Idiot Ball - Television Tropes & Idioms

A moment where a character's stupidity fuels an episode, or a small plot line. If the character does this the entire time then the character is Too Dumb To Live, if multiple characters have the Idiot Ball it becomes an Idiot Plot.

Coined by Hank Azaria on Hermans Head: Azaria would ask the writing staff, "Who's carrying the idiot ball this week?" This is not a compliment. The person carrying the idiot ball is often acting out of character, or misunderstanding something that could be cleared up by a single reasonable question that he isn't asking solely because the writers don't want him to ask. It's almost as if the character is being willfully stupid or obtuse. Unsurprisingly, this provokes a What An Idiot response from the audience.

Examples:

Live Action TV

Friends, when Monica believed that Chandler found sharks sexually arousing ("The One with the Sharks").
Pretty much every episode of Threes Company.
Pretty much every episode of Bewitched.
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.
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.
- 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".
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.
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.
- To be fair to Rose, all that happened to Adam was getting kicked out of the TARDIS for being selfish. On the other hand, Rose was confronted with the image of her father dying and clearly became too emotional to think about the consequences of someone not dying that should have, which the Doctor himself admitted he should have been able to see coming. She likely would have thought twice about it if she'd known destructive time-monsters would eat the universe if she mucked around with it.
- It's really the Doctor who receives the Idiot Ball here. You're going to let Rose watch her father get hit by a car while standing feet away, twice? Really?
Described quite nicely in a Blake's 7 episode.
Avon: None of us showed conspicuous intelligence on this occasion.
- Perhaps it was Idiot Dodgeball?
Peter Petrelli of Heroes usually appears to be a reasonably bright guy. However, the season one finale had him standing around looking panicky as he was about to go nuclear, completely forgetting that he had the power of flight. It was later handwaved in a Season 2 flashback episode that he was using up all his power by trying not to explode.
- Peter's insistence, in the final episodes of Season 2, on constantly believing Adam isn't a bad guy, despite virtually everyone he meets saying otherwise, including Hiro, the man who helped him save NYC less than a year ago. It's even worse when one remembers that Peter can read minds, and thus could have found out in an instant that everyone was telling the truth and Adam was hiding his true intentions from him. Likewise, Peter straining and straining to open the door to let everyone into the room with the virus of doom so he could nuke it, when he could have just walked through the door.
- Let's not forget that Peter knew Adam had been locked up for 30 years, therefore the company had been holding onto the virus for that long without incident. Now what could have changed to cause the future Peter went to? Could it be Adam getting out?
  - Peter's first memorable action way back at the start of the series is to see if he can fly... by jumping off a tall building. This troper considers Peter to have been consistently portrayed as an idiot. Of course, he's also the most powerful character on the show.
  - In Season 3: Future Baddass Peter shows he's still an idiot, when his first solution to changing history is to go back in time and shoot his brother. Did it not occur to him to go back another 10 minutes and TALK to his brother/
  - Also in Season 3: Regular Peter proves he's even more of an idiot than future Peter. In a Mexican standoff in the third episode, a child is being held hostage. An ally is telling him to simply teleport out. Rather than stopping time (which he has been able to do relatively easily recently, and he should have thought of since he got the power from the same person he got his teleporting power), he uses a just absorbed speedster power to attack not the man with the hostage, but a relatively powerless character. Of course, the hostage is killed in the conflict and the entire city is blown up as a direct result.
  - Again in Season 3: Regular Pete barges into the company pulling all the evil villains together, and bumps into his assumed to be dead dad. Instead of taking half a second to see if his dad was planning to do something to him by using his mind reading ability (which he used about ten minutes earlier in the episode), he proceeds to hug his dad, and get all his powers taken away.
- But then, it pretty much rained Idiot Balls in Heroes season 2. Claire suddenly decides to defy all her father's instructions to play normal, despite knowing exactly what the company would do if they were found, the Company themselves keep Sylar in a zero security facility with no guards, Maya trusts everyone and anyone she meets, and Elle lets Sylar live despite having the ability to fill a man with enough electricity to kill them (the Company may want him alive, but she could've at least zapped him with enough strength so that he wouldn't just get back up and run in two seconds).
  - Bob allowing Elle (who admits to being a diagnosed sociopath) outside of the Company headquarters at all, ever, would qualify as an Idiot Ball moment. He not only does this, but sends her to watch over someone who can easily recognize her...
  - Oh, and now Momma Petrelli has fired Elle and released her into the general populace instead of locking the psycho up. This is AFTER having a prophetic dream that shows Elle will become a threat to them all and join with the villains recently released. No, this can't possibly go wrong.
- In the Season 3 opener when Suresh injects himself with the super hero formula. This troper at least thought it was awfully idiotic. End of episode result, his skin's peeling off and he appears to be physically mutating, at least on his back.
  - Season three also opened with Hiro getting a video will from his father. His words were basically "don't open the safe, it could destroy the world". Guess what the very next thing Hiro does? And something bad happens, surprise, and he refuses to go back in time because apparently going back 400 years and creating a murdering monster is the same as going back five minutes to prevent yourself from opening a safe.
  - Isn't the true idiot ball carrier the people who didn't realize Kaito wanted Hiro to open the safe? After all, why would he make the only way to open the safe Hiro's handprint?
  - Most of the above complaints are spot on, however this one *might* be justifiable. Hiro seems to base most of his Time-Travel 'knowledge' from movies & comics, in most of which, going back in time and meeting yourself is a BAD thing, and he probably couldn't have stopped himself from opening the safe without in some way interacting with himself.
  - Yeah, except it's not like other stories involving time travel - he knows very well that he can time travel. He probably wouldn't be surprised for long if he met himself.
  - How about just rewinding time? Hiro was doing this... literally minutes before this incident. I don't care how fast Daphne is (apparently fast enough that she can maintain a conversation when time has been slowed so much that sound is stopped), but if time goes backwards, then she won't be able to do a thing.
  - Also, Hiro could have gone back in time a while and replaced the formula with a fake. Neither Hiro nor the thief would be able to tell the difference between a fake formula and a real one, so this wouldn't change anything.
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.
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."
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, for this troper, 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 Dark Angel the protagonist was forced into being the carrier for a disease designed to kill her love interest. One of the major story threads was her quest to find the cure and steal it from a military complex. The love interest was infected several times throughout the plot, and it was revealed that any of the genetically modified characters can save him with a simple blood transfusion. When the protagonist finally finds the cure, she elects to use it to save the love interest instead of curing herself and using her blood to save him.
- Uh, no. The cure is destroyed at the beginning of the season, along with the lab used to create it, and there's only enough left to cure him. She spends the season trying to make a new one to cure herself, but apparently in her blood it can mutate and kill any cure.
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.
In one episode of Scrubs, JD is distraught about turning 30 without having accomplished anything on his "Things To Do Before I Turn 30" list. Understandable enough. 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. This would be a perfectly acceptable, if thoroughly silly, sitcom plot, if one of the other to-do list items wasn't "learn the difference between 'Senator' and 'Congressman.'" Five minutes with the Constitution or, even worse, 30 seconds on Google would have given him a solution and an end to his angst.
- Granted, if this troper were in that situation, he would want to do something more major on the list, like completing a triathlon, because 30 seconds on Google would feel like giving up.
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.
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 CS Is 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.
There is a commercial for a cable company where there are a red team and a blue team competing on a TV Game Show called "That Cable Company always has more High Definition TV programs than Competitor Satellite Company" (The ad actually names both companies; the idea for this trope is the story). Anyway, despite being the name of the game show they're in, when the red team is asked which has more HD programming in some city (and a voice over announcer repeating the fact that they should know this), they still get it wrong!
Celebrity Jeopardy. Enough of your mind games Trebek!
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?

Western Animation

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.
Honorable Mention: The Orb of Confusion in Spongebob Squarepants - a literal Idiot Ball.
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. (This troper calls that moronic, and hopes that Zuko will make sure that any plant referred to as "Look! It's the famous ### tea plant! That, or it's the ### plant which is poisonous" goes up in flames before worse things happen.) 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 bretrays 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. Zuko says he had not mentioned it because he had no reason to; as far as he knew, Aang's goal was to defeat the Fire Lord before Sozin's Comet returned, but in actuality he and the others had decided to wait until AFTER the comet had come and gone.
Despite being relatively sane, Slinkman of Camp Lazlo likes to carry the Idiot Ball around a lot. Upon first watching the show, this troper assumed it was his prized possesion.
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.

Film

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.
  - One could argue that Wallace picked up a Competence Ball in deciding to go out for coffee rather than using Butch's coffee pot. When murdering someone in their home, it's usually smart to not leave fingerprints (and even lip prints) everywhere in their kitchen. However, he promptly swapped it for an Idiot Ball when choosing to do so just as Vince went to the bathroom while leaving his gun on the kitchen counter.
  - Also worth noting is that neither knew of Butch's watch, and thus thought Butch's apartment would be the last place he'd show up.
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.
- It's implied he doesn't know Hans is the actual leader. John probably assumed he was another mook and was stringing him along for information.
- Plus, just shooting him at that point would be a bad idea. Alive and captured, Hans can have the other terrorists stand down. Dead, and you've got six or seven heavily armed terrorists without any leadership, which is going to be a bad situation.
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.
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.
- Strategy? THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS... IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS... *a chunk of ceiling falls on the editor's head*
- 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.
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.

Literature

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.
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.

Video Games

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.
- Same with the Rank Four fight, where he announces to his opponent - a stage magician - that he's there to kill him, right in the middle of his "Saw a Travis in Half" trick.
- 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.
  - Not always. You should check her hands. If she's gripping the bat, stay the fuck away. If she isn't, go ape.
Although not exactly under the scope of this article, the overly stupid Cirno from the Touhou games is known as "⑨" 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.

Comic Books

The recent "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 especially egregious 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.
  - Or when you remember he's worked with the Ghost Rider, whose entire reason for being is that Mephisto shafted him on a deal. Way to go, Parker.
- This last point does indeed make Peter's stupidity all the more evident, as he seeks out the help of several of the most brilliant people in the world (including Reed Richards and Dr. Strange), all of whom tell him that it is simply Aunt May's time and that using magic or super-science in an attempt to thwart fate will not end well. And it doesn't.
  - This reminds me of a saying I've heard, how did it go? Oh yeah, it's "with great power comes great responsibility".

Anime

In one Naruto filler episode, Naruto gets whacked with the idiot ball hard. He fails to recognize that two people are wearing terrible disguises to make them look like Gai and Rock Lee and even misinterprets their horrible tasks as Taijutsu training.
- It's possible he was well aware that they were dupes, but thought that the tasks they were being assigned were, in fact, Training From Hell disguised as degrading punishments. It's also possible he was doing it just to make it that much worse for them because of his cheerful exhuberance at the task. He is a prankster, after all.
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*
- 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. 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.
  - If the writers didn't do that though they would end up with the Dragon Ball Z style, 'opposition powerful enough to blow up the planet' trope, this doesn't justify it as it is really just lazy writing (make the battles more about skill then SFX) but there we are.
- 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...
- 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 One Piece, When the pirates first see Usopp, who tries to scare them away by claiming he has thousands of men ready to defeat them. Although Luffy is impressed, Nami states that Usopp is lying, when he asks how she knew, she states that Usopp had just told them. Which leaves Usopp in a fit.
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.
Suzaku and Lelouch from Code Geass strike a deal, Lelouch (as Zero) will be exiled, but he gets to have 1,000,000 at the actual exile. Making a deal with Lelouch is bad enough but agreeing to his request is bordering on Too Dumb To Live. This being Lelouch, he uses I Am Spartacus to get 1,000,000 also exiled. In Hindsight, Lelouch should have just asked for the entire population of Japan to be there...Suzaku would probably be stupid enough to do it.
- Lelouch's IQ seems to drop 100 points when someone he cares about is involved. The most obvious examples is his Rape The Dog moment that happens after his close friend and almost girlfriend is killed where it hinges on none of the important members of the Black Knight finding out, they do. He then follows it up with tasking an insane male Tyke Bomb who wants to be Lelouch's brother and kill Nunally... with saving Nunally. Despite knowing that he killed his almost girlfriend. That's not a typo, he really did something that stupid.
  - Not to mention that he sends his Ace Pilot Kallen with the order of killing Suzaku in battle as punishment for their fall-out... forgetting that he gave Suzaku a Geass order to live, meaning he'll be forced to use even his last trump card to survive. What is said trump card? A nuclear warhead. Nice job blowing everything up, anti hero
  - After Euphemia dies (which was partially his fault), he blames the whole thing on Britannia, and causes an anti-Britannian riot, thankfully, this really only effects one character, and the riots where not near Ashford or he could have put Nunnaly in massive danger.
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!'
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.

Machinima

Deus Ex Machina. Wow. So, the titular hero's suit has super strength, temporary invulnerability and invisibility, night and thermal vision, etc. Yet, in every case that he should use them, he doesn't. His first big fight was against a monster known as the Decapitator. Instead of remembering that he has super strength as well as temporary invulnerability, he just runs away. Then, when confronted by Derrick Owen, he just stands there and lets himself get shocked and passes out. He gets trapped in a small cell underground, stays there for four days, weak and hungry, and only after some mook says onscreen that they might've left a grenade on him (!!!), and he could use his invulnerability to bust his way out by detonating grenades without hurting himself. Please note that the mook said this was nowhere near John when he did, and John had no way of hearing the mook at all. He stayed there for four days without food or water for no apparent reason. He even gets shot in the face by the villain, nearly dying in the process because he apparently forgot he could turn invulnerable. One wonders why the hell they gave him all those abilities in the first place, he acts like a Badass Normal, when in fact has many powers at his disposal. Despite the overwhelming number of examples, this isn't an Idiot Plot, since the villains seem to be fairly competent.
- He used his invisibility once, to escape a couple civillains when he was declared a threat to society to be shot on sight after going rampages during a ~~rip off~~ homage to Venom/Spider-Man. ONCE, he ever used a power when it was helpful. He's got to be the stupidest hero ever.
  - Of corse, that example itself leans toward the Idiot Ball once more when you stop and think just how did he get stopped by a couple Muggles in the first place. He also apparently was giving away idiot ball to others that day, since the only reason he was able to use invisibility to get away was because he used the old trick of "Look Behind You!". The Genre Savvy civvies joke about how stupid it would be to look...AND THEN TURN AROUND TO LOOK ANYWAY! Geez!