Idiot Ball - Television Tropes & Idioms

One commercial takes the Idiot Ball to truly staggering heights. A Comcast commercial features contestants on a show called You Might Think DirecTV Has More HD But You're Wrong. The contestants only have to answer a single question - which has more HD, satellite or cable? The host, a voice-over, and the frickin' name of the gameshow tells them that "You Might Think DirecTV Has More HD than Comcast But You're Wrong," and yes, they get it wrong.

One story of Ranma 1/2 has Ranma given the Idiot Ball for sake of plot. Despite the fact he is shown playing cards well both before and after this story, and the fact Ranma hates to lose, he is shown as being completely inept at simple poker, being unable to resist going for a card that is slightly raised even after this bad habit is pointed out to him, and being unable to hide his facial expressions, forcing him to wear bandages on his face to have some chance at beating an opponent who is explicitly stated as being so bad he can only win by cheating- and even then, only against children.
- Some of the harsher fans also criticize Akane's obliviousness to P-chan's true nature as being handed a permanent Idiot Ball. They point out that Akane knows multiple people with Jusenkyo curses, including one person who could -and temporarily did- easily masquerade as a pet, and that Ryoga and Ranma's rivalry stems from something more serious then the bread feud, so she should be suspicious of her pet, especially seeing as how Ranma dislikes it so (and it dislikes Ranma back) and has the strange habit of getting lost all the time, nevermind the sheer amount of hints Ranma drops about there being some connection between Ryoga and P-chan.
- Beyond before learning that Ryoga is in fact not doing it for perverted reasons, as he isn't snuggled just enduring getting beaten up a lot to be able to defend her, he doesn't really do it on purpose though. He always saves Ryoga from water, or changes Akane's head in another direction during the transformation. P-chan is too unusual to coutn as idiot ball, but Akane does have one for Ryoga's infatuation.
- The match with the Gambling King had them playing Old Maid, not poker. And even if Ranma was shown playing cards in throwaway panels before and after the event, it doesn't mean he was winning.
  - That Ranma was losing is not, imo, the reason it is an idiot ball; though Ranma was shown to win while playing cards in other arcs for example he beat Ryoga and Akane while pretending to be Ryoga's sister and beat Akane and Miss Hinako when he was at Miss Hinako's apartment. Nabiki and all the Tendo's lost to the Gambling King when he cheated. It is Ranma's inability to bluff when he was shown to lie believably a lot, it is his inability to hide his emotions even though he has shown to be able to and had training specifically for that prior to that arc, it was his lack of observation skills which he generally has the best in the manga easily seeing through other peoples techniques and disguises, it is the fact that he is shown playing cards fairly often and since he is competitive he would not play if he had consistently lost, etc. that makes it an idiot ball.
In one Naruto filler episode (161), Naruto gets whacked with the idiot ball hard. He fails to recognize that two people are wearing terrible disguises to make them look like Guy and Rock Lee and even misinterprets their horrible tasks as Taijutsu training.
- In Episode 193, Rock Lee fails to recognize his own sensei, simply because of a weird wig. To make it much worse, the city guards fail to realize something is up when two identical Might Guys are running around all crazy like. This, when the -children- can disguise themselves as teachers... and just to pound the point home, the next adventure chronologically has yet even more people using disguises to threaten the lives of pretty much everyone. Way to go, guards.
- Pretty much all the 'comedy' Filler episodes of 'Naruto' seem to involve a multitude of Idiot Balls.
- Some parody comic did an impression of that chapter.
- Naruto and Kiba grab the idiot ball around Hinata, as neither of them are able to tell that she has a massive crush on Naruto.
  - Kiba holds it to the lesser degree, as there are suggestions in the anime that he knows about Hinata having feelings for Naruto, and even the manga suggests that he, unlike Naruto, suspects the reason for Hinata's behavior around Naruto.
- Sasuke gets one after he decides to kill Danzo. When does he choose to assassinate Danzo? While Danzo is meeting 4 of the most powerful ninjas in the world instead of when his going to or leaving the meeting. While he does pretty well at first his quickly defeated when the Kage start fighting.
Irina Woods from Mai-Otome is normally a smart girl, but why in the world would she lend her library book on "Human Engineering" to Tomoe when she could have easily returned it herself? Any reasonable person would have suspected Tomoe was up to no good after she returned alone from her little "chat" with Miya, and cautiously refused to turn the book over to her. The lesson learned here, kids? Keep an eye on your own belongings!
- Of course, by giving the book to Tomoe, Irina's just passed the Idiot Ball, as Tomoe leaves the book behind in Professor Youko's lab in a presumed attempt to frame Irina for injuring Erstin, despite the fact there were at least a dozen eyewitnesses who could vouch for Irina never having left the classroom at the time.
- Luckily for Irina, the professor recovers the book in a later episode and returns it to her, no questions asked.
Pokemon: Ash Ketchum in the most recent anime. It'd be impossible for him to lose at this point, seeing how he's had that Pikachu through 3 different regions, let alone all the hundreds of other Pokemon he's acquired and mastered, on top of his extensive knowledge of Pokemon battling and counter-typing from his years of battle. So what does he do? He loses against the first gym leader in Sinnoh. *slow clap*
- How about him getting curb-stomped in a 6-2 loss against Paul? Or maybe his attempt to counter a Guillotine with Steel Wing? Or Using Turtwig to tackle a FLAMEWHEEL attack as a counter move?
- Not to mention he insists on getting rid of all of his Pokemon in the early seasons, it seems right when they're really good. Butterfree can knock people out? Oh, look, mating season bye. Charizard finally listens to you? Well, leave him at a camp. Your Primeape? Hell he only won a tourney after you gained his trust. Get rid of him all after the fact. Hell, he even tried to get rid of that damn Pikachu, despite the fact that it can godmode its way through Ground types and Raichus.
  - This is actually because Ash wants what's best for his Pokemon. He let Butterfree go so it could mate, Charizard so it could grow stronger (the camp you reference was full of Charizard much stronger then his) and so it could mate, Primeape because it enjoyed the fighting, and Pikachu because he felt it was happier among its own kind. Incidentally, in Pikachu's case, Ash wasn't very happy about having to leave Pikachu behind.
- Throughout all 10 seasons, Team Rocket have had some of the most pathetically shallow disguises yet the protagonist team always fall for them. Ironically, one-shot characters can sometimes see through them yet the characters with the most experience can't...
  - It's assumed that the disguises are much better then they look, it's just they look faulty so kids can see through them.
- A specific example: The Whirl Cup. Ash is facing Misty's Psyduck with a Kingler. He already demonstrated knowing how to bypass Psyduck's headache powers in a previous episode, yet the writers made him fall for it just so they could hand Misty the win.
- In a later episode, James is feeling down because his Cacnea is having trouble learning a new move. Ash and Co, for absolutely no fathomable reason, decide to help train it. That's right. They're willingly to help Team Rocket, the group who have been stalking them, spying on them and attacking them since day one, get stronger. When Dawn points out that Ash is being a monumental dummy, he brushes it off, saying it's their job to help Pokémon. Have to wonder how he would feel if the training had succeeded and Team Rocket used their newly improved Cacnea to successfully steal Pikachu once and for all...
Luffy from OnePiece seems to willingly carry the idiot ball because, to him, it makes the adventure more fun. There's a noticeable difference between 'serious' Luffy and 'non-serious' Luffy. Serious Luffy is the guy who received a 300,000,000 beli bounty for crushing Arlong, defeating Sir Crocodile, and annihilating Enies Lobby, defeating CP9, and rescuing Robin. Non-serious Luffy is the guy who dances at random, picks his nose in front of enemies, and considers 'Four Swords' an appropriate insult against Zoro.
- There's a stunning example in volume two of the manga, in which Luffy, who is made of rubber seems helpless to get out of a cage. A cage that has only vertical bars spaced more than six inches apart.
- This is practically confirmed in the Sabaody Archipelago, where Luffy not only willingly passes up a chance to find the location of One Piece, but threatens to quit being a pirate altogether if any of the others ask because he doesn't want to go on a boring adventure.
- Heck, it seems like every character except Robin has carried it in some way, shape, or form.
Omi Tsukiyono from Weiss Kreuz, who is supposed to be by far the smartest member of his team of Hitmen with Hearts, gets hit by the Idiot Ball when he decides that the best thing to do with a CD that causes suicidal psychosis in half the people who listen to it is play it and see if it works. It takes two of his teammates passing out for him to realize what a very, very stupid idea this was.
- If he had played it by remote for people he'd not mind seeing die, that would have been a whole different trope. As in the antiheroic edition of the Magnificent Bastard.
Suzaku and Lelouch from Code Geass strike a deal, wherein Lelouch has Zero's crimes absolved in return for exile from Japan, as well as his bringing one million people to participate in the Special Administrative Region which Suzaku supports. Then, in typical Lelouch fashion, he has the million people dress as Zero, meaning they get exiled too. The entire plan hinges upon Suzaku being Lawful Stupid and obeying their deal to the letter (though in fairness to Suzaku, it relied equally on his honest desire to avert a potential riot/massacre).
- Lelouch's IQ seems to randomly drop when someone he cares about is involved. The most obvious example is when his close friend and potential girlfriend is killed, which hinges on none of the important members of the Black Knight finding out but they do. He then follows it up with including an insane male Tyke Bomb who wants to be Lelouch's brother...in the team tasked with saving Nunally. Despite knowing that he killed his almost girlfriend. That's not a typo, he really did something that stupid.
  - After taking over the school during the finale of the first season Lelouch didn't make sure the students -including his own sister- were guarded 100% of the time. After most of the students leave Nunnally alone while trying to help Suzaku, V.V just waltzes on in and picks Nunners up. This makes Lelouch leave the Black Knights and causes the failure of the rebellion, leading to the capture of nearly the entire rebel force.
  - Pretty much the entire cast have to become morons during the school festivals. Such examples include C.C wandering around looking for Pizza, Villeta agreeing to wear a Stripperiffic swimsuit (then bemoaning the fact that she's wearing said Stripperiffic swimsuit), and Lelouch becoming basically Keitaro from Love Hina for an episode. He can handle a rebellion but he can't keep Shirley away?
  - The Cupid Day Episode, being another one of those episodes, gives the participating cast temporary stupidity, but in particular Sayoko and Anya get the worst end of the deal. Sayoko arranged an impossible schedule for Lelouch and constantly did inhuman stuff like jumping 20 feet in the air and running insane speeds with super human agility, while pretending to be a guy who can't run a block without being winded. Anya just gets into a giant Robot in an attempt to get Lelouch's hat and nearly kills Shirley because of it, which makes her more like a psychotic Ralph Wiggum.
- Lelouch fails to take into account shoddy Chinese workmanship caused by corruption, after it was made perfectly clear that the Eunechs are corrupt as hell. Considering that Lelouch sometimes borders on Ominscient this is a huge drop in competency.
- The reveal that Lelouch has been just outside the base of V.V the whole time looks impressive until Fridge Logic sets in, and you figure out that V.V is too stupid to have such sophisticated things as a lookout in case an army was about to attack his base. This makes him stupider than Meerkats who have developed such sophisticated methods.
- The Black Knights' mutiny against Lelouch on the word of Ohgi and two Britannians, one of whom is the Prime Minister. The other none of them have even met and is hanging on Ohgi's arm for no apparent reason. Not a soul calls attention to this. Their "evidence" is likewise almost entirely conjecture, and the main selling points, Geass and Lelouch's former princehood, are outright word of mouth. Wall Banger at its finest.
An entire episode near the end of Slayers NEXT basically put the plot on hold just to show a fight sequence with a Brainwashed And Crazy Gourry. Which wouldn't have been so bad if the villain hadn't slapped a really bad helmet on Gourry (and disguised him with nothing else) and also required the cast to A) Not see through the paper thin disguise B) Apparently forget that Gourry was kidnapped one episode ago C) Not assume that the blond guy dressed like Gourry and wielding the Sword of Light and fighting exactly like Gourry actually was Gourry. The characters would even constantly point out that he seemed familiar, but amazingly, despite the fact this is Slayers, they seemed to lose their Genre Savvy natures for the duration of the episode and the viewer was supposed to take it all seriously.
Interestingly, in the first volume of the Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo manga Poppa Rocks/Don Patch uses an actual 'Idiot Ball' as a weapon. Whoever is hit by it would 'get an "A" on his exam... by CHEATING!'
- Don Patch also has an attack where he injects you with a serum that makes you think like he does. Beauty didn't take it well.
Subverted briefly on Death Note:
Light: If this phone rings, I'm dead! (beat) Wait, what am I thinking; I can just turn it off.
- One of Light's few weaknesses is that, if something catches him without a plan, he's prone to panic. You can see it at the end too. But this trope is played straight with Naomi Misora, who, despite being Genre Savvy enough to give a fake name, is eventually charmed into showing her driver's licence with a basic social engineering technique.
In Rappi Rangi the hero has a tiny horn that caused him to be beaten and ostracized by his village as a child. This Freudian Excuse causes him to flee like mad whenever he thinks torches and pitchforks might be around the corner. Even when nothing is actually wrong. Even if it'll completely undo his Ninja Harem's plans. Even on his wedding day when his would-be bride says to his face she thinks the horn is cute. Even when the Ninja Harem tells him that his bride thought it was cute. In his defence, they were pretty severe beatings.
School Rumble is more like a case of "pass the Idiot Ball". There's usually an idiot of the week.
Tsubasa Chronicle, episode 48. After collecting 13 feathers on screen and who knows how many off screen, all with pink markings, King Chaos just hands them a number of purple, blue, and orange feathers. And not one person stops to question that. Of course, it's a trap.
Keichii carries one of these towards the end of Watanagashi-hen, when he agrees to go for a walk in a secluded underground dungeon with a self-confessed murderer who freely admits to having mental issues that make it difficult to control her behavior even when she doesn't actually want to hurt anyone. She's able to hold herself together enough to let him go after only torturing him a little, but before she does she warns him never to get near her again. Guess what happens when he decides to ignore that warning.
- To be fair, in the game version and the manga, he had a better and more justified reason for ignoring her warning - namely, he was giving Mion the doll that, by not giving it to her, started the whole thing. Still pretty dumb, though.
  - And there's the slight fact that Mion was dead, and he gave it to Shion (who was completely insane at this point)
It seems like Momo's entire class in Peach Girl is forced to carry this, as it regards Sae. Her schemes have hurt or enraged almost everyone long before the first time she is caught out on her campaign against Momo. Yet the class is ready to lynch Momo, and on more than one occasion, based on setups they all know Sae's capable of, and they all say very clearly that they know this when she is exposed. Worse, even when exposed, Sae getting anything stronger than the cold shoulder seems out of the question, since no one wants to do to her deservedly what they did to Momo based on whipped up frenzy.
In Bleach, Urahara has the Idiot Ball when he knows about Aizen's plan to kidnap Orihime and use her powers on the Hogyoku and wounded Arrancars, but instead tells Orihime that she can't fight because she's unable to use Tsubaki. Orihime then, believing that she's not strong enough to fight, goes with Rukia to the Soul Society, and on her way back, gets kidnapped. At no point does Urahara attempt to confirm her whereabouts or keep her out of the fight.
- What he should have done was keep her with him at his shop where, if any of Aizen's flunkies wanted to get at her, they would have to first contend with him, Yoruichi, Tessai, Ururu, Jinta, Renji, and the mod souls.
- Two words: Zommari Leroux. As if being a pink pumpkin weren't bad enough, he could have easily ended his fight with Byakuya immediately, but was too arrogant to finish him off quickly.
- Two more words: Tia Harribel. She's even worse than Zommari. She was BLATANTLY capable of killing Hitsugaya at literally any point. Her first act on using Ressurection was easily bypass Hitsugaya's defenses and slash the living shit out of him, from a distance, him only being saved by a hastily Ass Pulled ice clone, which he proceeded to inform her was the only one he could create that day. After that she spent the entire fight playing tug-of-war with her water powers and his ice powers.
  - Two More words still Dumb Blonde
- Yet again two more words Kaname Tousen. The guy is pratically toying with Hisagi and Komamura with his hollow mask alone. Yet he decides to use his resurrección, apparently without having tested before hand. Once he uses it he gets so intoxicated by his newly gained sight that he fails to notice Hisagi sneaking up behind him, and gets stabbed in the head as a result
  - Due to Tite Kubo's incredibly lazy writing and repeated copouts, the Arrancar as a species are holding onto the idiot ball as tight as they can. It's the only excuse he's been able to use for not killing off a single good guy. Well, except for Ulquiorra, who just got screwed by a Deus Ex Machina.
So, Lawrence. You've got a harvest goddess as a travelling companion, who prides herself at being "Horo the Wise" and being far cleverer than you give her credit for. You've already been called out for keeping secrets from her, and you had previously flubbed your Insight check to pick up on her mood when you suggested you just drop her off at the nearest town instead of going all the way to Yoitsu with her. Was it really such a good idea to leave her with the letter that says her hometown is probably gone, just because you assume she can't read? And, seriously, when she confronts you about it... when a wolf goddess asks you in a grief-stricken panic to sleep with her, you say yes!
The entire storyline of Angel Densetsu juggles with so many idot balls that you have more or less every example, subsect or relation of this trope. In spades. We even have Word Of God that Kuroda is the designated carrier and master of the Idiot Ball, for the express purpose of plot advancement. Behold the Idiot Ball of Plot Advancement! The worst thing? It's so well done it's almost believable.
- The Selective Obliviousness of the main lead does not help a bit.
- There's so many balls zipping around it even takes a while to understand who the Butt Monkey is. (It's Ogisu byw)

The "One More Day" storyline in Spider Man sees Peter Parker doing the Atlas gig with an Idiot Ball of truly gargantuan proportions. Making a deal with the closest analogue to a devil Marvel comics possess to save the life of his already elderly aunt, at the expense of not only his current marriage, but the entire history of that marriage? Quite possibly the first example of stuffing someone in the fridge but leaving them alive to taunt the audience with. This is even worse when you consider the number of readily available contacts the man had with spells, technology, and/or mutant powers that would put her together as good as or even better than new with minimal effort.
- Parker supposedly went to those contacts, but it was shown that all of those people couldn't help him. That means guys who could take a left arm, brain, and half a heart and rebuild a person from those pieces couldn't heal a gunshot wound. Hell, Tony Stark, a man without any real medical knowledge, managed to build a super pacemaker IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!, but there was no one who could take care of a simple gunshot wound. This wasn't an idiot ball, this was a galactic-scale Idiot Plot.
  - It was stated (exactly once, probably in an attempt at an Author Saving Throw) that by the time Peter started making the rounds looking for help, May was already brain dead. There was, for all intents and purposes, no one left to save. Still doesn't explain why none of Spidey's allies stepped up to offer assistance when word got out.
  - Even if she was braindead, that shouldn't be a problem for Dr. Strange...DR. FUCKING STRANGE...the guy who actually has the power to literally CALL Gods from other universes and tell them to do things for him. Surely a God, even a minor God, could fix that problem. More so since Elixir, and X-Man, can literally control every cell in a person's body, It's truly ridiculous to suggest any amount of brain damage would stop him from healing her...in fact, it only raises the question of why Spider-Man didn't go to him immediately after she was shot, prior to brain death, when he probably could have healed her over a phone call (he grew back a person's heart after it was ripped out, I'm not even kind of joking when I say he could heal mortal wounds over a phone call).
Most of them, especially Strange, spouted some vague Prime Directive stuff to refuse helping (nevermind how each is perfectly willing to spank reality whenever convenient). At least they offered the, acutally good, advice that instead of worrying, Peter should just enjoy his last day with his aunt. Sadly, depite the entire universe telling him this is a bad idea, Joe--I mean Peter couldn't stand to see his mother figure die because of his enemies.
Xavier excusing Emma trying to mentally seduce Scott while she was treating him. As one who believes so strongly in his ethics, he would not have stood for that. He would have thrown her out, regardless of whether was anything physical. It's not as though Xavier never misused his power, but he still has standards.
The otherwise excellent Watchmen features this with Doctor Manhattan, who exists in every part of his lifetime at once. The other characters constantly accuse him of not caring about anything — ignoring the death of John Kennedy, for example, because he foresaw that he didn't do anything about the death of John Kennedy — when they should have learned by that point that he did that kind of thing, and that the problem could very easily have been resolved by simply asking him questions.
- The Watchmen Sourcebook written by Moore for the Watchmen module of the DC RPG in the early 90s actually has a moment where someone asks if Jon and Laurie get married in the future, and Jon says she leaves him in October of 1985.
There was a villain who blamed Max Mercury for the death of his family, gained access to a time machine, and used it to try and destroy Max Mercury. He was temporarily incapacitated with horror when asked why he hadn't used it to save his family.
Superman and the Flash are probably the heroes most prone to these, given that one has ridiculously powerful Combo Platter Powers, and the other has the ability to move at near light speed, and drain time and perception of time out of things.
- "What's that you say? Villains including a man who can absorb powers through touch, a woman who can turn into electricity on a whim, and a man powered by Kryptonite, my greatest weakness, are all after me? I'm gonna go punch 'em!"
- Let's not forget that when a villain (Luthor) did get control of Flash's abilities, he almost took out the entire Watch Tower and all the heroes single handedly.
  - Although in Flash's defense, it's made pretty clear that he could be that destructive if he wanted to. He holds back on purpose.
Comics blog Polite Dissent refers to this phenomenon as ONISGS ("Oh No, I Suddenly Got Stupid")
Everyone in a Superman comic...ever. The most obvious being that no one can see past Clark's glasses. Also Clark very stupidly says that he and Superman grew up together and are like brothers. Yeah, that's not going make people notice how you look exactly like him!
- This is specifically addressed within the book. At several points it has been observed that one of Superman's greatest abilities is that when he takes on the persona of Clark Kent he speaks in a different way, holds himself in a different way, and has a different walk. All Star Superman takes this several steps further by having Clark be an accident prone klutz, whose accidents always happen to solve a particular problem nobody had noticed (tripping over an electrical cord and stopping someone being electrocuted, for example). This may be taken as being an example of Lampshade Hanging.
  - Isn't it all just due to his Super Hypnotism?
  - Perhaps they're all just distracted by the many beautifully woven hangings on or about his person?

Parodied in Scary Movie, when the "Walking Dead teens" are in the theater wondering who the killer could be — when the Killer is right in plain sight in his Grim Reaper costume, mopping up the blood from his most recent victim.
In Pulp Fiction, Butch has to go back to his apartment to get his watch. He thinks no one is here, but then finds a MAC-11 machine pistol on his laundry machine. Suddenly, he hears the toilet flush, and then out of the bathroom comes Vincent Vega, who he promptly kills with his own weapon. It turns out Vince came here to kill him, but he wasn't home. He then decided to go to the bathroom (which, by now, he should realize will always lead to bad things) while leaving his gun just laying around the apartment of the guy he's trying to kill.
- Later information from the production team reveals that Marcellus Wallace was carrying the Idiot Ball in this scene — both him and Vincent Vega were supposed to be waiting to ambush Butch in his apartment, but Wallace chooses to go out on a snack run at the same time that Vega is in the bathroom. Double idiot points for Wallace in going to the nearest 7-11 for coffee, when presumably Butch's apartment has a kitchen and a coffee pot.
  - It's not like they're presented as a crack squad of hitmen, though. Earlier in the movie, neither Vincent nor Jules bother checking the apartment for more people and Vincent later accidentally lets his gun go off in the car.
- However, neither Vincent or Marcellus were as stupid as Butch, who knew how dangerous it was to go back to his apartment, and that the mob would very likely be looking for him there, but went anyway to get his precious family heirloom watch. He's very careful about the whole thing... Until once he has the watch. Then he decides to hang around the apartment and cook pop tarts instead of, I don't know, getting his ass the fuck out of there as fast as he fucking can. His dawdling led to him catching Vincent in the bathroom and if he had left just seconds earlier he would have missed both Vincent and Marcellus.
- And then, he leaves the big deadly gun behind! Yes, I know, there's the whole legal issue of having a gun the size of Bruce Willis' arm with you, and you can't really carry it around in public, but still...
You could argue John McClane has it in Die Hard during the scene where he first meets Hans face-to-face. He gives Hans an empty gun, so can't be too surprised when Hans points it at him, but rather than shoot the leader of the group holding the building hostage, he decides to exchange quips and thus gets surprised by the reinforcements. He could have nearly ended the whole situation, but instead has to be a moron.
- John answers that question five seconds after The Reveal about the gun being empty. He's going to use Hans as a bargaining chip and trade his life for his wife's.
  - That must have been edited out of the version I saw, in which he responds "what do you think I am, stupid?" and then the elevator shows up— and Hans quips back "You were saying?" (Cue machine-gun fight.)
One must seriously wonder why the workers in Metropolis do not notice a difference between the moderate, kind, and properly-postured Maria and her psychotic, scowling, hunched over robotic duplicate.
- Well, the audience didn't notice the difference between the real rock band and their "Rip and Destroy!"-singing robotic duplicates in Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, either.
King Leonidas in 300 may have strengthened his fighting unit by rejecting the help of Ephialtes, but maybe he was forgetting what he'd been told five minutes earlier - that only Ephialtes knew a way for the Persians to sneak around and surround them. Now that's strategy.
- He rejects Ephialtes because Ephialtes, being crippled, can't properly stand in a formation with the other Spartans - which is quite sensible for the duration of the one fight in which the Spartans actually fight in that formation. After that, they start just leaping out into the midst of the Persians without much in the way of a formation, at which point Ephialtes could, in fact, have made a meaningful difference, or at least been allowed to participate instead of callously rejected.
- Considering that Leonidas knew from the start that they were going to sacrifice their lives, he could have just as well told Ephialtes to charge ahead, and take as many Persians with him as he could - he would have died anyway if he stayed, so he could have been some use before that.
  - Also, the real (and movie) Spartans despised deformity; it was a cultural thing. To the movie Spartans, Ephialtes wasn't a potential ally against the enemy; he was some kind of twisted monster. Leonidas was being a nice guy just talking to him instead of killing him out of hand.
- It's worth noting that the real Ephialtes was a normal-looking man who told Xerxes about the hidden path not out of spite, but simply for material gain. This obviously isn't anywhere near as interesting for the sake of the narrative. Significantly, it implies there were Greeks who were willing to deal with the Persians who clearly did not see them as baby-killers (which is, in fact, historically true), so Ephialtes' new story was shoehorned into the narrative in order to make sense of the Greeks' betrayal.
  - Also worthy of note that Word Of God has said that Dilios (The Narrator) was embellishing the narrative in order to rev up the Spartan Army he was about to lead into battle. Frank Miller has said that Dilios "isn't one to let the truth get in the way of a good story." Saying that Ephialtes was a battle-trained cripple who betrayed the Spartans for spite as well as material gain is a bit more of an embellishment than saying the rhinos were a bit bigger than they actually were, or the pots of chemicals were "magic", but some thing in stories get more embellished than others. And, Dilios might not have actually known the whole story of how the Persians surrounded him (might not have even met Ephialtes), thus requiring more of that part be made up.
  - Have any of you realized that it makes no sense for an elite fighting unit to just accept some guy off the street who volunteers? How about this. Next time you see a SWAT cop out on a hostage standoff, or something like that, just offer your services to help join the SWAT team... Then get pissed off at him because he rejects you. Like... d'uh!
At the end of Firefox where the climax is dependent on the fact that Clint Eastwood's character has momentarily forgotten to think in Russian, even though he's been kicking the snot out of everybody for the last fifteen minutes by doing just that.
- Those were Plasticine opponents, not Big Bads.
Marlene from The Hand Which Rocks The Cradle holds it firmly in her hands when she reveals to Peyton that she knows who she is, prompting Peyton to lure her to her death.
At the end of Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Abe Sapien gives the Big Bad the final piece he needs to activate an unkillable army because the bad guy threatened to kill his own sister, Abe's love interest. Except that the movie has already established that any wound to the sister hurts the brother as well, making it perhaps the emptiest threat in movie history.
- This goes even deeper: ultimately the sister kills herself to stop her brother. Well, at the start of the movie the brother is on trial in front of the rest of his people, and they agree to execute him. His sister - who will also be killed if he is executed - has to consent to his execution in order for it to happen, and she does. She spends the entire movie on the run from her brother to keep him from obtaining the final piece, but she could have simply killed herself at any point along the way to prevent him from succeeding. It would have been believable for her to finally give in and sacrifice herself, had it not already established at the very beginning of the film that she believes her brother should die, which in turn will kill her.
  - The sister apparently is saddled with the Idiot Ball for most of the movie. When she is taken into custody by Abe and Hellboy, they are confronted by her brother, who takes out a little bean and lets it crawl across the ground towards a drain grate. After staring at it in horror for about five minutes, the sister finally shouts for them to keep it away from water which is nigh impossible for them, seeing as it's right at the drain by that time. There's also the clever moment where they take her to their headquarters and, during a love bonding scene with Abe, she casually mentions that she and her brother share a telepathic link, which means that he knows everything she knows and thus now can find the headquarters and her. WHY THE FLIP DIDN'T SHE SAY THIS EARLIER? On the other hand, Abe shares the Ball with her on that one, seeing as he is not worried at all about the fact that the psychotic nut they just fought will be on their doorstep at any minute, instead electing to get hammered with Hellboy while singing Barry Manilow.
The only reason that Khan is able to successfully ambush the Enterprise in Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan is that Admiral Kirk, a seasoned combat veteran, forgets to raise the Deflector Shields. It rubs off on Spock as well, who delivers a Not Now Bernard to Saavik as she tries to point out the error. This is even given a Lampshade Hanging later.
Kirk: Mr. Saavik, you go right on quoting regulations!
- Nero, from the new Star Trek movie has just seen his planet destroyed, and immediately falls into a time warp, sending him some 100 years into the past. Whats his first idea? Destroy the planet of the man who was too slow in saving his planet. Not once, NOT ONCE is it ever mentioned that HE IS IN THE PAST. Had Nero simply returned to Romulus, he could have told his home of the disaster in the coming future, AND given knowledge of superior technology a century ahead of the times. The Romulans being the kind of folk they are would then take this technology, refit their ships, decimate the Federation and remember to evacuate their planet before their sun explodes (If they can't solve the problem altogether). The real Wall Banger moment? He has 25 years to realize that his plan is stupid. Never crosses his mind.
  - Actually this is explained by the movie itself: Going back in time created a new time line. While Nero could go save Romulus, it wouldn't be his Romulus that he'd save, but the one from this alternate reality.
- It is mentioned, obliquely - when he asks for the "star date" from the captain of the Kelvin. He had a Villainous Breakdown, but, as mentioned, he didn't stop to think about what that entailed. However, I'm not sure how the alternate plan would work - Is Romulus part of the Federation at this time, or not?
  - It should be mentioned that Nero was completely bent on revenge, had his ship crippled just exitting the black hole from the Kelvin's destruction, got kidnapped and enslaved by Klingons for 25 years...
  - In which case the Klingons are carrying an Idiot Ball for not taking advantage of at least some of the technology Nero has and conquering the Federation themselves.
  - We don't actually know that they didn't try to—the Federation did, after all, but they still weren't a match for Nero's Ship O Doom. It's also stated in the novelization—and was unfortunately cut from the movie—that Nero was intending to go to Romulus—later, once they'd wiped out the Federation, so they could return as 'conquerors, not miners'. Which saddles him with a different sort of Idiot Ball, or at least a big old Ball of Crazy.
- Getting back to Kirk in Star Trek II, it's important to point out that up to this point, Kirk has been beating himself up over how much he's past his prime as a commanding officer. His being slow on this trigger is what gets him to pull himself back together to take Khan down.
Most of the trapped characters in the Saw movies. One very small point in their defense is that people might not mentally be at their best when they're about to die.
The Doctor's Wife in Blindness is the only sighted person in the entire asylum. So what does she do when a blind guy in another ward starts waving a gun that he can't aim, stealing food and posessions, and demanding women? Why, lead a bunch of other women to him and let him rape all of them, herself included.Rem
Lyra at the end of Northern Lights. She just goes to sleep, knowing full well her father/uncle is hiding something. She decides not to ask the alethiometer for details because she's afraid to know the truth, which is not at all in sync with her character - probably Because Destiny Says So.
Every James Bond villain, by explaining the whole plot to James Bond, and then putting him in an easily-escapable trap with an inept guard. (Naturally, this is Lamp Shaded in Austin Powers, where Scott says "Why don't you just shoot him?" And Dr. Evil doesn't explain, but simply cuts him off by going "SHHHT!" every time, saying "I've got a whole bag of 'SHHHT!' right here!")
Most everyone in the Star Wars prequel film... Padme is fine with Anakin murdering a bunch of unarmed women and children, espousing dictatorship, bitching out his master/friend Obiwan and cosying up with the obviously evil Palpatine (and everyone gets an idiot ball for not working out he was the evil mastermind until halfway through the third film) but apparently killing defenceless children twice is BAD... oh and she decided life wasn't worth living after working out Anakin was evil, despite having just popped out two kids.
- Anakin for just doing everything Palpatine says - mostly turning to the dark side and slaughtering his fellow Jedi (including kids) to save Padme... and then choking the life out of her the next time he sees her. Oops. Also the whole worrying about his mother... given the apparent Jedi penchant for disobeying orders, you'd think he'd have managed to fly off to Tattooine and check his mother wasn't still A SLAVE.
- The entire Jedi council for apparently contracting amnesia about the whole PLOT TO DESTROY THE JEDI. Obiwan is especially guilty as he was tasked with actually finding out what the scheme was, found an entire clone army commissioned by a dead Jedi master - ready for the convenient war that's just starting. Then everyone apparently forgets the fact they've just taken a few hundred thousand sleeper agents into their ranks and never mentions anything about it and act surprised when they all start murdering Jedi.
  - The army was commissioned by a JEDI for the Republic...they were suspicious but had no other choice
  - To say nothing of spending some time reading the standing orders for the army. I mean, I know 66 must have been pretty far down the list but you'd think "Kill all the jedi" would raise some flags somewhere.
  - They didn't even need to do that. The army was ordered in secret by a Jedi who removed the cloning planet from the Jedi archives to avoid it being discovered, and that army was linked directly to Jango Fett, who was linked to the attempted assassination of Pademe, as well as being linked to the Jedi who defected to the Sith who led the Separatists. So the army was created by their intended enemies and the Jedi don't seem to give a shit. Even though the Republic is made up of hundreds of planets that could easily cough up a huge army that isn't built to be saboteurs. And the kicker? The army was commissioned by a Jedi. The army belonged to them. Yoda could have had the whole thing liquidated and used an army of loyal draftees. Its not like battle droids are particularly difficult to counter, even after their droid brains were upgraded so they wouldn't be defenseless if one of the control orbs was destroyed. They still go down with a few blaster shots like any other thing, and though they can be mass produced, they're not very bright.
  - 'Draftees?' From which planet, under what authority, with what training precisely?
  - It's possible Order 66 wasn't recorded anywhere and was only known to Palpatine. Still, an army materializes out of nowhere and nobody questions it?
  - Order 66 was one of 150 published orders. Order 65 authorized Grand Army personnel, under certain situations, to detain the Chancellor (with lethal force if necessary). Order 66 just looked like Order 65's complement.
- Mace Windu pats Anakin on the back for fessing up that Palpatine is the Sith Lord that everyone has utterly failed to notice the length of the prequels, then ensures big dumb Anakin DOESN'T come along to arrest Palpatine - thus allowing Palpatine to trick big dumb Anakin into thinking the Jedi are trying to take over... so, that's idiot balls all round.
  - It'd be so much better taking the impulsive friend of Palpatine to a battle he couldn't possibly help in?
- All the factions that compose the Separatists - they're ALL apparently commercial entities... and so, logically should be interested in profits. Waging a galaxy wide war against the defacto government of said galaxy with expensive battledroids... well, that's going to make for something of a dent on the bottom line.
- And Darth Maul for trying to stare Obi-Wan to death, rather than murdering him and then just gawking when he jumps up, gets a lightsabre and comes to cut him in half.
  - Considering Obi-Wan jumps, gets the saber and cuts him simultaneously, in less than 5 seconds, he would need a really quick reaction.
  - He's a Sith Lord; he has a superhumanly fast reaction time.
- The Jedi themselves. They entrust their entire future to one incredibly powerful youngster whole also has a tendency to be an asshole and go crazy when his loved ones are at risk. His loved one is on a planet outside of the influence of the Jedi. Instead of sending the Jedi to go and straighten that shithole out (which is kinda in their job description) and thus preventing nasty accidents like Shmi getting captured by the Sandpeople (since Jedi would be around to go save her rather than a bunch of farmers), or at the very least checking up on her or freeing her or something, they just tell him to let go of his attachments, completely ignoring the fact that he came from a wildly different background, had already forged very strong attachments and was a special case that needed to be treated like one.
  - Tatooine isn't Republic space, they have absolutely zero authority there and the Republic isn't going to authorize a war on the hutts.
  - Just BUY her then
- It doesn't get any worse than Obi-Wan's line "Anakin's the father, isn't he?" No Shit, Sherlock!
In Dreamscape, Max von Sydow figures out Christopher Plummer's evil plan and tells him so, right to his face. The response? "Have You Told Anyone Else"?
The movie Mom and Dad Save the World involves a literal Idiot Ball. One of the weapons used on the Planet Spengo is called a Light grenade. If you pick it up, you disappear in a flash of light, leaving the grenade behind. The clever part is that the grenade says "Pick Me Up" on the side. That works because the people of Spengo are really, really stupid. A squad of attackers encounters a Grenade, and several cutscenes later, we see the squad has been reduced to two or three, surrounded by empty uniforms and scattered helmets, staring intently at the grenade. One says "we're gonna need reinforcements".
In Anchorman, Ron Burgundy jumps into a pit full of hostile bears, to "save" his girlfriend, then realizes he has no plan and immediately regrets the decision.
Ethan Glance in Space Cowboys. He decides to, without telling anyone, take an unauthorized spacewalk on the secret orders of Bob Gerson, and with everyone shouting at him not to connect the PAM rockets on the IKON satellite, decides to do it anyway, thinking that doing so will allow him to singlehandedly move the satellite into a stable orbit (which has dozens of problems even if he was successful). But when he connects it, the satellite activates, swings around, crashes into the docked space shuttle damaging it, and the satellite starts jettisoning its outer casing. One of the panels hits Ethan, somehow just knocking him out though it doesn't damage his helmet enough for it to leak air, and leaving him unconscious tethered to an activated Soviet orbital platform. The movie ends without touching on what happened to Ethan when he got back to Earth, but if he survived, he likely faces:
An expulsion from NASA, considering his actions lead to the destruction of expensive NASA equipment
Jail time considering he endangering NASA astronauts, damaged Russian equipment, and jeopardized the lives of thousands or even millions, because even if the missile warheads didn't detonate in the atmosphere (nuclear weapons aren't like gunpowder, and they require everything working perfectly to create critical mass), they would still shower weapons-grade nuclear material on the ground or water below, creating an environmental catastrophe.
Life imprisonment, court martial, or even capital punishment for collaborating with Bob Gerson, knowingly withholding critical mission information, and following secret orders which could have caused nuclear catastrophe.

Talismans of Shannara does this to Wren, who just spent the last entire book learning how easy it is for trust to be betrayed, but who still falls for the trap of a character everyone including her suspected, pretty much just to get her kidnapped and in contact with the other good guys to tell them what she knows. When she gets back, nothing horrible seems to have happened to her army in her absence.
Grace in Vampirates takes forever to figure out that she's on a ship crewed by the titular creatures, despite knowing that they exist before they find her.
The Draka series of Alternate History novels, in which enemies of the Dominion outright ignore it until it's too late. Repeatedly. Knowing it's happened before. As one synopsis put it, the first 'alternate' in the setting's history must have been an 11th Commandment reading "Thou Shalt Not Attack the Dominion of Draka".
Herodotus tells of a king named Croesus who consults an oracle to determine whether or not he should attack an enemy's kingdom. The oracle says that if he attacks, "a great kingdom will be destroyed," at which point Croesus commits his army and ends up losing his capital city and being enslaved. Of course, he could've just asked which kingdom would be destroyed, but that's not nearly as fun, is it?
- The Oracle was always intentionally vague, and there was even a quote upon the entrance to her temple saying, in effect, "Know thyself." In that respect Croesus held the idiot ball in that he overestimated his forces.
- Also, asking just one question to the Oracle was a huge deal, as the questioner was expected to make an offering to the Oracle before asking. Croesus brought a HUGE load of loot all the way to Delphi, so asking "Which Empire?" would mean a trip back to Lydia, emptying more of his treasury, then another trip back to Delphi. Not the most economical way of divination, or maybe Croesus was just stingy.
In Eldest, two of the Big Bad's henchmen show up in the hero's hometown looking for the hero's cousin. The two characters in question are instantly recognized as the monsters who killed the hero's uncle by the townspeople, who tell the henchmen that the hero's cousin is out hunting and they don't know when he'll be back. Let's repeat that: the townspeople, in order to protect the hero's cousin, tell two known arsonists/murderers that he's out and will be back later, apparently expecting the henchmen to turn around and go home.
Mara Jade didn't even find it a little suspicious that she couldn't sense Nom Anor with the force. If she'd confronted him on it right off the bat, she'd have prevented about half the problems in the entire New Jedi Order series. Way to go, Jade.
- Nom Anor grabs it too. After ten years of spying on them, he doesn't even think it's a little dangerous to try and kill Luke's wife.
- In the X Wing Series, Corran Horn is an ex-cop turned fighter pilot for the Rebellion. He's given a cover identity and put on ~~Coruscant~~ Imperial Center, the capital city-world of the Empire, to gather information as part of an operation to take the planet. But one day, after one of his companions tries to have sex with him and he refuses, he decides to go walking while ruminating on his past, and pays no attention to where he is going. At all. He finds himself at a Wretched Hive and as it turns out the whole thing acted as a Shaggy Search Technique, but really, wandering an enemy-held world and heading into the depths of its seedy underbelly while not paying attention to where he's going? The Force looks after fools.
Sylvester would like to add that this page makes him wish he was a rock.
Charles Todd's A False Mirror starts off with several characters playing "catch the Idiot Ball":
- Stephen Mallory, confronted by local detective Bennett about the mysterious disappearance of Matthew Hamilton, husband of Mallory's former girlfriend Felicity, immediately charges off to see Felicity. This despite the fact that Mallory is automatically the prime suspect, since he is still obviously obsessed with Felicity.
- In the course of evading Bennett, Mallory runs over Bennett's foot with his car. This does not make Mallory more popular with the local constabulary.
- When the police catch up with Mallory at the Hamilton's house, Felicity has the brilliant idea of pretending that Mallory is holding her and her maid, Nan, hostage. At gunpoint. It belatedly occurs to her that this is the epitome of an Idiot Ball maneuver.
- To make matters worse, Nan tells two different people, including Inspector Rutledge, that Felicity set up the mock hostage situation. Nobody feels obligated to inquire further.
Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley's original novel, is warned that the monster will visit him on his wedding night. So he leaves his new bride alone while he goes outside to reconnoiter the area. And he's surprised when the monster breaks into the bedroom and kills his wife? Not only that, Frankenstein could have avoided the whole problem if, instead of "aborting" the creation of a bride for the monster because he was worried about hordes of the creatures overrunning the world, he'd simply made her infertile.
- On "simply making her infertile":
  - A) medicine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries probably didn't know enough about the mechanisms of reproduction. They were still arguing between Preformationism, Spontaneous Generation, and Aristotelean Epigenesis.
  - B) Even the straightforward method of giving the Bride the uterus of a woman past menopause might not have worked. Frankenstein's whole methodology was restoring vitality to inert tissue, after all; if he could raised the dead, and cause flesh to knit together well enough to function as a whole, why wouldn't that restore function to all organs?
- The simplest solution to these potential problems would be to construct her with no uterus at all. Neither she nor her mate would have any reason to suspect that's why she never gets pregnant.
Huge example in the Mortal Engines series: The protagonist is just about to escape from a city under siege using an air balloon, which is about to fly to the place his love interest is staying. One idiot ball later, he jumps out of the balloon, while it's taking off, while everyone's shouting at him to stay in the basket, while the city's being destroyed, and runs off to fetch a letter from said love interest. A letter he's already read. Needless to say, the balloon's gone when he gets back. Wall Banger.
The plot of The Demolished Man begins with an exchange of coded messages using a key described in the book. Check the translation.
"What in the name of diseased crap are you reading?"
In "A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" said King and Yankee decide to do some legwork among the peasants. What gives away their disguises? The King babbling on about how turnips grow on trees and apples below ground.
Just about every named character in The Wheel Of Time. Notable incidents:
- Rand leaving Callandor in the Stone of Tear (He was incredibly lucky that none of the Forsaken decided to take action)
- Pedron Niall employing Padan Fain as an advisor.
- Just about everything Eladia has done from book 5 onward.
- Moiraine insisting on upholding the tradition of Aes Sedai superiority by witholding information (even from the ta'veren.
- Suian Sanche sending untrained girls after a group of thirteen Black sisters (only many contrived coincidences and idiot balls on the Black sisters' part saved them)

Friends, when Monica believed that Chandler found sharks sexually arousing ("The One with the Sharks").
- Are we forgetting Monica and Chandler's Secret Relationship? Everyone else grabbed the Idiot Ball like crazy. Ironically, Joey, who is normally king of the Idiot Ball, figures it out first.
  - And then Monica and Chandler grab the ball once everyone has found out but Ross - who they want to keep it a secret from more than anyone. They know he just moved in across the street, they've already been caught fooling around once by Phoebe through Ross' new window, and they don't think to close the drapes?!
  - ...and even after those many years of spying on Ugly Naked Guy from the same distance, they hadn't figured out that Ross might have a similarly unobstructed view in the other direction.
  - They had other things on their minds, If You Know What I Mean...
Pretty much every episode of Threes Company.
- Friends even had a Take That against the show in one episode, when they're all watching the show and Chandler says something to the effect of "Oh, this is the episode of Three's Company where there's some sort of misunderstanding." Phoebe replies "Then I've already seen this one," and switches the TV off.
Pretty much every episode of Bewitched.
My favorite example comes in Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Unification part 2." So, the villainous Romulan Sela has revealed her plan to invade and occupy Vulcan, but it's critical that Star Fleet not be warned ahead of time. Across from is seated Captain Jean Luc Picard, Lt. Commander Data, and Ambassador fuckin' Spock-three of the smartest and most bad ass characters in all of Star Trek- whom she has managed to capture. So what does she do now? Leave the three of them in her office. Unattended. And with access to her computer. Geez, it's like she wasn't even trying.
We can forgive Major Anthony Nelson for not wanting Jeannie to give him the riches of the world - a strong work ethic and the desire to earn one's keep is what built countries like the USA. But for him to constantly wave off Jeannie's amorous advances and instead date women who aren't anywhere CLOSE to as gorgeous as she?!!! Coming to his senses and finally marrying her in Season Six is all that's keeping him from being Too Dumb To Live.
In the Corner Gas episode "Whataphobia", Lacey is revealed to be terrified of balloons. The rest of the episode centers around different reactions to this fear, such as Hank's misguided attempts to "cure" this fear. In fact, pretty much anything Hank does.
- Hank's not really carrying the Idiot Ball so much as he's just an idiot.
Every member of Torchwood has been directly responsible for at least one of the crises they've had to face - Gwen in "Day One," Ianto in "Cyberwoman," Toshiko in "Greeks Bearing Gifts," Owen in "End of Days," and Suzie in "Everything Changes" and "They Keep Killing Suzie." To be fair, Suzie is an amoral serial killer. It's not so much stupidity as not caring what happens to other people. People also chalk Ianto's up to the fact that his love for Lisa has blinded him to the fact that, no, that isn't Lisa anymore (even though it looks like her)
- Captain Jack's been Idiot Balled twice in Season Two:
  - If he knows that Captain John Hart is dangerous, why not go with him himself, instead of sending someone who he thinks that John may get the better of?
  - Using the resurrection glove to raise Owen just to give him two minutes to prepare for death (by which we mean "panic"), when he knows full well that good things do not happen when the gloves are used, and this is a new glove he just stole so whatever side-effects it might have are unknown. The side-effects? Summoning Death himself to walk the earth and destroy all humanity. Nice job, "Captain".
- In the first season episode "Countrycide", the team goes off to inspect a body all together as a group. In doing so, they abandon their camp with some of their supplies and equipment and leave the keys in their SUV. As far as they knew, their were aliens capable of who-knows-what on the loose, and were thus giving them access to their supplies. As would be expected, the SUV is stolen.
  - From the same episode, you have two people ready to kick down a door and probably get shot at, one's a rookie with little combat experience, the other's FRELLING IMMORTAL! Which one do you send in first?
- In "Something Borrowed", Gwen goes alien hunting the night before her wedding, and gets bitten. What do you think happened?
  - If most of the seemingly stupid things Gwen does are really in character for her, is it still considered an Idiot Ball?
- How about the opening of "Fragments"? Lapse of judgment number one: "Hmm, there seem to be alien life forms registering... let's split up not once, but TWICE, despite the fact that we have no idea what this alien might be or if we'll even be able to fight it alone." And number two, which is somehow even WORSE?: "Oh, look, it's not aliens after all... it's bombs that are set to go off any second now. Let's all stand and stare at them instead of running away!" While the rest of the episode makes up for it, it's pretty hard to get through those opening scenes without outright laughing at the pathetic stupidity.
- To summarize a conversation between Jack and Ianto in the radio play Asylum: "Let's mess around with this unknown possibly alien technology that appears to be extremely powerful! Oh, drat, we foolishly cut off all communication and gridlocked the traffic around us. Wanna hot wire a motorcycle and steal it? Hello pussycat! Meow!" (And that italicized bit is direct quote.)
- The "Children of Earth" miniseries has an Idiot Ball of a political kind, namely the British government, which, having made what turns out to be a massive blunder in 1965, tries to resolve its present consequences by attempting to cover its ass while at the same time giving the villains what they want, rather than spending any time looking into a way to stop them. Sadly, there may definitely be a bit of Truth In Television there.
  - Ianto's death in "Children of Earth" is caused by one giant Idiot Ball shared by Jack and Ianto. Because their big plan to make the aliens go away is... to threaten them. Yup. That's it. Jack, who has been fighting aliens on Earth for over 100 years, and who was once a Time Agent and traveled with the Doctor, can't think of anything better than that. And Ianto goes along with it and with him... just because. So when the aliens call Jack's bluff and release a virus, there's nothing either one of them can do but die.
The Drew Carey Show lampshades and inverts this by having the characters pick up an object called an Epiphany Ball while snooping around in a laboratory at night. Whoever holds the ball suddenly gains understanding to all their problems. Predictably, after it gets passed around a bit, they fight over the ball and it is shattered as it dropped to the floor.
On Farscape there was this one time John got sent back to his first meeting with Aeryn. Of course, rather then letting her just beat him up, he fights back like she taught him. And reels of her name and regiment. When she's eventually got him down again, she asks "How did you know my name?" He crowns his stupidity by telling her a better question would be asking how he knew about a birthmark on her hip... then, infuriated, she breaks his neck. Is anyone surprised?
- To be fair, at the time Crichton believed that these "flashbacks" were all illusions created by Einstein, the resident godlike alien; as such, he didn't take any of it seriously until Einstein pointed out that he'd accidentally brought something back from his third flashback.
The companions on Doctor Who are regular recipients of the Idiot Ball, even if by that point they're shown to be relatively intelligent and Genre Savvy people. A glaring example is from the new series episode "Father's Day", wherein Rose ignores the Doctor's warning about interference and stops her father from dying, despite seeing first hand exactly what happens when you ignore the Doctor.
- Sarah Jane gets the exact same idiot ball in "The Temptation of Sarah Jane", with numerous lampshade hangings. Thankfully, she's a good actor, and it's built up. (She is also Genre Savvy enough to know how screwed she is.)
Described quite nicely in a Blake's 7 episode.
Avon: None of us showed conspicuous intelligence on this occasion.
- Perhaps it was Idiot Dodgeball?
Let's face it Heroes has so many of these that it'd be easier to point out when they ''aren't'' being stupid.
- If anything the frequency and size of the idiot balls has increased exponentially as the seasons passed from a reasonable suspension of disbelief to characters regularly choosing the most utterly insane, illogical and downright stupid course of action.
The entire Buffy cast in the episode "Intervention." No one wonders why Buffy's acting oddly and using highly unusual speech patterns only three episodes (to be fair, the time that passed between episodes is unknown) after a robot with identical behaviour and mannerisms showed up, and everybody could immediately tell it was a robot then, despite next to zero hints.
- Lampshaded in the very same episode, when Buffy herself walks in the house and comes face to face with her duplicate. The other characters are stunned and bewildered, to which Buffy (having heard all of two sentences from the Buffybot) responds:
  Buffy: No, she's a robot. She acts just like that girlfriend-bot that Warren guy made. You guys couldn't tell me apart from a robot?!
- The Initiative were portrayed as staggeringly stupid and incompetent, simply because the whole nature of the show required it to be so.
- In Season 2, Jenny Calendar is lobbed the Idiot Ball when it's her time to die. Knowing there's a powerful, homicidal vampire with a mad-on for her clan targeting the Scoobies and anyone close to them, the Watcher's girlfriend decides that rather than go home, where vamps can't enter without invitation, she'll stay in a darkened Sunnydale High late at night and alone to work on her soul-returning spell.
  - And then Angel picks it up a few episodes later when he's trying to awaken Acathla. He has to torture Giles for hours to find out that he has to use his own blood for the ritual, even though the Latin part contains the phrase Sanguia Meam. Roughly translated, it means my blood. And Angel definitely understands Latin.
If there weren't moments (and even an entire hour at the end of the miniseries) when he actually had a clue and wasn't screwing things up, Tony Lewis of The Tenth Kingdom would actually be Too Dumb To Live. With those additions to the character, he just carries the Idiot Ball for the entire adventure only to finally drop it during the assault on Wendell's castle. But the most obviously idiotic moment (aside from breaking the magic mirror) has to be in part one, when he proves he definitely never paid attention to Aladdin or any other wish-granting story. For his third wish on the dragon dung bean, he wishes for a vacuum cleaner which would clean the entire apartment so he would never have to lift a finger...even though for his first wish he caused his building's superintendent and his entire family to become his slaves forever.
- Of honorable mention is his decision in Little Lamb Village to take the Traveling mirror, which had already shown a penchant for disappearing and being hard to track down, and hide it on the only movable object in the barn.
- I'd have to nominate the Midas Touch incident—mostly because by that time he'd been in the Nine Kingdoms long enough to know it ran on fairy-tale tropes, AND was warned by Wolf, who was actually native to the area, to forget it, but accepted the spell anyway, and of course, managed to turn one of his friends to gold. Wolf later remarked, "It was almost ... predictable."
- He walks in on the Wolf Man angrily backing his daughter up against a wall...and just goes on with what he was going to say, apparently not even noticing.
Why, Supernatural? Why on earth would Sam and Dean even let Bela see the Colt, let alone leave her alone with it? They know she can easily unlock the safe and they certainly know that she can't be trusted.
- They must have got it from their father. What was he thinking? Meg and her brother were obviously going to test the Colt out and they would obviously want to tear him and his sons apart when they found out that it was a fake.
- And another one for Sam in Long Distance Caller. Leaving your unstable, few-seconds-away-from-losing-it brother alone in the hotel room, just telling him not to go anywhere and expecting him to actually stay? I thought you would have known better by now, Sammy.
- For such a smart boy, Sam has grabbed a lot of Idiot Balls. The most glaring was in Nightshifter. He might be acting even colder/bitchier than normal and he certainly has all his attention on the job but telling Dean to get the guard outside where the news and police are waiting? Here's an idea, Sam, why don't you (y'know, considering you aren't the one being wanted for murder) do it while Dean takes care of the shifter. That would have made a lot more sense.
In NUMB3RS the entire FBI hauls around an idiot ball the size of the shop. While for the sake of the plot it's all right that every case they meet requires advanced maths to solve, it does not explain why the FBI is incapable of any police work. One of the more outrageous example concerns a fugitive whom the FBI has been after for months. They know the man is on the run, but has not left his home county. Even with that they still cannot find him, but even worse is the fact that the show's resident math genius uses advanced math to reveal to the FBI that the fugitive is regularly stopping at his old home to visit his wife. Indeed, at no point in those long months has it ever occurred to any of the FBI's agents that the fugitive who's staying in his home county may be contacting his loved ones and that they could just catch him by putting up surveillance on the man's wife. The whole show is like this, featuring FBI agents whose only qualifications are that they are damn good at kicking down doors while shouting for people to drop their weapons.
Scrubs: JD is distraught about turning 30 without having accomplished anything on his "Things To Do Before I Turn 30" list. Two days before his birthday, he finds out that a couple of the hospital's sad sacks are competing in a triathlon; very convenient, as "finish a triathlon" is one of the things to do on his list. You can guess what happens next. Acceptable sitcom plot, except that "figure out the difference betweeen Senator and Congressman" is on the list. For one thing, it's almost impossible to believe a reasonably intelligent, very well-educated person like JD would struggle with that concept. Also, even accepting that, five minutes with the Constitution or, even worse, 30 seconds on Google would have given him a solution and an end to his angst.
Generally inverted on Reno 911... During every sketch, one of the idiotic policemen seems to be handed a competence ball, demonstrating an inconsistent amount of skill and intuition in dealing with the idiot criminal or idiot partner. This could be Hand Waved by the necessity of the comedic Straight Man.
- The Comepetence Ball seemed to go to all the bit-characters, making them practically Mary Sue perfect in order to make the regular actors look idiotic... and even more annoyingly than ordinary Mary Sue characters, since it would usually end up with the regular characters being injured or humilitated in some way, but they were also center-stage while the bit-characters were barely visible.
CSI's season 8 pilot gave the Idiot Ball to Sara, who should have encountered basic survival stuff at some point during her lifetime, either from a job safety kind of lecture (given how much wandering the CSIs do) or from a case involving a dead guy in the wilderness, as both San Francisco and Las Vegas have nearby places to get lost and noob hikers to get lost in them.
Celebrity Jeopardy, where pretty much every contestant is holding the Idiot Ball except Sean Connery.
Lampshaded at the end of a Malcolm in the Middle episode:
Policeman: So you found the gun, removed it from the original holder, touched it again to move it to a different spot, used a hacksaw to try to disable it and shot it, and didn't think to call the police until after that?
Malcolm: Yeah.
Policeman: What's your IQ again?
An episode of How I Met Your Mother revolves around this. Robin and Lily spend the episode on a chase around New York to find Ted, who has (according to the stories of the people they ask) been apparently cheating on Robin and generally doing things that really "don't sound like Ted". It later turns out it was Barney the whole time, who gave Ted's name to prove that the line "Ted Mosby, architect" makes girls want you. If only either of the girls had thought to ask any of these people what Ted looks like or what he was wearing... I guess hearing "blonde" or "in a suit" would have killed the entire episode's plot in five minutes.
- Barney and Robin get to carry the idiot ball in the first episode of season five, when they have spent months having a relationship in secret because they're not ready to define said relationship yet (and if their friends knew they would insist that they do so), only to leave the bar, go upstairs to Robin and Ted's apartment and start having foreplay out on the livingroom couch. And then they actually look surprised when the others walk in. They could have kept their relationship to themselves for much longer if they had thought of something as simple as a) going to Barney's place or b) going to Robin's bedroom.
Wesley's actions during the latter part of Season 3 seem to consist of one-half Deathgrip on the Idiot Ball and one-half Bad Ass, stirred to taste and left to simmer. Why he a) first went to Holtz instead of, how you say, one of his own goddamned friends and b) beat the everliving crap out of Lorne when Lorne got a partial reading of him while Wesley was singing instead of continuing to sing, letting Lorne carry on reading him and figuring out just why Wesley was abducting Connor is an abiding mystery, the answers of which are known only to Angel's writers.
- IMHO Angel would have done to remember this is the same man who was about to sell him and Buffy out to the demon who needed help with the hard to reach places. THIS is why the Council sacked him. I mean the man believed a TALKING HAMBURGER. Also, just a hint, Wes, sky =! blanket.
(In Stargate Atlantis)The death of Carson Beckett. Exactly when did walking slowly away from a BOMB DISPOSAL UNIT taking care of a high-explosive tumour nobody's ever handled before seem like a good idea?
- McKay and Daniel Jackson got it in Season five's "First Contact". If any other member of the cast had been held at gunpoint by aliens demanding that they activate an unknown device which had originally been shut down due to "unforseen consequences" great enough that it was worth letting the Wraith live, they would have taken the bullet first.
  - You can hand the ball to the Ancients as well, for not sending around an email saying "don't use any Stargates for the next month or so while we go pick off our stranded enemies" before switching the device on
There's an especially wacky example in the late Stargate SG 1 episode "Bad Guys." The heroes go through a gate and find themselves trapped in a museum storage area with a loud party in the next room. They think they can hide six hours until rescue arrives, but then a lady shows up, screams, and runs away. Col. Mitchell's response? He chases her, rifle drawn, into the room where the party's taking place. When a security guard quite reasonably opens fire, Mitchell shoots him in the leg and takes the entire party hostage. The kicker is that Ben Browder, Mitchell's actor, cowrote the episode.
Lee Adama is the usual carrier of the Idiot Ball in Battlestar Galactica. It's lampshaded when Roslin tells him she knows she can count on him to do the right thing, but the smart thing? Not so much.
- Kara Thrace also has a few of these, although the abolute king of this trope has got to be Dr. Gaius Baltar.
- Col. Tigh also get his hard by this trope. For example, one amusing example was when, after ordering in the Marines to quell rioting in the fleet and being told that there weren't enough Marine officers to lead all of the necessary teams, he came up with the brilliant idea of assigning Viper pilots to lead the teams. You know, those guys who spend all they're time flying around in Vipers and have absolutely no experience whatsoever at leading men into combat. To be fair, he does get told off by Doc Cottle, but still.
Every so often, House or one of his team will miss something ridiculously obvious so the plot can be padded out to 42 minutes:
- "Maternity" — Every doctor at Princeton Plainsboro managed to convieniently forget that newborns carry the same antibodies as their mothers.
- "Histories" — Foreman didn't make a connection between the bats he found at a homeless patients shelter and rabies.
- "Distractions" — Every doctor failed to notice the cigarette burn and nicotine stains on the patient.
  - To be fair, In Distractions the patient had previously gotten in an ATV crash that caused him to be covered in burns. It was believed that the cigarette burns could have been a burn from a drop of gas
- "Skin Deep" — Every doctor managed to miss the fact that their patient had no uterus and didn't notice the pair of undecended testes in her abdomen despite numerous ultrasounds and scans.
- "Epic Fail" — Foreman fired Thirteen, because her working as his subordinate would break them up. There is no way she would dump you after that, genius! Say it with me: Epic Fail!
In Spooks, it was sometimes held by Adam. Dies while holding it because he does a handbrake turn in a bomb-rigged car and then parks it instead of jumping out and letting it run for another twenty/thirty yards.
Hi there, entire population of Camelot.
One episode of Bones has Temperance convinced it is out right irrational to think her book could be connected to the series of murders that mirror exactly the ones she wrote about.
- That's not really fair. Brennan later admitted that she knew they were connected, but she didn't want to believe it because that would make her responsible for the murders. She wasn't stupid, she was just feeling guilty.
Have any of the losties from Lost ever asked the Others the rather relevant question: "Why?"
- It would help. How much, we won't know, considering how the Others are cryptic (and in the case of Ben, outright liars) in their conversations.

No More Heroes has the viewpoint character hug the idiot ball and never let go. It's not clear whether this is meant as a You Suck, or just for Rule Of Cool, but it. never. stops. If there is a trap, no matter how obvious, Travis will walk right into it. If there is a trick, no matter how old, Mr. Touchdown will fall for it. If there is a foe, Travis will charge them head first. Those trip mines might be obviously placed, but Travis Touchdown will never resist the urge to pass right over them. Good thing he's nearly invulnerable.
- The Rank Seven fight apparently straps six or seven extra idiot balls to the Travis. That's probably as a Kick The Dog thing for the bad guy, though it does get a little ridiculous.
- Perhaps the best use of this, though, is during the Rank Two fight, in which leaves the Idiot Ball out for the player to grab. Periodically, the boss will just collapse on the ground and start weeping. If the player decides that this is a perfect opportunity to take her out, the boss immediately parries the blow, and proceeds to beat Travis to death, regardless of his current health.
  - There is a catch to this though. There are two different animations, one is her Playing Possum and the other animation is the real deal. She is open for attack should the latter occur.
Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe gives essentially the whole cast bar a few the Idiot Ball for essentially the whole plot. Even when they weren't hopped up on interdimensional Unstoppable Rage, the characters did a bang up job of not trusting eachother and, at times, straight up not noticing clues that maybe the other fighters from the other universes are possibly going through the same thing they are. As a result, massive Lets You And Him Fight. It doesn't help that whenever anyone starts to wonder whether they weren't fighting enemies, someone would suddenly appear going through said Rage and attack, though even then the symptoms of the rage are obvious (the recognize it when it affects each other, for instance). Of course, this mainly just hinders them from doing anything relatively productive, and, ironically, the only person doing anything towards fixing things is Lex Luthor. Meanwhile, the only other people who aren't held back either use it to go on a spree of destruction (Joker being Joker, really), or loses opportunities to figure things out once they arrive ( Batman). Superman, of course, being Superman, is the only other one who remains optimistic and friendly despite aggression from basically everyone.
- Granted, this is absurdly common in most Fighting Games, just this is one of the more recent big offenders.
In God of War 2, Kratos happily drains all of his power into the Sword of Olympus and is promptly betrayed at his weakest, even though Persephone does the exact same thing to him in Chains of Olympus
- Not to mention the fact that up until then Kratos was doing perfectly well in the fight without the blade.
Although not exactly under the scope of this article, the overly stupid Cirno from the Touhou games is known as "?" or "Nineball". Thus, she's an idiot and she's a ball.
In Sonic Adventure 2, when Tails brought the fake Chaos emerald AND the real one to the Space Colony ARK, when he could have left it back on Earth and Eggman would probably had never known.
- In consequence, When Sonic is handing over the fake emerald in exchange for Amy, Eggman captures him into a capsule to send him out in space, exclaiming that he couldn't be fooled by that fake emerald. To which Tails asks. "How did you know it wasn't the real one?" On to which Eggman responds "Because you just told me, Foxboy!"
In Final Fantasy VIII, Quistis tells off Rinoa at General Caraway's (Rinoa's father) residence, then leads her group away to perform its mission (pulling a switch that will imprison Sorceress Edea and provide a clear shot for Irvine.) Once Quistis and the others have arrived, she feels guilty for hurting Rinoa's feelings and takes everyone back to the mansion to apologize, despite the severe importance of the mission and the extremely limited time they have to pull it off... only to end up locking herself and her group in the mansion when Rinoa (who never even saw her) accidentally springs a trap. It's nothing short of a miracle that Quistis' group found a way out of the mansion in time to perform its mission.
If the player pays attention in the beginning of Half Life, he will likely wonder how Dr. Freeman even made it to the testing chamber for all the Idiot Balls the science team is juggling. Disregarding safety protocols because Breen says so? Going ahead with the experiment after a power outage toasts half the data in the computers? Ignoring an EXPLODING CIRCUIT after safety protocols are overridden? Using a super-pure crystal sample at super-high intensity? It's a wonder Gordon survived the tram ride.
- It clearly affected him too. As noted in the IJBM page for Half-Life 2, he climbs into inescapable Stalker pods not once but twice in the citadel and is only saved by two lucky breaks.
In Advance Wars at one point, in order to give the player tutorial information on airports, Andy (who's supposed to be a whizzkid when it comes to machines) infamously asks "What's an airport?".
- Also done to Will in Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict. Despite being one of the above average students in the military academy, and having just gone through a continent and a half, STILL had to consult a textbook to figure out how to check the range of a Talon Gun.
Valkyria Chronicles is really an Idiot Plot for basically everyone but the main villain; the Gallian Army repeatedly does truly stupid things when you consider how awesome but unrealistic everything is. Admittedly this is mostly so that player-controlled Squad 7 can remain the central force of the game, but you can watch basically every scene and find somebody doing something stupid that's preventing their side from winning the war until the romance plot is over.
- Faldio shoots Alicia to awaken Valkyria powers in her. If he had just asked and let her make the decision herself, pretty much the entire second half of the game could have been avoided.
- Here's a hint, guys out there: if your girlfriend is on the verge of an emotional breakdown in front of you, the proper course of action does not involve you standing there doing nothing while she runs away, nearly in tears and telling herself (and you) she'll be okay.
The entire playable cast grabs the idiot ball at one point in Final Fantasy VII. They're trying to stop Sephiroth from getting the Black Materia, and they know that Cloud is vulnerable to being brainwashed by Sephiroth. So what do they do once they've reached the Black Materia first? They give it to Cloud.
- This is made even worse by the fact that Cloud told them not to give it to him, under any circumstances. The character holding the Black Materia is left behind before the big confrontation, and told to stay put. Then, Sephiroth uses an illusion to trick them into thinking Cloud is in trouble, they rush forward to help, and when they see Cloud surrounded by a group of Shinra, they calmly hand it over.
In Mana Khemia Alchemists Of Al Revis, all the characters get their stupid moments (mostly seen in their personal sidequests). Though this is intentional, the things they do are so dumb (up to and including using deadly force on each other, only to be Easily Forgiven) that it breaks the Suspension Of Disbelief.
Most Ace Attorney cases are dependent on a particular character holding the Idiot Ball at a particular time. Usually it's a witness holding it, but sometimes the judge or even the prosecutor will be the one who have it. When Phoenix or Apollo holds it (which is quite often), it typically causes a massive Wall Banger for the player. But Thou Must!
- This is most notable in the third case of Trials and Tribulations, where proving the killer is Furio Tigre, who was previously smart enough to not only successfully frame an innocent waitress WITH A TRIAL in addition to planted evidence, but also drag the reputation of a high-ranking attorney through the mud at the same time, depends on him being dumb enough to call Phoenix's bluff that the bottle of ear medicine is the bottle of poison used to kill the victim. IT WORKS.
  - He was also pretty damn arrogant and egotistical, so Phoenix just used his flaws against him.
Silent Hill games often force the player to accept the Idiot Ball in order to advance, possibly deliberately as part of the ongoing torturous mind screw. Consider the number of times in one particular game that the player is asked whether James will stick his arm into a dark hole or leap into a pit whose bottom he cannot see.
In Jade Empire, Master Li reveals to you that he is really the Emperor's brother. Only afterward does he think it prudent to chase off the eavesdropping Gao. The same Gao who had hours earlier gotten fed up with the favoritism Master Li had been showing you all these years. The same Gao who had been expelled for using barred magic in his duel with you. The same Gao whose father is a crime boss with ties to the Lotus Assassins, who have been searching for the Emperor's brother since the events at Dirge twenty years prior. The results are predictable. Subverted, of course; Master Li had planned the whole thing, probably from the moment he accepted Gao into his school in the first place.
- This might better fall under Xanatos Gambit. Master Li looks like a complete fool on many occasions in the early game, with Sagacious Zu even lampshading that Master Li couldn't possibly be the Glorious Strategist, given that he idiotically surrendered to the Lotus Assassins without a fight to save his students when he knows Lotus Assassins take no prisoners. He's right, and Master Li goes from What An Idiot to Magnificent Bastard over the course of a single cutscene.
Midori of Devil Survivor loves playing with this. Once she gets her own COMP, she promptly goes Leeroy Jenkins on the demons and simply will. Not. Listen to anyone's warnings. Even running into an invincible demon doesn't shake her grip on it.
- The only reason she listens is when she was nearly Lynched because she never considered the idea that people would be afraid of a weirdly-dressed girl summoning demons.
The Amiga game Nemac IV takes places in a facility of the same name, housing a supercomputer designed to oversee defence and with complete control of non-human military assets. Fortunately, the people who created the computer decided to test it with a simulated invasion to see how it would respond, feeding it almost all the information it needed to act. Unfortunately, the one piece of information they left out was the fact that the invasion was simulated.
In terms of player vs. player combat, World Of Warcraft basically forces this on you. The storyline makes it abundantly clear that the war between the Horde and the Alliance is counterproductive at best, and yet it only rewards you if you take on the role of a rabid patriot.
In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption the main villain, Dark Samus, is able to kill you with a non-standard game over if you are ever fully saturated by phazon radiation. Of course, the Idiot Ball goes to the Galactic Federation for making this possible in the first place. When Samus, and a group of fellow bounty hunters, is zapped by Dark Samus's phazon beam at the beginning of the game, they find that all the bounty hunters have been genetically altered by the beam to allow their bodies to generate phazon energy. Rather than trying to fix the problem, they install a device to draw on this deadly, unpredictable energy directly into your power suit. Of course, this is justified in that every major boss in the game can ONLY be defeated using this device.
- Also justified because the Federation studied the Phazon that their bodies were generating, and their results told them that it had no negative effects on the Hunters. The first time the corruption idea even came up was after Samus landed on Bryyo, which was over a month after they started generating Phazon.
The heroes of Persona 4 miss many a glaring contradiction in their investigation of the kidnappings and subsequent murders taking place in their hometown. One particularly explicit use of the idiot ball is when the entire team leaves a known potential victim completely unprotected so that they can apprehend a balding, overweight voyeur climbing up a telephone pole in broad daylight, believing him to be the true culprit. It seems highly unlikely that a group of high school students would mistake such a character for a villain who up to that point had been so discreet and efficient that even the police didn't have the slightest idea regarding his identity. They were encouraged by inept policeman Adachi, who wanted to clear the team out for the real kidnapper, but this is hardly an excuse.
- Even worse is the scene leading up to Nanako's kidnapping. Neither Dojima nor Souji think that Souji might be able to demonstrate his claims of being able to enter TVs by sticking his hand in the one not ten feet away. Trained policeman Dojima then proceeds to leave his daughter alone and unprotected, immediately after Souji receives a letter threatening someone close to him with death.
- Let's be honest. Taro Namatame had this going on too. All the while he was "saving" people and he never once considered that the TV world and the Midnight Channel might be connected to each other. If he had thought of that, he might have considered that the TV world had caused the deaths of Mayumi Yamano and Saki Konishi.
Dear god, Luna's Disney Death in Star Force 3 could have been completely avoided if she didn't casually walk up to Megaman, stick around long enough to point out two of the characters hanging around are people she knows, and not notice Joker until he was in front of her and not just threatening, but outright saying he was going to destroy her. And Megaman/Geo is no better, chasing after Joker when he TELEPORTS AWAY, leaving Luna a sitting duck to his attack from behind. This wouldn't be so stupid if he didn't just witnessed him teleporting in front of Luna in the first place.
In Mario And Luigi Bowsers Inside Story, this kind of thing basically fuels the plot, from Bowser getting stepped on by everything too big to fight normally and eating dangerous shrooms from lunatics. But the defining moment? Bowser EATS the DARK STAR. Keep in mind that the Dark Star is an Artifact Of Doom... and an EldritchAbomination In turn, it copies him by absorbing his DNA, mutates bacteria type creatures inside him, proceeds to eat whole the remains of the last villain he fought after Mario and Luigi battle it in a Boss Battle, capture Peach and nearly cause the end of the world.
- Still, Bowser didn't so much as actually eat it as the Dark Star just teleported it inside of him. Nonetheless while Bowser is guilty of this trope it's fitting for him and he usually manages to turn it into a Crowning Moment Of Awesome or a Crowning Moment Of Funny either through the Mario Brothers helping him out or just through being a Badass.
In Grandia II, Staff Chick Elena. Full stop. Once it is revealed that she and Action Girl Millennia are one and the same person, with the latter being a superpowered, "inner demon" alter ego of the former, Elena decides to have herself exorcised—this despite the fact that Millennia has done nothing more evil than testify quite blatantly to her sexual attraction to Ryudo and display a love of fighting and killing...but only of monsters and villains. The pope then proceeds to tell her, quite explicitly, that if he exorcises her, he will use the shard of Valmar within her to reconstruct the demon and with him, destroy the world. He could not have been any more explicit. What does she do? Ignore what he said, and still agree to the exorcism just because, in her Incorruptible Pure Pureness, Purity Sue nature, she cannot stand to have anything demonic within her. So just to recap, what is being weighed here is: Millennia versus the release of the Big Bad and The End Of The World As We Know It. What does she choose? To top it off, this stupidity of Elena's gets one of your party members killed—the Proud Warrior Race Guy, Gentle Giant Mareg who was also the strongest and arguably most useful in a fight, right after he received his ultimate weapon of course—leaving you with the Joke Character, Spoony Bard Prince Roan. So, you lose an utterly awesome, superlative fighter for one 40 levels weaker whose best move is throwing rocks at the enemies, AND doom the world...all to get rid of a pair of wings and a slightly oversexed action junkie? Is it any wonder she's apologizing to the Hero for the rest of the game? Since in his words "a world that has someone like her representing it is one I don't want to save".
In Luigis Mansion, this is lampshaded in game by King Boo, with the plot itself relying on insane amounts of idiotic decisions by the characters. Luigi actually believes he won a free mansion in a contest he didn't even enter (already the setup for your standard scam)? Then Mario explores the place early... and gets captured. And Luigi finds out the mansion looks nothing like the picture and is haunted. Later, Luigi presses the switch that says 'do not press', unleashes the fifty odd Boos trapped under the grate, and approaches various suspicious events without hesitation.

Coach Z on Homestar Runner. It seems that he only keeps his "more than two praeblams" (other than his butt fixation) for one episode.
- Hell, the whole cast plays dodgeball with the Idiot Ball. Proverbially, or course.

In a case of a literal Idiot Ball, Xykon from Order Of The Stick wipes out the Azure City paladins by tossing a superbounce ball inscribed with a Symbol of Insanity into their midst, causing them to turn on each other in a tremendous bloodbath of confusion.
- When Vaarsuvius decides to take on Xykon by himself, it's not nearly as stupid an idea as it might seem due to a Deal With The Devil (and the Demon, and the Daemon) she made recently to gain a massive amount of power. Too bad he's carrying an Idiot Ball for the entire fight.
- Justified due to V's completely wrecked emotional and mental state at the time: Within the last 100 comic strips, V had watched powerlessly as a group of low-level soldiers died cursing V's inability to save them, failed to get months of the elven equivalent of sleep due to pervading nightmares, been crushed in battle by a dragon who threatened to devour his/her children, and then sold his/her soul to fiends in order to protect his/her family and assist his/her scattered allies. Except V's family gets so scared and angry of V's dark magic that they leave V. And V's allies manage to gather together without V's magic. The Three Fiends predicted an 84% chance that V would attack Xykon, his/her's biggest threat due to combined stress of V's experiences and the pain of leasing his/her soul.
Hazel from Girls With Slingshots goes through an insane level of mental gymnastics in her belief that Jaime's new love interest must be male, despite knowing she's been with girls before. When Jaime tells Hazel her new "boyfriend" is Erin, Hazel (who, admittedly, doesn't remember Erin's name) hears it as "Aaron," even when Jaime repeats it several times, and even when Erin herself points out her own name with a meaningful stare. They then go on a double date, where Erin shows up in a bowler hat, glasses, and a fake moustache, and not only does Hazel not recognize her, but has to be told by her boyfriend that Erin is female, after she and Jaime have gone to the restroom together.
Inverted in 8-bit Theater. Everyone seems to be passing around a minor Sanity Ball. Which they lose sometimes.
A rather in character Idiot Ball is given to Jade in Jade 6, when she helps with a rather...dangerous...sounding deal. Thing is, she said she'd help, the person really needs it, it SHOULD all go okay, right? (She's shown ALMOST catching herself, but she keeps slipping back.) Partially caused by a massive Hero Ball, as well.
Jim in Darths And Droids has a lot of idiot ball moments, though, in this case, it's a more integral part of the character, and generally gets used for laughs. The entire plot of the series effectively starts because of such a moment.

In the Ben 10 episode "A Change Of Face", Grandpa Max doesn't notice that Gwen is acting odd; the source of the odd behavior is that villainess Charmcaster has swapped bodies with Gwen. Even later on, after the ruse has been revealed and more body-swapping has occurred, Grandpa Max still can't tell who's who without a scorecard... This is pretty glaring, given that Max is a former Plumber (this show's MIB equivalent), has been repeatedly shown to be pretty clever, and above all is their grandfather.
- Another example is in the Alien Force episode "Good Copy, Bad Copy". You'd think that, considering how much weird stuff they've seen, Kevin and Gwen would immediately be suspicious of 'Ben' (really a Galvan named Albedo) claiming he's looking for Ben. Instead, they just assume he's the real thing having lost his mind, setting up for the old "Which one is which?" bit.
In the Gargoyles episode "Vows" Demona gains possession of an artifact known as the Phoenix Gate, which allows the holder to travel to any place at any time at will. She travels back in time and informs her past self (also in possession of the past version of the Gate) that SHE should use the Gate to change history, instead of just doing it herself with the Gate she already possesses. The ultimate lesson is that history is immutable, though the reason for this apart from a large, conspicuous Idiot Ball is unclear
- Made even worse by the fact that present day Demona says she remembers the whole incident (well Goliath's talk after she got knocked out), but if she remembers that it's pretty odd to think she'd have forgotten meeting herself. So if she already had memories of her plan failing, why go through with it? It reeks of Dr. Manhatten style pre-destination.
  - The aforementioned PALES in comparison with the sheer idiocy Demona displays in "Hunter's moon". So, after a centuries-old search she has finally assembled all the elements for the fatal blow against humanity: an enchanted virus that will kill all sentient beings on the planet. She also has a magical figurine that will protect the gargoyles from the virus. She is ready to break the container and release the virus when Goliath and Co break in. So she, you guessed it, start monologizing. In the worst Bond Villainesque manner possible. Not only does she elaborate on her plan, but she actually POINTS to the figurine on the table as if plrading: "Goliath, be so kind and smash the thing thus rendering the plan I've spent the last 500 years implementing completely pointless...There you go! You're such a sweetheart!"
Honorable Mention: The Orb of Confusion in Spongebob Squarepants - a literal Idiot Ball (picutured above).
- On a less literal note, the trope applies to several episodes, with varying results - Spongebob, Patrick, Mr. Krabs and/or Plankton will be saddled with the idiot ball at any time whatsoever. The only ones safe are Sandy and Squidward...and even then...
The same goes for The Fairly Oddparents, where in most episodes it's Timmy's idiocy that gets the plot moving.
This very web page is referenced and linked to in Ed Liu's Toon Zone review of the Flintstones sequel series The Pebbles And Bamm Bamm Show. To wit:
- "[Pebbles is] the one most often saddled with the Idiot Ball, since most of the episodes rely on her misunderstanding something and then finding the worst possible way to fix her mistakes."
Avatar The Last Airbender:
- Iroh, usually The Obi Wan, Retired Badass and The Caretaker in one, once almost killed himself by drinking tea made of the leaves of a perceived delicious tea plant that wasn't. Followed by a small Find The Cure plot. (Though this may have been a bit of character exposition, meant to demonstrate exactly how much Iroh enjoys his tea.)
- Also, using Firebending to heat his tea while they were trying to stay incognito... in the Earth Kingdom... surrounded by refugees from the invading Fire Nation forces. Zuko immediately lampshades: "What are you doing firebending your tea?! For a wise old man, that was a pretty stupid move!"
- Of course Zuko has no room to talk, he has had two massive idiot balls. The first was when the ending to the second season finale where he betrays his uncle, and tries to capture the Avatar, because Azula (a notorious liar) told him that their father forgave him and wants him back. When he returns Ozai does forgive Zuko but only because he believed that Zuko killed the Avatar. The second was in the series finale, when he told everyone that Ozai planned to ethnically cleanse the Earth Kingdom, something he should have mentioned in "The Western Air Temple" several episodes ago; it was kind of important.
  - Justified. Zuko says he had not mentioned it because he had no reason to; as far as he knew, Aang still had the goal of defeating the Fire Lord before Sozin's Comet returned...but in actuality, Aang and the others had decided to wait until AFTER the comet had come and gone, without telling Zuko.
  - On the other hand, shouldn't Zuko have realized that something was up before they are down to three days before the comet arrives, since apparently no one has mentioned to him what the battle plan was? He's cutting it kind of close to question why they are still on vacation when the Final Battle is supposedly right around the corner. Not that it let's the rest of the cast off for failing to talk to the guy with such extensive inside information about the enemy.
  - Basically, Poor Communication Kills.
Despite being relatively sane, Slinkman of Camp Lazlo likes to carry the Idiot Ball around a lot.
In the Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, Antoine would occasionally be used for this. The mini-episode Fed Up with Antoine was the most blatant example of this trope.
- Interestingly, Sonic was also given the Idiot Ball for a single episode. In the episode "No Brainer", Sonic nearly gave away the location of the Freedom Fighter's secret base due to being hit with a memory-erasing gun.
Thrust is actually pretty smart in Transformers Armada when he first shows up. After several Deus Ex Machina-induced failures he starts spending a lot more time around the Idiot Ball, culminating in getting his rear kicked by human children.
A case of a literal idiot ball can be found on The Simpsons. In one episode, Lisa is no less smart than she usually is, but she's feeling like an idiot because a new girl in class, Alison, has proven to be better than her at everything. Visiting Alison's house, Lisa attempts to play an anagram game with Alison's father but fails miserably. Taking her to be a simpleton, Alison's father hands Lisa a red rubber ball, saying "this is a ball. Perhaps you'd like to bounce it."
- Pranksta Rap – The plot revolves around Bart faking his own kidnapping and gives rise to two idiot ball moments. Bart handwrites the ransom note. Marge fails to recognise her own son’s handwriting.
Star Wars The Clone Wars has an episode where Obi-Wan and Anakin are sent to negotiate with some Weequay who have captured Count Dooku. Right from the start, they go in expecting a trap, yet apparently did not bother to think of any counter measures. They quite willingly hand over their lightsabres rather than hide them and worst of all, at the end when they've finally broken free and have the Weequay leader at blade point, ready to give up and come to prison quietly, Obi-Wan tells Anakin to let him go. Why? Why? Why? They never even try to explain why Obi-Wan suddenly wants to let someone who lied to them, drugged them, kidnapped them and tortured them get off scot free!
- Because he knows Count Dooku is going to hunt them down as Obi-wan points out at the end when the Captain ask why are they being let go.
  - So this Jedi Knight, this paragon of justice and peace, is perfectly happy to let a Sith Lord run around murdering, instead of doing his job by the book, which would be arresting the guy? Wow, who knew Obi-Wan was a Jerkass...
  - Obi-Wan did advise the pirate captain that it would be a really good idea to find some other planet to hide on, before Dooku got around to looking for him.
- The Clone Wars also has Cad Bane, a bounty hunter who seems to have the power to hand out idiot balls to all of his enemies. In every one of his appearances, he manages to succeed by turning the Jedi into complete morons. Bigger idiots than they usually are in the prequel era, that is.
Lion-O of ThunderCats runs headlong down the field with the Idiot Ball held very tightly ( I'm going to go exploring! Uh-Oh, trouble I can't handle myself! Wait, can't call the other Thundercats, the episode's not three-quarters over yet! ) though he occasionally passes it off to other Thundercats. Tygra, especially, seems willing to run with it. Lion-O has the justification of being a mental child, but Tygra and the others have no excuse.
Every character in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon would carry the ball when the plot required. A stand-out moment includes a scene in the series' third episode, when, left to their own devices in April's appartment, the turtles suddenly become retards: Leonardo begins throwing tubes of lipstick at a painting, calling it "target practice"; Raph interprets "insert capful of Shampoo into tub" as referring to an actual baseball cap; Donny starts fiddling with April's answering machine with no regard as to her privacy; and Mikey proves incapable of making instant pizza which he had no permission to touch. April is undestandably furious.

People practically pass the Idiot Ball around on a regular basis. From such man-made disasters like "The Great Irish Famine" to "The Great Leap Forward", incompetence, miscommunication, and plain malice are passed up and down a line until a small error becomes a really big problem.
- Of course, one must always remember Hanlons Razor.
- Many disasters of this sort happen because of an underlying problem that encourages people to act in ways that an outsider would call idiotic. For example, during the Chinese "Great Leap Forward," everyone had a strong incentive to cover up problems, because the Party leadership tended to Shoot The Messenger when someone admitted to a shortfall in production. In the Potato Famine, the British aristocrats with the power to control government policy in Ireland didn't care much about what happened there, and so avoided dealing with the famine until it became serious to ignore.
  - I generally count willful ignorance in the "malice" section.
- Regarding the Irish Potato Famine, some in London thought famine was inevitable and interfering would do no good, as Malthus had predicted that population would eventually outstrip food production ... ignoring that Ireland (pop. 10m) was producing enough food for 20 million. They took the pragmatic option, deciding that food shortages in British cities would lead to revolution, but food shortages in Ballynackfigginspittle would just exterminate those semi-human creatures no-one cares about.
Lets not forget the case a few years ago where NASA lost a billion dollar space probe because some idiot forgot to convert from american standard to metric. Apparently rocket scientists are above checking their work.
You can generally rely on six-year-olds to be six-year-olds, and that's about it. Nothing illustrates this quite so well as the recent "Balloon Boy" fiasco, when, having executed his plan for fame and attention well enough to get away with it if not actually avoid raising suspicion, the father asks his son (on national television even) why he didn't come out from where he was hiding when he heard everyone looking for him, and the kid responds, "You said we were doing it for the show."
Luigi Cardona is a not-so-well-known Italian general during the First World War who held onto his Idiot Ball for a very long time. He was a general who believed in Napoleonic tactics, even thought the technology had been much improved during the 100 years between Napoleon and him. His failed offensives - 11 in total - along the Izonso (now called the Soča) River emptied the Italian manpower significantly and eventually led to the near-collapse of the Italian army after a Central Powers counterattack at Caporetto. That the Izonso is located in the Alps and that the Austrians held stronger positions didn't help matters either.
In WW 1 France and Britain going to war with Germany, the country whose chemical industry produced 90% of the explosives used by the French and British army.
- To be fair, France didn't really have the option of NOT going to war with Germany, once she'd been invaded. And Britain was bound by treaty to come to France's aid.
  - No it wasn't. Britain joined the war because Germany invaded Belgium.
- Hell, the entirety of World War One itself is one big giant idiot ball. The ultimatum issued by the Austrian government after the assasination of Franz Ferdinand and the Serbian reply were basically insult-trading instead of diplomacy. Especially since almost no one in Austria liked Franz Ferdinand and Emperor Franz Josef didn't really want to go to war. Later on in the war the Germans and the Allies were both committed to total victory, which meant that attempts by Pope Benedict XV and Emperor Charles of Austria to resolve the war diplomatically were rejected out of hand on both sides. Then there was the German plan to knock Russia out of the war: send Vladimir Lenin back. Way to use your heads, guys.

Open Blue's Back Story has King Armando of Avelion betting his country's second largest colony in a swordfight with the greatest swordsman in the Old World. Naturally, he lost. For a skilled diplomat and peacemaker, Tempting Fate like that wasn't exactly a pretty smart thing to do.
Whateley Universe example: during the 'combat finals' at Whateley Academy, Buster (super-strong brick who gets stronger and tougher the more you hit him) drew Aquerna, one of the school losers. He lost by chasing her all over the place until she found a spot where she had the advantage. Lampshade Hanging by the instructors, who pointed out that he was so much stronger than she was, all he had to do was go to the 'win spot' and type in his answers, and she wouldn't have been able to do a thing to stop him.
Cracked's 6 Movie Plots Made Possible by Bafflingly Bad Decisions.

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