Didnt Think This Through / Literature

People not thinking things through in literature.

---

• Examples from Aesop's Fables:
  • Averted in one version of "The Frogs and the Well". Two frogs search for a new place to cool off after their marsh dries up and they find a well. One of the frogs suggest they jump down here as it's wet and would be good for them. However, the other frog prevents him from doing so, asking how they'd get out if the well dried up. An alternate version plays the trope straight when the other frog jumps into the well before he hears the other's argument.
  • Played straight in "The Fox and the Goat". A fox trapped in a well tells a goat to come into the well for its excellent-tasting water. The goat does so and, finding itself trapped, asks how they'll get out. The fox asks to get a boost up from the goat's horns so he can climb out, saying that he'll pull the goat out after. The goat does this and is abandoned by the fox. When called out, the fox says to the goat that he should have thought before jumping in.
• Anxious People: The bank robber plans to steal exactly 6,500 kronor from the bank just to pay off one month's rent on an apartment. After, the robber fully intends to return all the money. How, though, is never figured out. The robber is just too desperate to think straight.
• Artemis Fowl: The plot of The Eternity Code kicks off when Artemis build the C Cube, a miniaturized supercomputer built using fairy technology that's lightyears ahead of anything else on the market. His grand plan? Invite technology magnate Jon Spiro (a man rumoured to have made his fortune off the back of stolen technology) to lunch, brag to his face about how the C Cube will make his company's products obsolete overnight, and offer to give him a year to prepare before launching it. While he does consider the possibility of Spiro trying to steal it, he arrogantly assumes that Butler's presence, and the Cube's eponymous Eternity Code encryption, will be enough of a deterrent. He's dead wrong.
• Battle Ground (2020): Harry states that the White Council of wizards didn't consider that in expelling him, they lose their only handle on him other than the threat of force — and that as Winter Knight, an attack on him would be an attack on Queen Mab, the Appeal to Force that Magical Society is founded on. Though honestly, it's unclear if this is the case or if they just don't care, considering how many times he's pulled Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! and/or refused to communicate.
  • Harry's ejection is the long term result of him not considering the consequence of his actions. Harry spent years associating with monsters, openly opposing the Senior Council, and avoiding the wizarding community at large, so very few people actully know him as a person, but by his less then stellar reputation. Even after the events of Summer Knight Harry never took the idea that it would reach a point where he be more trouble then he's worth, and the council would simply get rid of him.
• Ben and Me: When Amos and Ben first talk to each other, Ben defends the meager fueling on the fire with the maxim "waste not, want not." Amos points out that getting sick from exposure to the cold could result in wastes of time (in bed) and money (for doctors). Ben promptly builds up the fire.
• In The Bestseller by Olivia Goldsmith, married couple Judith and Daniel Gross collaborate on a book where Judith will write it, and Daniel will edit and sell it (under the pen name Jude Daniel). However, the fame goes to Daniel's head and he decides to claim that ''he'' wrote the book himself and divorce his now-pregnant wife (he's also having an affair with his editor), even going to the trouble of making up notes claiming he wrote it, thinking the novel will be a success and he'll be rich off the royalties, which (of course) he won't share with his wife. What he fails to consider is what will happen if the book is a flop—which winds up biting him in the ass. Big time.
• In Classic Singapore Horror Stories, one of the stories in the anthology revolves around Jessica, a Gold Digger, who scams herself into becoming the third wife of an Indian billionaire, Gopal Balla, and then arranging to have the first and second wives killed off, one at a time, before she personally murders Gopal so that she can become the sole inheritor of Gopal's wealth. Unfortunately, Jessica didn't look through the facts: the rural New Delhi countryside that Gopal's native Indian household is located still believes in the act of Suttee, or ritualistic burning, where the wife is cremated with the deceased husband. Naturally, her actions ends up biting -- or in this case, burning -- her in the ass on the day of the funeral.
• In Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree, a Sesame Street Golden Book, a witch who owns a cookie tree casts a spell on it so it would only give cookies to people who share them to keep Cookie Monster from eating them. This spell works, but a little too well, as now the tree won't give the witch any cookies, either. When Cookie finds out, he calls the witch out on this, and she can't help but agree with him. The two form an alliance and agree to share the cookies with each other, but Cookie soon gets carried away and eats all the cookies from the tree.
• A Court of Thorns and Roses: Feyre happily accepted Tamlin's marriage proposal and it only starts to occur to her two months later that being married to a High Lord involves sometimes having to put aside what you want for the good of the Court, having all your actions scrutinised, being expected to follow certain rules and traditions etc. Lucien lampshades this when Feyre says she just wants to marry Tamlin specifically rather than a High Lord, with Lucien stating they're "one and the same".
• Cradle Series: In Bloodline, Seishen Daji somehow manages to lie under a truth field, and uses the opportunity to claim he never committed any crimes, he is just being framed by Lindon, who has a baseless grudge against him. Mercy (who is acting as judge) knows this is ridiculous, but pretends to believe him. Lindon takes his cue and challenges Daji to an honor duel. At which point Daji realizes he just got into a grudge match with one of the most powerful men in the world.
• In the Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. book Hair Raising, Rusty the full-time werewolf's secret weapon in a gang war between the full-timers and the transforms-at-the-full-moon werewolves are undomesticated cockatrices. Dan asks how Rusty is going to corral his beasts, as a cockatrice can anyone who looks at it into stone. Rusty realizes this...after he's unleashed the cockatrices.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In the first book, Greg protects Rowley's reputation by saying he threw the Cheese away. He doesn't realize until it's too late that, in order to toss the Cheese in the trash, he would have had to touch it, ergo giving himself the Cheese Touch.
  • In The Deep End, Susan paid for a fundraiser and gave Greg a planet named after him. However, she forgot to include his last name, so Greg thinks that anyone with his first name can go to "Planet Greg" and claim it as their own.
  • In a flashback, Greg explains that one of the reasons why soccer was better when he was little was being able to have slushees at the snack bar. But then Susan and the other parents had the stand changed to sell only produce and granola bars as snacks, resulting in sales dropping, the field becoming overgrown (because selling the slushees paid for upkeep), and the season ending early because kids were getting ticks from playing in the uncut grass.
• Arnie in Dr. Franklin's Island, stranded on a Deserted Island with the other two survivors of the crash, dedicates a lot of time and resources to building a raft that he claims he only wants to use to cross the bay, but clearly actually wants to take onto the open ocean. None of the castaways see any other nearby land or any passing boats that might pick him up, and they point out that the raft he's making is not up to rough water - actually, the one time he tests it in the bay it flips over - but he says he'd rather die than spend his life on that beach. When he and the raft vanish while the others are exploring the jungle, they assume he went out to sea and died. He actually found the Cave Behind The Waterfall and was picked up by a Mad Scientist, who had his goons retrieve and smash the raft so the others wouldn't get suspicious.
• Earth's Children:
  • When Jondalar is teaching Ayla how to speak while recovering from his injuries in The Valley of Horses, he unthinkingly teaches her his native Zelandonii language, not the language of the Mamutoi, the people who live nearest her cave. They're both dismayed when they realize this; although Ayla can talk to Jondalar just fine, knowing Zelandonii will be useless if she wants to talk to the locals (and the Zelandonii live on the other side of the continent). Luckily, Ayla decides to leave with Jondalar and he can translate for her/give her a crash course in Mamutoi, and she quickly picks up the basics due to her highly-developed memory.
  • In ''The Plains of Passage, Ayla points out that Attaroa's plan to wipe out the men in her camp has one major flaw...if there are no men, then there will be no new children, male or female. In Attaroa's defense, most people in the series don't realize just how important men are to conception...Attaroa is also so crazy she doesn't care (even though she's started to notice fewer children have been born after she separated the men and women and forbade intimacy between them).
  • Marona's prank on Ayla in The Shelters of Stome, involving giving her inappropriate clothing to wear for a feast. Though it may have been very embarrassing for Ayla at the time, it means Marona is going to be associated with it as well. As a result, everyone’s going to remember her as 'the asshole who thinks it's funny to humiliate newcomers and make our tribe look bad'. She realizes this later when people start to shun her and is pretty pissed off her prank had unintended consequences for her.
  • Peridal persuaded Janida to have sex with him despite her not having had her First Rites yet (in their culture, a girl is considered a woman after she's deflowered in a special ritual, though Janida had to wait a long time between menarche and the ritual date). Consequently, she became pregnant (even though Peridal isn't aware he directly contributed to the pregnancy, he does know of his people's widely-held belief that girls can only conceive after First Rites) and he's now having to take responsibility for the fall-out.
• In The Enormous Crocodile, the titular crocodile schemes to eat human children. However, instead of keeping his intentions a secret, he can't resist the opportunity to brag about what he intends to do in front of the other animals in the jungle, which lets them foil his plans.
• From the Fern Hollow series:
  • In Brock The Balloonist, Brock Gruffy finds a hot air balloon and decides to try it out—he, however, has never taken any lessons, has no idea how to control the thing, and ends up causing a lot of damage.
  • In Muddles At The Manor, Lord Trundle hires two kids to fill in for his injured gardener. First they try to use a motorized mower they can't control and end up ruining a flowerbed and the mower itself. Then they are asked to burn some trash from the garden. Instead of making small bonfires away from any structures, they build a great big one right next to a potting shed, which burns to the ground. You really can't blame Lord Trundle for firing them after that, but he's also partially at fault for not supervising two completely inexperienced "gardeners", as he may have been able to warn them away from these debacles.
• The protagonist of light novel FFF-Rank Trashero can chalk up a great many of his personal failures to this. Despite considering himself a very rational individual, he has far too many instances where his egocentricism and narcissism prevent him from looking any farther than the immediate benefit to himself. Of course, he keeps blaming others and not properly learning from his mistakes, so this keeps happening.
• There exists in the Firekeeper Saga an entity called the Meddler. His trademark is, as his name suggests, to meddle in the affairs of mortal creatures, and many of the books' events are discovered to be a result of his trying to escape a prison he had been sealed in by getting key figures moving. However, he pays little heed to the consequences of his actions, best illustrated in a legend told of him in which he helps a pair of young lovers forbidden to see one another by the boy's father. However, the father reveals after they've run away that they're actually half-siblings and that the boy was aware of this...and the girl was not.
• Many of Floralinda's problems in Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower are caused by a lack of foresight on the part of the witch who imprisoned her. The witch designed Floralinda's accommodations on the seeming assumption that Floralinda would be rescued quickly, but designed the rest of the tower to be as lethal as possible. Needless to say, Floralinda is not rescued quickly. Or at all. After twenty-four princes die trying to save her, nobody else shows up, so she's stuck in a room with one dress and no running water for months. There's at least endlessly renewable food, but Floralinda nearly freezes to death because her room is uninsulated and doesn't even have a working fireplace.
• The Franny K. Stein book Frantastic Voyage has Franny receive a double dose of this trope.
  • Her initial plan for deactivating the doomsday device her dog Igor ate by accident was to shrink and enter his body so she could unscrew the screw in the doomsday device and turn it off from there. The problem with this plan is that the screwdriver Franny brings with her is too small to unscrew the doomsday device's screw as a result of shrinking with her.
  • Upon realizing that she needs a bigger screwdriver to unscrew the screw on the doomsday device, Franny tries to command Igor to swallow a regular size screwdriver. This doesn't work because Franny is so small that her voice is inaudible to Igor.
• In Girls Kingdom, Kirara challenges Minako to a two-on-one volleyball game, with her and Misaki against Minako, who's stated to be good enough at the sport to compete internationally, in an effort to get her to sign a sponsorship deal with Kagura. Predictably, two complete non-athletes against someone who's that good results in a very one sided and actually dangerous match. After nearly breaking Kirara's arms with a few serves, Minako calls it off because she doesn't want to hurt the duo.
• Goblin Slayer: In Volume 5, a group of adventurers attempted to stake out the entrance to a goblins' den til they either starved inside or they blindly charge out to their deaths. Goblin Slayer notes that it's a good idea on paper when he hear of it. However, they didn't take into account the time, energy and resources it would take to camp out on a mountain in the middle of winter, nor did they realize that they were actually staking out an auxiliary temple rather than their actual lair.
• In the Goosebumps book The Ghost Next Door, the mysterious shadow stalking Hannah turns out to be quite the Smug Snake; their overconfidence causes them to not think of the possibility that Hannah, as a ghost, can just walk right through them to save Danny from the fire they want him to die in. This mistake causes their own death because they needed Danny to die in order to be incarnated.
• Scarlett, of course, has this many times in Gone with the Wind. She rushes into a marriage with Charles Hamilton to save face in front of those who (correctly) thought she was pining away for Ashley Wilkes. Reality hits her as early as their wedding night, as he approaches their bed and she suddenly realizes what's going to happen. She's only able to put him off by pleading timidity and fear. Then when he dies after only two months, she realizes that between her marriage, widowhood, and impending motherhood, that she's never going to have the fun she had as an unattached girl, being forced to wear mourning for years and shun all social events.
  • Later, when she tells Rhett that she doesn't want any more children (translation, they will now have a Sexless Marriage), he simply shrugs and nonchalantly declares that he'll seek sexual pleasure elsewhere. Only then does she realize what she's given up — late night conversations, him comforting her after a nightmare, etc.
• The Great Brain:
  • The most common is JD as every time he tries to beat con artist older brother Tom at his own game, it backfires on him. More than once, JD has tried to blackmail Tom only for it to be flipped around and JD ends up paying even more than he originally did while grousing on "my little brain."
  • However, Tom's own schemes can fail this way too. For all his smarts, Tom is still a kid and thus won't fully grasp his scheme's long-range consequences or nuances and is tripped up by a Spanner in the Works even he couldn't foresee. It's indicated this is why his attempts at legitimate ventures fail, as Tom is terrific with a con game but fails to grasp the complexities of an honest business.
  • Tom smugly thinks he can get a reward from a train company for improving things by suggesting a long pipe from the smokestack to the rear of the train so the passengers won't be bothered by cinders, smoke and ash. The train conductor deflates Tom by revealing that very idea has been suggested before and vetoed because all that material would get clogged in the pipe and overheat the engine. Tom has to stew in embarrassment at missing that obvious point.
• In Halo: Glasslands and Halo: The Thursday War, the Elites are in a civil war between a faction who still worship the Forerunners and a faction trying to create a new, more progressive society. Humanity's Office of Naval Intelligence thinks that it would be a good idea to support the zealots even though A.) most of them really hate humans and B.) the progressive faction are dedicated allies of humanity. As it turns out, most of the zealots end up joining a fervently anti-human Covenant remnant whose primary goal is to Kill All Humans.
• Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World: The Bandanna Thief decides it would be a great idea to steal the bandit chief's bandana from Michio's reward and swap it with a common cloth. It never occurred to him that "Thief" would appear on his intelligence card the next time he was inspected for any reason.
• Harry Potter:
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: The Trio devises a plan to impersonate students from House Slytherin so that they can sneak into the Slytherins' dorm and hopefully uncover some information about the titular Chamber. They spend a month concocting an extremely advanced shapeshifting potion and make some thoughtful arrangements, like stealing appropriate robes and preparing drugged cupcakes to put said students out of commission for the duration of their foray. Finally, everything is ready, and they perform the transformation... whereupon they realize that they have no idea where the Slytherin dormitory is. Of course, said thoughtful preparations were thought of solely by Hermione, so it's possible she knew where the dorm was, but her transformation went wrong preventing her from joining the boys and distracting her from telling them.
  • In the same book, Harry and Ron miss the train to go to Hogwarts, and in order to get there, they steal Mr. Weasley's flying car. They promptly get seen by about seven Muggles across England. As McGonagall points out to them, they had an owl and perfectly legitimate reasons to be late, so they could have just sent a message to be picked up... but even that might not have worked, as Dobby would have likely intercepted or destroyed the letters to keep Harry from returning to Hogwarts, which kind of begs the question why Harry didn't tell any of the staff about Dobby.
    • Even beyond that, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were on the other side of the wall, having just dropped off the other kids. Had Harry and Ron waited 5 minutes, the Platform staff would have fixed the wall and the parents could resolve the matter for them.
  • Again, in the same book, it's revealed through flashbacks that Tom Riddle Jr. (a.k.a. Voldemort) didn't actually think about the consequences of unleashing a giant monster and killing a muggle-born witch (Moaning Myrtle). He was very smug about being a Karma Houdini until learning that since the authorities couldn't find the person or being responsible for the death of Myrtle, they'll be shutting down Hogwarts for safety reasons, thus sending Tom back to the orphanage he hates oh so much. This is what led Tom to framing Aragog as Slytherin's Monster and Hagrid for being the one to release him.
  • There's also Viktor Krum's ill-fated transfiguration during the second task of the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. While his transfiguration (turning his head into that of a shark) allows him to swim underwater without problem, he's unable to change himself back and has to rely on other wizards to revert his head back to normal afterwards.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Harry suffers from this twice with regards to Snape. After having his vision of Sirius he forgets that Snape is also a member of the Order until he arrives in Umbridge's office. He also doesn't consider that for the same reason he had to use code to tell Snape what happened without letting Umbridge know, Snape would be unable to admit to receiving the message.
  • Vincent Crabbe has a fatal dose of this in Deathly Hallows, when, during a fight with the Trio, he produces Fiendfyre, a powerful curse that creates sentient flames. In a room full of very flammable things. Did we also mention he had no idea how to control the fire? After he burns to death, Ron speculates that he may not have been paying attention when he was taught how to stop the curse.
  • Voldemort's whole plan with the Horcruxes is this. Yeah, he made 6 of them but he used 6 magical artifacts whose history can be easily tracked back to him instead of using random rocks and thrown them away into the bottom of a lake. Which is, literally, the first thing that Harry feared he did.
  • In the "Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump" section of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the king makes such a mistake by decreeing in the persecution of witches and wizards followed by requesting a wizard to teach him magic. Since the power to use magic is innate and no witch or wizard would dare to come forward to volunteer under the threat of persecution, only a charlatan obliges.
• The Hike (2023):
  • Liz says that when she first suggested a trial separation to Patrick, she'd secretly hoped he would tell her what a crazy idea that was and reaffirm their love for each other. Instead, Patrick responded that he thought it was a good idea because of how bad things have gotten in their marriage, leaving Liz with little choice but to agree.
  • Joni is persuaded to give a music performance for the lodge guests; Helena films it and uploads it to her Instagram. Joni's managers get wind of the video and the next day she receives a call saying she'll probably need a lawyer. Joni impulsively abandoned her music tour and has now been videoed performing at a separate venue, meaning she's in breach of her contract; she was caught up in the moment so the legal ramifications didn't even cross her mind at the time. When she asks Helena why she uploaded the video, Helena retorts that she just wanted to keep a special memory of her friend and show how proud she is of her; she has less than 20 followers on Instagram, so she didn't realise it would get noticed by anyone else.
  • At the start of the trail, a local woman warns Liz to turn back because a storm is coming; Liz brushes off her warning and doesn't mention it to her friends because the weather looks fine at the moment, the forecast was mixed at worst and she doesn't want to go back. The weather turns extremely nasty on the second night; the friends are forced to shelter in a cave from the thunderstorm because their tents can't withstand the downpour and the metal poles would make them a target for lightning strikes, leaving their belongings behind. The next morning they discover the storm caused a landslide that went right through their camp, destroying their supplies. Liz admits she didn't consider just how bad things could get if there was a storm, nor did she consider the effect it would have on Joni, who she knows is terrified of storms (she has to practically drag her out of the tent).
  • Joni impulsively steals a bag of cocaine she and her friends found stashed in a cave. At the time she was only thinking about feeding her habit, especially with how stressful their current situation is, but as her horrified friends point out, the person who left the cocaine will realise some is missing and will likely come looking for whoever took it, and they probably won't be a particularly savoury person. Vilhelm and Leif indeed come looking for them and Vilhelm nearly kills them all.
• Horatio Hornblower: In Lieutenant Hornblower, Acting-Captain Buckland is persuaded to follow the secret orders to attack a nest of Spanish privateers, so he just sails the ship up a channel between the fortifications, hoping to blast them apart with the ship's cannon. Turns out they can't get the right elevation; then the ship runs aground while the Spaniards happily pound away with heated shot. It's all they can do to escape intact — Bush reflects later that taking a wooden ship into a situation where red-hot cannonballs can be fired into her was pretty foolish.
• In the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, there are two noted flaws in the villain Stapelton's plan to kill off the other heirs to the Baskerville estate and then reveal himself as the previously-unknown heir:
  • In the Epilogue, Watson points out that Stapleton's scheme had one major flaw — how could he claim the Baskerville fortune without instantly raising suspicion on himself? Holmes says that Beryl told him that her husband planned to either a) go back to South America and claim the inheritance from there (ignoring the fact that he had fled from there to avoid prosecution for embezzling public money), b) create another disguise to claim it, c) engage some accomplice to claim it for him instead.
  • Stapleton also doesn't appear to have fully considered the potential consequences of using his own wife as the bait in a Honey Trap, and that it might not be very pleasant to have to watch another man seduce his own wife.
• Discussed in How NOT to Write a Novel:
  Sometimes a writer knows where she wants to end up but can see no plausible way to get from A to Q. Instead she announces “Q!” in a confident tone, often following up with some vague comments about “long conversations have led to this,” or “fevered negotiations had been required, and somehow all issues were finally resolved,” or worst of all, “It was as if John had somehow turned into a different man.” If John somehow turns into a different man and we do not witness that transformation , the editor considering your novel will somehow turn into an editor considering a different novel.
• I, Jedi: Corran's plan for confronting Exar Kun hinges on Kun's seeming inability to interact with the physical world, and need to act through other agents. Unfortunately, Corran forgot that Kun had managed to short out Vodo-Siosk Baas's holocron by himself, and he proceeds to do the same with the bombs that Corran brings with him to demolish Kun's temple.
  Corran: Ooops.
• In Dictator, the third book of the Imperium trilogy, Caesar's assassins show courage and cunning in planning and carrying out the assassination — but they make no plans whatsoever for the aftermath, simply assuming that the Republic will reassert itself and things will go back to normal with Caesar dead. Cicero repeatedly bemoans the failure of the conspirators to take out Antony as well as Caesar, or to take any other measures to restore republican government.
• Kitty Norville: Twice in Kitty Goes to Washington. Kitty had good reason to banish Elijah Smith back where he came from, but she didn't consider that this would mean the collection of vampires and lycanthropes under his control would then be out of control. Cue chase scene, followed by calling in backup to deal with the fallout. Later, Kitty tries to distract the guards on the first floor of a building by throwing rocks at the upstairs windows, hoping they'll investigate the crash. She realizes belatedly that if they instead put two and two together and look out on the street, she'll get caught red-handed. (Luckily, they're typical guards.)
• In the Knight and Rogue Series, when told he must, in order to regain his legal rights, capture a murder suspect he released from jail and become his brother's steward, Michael sets out to bring the criminal to justice. Upon learning she's innocent, he decides to not even bother with bringing her to trial, opting to be tattooed as a horrible criminal instead. It's not until afterward that he realizes that this will make people hate him by default and take advantage of him due to his being unable to go to the law for help. Fisk was not impressed. Bonus points for his father forcing the situation on him in the hopes that only his oldest son will hire Michael for a stable job if he's marked, as he apparently didn't notice that Michael spent the whole past year funding his adventures by stopping for the day in random towns and doing odd jobs for people who don't need to see the area on his arm where he gets marked.
• Legends & Lattes: Viv makes and carries out careful plans to get her city's first coffee shop up and running, but has no idea how to promote and advertise, assuming that people will just come—even though no one in Thune has ever heard of coffee or has any notion why they would want to buy it. Fortunately, Viv's new assistant Tandri has the business savvy and artistic talent to get things running.
• The Marvellous Land of Snergs: Joe escapes from seclusion and talks Sylvia into going to the Land of Snergs, assuring he knows how to find the way. So, they head into unknown woods even though they have no supplies or equipment, they do not know how to find food and water, and they have no idea of how far they are from their goal. Before long they are hungry, thirsty, cold and hopelessly lost.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Subverted - Prince Geoffrey relies on appearing like he never plans for most things, in order to appear as an idiot to the public, when in reality everything he does is well-thought and planned out.
• In Stephen King's Nightmares & Dreamscapes story "The End Of The Whole Mess", this is Bobby Fornoy's Fatal Flaw. His brother reminisces about when he was a child and developed a glider, not figuring out that the backwoods of his house were too dense to fly such a thing until he was high in the air and ended up crashing. The story itself showcases Bobby finding out a way to create world peace via a natural water-borne calming agent he discovered...and not detecting until it's too late that the agent triggers early-onset Alzheimer's. Oops.
• In No Game No Life, the king of Elkia holds a gambling tournament to determine his successor, since the world is one in which everything is decided by playing games. Unfortunately, Imanity cannot use or perceive magic (the reason why they're by far the weakest race and smallest nation), so anyone with an accomplice from another race could cheat their way to victory in the tournament and become a Puppet King for the other nation, like Kurami had planned on doing. Upon thinking about this, Sora, the protagonist and an outsider, realizes that it's one more reason why the king deserves his reputation as an incompetent fool. Subverted later on, when Sora, learning that the king bet land that was worthless to the Imanity against the Warbeasts so he could gather information on their game and pass it on to his successor after his death, surmises that the previous king must have foreseen this, and did it so that someone who could overcome a magically-assisted opponent would succeed him.
• Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World: Alice and Rin kidnap Iska and hold him in a hotel room. Alice shackles them together and gloats that he can't escape. He asks her how they are supposed to go to the toilet or bathe. Alice, who suddenly needs to pee, frantically asks Rin for the key, but Rin had left, forcing Alice to wait for her to come back.
• In Pact, Blake Thorburn binds Pauz, a minor demon, into a book, but fails to account for the small army of corrupted animals that Pauz had assembled — which promptly attempt to kill him, resulting in him nearly being gored by a deer. Later, he challenges Conquest, Lord of Toronto, to a wargame in exchange for his freedom, but fails to account for Conquest's willingness to damage the city and its citizens, leading to a moment of My God, What Have I Done?.
• The Walter Lantz adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin diverges in a few ways from the traditional plotline. Here, the Piper traps the rats in a cage instead of just drowning them. The townsfolk skimp on the Piper's bill, thinking there's nothing he can do about it. The Piper then opens the cage...
• Princess Academy: When negotiating with their tutor Olana for better treatment, one of the things the academy students ask for is the dismissal of the Aslandian soldiers, since they only seem to be there to intimidate the students into behaving. Olana asks what will happen if bandits come to the mountain village, so Katar points out that even if they do come, there is nothing valuable in the village except linder blocks too heavy to steal, and the mountain men are strong enough to fend them off. However, none of them realize that bandits could still attack the academy itself, which is a good distance from the village—and they do, when they hear that one of the students will be chosen as the future princess of Danland. They break into the academy unhindered and capture all the girls, intending to find the one chosen as princess and hold her for ransom.
• In The Queen And I, new Prime Minister Jack Barker is a Republican who's so fanatically anti-royalist that he dismisses the monarchy and makes outlandish plans for social reform that he can't actually pay for, to the extent that he has to sell off everything up to the Houses of Parliament trying to recoup the country's debts.
• The Queen's Thief:
  • Gen goes through quite a lot to become engaged to the woman he loves, and only after several near-death experiences and grueling sessions of diplomatic negotiations does he properly process that marrying the Queen of Attolia...will make him the King of Attolia. Of course he did already know that beforehand, he just refused to think about it until he had absolutely no way left to avoid doing so, at which point he freaks out.
  • Additionally, he doesn't realize leaving earrings in Irene's rooms won't come across as a gift, but rather as a taunt, because it's proof he can get into her private space without her knowledge. Or that she might have some difficulty believing that someone who is a prince of a nation she is currently at war with—because she cut off that same prince's hand, mind you— and who as far as she knows has never met her before they came into conflict is genuinely in love with her and not just screwing with her.
• Rebuild World:
  • Akira tries to explore the famous and highly dangerous Kusuzuraha Ruins with nothing but a handgun against monsters he knows nothing about on his first day of being a hunter. Alpha is quick to point out the folly in Akira's actions, which leaves him embarrassed and ashamed.
  • After Akira leaves from an argument he was having with Katsuya as Elena and Sara were arriving to stop them, that leads to both only hearing Katsuya’s side and then showing that the next time they meet Akira, which makes Akira lose a significant amount of trust in the two. When Elena and Sara realize this, they think My God, What Have I Done?, and that it’s weird they didn’t wait to hear Akira’s side before judging. This was the result of Katsuya’s unconscious More than Mind Control effecting them.
• Reincarnated as the Piggy Duke: This Time I'm Gonna Tell Her How I Feel!: The original Slowe's plan was to be a Jerkass who is Hated by All in a Long Game plan to lower his standing to be able to marry his servant Charlotte without causing a scandal. He didn't realize by the time he did she would fall in love with someone else since he never told her.
• One Relativity story has, in the climax, all of the heroes trapped at the top of a "parachute" carnival ride. Dark Flame suggests that they each get into a gondola and cut the cable, and then they'll be lowered safely to the ground by the parachutes. It isn't until after her cable is cut that she realizes that it's just a carnival ride, the gondolas were designed to be lowered by cables, and the parachutes were just decorative.
• In Shaman Blues, Witkacy's plan for luring a wraith into entrapment circle involves cutting himself with its focus object and let the blood bring it in. The gaping flaw in the plan is that he forgets about binding power of blood, and as a result is almost dragged into the afterlife along with the wraith.
• In the Warhammer 40,000 Shira Calpurnia novel Legacy, the local cathedral makes a play for the story's MacGuffin, a Rogue Trader charter signed and sealed by the Emperor Himself with a drop of His blood. This places it among the holiest of relics, but the church's legal strategy has one critical flaw: The Emperor's word is law, sacrosanct above all others. That signature marks every provision of the charter as a divine command, including the clauses about how it is to be passed down in the Phrax line. As Calpurnia's legal research team discovered, the matter had been litigated before, with a definitive ruling against the Ecclesiarchy.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Given the Gambit Pileup nature of the story, this is a Fatal Flaw for a depressing number of characters, leading to many a Pyrrhic Victory and petards a-hoisting. Most (if not all) viewpoint characters display some form of Wrong Genre Savvy, Stupid Good, Stupid Evil, Lawful Stupid and/or Chaotic Stupid tendencies leading to various brands of Not Quite the Right Thing for the circumstance (or Not Quite The Right Wrong Thing, depending on the character), all of which come back to bite them in the end. Funny how that one little angle you hadn't stopped to think about suddenly has very big consequences if you're a leader with insufficient reality checks on your power and you can't shift gears fast enough…
  • For an example that isn't any of the present characters, King Maegor The Cruel had all the builders responsible for making the Red Keep killed so only he would know all its secrets. When he tries to make other building projects later, he has an extremely hard time finding competent builders because not only did he kill most of them, but the rest wised up and would flee the city when he tried to hire them. He ended up having to build the Dragonpit with prisoners and foreign contractors.
• A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born: Young Jim diGriz gets himself imprisoned so he can meet other criminals and learn from them. The problem is that the criminals he finds in prison are the ones who were dumb enough to get caught.
• The Superteacher Project: The principal and teachers are initially honored that their school is being chosen to test the superteacher project (and that Mr. Aidact is doing all of the work they don't want to) before eventually realizing that the success of one robot teacher could get all of them replaced eventually.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • The Hobbit:
    • The one weak spot in the dwarves' scheme to get their gold is that Smaug is still sitting on it and a baker's dozen dwarves are no match for the dragon, which is why Gandalf insisted that they rely on burglary. However, Bilbo, seeing the size of the hoard he's supposed to steal, states that they should have brought an army of burglars, as it would take five hundred years to steal it all by himself, even without Smaug.
    • During their dialogue, Smaug smugly asks Bilbo how he's supposed to get his share back home. Bilbo realizes he had been so focused on getting to the mountain that he never thought of this. When he asks the Dwarves about this problem they admit they hadn't thought of it either.
    • To enable the dwarves to escape from the Wood Elves, Bilbo secures them inside barrels so they can float away downriver.
      It was just at this moment that Bilbo suddenly discovered the weak point in his plan. Most likely, you saw it some time ago and have been laughing at him; but I don't suppose you would have done half as well yourselves in his place. Of course, he was not in a barrel himself, nor was there anyone to pack him in, even if there had been a chance!
  • The Fall of Númenor:
    • Sick of Aldarion breaking his promises to return soon from his sea journeys, Erendis decides she will not show him affection or even regard again until her husband makes atonement for his offenses; at the same time, she starts poisoning her daughter Ancalimë's mind against her father and males in general. It did not occur to Erendis that Aldarion would take her outward lack of love as a sign that she has fallen out of love with him, hence she should be left alone. Or Ancalimë would eventually come to regard her mother as pathetic for being hung on one man and would abandon Erendis too.
    • Sauron tricks the corrupted Númenoreans into invading the Undying Lands to steal the Elves' immortality, knowing that they will be punished by Eru. It is not until the island of Númenor starts coming apart beneath his feet that Sauron realizes Eru's punishment would include him for corrupting and instigating the Númenoreans in the first place.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs:
  • This is Angelica's Fatal Flaw. She has a Hair-Trigger Temper and has bad habit of acting before thinking. In the original game, she challenges Olivia to a duel without thinking who would accept on her behalf, which turns out to be all of the capture targets. After her defeat, she is disgraced and banished. Marie takes advantage of this in the story proper and manipulates her into doing the same thing, only for Leon to step in Angelica's stead.
  • Applies to Marie as well. Her biggest flaw is she never fully considers her actions and only thinks in short term. Her actions almost destroy the Kingdom, forcing Leon to save the day despite the fact she technically knows more about the setting due to knowing about the various sequels to the game. Albeit, this only happened because she was Locked Out of the Loop.
• Angie from Two Little Girls in Blue practically lives and breathes this trope. She's pretty good at coming up with solutions and schemes on the fly to get herself out of immediate trouble or achieve her immediate goals, but she rarely plans ahead for the long-term and her ideas tend to make things worse for her and accomplices down the road. A major example is her decision to kill Lucas and set it up like a suicide to keep Lucas' share of the $1 million and Kathy (a girl she helped kidnap for ransom money) for herself. She then finds herself having to find a way to lie low with $1 million in cash on her person that she reasonably shouldn't have and a frightened little girl whose face has been shown all over the country. She later whines to Clint that she didn't think her actions would cause all this extra trouble: she just wanted more money and a kid.
• In the backstory to The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, Kyousuke summoned the White Queen, an all-powerful Eldritch Abomination. The White Queen fell in love with him at first sight, and he decided to try and use her power to help fix the world. After the events of the Secret War, the White Queen turned evil and became the greatest threat to the world, and Kyousuke resolved to stop her at all costs. To achieve this, he creates and summons the Colorless Little Girl, a second all-powerful Eldritch Abomination who's in love with him. There's absolutely no way this could backfire.
• Watership Down: A precognitive rabbit has a vision that his warren will be destroyed, and with it every rabbit who lives there. He and his brother try to convince the leader to move the warren, but fail, so they gather up a group of everyone who believes them and leave in the hope of making a new warren somewhere safer. They travel a long way, survive various dangers, find a great new spot... and then realise that all of them are male and they didn't think to bring along any females, so they're going to need another plan if they want their new warren to last longer than a couple of years at best.
• The Wheel of Time: One example involves Mat infiltrating the Stone of Tear to save his allies from the baddies. He shoves a bundle of fireworks into an arrowslit, then lights them to create a diversion so he can sneak in by another route. When he notices that the blast has made the arrowslit larger, he changes his plans and climbs through it instead...then realizes that half the garrison is headed his way. Naturally, he gets away with it.
• In Wings of Fire: The Dark Secret, Flame and Ochre (two of the replacement dragonets) are tasked by Morrowseer to try and kill Starflight. While he hides behind a NightWing guard, they go up to her and ask her where a NightWing dragonet was so they could kill him, hoping they would help. Instead, the guard roars at them for this, roaring an alarm that strange dragons have come to attack their dragonets, and Flame and Ochre get thrown into prison.
• In the X-Wing Series book Solo Command, Wedge concocts a plan that involves Chewbacca going along as his copilot. It's a pretty well thought out plan, but as Janson points out just as they're about to launch, he did forget one small detail...
  "Wedge, you don't speak Wookie."

---