Failure Montage

Darwin fails to help out.

A type of Montage, and the approximate inverse of a Hard-Work Montage, which shows a character or series of characters trying and failing to achieve some specific task such as building something, finding a job, finding romance, or performing a skill. The intent is to show either that the characters are hopelessly inept or clumsy (in which case it will probably include moments of Epic Fail or How Is That Even Possible?), or that the task is extremely difficult. A scene showing the characters despairing about their lack of progress is usual to be thrown in.

If the attempters are protagonists, they'll usually succeed in the last shot; this may lead into a Training Montage, in which the attempter does gradually better each time, giving the whole scene a chiastic composition. Alternatively, the scene will cut out after the first success, the implication being that the character mastered the skill offscreen.

This often occurs when someone gains a new superpower; see How Do I Shot Web?. It is also frequent in a When You Snatch the Pebble situation.

Compare Humiliation Conga, where the failures happen one after the other in real time. Writer's Block Montage, Travelling Salesman Montage, and Terrible Interviewees Montage are Sub Tropes. Hilarious Outtakes are somewhere between this trope and the real world.

---

Examples

Anime and Manga

• Dr. STONE: Chapter 215 has one where the Kingdom of Science's efforts to launch a rocket keep ending in either it flying off course or exploding. Though Senku and Xeno's smiles show they aren't too bothered by the streams of failed launches as they improve the rocket.
• When the Admiral rearranges the fleets in Kantai Collection, the newly-formed Mobile Unit Five is a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that can't get along and can't decide on a flagship. The girls decide to take turns as flagship on training missions. Each time, an enormous explosion at sea - followed by the dejected girls recuperating in the Repair Spa - tells us all we need to know about their degree of success.
• A flashback episode of Last Exile shows how the protagonists became messengers after being orphaned. Their biggest hurdle in doing the job was retrieving the messages, which were on a ring at the end of a long pole, which had to be grabbed via flyby in an aircraft, similar to a train seizing a mailbag. They miss many times and eventually have to practice on the ground, then at slow speed, before they can do it for real.
• In One Piece, the creation of Water 7's sea train is depicted in a montage including shots of the multiple failed prototypes that preceded the final Puffing Tom. This demonstrates just how difficult perfecting even one requirement for the final sea train was, let alone all of them.
• In Plastic Memories, Isla's attempts at retrieving Nina, a Giftia, or android, nearing the end of her service life. Chizu slams the door in each of her attempts for several days.
• In Pokémon Journeys: The Series, after a disastrous first battle against Gym Leader Bea, Ash submits his Riolu to fight foes with tentacles in order to better counter her Grapploct. Cue loss after loss that only drives Ash further into the Corner of Woe (though he gets better by the end of the episode).
• Happens in the one-shot manga Section 459, when the boss tests Mugen to see if he is worthy to be a demon.
• Chapter five of Torako, Anmari Kowashicha Dame da yo largely centers on Aiko Torasawa trying to join various clubs. Popping the ball and tearing the net in half during Volleyball tryouts is a foreseeable-if-unfortunate consequence of her poorly controlled Super-Strength. Knocking over multiple bookshelves at the Literature club, however, is just plain sad.
• Urusei Yatsura. Aratu trying to win the game of tag against Lum, notably his attempt to get past her flying ability. Each attempt results in him being carried off heavily bandaged on a stretcher.
• Weathering With You: At the start of the film, Hodaka attempts to find a job in Tokyo, but over the course of a rapid montage ends up being rejected by everyone he approaches which causes him to take up Keisuke on his job offer. Later on, while on the run from the police who are seeking to take them into custody, Hodaka, Hina, and Nagi are looking for a hotel to stay the night in, but as with the last montage they get rejected by almost every hotel they enter until they finally get into a rather luxurious one.

Asian Animation

• The Founder of Diabolism Q, the chibi Spin-Off of the Animated Adaptation of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi, is a series of short gag episodes and so has multiple montages of characters comically failing even the most mundane tasks.
  • Episode 11 has Wei Wuxian and the Jiang siblings attempting to resolve the Jiang parents' quarrel by giving gifts to the mother and pretending they're from the father. Cue montage of each gift backfiring in some way (such as a bouquet of flowers attracting a swarm of bees which gets everyone stung) — by the time the father returns from his trip, the mother is angrier at him than before.
  • A flashback in Episode 19 shows a montage of Jin Zixuan trying to court his crush and former fiance Jiang Yanli by growing a flower, carving a bell and cooking soup all for her. Thanks to his incompetence, however, each gift was ruined in some way, such as the soup being so bad he passed out from tasting it. Jiang Yanli appreciated the gestures and showed him her affection in the end, showing that his efforts weren't all for nought.
  • Episode 21 mostly comprises a montage of Wei Wuxian's failed attempts to escape the Cloud Recesses. The first two attempts have him purposely breaking the rules in hopes of being kicked out, but Lan Wangji just stops him by casting a freezing spell on him. The last attempt has Wei Wuxian tricking him into drinking alcohol (which is against the rules) so that he can blackmail him into letting himself leave, however Lan Wangji just drunkenly ties him up.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Episode 3 begins with a montage of Wolffy's attempts to use a vaulting pole to get past the Goat Village gate, with his three attempts falling flat - first, he crashes offscreen; then, he hits a beehive and gets chased by bees; and finally, he flies into the gate rather than above it.

Comic Books

• Bruce Wayne: Not Super:
  • After Bruce decides to make a costume based on a scary animal, the next couple pages show him in unthreatening and/or impractical animal costumes (like a cobra with no arm holes).
  • A montage of Bruce testing the original bat gadgets shows things like him tasering himself or almost being hit by the first batarang coming back at him.
• Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith. The Mask of Momin is a helmet that once belonged to the Sith Mad Artist Lord Momin. It's imbued with his personality which possesses anyone who wears it. Darth Vader uses Lord Momin to construct a castle that can focus the Dark Side of the Force, only to execute him when the first design fails, take the helmet and put it on one of his stormtroopers. Cue a series of panels where Momin assures Vader that this design will work, whereupon the design collapses into a puddle of lava or blows up, then the next panel has the Mask on a completely different mook (and in one case a lava flea) who is assuring Vader of the same thing.

Fan Works

• Naru-Hina Chronicles: When Naruto asks Sai to think about the similarities between all the girls he dated, it leads to a panel showing eight girls (one of them being Ino) slapping Sai on his face in the exact same way.
• Let's just say Italy experienced one in Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità as he tried to seek advice as to who he should choose. Let's just say he didn't get any help until he visited Austria who tells him to choose both Germany ''and'' Japan.
• The Ultimate Hope is a long conga line of every single murder motive Monokuma can think up either failing to have any effect or making the students even better friends than they were before.

Films — Animated

• In An American Tail: Fievel Goes West there is a montage of Tiger training under Wiley Burp, bumbling through each exercise until he finally gets things right.
• The Brave Little Toaster has a montage of the appliances' failed attempts at finding ways of travelling out of the cabin.
• Cars 3 has a montage of Cruz trying and failing to keep up with Lightning on Fireball Beach as she learns to drive on the wet sand.
• Chicken Run starts with a montage of Ginger's plans to break out of the farm, each one ending with her being stuck in solitary confinement as punishment.
• Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation has a montage of Ericka ignoring Abraham Van Helsing's plans and goes to lengths to kill Drac herself, but her attempts are ruined by unwanted interference from Blobby.
• Kung Fu Panda: Po's many unsuccessful attempts to get into the audience that gathered to see the selection of the Dragon Warrior are compiled into a montage up until his fireworks idea.
• The Man Called Flintstone: Two songs during the movie feature these:
  • An antagonistic example occurs in "The Happy Sounds of Pareé". While the Flintstones and Rubbles tour Paris, Ali and Bobo keep attempting to take out Fred with increasingly complex plots, only for them to backfire on themselves.
  • "Pensate Amore" takes place in a Fantasy Sequence with Fred and Wilma in a medieval setting. All of Fred's attempts to reach Wilma at the balcony of a tower end in failure. When it looks like Wilma has given up on him, Fred walks away sad, but Wilma sends little angels that carry Fred to her.
• Mulan's "I'll Make a Man Out of You" opens with a montage of all the soldiers trying and failing to retrieve Shang's arrow from the top of a pole.
• Quest for Camelot starts with the young heroine's father telling her the story of Excalibur, with a brief montage of men trying and failing to pull it from the stone before the future King Arthur succeeds.
• Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Dunk for Future: The training montage that precedes the big game starts out as one, with everything from Paddi ripping his pants to Sparky thinking it would be a good idea to play his Nintendo Switch while exercising. It gets better, and everyone is able to actually master the techniques.
• Secret Magic Control Agency: After their initial attempt to access the SMCA base through the hair salon due to being transformed into children, there's a montage of Hansel and Gretel trying various other methods of sneaking inside... and each time, they get kicked out.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: In order to prove himself skilled though to go on a quest with Princess Peach, Mario is made to complete an obstacle course (which Peach easily gets through in one try just to demonstrate). Cue Mario failing, rather painfully, dozens of times attempting the obstacle course all the way from sunset until sunrise. He never gets it (even with a super mushroom), but his Determinator attitude impresses Peach enough to let him come along anyway.
• Tangled has one of Rapunzel trying to shove the unconscious Flynn into her wardrobe. Even when she finally succeeds, his fingers are still sticking out.
• Winnie the Pooh (2011): Christopher Robin issues a contest to see who can find the perfect replacement for Eeyore's tail. Pooh is up first, suggesting his pooh-coo clock, but it doesn't go well; Piglet then suggests the red balloon that follows the gang, but that doesn't work either. This leads into the narrator saying they tried a great many things all which fail humorously, until they run out of things to try.
• Zootopia: The beginning has Judy trying to make it through a series of obstacle courses based on Zootopia's regions. She is buried in sand in the desert one, slips down a wall of ice in the tundra one, falls off the monkey bars in jungle course, and falls into a (bear-sized) toilet when she tries to use the bathroom. With the coach shouting "you're dead!" every time she falls.

Films — Live-Action

• The Muppets Take Manhattan has the "You Can't Take No For An Answer" number, a song about how you need to keep trying no matter what, set to a montage of Kermit's group being rejected by every Broadway producer and in some cases forcibly thrown out.
• Groundhog Day has several of these. There's one for Phil's failed attempts at wooing Rita (with repeated slaps in the face), another for his attempts to save the old hobo's life, and a particularly morbid one of him repeatedly committing suicide to try and escape the time loop.^note One time it's shown that the timeline continues after he dies.
• In another case of a "Groundhog Day" Loop, Happy Death Day has Tree investigating who might be the assassin. Who is always there to kill her once someone is crossed off the suspect list (and not only the deaths are comedic, but the montage is scored by a pop song about empowerment). The sequel has Tree helping the guys who are trying to close the loop, them failing, and then her indulging into hilarious suicides to restart the day.
• WarGames. After David Lightman learns of the possibility of a back door into the system he wants to hack into, there's a long montage of him trying various means of discovering the password needed to open the back door. In a later scene, after he sees a video of Professor Falken and his deceased son, he realizes that the password is the son's name: Joshua. And it works.
• RoboCop 2 demonstrates early on why the hero is the only one of his kind: repeated attempts to make another Robo Cop result in cyborgs that immediately self-destruct with the realization of what they have become, kill the scientists that made them, or both. Eventually an executive figures out that they need someone with a very strong survival instinct who can be coerced into taking orders.
• Cool Runnings:
  • The first Training Montage consists of shots of the team learning push starts. Nearly all of their attempts end in some combination of crashes, face plants, or people running after the sled.
  • A variation occurs when they're trying to find someone to sponsor their team, which leads to a montage of various company representatives all laughing at them.
• In A Knight's Tale, William's attempt to become a master jouster is at first fraught with failure, as he tries repeatedly to grab a ring with his lance or hit the shield of a practice dummy, to his friends' increasing dismay and frustration. At one point they comment that he actually seems to be getting worse, and even one of his victories leads to him being put in danger of drowning. After he finally succeeds in his training the film jumps to his first tournament, where he barely scrapes by with a win.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Iron Man has a montage of Tony Stark working on parts to the Iron Man suit and having spectacular failure after spectacular failure.
  • Early in Iron Man 2, Tony has to clear a Senate subcommittee hearing, as the U.S. government are nervous about his singular control of the Iron Man technology and the possibility that it might get into unscrupulous hands, especially now that other countries are making their own efforts to create their versions of Tony's suits. To demonstrate how far behind in the race the others are, Tony takes control of their screens and shows what those attempts have amounted to, all of which result in sheer property damage and/or severe injury to the test pilot.
    Tony: Wow. Yeah, I'd say, uh, most countries: five-ten years away. Hammer Industries: twenty.
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron has the Avengers (except Natasha) try to lift Thor's hammer as a party game. Banner fakes Hulking Out, Rogers manages to budge it a little^{note- spoilers!}revealed in Endgame to be him faking failure, and Stark... Stark tries it barehanded, with his gloves' retrorockets, and even has Rhodes join in.
• Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Peter has a How Do I Shot Web? montage where he tries to figure out how to, well, shot web.
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2: After an encounter with Electro overloads his web shooters, Peter is shown trying to find a way to keep that from happening, resulting in him repeatedly making batteries explode and nearly starting a fire.
• Combined with Death Montage for Black Comedy in Edge of Tomorrow. Cage is a New Meat soldier stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop in which he's killed in battle only to wake up alive the previous day. He finds a legendary Action Girl who was once in the same situation and asks her to train him how to survive the battleground. Cue crippling injuries from the training robots, whereupon she shoots him in the head to reset everything to start. Wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, get trained, make it to battlefield, Yet Another Stupid Death, wake up, get trained, get injured, Boom, Headshot!, wake up, Boom, Headshot!, wake up...
• Seong-geun's Robinsonade in Castaway on the Moon starts off as this, as he first attempts to hunt and catch food on the island. He tries to rig up a spear to catch fish, using a stick and a fork, but spears his own foot. Later he gets much better at it.
• In October Sky there's a long sequence of experimental rockets exploding on the launchpad before the protagonists are shown figuring out what the problem is.
• Secretariat: When Penny and her crew are trying to get commitments to breeding rights for Secretariat, with phone call after phone call, sending Ron to talk to other owners, and ending with a paper with the "No" column completely filled, because no one is willing to invest $100,000 in an as-of-yet unproven horse.
• Eddie the Eagle has two:
  • It starts with young Eddie trying out different sports in preparation for his Olympic career and failing miserably at each, eventually completely filling a box with pairs of glasses he's broken in the process.
  • Later there's one of his attempts on the ski jump with crash after crash after crash.
• Singin' in the Rain has a sequence, during the filming of The Dueling Cavalier as a talkie, in which the studio technicians attempt various ways to wire Lina for sound. None of them work.
• In The Legend of Johnny Lingo, after seeing Tama ride a sailing canoe with relative ease, Johnny Lingo tries to do the same, but he does it with much less ease and more falling in the water.
• Now You See It...: Each of the magicians Allison considers before Danny are shown bungling their tricks in a montage.
• The Right Stuff: A rather spectacular one of rocket after rocket exploding in the run-up to actually launching anything into space.
• In Beach Party, Sutwell attempts Awesomeness by Analysis by doing calculations in the sand before his first attempt at surfing, but forgets to carry the two, resulting in a montage of him repeatedly falling off his surfboard.
• Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines opens with a comedic montage of Red Skelton and other people trying flying machines through the ages, which all fail.
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has one showing Ace struggling to see which member of the 1984 Miami Dolphins team likely abducted the Dolphins' team mascot, Snowflake.

Literature

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Big Shot: Greg's not excited about trying out for the basketball team, based on his previous experiences with school Field Days. Cue three consecutive illustrations of him on his 32nd strike in baseball, accidentally falling off the diving block on a swim team, and failing to block a puck in hockey. He says that he's been trying to block out these memories.
• Ready Player One: Among the data that Wade steals from IOI are numerous videos of the Sixers trying and failing to open the Crystal Gate. It is stated that Sixers have spent the past several days performing increasingly absurd actions in hopes that doing them while reciting the words above the Gate will work.
• In Moonflowers, this is Played for Drama. The cast is preparing to rescue seven unknown victims from The Wild Hunt, and the Irish Army sends a hundred infantry to match up with the Wild Hunt's hundred cavalry riders. They're quite pleased to find out that the Wild Hunt is now down by a third... only for Rickard to say that they should have sent at least double the soldiers to a hundred cavalry, especially since modern soldiers haven't even FOUGHT cavalry. The cast soon calls up whichever civilian riders, mounted police, and reenactors can get to Mary's Cape by morning, and when said riders find out that the Wild Hunt's leader jumped his horse over a speeding car, while another rider jumped OFF his horse onto that car, half of them know they're outclassed and bow out right there. The other half has to suffer through this trope, since few civilian horses will put up with this level of stunt-riding, and none of them are getting shot at or intentionally harmed.

Live-Action TV

• One episode of The Tomorrow People (2013) has Stephen attempting to access "Limbo" by trying to learn to stop time whilst teleporting. We get a nice montage of him and John trying to work that out, before concluding that they need a new approach.
• Tetangga Masa Gitu: In the episode with Ruly Ernando, Ruly challenges Adi to a pingpong match. Once Ruly decides to stop holding back, we get a montage of Adi failing to return Ruly's smashes.
• When the MythBusters tested the claim that dental floss can cut through prison bars, Grant initially tried to build a floss-bot out of things a prisoner could plausibly get his hands on. Cue one Failure Montage, complete with bleeped-out swearing and frustrated throwing of robot parts.
• Played with in Takeshi's Castle. Common way of advancing the show past a straightforward non-group challenge is combining footage of several people failing it with one or two succeeding to pass.
• Used frequently on The Amazing Race with some of the harder tasks. After establishing the difficulty the team or teams are having with the task, they will show said teams failing the task multiple times in quick succession, with a counter on screen to show the number of attempts the teams are taking to complete said task.
• The Good Place: In episode 2 of the second season, there's a lengthy montage of Michael's 803 attempts to make his "convince four humans that they're in the Good Place while subtly torturing them" plan work with him being unable to keep Eleanor from figuring out the truth every single time no matter what he does. Except for the time it was Jason.
  Michael: [aghast] Jason figured it out? [Jason grins] Jason? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts. Ow.
• Taskmaster: A few occasions, most notably:
  • Nish Kumar's attempt to chip a football through a basketball hoop is initially shown as though he had done it the first time, leading to wild cheering. Alex then casually reveals an extended montage of Nish's comically numerous failures before that.
  • In "The 75th Question," the live task to guess a guest's first name with yes-or-no questions goes badly off the rails (hence the title), and they have to resort to a Failure Montage to pare it down enough for broadcast, a first for a live task.

Podcasts

• Episode two of Mystery Show features Starlee calling at least four different bookstores looking for a copy of her client's book. It's just as impossible as her client had told her.

Professional Wrestling

• Jay Briscoe got one before Supercard Of Honor VII in 2013 showcasing every last one of his failures to win a singles title in Ring of Honor since the promotion started.

Theatre

• Played for Drama in Jasper in Deadland; the opening scene is a montage of almost everyone in Jasper's life demanding an explanation for his various failures.

Theme Parks

• A brief one is shown in Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem at Universal Studios when Gru plays clips of his earlier attempts at making the "Minion Gun" work, all of which end up turning the volunteers into distorted-looking Minions.

Video Games

• Super Meat Boy has this as a feature. After you complete a level it gives you a simultaneous replay of every attempt.

Webcomics

• In the El Goonish Shive story "Question Mark", after Sarah discovers that she has a magic mark, there is a brief montage of her trying and failing to do various things with magic.
• In Champions of Far'aus, story chapter #4, Daryl's attempts to catch a troublesome kappa are shown as a montage.
• Dank from Sneaky Goblins fails spectacularly at killing a wild boar for breakfast.
• One strip from Darwin Carmichael Is Going to Hell is a montage of Darwin's various attempts to improve his karma via community service, but all his efforts to improve the world end in failure and are appreciated by no one.
• In a Latchkey Kingdom chapter parodying Dark Souls, there's a montage of Jane and Willa respawning after failed attempts to defeat the Capra Demon, showing Jane's cheery resolve turn into sobbing despair.
• Sailor Ranko: A Training Montage of Ranma training Akane to fight their way to the portal is followed by them spending several weeks trying and failing to reach the portal.
• Twisted Tropes: The strip shows Starscream trying to poison, shoot and Vorpal Pillow Megatron and comically missing every time.

Web Original

• The Angry Video Game Nerd regularly does this when a game is particularly difficult, showing clips of the increasingly frustrated Nerd repeatedly failing a section.
• The Demented Cartoon Movie has the ten-part montage "DiScOverIng thE meAninG oF THE ZEEKY WORDS!", a mission to Mars that fails at a different stage each time.
• Dumb Ways to Die has a series of people failing to live.
• Jet Lag: The Game: Season 5 features Sam and Toby in two of these: the first in a task to kick a rugby ball through the equivalent of the goalposts, and the second trying to throw a gumboot. Appropriately, it's set to "The Blue Danube". Adam and Ben also have one when trying to complete the handstand roadblock.
• Many Lets Players playing particularly Nintendo Hard games will often have a montage of deaths as they try to get past particularly aggravating segments.
• Red vs. Blue:
  • When Wyoming, York, and Maine are squaring off against the new Freelancer, their repeated failures as presented rapid-fire, showing just how comically outmatched they are by Tex.
  • In season 12, the main cast is trying to get Felix as part of a training exercise. None of the attempts even come close.
  • In Season 14 "The Triplets", interspersed with the top-ranking agents of Project Freelancer training, we also have a montage of the worst agents of Freelancer failing to get anything right in their sessions as counterpoint.

Western Animation

• Action League NOW! had a Clip Show involving the Action League standing before council to see whether they should retain their hero status or be declared a danger to the public for their incompetence. Each of the Leaguers' flashback to their past exploits don't really help their case, but the icing on the cake is Flesh's recollections which are presented in such a montage of how his clumsiness or carelessness only did more harm than good to the people he was trying to help.
• Ben 10: In “The Big Tick”, Ben goes through most of his transformations while trying to stop The Great One, failing each time.
• Cat Burglar: After you lose your first life, Rowdy will chastise you for being careless with his lives before showing you why you’re only getting three lives instead of a cartoon cat's usual nine. His previous lives were lost, respectively, by being blown up by a TNT detonator, having a wall collapse on him, throwing a brick at a store window only for it to bounce back at him, be subjected to a Backwards-Firing Gun gag while holding up a bank, get attacked by a Killer Gorilla in an old lady's purse, and being executed via electric chair.
  Rowdy: "Well, there's a reason they don't call me 'lucky cat'..."
• The Cuphead Show!: In "Sweater Luck Next Time", the Devil keeps appearing in every place where he intends to steal Cuphead's soul, only to get constantly zapped by the protective invisible sweater each time.
• DuckTales (2017): In "Whatever Happened to Donald Duck?!", Donald and Penumbra stumble upon Lunaris' secret war room and view a tape of Lunaris testing out potential rockets for his planned invasion of Earth. His first two blew up when he tried to launch them (getting himself injured in the process), and the third rocket launched perfectly, but the robot dummy inside couldn't survive the trip, which was why he stole Della's Spear of Selene blueprints for his fleet.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Deja Vu", Timmy decides to prank Francis with a water balloon as payback for what he did the other day; however, Timmy's aim is constantly off, and he keeps missing and hitting several other unsuspecting victims and trying again thanks to Cosmo as a reset watch. He misses a total of four times until he finally nabs Francis.
• Gravity Falls: In "Soos and the Real Girl", there's a montage of Soos trying (and failing) to flirt with women (and an androgynous goth hanging around outside "Edgy on Purpose") at the Gravity Falls Mall.
• Kaeloo:
  • In Episode 80, a montage is shown of Stumpy losing at beach volleyball. The final scene in the montage makes it look like he's going to finally hit the ball, but he fails that too in an Epic Fail.
  • In Episode 233, Kaeloo gets turned into a giant non-sapient frog and Mr. Cat and Quack-Quack must capture her in order to return her to her normal form. A montage ensues of them trying various methods devised by Mr. Cat, all of which fail horribly and end with Mr. Cat getting injured.
• The Kim Possible episode "Blush" begins with several quick scenes of Dr. Drakken gloating at Kim that she is about to witness his ultimate victory, followed by Kim derailing his plan as usual. Each defeat required less and less effort on Kim's part, elevating Drakken's humiliation alongside.
• Combined with Travel Montage in The Legend of Korra, as Team Avatar travels the Earth Kingdom trying to recruit the newly-awakened Airbenders, and showing Tenzin's utter lack of salesmanship as he unsuccessfully tries to convince each one to come learn the Air Nomads ways. True to Tenzin's usual form, each sales pitch he gives is (technically) accurate, but framed in the worst possible way for each specific candidate. He tells the overweight glutton about their vegetarian diet, the overly-fashionable one about their uniform robes, the materialistic one about their ascetic lifestyle, and the parents of a child about their tradition of tattoos.
• Looney Tunes: The Roadrunner and Coyote short "To Beep or Not to Beep" ends with the Coyote getting a catapult with which he intends to flatten his nemesis... somehow, that is if he can get it to work right, since it keeps landing on him. No matter where he stands, the boulder (or another part) lands on him, until he finally hides underground, at which point the thing doesn't do anything at all.
• Molly of Denali: In the episode "Snowboarding Qyah Style," Molly gets a brief one while trying repeatedly to learn how to snowboard.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic seems to like this one a lot.
  • "The Show Stoppers" has a montage early on featuring the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying and failing at various tasks in attempts to get their Cutie Marks.
  • "The Cutie Pox" has one where the CMC try to cheer up Apple Bloom after another failed cutie mark venture. Her response for each is "No, it won't!".
  • The Mane Cast during the "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me" song in "Magical Mystery Cure." All of them save Twilight Sparkle are shown trying, and failing, to do one another's jobs.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders, yet again, in the "Hearts as Strong as Horses" song in "Flight to the Finish." In this case the Failure Montage leads up to eventual success through teamwork.
  • "Pinkie Pride" has Pinkie Pie, feeling overshadowed as resident Party Planner Pony, trying out other jobs including operating room nurse, mailmare, and construction worker.
• The Patrick Star Show: In "Fun & Done!", SpongeBob and Patrick show Andy a bunch of fun stuff like action figures, television, and kazoos to find something that'll unleash his imagination. None of it works.
• The Owl House In "Thanks to Them", Willow, Gus, Amity, and Vee looking around Gravesfield to try to get more information about the mysterious map they found. They eventually find what they're looking for at the Gravesfield Historical Society, but before that, visit three other places first with no success.
  • At the costume shop, the shopkeeper runs them out of the store when Gus and Willow play around with the outfits and cause a scene, and she just looks at them in confusion when Willow tries to pay her with a gold coin from the Boiling Isles.
  • When they go to the library, Amity—who works in a library on the Boiling Isles with living filing cabinets that require bribery or gestures of respect to be persuaded to open—is confused when they don't respond to anything she does, and when a little girl just walks up and opens one, her shock and subsequent embarrassment causes everyone there to stare at her.
  • They reluctantly try visiting the giraffes at the zoo, but it barely acknowledges their presence. They're about to leave, but Willow takes a picture of it first, prompting it to reveal its "freaky" insect-like insides and roar at them and making all four of them scream.
• Razzberry Jazzberry Jam: “Calling All Jazzberries” contains a rather Wile E. Coyote-esque montage of Louis’s various outlandish attempts to meet Salinger face-to-face (jetpacks and hot air balloons were involved, among other things), and Salinger’s equally outlandish methods of thwarting him.
• Regular Show had several failure montages for Mordecai and Rigby in different characters, some prominent examples being:
  • Their training montage with the God of Basketball, so full of failures he declares them to be the worst Basketball players in history.
  • Trying to clean up the park's abandoned ballroom, while ghosts undo everything they do.
• In The Simpsons episode "Homer the Smithers", Homer is Mr Burns' assistant instead of Smithers who's on vacation, and Homer's making Burns breakfast. Every single meal he's trying to make ends up catching fire, even when he pours milk on cereals.
  • There are a number of scenes in the show showing Homer industriously at work in his workshop, resulting in a sorry tangle of lumber and nails.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Pickles", SpongeBob has trouble doing things right, and there's a montage of him trying to figure out how to get into bed.
  • In "Missing Identity", SpongeBob tries to retrace his steps to find his missing name tag by repeating everything he did that morning, from tripping down the stairs to tasting Gary's food to saying hi to Patrick. Unfortunately, Patrick keeps flubbing his lines, meaning that they have to go through the whole thing over and over.
  • In "Skill Crane", there is one of Squidward trying but failing miserably to win a prize from the crane.
  • In "I Heart Dancing", Squidward forces SpongeBob to copy a three-step performance and not stop until he gets it exactly right, in an attempt to ruin his dance audition out of jealousy. SpongeBob begins to practice, but he cannot do the third step correctly and ends up messing it up every time; he continues into the night and into the next morning and finally makes it...but Squidward wants him to do it again. It is to the point SpongeBob is overworked and finally falls asleep, and cannot wake up in time for the audition.
  • In "Friendiversary", Squidward is forced to spend the day with an amnesiac SpongeBob to get him to regain his memory of him. What follows is a montage of him reenacting various things they did from past episodes; SpongeBob shrugs at each and every one.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "The Spy Humongous": As they continue "Anomaly Consolidation Day", Mariner gets thorns shot into her face from a flower when she tries to smell it, accidentally electrocutes herself from holding an alien artifact improperly, and gets encased in slime on the ceiling from Tendi accidentally spilling a liquid substance out of its container.
• Star Trek: Prodigy: In "Kobayashi", Dal discovers the Kobayashi Maru simulation and decides to take it for a spin. In his attempts to win the simulation, we're constantly shown him getting blown up in various ways. One of those incidents has Dal and Jankom Pog huddled behind the tactical consoles and having forced the hologram simulations of Uhura, Spock, Dr. Crusher and Odo to hide with them.
  Spock: It appears he's lost the capacity for rational decision.
• An amusing cavalcade of failures is demonstrated in Transformers: Animated after Megatron returns from his supposed death in the pilot three-parter, whereupon he promptly executes Starscream. Starscream in turn gets an Allspark fragment stuck in his head and is brought back to life as well as an immortal zombie of sorts. Starscream being Starscream, he subsequently attempts to assassinate Megatron and fails repeatedly over the course of several minutes (implied to be several hours). Each time Megatron thinks he's rid of Starscream, Starscream returns unfazed to try again, much to Megatron's obvious and increasing annoyance. Starscream can't actually overthrow or assassinate Megatron, and Megatron can't actually get rid of Starscream despite his best efforts and firepower, making this a two-fer montage.
• The The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse episode "Once Upon An Apple" has the Evil Queen Grimhilde trying to eliminate Mickey Mouse for interfering with her plan to murder Snow White (as well as replacing Snow White as the new fairest in the land), with every attempt backfiring on her.
  • Grimhilde tries to push Mickey off a bridge, but he unknowingly dodges her (while painting the railing) and she falls down.
  • She plays a game of bobbing for grenade apples with him. Mickey grabs a pineapple while Grimhilde grabs one of the grenade apples, which explodes in her face.
  • She throws an axe at him but he ducks down while watering some flowers. The axe instead hits the tree in front of Mickey and it gets chopped down, falling onto the Evil Queen.
  • Last, but not least, Grimhilde chases Mickey on scooters, with her wielding a spiked flail. Mickey stops at a soup kitchen, while Grimhilde continues down the road. As she turns around, she gets hit by a streetcar.

---