one up but then lets it go. After being told to fire on an unarmed demonstration, main character Richards refuses. When the copilot goes to pull a gun on him, Richards knocks the guy out cold, whereupon the three ground pounders in the passenger compartment haul Richards out of his seat and subdue him, leaving the unconscious co-pilot to fly the helicopter. How that plan was supposed to work is anybody's guess.
• RV: When the RV gets stuck on a pinnacle of a steep hill, Bob repeatedly tries to rock it, to no avail. He then climbs to the front and tugs on the wipers to get the RV moving. Eventually, he manages to get the RV on the ground and moving. Bob is relieved — until he remembers he's still clinging on the windshield as the RV rolls down the hill at top speed!
• In Samurai Cop, Joe and Frank go to where Okamura is and catch him in an unassuming moment of love-making. Joe calls out to Okamura that he's under arrest, then ends up fighting with the locked sliding glass door that gives Okamura time to escape.
  Kevin Murphy: (as Joe) As soon as I— d-damn! "Open door first, then shot at bad guys"! I never learn!
• Saw V: when Jigsaw instructs him to enter a coffin filled with broken glass, Strahm throws Hoffman in instead, assuming the coffin to be a trap. He discovers to his horror that he has doomed himself — the room is the trap, and entering the coffin is the way to safely escape. Given that he knows the standard format of a Jigsaw trap is to instruct the victim to voluntarily do something harmful or dangerous in order to avoid death, he may have dropped the ball there...
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic's plan to take down the first of Robotnik's drones is to leap onto it and smash it into pieces, but he underestimates how resilient and intuitive the drone is since his own weight is too light to bring it down and the drone simply spins fast enough to throw him off.
  Sonic: This was a horrible plan! What was I thinking? Awww, I'm gonna puke!
• In Spaceballs, Dark Helmet, against the suggestion of Colonel Sandurz, decides to activate Ludicrous Speed while standing up, causing him to cling for dear life to the railing as the ship goes to plaid. When he demands that they stop, Sandurz tells him that they need to slow down first, only for Helmet to tell him to stop now. When the emergency brake is pulled, Helmet goes flying into the consoles in front of him.
• SpaceCamp: The NASA robot JINX never stops to consider in his rush to give his friend Max his wish to go into space that sending him up in a barely-ready shuttle that doesn't even have enough oxygen to make it to re-entry could be detrimental to his health.
• Spider-Man 3: Implied. Eddie fabricates a photo of Spider-Man robbing a bank to get the photographer staff job at the Daily Bugle that he and Peter were competing for. Eddie seemingly didn't plan for what would happen if the truth came out that the picture is a fake. When Eddie begs Peter not to tell anyone what he did since it would destroy his career, Peter smugly tells him that he should have considered this beforehand.
  • Another hole in Eddie’s plan: the fabricated picture he turned in was based on a Spider-Man picture Peter originally took. It apparently didn’t occur to Eddie that Peter would recognize his own work, especially since he's the only other person in town who takes pictures of Spider-Man.
• Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope:
  • Zigzagged with Luke and Han going to rescue Leia from the Death Star detention center. On one hand, their "plan" was rather ill-conceived (going into a place they knew nothing about, not planning a way to get out, cutting off their escape route, and setting off an alarm, escaping only because Vader wanted to let them go and follow them). However, on the other hand, they didn't exactly have time to think of anything better. One could consider Vader's gambit as this, since it doesn't take into account how dangerous it is to let the heroes escape with the Death Star's blueprints, but Star Wars villains tend to suffer from terminal overconfidence and never seem to cotton on to their exploitable weaknesses anyway. Of course it nearly worked since Leia, having worked out the ship was being tracked... proceeded to head directly to the Rebel base anyway.
    • That last part is actually a subversion. The Rebels needed to lure the Death Star to a place where they would be ready to attack it. Using their own base as bait might seem a tad radical, but it was also the only place where they could count on the DS to arrive at a known time.
  • Luke blasts a door's control-panel to seal out his and Leia's pursuers, only to realize that the force-field bridge across a chasm on the other side can't be extended without those controls.
  • The tactics of the X and Y Wing fighters when skimming the Death Star trench leans on this. Each attack section's leader is front and center, waiting to take his shot while his two wingmen ... drop back, hope the enemy fighters don't notice their presence, and buy a little time with their lives when that hope is dashed. The tactic fails once, twice, and was about to fail a third time when Han showed up to save the day.
• Lampshaded in ¡Three Amigos!. Dusty Bottoms has found Carmen in her place of imprisonment:
  Dusty: We have a plan.
  Carmen: What is it?
  Dusty: First, we break into El Guapo's fortress.
  Carmen: And that you've done. Now what?
  Dusty: Well, we really didn't expect the first part of the plan to work, so we have no further plan. Sometimes you can overplan these things.
  • When the Amigos are summoning the Invisible Swordsman, Lucky and Ned both follow the instructions they were given and fire into the air. Dusty fires straight ahead of himself ... and accidentally kills the Swordsman now standing right in front of him.
• In the iconic Tora! Tora! Tora!, the Japanese had planned for their ultimatum to be delivered to the United States at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, they forgot to account for time zones — the attack on Pearl Harbor hit 55 minutes before the Japanese delegates delivered the ultimatum, thus what was supposed to have been a cowing attack combined with a threat instead turned into a sneak attack with the threat adding insult to injury, further angering the US.
• Downplayed in V for Vendetta. Gordon Dietrich writes and films a comedy sketch making fun of British dictator Adam Sutler. He did know it would piss Sutler off, but assumed he'd just have to apologize and do some fundraisers and meanwhile the ratings for his show would skyrocket. Instead he's beaten up and arrested by Secret Police commander Peter Creedy, and then executed after Creedy finds a Qur'an and gay pornography while searching his house.
  Creedy: Not so funny now, is it, funnyman?
• In Warcraft (2016), Llane orders Garona to kill him so that she may gain respect among the orcs and thus a chance at forging a peace between the two species. This part works without a hitch, but Llane didn't count on Lothar coming back to reclaim his body and thus finding Garona's knife in Llane's back, pretty much ensuring that the human side won't wish to negotiate.
• In Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger Rabbit, while on the run from the police, goes around town asking where Eddie's office is, so when he finally gets there, the police are hot on his trail.
• In Wild Tales, Diego obviously did not consider the effects of setting off a fire extinguisher in an enclosed car and almost asphyxiates himself.
• Wolves: Giving up a werewolf baby for adoption. To regular human parents who don't know werewolves exist. What did the Tollermans think would happen?
• In X-Men: First Class, Sebastian honestly believes that he can convince Erik to join him, despite having murdered his mother to activate Erik's powers and knowing that he has spent his entire life hunting him down. Magneto even says as much:
  Magneto: I'd like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But unfortunately, you killed my mother.

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