Horrible Judges of Character in Western Animation.
- Even though Dylan of 101 Dalmatian Street fame is more mature and responsible than his stepsister Dolly, he is prone to befriending characters such as Bessie the Cornish Cow and Hunter De Vil without realizing their true intentions.
- Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers: King Spartos of Tarkon had a really bad habit of trusting advisers that told him what he wanted to hear, despite his daughter's objections and knowledge of the wider galaxy. It's only towards the end (and with the use of some Applied Phlebotinum from the Heart of Tarkon) that he's able to see his daughter and the Rangers are correct.
- American Dad!: The Smith family members have a terrible judgement of character towards Roger as seen in multiple episodes as one common plotline the show uses involves one member of the family giving Roger an opportunity for some scheme or business only for Roger to backstab them. Steve out of all the smith family members has the worst sense of judgement towards Roger, to trusting him constantly and getting screwed over for it again and again, showing that Steve does not learn his lesson and because of this repeats the mistake. In one episode l, Hayley and Jeff decide to not trust Roger when he hosts a burning man event in the backyard and when they think he using the event to harvest people’s organs, they are proven wrong when it’s revealed that Roger harvested his own organs to fund it.
- Sparky's mother on Atomic Betty. She tends to date supervillains a lot, even the show's Big Bad on one occasion.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- The Earth King unflinchingly trusts his slimy advisor Long Feng. It helps that he's voiced by Clancy Brown and has insinuated himself into the court since the King was a child, but the Earth Kingdom is pretty much a police state thanks to the King's blind trust.
- To the Earth King's credit, he does defy this trope in that he is willing to listen to evidence and openly states that he hopes the gang are lying because the implications of their statements (not just his advisor's betrayal, but being the head of state in a 100-year war and being the last person to hear that such a war is going on) are very troubling thoughts. And while the first offered piece of evidence (a bite mark on Long Feng's leg from Appa, despite the claim that he's never seen a Sky bison) doesn't flat out convince the Earth King, the King is willing to admit that the gang's story does have some leg to it.
- And then Zigzagged when the King expresses his grief over being the victim of this trope to the Kyoshi Warriors... who at this point have been infiltrated by Azula and her friends.
- Most people who trust Azula. This includes Zuko, who really should know better, but she's really good at telling lies he really wants to hear, and occasionally mixing just enough truth into it).
- Toph, Living Lie Detector that she is, would have believed Azula if her lie wasn't Blatant Lie up to eleven.
- Of course, once Ty Lee and Mai betray Azula, she falls victim to a version of this trope, seeing everyone as out to get her and banishing them, from an innocent handmaid who held the bowl that contained to a cherry that had the pit Azula almost swallowed, to the Dai Li agents (whose loyalty was very fluid), to her Advisors Lo but not Li (while pointing to Li when declaring them banished, leaving everyone confused as to who she was banishing).
- Two episodes where Katara (and the rest of the gang) trusts someone who appears nice while Sokka looks paranoid for doubting their intentions.
- Katara finds a connection with Jet, who lost his parents due to the fire nation and is now fighting against their injustice. Unfortunately, this blinds her to just how extreme of a grudge he holds, indiscriminately attacking even innocent civilians to get rid of the fire nation.
- Two seasons later, when the gaang meet Hama, an elderly waterbender who was captured by the fire nation, it isn't until Hama tries to pass on her bloodbending to her that Katara realizes the horrible revenge Hama has been inflicting on firebending civilians.
- As talented of a leader and general as he was, Fire Lord Azulon clearly misunderstood how much Ozai hates Zuko. He orders Ozai to kill Zuko, so he'll know the pain of losing a child just like Iroh has, intending for this to be a punishment. Unfortunately, Ozai would've happily done it, and Azulon pays for this mistake with his life.
- The Earth King unflinchingly trusts his slimy advisor Long Feng. It helps that he's voiced by Clancy Brown and has insinuated himself into the court since the King was a child, but the Earth Kingdom is pretty much a police state thanks to the King's blind trust.
- Prock in The Awesomes is this when it comes to women he's interested in. Mostly relevant because of his blindness to Hotwire's fairly obvious double agent role, but it also shows three of his earlier dates: A normal looking girl who, on being introduced to his father, sprouted flames and attacked him. A woman with green skin and hair who, on being introduced to his father, turned into a Lizard Folk and attacked him. And a robot with buzz-saw hands and rocket launcher shoulders wearing crudely applied lipstick and a wig.
- Batman: The Animated Series: "It soon became obvious to me that The Joker, so often described as a raving homicidal madman, was actually a tortured soul crying out for love and acceptance..." Doctor Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), welcome to the list.
- Beavis and Butt-Head:
- The title characters. Even when they get their asses kicked by Todd, they still think he's cool and aspires to join his gang. In fact, every single hoodlum, criminal, and Jerkass they meet is "cool" by their standards. Then again, when you consider their priorities and interests, it's not that surprising. Hell, in one episode they even "befriend" an escaped serial killer who is clearly deranged, is more or less openly planning on murdering them... and has the word "Killer" tattooed on his forehead (because they're both nearly illiterate, they read it as "Kyle-er" and think it's just his name).
- Most of the citizens of Highland are horrible judges of character; otherwise, the show wouldn't find itself repeatedly using the Seemingly Profound Fool plot.
- Mr. Van Dreissen seems to be on an eternal, hopeless quest to bring out the "good" he claims to see in B & B. He sees everyone in that way, so his horrible judgment is pretty severe.
- Stewart Stevenson sees the duo as his best friends, even though they hate his guts, get him in trouble a lot, and insult him many times over. Despite all that, Stewart is unable to face the music and understand just how horrible Beavis and Butt-head are towards him.
- Linda Belcher of Bob's Burgers is entirely too trusting of total strangers. Her innate desire to make friends with just about everyone she meets blinds her to some pretty awful, incompetent, or manipulative people.
- In one instance, Linda's easily swayed by the "Deuce of Diamond's" promotional video for baseball training to help Gene. The video's poorly shot and edited, and it's clear the Deuce is a scammer who has no clue about baseball. Linda never realizes he's a con artist and continue to sings his praises as Gene's only hope to become better at baseball.
- Lazlo of Camp Lazlo is an All-Loving Hero who always looks on the bright side and thinks the best of others, even if they're jerks like Edward or Scoutmaster Lumpus. A few episodes imply Lazlo is aware that Edward hates him and chooses to ignore it.
- Dave from Dave the Barbarian constantly insists in a single episode that a princess named Evil Princess is not evil despite the fact she "says she's an evil princess, looks like an evil princess and has 'Evil Princess' stitched on her hankies."
- Lois displays this in one episode of Family Guy when she learns that she has a brother, Patrick, who was committed to a mental hospital and has him released, and shortly afterwards a serial killer nicknamed "The Fat Guy Strangler" begins targeting Quahog's obese citizens. She's reluctant to consider the possibility that Patrick may be connected to the killings even though he plasters his bedroom walls with photos of himself strangling fat guys, and he has the corpse of a fat guy under his bed, next to a half-dead fat guy who claims Patrick tried to kill him.Lois: So he has a lot of pictures of himself strangling fat guys, that doesn't make him the Fat Guy Strangler!
Brian: Oh yeah? What about the dead fat guy under his bed?
Lois: Coincidence?
Brian: What about the half-dead fat guy in the corner?
Fat guy: Patrick tried to kill me.
Lois: Maybe it's a different Patrick.
Brian: LOIS!
Lois: Okay, okay! - Downplayed with Philip J. Fry's friendship with Bender in Futurama:
- Fry knows Bender's deal and loves him anyway—and to be fair, it's very mutual. That doesn't stop Fry's personal fondness for Bender from skewing what little judgment he has, as evidenced by "The Lesser of Two Evils," in which he somewhat paradoxically insists that a bending unit who acts almost identically to Bender is the "evil Bender". (It's also played pretty straight in a What If? segment where Fry tries to convince Earth's army that a Humongous Mecha version of Bender is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood as the latter gleefully tramples New New York under his feet.)
- Played for Laughs when earth was fighting the Decapodiansnote . After obtaining the planet's military defense codes, Zapp Brannigan believed that his sidekick Kif was too suspicious to be given the codes and ended up trusting them to a Decapodian in an obvious Paper-Thin Disguise as a soldier.Zapp: You, ensign, what's your name?Decapodian: Hugh Mann, sir!Zapp: Hugh Mann. Now that's a name I can trust. Run down to the central battle computer and enter these codes. Chop-chop.Kif: Sir, there's something about that ensign that's—Zapp: You're damn right there is. That strapping young lad's gunning for your job. And he just might get it.
- Gravity Falls: The eponymous town seems to have made it a habit of celebrating the wrong kind of people.
- Lil' Gideon is fawned over as an adorable child and a brilliant psychic. In reality he is a completely insane, attacking Dipper with lamb shears for "getting between" him and Mabel , and later summoned a demon so he could steal Stan's deed to the shack. The townspeople finally learn the truth when Stan exposes his illegal surveillance cameras, and cart him off to jail.
- The Northwest family is the idolized founding family of Gravity Falls but is pretty condescending toward regular people. And as turns out, they never founded the town, and have been scamming and screwing the residents for a century and a half.
- Harley Quinn herself in her titular series has this in spades. Because of her horrible relationship with the Joker, she believes all men in a relationship with women act like him. This leads her to assume Mr. Freeze was lying about the whole "I froze my wife to keep her from dying of a horrible disease until I can find a cure" thing and that he really did it out of a desire to control her, so she unfreezes Nora... only to find out that Mr. Freeze was very much telling the truth. Nora's disease begins progressing extremely rapidly, to the point that the only thing that can save her is a complete blood transfusion, but Nora has an extremely rare blood type. Freeze immediately volunteers to take a serum mixed up by Poison Ivy that will change his own blood type to Nora's so that she can be saved, at the cost of his own life. Harley is completely blown way by this Act of True Love.
- In nearly every episode of Inspector Gadget, if not every episode, Gadget confuses obvious MAD agents for normal, law-abiding citizens and kindly offers them his assistance with whatever they need, while at the same time confusing his own dog in a Paper-Thin Disguise for a (very short) MAD agent and chases after him relentlessly. He took it to eleven in the Christmas special when he thought Dr. Claw was Santa Claus and arrested the real Santa. Luckily for the good guys, Gadget is such a Walking Disaster Area that he is more liable to thwart the bad guys when trying to help them than he is when actually trying to thwart them.
- Kaeloo: The eponymous character has some of the show's villains judged horribly. There's Mr. Cat, an Axe-Crazy psychopathic jerkass who Kaeloo thinks is nice (unless he tries to be nice to her for real, in which case she thinks he's being mean). Then there's Olaf, a Mad Scientist who wants to Take Over the World. She thinks he's a Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold when in reality he is insane and evil.
- In King of the Hill, a good third of the series' episodes start off with the characters taking anything and everything a complete stranger tells them at face value, while simultaneously refusing to believe anything people they've been friends with/married to/the parents of for decades say. Some episodes give a reasonable excuse for thisExample:... but most don't.
- The Lion Guard: In "Can't Wait to Be Queen", Kiara is left temporary queen of the Pridelands while Simba and Nala are away on business. During that time, she's approached by Janja's vulture minion Mzingo, who claims that Janja wants to discuss peace with her. Janja is a big-time Jerkass who regularly breaks into the Pridelands to cause chaos For the Evulz, but Kiara decides to go anyway, brushing off Kion's warnings due to their Sibling Rivalry. It's not until she shows up that she realizes that Kion was right; Janja planned to kidnap her in order to blackmail Simba into letting him take whatever he wants from the Pridelands.
- In The Magic School Bus, this trope is usually restricted to Arnold's view on his cousin Janet. However, the rest of the class joins in the butterfly episode where they think Phoebe must be sabotaging them by suggesting they make the school mascot a butterfly because the team they'll be facing is from Phoebe's old school on Janet's word alone.
- Phineas and Ferb: A side effect of the titular boys' status as Innocent Prodigies. It's especially pronounced with Phineas, who never realizes that his older sister Candace is trying to get him in trouble, or that Isabella is trying to flirt with him.
- The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
- Ms. Keane pulls this twice:
- In the episode "Schoolhouse Rocked", in which the Gangreen Gang are forced to attend Pokey Oaks by a truant officer, Ms. Keane accepts them with open arms, and when the Powerpuff Girls counter their antics and attempts to torment the kids, Ms. Keane only sees the Girls assault them and punishes the girls while letting the Gangreen Gang get away with it. It's only when they brutally injure the other kids in a game of dodgeball that Ms. Keane realizes that the PPG were right about the Gangreen Gang all along.
- It happens again in "Gettin' Twiggy With It", where Ms. Keane allows class bully Mitch Mitchelson to take the class hamster, Twiggy, home despite the girls' protests that he's cruel. Once again, she apologizes to the girls at the end of the episode after Mitch's mistreatment of Twiggy causes her to grow into a giant, radioactive man-eating hamster... while punishing Mitch by forcing him to run from it on a giant treadmill.
- Ironically, the Girls themselves fall into this in "Knock it Off" when they hand over a beaker of Chemical X to the Professor's old college roommate, Dick Hardly, not realizing that he is up to no good (even though they clearly heard him call them "things" earlier and that he suggested using them to make a gold mine).
- In the same episode, the Professor himself back in college as he always thought of Dick as a friend despite all the times he leeched off of him in work, and only realized Dick's true motives when he came for a visit in the present day.
- Ms. Keane pulls this twice:
- The Simpsons:
- In the book Angelica Button and the Dragon King's Trundle Bed, the snake Lord Evilton is the minister of niceness.
- Zig-zagged with Lisa Simpson in "Lisa's Date with Density" where she gets a crush on Nelson Muntz. (Even Bart thinks this is crazy, telling her, "I'll probably never say this to you again, but you can do better!") It's not that Lisa doesn't know that Nelson is a rotten kid, she just honestly believes that he might have a sensitive side, and she might be able to change him. By the end of the episode, however, she realizes that Nelson is rotten through and through, and they break up. Although, in a subsequent episode, she does a favor for him, and when asked why, she shrugs and says, "Well, we used to date."
- In "The Trouble with Trillions," the entire U.S. government during the World War II era considered rich people, including Mr. Burns, to be Always Lawful Good. This ended up biting them in the butt when Mr. Burns stole the trillion-dollar bill meant to pay for the rebuilding of Europe after the war.
- South Park:
- Cartman's mom seems to think he's a "little angel" to the point where she doesn't even question his story about why he has a picture of him with Butter's penis in his mouth in "Cartman Sucks". She also lets him get away with murder and always takes his side, with the exception of more recent episodes ("Tsst", "Coon 2: Hindsight" and "HumancentiPad").
- The members of the Mel Gibson fan club in "The Passion of the Jew", who are unaware that Cartman wants to restart the Holocaust and instead think that he just wants to promote Christianity, even mistaking his German speech for Aramaic.
- Played for Laughs in "Free Hat". The episode's titular character, Hat McCollough, is a serial murderer of 23 babies, but a protest group wants him freed from jail, claiming he killed the babies in self-defence.
- Cartman's mom seems to think he's a "little angel" to the point where she doesn't even question his story about why he has a picture of him with Butter's penis in his mouth in "Cartman Sucks". She also lets him get away with murder and always takes his side, with the exception of more recent episodes ("Tsst", "Coon 2: Hindsight" and "HumancentiPad").
- A minor running gag in Spider-Man (1981) contrasted J. Jonah Jameson's blind hatred of Spider-Man by having him genuinely believe that supervillain Doctor Doom is a good guy. How the name didn't tip Jameson off is anyone's guess.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob and Patrick, due to their optimistic innocence, frequently fall into this trope. SpongeBob in particular fails to notice Squidward's obvious dislike of him. Other notable examples are when the pair releases the Obviously Evil Man Ray just because he says "please" though in this case, Man Ray eventually decides to turn good after all, and when SpongeBob is chased by a criminal and hires that criminal in a Paper-Thin Disguise as his bodyguard. Spongebob is also willing to stick up for Mr. Krabs for anything, even though Mr. Krabs is an utterly shameless cheapskate who will do anything to save a penny while thinking that he's a great boss. Mr. Krabs, at one point, sold Spongebob's soul to the Flying Dutchman for 62 cents.
- In the Squirrel Boy episode "Islands in the Street", when Andy teams up with the local jerkass Kyle to find Rodney and Salty Mike, Bob sees Kyle criticize his car's cup holder before throwing it out in disgust and declares "He seems nice."
- In Star Trek: Lower Decks, Nick Locarno rescues and attempts to recruit Beckett Mariner into his brand new, independent Nova Fleet, believing her to be a Military Maverick who acts out in defiance of Starfleet's bureaucracy and red tape. In actuality, Mariner is a Shell-Shocked Veteran whose loss of her idol (and Locarno's old Nova Squadron teammate) Sito Jaxa and being involved in the Dominion War has caused her to act out so she doesn't have to be promoted and send her friends to their deaths but, in actuality, she loves Starfleet and believes in its mission. The moment he invites Mariner to speak, she immediately denounces him and his plan and flees with a Genesis Device he'd planned to use as a deterrent.
- Star Wars Resistance: Tam Ryvora believes that, because her grandfather once worked in an Imperial factory, the Obviously Evil First Order isn't really a problem and can be reasoned with. She learns the hard way that blowing off Kaz and Yeager's warnings about them was a bad idea.
- In Star Wars: The Clone Wars Padmé's Separatist friend Senator Bonteri of Onderon served Count Dooku due to believing that the Republic was too corrupt to be effective and that Dooku was a good man, despite Padmé's warnings otherwise. Her naivety ends up getting her killed, as Dooku ends up having her assassinated due to her attempts at ending the war obstructing the Sith plan to use it to wipe out the Jedi.
- Duchess Satine Kryze is an All-Loving Hero willing to see the best in people, but apart from Obi-Wan Kenobi, every person she put her trust in has proven themselves to be very treasonous: Vizsla who funded Death Watch, Almec who profited off the corruption in Mandalore, and Merrik who was willing to blow up the ship for the Separatists.
- In a Very Special Episode of Static Shock, "Jimmy," the entire school is this to Nick Connor, having voted him "Best Personality". Virgil himself notes there should have been a recount, and he's proven right when Nick relentlessly bullies and torments the titular character Jimmy Osgood to the point he snaps and steals his father's gun with full intent of killing him, which he's barely talked down from doing, only for him to accidentally shoot Richie instead after Nick's two friends tackle him. By the end of the episode, everyone has been made aware of Nick's true colors, with Virgil remarking that the only good thing about the whole mess is that at least he won't be winning any more popularity contests.
- In Sweet Sea, after Sweet Sea's caught shirking her duties to play water polo, King Neptune arbitrarily decides she's worthy of custodianship of the only thing keeping the kingdom from falling apart. Unsurprisingly, she takes it off for a dance performance—for some reason—and Squidney steals it.
- The Transformers:
- An exteme case occurs in "Megatron's Master Plan", which revolves around the Decepticons' plan to make the people of Earth (or at least Central City) believe that they were, in fact, the good guys all along... after how many very obvious instances they are not? And everybody actually believes it! Then when they were proven complete morons, the enslaved humans all blame Shawn Berger, who while not having a great reason to help the Decepticons at least had the most reason to trust them, as the second main cause of their misery.
- "Enter the Nightbird" might be another case, depending on how much sentience/sapience one reads in the titular character. Giant robot ninja armed with more weapons and powers than you can shake a stick at? Truly she is going to "benefit mankind, and not harm it".
- Orion Pax was one of these in his backstory. He was a Megatron fanboy who thought old Megs had Cybertron's best interests at heart. That ended when Megatron nearly killed him and his girlfriend after duping them into helping him. Orion's a somewhat better judge of character as the Older and Wiser Optimus Prime.Optimus: I was wrong, my friends. I admired Megatron merely because he was powerful. I failed to see how he used that power.
- Megatron insists on keeping Starscream around, despite the endless plotting to overthrow him - most of it clearly audible from a long way off, and some of it to his face. Lampshaded in the Generation 2 comics:Megatron: Why? That's what they all asked me. Why him...why Starscream? Why, of all the Decepticons, did I choose to revitalise the one whose record of deceit and betrayal is legend? Because I'm an idiot, that's why!
- Transformers: Animated:
- When talking about the Elite Guard the Transformers Wiki noted that:
"Sentinel Prime, the biggest jerk in Transformer history, and Longarm Prime, a double-agent, are both high-ranking members of the Elite Guard, while Optimus Prime, a true hero, is a washout and space bridge repairbot. Either Optimus Prime did one major screw-up, or Ultra Magnus is the single worst judge of character ever." Since Optimus Prime's screwup was taking the blame for Elita's death on a planet they shouldn't have been on in the first place, Magnus does have a tiny bit of leeway. No excuse for making Sentinel Prime practically his right-hand-mech, though. Apparently, once washed out, you can't be brought back in, at least according to Magnus himself when talking to Optimus. And he probably keeps Sentinel Prime at his right hand so he can babysit him. We've all seen what happens when he's not around to keep the glitch-head out of trouble. - Megatron doesn't get off scot-free. Starscream was a high-ranking member of the Decepticon forces for eons, and has been trying to off Megatron for a good deal of them. But Megatron seemed genuinely surprised when he found out it was Starscream who planted the bomb on him. He learned his lesson after that, showing that, unlike most other Megatrons, he's not at all forgiving. Starscream shows up, and once he has his gun back, the first thing ol' Megs does is blast Starscream square in the face. He proceeds to wash, rinse, and repeat as necessary whenever the guy shows his face.
- When talking about the Elite Guard the Transformers Wiki noted that:
- The eponymous Wander of Wander over Yonder often falls into this. Due to his overly exaggerated optimism and carefree behavior, he seems to be unaware of dangerous threats, especially Lord Hater, which bothers him to the max. The only one who sees through this is his partner Sylvia, who is more rational and level-headed.
- Princess Elyon from the TV adaptation of W.I.T.C.H. has an even worse problem than her comic book counterpart. Her greatest personal flaw is that she repeatedly trusts the wrong people and believes those she has only known for a few weeks over her closest friends and the ones who raised her for most of her life. She takes absolutely everything Cedric (disguised as her ideal man) and Phobos tell her at face value despite being repeatedly warned about them by everyone she knows and believes Trill's version of her parents' attitudes over her guardians' version. Both times, this comes back to bite her on the ass when Phobos and Nerissa (Trill's true identity) respectively steal her powers and imprison her. The first time, she does have a slight excuse in that both her friends and guardians chose to deliberately conceal the truth from her.
