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Epic Failure in western animation.

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    A-D 
  • The Addams Family (1992) had "The Day Gomez Failed", the plot of which had Gomez deliberately trying to fail, as he'd grown bored of succeeding. Every one of his attempts resulted in a success, causing him to get depressed until Morticia points out that he'd failed at failing, and thus still actually failed. Don't think too hard about that one.
  • The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
    • In "Battle of the Band", Jimmy, Carl and Sheen win 8th place in a talent show with a hastily improvised act. The talent show only had seven acts.
    • In another episode, it's shown Jimmy is incapable of being creative when it comes to writing and art as all his creations are boring and laughably bad. Except for his opera, which the other characters refuse to think about, it was that bad.
  • In The Adventures of Puss in Boots, Puss is challenged by a Riddling Sphinx and manages to get each one even more absurdly wrong than the last, to the point where his answer to the last riddle is a lip popping sound. He then challenges her to come up with a riddle he can solve, but she fails at that.
    Sphinx: What is blue and is the sky?
    Puss: I know this one...
    Sphinx: It's right in the riddle! I just said it, it's the sky! All you have to do is say "Sky"! Say "Sky"!!
    Puss: Can I have a hint?
  • American Dad!:
    • In "Four Little Words", the four times Francine stated "I Told You So" to Stan: Stan somehow crashing a British double-decker bus into the garage, Stan accidentally killing two bungee-jumpers by wrapping the cord around their necks, Stan losing a game of chess to a rooster, and Stan setting the backyard pool on firewhile there was water in it.
    • In "Fart-Break Hotel", without Francine, Stan can't even dress himself.
    • In "Kung Pao Turkey", Stan tries to scare away his Chinese in-laws by dressing up as Godzilla... only to accidentally set himself on fire.
      Mah Mah Ling: (after dousing Stan out with plant water) Godzilla Japanese.
    • In "Seizure Suit Stanny", when Steve tries to jump off the high dive at the community pool, he ends up bouncing off and catapulting himself into the lifeguard tower, then landing beside the pool, flat on his back, and blacking out as he rolls over into the pool.
    • In "My Morning Straitjacket", Stan gets himself and Roger kicked off a tour bus for My Morning Jacket after he brags about the time he did drugs with "Tina Jivestrong and the black guy from the Beatles."
  • Fu Dog from American Dragon: Jake Long is a magical sentient and talking dog, but the one time he needed to communicate with a normal dog he needed an English/Dog dictionary... and still failed.
  • Archer may need its own page for this; an episode isn't over until compound failures merge and snowball to Epic. Also subverted by the times an apparent failure is actually a successfully engineered sabotage.
  • In the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Beach", we get to watch Azula fail royally hard when it comes to normal socializing. Such highlights are the Kuai Ball game which showcases her ruthlessness to a friendly game, her sharp pickup line at the party and screwing up landing a potential boyfriend by promising world domination (makes sense in context). She cannot turn off the commander lifestyle off the battlefield for the life of her.
  • In the Back at the Barnyard episode "Cowdyshack", Pig was so bad at golf that when he had to replace an injured Otis during a tournament, he managed to wipe out Otis's 300 stroke lead just trying to sink a single hole, when the ball was five inches away from the hole.
  • This was sometimes zig-zagged in the earliest Ben 10 comics; often, Ben would use the Omnitrix and mistakenly turn himself into an alien other than the one he had wanted. (For instance, in one case he thought the super-strong Fourarms was best for the crisis, but instead he got the super-smart (but physically weak) Grey Matter). Nevertheless, he was usually able to solve the problem with whatever he got.
  • Ben 10: Omniverse: Ben learns the hard way that LEGO does not make a good net.
  • Bob's Burgers:
    • In "Tina-Rannousaurus Wrecks", Bob and Tina have just finished shopping, and Bob offers Tina a chance to drive the car around the nearly-empty parking lot. Not only does Tina crash into the only other car in the entire lot, she actually steers away from it, then steers back toward it, several times, all while driving at a slow walking pace. And even worse, that just happened to be Jimmy Pesto's car.
    • This tends to be a trend in certain Gene-centric episodes. They start off with him being incredibly enthusiastic about trying something new and then he completely and utterly bombs within five minutes. In "O.T.: The Outside Toilet", when he's being entrusted with a flour sack baby, he not only drops the first one seconds after getting it, but he then dropped the replacement and the one he stole from another classmate. In "The Unnatural", where he was on a Little League team, during his very first turn at bat he got so freaked out when someone pitched the ball he purposefully swung his bat three times in a row to strike himself out. The rest of the game went so badly the parents of his teammates consoled their kids by flat out saying it was Gene's fault they lost.
  • In the Bojack Horseman episode "Free Churro", Bojack mentions this as how his father died. Bojack's dad, Butterscotch, wrote a book, convinced that the novel was a worldwide classic and his legacy. However, no one even bothered to review the book, it was so bad. As such, Butterscotch issued a Take That, Critics! in the form of a Duel to the Death with pistols at dawn. Some nut job eventually took Butterscotch up on the offer, but when Butterscotch began to walk away from his opponent, he turned to ask what the nutjob thought of the book. As he did, Butterscotch tripped over a tree root, bashed his head on a rock, and died instantly.
  • Central Park:
    • In "Hot Oven", Owen has trouble cooking his pizza right because his oven can't get hot enough. After using the forge to cook his pizza, he presents his perfect pizza to his family only for the pizza to slide off the pizza pan and land on the floor. He quickly puts the pizza back on the pan and presents it again to his family. It isn't a complete fail because despite it falling on the floor and looking awful, everyone loves the pizza.
    • In "Live It Up Tonight", when Molly is searching for Cole after he ran away from her because he thinks she's a vampire, she finds him stuck on a fence hanging upside down after he failed to climb over it. Molly points out he could have just walked around the fence, where the end of the fence is a few feet away from the spot where he was hanging from.
  • The Cuphead Show!: When Cuphead enters King Dice's game show and barely makes it through the song and trivia rounds (which King Dice deliberately made extremely easy), all he has to do is roll two dice. It literally doesn't matter what the dice roll: he would win the "surprise door" regardless of if he rolls a 2, 12, or anywhere in between. What happens when Cuphead rolls them? They fly off the pillars holding them, are flung a short distance, and then finally explode. Cuphead somehow lost a game rigged to always win. Of course, losing the game is good for Cuphead since the whole show is a con to have "winners" forfeit their souls to The Devil.
  • Danny Phantom: Sam's plan in "Girls' Night Out" was for her, Jazz, and Maddie to split up and take Kitty, Ember, and Spectra when their guard is down. They caught no one (the divas didn't even suspect anything) and experienced a Humiliation Conga: Sam got beat down by hypnotized champion Helga (who also ate her Fenton Thermos), Jazz got humiliated and literally trashed and Maddie was humiliated on a TV broadcast.
  • Darkwing Duck once tried to get rid of a fly by using explosives. His house became a mess and the fly survived.
  • Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: The Vulture Squadron is lucky that they're able to get their planes in the air, let alone botch up every operation in their efforts to stop Yankee Doodle Pigeon.
  • DC Super Hero Girls (2019): Mr. Chapin brings up in "#AngerManagement" that Kara Danvers is such a terrible student that she's somehow flunked homeroom.
    Mr. Chapin: How do you manage to fail a block of time that doesn't even give grades?
  • Dexter's Laboratory: The first Dad Cartoon involves Dexter's Dad attempting to clean his car on Saturday, only to break more and more of it as the short goes on, and eventually growing so frustrated by this he just shoves the wrecked car off a cliff in a rage. That's bad enough, but then it's shown that there are dozens of cars down there, implying he's done this every Saturday for MONTHS.
  • The Dilbert cartoon provides the trope image for Pointy-Haired Boss, featuring the Trope Namer losing a game of chess to a pineapple.
    PHB: Stupid fruit! ...Best three out of five?
  • Parodied in Doug where the title character imagines himself failing the English test with a negative 60, making him "The Stupidest Boy in the World".
  • Glomgold of DuckTales (2017) fails so badly at golf that he's surprised that taking a perfectly normal swing didn't set him on fire. He's no better at cheating; during the coin toss, he very noticeably switches the regular coin for a double-headed one, then calls tails.

    E-L 
  • Ed, Edd n Eddy has several examples, from both the Eds and the Kids:
    • Jimmy attempts to remove a quarter from the ground with an eyelash curler. We don't see just what happens, but moments later he's driven away in an ambulance.
      Kevin: [laughing] Eyelashes ain't the only thing that thing curls!
    • "Oath to an Ed" has the Eds fail at increasingly simple Urban Ranger merit badges, which culminates in them being unable to change a toilet paper roll.
    • In Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, Ed is "driving" the car from Eddy's brother's room through the desert. Just as Eddy remarks "From here on out, it's nothing but smooth sailing!", Ed runs into a huge rock that's the only obstacle for miles around, totaling the car.
      Eddy: Way to go, Lummox! The only rock for miles, and you had to hit it!
  • The Fairly OddParents!:
    • In "Totally Spaced Out", while fighting Timmy in a duel, Mark turns his Powered Armor into a large cannon bigger than a house, aims it point-blank at Timmy, and fires... and ends up vaporizing everything except Timmynote .
      Mark: Whoa... I missed.
    • In "Foul Balled", we get an example of how terrible a baseball player Chester is. One time when went up to bat, he ended up getting nine innings worth of outs with one swing.
    • "Information Stupor Highway" has Mr. Crocker attempt to upload his recording of Cosmo and Wanda to the Internet, only for the loading bar to somehow go backwards.
      Computer: -1%.
      Crocker: Drat!
    • In "Fairy Fairy Quite Contrary", Timmy needs to distract an adult so Cosmo and Wanda can put out a fire. He tries doing a card trick, and ends up tossing every card into the fire, causing it to grow.
    • In "Pipe Down!", Timmy is so terrible at charades he loses in just 1.25 seconds.
      Timmy’s Dad: You are the worse charades player ever
      Mr. Dinkelburg: (leaving with Dad’s trophies) Thanks for the trophies, Turner!
      Timmy’s Dad (flaps his arms) This is not a bulldozer. (Prances across the screen) This is not a fudgcicle! (Rows an invisible boat in the other direction) And how is this Ghostbusters II?!
    • "Invasion of the Dads" is full of this. Mr. Turner causing a flood while trying to fix the plumbing seems reasonable, right? Well, he ended up causing a flood every time he used a monkey wrench, even when there was no water involved. It even happened when all he did was open the door.
  • In one episode of Garfield and Friends, Garfield shows slides of a vacation Jon took him and Odie on a year ago. The first day had them entering a long tunnel with it taking a whole day to reach the other end, and Garfield having no idea how Jon got lost in there. Not only that, but while trying to find the offramp to Orlando, Jon somehow drove to Antarctica.
  • Green Eggs and Ham:
    • Pretty much all of Guy's inventions violently explode. Even very simple ones like a device made from two chopsticks, an egg beater, and a pair of gloves.
    • Gluntz tries to conquer a Green Eggs and Ham Mega Meal Challenge, but fails to even skim its topmost layer.
  • The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
    • In "Runaway Pants", Billy is shown to be so hilariously out of shape that when he tries to join Irwin and Nergal Jr.'s race to the bus stop, he becomes exhausted taking a small leap forward and falls over, saying that his legs and lungs hurt. Later during gym class, he has extreme difficulty doing a single crunch.
    • In "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?", Billy is described as being so impossibly dumb that he took an IQ test and his final score was -5. The same test was given to a shovel and two candy bracelets, and they each scored a +17.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: In "Cobra's Candidate", a candidate for mayor is exposed by the Joes as a puppet of the evil organization Cobra, who were planning to put their goals into law. As a result, he goes from a commanding lead to losing in a landslide with only two votes out of 2.1 million, both of which turn out to be from Cobra operatives. Not even his own family was willing to vote for him.
  • Mentioned in the first season finale of G.I. Joe: Renegades when Mindbender's Bio-Viper is destroyed in an experiment he was sure would work.
    Destro: I believe the term is EPIC FAIL.
  • Jellystone!: At the beginning of "Baby Shenanigans", Doggie Daddy tries to juggle cooking pancakes, doing his taxes, washing the dishes, and playing with Augie all at the same time. First, his pancakes burn and catch fire, then his computer short-circuits and catches fire, then the dishes in the sink, which is filled with water, catch fire.
  • In The Jetsons, George and Jane once left their kids home alone for an extended period of time and Judy tried to serve ice cream. She burned it. She didn't melt the ice cream, she burned it without melting it.
  • An episode of Johnny Bravo has Johnny entering a cooking contest. He came in 16th place, in a contest that only had 12 contestants. The cake that he made was made of random junk he pulled out of their pockets.
  • In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Ultimatum", the Ultimen discover their true origins and as a result, the minds of four of the five members break and they go on a rampage. During the resulting fight with the Justice League, joined by Long Shadow (the only member of the Ultimen to not go rogue), an expy duo of the Wonder Twins, Downpour and Shifter, tried to defeat AQUAMAN by turning into: A) water, in an attempt at drowning Aquaman; and B) a land-based dinosaur that could barely move in the water, let alone breathe in it. Aquaman's response: "King of the Seas, remember?"
  • In the Beach Episode of Kaeloo, Stumpy failing to catch a volleyball actually counts as an epic fail.
  • At the end of Kim Possible episode "Ron Millionaire", where Ron ended up becoming a multi-millionaire (and gaining a personality change to match), Dr. Drakken managed to create a lair with a large laser cannon from the funds he acquired from Ron. He then demonstrates the weapon's abilities by firing it at the moon, deflect on mirrors installed there and start his fiendish Evil Plan. Instead, it returns right back to the source and demolishes his own lair. Shego then tells him that it was a colossal waste of money.
    • On the other end, Ron also suffered from both this trope and Status Quo Is God; Dr. Drakken was able to steal literally every penny of Ron's ninety-nine-million dollar royalties fortune because...Ron kept all of it in his pants. Somehow.
  • A King of the Hill episode has Peggy doing the famous "Stick a flower in liquid nitrogen and watch it shatter" experiment, which goes off well...until she drops the flower on the floor and it doesn't break, after which, she tries bashing it against a desk and it still doesn't break. She then throws the rose at the window, which breaks the window but not the rose.
    • A different episode has Hank, Dale, and Bill being a pit-stop crew while Boomhauer is the racecar driver. Hank and Bill do their jobs, and Hank tells Dale to stand in one spot, not moving, and hold a bucket of sand. Both Bill and Dale somehow end up in the backseat. And Dale dropped the sand.
  • In The Legend of Korra, Bolin is told to bribe the judge for Tonraq's trial and given money to do so. He instead bribes two random people who were not even involved in the trial. Asami lampshades his incompetence in this case.
  • The Legend of Zelda cartoon from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! opened one episode with two pairs of Gannon's troops sneaking into Link's quarters to kill him as he lies in bed reading a book. As soon as they enter, one trips and accidentally fires his crossbow, killing one of his teammates. That teammate fires his crossbow as he's killed and kills another of his teammates. That other teammate does the same and the one he kills does that as well to the one who started the whole debacle. Link's still in bed with his book when the last one falls.
    Link: Boy, I'm good.
  • In The Lion Guard, Kion and the Lion Guard decide to remove the bees in the eland herd's way instead of directing the herd away. Unsurprisingly, they get chased by the bees, but Bunga isn't bothered, happily snacking on bees and honey.
  • Looney Tunes: Countless examples:
    • Wile E. Coyote was prone to epic failure, often in humorously spectacular fashion. Some of the more memorable ones included a dose of Chekhov's Faulty Booby-Trap.
      • None, however, was ever more famous than the catapult in "To Beep or Not to Beep" (which was repurposed from the proposed pilot The Adventures of the Road Runner), which fails not once, not twice, but an amazing six times in his latest attempt to flatten the Road Runner with a large boulder. The Coyote, determined to make the catapult a success, but is continually flattened as the catapult fails (and sometimes collapses) in physics-defying ways. When the contraption jams on the sixth try, Wile E. tries like heck to get it unjammed before the arm finally releases the boulder. Wile E. doesn't notice that he's hurtling through the air atop a flying boulder until it's too late, and is crushed against another rock formation, dashed into high-voltage power lines, and sent flying back to the catapult, which throws him to the ground right below the point where the boulder lands. Viewers then see the reason for the epic fail: the manufacturer's nameplate, which reads that the catapult was made by the "Road-Runner Manufacturing Company; Phoenix * Taos * Santa Fe * Flagstaff."
    • Marvin the Martian does this often too. In "Mad as a Mars Hare", he first aims a disintegration pistol at Bugs but Bugs pulls his helmet visor down, takes the pistol while Marvin tries to pull the visor back up and disintegrates Marvin (requiring him to "reintegrate" himself, ranting that "Being disintegrated makes me very angry!"). Then he tries to use a weapon on Bugs that will, in theory, evolve Bugs into a higher form that will make him subservient. Unfortunately, Marvin gets the weapon's setting backwards, turning Bugs into a super-strong Neanderthal rabbit. It ends painfully for Marvin.
    • Chuck Jones came to define Daffy Duck in these terms, especially by casting him in archetypal 'movie hero' roles, and having him fail spectacularly and worse still, constantly being overshadowed by meek sidekick Porky. Then there's the cartoons where he tries engaging in a battle of wits with Bugs Bunny...
  • The Looney Tunes Show:
    • In "To Bowl or Not to Bowl", Daffy is tied with the opposing team in a bowling tournament and is two pins away from winning. He first gets a gutter ball, is given a free turn due to a technicality, then gets another gutter ball. He's so mortified by his embarrassing loss that he stands motionless in the bowling alley all night.
    • In "Working Duck", Daffy is hired to be a muffin man at Enormocorp, the fifth-largest conglomerate in the world. The CEO, Foghorn Leghorn, is so impressed with Daffy that he makes Daffy his successor. On his first day as CEO, Daffy makes one bad decision leading to the company going bankrupt, hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, and experts fearing the entire world economy could collapse.
    • In "The Shelf", when Bugs is awarded a Nobel Prize, he insists on personally installing a shelf to display it. The rest of the episode is him failing catastrophically at doing so because he has no idea how, and his status as The Ace gives him too much pride to have someone install it for him.
  • In The Loud House episode "Changing the Baby", Leni somehow gets trapped in Lily's crib, after entering her room to show her fashion magazines. The image of her trapped in Lily's crib has now become a Memetic Mutation.

    M-Z 
  • Mike Tyson Mysteries: Mike's attempt at making a dish in a cooking competition. He's given baby octopi, plantains, smoked kippers, and a can of cream of mushroom to work with, so he just puts all of them on a plate (including the unopened soup can) and blast chills it, while also somehow cutting himself and getting his blood on it.
  • Miraculous Ladybug: Hawkmoth tries to akumatize Adrien's bodyguard—but at the last second he cheers up, rendering him useless for akumatization. The butterfly dodges past him and corrupts a baby. Hawkmoth is completely gobsmacked, but tries to salvage the situation since a giant baby is at least theoretically a threat. The baby, however, completely ignores Hawkmoth and just wanders around looking for candy, because, y'know, baby.
  • OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: In the premiere episode "Let's Be Heroes!", K.O. goes to confront Darrell, the Boxmore robot attacking Lakewood Plaza Turbo, with all the hero gear he bought at Gar's Bodega. K.O. and Darrell face off in an epic battle, but then A Real Magic Skeleton wakes K.O. up and tells him what really happened. Darrell beat him handily because K.O.'s gear backfired on him; his fire gauntlets went off in his face when he tried to block Darrell's punch, then K.O. tripped over his own beach-towel cape and fell over into his lightning nachos, which shocked him and sent him flying into a wall.
  • The Patrick Star Show: In "Pat-a-thon", Patrick profits nothing from his telethon. He ends up losing a cent somehow.
  • When Hans the puffin duels Skipper in The Penguins of Madagascar, he attempts to taunt him:
    Hans: You should know that I kissed your sister! On the lips!
    Skipper: I don't have a sister. And if I did, she wouldn't have lips.
    Hans: ...Really? Then who did I kiss?
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • In "No More Bunny Business", when Perry the Platypus doesn't show up to thwart his evil scheme, Dr. Doofenshmirtz sets up a potted plant hanging from a rope as his new arch-nemesis. Doofenshmirtz somehow loses to "Planty the Potted Plant".
    • In "Bad Hair Day", Candace ended up looking like this after trying to follow a very simple hair care video that just consisted of brushing and flipping one's hair back.
    • Doofenshmirtz comments on it in "Sci-Fi Pie Fly," after his attempt to cheat at a pizza-dough spinning contest results in his sucking the whole festival into his sleeves, ending with a huge explosion:
      Doof: That failure was spectacular even for me!
    • Doof-1 had at least two instances of the trope in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension:
      • When he tried to take over the Tri-State Area with an army of robots, he installed self-destruction buttons at the soles of their feet.
      • Knowing Phineas and Ferb have a pet platypus named Perry and seeing Perry fighting "so good" to protect them from Perry the Platyborg didn't ring any bells for him. Perry still needed to put on his fedora hat for Doof-1 to recognize him.
    • In school, Doofenshmirtz once lost to a baking soda volcano in a poetry contest.
    • And of course, no one can forget the legendary moment when Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s mother somehow managed to not show up for her son’s very birth.
  • From Regular Show:
    Rigby: How do you score negative points? How is that even possible?!
    • In "Benson Be Gone", Benson tells Mordecai and Rigby to park Mr. Maellard's limo but they end up crashing it into the park house... on the second floor.
      Mordecai: Hey, Benson... remember when I told you I could drive stick? Well, turns out I'm a little rusty.
  • Richard Scarry's Best Learning Songs Video Ever: After Freddie Fox finishes his song about numbers, he slips on a Banana Peel and grabs onto the curtain, accidentally pulling it down and ruining the stage. This results in him and some of the other kids getting buried under the curtain.
    Huckle Cat: Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing technical difficulties. Please take a fifteen-minute intermission.
  • In the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Gutter Balls", Ed Bighead has a flashback to his final frame on a bowling tournament. With the scores tied, he only needs one pin to win, and he deliberately wasted his first roll on a gutter ball. He throws the second ball, but instead of rolling down the lane, it flies off and ricochets all over the place, demolishing the alley. At the end, the only thing left standing are Ed's pins, completely untouched. He was never able to live it down.
  • Rocky and Bullwinkle. Early in NBC's run of the show, a live-action Bullwinkle puppet would introduce segments. In one infamous incident, Bullwinkle closed the show by telling the kids at home to remove the turning knobs off their TV sets so they'll be sure to see him next week. NBC received over 20,000 complaints from parents because their children followed Bullwinkle's suggestion, which caused Bullwinkle to advise the kids to glue the knobs back on. The puppet wouldn't be around much longer after that.
  • In Samurai Jack, Aku at one point sends an entire robot army after Jack, and after just one of them trips, the entire army is destroyed. Aku's expression sells it.
  • Scooby-Doo
    • In Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Freako the ghost pokes his head through a keyhole so he can scare Farquaad on the other side of the door. Unfortunately, he gets stuck, so his brothers Shrieko and Meeko try to pull him out. They end up pulling the door off of its hinges and end up plastered against the opposite wall. As Shaggy put it, "Like, you Boo Brothers give failure a bad name." Take in mind that earlier they boasted about their ability to go through walls.
    • In the Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! episode "Pole to Pole", Robi plays a racing game with Shaggy and Scooby and gets 33rd place even though the game only has 30 racers.
  • The Sheep in the Big City episode "Here Goes Mutton" features a very unsuccessful football team called the Big City Fuzzy Little Bunnies, who are said to have lost 14 out of 13 games because they somehow lost one game twice. When they later compete against the Tri-state Evil Killer Death Team, the score ends up reading 83 for the opposing team and -5 for the Big City Fuzzy Little Bunnies.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
      • In the episode, "Zoobotnik", Robotnik orders Scratch and Grounder to go downstairs and open the door.
        Robotnik: Think you can manage that without falling on your faces?
        Scratch: No problem.
        Grounder: Can do.
        [they proceed to do just that]
      • In "Sonic is Running", Sonic and Robotnik run for President of Mobius. When Robotnik's attempts to improve his image don't pan out, he resorts to using Mass Hypnosis to make everyone vote for him, but when that fails, Sonic wins the election by 19 million votes while Robotnik gets only 1; which was him voting for himself, as his own mother (who made him run for president in the first place) voted against him and Scratch and Grounder simply forgot to vote.
      • On the hero side of the scale, another episode had Sonic become the sheriff of a western town and forced into a gun duel. When training for it, Sonic and Tails find out that Sonic is a poor shot. How bad? He can't shoot the broadside of a barn when he's standing five feet to it.
    • Sonic Boom:
      • In a preview, Eggman makes a comment about how prepared he is before tapping commands into his wrist-mounted console. His entire base explodes.
        Eggman: Lucky thing I always have a Plan B. [destroys base] No....!
        [switches to Orbot and Cubot at Sonic's place]
        Orbot: We're still working out a few kinks.
      • During "Into the Wilderness", Knuckles has trouble starting a fire, and Sonic decides to run laps around it to fix the problem. His shoes catch fire instead. Also, Amy's attempt to put a tent together using a flintstone Sticks left for her also caused the tent to burn to the ground.
      • Dave the Intern manages this while working at Amy's restaurant:
        Eggman: The soup is cold and the salad is hot. How is that even possible?!
  • South Park
    • During a tap contest in "You Got F'd in the A", Butters loses one of his shoes onstage, unleashing Disaster Dominoes that end up destroying the stage and killing eight audience members, traumatizing himnote . After getting over it and entering another contest, this becomes an epic win as the same thing happens, this time killing his opponents (and retraumatizing him).
    • In "Volcano", it turns out the "duck and cover" method of avoiding lava does not work after all, as three hapless men find out the hard way.
    • In "Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride", we see Cartman finishing a report for school on how Simon & Simon were not actually brothers — only on television. Unfortunately, the assignment was on Asian cultures.
    • In "Tonsil Trouble", the doctors in charge of Cartman's tonsillectomy were so inept that they gave him AIDS. It even was referred to as a "one-in-a-billion" fluke In-Universe.
  • In Spliced, Peri manages this several times in "Bowled Over" while attempting to find out what he's good at. First he tries making a sandwich, but instead he makes a large, sandwich-like insect. Then he tries painting Joe's house, which randomly sets it on fire. Then he tries fixing Patricia's car, but ends up giving it sentience instead. Finally he ends the cycle when he finds out he's a great bowler.
  • Star Trek: Lower Decks:
    • In "Envoys", when Ensign Sam Rutherford undergoes an advanced command training simulation, it's a total disaster.
      Computer: Ship destroyed. Casualties: 105%.
      Rutherford: Wait, how did I kill more than the whole crew?!
    • Soon after, his handling of a basic command simulation (which is supposed to be much easier) is apparently the worst result in Starfleet.
      Holographic Lieutenant: All the ship's children have been ejected into space!
      Rutherford: All those kids...
      Commander Ransom: Freeze program. In thousands of simulations, that's literally never happened before.
    • "Veritas" has the Lower Deckers brought before what appears to be a tribunal, and nearly boiled alive in a jar of eels. At the episode's end, it turns out there's a serious case of Poor Communication Kills going on, and they're actually supposed to be at a party, but since no-one told them...
      Captain Freeman: Today you four almost managed to get yourselves killed... at a thank you dinner.
    • "I, Excretus": The Cerritos crew are put into what turned out to be severely rigged training drills, so there's a lot of these going around. Mariner's final test has her put in a Western, where she's immediately penalized for not taking a horse. Having taken horse-riding courses, she figures this will be easy. The horse throws her off and tramples her for good measure. Later on, the drill instructor admits that wasn't her. All Mariner.
    • Later on, the bridge crew and the lower decks are put into a shared simulation of busting the ship out of spacedock. Between bickering and Mariner still recovering from the disturbing images of one of her previous drills, all they accomplish is crashing the ship before they've got out of spacedock.
      Ransom: Wow. That's gotta be some kind of record.
      Shari: Actually, it is.
  • In the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episode "Lobster Claws", Ludo's minion Beard Deer manages to grab Star and awaits for Lobster Claws to grab Star's wand. Somehow, he completely misses Star and pulls off Beard Deer's left antler.
    • Later in the same episode, Marco tries to help Lobster Claws turn good with a number of simple tasks, all of which end in failure. Finally, he tries to have the monster help an old lady cross the street; Marco and Star turn away for all of three seconds to argue and Lobster Claws razes four city blocks and starts a massive fire.
  • Star Wars Rebels: In "Through Imperial Eyes", the rebels stage an operation to rescue The Mole, Kallus, from the Empire as they believe his cover may have been compromised. The thing is, they don't warn him that this is going to happen, and due to some unforeseen circumstances end up indirectly exposing said mole's cover to Thrawn.
    • In a milder example from the episode, Kanan gets himself stunned when he tries to mind trick Governor Pryce.
  • Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City: In "Huck's New Job", Huckleberry Pie is told by Bread Pudding that he can't perform his music at the Berryworks unless he has a food cart, so the girls let him try working at theirs. Unfortunately, Huck is so hopelessly incompetent that he flubs every job they give him; Lemon Meringue asks him for a wrench and he hands her a hammer, a screwdriver, and a rubber chicken, and he can't come up with any flavors for Blueberry Muffin's ice cream stand other than vanilla.
  • Superman: The Animated Series has an episode where Mr. Mxyzptlk tries to harass Superman. He is basically a Physical God, even compared to Supes, but he promises to return home for three months if he ever says or spells his name backwards. This episode consists of Superman as a prankster, constantly fooling Mxy into banishing himself. At one point, his totally hot wife tells him to simply kill Superman before he can say anything. Thus Mxy spends the next 3 months building a killer robot. He marches off, full of vigor. The moment he's gone, she starts counting down from five... too much credit; he's back by three. At the end of the episode, Mxy is tricked into spelling his name TWICE, backwards. In a row. Using heat exhaust from the kryptonite rocket he turned into to chase Superman across Metropolis. Superman goes straight into Smug Super territory as he mocks Mxy before banishing him for good.
    • One particular instance stands out as severely Epic Fail:
      [Superman, as Clark Kent, is shaving himself when Mxy shows up]
      Mxy: Your three months are up. And this time, you're not gonna cheat me out of my fun!
      Clark: Oh, it's you again, Mr. Kltpzyxm.
      Mxy: Not "Kltpzyxm!" Mxyzptlk! Now, the first thing I'm gonna do- Aw, nuts. [poof]
      [Clark continues shaving]
    • Not to mention when he tells Mxy that he'll meet him up on the roof just as soon as he's done proof-reading his latest story. Mxy refuses to let him stall and does so for him ... no points for guessing what all the typos spell out.
  • Taz-Mania:
    • In the episode "Deer Taz", when the black bear appears, Taz tries to attack the black bear with his usual attack, but the black bear is way too strong for Taz, and the attack epically fails.
    • In "Boys Just Wanna Have Fun", in one scene, Hugh, Taz's dad, tries to play a game (using a sponge football) with Taz and Jake, Taz's brother, but as soon as the painting of a woman appears, Hugh ends up running RIGHT INTO THE FLIPPING WALL!
    • In "Frights of Passage", in one scene, Francis X Bushlad epically fails when he says that he always triumphs, but ends up falling off a waterfall.
    • In "Hypnotazed", Bull tries to hypnotize Axel into thinking that he is like Taz, but Axel's eyes reflect the beam right back at Bull, causing epic fail to occur.
    • In the episode "Tazmanian Lullaby", Francis kept on slipping on the same banana peel.
  • In one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) episode, Michaelangelo manages to screw up cooking a pizza by leaving mechanical tools and gears as toppings.
  • In the Tom and Jerry cartoon, "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", Tom has finally had enough of Jerry and combines as many poisonous things into his milk to kill Jerry. Instead, it makes Jerry into an indestructible Super-Soldier more than capable of wiping the floor with him.
    • The Chuck Jones short "Bad Day at Cat Rock" features a recycling of the catapault gags from "To Beep or Not to Beep", only made more pathetic by the fact that Tom uses a makeshift teeter-totter out of an I-beam and a boulder instead of a catapault.
  • In what is most likely a Shout-Out to the infamous Ulong tribe of Survivor, Team Victory in Total Drama World Tour managed to win a grand total of zero elimination challenges and is completely wiped out before the season is even halfway over. The reason is not the unfitting name, but because of the Curse of the Mummified Dog DJ put on himself for his team. The only time they ever won or did not come in last place was in episodes 5 and 8, and even one of their wins was a non-elimination challenge so it technically doesn't count.
  • Transformers:
    • In the very first Transformers episode, Starscream shoots at the stasis locked Autobots... and revives them. Oops. He goes on to make a long, long career in Epic Fail after that.
      • In that same opening storyline, Starscream tries to shoot Megatron dead in front of his men. Twice. And fails both times. So pathetic is this attempt at treachery that, both times, Megs can't be bothered to kill him, opting to rub it in his face, land a non-fatal shot, and go about his day.
      • In the fourth episode, Spike and Bumblebee are spying on the Decepticons and learn that the 'Cons are building a space bridge to Cybertron. While attempting to flee with the information before the Decepticons realize they're there, Bumblebee somehow manages to accidentally throw himself into reverse and accidentally backs off a cliff.
    • In one episode of Beast Wars, Inferno, having long since suffered from Villain Decay, is told to rush the Maximal's base. So he does. And by "rush", we mean "run in screaming like an idiot, flailing his arms like he's epileptic, and not firing a single shot". The Maximal's reaction is to exchange awkward glances, shrug, and drop a big rock on him.
  • Trollhunters: In "Just Add Water," the kids are paired up and given bags of flour to treat as their babies. The very next day, all the bags except for one have been destroyed, and that one might have been a literal miracle. The teacher nearly cries over the entire class failing such a simple assignment, and says he hopes he's retired by the time their real children are in high school.
    Jim: There were some bumps along the way, but I think I did a good job. I might actually make a good father.
    Claire: Jim. You blew up our child.
  • In one Underdog cartoon, Simon Bar Sinister's plan to Take Over the World involved using a device called the Big Dipper to steal the Earth's water; it could drain the water from lakes, rivers, and even oceans, storing each in a small jar, which he planned to use to starve the world into submission. However, he had a few failures trying to perfect it. The first time, it froze the water solid. The second time, it turned the water into steam (making the fire department think his house was on fire). The third time was the biggest Epic Fail; it did the opposite, flooding his whole house. (His really bad excuse to the police, that it was his leaky faucet, made them suspicious, but they still couldn't arrest him). Unfortunately, his fourth attempt was a success. He may have been evil, but at least he was persistent.

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