Plot Induced Stupidity - Television Tropes & Idioms

"All I had was my trenchcoat, hat, and an unlimited supply of magical wishes. The odds were against me."

—Timmy Turner, The Fairly Oddparents

"Using my superpowers, I could have easily saved myself and my friends, but I didn't react. Why? Because I smoke pot. Still think drugs are cool?"

—Captain Hero, Drawn Together

When a character has the Idiot Ball slipped into their pocket while they weren't looking, causing them to forget to properly use their abilities, intelligence, or powers to stop a bad guy or get out of a situation, even though they may have used the ability in similar situations before (often many times). This happens often with Superheroes and within the filler episode of Shonen anime.

This is used quite a bit when characters have extremely useful or increasingly powerful abilities or equipment, and some unfortunates tend to have this inflicted on them all the time, turning a Genius Bruiser or Badass Bookworm into a garden-variety Bruiser or Badass. Only some lines of technological jargon or displays of useless gadgetry will remind the reader that they have more brains than they normally use. Some might consider this a form of Informed Ability, with the "ability" being genius-level intelligence.

Amnesia Danger is a variant of this trope, when it's justified using convenient amnesia. The heroic version of Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him, except while at least villains don't have to answer to their actions, heroes should be obligated to stop evil-doers or disasters as quickly and efficiently as possible. An initially-competent villain who undergoes rapid Villain Decay from Plot Induced Stupidity has suffered an Octopus Aneurysm.

See Fridge Logic for when it occurs to the viewers a little later what the character could've/should've easily done. See Forgot I Could Fly when it occurs to the character Just In Time what he should've done long before.

Plot Sensitive Snooping Skills is a particular variant/sub-trope. If a device is discovered once, never becomes part of a character's standard bag of tricks, and is forgotten that is Forgotten Phlebotinum. Hollywood Tactics are a usual result. Compare Drama Preserving Handicap.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

Usagi often used her disguise pen in the first season of Sailor Moon to get into areas where access was forbidden otherwise. In later seasons, it was completely forgotten... except for one odd season three episode when Minako borrowed Usagi's pen to act as an Identity Impersonator for Sailor Moon. Note that Minako actually had her own disguise compact in the Codename Wa Sailor V manga and in the Sailor Moon manga, although the fact that it was never shown in the anime may mean it simply doesn't exist in this continuity. Additionally, in the manga, both Usagi and Minako have devices (a mask and a compact respectively) that can reveal the disguised enemies' true forms; these conveniently get forgotten when it comes to fighting Witches 5 or the Dead Moon Circus, who do disguise themselves as normal people in areas that are known to have connection to the enemies...
- Sailor Moon hated the mask (Even moreso after she saw Naru getting hurt through it) and casually flings it off after transforming. After she gains a new transformation it never appears with her hinting that she just plain lost the ability to use it.
  - ...Except for a single instance during the Black Moon series, where Sailor Moon uses her mask to reveal the disguised droids; this happens after she gains a new transformation. Minako is also shown to still have her compact on an occasion during the Infinity series.
All the main cast (save Judai) of Yu-Gi-Oh GX during the third season seem to become complete ignoramuses when it comes to the game of Duel Monsters; once it hits the fan and they're confronted by Dueling Zombies and homicidal Duel Monsters, instead of using their uber-dueling skills to defend themselves or getting the hell out of Dodge and not add to the problem (as dueling during the first part of the season only added fuel to the fire), they chose door #3 and just sat on their asses until they got captured and killed off. The worst offender has to be Sho, who purposely keeps his distance from Judai and the rest of the gang for some reason all his own, even when his intervention as their close and dear friend could've helped avoided most of the latter-half problems altogether.
- Also happens in its parent series when Yugi, for no apparent reason, hands over his Exodia cards to Insector Haga (Weevil Underwood), a very shady generic bad character, who promptly tosses them off the boat they were on. The loss seems to be for no other reason than to ensure Yugi doesn't win all his duels with Exodia stomping. This is mocked in the Abridged Series, where Yugi flat-out says "You're clearly evil, but I see no reason not to trust you".
- In the episodes where Marik fights Yugi using Slifer the Sky Dragon, Yugi has only 1100 points left. Why doesn't he summon a monster to attack him directly? With all those cards he drew, he certainly should have more than enough. Or better that, just put Revival Jam in attack mode and do it (Granted, that stops Revival Jam from defending Slifer from then on, but you've already won!).
  - If I recall correctly, there really wasn't anything he could have done, the cycle constantly activated in one phase so his turn never even came up again so he never got the chance to even use any of the cards he got.
  - He could do it earlier, though, because Yugi just kept stalling. And besides, it happens in every duel: every duelist that is facing the protagonists will never resort to summon any other monster once their trump card is already on the field, so they have to keep killing every stalling monster their opponent shields himself with, although they could simply summon another monsters to kill the opponent for good. It results, of course, in that the protagonist gets his powerful cards finally and pulls off a huge combo to win at the last moment. It's ALWAYS like this.
  - This is reversed in episode 55, Joey vs. Rare Hunter (Exodia guy). The Rare Hunter (2500 LP) sets a monster in defense mode and has no other cards on the field. Joey has Alligator's Sword and Panther Warrior (and scapegoat tokens) on the field. He then sacrifices his two monsters to summon Red Eyes Black Dragon and simply destroy the facedown card instead of summoning a monster with at least 1000 attack points and winning.
  - Marik gets repayment later, when Mai pulls a truly idiotic move during the Quarter-Final of the Battle City Tournament. She has three harpy ladies on her field, Marik is wide open. Instead of simply finishing him right then and there, she shoe-horns the duel away by trying to summon Marik's Egyptian God Card, which she can't even control.
  - To be fair, Marik had at least 1 monster on the field which apparently could not be killed in battle.
- There's also the GX first season finale; all of the Seven Star Assassins have been defeated, and the spirit keys are safe and sound. That should be the end of it, right? Unfortunately, the plot demands that Judai have one final duel with the Assassins' leader, who must have the Sacred Beast cards in the vault that the spirit keys unlock. So, how do the writers solve that? By having Manjyome get talked into using the spirit keys as part of an ante for a duel between her and Asuka, the other part being Asuka going on a date with him, despite everyone clearly knowing by that point (and Asuka herself pointing out) that the keys will only unlock the vault if they're won through a duel. He loses, of course, causing the keys to float off and unlock the vault by themselves, setting up for the final showdown.
In Naruto during the Forest of Death arc, Haruno Sakura uses her ninja training to stab an enemy in a non-vital spot, then she bites him and hangs on for a bludgeoning rather than attack in any other way. After the time jump, she gets herself impaled by flinging herself in the path of an attacking ninja rather than deflecting him from his target.
- This echoes the instance in Tsunade's fight with Orochimaru, where Tsunade throws herself between Orochimaru and Naruto and is impaled for her efforts.
  - Tsunade, at least, had Super Healing Skills.
  - This is a such a common example of a Stupid Sacrifice that it's barely worth mentioning. People have been jumping in front of attacks that they could deflect or push the target out of the way of for years.
- Sakura's response to Naruto and Sasuke charging each other with Rasengan and Chidori is to run between them when they are unable to change their course to avoid hitting her. She avoids a most likely fatal injury only thanks to Kakashi.
  - She's the victim of PIS so often Pre-Timeskip, it makes you question the quality of the Konoha Ninja Academy, considering she was one of the TOP students in their class.
  - Let's just assume that, while Sakura may be one of their top "students" pre-timeskip, she was certainly lacking in hands-on, practical intelligence. There's a difference between studying well/memorizing facts and being able to think clearly in a tense situation.
Most Dragon Ball Z movies are also guilty of this, during which all saiyan characters will magically forget to become Super Saiyan for the duration of the movie, or until then end. Averted slightly during the Frieza saga when Yamcha declares Goku has an ace up his sleeve with the kaioken technique, and King Kai responds that Goku had been using it the entire time.
This happens countless times with Tsuzuki from Yami No Matsuei. Even though he's supposed to be one of the most powerful ancient Gods of Death, he is rendered completely helpless when Muraki is around. He's not even able to throw a decent punch at the guy, and is made into a whining and crying wimp in his presence just for plot's sake. Example: Muraki is flying away on a helicopter, and Tsuzuki forgets that he can always summon or cast a spell that could blow the helicopter down.
Along with My Name Is Inigo Montoya, this is probably the #1 reason anyone gets beaten in Bleach. Bad guys fighting the main heroes, or the Shinigami, will usually get killed because they suddenly forget that with the several seconds of warning they receive from their screaming opponents, they could have just Flash Stepped out of the way. It get's just plain ridiculous in the anime version because all fights take several times longer. The only time this is seemingly avoided is when Soifon decides to stop wasting time Obfuscating Stupidity and just One Hit KO her opponent with a Flash Step attack while he's doing his power up sequence.
- Not to mention when Ichigo FORGOT HIS BANKAI FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THE BOUNTO ARC! Although really, it looked more like he forgot that the word is "Bankai", as all he would say is "ban-" and forget what comes next, which was actually kinda funny.
- With Aizen's epic mishandling of the war, his minions are now down to Yammy ineffectually blundering around in Hueco Mundo and Gin in Karakura town with him. His abilites meant he could have won the war without losing a single arrancar.
  - Unless he hasn't really, it could be that he has been using his powers this whole time.
Read or Die: Yomiko Readman could have made her life so much easier if she had actually bothered to exploit all the literary tropes her enemies often followed. After reading so much, she could have become this site's number one contributor if she were real.
- This Troper is still shocked that after a definitely Shout Out and You Shall Not Pass moment after cutting the "bridge" to cause Wong to fall to his doom, Maggie didn't remember The Lord of the Rings and step away from the edge. Sure enough, the evil Paper User sends a whip made of paper to drag her down with him and they battle it out on the way down.
  - It was better in the long run that she did end up continuing her fight with Sonny Wong, since he might have survived the explosion of the building they were fighting in, and the subsequent ink flood, if she hadn't kept him busy on the ground floor for so long.
In Detective Conan, one episode featured Conan attempting to stop a murder by "Shocking" the murderer into giving up. He shows up Just In Time and shows a plant that holds sentimental value to the murderer, causing her to break down and cry, saving the intended victim. What our diminutive detective seems to forget is that he wears a watch that shoots tranquilizer darts! Why risk the killer ignoring this when he could just tranq her?
- Come to think of it, he never seems to use that watch for anything but setting up the solution to the Murder of the Week...
  - He's only got one shot in it and he doesn't have a place on his normal clothes to keep spares on him. Therefore he always saves it for when he needs to drug Kogoro to wrap up the case otherwise the killer might get off. The only time he uses it as a weapon are when he's not solving a case, such as when he's going against the members of the Black Organization or Kaito Kid.

Comics

Nearly any situation should be easily solvable by the Flash, since he can move hundreds and hundreds of times faster than anything else on earth. Yet he constantly forgets to use the full potential of his superpowers until it's time to end the story. Abilities the Flash consistently forgets he has:
- Running faster than light;
- Speed stealing;
- Infinite mass punch...
- ... and it gets worse. On one occasion the villains have destroyed a bridge. The Flash runs to a university, teaches himself civil engineering, rushes back to the site of the collapsing bridge, scavenges for parts and builds an entire new bridge to replace the old one, all in the blink of an eye. Tell me again how anybody ever manages to beat this guy? Oh, right...
  - Lampshaded in an episode of Justice League Unlimited, since its revealed that whilst the Flash can do all these things and more, he doesn't because of the fact they're so dangerous. Luthor on the on the otherhand isn't so worried about it when his mind ends up in Flash's body.
  - Remember that if Flash uses the powers involving him going faster than light, it can cause him to be sucked into the speed force. In fact - it did happen.
  - Not the case, actually. The Speed Force Barrier, or where it is passed, is actually Higher then the Time Barrier is. In order for Flash to be sucked into the Speed Force, he would have to willingly accelerate himself to the point that he would be running backwards in time. If he did that, everyone around would probably be reduced to a fine Red Paste when the Shockwave of someone going that fast hit them. Even then, he has been shown surpassing Mach 50, and at least 1 Comic had a Future Flash being the entire Police force of the Planet Mercury (As in, He stopped Supervillans and Normal Crooks). If the Flash didn't have This Trope, there wouldn't be any crime, ever, because as soon as something happened, the perpetrator would already be in Jail.
  - This is in fact what happens in Kingdom Come. The city he patrols is is crime free.
  - It becomes even more ridiculous given the fact that at one point the Flash was able to (within a small fraction of a second) save a city from nuclear annihilation by carrying its half a million person population to a hill miles away one person at a time. And yet Central City's banks still get robbed on his watch.
Most of the above points also apply to other speedsters in the DCU.
Obviously, Superman suffers from the same forgetfulness both in the comics and in Smallville.
Marvel's Vision has occasionally fallen victim to similar attacks (though it's rarer). In one issue of What If?, he was killed by a parasitic alien vine that grew into his bodily systems. A fan wrote in to ask what was up; the editors eagerly latched onto his suggestion that "the plant in question isn't entirely tangible itself, and that's why the villain used it".
- An Avengers comic had Vision, along with Thor and Iron Man, taken out by knockout gas. Hmm, a Physical God who can control winds, an unbreathing android, and a guy in a sealed combat suit? No problem. The criminal masterminds who took them out so easily?... Well, you've got to see this one for yourself.
The Essential Silver Surfer is full of this. To get into a story with an Evil Twin, a Mad Scientist convinces the Surfer to get into his duplicating machine. The Surfer pretty much says "Well, I've been screwed over by a Mad Scientist before, and I sense evil in you, but what the hell." When he meets a scientist who invents a device that might let him leave Earth but needs money to make it, the Surfer decides to get a job. He can't (because he doesn't have a Social Security number, he's not in the union and he's funny-looking) so almost robs a bank in desperation, forgetting he can manipulate matter and could just make the scientist's gear for him. He spends about eight comics looking for someone who won't hate him for being "a silver-skinned freak" before he remembers that the Fantastic Four were quite friendly... need I go on?
In Marvel Zombies, the zombies are attacking Doctor Doom's castle and the Scarlet Witch is infected by the Punisher. Gee, Scarlet Witch, did it never occur to you you could just teleport him and the other zombies away like you did with Ash earlier? Or teleport Enchantress away earlier so Dazzler wouldn't be infected? It is also never explained why Doom didn't just kill Enchantress in the beginning like he did later.
- Most of the whole Marvel Zombies line was stupider than most readers and even the writers seem to realize. For example, if Nick Fury was definitely in the "food" category, him being powerless — how the hell did Iron Man and the Punisher, among others, end up infected? Neither of them has a single power, and Iron Man's "Extremis" stuff only happened within the last year or so. Wallbanger!
- On the other hand Marvel Zombies runs on two things: zombie movie tropes and Rule Of Cool. None of it makes much sense.
- Iron Man's zombification at least was explained in Marvel Zombies: Dead Days: at Zombie Reed Richards' urging, the other zombies deliberately held back when infecting him because his technological expertise could prove useful in finding them more food.
  - Zombies can plan?
  - They basically went with the idea that if you have superpowers, you pretty much maintain everything you had before you got turned, only now your constant hunger makes you more or less....not as nice.
Green Lanterns have been variously shown as being able to warp time, move faster than light, contain supernovas, fight toe to toe with superman, alter their own DNA, read minds, find subatomic aliens... Scratch that, if it's a superpower of any sort any given GL has used it at least twice. Now here's the thing. There are creatures other than Gods that bother them. Funny huh?
- Its somewhat justified in their case as their power require willpower and concentration to make anything happen. A GL who is having a bad day, is unfocused or demoralized will be less effective and the GL's are essentially human without their rings (or at least the human ones are.) Plus, their rings require a periodic recharge and anything yellow or anyone whose fast enough or crafty enough to remove a ring is a threat. Still, the idiot plot is somewhat less excusable in the case of veterans like Hal Jordan (or really, any of the Earth based GL's these days) as he is both experienced, and extremely strong willed.
- About a few of those: Containing a supernova and warping time this troper recalls were done by the Blue Lanterns, but their powers only work like that in the presence of a Green Lantern, so it might still count. And though finding subatomic aliens was one thing, fighting them was only possible by the sheer luck that they themselves had one on their side. Sometimes its less Plot Induced Stupidity and more a lack of a Deus Ex Machina that makes it possible to hand their asses to them.
- A plausible explanation is that a ring is only as good as its bearer. Theoretically they can do anything, but practical use is limited by their wearer's individuality. For example half of the feats mentioned above have never been attempted by any of Earth's Green Lanterns, and even among these each has his own area of specialisation with his ring. Kyle has the most diverse constructs(he's an artist), John's constructs are strongest(architect) while Hal(a pilot) just sticks to basics, like boxing gloves, plasma beams and energy bubbles.
  - There are still occasions of Plot Induced Stupidity with Green Lantern. One hugely glaring example was Identity Crisis where Kyle Rayner, someone who's been shown as more comfortable using his ring than fighting mano-a-mano, flew in and threw a punch at Deathstroke the Terminator... with his ring hand! All for the sake of the scene and Author's favorite.
Marvel's CivilWar was full of PIS moments, but the biggest one has to be in the last issue, when the feuding superheroes continue their battle after being transported to New York City- causing destruction and even casualties, despite the fact that most of them were trained specifically to avoid that from happening! (Destruction in comics is usually caused by the *villains* the heroes fight, and would have been greater without their interference.)
Technological jargon aside, the Merged Hulk often seemed to be unaware that he had Bruce Banner's smarts as well as the original Hulk's strength.
It seems to apply whenever a shape shifter or any character otherwise capable of warping perceptions uses this ability to frame a hero. All other characters promptly forget these abilities exist and take the incriminating footage or eye witness accounts as incontrovertible proof and generally won't even give the accused the chance to speak, never mind a fair trial. Examples include The Ultimates where Captain America is framed for killing Hawkeye's family and Nick Fury, who really should know better, or, at least, enough to investigate the possibility, beats the living crap out of him, and the currently ongoing World Against Superman arc, where Supergirl and others are framed for killing Mon-El.

Films

The Mobile Infantry in the Starship Troopers movie have rifles that come with underbarrel shotguns and nuclear rocket launchers, yet they seem to rely almost entirely on their rifles' regular firing mode — even when faced with instances where such weapons would be most effective, such as close combat with the Bugs or when facing a horde of thousands of bunched-together aliens charging their fixed positions.
- That and, why the hell don't they just use tanks?
  - Or artillery
  - Or air support
  - Or orbital strikes
  - ...
The Strangers elevates this trope to an art: not one of the three victims seems to have any self-preservation instinct or intelligence, especially the friend who sees devastation and goes blithely in only to be shot dead by the male lead who's hiding with his idiot girlfriend in the closet. Also, James goes outside the house to get a radio, leaving his girlfriend in the UNPROTECTED house. For all that she does, Kristen could even be already dead: she whimpers and moans her way through the film and there's not even the satisfaction of seeing her croak!
Most of the victims in 2008's version of Prom Night, especially the lead female Donna and her female friends seem to be complete idiots; Claire sees the killer coming for her and does not move an inch, Lisa manages to get herself trapped pretty idiotically, Donna even gets a freaking premonition and still does not get a freaking clue, but most idiotic of all is the reasoning of the uncle, who does not want the police to ruin his niece's prom, the police for underprotecting Donna and basically letting her boyfriend Bobby get killed, basically get fooled by a shave from the killer, and a whole slew of other things I should type the whole freaking script to reveal.
The Karate Kid Part Three: Daniel-san survived a fight to the death in Part Two and has at the point been studying Karate under Mr. Miyagi for over a year but he is being beaten up and terrorized by Johnny Lawrence 2.0 all because they could not think to do anything else but recycle the Plot of the Original film.
- There's also the part where they're afraid of the millionaire villain's wealth and the influence that it brings, and feel helpless to counter it. Entirely forgetting that in the last movie Mr. Miyagi reconciled with his old childhood friend, who is about ten hojillion times wealthier and more powerful than the villain, and could have stopped his financial manipulations by rolling over in bed.
In The Return of the King, Gandalf rescues Faramir and his retreating troops by using his staff to shine a bright light at the Nazgûl, which scares them away. One might wonder how come he doesn't do that every other time the Nazgûl are around...
- Commented by several cast members on the audio commentary. Ian McKellen mentions bringing the trope up to Peter Jackson, who shrugged and told him he used up all the batteries when he saved Faramir, and the shops in Minas Tirith were all out.
- This happens in the book, as well. The narrator's explanation implies that this was essentially a battle of wills, and the Nazgûl backed down because it wasn't the time yet to challenge Gandalf in all out battle — their leader wasn't present and they didn't have an army behind them, and their quarry wasn't that significant at this point. Basically, Gandalf intimidated them to leave, but they could have chosen to resist if they had a good enough reason. It's possible to speculate that this beam of light had approximately the same strength as a stream of running water, which the Nazgûl also fear, but can overcome if they really must.
House Of Wax, the 2005 remake, just displays this on a level affecting everyone, from the sexy young teens who think it's okay to chuck beer bottles at a truck that pulls up to your camp, or to stick your finger through a metal grating when the killer has tied you up underground and is now talking with your boyfriend just above you (and the grate is just under the killer, who can see you, and cuts off the tip of your finger in a quick swoop), or that you've finally gotten the upper hand on one of the killers, bashed him in the head with a big-ass stick, then DROP the stick and try to run when your Achilles tendon has been sliced. Then there's that whole thing about building a house made of wax in LOUISIANA.
In Blade, the eponymous hero arrives at a rave populated entirely by vampires and correctly kills them all using their various Weaksauce Weaknesses. All except the last one, whom he sets on fire and leaves to burn. Why? Because he read the script, and he knows that if that vampire isn't taken to the morgue so he can wake up and take a bite out of the M.E., there's no movie.
- Not really stupidity, he does specifically state he's testing out new wasy to kill vampires when he lights him up, but is then interrupted by the police.

Gamebooks

Literature

Harry Potter has some examples, which are discussed in its It Just Bugs Me page.
A vast amount of Warhammer 40000 stories revolve around troops being sent by spaceships able to casually remove any target up to the size of a continent from existence, to be deployed to fight long and hard against an enemy in an area of no particular value.
- Most of these are justified by either the protagonist faction wanting to capture the area (in which case, blowing it up would be counterproductive) or the area having anti-orbital defenses.
  - This concept of explosions being counterproductive makes no sense.
  - Many of the places needed to be captured are holy sites, therfore they must be cleansed on foot.
- It's the same reason the Space Marines wear brightly painted Power Armour: Rule of Cool. Also, as a more in-universe explanation, it's because their leaders are Complete and utter morons with no grasp of reality, more concerned with grandstanding and their positions than the suffering of a bunch of Red Shirts.
  - It's more the fact that general Space Marine Combat Doctrine has no need for camoflague. A Space Marine assault is more likely to come from the skies than the forest. It should be noted however, that units and chapters with tactics that involve camoflague, such as Scouts and the Raptors chapter use them.
Flinx of Alan Dean Foster's Humanx Commonwealth series gets hit with this a lot in the novels after Flinx in Flux. Having been established as: (a) streetwise, (b) adept at survival, (c) having a ton of money, (d) being able to defeat just about any enemy with a combination of his Emotion Bomb and Superpower Meltdown powers; at least half of the scrapes he gets himself into are caused by a combination of him deliberately walking unprepared into lethal environments or conveniently forgetting about one or more of his Psychic Powers in order to allow a different character to get a Big Damn Heroes moment. There's also at least one scene in Trouble Magnet where he does rely on his Emotion Bomb power to get himself out of a scrape, only to have it not work on him thanks to Power Incontinence... a fact he really ought to have taken into account considering how frequently it happens to him.
In the Geronimo Stilton book, "A Very Merry Christmas," Geronimo goes to New York and accidentally picks up the wrong (but identical to his) bag at the baggage claim. Fortunately for him, the person who picked up his bag thought to call her own cellphone; unfortunately, the cellphone's batteries die ''just'' before she can tell him where to meet her. He finds a schedule book in her bag and spends the rest of the day (and book) going to all the places she had written down, never once thinking to use a payphone (or ask to borrow someone else's phone) to call his own cellphone, which is in his own bag, and find out where she wanted to meet him.
In the Mallorean, Belgarath does this. He, Belgarion, and Zakath have to fight a dragon, which is immune to direct sorcery. He makes Garion and Zaketh immune to fire to face the dragon, and has no doubts that this will work, demonstrating that indirect sorcery can be used. Despite this and 7000 years of experience, the idea of translocating large rocks above the dragon's head, or something similar, never occurs to him.

Live Action TV

Hiro Nakamura of Heroes is one of the most powerful characters in the series with the ability to stop time and teleport; he's just too much of a dork to think of using it when he needs to defend himself. This was even given a nod in the series when his friend, Ando, deliberately antagonized a group of peeved gamblers, assuming Hiro would use his power to put them all down. Hiro, not comprehending the situation, was almost immediately KO'ed by a punch to the face.
- Admittedly, this is because the acrimonious conversation is occuring in English, which Hiro does not speak at that point in the show.
- I would argue that Peter Petrelli is far worse than Hiro when it comes to being handed the Idiot Ball. But I guess they have to make him stupid to avoid having him fall into A God Am I status. By comparison, at least in the first season, Sylar usually used most of his arsenal to deadly effect.
  - Example in case: In the final episode of Season 2, Peter is using up immense amounts of telekinetic energy to break into a vault with a solid 24-inch thick riveted steel door. As impressive as this may have been for the special effects, Fridge Logic would note that he can walk through solid objects and could have saved himself a lot of time and exhaustion.
  - My favorite example comes in season 3. In a Mexican-standoff hostage situation, rather than using telekinesis or time-stopping, he uses newly acquired super-speed to attack one of the enemies. The fact he attacked the most harmless enemy is a whole nother idiot ball...
  - Can't forget the fact that he wouldn't even know he had super speed, as he just absorbed it subconsciously. And he should've known about stopping time or his telekinesis, since the character who he learned telekinesis from was shouting at him to teleport! Teleporting and stopping time were learned from the same guy, and given that stopping time would have enabled him to save the hostage... *argh*
- Hiro still is something of a Wall Banger at times. Like in Season 2 when he deliberately has an affair with Takezo Kensei's girlfriend in spite of knowing it will mess up the time/space continuum and knowing that Kensei is a drunk who's been turned into a hero only through The Powerof Love / The Powerof Friendship. Not to mention that he could have avoided the situation in the first place by going forward in time earlier. And then, there's of course, his absolute What An Idiot moment at the beginning of Season 3, complete with Sealed Evil In A Can. This Troper likes Hiro, but he's pretty stupid sometimes.
  - It gets even worse, in a more recent episode Hiro has to go after a precog who naturally knows he's coming. Attempting to catch the precog he gets himself knocked out by a shovel, he then tries going back in time to intercept his ambusher only to get knocked out again by the same guy (who hadn't time traveled). Sure the precog has to power to co-ordinate this but Hiro can FREEZE TIME so that the ambusher would be unable to intercept his interception (less confusing when you watch it). Anyhow Hiro decides to give up using his powers that he barely even used deeming them useless (when they blatently aren't), the precog eventually reveals that this was a test and Hiro passed by not depending *bang* on his *bang* powers *bang* OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD HIS PROBLEM IS HE HARDLY USES THEM NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND... my head hurts now. This troper could only just forgive this since the ensuing scenes were funny.
  - Hiro has proven repeatedly that he can stop time and manipulate things around for as long as he likes before setting time forward again... so aside from massive stupidity, what's stopping him from freezing time and using a hacksaw to decapitate Sylar and gleefully start time again while Sylar's head is now relocated 12 feet away from his body? With time stopped, Hiro's clothes wouldn't even get stained because there'd be no time flow to make Sylar's neck gush out while he's cutting.
  - But that wouldn't be honorable.
  - To be fair, there isn't any time with which to run the chainsaw either. He could just use his sword though.
- DL got shot three times during the show, not that bad, severely wounded and killed off. This is the guy that can not only phase through solid objects, but can let solid objects phase through him.
  - Assuming he needs to make a conscious decision to phase through an object (since he wasn't constantly falling through the ground), the smaller and faster-moving an object is, the harder it is for him to let it go through him.
  - To be fair, the first time he was shot he was concentrating on getting Micah into the car and the bullet took him completely by surprise. And the second time he threw himself in front of Niki to prevent her being shot, so phasing through the bullet would have been a really stupid thing to do. The third shooting was still a real Wall Banger though.
  - Anyone D.L. touches while phasing becomes intangible as well, so the second bullet would have been avoided if he made it phase through himself and Niki.
  - This troper isn't sure D.L.'s powers work that way. He's always understood D.L. to be phasing the thing he touches, not himself. Which would explain a total inability to phase bullets, because by the time they touch him, it's too late. Consider he's been shot three times, and not once managed to phase, this seems the most logical explanation.
- In the end of Season 1, Sylar is stabbed by Hiro suddenly teleporting behind him. This wouldn't be so bad, if he hadn't stopped BULLETS fired BEHIND him one minute earlier.
- Peter consistently failing to make the connection that... healing/regeneration could get him his powers back + he has the power to copy a single person's power by touching them + he's found Claire = he could get his powers back.
Pretty much any story where the characters have access to some kind of beaming technology or the equivalent uses this to some degree, and really has to given the immense versatility of being able to teleport anything at will. Stargate SG-1 does this less than many shows, having beamed nukes into other ships, beamed a skyscraper into orbit before it exploded, and beaming people out of ships into space, but they have yet to beam an enemy ship in half.
- This is attributable to how the beaming works. The beaming requires that the target have a beacon on it that the technology can lock on to, for a start. For another, they usually have to do some techy stuff to get the nukes and such through the shield, so no doubt the shields will usually block attempts to just rip the ship apart, making just moving smaller objects, like nukes, a much more viable and reliable option.
- One early episode does show the Asgard using their transporter as a very impressive weapon, beaming Goa'uld troops and entire buildings to nothingness in a surprise attack (while simultaneously using the same technology to safely beam a friendly native to their ship and back).
In Hogans Heroes, Carter wavers between Genius Ditz and flat-out The Ditz. He's the group's demolition expert and blew up his school's chemistry lab, but he doesn't know enough scientific terminology to instruct Lebeau in how to pretend to know chemistry.
In Dexter, Sgt. Doakes forgot everything he learned as a Miami detective and a Special Forces operator and got himself captured by Dexter in the second season. When confronting Dexter on the pier, Doakes made a mistake that is beaten out of every rookie cop back in the academy. He allowed a suspect to approach him while holding him at gunpoint while standing too close to him. Doakes had been established as having a military Special Forces background and had seen action in Papa Doc's Haiti. He was also an experienced detective on Miami's police force. This was a man with a lot of experience confronting dangerous people and winning. Doakes should have blown Dexter away the instant Dexter twitched a muscle in his direction.
- He needed to take Dexter alive. A dead Dexter Morgan is useless for clearing his name.
  - Not really. Dexter was standing there with garbage bags full of body parts. It wouldn't have taken forensics long to sort everything out.
  - But all that could be taken as Dexter found Doakes disposing of the body and Doakes killed Dexter and tried to use him to clear his name. Doakes didn't want to risk that.
- He'd also just found out that one of his co-workers was a prolific serial killer. I think he's allowed to be a little unbalanced.
  - Not likely. Doakes was established as getting a bad vibe off of Dexter from the first episode. He later started following Dexter around to confirm his suspicions. Catching Dexter red handed would not have unbalanced Doakes at all.
The various Star Trek series regularly did this. It's the 23rd or 24th century, yet the crew is frequently in peril from threats that even 20th century technology could handle. They repeatedly forget that their own warp drive, shields, transporters, phasers, replicators, holodecks, sickbay, etc., etc., can perform miracles.
- In the Original Series episode "The Enemy Within", crewmembers are trapped on the surface because the transporter is broken. Why don't they send down a shuttlecraft to rescue them? The film-making reason was because the Galileo 7 Shuttlecraft set hadn't been built yet, but we know the REAL reason. The crew are morons.
- The Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Justice", where Wesley breaks an idyllic world's trivial law by accidentally stepping on flowers and faces the death sentence. One wonders how Star Fleet manages to not have its personnel constantly imprisoned or executed if they fail to check the laws of every planet they visit before they authorize shore leave there.
  - It's made even worse in this case since near the start of the episode Worf told the Captain that he'd read the laws and they were fairly standard. I have to wonder about the Federation's laws if randomly applied death sentences are fairly standard.
  - Even worse than that. It would almost be acceptable if a law about 'stepping on flowers' was a crazy exception in the middle of a bunch of sane death penalty laws for things like murder, but what happened was Wesley had entered a secret, random 'punishment zone', where the laws are enforced extremely harshly to keep everyone in line all the time, as they never know of they're in a punishment zone. Any violation of the law in a punishment zone is that harsh, and their entire system of justice has, as the basis, everyone being in constant worry they're in such a zone. And somehow Worf just totally missed this.
- In the Deep Space Nine episode "The Siege of AR-558", the Federation faces off against the Jem'Hadar with phaser rifles and 24th century grenades, which are less effective than their 20th-century military counterparts. Meanwhile, their ship is parked in orbit, which could have annihilated all the oncoming troops in a single volley.
In Quantum Leap, there are several episodes in which Sam has to keep someone from being kidnapped, and the obvious solution — have Al stay with the victim at all times until something happens — rarely if ever occurs to them. Generally speaking, Al's potential for spying is greatly underused.
The writers of Torchwood slipped an Idiot Ball to Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones in the fourth episode of Children of Earth. They confronted the enemy with nothing to back up their bluff and no contingency plan in case things went wrong (which they did, almost immediately).
- Of course, Jack and Ianto wouldn’t have been in that position had the Idiot Ball not previously been held by the British Government, which decided that the best way to keep Jack quiet about the 456 was to blow him up along with the Hub (where Torchwood kept the alien tech they’d acquired), thereby depriving themselves of their foremost expert on E Ts and a potential source of weaponry.
  - Which was caused by the British Government holding the idiot ball in the sixties. They needed someone to hand of orphans to aliens, an act that needed no special skills and involved lying to children and being okay with being responsible for their deaths. Government officials thought the act was justified, and at least one person believed they might go to a better place, but who did they get to do it? The one guy who can't die and would have knowledge of what the government did forever.
  - So basically the British government has been holding the idiot ball for the past fifty years.
  - Many Britons would agree that this is Truth in Television
  - No one else noticed all that happened when the UN did find out was a mild scolding and a "oh you British rascals"? Not just that, they were afraid of people sworn to secrecy, that regularly does top secret things for the government, would suddenly not be secretive.

Video Games

A good video game example is Quistis in Final Fantasy VIII during the "parade assassination attempt" sequence: she leaves her post during the critical phase of a meticulously planned mission, with half the party in tow, just to traipse halfway across the city so she can apologise to Rinoa for an earlier misunderstanding. And she's usually the level-headed Cool Big Sis figure. Someone handed her the Idiot Ball.
- "Level-headed Cool Big Sis"? She's a teacher who hits on her students and can't control them when their egos override their common sense. There's a reason she gets removed as a teacher early on in the game: this scene is just the most blatant example of her unprofessionalism.
- Another Final Fantasy example comes from the original Final Fantasy Tactics, wherein a major plot point hinges on the dramatic and permanent death of Delita's sister — despite the fact that the hero is standing nearby with any amount of Phoenix Down, resurrection spells, etc.
  - More of a difference between combat abilities and setting reality. There's no evidence in any Final Fantasy game that I can recall where Phoenix Down and resurrection works on someone who was killed outside of player-controlled combat. Many would argue that these abilities actually only recover an unconcious state that is sometimes labelled "dead" to indicate it's different from other unconcious states such as sleep.
Plot-induced stupidity is common in video games with railroad plots. This troper's favorite example is pretty much any Legend of Zelda game where Link must pull the Master Sword out of a stone to advance the plot, but it invariably releases unspeakable evil. I knew quite well in Ocarina of Time that the Master Sword was keeping Ganon from getting the Triforce, but you actually can't defeat Ganon without letting him get insanely more powerful first. Same goes with pretty much any Legend of Zelda sequence where the game waits patiently for you to do something stupid, of your own free will, because it's impossible to beat the game otherwise. Then it can claim later that there was a better option, but Your Character Wouldn't Have Done That.
- This plot point is subverted in TP, as getting the Master Sword not only not release Ganondorf, it also gives you two formidable weapons — the sword itself and the curse fragment. While the curse itself was caused by unspeakable evil (i.e. the Big Bad's), it gets "released" from Link in a way that you can control it. An example from TP that does follow this trope? The fact that a bratty preteen and his toddler brother (this is Talo and Malo, for those of you who have played) can block your way to the rest of the game and not move until you give him the wooden sword. I thought that a very easy way around this is simply to have him whip the brat into submission and drop the sword at the spring, and/or have it be destroyed when he gets attacked by the Bulblins, or have him drop it when he changes to wolf for the first time.
The game Portal does the same thing in the boss sequence. You can wait all day but nothing's going to happen until you destroy GLaDOS' morality core.
- That's not stupid — that's all there is to do. The only option is is to sit in corner and die of thirst while listening to GlaDOS' blabber. Sure it changes things for the worse for a while, but it also forces GlaDOS to an action that makes the player's escape possible.
While the characters of Silent Hill are not known for their intelligence, Eileen from the fourth game deserves special mention. After she and Henry discover the history behind the game's antagonist, she suddenly decides to leave Henry, her only protection against the hundreds of lethal monsters roaming around, in an effort to "help" Walter, a man who not only brutally murdered eighteen people, two of them children, but savagely beat her almost to death only a few hours ago, all for the purpose of Henry having to kill Walter before she dies in the Final Boss fight, earning her the much coveted title of the most useless and irritating character in the entire series.
- In her defense, by that point in time, she's in varying degrees of possessed. I know it's something of a Hand Wave, but still... one can only speculate how much is Idiot Ball, and how much is just doing as she's told.
The events of Macalania Temple in Final Fantasy X. The party have just killed Seymour, and not one of them thinks to lie when asked, even though nobody would have suspected Yuna of doing it. Of course, the story couldn't have carried on if they hadn;t admitted it.
- Who else could have done it? Nobody else was around except your party! "Uhh, sorry Trommell, Seymour just went into cardiac arrest. No, all the cuts and bruises and burns on his body don't mean anything. Don't mind his dead bodyguards either, they too went into cardiac arrest spontaneously." The true stupidity of that whole arc was everything Yuna did. Poorly planned doesn't even begin to describe her actions, including post-Bevelle. This Troper was glad when she was finally punted out of the Spotlight to make way for Tidus and Auron again.
The railroad ending options of Fallout 3 have this trope in spades. No matter what, someone has to die from radiation poisoning, either the player or an innocent secondary character. This is despite the fact that the player has at least two optional companions who are immune to radiation damage — Fawkes (good players only) and Charon (any player alignment). To add insult to injury, by this point in the game most players will have collected both a very high rad resistance through perks and a huge number of anti-radiation chems, and could probably stay in the chamber for weeks if necessary.
- Broken Steel changes the fate of the both the player character and Paladin Lyons to being Not Quite Dead, no matter who went in and pressed the button.
  - Not just those, but nearly everything related to the ending bemoaned on the Just Bugs Me page.
Lancer in Fate Stay Night. Granted, it's not entirely his fault considering he's actually been ordered not to just kill everyone. But he never actually does net a kill with his Noble Phantasm.
How many times can the dragon Spyro forget he can breathe flames at the start of a new game in his series?

Western Animation

To move the Idiot Plot of a typical episode of The Fairly Oddparents, either Cosmo and Wanda's magical wands are stolen, or more commonly Timmy has to stupidly forget that he is enabled to alter reality on a whim. Naturally this has been Lampshaded quite a few times. For example, the quote from above comes from the episode "Where's Wanda", in which Wanda goes missing. Timmy proceeds to turn the world into Film Noir and become a detective in order to track her down... when he could have easily just wished her back.
- In Timmy's defense, every single attempt he ever made at simply wishing the plot of the week to be magically resolved was always blocked by some arcane and obscure magic rule that would forbid magic from undoing his previous stupid wish. "Not Using Magic to Break True Love" came up a lot in this regard. By this point, Timmy may simply be assuming that wishing things back to normal will bring up the freaking rulebook, so he's saving himself the aggravation and solving things the hard way from the start.
Similarly, there are too many times to count in Danny Phantom where Danny seemingly forgets that he has the ability to become invisible or intangible at will. Early on it made sense due to it being clear he was still getting used to his abilities, and sometimes it was played for humor, but it seemed strange he would still sometimes forget this fact even in the later episodes.
In the first season of Justice League, characters would regularly forget their powers. In the season finale, Brainiac is holding everyone in an iron grip with tentacles. They struggle for an unreasonable time before Martian Manhunter remembers that he can turn intangible at will.
- The Martian Manhunter is the king of this trope. He has the ability to transform into whatever Super Strong forms he can imagine — an ability he uses three times in the entire series. He'll stare at incoming projectiles with a surprised look on his face instead of turning intangible, or super solid or transforming into a form that cannot be so easily hit.
  - In the Silver Age comics, he had even more powers, with new ones popping up all the time. Somehow, he just never used them with the slightest tactical sense. As this troper's high school guidance counsellor said many times, "You have so much wasted potential!"
  - On the other hand, with powers ranging from Super Strength to making ice cream with your mind, it's hard to create conflict.
  - Well duh; why would any villain fight someone who'll give them free ice cream?!
  - Ice cream aside, "Starcrossed" has a prime example of both Batman and J'onn being marvelously stupid. Batman takes the Watchtower out of orbit so that he can use it to blow up the bad guys' MacGuffin. However, in order to make sure that it actually hits the target, he plans to stick with it all the way until impact, whereupon he will be killed. So he tricks J'onn into an escape pod, and when J'onn figures out the plan he starts beating on the door to get back in! Never mind that he can pass through walls and make himself impervious to explosions and would therefore be a much more logical choice for this particular job. All this sets up Superman's heroic rescue of his comrade just seconds before death, so the inherent insanity of the decisions made is apparently unimportant.
  - J'onn is vulnerable to fire, so having him in something that was in the process of catching on fire was probably not a good idea. Sure, Batman can be set on fire, but at least he won't collapse from just being near it.
  - Also, despite having all of his abilities, the show establishes that J'onn can't BREATHE IN SPACE (he was seen in a space suit during all of his instances working in space). Batman had already launched the pod by the time they realized what he was doing. If J'onn tried phasing through at that moment.... well, no more Martian race.
- Let's not forget the many, many instances where Superman would be felled by an electrical field, despite the fact that he is supposed to be invulnerable. This got to be so bad that in the second season the writers actually started to show less of Superman getting taken out by a electrical shock or something along those lines, and more of his invulnerable side.
And if you think the above examples are bad, you should watch the old Superfriends some time. "Gee, Jayna, here we are trapped under the foot of a giant space monster, touching each other. If only we had, I don't know, some kind of superpower that would allow you to turn into a small animal and me into something which could flow through the claws, we could escape!"
- All of Superfriends was made of this trope. It was parodied openly in a sketch on The State, Superman orders the other heroes to basically cleanup duty and then says "I'll stop the missiles... all by myself!" And then grabs his crotch with a smug look on his face.
In the Teen Titans animated series, Raven often conveniently forgets that she can fly, teleport and become intangible in situations where those powers would be highly useful. She also rarely uses her telekinesis to restrain opponents or hurl them away from the scene of a battle, rather than just tossing debris at them. There's also one episode where she concentrates and simply cuts the baddie's armour with her power. One.
- Raven not using her powers to just throw people away may be justified in that she has to put a little bit of her soul into whatever it is she's moving. If that is how your telekinesis worked, would you put your soul into Dr. Light? Of course, this does fall flat against the one instance where she did throw Slade around, but her father may have something to do with that. Incidentially, her teleporting looked more like phasing through the ground, traveling an unseen distance, and phasing through the ground again to reappear.
  - All this talk of soul and Dr Light makes me feel queasy for another prolonged music gag.
No matter how many missions the characters in Code Lyoko go on, they always seem to forget that, first and foremost, while on Lyoko one cannot die from lasers and swords, they can only be devirtualized. They will also forget their most important abilities at the worst times. For example, Aelita could use her Creativity power to create terrain barriers around herself, but even in dangerous situations where she has enough time, she quite often forgets that she can do this. She is the most obvious offender, but the others are often guilty as well.
- Aelita also forgets that XANA will NOT kill her starting with Season 2, despite this being proven in the first third of the season.
This seems to be a staple of Drawn Together, especially in regards to Captain Hero, who takes this to Ralph Wiggum levels. More often than not though, he is just sociopathic.
One Kim Possible episode had Shego being trapped in a shallow crocodile trap. Wouldn't be that bad for her, since she can shoot energy beams with her hands, she has sharp nails, she is very skilled at Kung Fu and jump several metres up in the air in a single leap. Yet she just stands where, just whining about how she really needs help right now.
- Shego also pulled this trope in the So the Drama movie. When the heroes were tied to the plastic cacti and the Diablos were swarming the planet, Shego went and LEFT THE FREAKIN' BACKPACK with ALL of the gadgets there. Because they CERTAINLY couldn't have pulled off the save even though she's constantly pointing out this very same problem to Drakken and a couple of other villains.
  - The backpack might not have mattered if they had left Kim and Ron in separate rooms, as Kim was ready to give up due to being played by ~~Eric~~ Synthodrone 901. Had Ron not been there to buoy her spirits(and bring about her Love Epiphany), Kim might not have gotten out of her funk. Of course falling for Eric in the first place may qualify for PIS in and of itself.
- Kim (and more often, Ron) sometimes does it too. In one episode she's running around looking for someone with a "555" tattoo, and keeps running into Senor Senior Senior, but doesn't make the connection.
In the Mighty Hercules cartoon series of the 1960's, Hercules had a magic ring that would endow him "with the strength of ten ordinary men" (according to his theme song). Along with invulnerability and superhuman reflexes. In each episode, Hercules would go to fight the episode's monster and get the snot beaten out of him. And then he would remember he has the ring...
The Ben 10 Alien Force Grand Finale had this in spades. On two separate occasions, the heroes decide to launch a suicide run to get to the Highbreed's headquarters — first on Earth, which costs them Kevin's beloved (and phenomenally tricked-out) car, then in space, which almost KILLS the technomorph Ship. Too bad they didn't have Paradox around, becuase he could have instantly moved them around through time and space to get wherever they wanted without risking assets or friends.
- Oh, wait, THEY DID. And he just stood back with super-genius Asmuth and watched!
- This troper wonders why Ben, as Way Big, was trying to pull the gate-thingy up out of the ground instead of ripping it in half or pushing it over.
Star Wars The Clone Wars. Considering the Jedi Knights are pretty much a One Man Army each, this is really the only way they ever seem to be defeated.
South Park. Just... just South Park.
The Weekenders: One particularly grating ep has Tish get a new hairdo... and a major drop in IQ.