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.

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 and 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...
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.

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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...
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!
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.
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.)
DC's Amazons Attack is full of these. Among the notable ones are:
- Supergirl and Wonder Girl deciding to kidnap the President.
- Said President deciding to intern innocent women in concentration camps simply because they've interacted with the Amazons before.
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.

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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.
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 the could not think to do anything else but recycle the Plot of the Original film.
In "the Return of the King" Gandalf rescues Faramir and his retreating troops by using his staff to shine a bright light at the nazgul, which scares them away. One might wonder how come he doesn't do that every other time the nazgul 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.

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Gamebooks

Literature

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 TO TELEPORT. In case you didn't know, teleporting and stopping time were learned from the same guy.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.

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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.
- 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.
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.
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. Fans of the game hope that a future expansion will allow for a more rational ending that allows the game to continue after the main quest, as this is only possible with a mod for the PC version at present.
- Apparently, with the Broken Steel DLC the player has the option of surviving.
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?

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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.
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.
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.
- 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...
In the first season of Avatar The Last Airbender, Zhao manages to capture Aang, but doesn't kill him, because of the whole reincarnation thing. Never mind that the next Avatar would, at best, have difficulty sitting up straight by the time Sozin's Comet arrived. Furthermore, Zhao's options for killing the kid were less than limited:
- Have the archers shoot him
- Burn his head off
- Take a spear/ sword/ pointy helmet and stab him
- Strangle him with chains
- Wrap him in chains and throw him from the highest point of the fortres
  - And ten there is the whole knowing that you were going to genocide everyone who could teach him his first bending style before he was even born,possibly including the person who would give birth to him