Western Animation / Didnt Think This Through

People not thinking things through in Western Animation TV.

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101 Dalmatians: The Series: In "Mall Pups", when the other three express reluctance to skip Bark Brigade to go to the mall, Lucky says they can just get the First Dog to give them an official pardon. Of course, that plan hinged on them actually getting to the First Dog, which they ultimately fail to do.

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican: When stealing Kenny's piggy bank, Freddie Fox tries to frame Paddy by planting fake pelican-shaped footprints. He's revealed as the true culprit when Paddy points out that he planted footprints going from where the piggy bank was hidden, but not to the piggy bank.
In The Adventures of Puss in Boots, after failing to answer the riddles of the Sphinx to win the Hourglass of Eurythion, and being overpowered by her when he tries to fight her instead, Puss settles for momentarily distracting the Sphinx to make a quick getaway with the Hourglass. As the Hourglass is nearly as big as Puss is, he doesn't get very far at all.
Adventure Time:
- In "Her Parents", Jake decides to invite Lady Rainicorn's parents over to the treefort so they could finally met him. Thing is, there apparently was a war between rainicorns and dogs, and since Jake is a dog himself, Finn fears that Raincorn's parents might not let her see him again.
  Jake: Nah... that could never happen...
  Finn: You didn't think this through enough. IT COULD HAPPEN!
- In "What Was Missing", Princess Bubblegum explains to Finn that they used to lock up Door Lords, but they broke out, 'cause they're door lords.
- In "Beyond This Earthly Realm", Finn is trapped on the astral plane, and only the Ice King can see him. Ice King offers to help Finn get back to normal if Finn will help clear out some mischievous spirits that have infested the Ice King's castle, but afterwards goes back on his word, expecting that Finn will be forced to turn to the Ice King (the only person he knows who can see him) for compansionship. Finn's response is to threaten to unplug the hole into which he'd stuffed all the spirits and let them back in.
  Ice King: No, wait! My plan fell apart!
- In "Lady & Peebles", as Princess Bubblegum explains to Ricardio the Heart Guy:
  Bubblegum: See, I know a thing or two about making a body out of biomass, and you DON'T leave your heart exposed!
American Dad!:
- In one episode where Francine gets poorly-aimed Laser-Guided Amnesia, she runs off to Burning Man with Hayley's boyfriend. This exchange happens when Stan meets up with Hayley at Burning Man:
  Hayley: Mom stole my boyfriend!
  Stan: Your boyfriend stole my wife! Let's get back at them by dating each other! Wait a minute. Daddy didn't think that through.
- In one episode, Stan arranges for a bunch of Serial Killers to be imprisoned in glass cells in an effort to make his haunted house scarier. After Francine points out that they're not scary behind glass, Roger sets them loose in the house to rectify it. After he's done so, Stan and Francine point out that now that the prisoners are loose, they're going to come after the Smiths and kill them.
  Roger: Scary, right? [Beat] Ahh, I never think things through.
- In "American Fung", Stan has Francine put in a mental hospital for a few days, so he can avoid facing her wrath for forgetting their anniversary. It never crosses his mind that Francine would put two and two together, and figure out who put her there. Not helping matters is that Stan kept forgetting his anniversary even after Francine was committed and tried to half-ass it by greeting her at the mental hospital with a bucket of fried chicken. Francine finally snaps and gets committed for real when she starts screaming that she hates Stan.
- In "Point Breakers", Stan's desire to keep working undercover with his new surfer friends leads to him framing them for bank robbery. He fails to realize that this will upgrade them from "suspects" to "wanted criminals" until it is pointed out to him.
- In "The One That Got Away", Roger goes on an elaborate scheme as Sidney Huffman to steal $10 gloves from a store by stealing the case's key from Dumb Blonde worker Judy's neck. By doing so, he gets intimate with her and buys a $700 necklace just so that he could put it around her neck to take the key off and get to the gloves. His haywire persona points out the stupidity of the scheme with what he spent to get to them.
  Sidney: Wait. You spent 700 bucks just to steal $10 gloves?
  Roger: ...Shut up!
Amphibia: Marcy's intentions, in a desperate attempt to not be separated from her friends upon being told her family would be moving away, lead to her showing them the Calamity Box. She believed that Anne and Sasha would be amazed by venturing into another world. Not only did she get them and herself sent to different places, but the two were also in perilous situations; she never considered telling them about her family moving. Later on, she recognizes that her actions were, in her own words, dumb.
In The Angry Beavers episode "Kreature Komfort", Norb and Dag’s cousin is a life action beaver who behaves like a regular beaver. Norb is convince that he and Dag should live like their cousin and they destroyed their dam, got rid of their things and create a new dam that is like their cousin’s. While Dag handles living it “wild”, Norb then realizes living “wild” means he no longer have the things he needs and wants like the bathroom, beds, hair products, etc.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force:
- In "Total Re-Carl", after mangling his neighbor's body and several false starts, Frylock rebuilds Carl by giving him a military suit and arming him with weapons of mass destruction. You know just how bad of an idea this was when it's Shake who calls him out on it:
Frylock: I give you the ultimate in military hardware. Complete with laser cannon, indestructible titanium exoskeleton, and motion-activated plasma pulse rifles.
Shake: And you're gonna plug him in!?
Frylock: ...You're right. Damn, what the hell was I thinking?
- In "Dicke-sode", Frylock removes Carl's dick so that he wouldn't have to worry about it being forcibly removed. Then realizes just how stupid his plan was.
- In "Working Stiffs", Carl hires, of all people, Shake and Meatwad to assassinate a mob boss. Not only does Shake bail out on the whole thing, but Meatwad is kind enough to tell the mobsters who hired the hit.
- In "Super Hero", Master Shake plans to become a super hero, and to complete the ideal he splashes himself with some nuclear waste in order to gain superpowers. Shake gradually melts over the course of the episode without ever gaining the superpowers he sought.
- In "Video Ouija", Master Shake plans to terrorize Meatwad through his Oujia video game.... by killing himself so he can get inside the game. Even as Shake explains his plan to Frylock he seems to realize on a subconscious level that it isn't the best idea:
  Master Shake: I'm going to get in that little game of his, and then I'm going to so hose him! (laughs) 'Til his heart stops! (laughs) See? And then.... And then I'm the winner.
In Arcane, Powder rigs up a Cymbal-Banging Monkey into a crude impact trigger for hex crystals, never stopping to consider that she has no way to focus the explosion. She already knows one crystal has enough energy to blow up an entire apartment, and she loaded the monkey with at least three. The resulting explosion not only fails to kill her intended target but also ends up killing nearly everyone she was trying to save except for Vi.
Avatar:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
  - Zuko is introduced as being solely focused on capturing the Avatar. This leads to him making very shortisghted decisions, such as kidnapping Aang in the North Pole and escaping into a blizzard, or trying to steal Appa from Lake Laogai despite not even having a space large enough for him. He gets better, eventually.
  - When Sokka and Zuko go on a "life changing adventure" together, Zuko has this effect on others:
    Zuko: I thought you thought this through.
    Sokka: I thought you told me it's okay not to think everything through!
    Zuko: Maybe not everything, but this is kind of important.
  - Aang and Sokka write a letter to Katara from Toph in hopes of reconciling an argument. Katara, not fooled, reminds them that Toph is blind and can't read or write. The next plan is to write a letter to Toph from Katara, before realizing that they have the same problem as before.
  - First season antagonist Zhao never considers any other possible side effects destroying the moon would have aside from "No Water Bending." Iroh points out that Fire Nation relies on the Moon too and that everybody relies on the delicate balance of nature.
  - Azula, for all her intellect, never wonders why her ruthless and manipulative behavior means she can't have true friends or respect from others. Unlike her brother, she never introspects on this, and it begins to create an inescapable conflict in her mind, which leads to her breakdown by series' end.
  - Even Ozai has a pretty major one before the series even begins. He banished Zuko as an act of Cruel Mercy, by forcing him on a Snipe Hunt and denying him access to his loved ones, as well as forcing him to live in a world that hates him. However, what Ozai failed to realize, is that, because Zuko is a genuinely good guy by heart, there would always be someone out there who would accept him. Iroh even came along with Zuko, and acted as a genuine paternal figure to him. Banishment allowed Zuko to reflect on his actions, find a positive father figure, meet some trustworthy friends, and even help stop Ozai to begin with. If Ozai just killed Zuko or kept him in a dungeon, then he probably would have defeated Aang.
- The Legend of Korra
  - Korra acts impulsively for most of the first season's run. Amon takes advantage of this several times, such as challenging her to a duel and ambushing her, or relying on her trying to save Tenzin and his family so that he can take out the Avatar at his own Equalist rally.
  - In the third season, new airbenders start to appear, and, naturally, Korra and Tenzin go and ask for recruits to rebuild the Air Nation. They put in a lot of effort before realizing that they keep pointing out the negative aspects, such as leaving home forever for a strict nomadic lifestyle, instead of any possible benefits.
  - The Red Lotus' plan to kill Korra never takes the full power of the Avatar into account. Also, their assassination of the Earth Queen in order to bring true freedom doesn't include a plan for cleaning up the resulting looting and anarchy. Korra points all of this out to Zaheer as he is chained up in prison, being the only member of his group to survive the ordeal. The look on his face shows that he realizes she's absolutely right.
  - In addition, what would have happened if Zaheer had killed Korra while in the Avatar State, ending the cycle. Would that mean that Ravaa dies too? In that case, humanity will be wiped out at the next Harmonic Convergence with no one to stop Vaatu.
  - Bolin never thought of the full consequences of siding with Kuvira. Opal made it clear to Bolin that she does not trust Kuvira or approve of him working with her. When Kuvira takes power and Bolin stays with her, he doesn't expect Opal to be angry with him at all.
  - In "Beyond the Wilds," Bolin seems to think that using menial gestures like setting up a picnic for himself and Opal will make up for his working for Kuvira and not listening to her warnings about her, which inadvertently led to her family's kidnapping. Opal is rightfully pissed and corrects him very quickly; he only wins back her respect and love by helping her rescue them.
    Opal: Oh. Steam buns. My favorite. This will totally make me forget that you worked for Kuvira, the person who captured my family and is probably torturing them right now. So yeah, let's just sit down and have a great picnic because we're so in love!
  - Turns out, this applied to Toph's parenting. Since the only examples of parents she had were her own mother and father, who she hated for treating her as a delicate flower and categorically refusing to acknowledge that she was a free-spirited tomboy who hated being trapped and a powerful earthbender who didn't need their protection, she went to the other extreme and let her own children pretty much do as they wanted. It never occurred to her that, given a choice, her oldest daughter Lin preferred discipline and structure, and her younger daughter Suyin would make friends who were much worse for her than Team Avatar was for Toph, and become a criminal. And Toph's hands-off nature meant that she never sought out her daughters to make amends, resulting in only Suyin patching up her relationship with her mother.
In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes Absorbing Man occasionally absorbs things he really shouldn't. When fighting the Hulk as metal, he absorbs rock. The Hulk promptly breaks his arms off. The metal form might not have let him win, but was at least keeping him in one piece. Much later he absorbs Mjölnir, and Thor reveals that he can now control Absorbing Man just like he does Mjölnir, and starts hitting people with him.

Balance: Five men identified only by the numbers on their back are precariously perched on a platform that tilts around a balance of support at the center. They are fighting over a music box, their only possession. #23 kicks the last of his companions, #51, off the edge of the platform and now he has the music box to himself. But he had to leave the music box on the other side as a counterweight so he could march to the edge and kill #51. Not until he's done that does he realize that he has no way to get back to the music box, and in fact has marooned himself on the side.
One episode of Batman: The Animated Series has the Terrible Trio, a group of villains who are little more than young rich punks who commit robberies because they're bored and figure they can get away with anything. In the end one attempts to bribe Batman (who they don't know is also rich, but Bats wouldn't have accepted even if he was dirt-poor) to let him go and, when that obviously fails, he gloats that he'll just bribe judges and hire the best legal team money can buy. What he fails to realize of course is all of his victims were the wealthy elite, all of whom have much more money and are much better connected than a group of dweebs living off of their rich parents' handouts: the episode naturally ends with him being marched to his cell, meeting his roommate, and staring in horror at the absolute squalor he'll be living in from now on.
Beavis And Butthead:
- In "Breakdown", Van Driessen decides to bring Beavis and Butt-Head into the mental hygiene center to show them what they ended up doing to McVicker. Of course, he didn't consult McVicker himself before doing so, and because of who the two are, McVicker's mental health ends up getting worse to the point of requiring electroshock therapy.
- In "Drones", the drone soldier leaves his station so he can enjoy cake and ice cream with the rest of the crew. He didn't lock the door before doing so, resulting in Beavis and Butt-Head breaking in, gaining access to the drones, and wreaking havoc. Additionally, this grabs the attention of security, who arrest him on the spot after the duo had already left.
Big City Greens:
- In "Supermarket Scandal", Cricket and Tilly decide to add in some fake produce made from household materials so they can make a huge profit; it seemed well until Bill warned them of the consequences the fake produce would bring if someone ate it. He's ultimately proven right when Chip Whistler takes a bite out of an 8 ball painted like an apple, broke his tooth and blamed them for it, despite the fact that Cricket warned him not to eat it.
- Hit hard by Cricket big time in "Homeshare Hoedown". When he registers his home for a Bed and Breakfast appointment, he thought it would be easy and the money would just pour right in; he didn't know the guests that stayed over would have a need and want for any situation, thus he has to attain to whatever request he is given. Lampshaded by Bill earlier as he tried to warn Cricket money doesn't come that fast and he has to commit to the job, but he didn't listen.
- In "Hiya Henry", Cricket is bothered by the dummy Tilly chose for her open mic act but cannot bring himself to tell her he doesn't like it because he doesn't want to ruin her fun; so he decides to violently bury the dummy in the backyard while she's sleeping. However, Phoenix found the place the dummy was buried and dug it back up, and Tilly proceeds with her performance.
- In "Shark Objects", Cricket decides to pull a prank on the beachgoers by pretending to be a shark in the water; too bad he didn't know of the horrible consequences that followed, and this even led the lifeguard to believe there really is a shark and was almost harpooned to death.
- In "Desserted", Cricket takes his family out to a dinner at Crispy's and claims he's paying for the meal. However, he didn't tell them why he's paying for it — he makes them order a rather large meal then has the meal be for free by taking on a Mega Meal Challenge by wolfing down a humongous sundae in one hour. Unfortunately, the Greens are too full from all the food Cricket ordered, and to make matters worse, Cricket replaced all of Bill's money with fake cash in case they found out the truth. Thus there's no way out of it, and Bill promptly calls him out for ruining their dinner.
- In "Time Crisis", Remy believed his violin audition for the Youth Metropolitan Orchestra was just a "single sheet of music"; turns out there was a whole lot more than just one page to study.
- Lampshaded in "Gramma Driver" when Cricket falls victim to his own smartphone prank.
  Cricket: I can't believe that yet again, my actions have had consequences!
- Bill ends up falling victim to this in "Dirt Jar". He accidentally throws out Cricket's dirt jar from their moving day and accidentally destroys it, but won't tell Cricket about it, so he and Gramma construct a makeshift dirt jar using the dirt from the backyard topped with paprika. Unfortunately, Bill didn't count on Cricket smelling the dirt in the jar once he gives it to him, and upon doing so, Cricket did not recognize the scent of country dirt and drops it, recognizing it as fake while Bill is forced to come clean.
Blaze and the Monster Machines: Crusher and his cheating. All of his schemes to stop Blaze will always have a minor flaw in them that allows Blaze to drive straight past them and get back on track. For example, whenever he blocks the track with various obstacles, he didn't count on Blaze either smashing through them or jumping over them. When he blocked Blaze's way with giant pipes one time, he didn't realise that Blaze could just drive right through them, selecting the one that's big enough for him to fit through. And when he sent space bighorns to stop him, he forgot that Blaze could just use his thrust to steer around them. The biggest example would be in "Power Tires", since no matter what Crusher did, he seemed to forget that Blaze could use the titular tires to turn into something to get right past the cheat — to drive across the proper surface, to get through a slot in the gates on the walls and ceiling, and even to drive right through lava to the finish.
Bob's Burgers: In "Flat Top O' The Morning To Ya", Jules wants to steal his flattop grill that's being auctioned off by the bank, but his plan involves waiting until the auctioneer is busy and just taking it in front of the all the other auction attendees. Even if he did have a good plan to get the grill out of the restaurant, he wouldn't be able to take it home because it won't fit in his tiny car.
BoJack Horseman: In "Stop The Presses", BoJack chooses an ad for the Secretariat docudrama he's starring in that is a mirror with "YOU ARE SECRETARIAT" printed on it, with the message being that the person looking into the mirror is Secretariat. However, the ad ends up being put on a billboard.
Princess Carolyn: It kinda just looks like a billboard for the sky.
Bojack: Yeah, I really didn't think this part through.

The Welsh tunnel burning plan in Castle was dependent upon the towers being weak enough to collapse under a caved-in tunnel. They didn't anticipate the possibility that the walls of the tower would be so thick as to withstand even that tactic.
Central Park:
- In Season 1 "Dog Spray Afternoon":
  - Helen brings in Shampagne's worm medicine and Bitsy's heart pill on a silver tray, but their pills look identical to each other and she can't tell them apart. She even questions herself why would she place the pills on the tray in a way that she can't distinguish them apart. She was planning on doing "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe" on to decide which pills goes to who, but Bitsy tells Helen to save the pills for later.
  - After Owen and Molly figures out the "Shart" tagger's next location, they decide to do a stakeout at the location while they wear ghillie suits at night, but they screwed it up with the following: 1) They told a random person what they were doing, despite telling that person it's supposed to be a secret, and that random person just happens to be the "Shart" tagger, 2) They don't bother to remain silent during the stakeout, 3) They leave their supplies right next to them in the open, and 4) They turn their flashlight on so they can see in the dark despite disguising themselves at bushes. Paige and Cole easily found them and calls them out on this.
- In "Rival Busker", Dmitry accidentally set the hotel he was planning to have his daughter's wedding at on fire because they made the wedding theme fire. It would have been fine if they had the wedding outside the hotel, but they decided to do it inside.
The Cleveland Show: In the episode "Yemen Party," Cleveland disguises himself as an Arab woman named Fatima to infiltrate Donna's woman support group. While there, "Fatima" ends up accepting an invitation to dinner at the Brown house to meet Cleveland, and it's only when he's standing at the doorstep to his own house as Fatima and Donna calls for Cleveland to answer the door that Cleveland realizes the obvious flaw in that plan.
Cleveland: I... did not think this through.
In one episode of Corneil & Bernie, the two look after Mr. Henson, a man is who feared by residents for committing over-extreme stunts. After he claims that he knows the two's "secret", Corneil panics thinking he overheard him talking and forces Bernie to do Henson's errands to find out, despite that Mr. Henson is an elder and is disliked for his out-of-control actions, Corneil should have figured nobody would have taken him seriously.

In the Danny Phantom movie The Ultimate Enemy, Danny's evil future self traps Danny in the future while he goes back in time to make sure that his existence still happens. Danny can't travel back to the past until he removes the time travelling medallion his future self fused inside him. The only person who can help is the future version of Vlad Masters, who's now become The Atoner. While the plan ultimately works, Danny never considered what a big risk he was taking putting himself at the mercy of his Arch-Enemy, especially because a similar event created the evil version of Danny.
Danny: I'm guessing if you could reach into me and rip out my humanity, you can get the medallion out, too. Then I'll pop back to my present like Tucker and Sam did.
Vlad: Or I could just destroy you now and prevent this future. Didn't think of that, did you?
In Dexter's Laboratory, this was very often one of Dexter's fatal flaws despite being a genius.
- In "Morning Stretch", he used a time-slowing helmet to turn thirty seconds into thirty minutes, allowing him the time to get ready for school. He failed to realize that the slowed time would prevent him from properly taking a shower or making breakfast, and his homework ignited from Friction Burn when he tried to finish it. He barely manages to finish by the time the effect runs out, only for Dee Dee to inform him it's a snow day.
- "The Continuum of Cartoon Fools" consists of Dexter trying to keep Dee Dee out of his lab permanently. He gets desperate enough to destroy every conceivable entrance and eventually resorts to locking the front entrance behind his bookcase and eating the key, not realizing until it's too late that this course of action would also prevent himself from entering the lab.
- The episode "Comic Stripper" has Dexter discover that Mandark has been beating him by patterning their mecha battles after the comic book Mister Misery. Dexter attempts to beat Mandark at his own game by buying every copy of the comic's next issue so he'll know exactly what Mandark is planning. Only to be caught off guard and defeated by Mandark anyway. When Dexter demands to know why he didn't follow the comic this time, Mandark tells him that he chose to copy the events of a different comic called Dangerous Duck since "Mister Misery" was sold out. When Dexter boasts that Mandark couldn't buy an issue because he bought them all, Mandark points out that he wouldn't be able to copy the next issue of Mister Misery if it was sold out. Upon realizing the flaw in his own reasoning, Dexter promptly morphs into a donkey.
Donkey Kong Country: In "The Curse of Kongo Bongo," cursed chain letters are sent out to everyone on Kongo Bongo that will sink the entire island if read twice. When K. Rool finds out about it, he tries to use it to his advantage by threatening to read the letter intended for him if he's not given the Crystal Coconut, making it clear he'll sink the island if he doesn't get what he wants. When DK and Diddy show up, he does exactly that, thinking there are more words on the other side when there aren't; it's at that moment that K. Rool realizes that he's doomed the entire island with him on it.
Duck Dodgers: In the episode "Fins of War", Dodgers learns both armies of Aquarium take the preservation of the planet's surface above war. Figuring this would be the solution to stop the battle between the two, Dodgers decides to destroy the surface with a hole large enough for the armies to restore, only for the entirety of the armies and a chunk of Aquarium's water getting sucked out into space. Afterwards, Aquarium once again gets unified, this time for their hatred towards Dodgers.
DuckTales (1987):
- In one episode, the Beagle Boys manage to get inside the Money Bin and trap Scrooge outside. When they call Glomgold to gloat, Glomgold points out that they have no way to transport the money ("What are you gonna do? Carry it in your wallets!?") and that Scrooge will have an army ready to take his Bin back.
- In the episode "Allowance Day" Huey, Dewey, and Louie want to buy an on-sale scooter, but don't get their allowance until the day after the sale ends which is Saturday in the episode. They trick Scrooge into thinking it's Saturday, which leads to Scrooge convincing his business associates that it's one day later than it is. Not only does this cause mass confusion but it also causes the store to end their sale and the price of the scooter to go back up.
  - To make matters much worse, the nephews cause an overseas business deal to go sour.
DuckTales (2017):
- Dewey's impulsiveness is one of his biggest character flaws, getting himself and his family into all sorts of trouble. For instance, in the premiere episode, he immediately challenges Flintheart Glomgold when he sees that Glomgold has his Uncle Donald hostage.
  Dewey: Let go of my uncle!
  Glomgold: No.
  [beat]
  Dewey: I wasn't prepared for that.
- In "Daytrip of Doom!", the Beagle Boys proceed to hold Huey, Dewey, Louie and Webby for ransom, expecting a big payout from Scrooge. Ma Beagle just points out to them that for starters, Scrooge is too cheap to bother with a ransom, and now they have a target on their backs causing Mrs. Beakley (and unbeknownst to them, a very angry Donald Duck) to come after them.
- In "How Santa Stole Christmas!", Scrooge is convinced by his old rival, Santa Claus, to take over giving gifts when he is injured. However, there's one problem: this was a Wounded Gazelle Gambit by Santa to get Scrooge to enjoy Christmas for the giving and the warm feeling it gives. Scrooge, however, decides to reinitiate his old plan to give out coal for a price, once more falling back into his greedy ways while he wants to help people keep warm. He doesn't realize the error of his ways until Webby tells him that coal's a gag gift for naughty children now — Scrooge just gave the entire world coal for Christmas.

Ed, Edd n Eddy: Aside from Pride and Greed, this is Eddy's signature flaw. If there's a way for him to get something he wants RIGHT NOW, he'll leap without thinking of the problems. Kevin getting grounded and can't retaliate in "A Case of Ed"? Taunt him! Sarah sending Ed to buy fudge for her and Jimmy with her allowance in "Brother, Can You Spare an Ed?"? Spend it on jawbreakers instead! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
- In "Knock Knock Who's Ed?", the Eds plan to create a cube of gelatin and let kids pay to swim in it, but it falters when they find that it's not viscous enough to swim through, as Ed dives into the cube and immediately sinks to the bottom.
  Edd: I must have overestimated the viscosity of the gelatin.
  Eddy: The greatest scam in the world! Gone.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show: Eddy's entire plan for sparing himself and his friends the wrath of the other cul-de-sac kids hinged on locating his older brother's current residence so he could protect them from their pursuers. It's clear that he didn't account for the possibility that his brother would beat him up instead. Justified, because it implied that Eddy was lying so long about his brother being a cool older brother that he started to believe it and he was that desperate to go to his brother because he and his friends were running for their lives.

The Fairly OddParents!:
- Most of Timmy's wishes are intended to improve his life right now, and he doesn't think about the consequences. Wishes like being an adult^note, having Christmas every day^note, being alone with his crush^note, and wishing for parents that could "care less" after getting fed up with their strict rules^note usually end up turning against him because he didn't foresee a usually obvious flaw. Even by the very last season, he still hasn't learned from this, claiming that thinking doesn't solve anything.
- In "Odd Couple", Timmy discovers the love of his parents can distract them from punishing him, and wishes up a boyfriend named Ricky to distract Vicky from tormenting him. However, the wish becomes unable to be undone because Vicky falls in love with Ricky, and fairies cannot interfere with true love; and as if it can't get worse, Vicky hires Ricky as her partner, meaning Timmy has two evil babysitters now.
- In "Timmy's Secret Wish!", Foop, having become a lawyer, exposes Timmy's secret wish to freeze the world in Comic-Book Time so he would be able to keep Cosmo and Wanda forever, as part of his latest plan to get rid of Poof — since Poof only exists because of a wish Timmy made, he would be undone like all of Timmy's other wishes. Foop succeeds, but realizes that, as Poof's Evil Counterpart, he would be undone as well.
- One episode starring the Crimson Chin had a spectacular example. The Chin is trapped in a cage that's unbreakable from the inside, and guarded by Short Fuse, a villain who explodes violently whenever his Berserk Button is pressed. The Chin notices the obvious flaw, lampshades it, and exploits it, all in the space of about two seconds.
  Crimson Chin: Just the inside, not the outside? That's pretty small thinking, don't you think?
  [Short Fuse, furious at being called "small", promptly detonates, destroying the cage]
- "Inspection Detection" plays this more seriously than usual: while prepping for Fairy Inspection Day, Timmy never tries to hide the things he wishes for, leading to him getting accused of shoplifting when he can't explain where he got them. Later, he offers to plug himself into a lie detector to prove his innocence, but this falls apart when his parents ask him where he got the lie detector (because he can't tell them about Cosmo and Wanda or he'll lose them for good). Where does Timmy end up after this? In a Police Lineup with Chester, AJ and Francis^note.
Family Guy:
- In the episode "Blind Ambition", there is a clip of one (or both) of Peter's Siamese twin ancestors each fighting opposite sides in the Civil War. The one who fought for the Union killed the other, who continued decomposing until he was a skeleton. "Yeah... did not think that one through," he said to a bartender who asked about the skeleton.
- In "Don't Make Me Over", Peter, Quagmire, Cleveland and Joe form their own rock band after a successful karaoke night at the Drunken Clam. They get together to perform their first gig at a prison and this gaping mistake hits them just as they're about to perform:
  Peter: Oh my God, we don't know any songs!
- Peter records a date for his future self. He tells "future Peter" to look outside and see a grown tree that he has planted. A cutaway shows future Peter watching the tape and giggling when he see the tree. The tape then says "now look at your hand. It's just numb because I'm gonna cut all the fingers". Future Peter replies "Oh yeah I too can play that game" and then cuts his arm.
  Peter: Take that! *sneers* Oh wait a minute...
- In "Brian's a Bad Father", Peter and Quagmire have a falling out after Peter shoots Quagmire in the arm during a hunting trip. Eventually, Peter offers Quagmire the opportunity to shoot him to make them even, thinking Quagmire would decline and consider the "thought" as being what counts. He never once considered that Quagmire would actually take him up on the offer, and tries to back out when he does.
  Peter: But... but just the fact that I would make the offer is so meaningful to you.
  Quagmire: Your offer means nothing, Peter. The only thing that means anything to me is a bullet in your arm.
- In the episode "Boys & Squirrels", Chris and Stewie adopt a baby squirrel after its parents were crushed by a falling tree. As they raise the squirrel in their house, Brian viciously attacks and kills it due to his burning hatred of squirrels. This is actually Truth in Television as dogs have been known to attack and kill squirrels in real life.
Fanboy and Chum Chum:
- In the episode "Chimp Chomp Chumps," Fanboy and Chum Chum buy the last three tickets for a Chimp Chomp movie, intending to give one to their friend Oz only to find he can't make it. When Boog asks for the last ticket, Fanboy and Chum Chum use it to their advantage to force Boog to do all manner of humiliating favors for them, since the entire time they were waiting in line for the tickets, Boog relentlessly tormented them. When all is said and done, Boog takes solace in the fact that while watching the movie, he'll be able to bop the boys senseless as payback. Fanboy and Chum Chum quickly come to this realization:
  Fanboy: Why didn't we think of that?
  Chum Chum: We really should've thought of that.
- In "Speed Eraser", Kyle is jealous when Fanboy ends up becoming the new "board eraser-er" for doing an impressive routine, so he gives him a cursed eraser which controls his movement to erase anything out of existence; this only makes him even more popular, so he literally straps the eraser to FB's hand so whatever he tries to use will disappear, to his horror and sadness. However, the Wizard forgot two very important things about the eraser when settling on this — first of all, if the eraser touches someone, then they will be erased; when FB tried to cling onto Kyle, he erases his entire body except for the head. Most importantly, because the eraser is sentient, it takes over all of FB's movements, and he tried to erase the head when trying to grab the wand, and even had to fight against it to use his free hand to grab it before he sees the wand is dirty and led to him erasing it, as well as the extra wand. Kyle tried to ask him to let Chum Chum get the wand for him, but he refused, because he claims he was the one who got him into the mess and can get him out of it.
Firebuds: In "The Getaway Car That Got Away", Louie Lam and his getaway car Throttle are arrested while robbing a toy store. Throttle calls Louie out for picking a place near a police meet-and-greet.
Follow the Sun: The snow cones were apparently so obsessed with exacting their vengeance that they forgot that, well, they're snow cones and snow cones melt in extreme heat. It doesn't take long for their faces to fade from their paper-wrapped bodies, and if that's not enough, the lake of blood they unleashed quickly grows beyond their control and they ultimately drown in it.
Played with and then subverted in an episode of Freakazoid! Dexter Douglas' mother, father and brother are held hostage by a supervillain in a secure fortress, so Freakazoid teams up with his friends to save his alter ego's family and take down the mastermind. The infiltration goes well until they actually have to escape from the prison, at which point Freakazoid announces he has a plan, and then calls the supervillain and proceeds to tell him exactly where he, Freakazoid is and what he's doing, while insulting the villain like a third-grader. When asked what his plan from there is...
Freakazoid: *beat*... okay, I know you're going to be mad, but I forgot the rest of my plan.
Everyone else: (groans)
Freakazoid: But let's do ''this'' instead!
Cut to new plan
- In "The Freakazoid", Freakazoid realizes the superhero code he's been following is false when he notices the Lobe Industries copyright note at the code book. When confronted about this, the Lobe admits he shouldn't have put it there.

Garfield and Friends: In the two-part U.S. Acres episode, "Egg Over Easy", Wade, who is afraid of everything, gets the idea to shell himself up in a paper-mache egg so he'll be safe, inspired by Sheldon, who decided to stay in his eggshell to avoid the world's disasters. However, Wade soon finds out that there are many disadvantages to being an egg. He can't see where he's going due to his eggshell obscuring his vision, he's unable to celebrate his birthday since he has to be born to have a birthday, and he can't blow out candles or eat cake since his eggshell obscures his mouth. When he gets captured by the Weasel, he can't yell for help because his eggshell muffles his voice, and he can't sound the alarm because his arms are still inside his eggshell. After Wade decides he doesn't want to be an egg anymore, he comes out of his shell and stands up to the Weasel. His friends save him and decide to celebrate his birthday, feeling it only fair since he was finally born. The episode ends with Wade deciding to shell himself up in another eggshell, figuring he should be safe now that the Weasel isn't around to menace him anymore. He then gets chased by the Easter Bunny, who wants to paint him, learning the hard way that just because the Weasel's gone doesn't mean he's safe.
In The Garfield Show episode "Land of Later", a race of sloth people from beneath the Earth attempt to take over the surface world by using a device to turn everyone there into a procrastinator and then enslave humanity once they've taken over. One of the sloth people points out to the king that procrastinators are useless as slaves. The king concedes the point, but decides to simply undo the effects of the device after the invasion is complete.
In Gargoyles, Demona caused pretty much everything bad that happened in the backstory (and to her, specifically) with two stupid moves motivated by paranoia, Fantastic Racism, and an inability to understand how humans capitalize on opportunities. She lost her first clan when she betrayed their castle to Viking invaders, thinking they'd stop at killing all the humans in the castle. Instead, they immediately started smashing gargoyles while they were asleep and helpless (and still present because unlike Demona, they still cared about the humans of Castle Wyvern and wished to protect them from things like viking attacks — something she never considered in her planning), because she and her co-conspirator had no way to stop them from doing that aside from really hoping they'd stick to their agreement. She later found a new clan and allied with Macbeth... only to overreact when one of his advisors suggested turning on her and betray him to Canmore. She never considered that Canmore hated her just as much as he hated Macbeth and would use the opening that she gave him to kill all of Demona's second clan.
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In "The Secret Snake Club vs. P.E.", all the boys work on a plan to try and eliminate gym class for good so none of them have to work out. However, none of them realized that all the girls had a completely different opinion of P.E., finding it as a proper outlet for their own aggression. So when the boys completely trash the gymnasium, the girls promptly beat them up.
Mandy: Did you idiots even stop to think that we girls want P.E.?

The Hair Bear Bunch: in "Raffle Ruckus," Hair Bear rigs a raffle so he'll win with the zoo as the prize. The bears think they'll live easy as owners of the zoo until the other animals come to them with maintenance issues. They discover what Mr. Peevly goes through on a regular basis.
Harvey Beaks:
- "Pee-Choo", Harvey is determined to get banned so that he can join Fee and Foo in getting launched into the air from the lake. After going through everything possible, he finally gets banned and can get launched with his friends. He forgets until it actually happened that he's afraid of heights.
Harvey: THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!!!
- "Why Are You Even Friends?": Determined to prove he and Harvey are best friends, Dade glues himself to Harvey's back. Because of Dade's weight, he ends up crushing Harvey and nearly drowns them in the lake.
Hey Arnold! makes use of this trope on some occasions:
- In the episode "Suspended", where Harold gets himself suspended on purpose so that he can spend a week without going to school. His intentions were to spend the entire week watching television and eating junk food, but he didn't consider that an emergency broadcast would appear over all the networks or that he'd be all out of the junk food he liked to eat on the day he decided to get suspended on purpose. Another failure to think things through is when he tried to hide his suspension from his parents so he'd have the house to himself, not realizing that his parents would lock the front door if they thought he was at school^note. Made even more aggravating for Harold that it was Monday, forcing him to decide right away he can't handle being suspended and decides to return to school.
- In the movie, the Big Bad, Scheck, also made use of this to the fullest extent with the abundance of security cameras in his building. While it was important he has the cameras to prevent potential intruders from stealing the "Tomato Incident" document and stopping his evil plan to avenge his ancestors by illegally demolishing the neighborhood where the titular event, which was a significant part of the Revolutionary War, took place and replacing it with a shopping mall, the same cameras were used against him when he burned the document in front of Arnold and Gerald, which then led to them getting their hands on a videotape that recorded his crime, and the document being shown as clear as possible before he burned it.

Invader Zim:
- Zim has this as a personality trait; as The Other Wiki once described him, "Zim has a crafty sort of intelligence, but he tends to think precisely one step ahead of his current problem". For instance, Zim builds a stasis-field device in one episode which subsequently explodes, but the fireball is slowed by the stasis field until it's expanding at less than walking pace. However, it will eventually grow to the point where it'll consume Zim's base along with the entire city. The Tallest might call back soon and Zim really doesn't want them seeing an embarrassing screw up like this (though they actually dislike him and so wouldn't really give a crap). Basically Zim has to get rid of the explosion, do it in a way that doesn't destroy his base, and do it quickly. Zim's brilliant plan to handle this problem? Simple. He'll just cancel the stasis field under the assumption that once the field is canceled, the explosion will be gone forever. This is true, but this will also annihilate his base and the whole city. Despite being warned by his computer, his arch-enemy, and even his Cloudcuckoolander sidekick that this is a really, really bad idea, he goes ahead with it. Hilarity Ensues.
- The Tallest also seem to suffer from this, resulting in conquered planets being turned into massive parking lots because they didn't know what they'd do with the planet after conquering it. They also ordered enslaved races to build weapons for them, resulting in the Megadoomer needing a massive extension cord and cloaking everything but the pilot and said extension cord.

Jimmy Two-Shoes:
- In "The Big Drip", Lucius destroys every washroom in Miseryville to torment Jimmy during a Potty Emergency... including his own.
- In "Dance, Jimmy, Dance", Jimmy's dancing instructor Rudolpho attempts to help him win Miseryville's annual dancing competition despite his incredible lack of talent by training a lobster to go inside Jimmy's pants and pinch him until he starts "dancing" in reaction to the discomfort. It doesn't work, as he loses to Lucius. Afterwards, Samy points out to Jimmy that there was no way Lucius, a deranged tyrant with a planet-sized ego, would let the judges get away with picking anyone else as the winner, and besides, Jimmy danced like he had a lobster down his pants.
Justice League
- "Tabula Rasa" had Lex Luthor attempt to defeat the Justice League using A.M.A.Z.O., an android built by Arthur Ivo that had the ability to replicate the powers of anyone it scanned, by lying to the android that the Justice League were evil. Before long, J'onn J'onzz is the only member of the Justice League whose powers haven't been copied yet, and Luthor encourages A.M.A.Z.O. to replicate them and complete the set. Unfortunately for Luthor, he forgot that J'onn J'onzz had telepathy, and A.M.A.Z.O. was able to use the telepathy to find out that Luthor was deceiving him.
- In "Only a Dream", Copperhead attempts to gain leverage for an escape by jumping onto Hawkgirl's back, positioning his poison fangs near her neck, and ordering her to fly him out. She flies up a few hundred feet and stops. When Copperhead demands to know why, she notes that his threat is no longer as effective, since if he bites her neck she'll fall to the ground and they'll both die. Copperhead wisely decides not to reenact the scorpion and the frog. "Didn't really think this through, did you?" After she touches down, Green Lantern congratulates her on the bluff; her reply is a deadpan "Who was bluffing?"
- In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Ultimatum", Downpour, a pastiche of one of the Wonder Twins, tries to kill Aquaman by hitting him with a torrent of water. Aquaman just stands there with a raised eyebrow: "'King of the Seas', remember?"
- Downpour's follow-up wasn't particularly well thought out, either. He rushes up to Aquaman and punches him. Ineffectually. Aquaman responds with a backhand slap that takes Downpour out instantly.

Kaeloo:
- In Episode 93, Quack Quack gets stuck inside a burning building, and Stumpy rushes into the building to save him. By the time he reaches Quack Quack, the flames have spread and both of them are stuck inside together. What makes this especially ridiculous was that they were undergoing firefighter training, and had a fire engine right outside with a hose and ladder which Stumpy could have used.
- In Episode 134, when Stumpy gets several clones of himself which annoy everyone else, Kaeloo, Quack Quack and Mr. Cat hatch a plan where they claim that Stumpy got a package in the mail from Ursula and only the real Stumpy can sign it, so the original will get rid of the clones. The plan works, but they then realize that they forgot what would happen once Stumpy asked for the package. At the end of the episode, Stumpy punishes Kaeloo and Mr. Cat, though Quack Quack gets away.
- In a Greek mythology-themed episode, Hades steals innocent souls and puts them in Hell for no reason. Zeus demands that Hades release everyone. To spite Zeus, Hades releases literally all the souls, including the ones who deserved to be there.... including their father, Chronus, who wanted to eat his kids. Zeus sees Chronus roaming free and remarks that Hades has been really irresponsible. From inside Chronus' stomach, Hades remarks that Zeus is right.
- In one episode, Kaeloo gets mad at Mr. Cat and goes on a rant about how she will give him the Silent Treatment; halfway through the rant, she realizes that he's a Living Emotional Crutch to her and it would break her heart if she actually stopped talking to him. She gives up on her idea within mere seconds.
This happened to Bonnie Rockwaller at the end of the Kim Possible episode "Number One", where she replaces Kim as the school's cheerleading captain. Her gloating is short-lived when she comes to the (at least for her) crushing realization that she's going to have to continue doing the hard work she had done to gain the position. Ron figures that Bonnie will only last about a month while Kim figures two weeks at the most — by the time all the cheerleaders are seen together again, Kim's back to being the captain.

In the first episode of Lazer Tag Academy, Draxon Drear travels back in time to capture his ancestor who invented the Starlyte (which he used to travel back in time) and threatened to kill her if the authorities in the future did not surrender. The flaw in his plan should be self-evident.
Legion of Super Heroes (2006): Alexis sics her personal robot on Superman, who immediately slices it apart with his heat vision.
Robot: Didn't think this through, did we? [Eye Lights Out]
Lilo & Stitch: The Series: Gantu becomes so fed up with Nosy's gossip that he pawns him off onto Dr. Hamsterviel, only to belatedly realize that the gossipy experiment will tell Hamsterviel the insulting nicknames Gantu made up for him (Ratface, Hamsterjerk, and Kiesterviel). Hamsterviel, in turn, is so infuriated by those names that he sends Nosy back to insult Gantu without realizing that Nosy now has all kinds of juicy gossip about him (starting with the fact that he sleeps with a pacifier).
Looney Tunes:
- The Bugs Bunny cartoon Jack Wabbit And The Beanstalk has Bugs challenging the giant to a duel. "Take twenty paces, toin, and fire. Got that, shorty?" As the giant takes his paces, he disappears into the horizon and Bugs thinks he's outsmarted the giant. But then the giant reappears over the other horizon — the twenty paces were enough to circumnavigate all the way back.
- Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur: You know, maybe that giant inflatable duck wasn't such a hot idea after all.
- Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production: Wile E. Coyote tends to go for a more complex solution to simple problems, with "Aromatherapest" showing why it's not a good idea. He and Bugs are sprayed by a skunk, but instead of going with tomato juice, he argues that concrete mix would get the smell off faster. He covers himself with it and... you can guess what happens next.
The Loud House
- The Loud House: Lincoln Loud is the self-proclaimed "man with a plan" of the household who can come up with rather ingenious schemes to get what he wants out of his sisters. Unfortunately, being an 11-year-old, he can forget that his sisters are capable of coming up with schemes, seeing through him, or "copying" his current scheme which screws him over.
  - In "The Sweet Spot", after months of planning, and hours of negotiation in the dead of night, Lincoln manages to get the best seat in "Vanzilla". When the girls confront him over it after getting suspicious, he tries to brush them off, only for them to get in the van and beat him, and each other, up over it, leading up to the van being destroyed, the road trip being cancelled and all of the kids being punished by being forced to sit on the sofa all weekend until they learn to get along. This is likely to happen again when Lincoln shows the audience another sweet spot on the sofa during that punishment.
  - In "Friendzy", Lincoln keeps inviting Clyde over because of the "friend card", which allows him to get what he wants on account that Lincoln has a friend over. Eventually, the sisters figure out his scheme and start inviting their own friends over before Clyde shows up so they can get first dibs on things like the TV or the badminton court. But, having anticipated that his sisters would copy his idea, he sidesteps them by inviting more friends so he can still get what he wants by way of "majority rules". So they also start inviting more and more friends over to the point where their house is overfilled. It eventually escalates into a major fight between all of the kids, which results in the police showing up to break everything up just as Rita and Lynn Sr. return home with Lily and the Louds getting fined $200 for noise violation.
  - In "Sister Act", Lana and Lola start switching places so they both can avoid doing things that one twin wouldn't like but the other one wouldn't mind doing (such as Lana pretending to be Lola so Lola can avoid doing the Gym Class Rope Climb, and Lola pretending to be Lana so Lana can get out of taking a bath). They manage to pull it off for a few days until they pretend to be each other so Lola can get out of a doctor's appointment and Lana can get out of a dentist appointment taking place the same afternoon. It backfires on both of them the next day because Lola gets a bad case of the flu, preventing her from competing in a pageant, and Lana gets an abcessed tooth, preventing her from enjoying a massive sundae she won in a recycling contest. These ailments wouldn't have gotten as serious as they did if they had attended the medical appointments they were supposed to, and their doctors would've spotted the early warning signs of those ailments and treated them right away. This forces the twins to confess what they did to their parents so their doctor and dentist don't lose their medical licenses for negligence, which not only gets them both scolded for their irresponsibility, but they end up having to do the appointments they were trying to avoid as themselves so both of them can get healthy again.
  - In "Yes-Man", Lincoln teaches his sisters how to get money from their parents. But when he finally asks them for money so he can purchase tickets for a SMOOCH concert, they're all out. His sisters do overhear that they caused him to miss out on something he really wanted to do, and make it up to him by staging a concert where they sing a song called "The Best Dang Brother Anywhere Around", and even manage to get SMOOCH themselves to show up.

In the Mighty Max episode "Cyberskull II: The Next Level", Cyberskull tried to steal all the Earth's electrical power and use it to activate a giant robotic shell for him to inhabit. When Max succeeds in bringing down Cyberskull's robotic shell, Cyberskull attempts to retreat into cyberspace, only for Max to point out to the villain that stealing all of the Earth's electrical power also shut down all computer networks, so there was no cyberspace for Cyberskull to escape to.
Mighty Mouse:
- The 1961 cartoon "Cat Alarm" has the underground cats staging an emergency news bulletin that the Cheeseville Dam has burst, sending Mighty Mouse into town and ushering the mice population out of the city. The cats send the mice into a "shelter" (actually their hideout), but they did not count on Mighty Mouse rushing to save the dam and seeing that it was still intact. Cue face-off with and beatdown of the cats.
- Another instance of failure to think things through happens in Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures in the episode "Heroes and Zeroes", where the villain Big Murray attempts to steal all the numbers in Mouseville and hold them for ransom. The problem with this scheme is that without numbers, no one is able to tell if they have enough money to pay Big Murray's ransom.
Molly of Denali: In "A Splash Of Mink", Molly and Trini get sprayed by a mink. In order to figure out how to get the smell off, they consult the internet and find an article by an "expert" who claims that tomato juice gets rid of the smell. They don't bother to check if the article is reliable or not. Luckily, Grandpa Nat teaches them that tomato juice doesn't really get rid of bad smells.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "Bridle Gossip", Applejack, who has been mysteriously shrunken, catches Apple Bloom going off into the Everfree Forest in search of the shaman Zecora to get a cure. She tags along by hiding in her mane which seems to work until she demands for her sister to turn around (every other character is under the false assumption that Zecora was the cause of Applejack's, and everyone else's, curse). Apple Bloom then leaves her on a branch and in response, Applejack threatens to tell Big Macintosh on her. She then realizes that, since she's only a few inches high, she has no safe way to make it back to town. For that matter, it's hard to imagine what telling the most easy-going and level-headed character in the show was supposed to accomplish anyway.
- Applejack has another in "The Best Night Ever". She brings her home cooking to a high-society event to try and raise money for Sweet Apple Acres, despite the gala naturally having free food for the attendees, and the "hoity-toity types" that attend these events being unlikely to buy such food anyway. She realizes this only as the Gala winds up.
- Celestia's plan in the Season 4 fin ale fails at every step. Send Discord to capture Tirek? They become allies because the former was Reformed, but Rejected. Transfer all the alicorn magic to Twilight? She trades it for hostages. Prevent Tirek from knowing about Twilight? There's a giant stained glass window with her image in the throne room. (Not to mention that Discord could tell him about her since 'he' knows about Twilight's ascension.) Tell Twilight not to let her friends in on the plan for their own protection? They immediately suspect that something's wrong, and get captured by Discord soon afterward. The only way Twilight was able to win was by unlocking the Harmony Box, and it was Discord, not Celestia, who told her how to open it.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games and Crystal Prep's Principal Abacus Finch's plan to win the titular games. Blackmailing the very shy and insecure Twilight Sparkle of that world into competing in the games. Then, upon finding out that Twilight has been unintentionally collecting the lingering Equestia magic with a magic amulet, pressuring her to use it to win the games. What could go wrong? Well two things actually. 1) The contest deals in both academic studies and physical challenge. So while Twilight passed the first one, no problem, and give her school an early lead, she's near useless during the second event because she's not an athlete in the slightest. and 2) Oh, how about Twilight losing all control of the magic, being transformed into a force of evil that's willing to destroy the universe!
  - At the end, when Cinch threatens to bring accusations of CHS cheating to the school board, it's pointed out that, given that the basis of the accusation is "they used magic", there's no way they'll believe her.
- Later Starlight becomes one of the main characters and we find out it's chronic and has been her whole life. Whenever she has a problem, she tends to immediately go with what she assumes will be the quick and easy solution (usually magical in nature), only to realize too late it only exacerbates the problem.
- In "Parental Glideance", Scootaloo needs to get up to Cloudsdale, the city of the pegasi, but can't fly up herself because of her weak wings. So she has her friends help her set up a giant slingshot to fling her up there. She insists that it's the only way, but Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom list off half a dozen easier and safer ways. Just as Scootaloo starts to agree with them, the slingshot snaps and flings her up to Cloudsdale.
- In "The Mean 6", Queen Chrysalis creates evil duplicates of the heroes in order to use the Elements of Harmony as a weapon. She doesn't know where the Tree of Harmony is, doesn't know how the Elements work, and doesn't realize that the duplicates are only loyal to themselves. As an added addition, she didn't know the Elements were powered by friendship, which is something the real ponies possess; the instant the Elements immediately recognize the clones are not their true bearers (when they acted the opposite of what element they represent), the Tree immediately destroys them to protect itself.
- Discord's main plan throughout season 9 is to take the guise of Grogar, the "creator" of all the dark creatures of Equestria, summon Chrysalis, Tirek, Cozy Glow and Sombra to work together, and have the Mane 6 defeat them as a means of boosting Twilight's confidence when it comes time for her to take Celestia and Luna's place as the main princess of Canterlot. While the situation with Sombra did somewhat work out (they beat him on their own without barely any need for his help) it also led to the destruction of the Elements of Harmony. What's more, Discord was confident he could keep the others in line till time for his plan to enact. However, as a trust building exercise, he sends the three to look for Grogar's bell, a source of immense power, and expected them to bring it back. Naturally, with three power-hungry villains working together, of course they would want said power for themselves. So they lie about not finding it, find a book on how to control it and turn on Grogar, exposing Discord in the process. This in turn ends up nearly leading to Equestria's destruction since three villains the heroines barely defeated in the past are now superpowered and they don't have their usual tool to wield against them.

The New Batman Adventures episode "Joker's Millions" has the Joker getting an Unexpected Inheritance from a dead rival. Except that most of it was fake as laid out by King Barlowe in a Video Will. Joker should have examined the money well before splurging on it. Being the Sore Loser that he is, Joker shoots the Spiteful Will in anger, not wanting to get jailed for tax evasion or worse, be humiliated for admitting that a dead man conned him.
- Joker also didn't think of how his henchwoman Harley might react to being replaced with another henchwoman.

The Owl House
- This is Luz's Fatal Flaw. She tends to think only about the immediate situation, if she thinks about it at all. As such, Luz can be very rash and impulsive when she gets angry.
  - Due to her impulsivity and her tendency of acting like she's a typical story protagonist, Luz ends up making lots of hasty decisions, like challenging Amity to a witch's duel despite only knowing one non-offensive spell, or challenging Boscha to a grudgby match despite never playing the game before or even knowing how it's played.
  - Luz effectively ran away from her mom and her normal human life to live in the far more interesting Boiling Isles, without considering that the summer camp she was supposed to go to might notice her absence. Luz does text her mom under the pretense that she's attending, but it's clear she hasn't thought about the situation beyond that. The only reason Camila didn't realize that Luz was missing is because Vee accidentally took her place mere minutes after she first arrived on the Boiling Isles.
  - This becomes a major problem for her in "Hunting Palismen" as not only does she struggle to connect with a palisman due to not having a long-term goal in mind, her improvidence causes her to get into plenty of trouble during said episode with the Golden Guard.
- Odalia Blight, Amity's mother, also tends to suffer from this problem—though in her case, it's largely due to her greed and arrogance blinding her to the potential consequences of her actions until it's too late.
  - In her first appearance in "Escaping Expulsion", her attempts to control Amity's life by expelling her friends and trying to kill Luz only serves to motivate Amity to lash out and rebel against her—then afterwards, she still intends to break her promise to Luz until her husband Alador explains why that'd be bad for their reputation. Also, she openly brags about Blight Industries forming its own army—while clearly not considering how the Isles' authoritarian Emperor might feel about that, which results in the Golden Guard paying them a visit at the end of the episode
  - In "For the Future", Odalia manages to talk her way into serving the Collector, hoping to manipulate him for her own ends. But having no idea how to handle a child—much less an omnipotent one—all her attempts fall flat as the Collector is only interested in his games, leaving her stuck as a glorified maid.

Phineas and Ferb:
- Doof falls into this a lot. Once he tried to drill a tunnel to China and forgot about the lava in the center of the Earth.
  - In the Second Dimension movie, Doof mentioned that he once tried to use an army of robots to conquer Danville, and put the self-destruct buttons on their feet so no one could reach them. You can guess what happened when they started walking...
- Phineas and Ferb themselves sometime fall into this by not considering the implications of their inventions.
  Phineas: A brain booster: in hindsight, not our best idea.
In an Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain short, Brain devises a plan to infiltrate Fort Knox and make off with all of its gold. The duo actually succeeds in getting into the vault, but Brain forgot about them having to carry the gold, and since they're mice, you can see where this is going.
- In general, Brain's plans to take over the world tend to be thwarted by something he failed to consider when they're not being thwarted by Pinky's stupidity. One example was when he planned to star alongside Pinky in a popular children's show and then go in suspended animation so he would awaken in a future where the show's fans would be fully-grown and accept him as their leader out of nostalgia. Unfortunately, the show's fans end up resenting Brain for unexpectedly leaving them so many years ago and promptly turn on him.
In the Pound Puppies (2010) episode "The Pupple's Court", Niblet brings in Lucky's owner Dot as a witness for Lucky's trial, not realizing that revealing Lucky had spoken to a human and revealed to her that dogs could talk would land Lucky in more trouble than he's in already. With that said though, Dot ends up causing the higher-ups to consider the negative consequences of not making exceptions to their rules.
The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
- Turned into a Running Gag with Mojo Jojo to the point where, when a spree of robberies occurred in Townsville, the girls quickly ruled him out as a suspect because it was too well thought out. Case in point: in the episode "Monkey See, Doggy Two," he re-uses his old Anubis Dog Head plan to turn the world into dogs under his control, but he doesn't turn the girls themselves into dogs because he believed that was the Fatal Flaw in the original plan. Instead, the still-human girls just beat the crap out of him, causing the plan to fail even worse than before. What makes this plan this trope even more is that Mojo Jojo did think this through — he solved the original problem by protecting his rear with a metal plate. He just thought hard enough that it circled back around into this trope when he opted to not turn the girls into dogs.
  - Another perfect example occurs in The Powerpuff Girls Movie. Mojo's plan was to make every ape at the Townsville Zoo as super-intelligent as he was and use them as his army to take over Townsville, and then the world. But once he announces his plan to rule as King of the planet of the apes, all of the super-intelligent apes promptly turn on him and announce that they will take over the world instead. For some reason, it never occurred to Mojo that an army of super-intelligent primates made just as smart as he was, would be smart enough to challenge his authority.
- In the episode "A Very Special Blossom," this applies to Blossom. She thought it would be a good idea to just steal the golf clubs, the expensive clubs that were displayed on the store's window. It's obvious that she didn't think that anyone (Bubbles, Buttercup, or the Professor) would ask how she was able to afford the expensive clubs when they are ridiculously high priced nor did she think that the owners of the store were going to find out that the clubs were stolen. This was what led to the Professor getting wrongfully jailed and Blossom having to do community service hours for punishment.
- In the episode "Bought and Scold", Princess Morbucks ends up bribing The Mayor into making her the Mayor of Townsville. Her first order is to make crime legal and crimefighting illegal to prevent the Powerpuff Girls from stopping her schemes. The girls are lost as to what to do before they realize that the crime being legal thing also applies to them and Princess. So, the Powerpuffs sneak into Princess' home and steal everything, forcing a panicky Princess to approach the girls to get her stuff back. They're able to trade her stuff back for getting the law repealed and the Mayor back into his position. When she finds out that they were the ones who stole her stuff, she demands their arrest before Blossom points out there's no Grandfather Clause to the law, thus they get away scot-free.

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja: In "The McHuggers Games", the Ninja stole a McHugger from Hannibal McFist before the product was available in stores. Knowing the Ninja, like every other highschooler in Norrisville, would be attracted to the publicity event created to advertise the McHuggers, Viceroy sent a robot to the event and programmed it to attack whoever was wearing McHuggers, thinking the Ninja would be the only one. He forgot that, given the publicity campaign's goal, the spokesman would be wearing one as well.
- In another episode, McFist made Viceroy make a giant robot that was just like an armadillo after watching a documentary. Armadillos have very poor eyesight, so until Randy showed up to destroy it, it was mostly flailing around blindly.
- McFist fall into this a lot. Randy and Howard can be a bit impulsive as well.
  - Case in point: One episode had Randy exposing McFist as the Corrupt Corporate Executive that he is. Unfortunately, this meant that, without having to constantly look good in front of the public, McFist was free to no longer hold back.
In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Kid-Kart Derby", Mitchell finds the plans for an ion drive, and puts it in his kid-kart, but it does not work because Mitchell didn't read farther down in the plans.
Robot Chicken:
- In one sketch, the mayor's assistant of Des Moines, Iowa, hires Godzilla to destroy seaside national landmarks (like the Hollywood sign, the Golden Gate Bridge, Sears Tower and the Statue of Liberty) so that Des Moines will get more tourists. When Godzilla receives his payment, he realizes he can't cash the check because he's a giant monster.
- A The Wizard of Oz-themed sketch involves the Wicked Witch of the West taking a shower. The water begins to melt her because she didn't count on that happening. As the Witch melts, she says "I'm such an idiot!".
Rugrats:
- In the episode "The Inside Story", the babies imagine shrinking down and traveling into Chuckie's stomach to take out a watermelon seed he accidentally swallowed. Angelica, however, reveals her intention to actually water the seed so it grows and causes Chuckie to explode. She succeeds and gloats evilly, until Tommy points out it's going to explode with her inside it.
- In "All Growed Up", which later led to the show's spinoff All Grown Up!, a pre-teen Tommy Pickles is coerced into taking his father's lucky medallion and giving it to Angelica so she can convince Samantha to reciprocate Chuckie's feelings for her. He tries to deceive his dad by replacing the missing medallion with a fake one made by wrapping gold paper over a dog treat, but the phony medallion ends up eaten by his dog Spike because he was able to smell the dog treat used to make the fake medallion, resulting in Stu freaking out over his medallion going missing.

In Samurai Jack, The Scotsman leads a massive army into battle against Aku, apparently having forgotten that none of their weapons are capable of harming him. Aku subsequently curbstomps their offensive with little effort.
The Scotsman: You know wha'? This was a bad idea!
- Also, Ashi washes off the ash covering her body, only to then remember that she doesn't have any actual clothes she can wear once the ash is gone. So she makes herself some clothes out of leaves.
Scooby-Doo:
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: "A Clue For Scooby-Doo" has Shaggy and Scooby underwater (with scuba gear, of course) trying to ward off the ghostly sea diver (the ghost of Captain Cutler) with a cannon on the deck of a sunken ship. Shaggy tries to ignite the cannon's fuse with a match, then forgets matches don't light underwater.
- Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: In "The Horrible Herd", Scooby and the gang hatch a plan to dispose of the eponymous herd by luring them into the ocean. It's only when the plan succeeds that the gang remembers that Professor Pericles used piranha DNA in the herd's creation, and thus, the monsters can swim. The episode ends with Shaggy and Velma dreading the long-term consequences.
A Filmation animated Shazam! story had Dr. Sivana use a machine that would prevent the Marvel Family from transforming into their Marvel forms by making them forget their magic word, "Shazam". However, despite being warned by Mr. Mind, he completely forgot that Freddy Freeman says "Captain Marvel" to trigger his change into Captain Marvel Jr. and the latter was able to smash the machine.
The Simpsons:
- In "Dog of Death":
  Homer: I've figured out an alternative to giving up my beer. Basically, we become a family of traveling acrobats!
  Marge: ...I don't think you thought this through.
- "Homer The Heretic" has a prime example as the episode opens in the middle of a roaring blizzard. It appears that Homer is the sensible one who chooses to stay home that day. Meanwhile, Marge and the kids go to church and it is miserable as hell (ironically). First, the sermon is super long, then the doors are frozen shut to the point that Groundskeeper Willie needs to use a blowtorch to defrost them, and Marge and the kids need to walk home because the car wouldn't start.
  - The tables are turned in the episode's third act when Homer is caught in a fire in his own house, but he is saved by Ned Flanders.
- In "Whacking Day", Apu holds a Kwik-E-Mart promotion for the eponymous holiday by promising a free Squishee for the first person to whack the snake hidden somewhere in the store. This inevitably leads to massive amounts of property destruction and damaged merchandise.
  Apu: I should have put more thought into my promotion.
- In "Bart Gets an Elephant", Bart gets a pet elephant when a radio contest offers one as a gag prize, providing two examples in one. The radio show never considered what would happen if someone actually did choose the gag prize and don't have an elephant to give him, and when they finally do find one, the family is completely unprepared to actually take care of an elephant.
- "Bart's Comet" offers a four-for-one:
  - The rocket launched from Fort Springfield misses the mark and takes out the only bridge out of Springfield, seemingly dooming the city.
  - There's only one bridge out of Springfield.
  - Rather than face certain death from the comet's collision, several people try their luck with the ruins of the bridge. Arnie Pye even lampshades it by calling it "a silent testament to the never-give-up and never think-things-out spirit of our citizens".
  - Artie says this while in a helicopter, suggesting that, bridge or no bridge, the people of Springfield could still (a few at a time) fly out of town.
- In “22 Short Films About Springfield”, it’s revealed that Moe has a secret room in his bar, where he can protect himself from criminals. While it does it’s job, it still provides other problems:
  1. What’s to stop the criminal from simply taking his money for themselves?
  2. Based on what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem very easy to get out.
  3. There isn’t much air, meaning that Moe can’t stay there for very long before passing out. Thankfully, he seems better by his next appearance.
- In "Lisa the Simpson", Homer gathers together all the relatives he can find to try to prove to Lisa that Grandpa's "Simpson gene" theory is absurd. Unfortunately, his plan only proves the opposite, because all the male family members are bigger losers than he is (one of them makes a living by walking in front of oncoming traffic and suing the drivers, for example). As Bart tells him, "You probably should have researched this first, eh Dad?" Fortunately, he inadvertently does manage to get Lisa her confidence back, as the female family members are very successful and intelligent; as one of them explains to Lisa, the Simpson gene is in the Y chromosome.
- In "Trash of the Titans", Homer runs for the position of Springfield's sanitation commissioner, but after being elected, he ends up spending his entire year's budget in one month because he didn't realize how expensive his campaign promises would actually be. Then he figures he'll solve everything by just forcing the garbage collectors to work without pay — until the mayor makes clear there's no way in hell they're going to stand for that. His solution to the budget crisis turns into this as well: He earns more than enough by selling the right for other cities to dump their garbage in the old mines underneath Springfield. Unfortunately, he didn't take into account what would happen when the mines were full, and ends up turning all of Springfield into a massive landfill to the point that the town has to relocate 5 miles up the road.
- In "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", Homer goes around slapping people with a glove and declaring he’s challenging them to a duel… until he slaps a Dixie-styled Southern man, who accepts and chooses pistols at dawn.
  Homer: Pistols at dawn?! Ohh, why did I have to slap someone who says “sir”?
- In "Tales From The Public Domain"'s retelling of the tale of Joan of Arc, when Joan (Lisa) is put on trial by the English for heresy in saying that God told her to lead the French to victory against the English, she asks God to appear as her witness, and God actually does appear at the trial, but an English soldier (Willie) at the trial says that God told him to lead the English to victory against the French, and God admits he had told both of them to lead their respective nations to victory, but never expected the two to ever meet.
  God: This is a little embarrassing. Goodbye, now!
  (God leaves the courtroom)
Skull Island (2023): After Irene is revealed to be Annie's long-lost mother, Annie gives her an earful for trying to kill Annie's Kaiju companion Dog in the process of getting Annie back, pointing out that Dog is the sole companionship Annie has had for the last ten years and is the creature who protected Annie from the other inhabitants of an Isle of Giant Horrors, so if he had died because of Irene's actions, any chance Irene had of gaining her long-lost daughter's trust and affection would have been completely torpedoed.
Sofia the First:
- In "Once Upon a Princess", Cedric tricks Sofia into using a sleep spell that'll make everyone around her sleep instead of the intended dance spell so she'll have to give him the Amulet of Avalor (which she refuses to take off due to a promise she made with the king) in exchange for the counter-spell. By the time he realizes he should stay out of the ballroom to avoid being affected by the spell, it's too late.
- In "When You Wish Upon a Well", Amber saw how the wishing well twisted her second wish (it turned Sofia into a cat, which is what Roland is allergic to) and yet doesn't expect any twists when she uses the third one to wish Sofia was no longer "a purple cat" (it turned her into a pink cat instead).
- In "Cedric Be Good", Cedric finally steals the Amulet of Avalor but, by putting it on, he subjects himself to its rules, which means he'll be cursed for doing bad deeds like stealing the amulet from its chosen bearer. The curse he receives as punishment for the theft indirectly causes the destruction of the potion that would enable Cedric to use the amulet's blessings without putting it on.
- In "Lord of the Rink", Prince Hugo takes up the enchanted ice-dancing class but wants to keep it a secret from his friends, who are on the hockey team with him and think ice-dancing is for girls, but he doesn't realize until Sofia points out that the ice-dancing class and hockey practice meet at the same time, meaning the other boys are sure to notice that Hugo isn't at hockey practice. To keep them from knowing about his participation in the ice-dancing class, Hugo fakes sick, and it works...until his father announces that he's the new assitant hockey coach, meaning Hugo has to be at hockey practice, and there's no way he can fake sick any longer to get out of it.
Sonic Boom:
- In "The Sidekick", Sonic fires Tails as a sidekick after he gets hurt and decides to hire a new one to replace him. The auditions utterly fail because not only does Tails comes back to audition for it again, Eggman decides to do so as well (the rules had a lot of Loophole Abuse). Sonic, in desperation, decides to put the two through a massively dangerous race that Eggman hijacks by bringing in Burnbot to attack. After Sonic rescues Tails again, Tails calls out Sonic for the whole thing, forcing Sonic to admit the plan had holes.
- In "Translate This", Tails charges into Eggman's base to rescue his Universal Translator. Unfortunately, he didn't quite think through how he was going to make Eggman give it back.
  Tails: Give me back my robot!
  Eggman: Or what?
  Tails: ...That's a fair question.
- In "New Year's Retribution", Eggman builds a slow-motion device to invoke Time Stands Still, putting Sonic at normal speed. However, everything else is slowed to a crawl — including Eggman's weapons. (Eggman, for some reason, is unaffected by it, which is of little comfort to him.)
In the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) episode "Hooked on Sonics", Antoine, in an attempt to win over Princess Sally, lures Robotnik with a Fake Defector role, promising him a Power Ring. He's able to lure Robotnik into a pit hole and vows to bring him in, only to learn too late that Robotnik has Jet Boots, allowing him to escape, capture Antoine and take possession of the Power Ring.
South Park:
- Cartman pretends to be retarded so he can win $1,000 in the Special Olympics in "Up the Down Steroid", thinking it would be easy to beat handicapped people. Handicapped or not, the participants spent time training for the events. Combining that with Cartman's own poor physical health, he winds up coming in dead last in every event he participates in.
  - He also forgot that he was made aware of the event by Jimmy and Timmy, handicapped people who know him and thus know he isn't handicapped. So when Cartman manages to get awarded anyway through pity, Jimmy confronts and exposes him.
  - Also, despite spending a lot of time trying to look convincing as a disabled person, he never thought once thought to ask himself how he’s "disabled". When he’s asked what his disability is, both he and his mother are completely at as loss for words, and the ruse is almost busted.
- "Summer Sucks": Fireworks are banned, and the Mayor attempts to glorify the use of ash snakes with a giant-sized one for the Fourth of July. It works and creates an enormous display of ash... and keeps going... and going. The now somewhat nervous Mayor asks the creator when it will stop, he explains that he has no idea since he never made one this big, leading him to quote this trope to the exasperated Mayor. He makes a quick calculation after the Mayor presses him, and estimates that the snake will probably burn out by November... of next year!
- There is also a variation in "Cartmanland" where Cartman inherits money from his grandma and buys a failing amusement park with the expectation of having the park all to himself. However, the plan blows up in his face because he needed to hire a security guard to keep Kyle from entering. To be able to afford this, Cartman needs to let at least a few people in at a price. Then he needs to let more people in to be able to afford to repair rides, serve food, etc. This continues until the park is bustling with activity and Cartman decides to sell the park back to the original owners at a loss. The sale also counts as this, since the IRS informs him that he owes money on inheritance taxes, and money to Kenny's family for his episodic death on one of the rides.
- Cartman has a pretty major one in “AWESOME-O.” In order to try to learn embarrassing secrets about Butters, he pretends to be the titular robot, who is supposed to be Butters’ very own servant. What Cartman doesn’t realize, is that being a robot is very different from being human. Since Butters knows an embarrassing secret about him and will tell the school if he does anything mean to him again, Cartman is forced to keep up the charade. This means that he can’t eat, and he can’t take off his hot robot costume, making him extremely sweaty. Hilarity Ensues, and eventually the military tries to dissect him. Of course, Butters eventually finds out the truth, and just to add insult to all of Cartman’s suffering, the entire school, as well as the military, learn all about his secret.
- In “Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina,” Mr. Garrison gets a sex change since he thinks that having female genitals and breasts will automatically make him just like a cisgender woman. He thinks that he’ll be automatically be accepted as a woman, he’ll get periods, he’ll get pregnant, etc. He learns the hard way, that, even in this universe, having female genitalia doesn’t automatically mean that your body is just like a cisgender woman’s. When Garrison realizes that he can’t get pregnant, he immediately demands that the doctors reverse to procedure, to which they tell him that they can’t. Eventually, in “Eek, A Penis,” Garrison uses stem cells to get his penis back. In Real Life, it takes years for people to transition from one gender to another, so that they can turn back if they realize it isn’t right for them. They must also have lived as the opposite gender for at least a year or two before they can get a sex change operation.
- In "Member Berries", after winning the Republican nomination, Mr Garrison suddenly realizes he is completely unfit to be president during his presidential campaign that he began in the previous season. For the next few episodes, he tries to sabotage his own presidential campaign, but only ends up unintentionally boosting his candidacy.
Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
- During the "The Alien Costume" three-parter, Eddie Brock witnesses Spider-Man fight Rhino to save John Jameson and a rare mineral, but when J. Jonah Jameson shows up, demanding to know what happened, Brock exploits Jonah's hatred of Spider-Man to lie and claim Spidey both attacked John and robbed the shuttle in order to get his job at the Daily Bugle back. In the next episode, it's clear that Eddie never considered the possibility that John would wake up in the hospital and confirm Spidey's story about the Rhino being the culprit; when that happens, all Eddie can do is make up feeble excuses and beg as Jonah fires him in a rage.
- During the X-Men: The Animated Series crossover, anti-mutant scientist Herbert Landon whips up a chemical meant to poison and kill mutants. When Spidey and Wolverine save Beast from the experiment, Landon is exposed to the chemical himself and is mutated into a grotesque monster; as Beast points out, Landon was so fixated on making a formula toxic to mutants that he never stopped to think what effect it would have on normal humans.
SpongeBob SquarePants:
- This trope is a key reason why Plankton's Evil Plans almost constantly fail; he repeatedly overlooks glaring flaws in them and fails to notice until it's too late to do anything about it. Most brilliantly and succinctly illustrated in "Plankton's Army", after Plankton successfully infiltrates the Krusty Krab:
  Krabs: Plankton! You knew I'd never distrust a dollar!
  Plankton: That's right, Krabs! Now hand over the Krabby Patty secret formula!
  [Beat]
  Krabs: ...or what?
  Plankton: I don't know. I never thought I'd get this far.
  Krabs: Well then, allow me to suggest your next move. [seizes Plankton and flushes him down the toilet]
- After Mr. Krabs bets SpongeBob's contract in a card game and loses to Plankton, he is transferred to the Chum Bucket and threatens to replant his brain in a robot chef lookalike if he does not cook any patties for him; it is to the point he shows him compassion and understanding until he becomes a mean and lazy Spoiled Brat and starts mouthing him off. This forces him to initiate the brain transplant, but he realizes too late this did not change the sponge's personality (or attitude), thus the robot chef is lazy as well. Karen tried to warn him earlier that such schemes never work, but he didn't listen.
- In "Fear of a Krabby Patty", Plankton tricks Mr. Krabs into opening the Krusty Krab for 24 hours so SpongeBob would collapse from exhaustion so he would have to tell him the formula; when that doesn't work, he sends in an order for SpongeBob to make 10,000 patties nonstop. Not only does this successfully tire the sponge out, it also causes him to somehow develop a fear of krabby patties, and Plankton realizes too soon that just because SpongeBob is afraid of krabby patties doesn't mean he wants to tell the formula as well, as he's too scared to see one patty or even think of them.
- In "The Inside Job", Plankton attempts to launch himself into Mr. Krabs' head to learn the formula from his mind, but he accidentally ends up in SpongeBob's instead. Wanting to try different measures, he first hooks up to the sponge's eyes so he can see everything he sees, but it wasn't long until Plankton realizes that just because he can see what SpongeBob sees doesn't mean SpongeBob can as well, because unplugging the eye socket renders SpongeBob completely blind and he ends up making a krabby patty out of kitchen ingredients. After that, Plankton then hooks up to the eardrum so he can hear the formula from Mr. Krabs, but doing so causes the world from SpongeBob's view to go completely mute, and he has to scream at Mr. Krabs nonstop because he cannot hear the formula himself.
- Mrs. Puff falls victim to this in the episode "No Free Rides". Sick and tired of having to go through SpongeBob's chaotic driving tests, she comes up with a bogus extra credit test so she can just give him his driver's license and get him out of her classroom. It's only after she does so that it hits her that she has just given SpongeBob free reign to drive on public streets and wreak havoc there. The worst part is her comments upon realizing this implies this already happened once before and she had to move towns to avoid jail.
- Puff falls into it a second time during "Demolition Doofus." After SpongeBob's latest driving test failure leads to her inflation sac being ruptured, essentially ensuring she'll never puff again, Mrs. Puff enrolls him in a demolition derby hoping he'll be killed. However, she completely forgot two important things about him which in turn lead to SpongeBob surviving every blow and becoming the champion; firstly, he's a sea sponge, which are invunerable invertebrates, evidenced when the first opponent that gets knocked out is slingshot back against his soft body. It also didn't occur to her that since he Drives Like Crazy, he's an impossible target for the other contestants.
- In the episode "Good Neighbors", Squidward, after putting up with SpongeBob and Patrick's stupidity and antics for most of the episode when he just wants to enjoy his Sunday, installs a security system to keep them out for good, only for Sponge and Pat to just walk in right after Squidward installs it in his house in an attempt to give him an apology cake; Squidward failed to consider that just because he considers SpongeBob and Patrick a threat doesn't mean the security system would as well. Worse, Squidward gets angry and starts pounding on his own security system, which then considers him a threat and zaps him. And ultimately when the system ends up accidentally covered in the apology cake, it goes into a full rampage after kicking all three out of Squidward's own house.
- In "Krusty Towers", Mr. Krabs, after an expensive stay at a high-end hotel, gets the idea to turn the Krusty Krab into one, the titular Krusty Towers. However, the flaws in this plan are soon made clear; he expected anyone to just start treating his business as a hotel and everyone wanting a Krabby Patty needed to rent a room, when people would still expect the restaurant to be still there, so a guy who only went there for lunch didn't have time to get a room, and just left.
- Squidward falls into this a second time during the above episode; after getting fed up with dealing with Patrick's ridiculous demands, he quits and returns as a guest to milk the Krusty Towers' policy of "We shall never deny a guest, even the most ridiculous request" for all it's worth at Mr. Krabs' expense. An indoor pool at the top floor proves to be one demand too many on Squidward's part, and when Patrick performs a cannonball while using it, it collapses through the floor, causing a chain reaction that destroys the entire hotel until only the original Krusty Krab remains and lands everyone in the hospital, where Krabs concedes the Krusty Towers was a bad idea from the start. Not that it's going to stop him from turning the Krusty Krab into a hospital after receiving a hefty hospital bill, though...
- SpongeBob is hit with this in "SpongeGuard on Duty". He thought Larry the Lobster's duty as lifeguard was to just walk around the beach being cool and loved by all the beachgoers, which he enjoyed doing when on patrol with him. But it turns out being a lifeguard is more than just that, as it involves saving drowning beachgoers' lives, something SpongeBob, who can't swim, doesn't find that easy.
  SpongeBob: Oh, if I'd known beng a lifeguard meant guarding their lives, I would never have said "yes".
Star Trek: Lower Decks:
- In "No Small Parts", Peanut Hamper teleports herself off the ship while it's under attack — but doesn't think of setting a specific destination, leaving her stranded in deep space once the battle is over.
- In "Old Friends, New Planets", this is what does in Nick Locarno. In the previous episode, Mariner is kidnapped and its revealed that she was chosen because she was a Military Maverick, not realizing that she's actually a Broken Ace due to the death of her old friend Sito Jaxa and the Dominion War soon after. When given a chance to talk to the galaxy about Nova Fleet, she instead warns them away, steals the Genesis Device and goes on the run, giving the Cerritos time to mount a rescue. Furthermore, when Locarno catches up with Mariner and fights for possession of the Genesis Device before it detonates. Mariner is teleported away and Locarno gets the device and shuts it down... only to find out that it requires two bars of Latinum to deactivate, as it was a Ferengi-made Genesis Device. It goes off, taking Locarno with it.
Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Marco suspects that the school guidance counselor might be working for Star's demon ex-boyfriend, Tom. In hopes of tricking Tom into revealing himself, Marco goes back to the guidance counselor and lies about making out with Star. An enraged Tom reveals himself immediately. Marco has just enough time to start congratulating himself before he is dragged off to Tom's hell dimension for torture and execution. Whoops.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In "Deal No Deal", Trace Martez, having learned that the job her sister Rafa has gotten her involved with is to transport unrefined spice to the ruthless Pyke Syndicate, panics after Ahsoka Tano mentions that the Pykes might seize her starship and ejects the cargo into hyperspace. Despite their other disagreements, Ahsoka and Rafa immediately point out this was a terrible idea, as the loss of the spice means the three girls no longer have anything to pay the ruthless gangsters with.
Static Shock: Quite a few of these moments occur in the episode "Jimmy".
- Jimmy's father owns a gun for personal protection, not once thinking that his own son would steal it, let alone access it.
- Nick's friends stupidly decide to tackle Jimmy after he lowers the gun, resulting in him firing it and accidentally hitting Richie in the leg.
- Virgil himself admits that he could have avoided the situation by telling an adult as soon as Jimmy asked him if he would like to see his father's gun.
Strawberry Shortcake: The Brambleberry Fairy planted brambleberries around her house to defend it and whatever is in it from thieves, but failed to realise that she just made a delivery dead zone that way, which caused her to not get the invitation to see Princess Strawberry Rose being born.
This is the stock in trade of one in Steven Universe.
- In "Bubble Buddies", his plan to get him and Connie out of the bubble is to get hit by a roller coaster. Obviously if it works, they'll get run over, but Steven doesn't seem to realize that.
- In "Fusion Cuisine" he has to bring one of his adoptive alien mothers to a dinner with his best friend's family. Each of them has both positive and negative traits for the role — Garnet is cool but isn't good with people, Pearl is very motherly but finds eating repugnant, and Amethyst is fine with eating but is a goofball to the core. He thus concludes, having spent just a bit too long ass deep in magic, that the correct response is to get them to fuse together, meaning he shows up with a six-armed giantess and is bewildered at the concept that this may not be the most subtle.
- In "Nightmare Hospital", Connie wishes she had more time to practice sword training. Steven gives her Rose's sword, not once considering that Connie's parents may object to their daughter owning an actual sword, which becomes a plot point in a later episode.
- In "Made of Honor", Steven de-bubbles Bismuth to invite her to Ruby and Sapphire's wedding. However, he does so in the bubble room and when Bismuth sees the bubbled gems, she assumes that Rose poofed and bubbled them for disagreeing with her. This results in her releasing a corrupted Gem, which attacks her and Steven.
- Steven ends up pulling off a LOOONG game version of this in "Marble Madness." When the gang is faced with trying to repell a bombardment of scout robots sent by Homeworld, Steven suggest they just let one of them do what they were sent to do and deal with it once they know. This leads the gang into the depths of the abandoned Kindergarden where the robot's task is revealed to be giving the Homeworld technitian Peridot a direct communuication link into the Kindergarden's control room to work on...something. Rather than just assuming she's up to no good and finding a way to cut Peridot off from the Earth, Steven suggests they just ask her what she's doing and immediately exposes himself to Peridot and freely offers up information about the state of the Earth and a list of all his friends and family. Things go south however and when Peridot tries to squish Steven after she's finished probing him for information and the Gems are forced to expose themselves, making it know to Homeworld that Gems from the Crystal Gem movement still exist. Not only does this result in Peridot returning half a season later with backup in order to finish her mission and aprehend the rouge gems, but the fallout of handing over information on his friends and family comes home to roost two seasons later and results in the attempted abduction of all of Steven's loved ones and ultimately Steven having to turn himself in to Homeworld and face judgement for his mother's crimes, with one of his friends still managing to get caught in the crossfire.
- After Steven learns more about his mother, Rose Quartz, it turns out that almost every single major event was due to Rose not quite thinking out the consequences of her actions. Worse still she seems to have never had an ephiphany about this, leaving Steven to deal with the consequences of all of them. The worst of them all seems to be her order to Pearl to keep all of this a secret along with her former identity, an order that Pearl is physically incapable of disobeying even when she wanted to. Almost every single misunderstanding Pearl has in the series has stemmed directly from this order.
- A mounting pile of these kinds of decisions are what creates the greater conflict of Steven Universe: Future
On Super Friends, Lex Luthor works with Darkseid to steal the power of the Super Friends. Luthor then double-crosses Darkseid, declaring he's unstoppable with, among other things, the power of Superman. At first seeming to submit, Darkseid blasts Luthor with Kryptonite. As a weakened Luthor slumps, Darkseid gloats that Luthor never realized by taking Superman's powers, he would also inherit his main weakness.
In Sym-Bionic Titan, In order to contain a mutated and violent Ilana, Octus traps her inside the barrier that is his body. However, he failed to consider that it would allow her to attack his "head", and pretty much names the trope.

Tangled: The Series: In part one of the episode Cassandra's Revenge, Cassandra comes to Corona to steal the Demanitus Scroll. Said scroll is in an ancient language that only Varian can read and translate, as he learned the language and made a translator key. Before she can take it, Varian destroys it with acid, and then gleefully tells her that she'll never read the scroll because the only thing in existence that could translate it now is him. He quickly realizes his mistake, as Cassandra then knocks him out and kidnaps him.
Teen Titans Go!:
- "Puppets, Whaaaaat?" Robin, tired of his teammates not listening to him, makes a deal with the Puppet Wizard to "make the other Titans as easily manipulated as [Robin's] puppets." This turns all the other Titans into puppets. The one flaw in the plan? Robin is turned into a puppet too.
  Robin: Come on! You're puppets! You're supposed to do what I say!
  Raven: Uh, yeah, but you're a puppet too!
  Robin: Oh. Right. I guess I didn't think this through too well. Maybe this was a bad idea.
- The episode "Boys vs. Girls", Robin tries to break up Beast Boy and Cyborg's new respect for Raven and Starfire by infecting them with a disease named after the Cooties. He intends to have the two admit boys are better than girls if they want to be cured. His plan failed because, as they point out, they could just infect him to make him give the cure.
In the Thunder Cats 2011 episode "The Forest of Magi Oar," the young hero Lion-O begins to recognize and lampshade his own lack of forethought. When he uses his gauntlet's grappling hook to latch onto a retreating Giant Flyer Viragor, Lion-O has just enough time to realize "maybe this is a bad idea" before he gets violently dragged along for the ride. Shortly thereafter, he faces down the charging a Giant Flyer after tossing his weapons aside. Again, he muses, "probably another bad idea," seconds before it grabs him in its talons. The latter gamble pays off, since, on a hunch Lion-O is betting Viragor proves Dark Is Not Evil.
In the Thunderbirds Are Go episode Signals Part 1, the Hood's minion Havoc manages to steal Thunderbird 3, but in Signals Part 2, it turns out she did this out of impulsive opportunism without an actual plan to keep her acquisition, something the Hood calls her out on since he made the same mistake in the past.
In El Tigre Manny accidentally activated a giant robot Granpapi created. He explained the robot was supposed to be activated after his death so it could wreak havoc and enact his revenge over the whole city. When Manny asks how was he supposed to activate the robot after his death, Granpapi admits he didn't think about that.
In the premiere episode of Time Squad, the trio discover that instead of the cotton gin, Eli Whitney created an army of flesh-eating steampunk robots that have ravaged a town and bit the flesh of several villagers. When asked why he created such machines, Whitney says he wanted to create something to benefit mankind. When Otto asks what is the logic of how and why these robots would be beneficial, Whitney admits he has no idea and didn't think things through.
Total Drama
- Harolds revenge on Duncan in "Basic Straining" by rigging the votes against Courtney to have her eliminated becomes this once we see the fallout from his actions. First, he spends all of "Camp Haunt-ture" hiding from Courtney wanting revenge for her unfair elimination and second Duncan's bullying on him becomes more vicious the following season once he found out.
- Much like when Harold rigged the votes to eliminate Courtney in Island as revenge on Duncan for bullying him, Alejandro didn't really seem to think about the repercussions that would come with his deception in order to eliminate Heather in All-Stars as revenge for what happened in the finale of World Tour. After he succeeds in doing this, his gameplay strategy is severely hindered by how nobody is willing to become his ally or form an alliance with him, which ultimately becomes his final undoing in "The Obsta-Kill Kourse" when he's unable to convince anyone to believe him about Mal and is quickly eliminated in a very unsurprising 5-1 vote. Downplayed as, if he didn't go through with it, he would have been eliminated instead.
- Sky did not think to tell Dave that the reason that she cannot date him is that she has a boyfriend she plans to break up with back home and she wants to focus on winning the game right now. To her credit, when she and Dave were talking, she tried to explain that she does like him, but Dave interrupts her, saying they should see where things go, and before Sky can tell Dave she has a boyfriend, Chris announces the challenge. The next few episodes, Sky foolishly thinks that Dave knows that she does not want to date someone while they are in the game, while Dave tries to do different things to get closer to her and impress her. Finally, in episode "Hurl And Go Seek", Sky outright rejects Dave despite both of their feelings for each other and calls him out on not listening to her. But she still did not tell Dave she has a boyfriend she plans to break up with. This comes to head in the final challenge, where Dave was brought back as a helper for Sky. Sky kisses Dave to motivate him, telling him that she does really like him, and she just wants to focus on the challenges, because it's hard to team up with someone she wants to date. At first that works, and Dave is determined to win the challenge for her, but then Chris shows a clip from home that reveals Sky's boyfriend Keith. Even when Sky tries to explain that she plans to break up with Keith, Dave refuses to listen to her and turn against her.
In the Transformers: Animated episode "Sari, No One's Home", Sari gets trapped alone in the Autobot base with Mixmaster and Scrapper. Unable to contact the Autobot team (her cellphone was broken), she decks herself out with a helmet, roller blades, and a hockey stick to drive them out herself. As soon as the eight-year-old human attacks the two-story robot, her hockey stick breaks.
Sari: Okay. That's as far as my plan got.
Verminious Snaptrap, the leader of the evil organization D.O.O.M. from T.U.F.F. Puppy is a constant victim of this trope. Nearly all of his evil plans have some kind of flaw. Some, however, are just plain dumb; one example includes heating up the Corn Belt with a space laser to make and sell popcorn as high-priced movie theater snacks. Among all of the flaws with that plan, the biggest is that the laser will destroy the Earth in the process. The Chameleon calls him out on the absurdity of his plan, and it is even lampshaded by Snaptrap's henchmen that this is a common occurrence.
Chameleon: Wait a minute! This is your plan!? You do realize that the laser's going to blow up the planet, right?
Snaptrap: Okay, where are you going with this, Chameleon?
Chameleon: I am not going- I am already there! This is a crazy plan! You haven't thought this through at all!
Ollie, Francisco, and Larry hang their heads in shame
Ollie: (sighs) Welcome to D.O.O.M.

Villainous: Flug makes a security system around the building....without a way to turn it off on the outside.

Wacky Races: Every single time Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat. It's never enough that he is always miles ahead of every other racer, he not only has to stop to lay a trap, but also stays behind to see the payoff, which always puts him in last place. The most absurd example was the episode where he got stuck in the mud, and pulled out by a farmer with a donkey. He decides to buy the donkey, thinking that the farmer will no longer be able to pull the other racers out. Never mind that 1) almost half the racers have some gimmick that allows them to get out on their own, including a dragon that can dry it up completely, 2) the farmer obviously has several beasts of burden besides the one he sold and 3) Just what the heck will he do with a frickin' donkey?!
- 4) after Dastardly's first opponent (Penelope) crossed the mud (with help from the farmer), he actually waited until all others passed before trying to resume his racing.
- In answer to 3, he rode the donkey to the finish line because the donkey destroyed the Mean Machine.
- Lampshaded in the unaired pilot for Wacky Racers Forever, where after Muttley pointed out that they're close to the finish line, Dick pointed out that they're villains, and thus, have to cheat in the race.
Wakfu: In the third OVA, when Yugo realizes that his clashes against Ogrest are sending powerful quakes and shockwaves affecting the surroundings, he tries to minimize the damage by teleporting the entire Zinit nearly up to space to contain the damage... unfortunately, this severely weakens him, leaving the six Dragons free to gang up on Dally on their own, and the fragments of the floating Zinit still turn into meteors as they detatch from the mountain. And that's without even going in the fact that just by activating the Six Eliatrope Dofus ends up creating a whole race in the past, which he honestly had no way to foretell.
In We Bare Bears, this is a typical display of Ditzy Genius/Child Prodigy Chloe Park; she thought it was a good idea to lurk around an occupant bear cave or jump into an alligator's pen to feed it a sandwich. Granted, she is still just a naive child and hanging out with Manchild bears didn't help.
- In "Captain Craboo", while running from the police to protect the bears' titular pet crab, Panda ended up posting a recent photo of Craboo online without considering that the police might trace it to his phone to track them down. Apparently, the police have access to online public photos to track down criminals and Panda still thought it was a good idea to do so.
- In "Professor Lampwick", the bears try to get the titular professor to give Chloe a second chance on her science test... by kidnapping him, and this ended up risking themselves in going to prison. Fortunately, Lampwick has already been through this before with different students that he takes it in stride and lets the bears off the hook after Chloe successfully completes the redo on her test.
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner: The segment "There They Go-Go-Go!", the coyote's final attempt at getting the roadrunner involved having boulders fall on him. When they don't fall, Wile E. tries to make them fall by stomping on them and then poking them with a large stick underneath. It's only when pebbles start hitting his head does he finally realize what he's doing and even asks with a sign "IN HEAVEN'S NAME — WHAT AM I DOING?"
WordGirl: In the show's first episode, "Tobey or Consequences", Tobey fails to consider that his gameshow opponent WordGirl has Super-Speed, meaning that she can press the buzzer much faster than he can.

Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum: In the "Race Around the World" segments with Xavier and Berby, Xavier always chooses snazzy-looking modes of transportation without first considering that those modes of transportation might not be practical for a race (like the Wright Flyer) or that they might not work at all (like the Da Vinci Ornithopter).
Xiaolin Showdown:
- In "Time After Time Part 1", Omi wishes to use the Sands of Time to return to the past. Only, his older self took it when he returned to the future. So Omi uses an alternative, tried-and-true method that lets him effectively travel forward in time (freezing himself for a few decades) so that he may retrieve the Sands of Time from his older self. You may have spotted the flaw in this plan already: with Omi frozen, there was no Omi left to grow old. To be fair, though, he was probably hoping for a Stable Time Loop.
- Jack Spicer also runs into this problem a fair amount of the time. For example, in "Days Past", he and the heroes all decide the only reliable way to defeat the recently free Wuya would be to seal her in another puzzle box, but the only way to get one would be from Grand Master Dashi in the past. Jack happily reveals that he already has a time machine but never used it because he could only generate enough power to go back in time 2 seconds. The team then lends him a Shen Gong Wu that produces unlimited power letting him run the machine to its full potential and they happily send Omi back in time to get a new puzzle box. It's only after he's gone that Omi realizes that they never talked about how he's supposed to return to the present and Jack realizes that his machine doesn't even have that capability at all since it's only ever worked for 2 seconds before so he never needed to care about returning forward. He does mention he could probably get a solution working in a week or so, but then one of Wuya's Golems shows up and wrecks the time machine while he's talking.

Didnt Think This Through / Western Animation

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