Too Dumb To Live - Television Tropes & Idioms

Many, if not all, of the characters in Ranma One Half get at least one occasion where they act like this. However, this trope gets played to its actual conclusion in one late-manga story, which really makes it into Mood Whiplash. A martial artist named Kumon receives a scroll detailing a style called "Yamasenken", which makes use of a lot of brute-force tricks. One of these is a bearhug attack explicitly stated to be capable of snapping a man in half. Kumon intends to use these moves to revitalise his dojo, which is dilapidated to the point it's being held aloft only by a single, rotting pillar. He decides to master this spine-shattering bearhug by practicing on the pillar. Naturally, when he succeeds in learning it, the whole house collapses on top of him, killing him. The worst part? The style was actually based around thievery, and Genma Saotome, the man who gave it to him, was more intending that Kumon would use the moves to steal the cash he needed than Kumon would try and legitimize them.
Poor Midorikawa Retasu. Her first appearance in Tokyo Mew Mew, she was a cool Dark Magical Girl... for less than an episode, until she became too weak to fight the Monster Of The Week. But as stressful as that would probably be, you still can't excuse her for forgetting her own powers when she falls into the ocean and panics. (Those powers? Water - including breathing it.)
Messily lampshaded in Elfen Lied: Kitsuragi, Director Kurama's Dojikko secretary, really is Too Dumb To Live, as Lucy proves about 10 minutes into the first episode...
The premise of Kage Kara Mamoru, in which a family has been secretly protected for ninjas for so long that they've lost the ability to survive normal life. The latest descendant, the female protagonist, therefore has a supernatural ability to walk blindly into trouble, and generally gets rescued before she even realizes what's happening.
Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan: Sakura is this way around Sabato, always offering her a hand even when she had tried to kill him just seconds prior or allowing her to seduce him in her attempts to kill him.
- However, Death Is Cheap in the series, which is lampshaded at countless opportunities. And in the scarce opportunities where Sakura isn't carrying the Idiot Ball he proved to be quite Genre Savvy.
Jun in Devilman Lady gets episode 1 going by encountering a strange woman (Asuka) stalking her. When Asuka comes to her door in the middle of the night, Jun, despite being afraid, unlocks her own door, willingly gets in a car with Asuka, lets Asuka drive her to a darkened area of the docks, and obediently walks into a deserted warehouse whereupon Asuka locks her in with a werewolf. Then again, Jun is a complete doormat in the beginning of the series and doesn't really think highly of herself. The fact she's a rather plain-looking model - a fact several other models say to her face - doesn't really help give confidence.
Fate Stay Night: Shiro, while not a typical Idiot Hero, wins some sort of prize there due to spending a good portion of the anime refusing to let the fighter do the fighting because she is a girl. He gets called on it by a number of people who think him to be What An Idiot before it sticks. The only reason he gets that far is because of his Death Is Cheap auto-healing powers.
- The "Saber's a girl" excuse really seemed more of a "I don't want the girl I love to be in danger" cop out (and watching her get her ass handed to her the first time she fought probably cemented that). Shirou's real stupidity is his extremely high penchant for self-sacrifice (which he's also called on).
- This is also only in the anime adaptation of the Fate route. In the game, especially in Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel, he ditches the whole self-sacrifice gig soon enough.
  - No, he really doesn't. In UBW he's even worse on the self sacrifice as part of the deconstruction. The interesting part about Shirou and honestly being too dumb to live is that he actually knows what he does is stupid and can't help it (except in Fate, where we never learn this).
The main character of Kyougoku Natsuhiko Kousetsu Hyakumonogatari, Yamaoka Momosuke. He has a habit of blindly trusting and attaching himself to even Obviously Evil people, trying to sacrifice himself for others and jumping in to save people from sword-wielding maniacs without any other means to defend himself than yelling "Please calm down!" He'd probably have died at least once every episode if it wasn't for Mataichi's team always saving his ass.
In Grave of the Fireflies, the main character, Seita, endures incredible hardships with his sister during and after WWII. Most of that hardship is a result of him running out on his kinda-mean-but-not-that-bad aunt's house to live in a cave. One of the reasons the aunt resents him is that instead of working, he goofed off during the day. And instead of getting a job, he runs off with his toddler sister. Even when things become so bad that their lives are threatened, instead of simply asking his aunt to take them back, he sticks it out, while his sister eats mudballs out of hunger. And then both he and his sister die.
- The aunt wasn't being stupid, really; she just had too much pride, as did Seita. The whole tragedy of this aspect of the plot is that the aunt never hated Seita or his sister; she was just under stress from being in a war zone and having to manage her own family plus two new children who couldn't contribute to the house. She felt that Seita buying his own food and cooker were his attempts at insulting her, but as we know, that was not the case. Along the same line of logic, she thought the pair leaving her house was another example of spite, but probably thought they would return once they could no longer eat. Seita however, attempts to hoist too much responsibility onto himself and doesn't ask for help, hence why he is such a dark example of this trope.
In the manga version of Fullmetal Alchemist several members of the Amestris military give Zolf J. Kimblee a Philosopher's Stone so he can test it to see how much more powerful he gets. Kimblee uses it to create massive destruction, upon his return they ask for it back, and Kimblee does what everyone who has spent 5 minutes with the man expects. He swallows the stone then kills the morons who gave arguably the most psychotic person in the series (only Envy is as close) a stone that upgrades his power. Maybe next time they should do some research on the guy they use for their experiment.
- Dietlinde Eckhart the main villain of The Movie. She invades Amestris on the mistaken belief that it's Shamballa, which it shares no similarities with, and doesn't even make sense. Shamballa is supposed to be located near Tibet, and Amestris is in another dimension. She then tries to take over the place when the Thule Society has only about 1,000 members while Amestris is a heavy militarized nation with a much larger army.
Lolly and Menolly from Bleach are two Arrancar Clingy Jealous Girls who aren't happy to see their boss, Sosuke Aizen, bring a young woman from Earth, Orihime Inoue, as a part of his Xanatos Roulette. What do they do? Go torture the girl out of jealousy. See them getting brutally mauled by their superior Grimmjow when he comes to free Orihime so he can get his arm fixed and fight her friend Ichigo. Then, after Orihime shows Messiah traits and revives/heals them out of pity, what do they do? After a while, they try to kill Orihime again and then use her as a hostage in front of Ichigo and Ulquiorra. Sweeties, that will NOT end up well for you two.
In Devilman Lady, Jun's girlfriend Kazumi dies when she leaves her hiding place for no good reason whatsoever.
Inverted magnificently in Baccano when Randy and Pecco's stupidity leads to them becoming immortals.
Schneizel and Nunnaly become to dumb to live in the end of Code Geass. They know Lelouch has geass, they know that Lelouch geass works by eye contact, why the fuck didn't they close their eyes when he geassed them? Neither of them die, but that's because Lelouch didn't want them too. Plus the only way Lelouch can geass his guards are that either Lelouch knows whose his guards are, or Schneizel was too dumb to order his guards to shoot on sight.
- Nunnaly is something of a subversion since her reason for not closing her eyes was that she did not believe Lelouch would actually use his Geass on her. As idiotic as her reasoning may sound initially, she was actually being Dangerously Genre Savvy at the time. At this point she was already aware of her status as Lelouch's Morality Pet and in spite of claims he made in a previous episode she may also have been aware of her status as the reason that he was using his power to control and manipulate the people around him. In this situation, she was aware that her innocence and purity were in essence her best weapons for dealing with her older brother and realized that it would have been a complete contradiction of everything that he had done beforehand if he used his Geass on her. The only reason she failed was that her position in opposition to Lelouch made him realize that in order to follow through with his plans as well as atone for his crimes, he would need to Jump Off The Slippery Slope and become the Complete Monster he had already made himself out to be. Only then would his ultimate plan succeed.
- As for the guards, it simply appears that nobody has ever thought of simply shooting Lelouch/Zero on sight, as is demonstrated multiple times throughout the series.
- Nina also qualifies, when she and some other people on the student council was taken hostage in the first season. When one of the Japanese guarding the hostages passes her, she was dumb enough to utter the word "eleven". Cue guard interpreting this as a racist remark, and threatening to kill her. Luckily for Nina, Euphemia was there to rescue her from the guard by revealing her identity as a princess.
- Out of the whole cast, Suzaku epitomizes the trope. Of course, given one of his main motivations it could almost be seen as an Inversion.
Dr. Gero/Android 20 from Dragonball Z. He may have had the upper hand when he had the remote to put Android 17 and 18 back to sleep... or explode them... or something... but after 17 took it from him and crushed it he should've shut his mouth. But instead he kept yelling at them and telling them to obey him, and grabbed 18, even though he knew full well 17 and 18 were stronger than him. Because he made them. (Well, modified them, but still.) And even after he got his head kicked off, he said "Ok, now I'm mad!!!" ... and then 17 made him go squish. Really, awakening them in the first place was a bad move. Hell, even creating them in the first place was a bad idea. Giving rebellious teenagers godlike powers? Seriously? This guy is supposed to be a genius?
- To be even more clear: after Androids 16, 17, and 18 were all too hard to control, Gero made Android 19, which relied on outside power and was thus dependent on Gero. Fair enough. But when Gero turned himself into an android, he inexplicably chose to model himself after 19 rather than the far more powerful earlier models. When he found this was too weak to stop the Z fighters, he activated 17 and 18, whom he had deactivated because they were rebelling and much stronger than he, and the above-described events happened.
- Vegeta is too dumb to live on several occasions too, most notably when he allows Cell to power up to his Nigh Invulnerable final form, because he "needs a challenge", and Perfect Cell proceeds to wipe the floor with him.
  - Goku himself suffers from this against Cell. After fighting Cell and giving him a good run Goku quits and reveals that he wants Gohan to fight Cell. Goku than gives Cell a Senzu Bean (which magically heals you), because he wants to be fair.
- ChiChi vs. Majin Buu, anyone? As Buu waits for the chance to fight, she storms out in a righteous fervor, slaps him across the face, and screams at him. His response: "Do you like eggs?" *zap*
  - Possibly a deliberate subversion of crazed Tsundere types in animanga. We hear how even Goku is afraid of Chi Chi, and we see evidence of this godlike being shaking at the sight of a frying pan wielded by a very strong yet still mortal spouse. In Buu's execution, we see once and for all that Goku, and perhaps many a super-ultra-strong animanga hero, aren't physically afraid of their others. They love them so that seeing them angry makes them afraid, but the broom, rolling pin and frying pan don't mean jack to mountain-breakers. A bit sexist, but a good explanation of a trope akin to George Reeves ducking the thrown gun.
The whole plot of Appleseed Ex Machina would have ended after the first third of the film, if there hadn't been such a long line of stupid decisions, for which "criminal neglect" doesn't really cut it.
Death Note - the fiancée of the recently murdered F.B.I. agent figures out crucial information on the Kira case and then decides to trust Light with it after he’s been acting creepy, following her around, and asking "Have You Told Anyone Else?"
- Someone who uses the name of Kira to pad his own pockets, knowing that Kira is a vengeful god of justice without much sense of mercy. Demegawa? Can you say "SAKUJO?"
Tytania: Duke Idris Tytania betrays another member of the clan he was sent to rescue, and stands by to watch while the enemy destroys his ship, presumably killing everyone on board, including Idris' subordinate, Berthier, who thought he was in on Idris' plans. Berthier actually manages to get to an escape pod and survives, though he is permanently crippled. Then, although he is presumed dead and could easily just take off, he goes back to continue serving the guy that just double-crossed and tried to kill him. Yeah. That works out real well for him, as you'd expect.

Close Anime and Manga

The Guardians of the Universe, as of Green Lantern #27. Seeing as how what they're doing here is essentially recreating even more dangerous versions of the original Manhunters - which crazy obsessed justice machines once overthrew, and almost massacred, the Guardians.
- And in Final Crisis, we find out that the Guardians' latest group of crazy obsessed justice machines are the perfect host bodies for the disembodied spirits of some of Darkseid's minions, who have been dead ever since Death of the New Gods. But now they can get better! Thank you so much, Guardians of the Universe!
Slightly different in 'Emerald twilight' of Green Lantern, with The Guardians of the Universe again. During 'Emerald Twilight' (when Hal Jordan became Parallax), Jordan was on his way to Oa to take nearly limitless power from the Central Power Battery. After stranding several Green Lanterns in space (where they probably would have died), Hal arrives on Oa. Jordan removes his power ring, effectively making him a normal human, and the Guardians, who have power on a cosmic scale (give or take) just let him walk into the central power battery. They knew Jordan would kill them if he had the chance, and they practically let him. The central power battery explodes, revealing Hal Jordan as Parallax. All but one of the Guardians died, and for no good reason.
- At least here, the Guardians realize that they are indeed Too Dumb To Live. One of them says "Thusly it ends? We simply allow him to expunge our grand design? Brothers, are we too atrophied to save ourselves or preserve the doctrine by which we have guided the universe?"
Superboy. All the Lampshade Hanging in the world can't explain how Superboy could be that stupid and live. Even the narrator acknowledged the stupidity of that Superboy. It turned out to be all a dream, even.
- He was just a kid, remember.
One could make an argument most of the characters of The Walking Dead fall into this, though for a fair bit of them one should take into account the Uncanny Valley factor.
Lampshaded in Nightwing #150. One of Two-Face's mooks was standing right behind a guy Two-Face wanted to shoot. Two-Face points out that this isn't a good place to be, and the guy needs it explained to him: "I can't afford to lose any red shirts." When the mook doesn't get the reference, Two-Face has had enough, declares him too dumb to live, and blows him away.
Nicky Cavella seeks to riles up The Punisher, by digging up his family and urinating on them, then broadcasting it on television. As one bystander says, "That guy is gonna go fucking berserk," not realizing Mr Castle is behind him, glaring at the screen. No, he does not kill everyone there, but he is pissed off. The next time we see him he is loading for bear, as if to kill every mobster in the city (and over the next few days, makes a damn good effort).
The US government (or, hell, the population in general), as portrayed in recent Marvel comics. Yes, let's give a mass-murdering, barely contained psycho his own private army and spy agency on our dime and let him be the one giving orders to all registered superheroes. That's surely not going to come back and bite us in the ass later down the road.
- Let's also let him have a team made up entirely of OTHER mas murdering barely contained psychos. Including a misogynistic serial killer, a cannibal serial killer, a feral berserker serial killer, a living GOD serial killer and...y'know, I think I've made my point.
  - He also now has a "Dark X-Men". Which includes Dark Beast, the guy who is essentially Josef Mengele with fur.

Close Comic Books

Lampshaded in Scream, when one character calls slash film victims "dumb blondes who are always running up the stairs when they should be going out the front door." And then, some manage to still die.
- Also lampshaded at the beginning, when Drew Barrymore's character asks if anyone's in the house, the killer taunts her on the phone with "Oh, please! Why don't you just go outside to investigate a noise?"
In Dantes Peak, the grandmother decides not to leave the area of the erupting volcano, prompting most of the other characters to go after her. Later, she attempts to wade through acid, which does kill her.
- It was arguably stupid to end up in that situation, but the actual jump into the acid was a deliberate sacrifice on her part; she was pushing the rapidly-disintegrating boat in which the rest of protagonists were huddling.
Ofelia of the movie Pans Labyrinth surely qualifies in the infamous Pale Man scene. She has been warned by the Faun not to touch any of the food on display, or else; the magic book, just in case she forgot, tells her again... and guess what she does? She apparently doesn't notice the horrific looking creature sitting as still as a statue at the head of the table, never mind hear it springing to life as she takes a bite out of some fruit. The fairies with her even wave their arms and try to warn her not to, but she just greedily swats them out of the way and they end up getting eaten by the Pale Man for their troubles. At this point, this troper found it hard to feel any sympathy for Ofelia when the Faun goes apeshit on hearing she ate some of the food when we were obviously meant to think the Faun was being harsh. I can't blame him. I don't care how tasty that fruit looked, when a mystical, creepy looking thing with antlers and some monkey-like fairies tell you not to touch anything, don't touch anything!
- While it was a stupid move, the child was ravenously overcome. She had, prior to that, been denied food as punishment by her cruel stepfather and had not eaten in something like 2 or 3 days.
- Also, it was kind of faery-food. Which is said to be magically tempting. It's not Too Dumb To Live if she eats it, just mortal weakness and maybe an unfortunate failure of Genre Savvy.
The entire Jedi order. Let's make a bunch of rules that not only run counter to human nature, but help ensure that your number will always be relatively low. Then let's blithely ignore signs that all is not well until one of your members gets de-lifed by something you thought was a myth. And then let's utterly ignore the growing power and corresponding immaturity and unpredictability of your "Chosen One", all the while getting played like chess pieces by the ultimate BBEG, who was literally staring you in the face the whole time.
- Very strongly covered in the novelization by Matthew Stover. Regarding the duel with Darth Sidious: "[Yoda] had lost before he started. He had lost before he was born." And "Yoda also realized that the Jedi Order mistakenly focused on fighting the old Sith rather than the new, evolved Sith of Darth Bane's order."
- Feltipern Trevagg. If you're going to seduce a space babe, you might try to find out what her species' mating habits are.
Basically, the level of intelligence exhibited by the human race in the film Idiocracy can be boiled down to two phrases: "Ow, my balls!" and "Welcome to Costco... I love you."
- "It's got electrolytes!"
Hud from Cloverfield may qualify. Whether his friends are being attacked by parasitic creatures or a gigantic monster is hovering over him with a hungry look in its (many) eyes, it never occurs to him to just put the damn camera down and do something! Naturally, another character loses her life to save him from the parasites while his hands are full, and the hungry monster ends up eating him. One of the Rifftrax boys describes Hud as "straddling a fine line between dumbass and inanimate object."
- There's a reason one of the Fan Nicknames for the monster is "Darwin".
- Heck, the same goes for The Blair Witch Project, Diary of the Dead, the remake of House on Haunted Hill, and Quarantine, too. Well, Quarantine is a contested case, as they at least offer a decent justification for the usually flimsy "people have to know!" premise, but still: we can B.S. about a director's artistic commentary on voyeurism and whatnot (that doesn't mean we should), but when it comes down to brass tacks, Handheld Camera = Idiot Ball.
- While we're on the subject of handheld cameras, Micah from Paranormal Activity definitely deserves a mention. Is rude to the psychic and objects to the idea of having a demonologist (who might have been able to solve the problem) in the house. Taunting the demon with a microphone. Promising not to buy a ouija board, then getting around this by borrowing one. The powder. Running around and calling the demon a pussy. The list is endless. Deserved everything he got.
Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds has Melanie going up to a room she knows is filled with birds. The result is She is nearly killed by dozens of attacking birds.. When the actress asked, "Hitch, why would I do this?", he replied, "Because I tell you to."
Ed from Shaun of the Dead takes this to new levels. The characters need to get past a horde of zombies, and do so by acting like zombies to avoid drawing attention. When they are nearly to apparent safety, Ed's phone goes off... and he answers it and starts cheerfully talking on the phone, less than ten feet from dozens of zombies.
- But this movie was a satire of horror movies, so this is kind of what you'd expect.
Although this trope is hardly rare in slasher movies, special mention must be given to the Final Girl from Friday The 13th. She omitted Once Is Not Enough no less than three times, each time leaving the killer's weapon right there for them when they woke up. There were a bunch of other examples of her stupidity, but that was the outstanding one.
- At one point in a screening of Halloween, Laurie Strode's stupidity is too much for one audience member. When she fails to make sure Mike Meyers was dead after he came back from apparent death the first time, the audience member shouts, "You stupid b***h, you deserve to die!"
Multiple characters in Burn After Reading more than qualify, but Chad Feldheimer goes above and beyond the call of duty, and definitely earns the title since he ends up getting shot in the head before the second act is even over.
The science fiction spoof Mom And Dad Save The World has a memorably absurd case of this on a massive scale, played for laughs of course: There's a weapon called the light grenade that disintegrates anyone it comes in contact with once the pin is pulled, but only if the victim is dumb enough to actually pick it up. It has the phrase "PICK ME UP" engraved on it. Because the movie literally takes place on a planet full of idiots, one of these left out in the open takes out an entire platoon of evil troops, each one picking it up immediately after seeing what just happened to the last guy who did that.
- You forgot that just as the second-to-last guy in the platoon is picking up the light grenade, the last guy left is on the radio calling for reinforcements. We can reasonably presume that they all picked it up too.
You'd think by now that the JSDF in the Godzilla films would learn that their conventional weaponry (IE: Tanks, missiles, cannons, giant lasers... ok, maybe that last one isn't that conventional.) have NO effect whatsoever on the eponymous monster and, if anything, only makes him angrier. Nope. Even after 28+ movies, they still try the same tactics over and over again.
Capturing a giant ape who's smitten with a female human and bringing him back to civilization? That's a GREAT idea! What's the worst that could happen? Oh...right...
The archangel Gabriel from the movie Gabriel qualifies. From the very first person that he meets onward he is constantly warned that using his powers will attract the attention of every bad guy in the city, letting them know exactly where he is. So what does he do? Why, he seeks out his fallen comrades who are in hiding and proceeds to use large quantities of his powers to "help" them, even when they specifically and emphatically tell him not to and yell at him for it after the fact.
- To top it all off, Gabriel is actually shocked and suffers a Heroic BSOD when he learns that he DID, in fact, lead the bad guys to his comrades and they all died because of his stupidity. Asmodeus even points out "if you didn't want them dead, why did you lead us to them?"
- Gabriel truly proves himself Too Dumb To Live when after Michael makes a last minute heel face turn and gives Gabriel the last of his life essence in order to save his life, dying in the process, Gabriel proceeds to throw himself off of the building to his own death MERE MOMENTS LATER!
  - A post-credits scene deleted from some versions of Gabriel makes it appear as though he commits suicide for no reason when in actual fact he gave up his wings/angeldom to become human and live with Amitiel (the main love interest). His final words being aimed at god ("Forgive me... I hope I see you again...") imply that he intends to live in purgatory and live a simple life.
I Know What You Did Last Summer. Helen, a blonde, is running through back alleys. So close, so very close is a crowded parade. Back behind her is the killer, her dead sister and piles of tires. She hears a sound, stops, turns back, the killer is there and grabs her and drags her behind the tires. Death ensues. Notable in that Helen is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. POST-Buffy. Good lord.
Revolver, a forgettable 2005 Guy Ritchie movie, has one scene where a somewhat quirky and unstable hitman is clearly uncomfortable about TheDragon's interrogation techniques. When he complains, the bad guy threatens him with "Question me again, Sorter, and we will have a falling out.". They do indeed have a falling out.
In 28 Weeks Later... all of the UK has been overridden by Infected crazed lunatic zombies. However, they starved (these "zombies" are mortal infected). So the US Army goes in and seals off a small section of London, that resembles The Green Zone in Baghdad, as a launch-pad to restore the UK to nationhood. Beyond this zone is the devastated abyss of England. So when a couple surviving English schoolkids are brought here, what do they do? They immediately sneak out of the safe zone to go home.
- Even More epic stupidity: the military's plan in case of an infection within the compound: Relocate all the survivors out of their high-rise apartments and pack them all into a large basement with no lights. With, apparently, unlocked doors in the back.
- Then there's the part where they gave a civilian the keys to everything- including their most secure quarantine.
The entire cast of The Ruins is not only shockingly unlikeable - they're also terminally stupid. What to do when you find you're surrounded by man-eating vines? Go to sleep.
- They didn't have much of a choice, there were hostile natives ready to kill anyone that stepped foot off of the hill, and they couldn't very well stay awake 24/7 without making themselves even more vulnerable after sleep deprivation kicked in. No, what really made the group Too Dumb To Live was when they first thought, "Hey, let's all go into uncharted wilderness that we have absolutely no prior experience backpacking in, with no guide to help us, no proper equipment or clothing, and tell absolutely NO ONE where we're headed or when we expect to be back. It'll be fun!" Even if a sadistic man-eating vine wasn't involved, they still probably wouldn't have made it back to their hotel alive.
Many, many, many characters in the Jurassic Park series. Especially in Jurassic Park III, when Amanda is shouting into a megaphone. Towards a forest. On an island she knows is filled with dinosaurs.
- That's not even half of it:
  Amanda: [on the megaphone] ERRR-IIIC!
  Dr. Grant: And tell your wife to stop making so much noise! We're food to these damn animals.
  Paul: [yelling] Amanda, Honey! Dr. Grant says it's a bad idea!
  Amanda:[on the megaphone] What?
  Paul:[pointing broadly at Alan] He says it's a bad idea!
  Amanda:[on the megaphone] What's a bad idea?
  [A roar is suddenly heard]
- Particularly egregious examples abound in Jurassic Park II, with the supposed biologist Sarah Harding being one of the worst. She complains that Ian doesn't need to rescue her, then stumbles from one moment of rampaging stupidity to the next like a female Mr Bean. To make matters worse, she lectures everyone with her about what you should or shouldn't do in a situation before immediately going out and doing what she said NOT to do. And unfortunately, this is a situation where her being Too Dumb To Live results in not her death, but the deaths of nearly EVERYONE she encounters on the island.
  - Let's not be unfair: ~~borderline~~ eco-terrorist Nick Van Owen was as much responsible as her: "Let's release the captured dinosaurs from their cages causing them to rampage all over the place!" "The hunter guy has a gun! Better steal his ammo!", etc.
Jesse from the second Alien Vs Predator movie. Her companions already killed the Alien in the stairwell, but she runs away and screams, forcing her companions to chase after her through a more heavily Alien-populated section of the hospital. Then she dies when she gets into the path of the Predator's disc blades. What An Idiot.
Bruce in Bruce Almighty: Gee, I'll answer everyone's prayers without any thought that it might cause a problem. He not only can't think about any logical way to use the powers of GOD but he doesn't even think to ask someone wise... which being God you could call up Einstein (or anyone) for advice. Idiot Plot indeed.
- Kinda justified as God expected Bruce to fail epically. After all, even GOD himself can't figure out how to make someone happy without ignoring that little thing called "free will".
- You know, you'd expect there to be quite a few miraculous healings in that time, not to mention when some kid prays for his dead mommy to come home... Of course, that would mark GOD as an asshole for not regularly answering non-selfish prayers, and would have de-railed the moral completely (such as it is).
  - Considering that God apparently sees no problem in letting children starve, yet seems to have nothing better to do than jump whenever some white American yuppie gets whiny, there really isn't much of a moral to derail.
Dr. Schneider from The Last Crusade, who refused her one chance at survival for a magical trinket; though to be fair, that magical trinket was the Holy Grail.
- Indy almost does the same thing only a minute or two later, and he is rarely considered Too Dumb To Live. It may just be a natural trait of the Grail and the temple that anyone who sees it yearns to possess it.
Raymond Cocteau in Demolition Man frees a dangerous psychopath in order to get rid of an enemy, but he has it implanted in his brain that he can't ever harm him. However, he also allows him to bring other criminals inside his home who don't have the don't-harm-Cocteau rule implanted. It doesn't end well for him.
Davis in the 2004 remake of Flight Of The Phoenix; the plane has just crashed in the middle of the desert and it's stormy outside. He goes out, in the middle of the night, to take a leak. Not only does he walk unnecessarily far away from the plane (it's the middle of the night! No one's gonna see you, jeez), he somehow trips and falls down, then rolls like, ten meters away from where he were - and gets lost. He fails to find his way back to the plane, and dies out there.
Considering the numerous mistakes they make throughout the film, ~~Brad and Janet~~ Asshole and Slut certainly apply.
Given that they've watched dozens of their comrades writhe in excruciating pain, I reckon most of the mooks in this scene qualify (Warning: This scene may impregnate the viewer, regardless of sex).
Many of the characters in Gorgo qualify. First, our heroes bring a dangerous animal into a major population center, then disregard the possibility of Gorgo being a juvenile, then disregard the effects of its mother coming into said population center (confident that modern technology can stop it) to the point where the government didn't even bother to evacuate the city! But the jewel in the crown has to go to a trio of teenage gawkers who got up close to the edge of the river Thames to watch the monster. They watched the army fill the river with gasoline, ignite it and watch the river burn for a full minute before realizing: Hey, maybe it's not such a good idea to be near the water while it holds burning gasoline. They are promptly, gloriously, incinerated.
Half of Gotham in the 1989 Batman movie seems Too Dumb To Live. It was already common knowledge that the Joker had murdered many people, but that didn't stop them from diving at the cash he offered in public. He even said into a microphone, "Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives," but they're too engrossed to listen. A minute later, many are dead. And some who aren't dead yet still grab for cash.
"Your weapons have no effect on me!"
- "Shoot him!"
There's plenty of stupidity in The Naked Gun series, but one particular moment comes to mind: In The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear, three cops come across what the audience can clearly see is a time bomb. They all mistake it for a nice clock and set it forward to correct the time. Guess what happens next.
Wolverine. Striker's plan to create the perfect indestructible kiling machine;
- Find almost involnerable mutant with healing powers, retractable claws, and a short temper.
- Cover said mutant's bones with indestructible metal, making the only part of him that doesn't heal as fast the only part that doesn't NEED to heal again.
- Piss off said mutant.
- Said mutant escapes.
- Try to kill said mutant using exactly the kind of things you DESIGNED him to withstand.
  - This becomes all the more idiotic when they reveal they have specially made bullets out of the same indestructible metal, which are possibly the only effective weapon against him, AFTER we have already witnessed their best marksman get slaughtered.
In the horror movie Darkness, Regina (Anna Paquin) performs a tracheotomy on her dying father to save him - knowing full well that, if she spills his blood, she will complete some arcane ritual and unleash hell on Earth. Well done, girl.
Let us not forget one of the hit men in Outland who comes to the base on Io — an airless moon of Jupiter — to kill the local marshal (played by Sean Connery) who's been looking into the use of ostensibly performance-enhancing drugs by the miners. As he stalks through a chamber with one transparent wall separating him from the vacuum outside, a falling pane outside (thrown by the marshal) catches his eye and he promptly opens fire with his rifle. Explosive decompression ensues.
- Well, for that matter, any character that carries a weapon capable of breaching the many, many vacuum seals in this space station. There was a reason the local marshals carried shotguns instead of assault rifles — reduced penetration!
Many, many characters in movies written or produced by Akiva Goldsman (see the sharks, above). Also, by extension, whoever it is who keeps hiring him.
The three victims in The Strangers; Kristen doesn't do anything but scream, trip and cry and actually injures herself, James among other things decides to go get a radio (because they were too stupid to have their cellphones on them) leaving Kristen alone and unprotected in the house, where their attackers can breeze in with ease, and their friend has his windshield broken, sees destruction, mayhem and hears loud music playing (which to a normal person would scream DANGER) and goes blithely in. Of course they all die. Yes, I know about the ridiculous ending, but I don't care, she still dies.
Anyone in the 2008 remake of Prom Night, especially Claire (Jessica Stroup) who sees the killer coming for her and just stands there and the local police, whose bumbling and ineptitude cause all the deaths in the movie.
Every single human being in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 film The Creeping Terror qualifies. The titular monster eats people, but in order to do so it has to reach them by moving very slowly. However, because idiots simply sit there and scream rather than run away, they suffer the grisly death that their stupidity deserves. The fact that they have to crawl into its mouth to be eaten doesn't help.
Will Stanton in the film Dark is Rising. At the end of the movie, he and the other Old Ones are forced to retreat into the Great Hall, where their enemy the Rider cannot enter unless invited. Will then proceeds to throw open the doors when he hears his parents and sister calling him only to learn that it was just the Rider who - oops - is now able to enter. Evidently Will thought his completely ordinary family was able to somehow get to a mysterious place which seems to be in an alternate time/dimension.
- Admittedly, that scene was in the book, and it was pretty significant to the plot there that Will was foolish.
Both of the Hulk movies. Seriously, will General Ross ever get that shooting =/= stopping Hulk, Betty = Hulk turning into Banner? Bruce spends the entire movies trying to lay low and keep things under control. Then the military catches him, tries to perform experiments on him, he turns into the Hulk, and they make things WORSE by hitting him with heavy artillery, making him angrier than before.
This troper is amazed that nobody has mentioned the eponymous character from the most recent Tim Burton film 9. I mean, come on. "Ooh, lookit. Something shiny, smack in the middle of the big bad monster's lair. It matches up with this arcane artifact in my hand. I think I'll just stick it on, without consulting any of my more experienced companions."
- Not to mention that the creature that had been terrorizing the other stitchpunks for a long time had been trying to do the exact same thing in plain sight of him shortly before. The brain fairy never came for 9...
- To be fair, he didn't actually see the cat beast try to use the talisman, he left after seeing it clawing and digging at junk. Still doesn't excuse the massive levels of stupid, but he didn't know the monster was about to do it.
ANYONE who buried anything in the burial ground in Pet Sematary after seeing the initial results (heck, after the initial warning for that matter). You'd think that after seeing what happened to Church the cat they would have stopped, but the guy then proceeded to bury his hit-by-a-truck toddler son Gage, who then came back and killed his wife. If that wasn't enough yet, he then buried his wife there, and she mercifully put an end to his chain of idiocy.
- Then came the movie Pet Sematary Two (yes, there was a second movie), which was more of the same, but with most roles reversed either gender-wise or species-wise, plus a much higher body count, reanimated or not and a MUCH higher "creepy" factor in that the plot dared to bring up the utterly stay-up-all-night-thinking-about-it scientific side of the undead people/animals, courtesy of Dr. Chase Matthews the veterinarian: first the kids Jeff and Drew buried Zowie the dog after he was shotgunned by Drew's abusive stepfather Gus, and upon Zowie's return didn't really feel like there was anything wrong when the dog acted nasty - Zowie was probably just irritable from being away from home for a bit. Of course more burials took place, including Gus himself and Jeff's actress mother Renee, who is taken from her grave much like Gage in the first book/movie. Interestingly, the undead Gus even does some of the burying, effectively enlisting Clyde the bully (who he killed while undead) as his henchman. In retrospect this troper actually found the second movie much more frightening than the first due to its more graphic depictions of absolutely everything despite it being basically the same movie over again (but still laughed hard through both at how utterly stupid one would have to be to get themselves into those zombie-fighting situations in the first place).

Close Film

Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter would receive a deserved facepalm even from the Bond villains. So, Mr. Riddle, you've learned how to construct artifacts that store parts of your soul and thus render you immortal. Now, where are you going to hide them? Well, of course it will be some locations that are directly linked to my real identity, cause nah, nobody is gonnah deduce them, EVAH! And what kind of protection are you going to give them? Well, of course the kind that will only require a random sufficiently powerful wizard to breach it (like, say, Dumbledore? Yeah, exactly!) and that WILL DEFINITELY NOT include some kind of alarm that immediately notifies me if the defense is breached and/or teleport the artifact directly to me, cause nah, even if somebody deduces the locations they nevah gonnah breach the defences, EVAH!
- Justified to an extent by the fact that very very few people knew his true identity, and fewer knew enough about him to make that kind of deduction. Why he thought this list of people wouldn't include Dumbledore (you know, the only guy in the world whose power and intelligence surpass your own?) of all people is an entirely inexcusable.
- It got much worse in the actual events of the story. Just how many times must an undodgeable, undeflectable, 9000%-lethal Killing Curse FAIL to kill an adolescent mediocre wizard before it finally dawns on the caster that something is freaking wrong with that kid and he should probably allow one of his henchmen to do the killing just this once or at least try some other implement? In our case it was FOUR times and for the forth time it was performed with the Most Powerful Wand In The World, and the kid had absolutely no excuses for surviving, and still he survived. Voldemort's response? Why, of course to use the same curse for the fifth time! Because, you know, if you hammer hard enough, it's gotta break some day, right? Wrong.
  - To send the least reliable of his mooks, whose both relatives had already failed him miserably, to check if that bizzarely hard-to-kill kid is finally dead and then not even being able to crack her lie despite being arguably the best mindreader in the world.
Anybody who has ever allowed Hercule Poirot, Columbo, Jessica Fletcher, or any other crime-solving detective to be anywhere near them. Dinner, vacation, school reunions, wherever these people go, murders are committed that they have to solve. This might be mistaken as simple Genre Blindness, but for the fact that this is often a known phenomenon within the show. Poirot, for example, has commented that he can't go anywhere without people dying. Adrian Monk's assistant Natalie called him the 'anti-Christ' in one episode, noting that even when he was on vacation people died around him. When Jessica Fletcher testified in a murder trial, a lawyer tried to discredit her by pointing out how many of her friends, relatives and acquaintances were accused murderers.
Peter in The Boy Who Reversed Himself. He is sacrificed to a man-eating boar (he lives anyway) because Laura and Omar don't consider him woth saving. Besides, it was Peter that got them stuck in the 4th Dimension in the first place due to his stupidity.
Elaida from the Wheel Of Time might be too dumb to die—as in, she could be impaled in the head with a Blighted tree specifically charged by the True Power to kill anything it touched instantaneously and she would be too confused about what was going on to actually bother to drop dead. Everything she does creates one diplomatic disaster after another. She sends the White Tower into civil war, tries to kidnap the Dragon Reborn (the Dragon must kneel to the White Tower!), sends fifty Aes Sedai to attack the Black Tower (I don't believe those rumors of there being hundreds of organized, militant channelers!), and ends up doing everything possible to prevent unification. Forget the rebels, she has a fabulous new palace to build for herself! By the penultimate book, the rebels' existence and the impending final battle against the Dark One are probably all that's keeping her alive.
- Therava, who seems to be more interested in turning Galina Casban into her sex slave, than in being the advisor of the Shaido Aiel. The rest of the Shaido Aiel may also be Too Dumb To Live. Many, many other characters get handed Idiot Balls from time to time, but their moments of clarity may disqualify them from this trope.
- The dumbest character in the entire backstory is King Laman Damodred, who 20 years before the start of the series cuts down a special tree called Avendoraldera. Said tree was given to his nation by the Aiel, a bunch of Proud Warrior Race Guys who could take over half the world if they weren't busy raiding each other. The insulted Aiel join together to invade the country, destroy its army, loot the cities, and chop Laman's head off. All because Laman wanted the wood for his new throne.
  - Only three clans went into the Wetlands, and it took every nation's armed forces and the unprecedented cooperation of the Children of the Light and the White Tower to fight them off. Even then, those three clans weren't actually trying to conquer anyone; they were just there to kill Laman. In Laman's defence, if he hadn't been such a pillock then Rand's mother would never have crossed the the mountains and died giving birth, and so Rand Al'Thor would have simply gone up the the Waste and killed himself by taking out as many shadowspawn as he could, as male Aiel channelers do.
- A lot of the important characters in this series tend to be too dumb to live, most notably Rand, who Wouldnt Hit A Girl... even if said girl is a legendary, psychotic Forsaken who is actively trying to kill both him and his girlfriends. He could have overpowered her but ends up just barely holding his ground instead while his friends are tortured, forcing Moiraine, the only Aes Sedai he could really trust, to make a Heroic Sacrifice to save them all. To his credit(?), he was also laughing his ass off at the time at how ridiculous the situation was, as he knows this is a stupid flaw for himself to have, he just can't seem to overcome it.
- Mind you, the three Taveren are a pretty good example altogether. They constantly split up and meet several (sometimes very important) characters and learn priceless information that can help them win the Battle, but instead of sitting down and working it all out, they spend their brief moments together...wangsting and avoiding each other. Way to go, guys.
Burt, the lead character of the Stephen King short story Children of the Corn is a particularly terrible example of Too Dumb To Live. He takes far too long to admit to himself that something is seriously wrong in the town of Gatlin... and even once he does, decides to linger just to make his wife - who realized much earlier and wanted to leave immediately - squirm. This results in both of them dying horrible and otherwise completely avoidable deaths.
The existentialist/absurdist book The Stranger has Meursault, the main character. The majority of the book is Camus trying to turn the What The Hell Hero moment in the first part into a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
A Song Of Ice And Fire has several characters who think themselves to be considerably more intelligent than they really are, with disastrous results. Cersei re-empowered the Faiths Militant, and Lysa was dumb enough to trust Littlefinger without question. Leaving the Moon Door open and then confronting him right in front of it wasn't bright either.
- This is actually a big character trait for Cersei, who thinks she's a lot smarter than she really is. Tyrion and Jaime, her brothers (and quite possibly the only viewpoint characters with any affection towards her, though they're both losing it fast) lampshade it several times.
- And then there's Catelyn. Get a load of this: she spends several pages musing about how a war with the Lannisters would prove disastrous for her friends and family, and is even told flat out by her husband that they are not yet prepared to win such a war. The very next thing she does is abduct and threaten to execute the presumptive heir to the Lannister family, based on the uncorroborated testimony of a pathological lier with known grudge against her husbands family. Smart move.
  - Not entirely fair - they were close childhood friends, and everyone still trusted him.
- And check out Ned Stark, who let his Honour Before Reason complex completely destroy his life and his family.
- For that matter, pretty much anyone who has even so much as made eye contact with Littlefinger could be considered Too Dumb To Live. And since this is ASOIAF we're talking about, they generally don't. Seriously people, when will they learn. (This Troper, when introducing a friend to the series, went as far as to warn her not to get emotionally attached to anyone who spends to much time hanging around Littlefinger.)
  - Oh, yeah. Littlefinger obviously has mindbending powers that make people around him Too Dumb To Live, either through actual magic or through being a Canon Sue. You would think that at least someone as shrewd and treacherous as Tywin Lannister is going to think that, well, this guy is highly dangerous and unreliable, at some point but no.
  - Arguably justified—as soon as any given character starts to realise the depths of Littlefinger's Magnificent Bastardry, is immediately murdered. The only one who hasn't yet is Tyrion, and that's probably only because he's nearly as good at plotting as Littlefinger. And because he left for the Free Cities not long after.
  - Also, this is sort of Truth In Television. Ever heard of Le Marquis de Talleyrand?
- Lets not forget Arya Stark here. Has a *single* one of her plans ever worked without someone to come in in a deus ex machina to save her from her own stupidity? The real galling thing about her is that her "plans" require everyone around her to be too dumb to live. Adults actually aren't as dumb as they look, Arya.
  - In fairness, she's 11 years old, thinks the successful plans Jaquen manipulated her into running were actually her ideas, every adult she's ever trusted either got murdered or betrayed her...
Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's original novel, decides to run away from, and afterwards basically forget about, his completely successful experiment in the creation of new life, after he decides that the result is uglier looking than he expected. He is then surprised when said creation feels epically neglected and decides to kill him.
- Not only that, but all the monster wants is familial love at first and then a female companion. Victor starts making one to appease it, then gets afraid the two of them would spawn a race of monsters, so he destroys the unfinished female, which prompts the monster to commit new murders in revenge. Victor never considers that he could just leave out some of the plumbing. Not only that, but despite knowing the monster has a history of killing the people that he, Victor, loves, despite knowing that it considers him guilty for the death of its 'bride', despite its explicit warning that it will "be with you on your wedding night," when Victor marries Elizabeth he assumes that he is the monster's next target, and sends his new wife away to wait in her room completely unprotected. The results are predictable.
  - Victor is too dumb to live by the simple point of leaving the monster at all. Had he just shot the damn thing, or stabbed it, or a number of other usual ways to kill things (specifically since the monster only had an infant's intelligence in the beginning) he would have been spared everything.
The heroes of Dracula, for their choice to stage their vampire-fighting headquarters in the insane asylum next door to the creepy mansion.
- Probably justified, as Dr. Seward had worked there for years with no problems before a vampire moved into the neighborhood. One could just as easily brand Dracula himself as Too Dumb To Live (or whatever), for moving in next door to one of Van Helsing's proteges, then sticking around to harass the wife of a lawyer who'd already learned what he was.
- Mina nearly dies (or un-dies) due to the heroes collectively being Too Dumb To Recognize Symptoms. Only days after failing to protect Lucy from the Count, Mina suddenly is struck with identical symptoms of fatigue and looking pale. Possibly justified in that neither Jonathan nor Mina were present for Lucy's final days, or maybe a near example of Poor Communication Kills, but still, shouldn't suddenly lethargy and anemia raise certain warning flags when a known blood-drinking abomination is in London?
- To be fair, there wasn't enough popular horror genre hits that made it into mainstream culture at the time, so one might forgive them with genre blindness.
The Kzinti from Larry Niven's Known Space series. While they are formidable-looking 8' tall, 500-pound tiger-men, a combination of room-temperature IQ and uncontrollable hair-trigger tempers means that they ALWAYS lose, even in hand to hand combat with humans 1/3 their mass.
Anyone who steps into the Mended Drum declaring themselves to be invincible will find the patrons will test that claim seriously.
- Quite naturally, by the usual Genre Savvy Discworld population, any examples of Too Dumb To Live that result in the person getting killed are marked down as "suicide" by the City Watch. There are a lot of ways to commit suicide in Ankh-Morpork. Walking into the Drum calling yourself "Vincent the Invulnerable" was just the icing on the cake.
In Oath of Fealty by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, the plot is initiated by a group of teenagers who, as a prank, try to sneak into a heavily surveillance filled arcology while carrying a box labeled "bomb". They take just enough precautions to defeat all of the nonlethal methods of stopping them. The abject stupidity of this act is very heavily lampshaded, and spawns the repeated phrase "Think of it as evolution in action."
- Don't forget the locked door they break through has a sign that warns, "If you enter here YOU WILL DIE!". Among other skull and cross bones type warnings.
  - This troper, having not read the book in question, considers that to be in the category of Shmuck Bait and their actions to be entirely justified.
This is a long standing complaint of fans of Romance fiction who use the abbreviation TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) to describe any heroine (or hero) who drives the plot by sending all reason and common sense on sabbatical while pursuing the love of their lives.
- And speaking of which, let's give a big shout-out to Bella Swan ofTwilight! Honestly, while I freely admit that the books are one rollicking avalanche of Guilty Pleasures, Bella NEEDS to be changed over so she'll have the strength to lug around that big-ass Idiot Ball she's been strapped to ever since she saw Edward Cullen walk into the school cafeteria. Her record includes:
- Wandering down a dark alley alone and unsupervised in an unfamiliar city while being chased by rapists, because she simply had to find a Barnes & Noble.
- Dating a boy who constantly threatens her life and is locked in a never-ending inner struggle with his desire to murder and eat her.
- Leaping off a cliff into the frigid, pointy-rock-filled ocean in order to force her mind to hallucinate about said boy and only after the fact realizing "Oh shit, this probably wasn't a great idea."
- Refusing to abort her hell fetus, which is slowly killing her, because she believes that she can will herself to not die.
  - Mind you, the second and fourth of those worked out okay, and in fact are exactly what a Genre Savvy character would do given that she's in a romance novel (not that she's Genre Savvy herself.) The fourth is also justified in that she's a Martyr Without A Cause, and the third in that she's really, really innocent.
Little Red Riding Hood, making this one Older Than Print. Terry Pratchett said it best in ''The Wee Free Men":
"...some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family."
T'Lana from the Star Trek pocket books was a very short lived character in the current Borg Story Arc for just this reason. From the first book she is introduced in she immediately questions the judgment of practically everybody on board the ship who isn't a Vulcan, she objects to nearly every action anyone ranked above her takes, and spearheads a mutiny with other members of the senior staff against Picard, only to give command back to him refusing to simply admit that she fucked up majorly. Even Spock eventually just walks away during a conversation with her, after calling her the vulcan equivalent of a dim-witted jerkass. At the end of the second book she appears in, Picard wants her gone, which means something when his current first officer once defected to the Klingon Empire and thus could, very technically, be called a traitor. Her ultimate fate? She's replaced with Genki Girl T'ryssa Chen, a half-vulcan who prefers her human side and roleplaying as an elf, and gets blown into powder when the Borg partially glass Vulcan.
The main character of The Da Vinci Code spends the first half of the book saying how incredibly smart he is because he's an expert on Da Vinci and codes and stuff. When shown an example of backwards writing, neither he nor his co-expert can even recognise it, let alone decipher it. This is just one example among many of how dumb the book was.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ma Su. Good God, Ma Su. During the Shu Kingdom's expedition against the Wei Kingdom, Ma Su was put in charge of defending Jie Ting, a very important location for the Shu forces. The location is near a mountain so Ma Su thought it would be a good idea to camp at the top of the mountain. Normally this would be a good idea, EXCEPT in this case, if they camped at the mountain and Wei surrounds them, their water supply at the bottom of the mountain would be cut off. Pretty much everybody except Ma Su sees this and he even ignores their warnings and proceeds to camp at the mountain. Guess what happened.

Close Literature

Prior to the start of season 7 of 24, the U.S. government decides to disband CTU. All of it. Even with a national organization of highly-trained agents with the latest equipment, the nation was always less than 24 hours from disaster, how do we make it safer? Yes, I know! Let's get rid of our best line of defense, which includes a One Man Army that has saved the country time and again. Head to Desk!! It's as if when President Palmer died, he took the last of the working brainpower in Washington with him.
- Possibly justified in that CTU was best known for breaking the law. Jack Bauer alone tortured innocent people, faked a stickup, staged a riot in a prion, invaded two foreign consolates (which could be considered an act of war), hyjacked a comercial jet, and has sumarily executed multiple suspects, and this is all while working (ostensibly) for CTU. If he's any indication, shutting down CTU was probably quite justified. As for simply disbanding the agents, instead of absorbing them into other agencies? Yeah, that definatly falls under this page, especially given that CTU was (at least originally) part of the CIA.
Smallville: As already mentioned above, Lana Lang. (Honestly; going swimming, after dark, in the school pool, in Smallville?)
- One of Robert Anson Heinlein's sayings by way of his longest lived character fits her perfectly: "Live and Learn. Or you won't live long." (The interested can look it up in The Notebooks Of Lazarus Long.
In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the residents of the town are hilariously aware and in denial of the presence of vampires and other demons.
- Given a Lampshade Hanging in one episode where a character gleefully predicts that if there aren't as many mysterious disappearances and unexplained deaths on the team this year, their football team is going to rule!.
- Consider Deputy Mayor Alan Finch: this is a guy who knows all too well about the dark creepies in Sunnydale, and he’s got some important information about the Mayor he needs to share with the Slayers. So what does he do? He decides to approach them in a dark alley in the middle of the night while they are being attacked by vampires. Guess what happens. Faith mistakes him for a vampire and stakes him, only realizing she's killed a human when he bleeds instead of puffing into dust.
The entire cast of the British comedy The Young Ones falls into this trope. The amount they don't know, and then the amount they presume to know, boggles the mind, but it's all harmless fun. Watching them try to sell a nuke to Libyan dictators was especially hilarious. To be fair, the environment they find themselves in could have come out of a Dada Comic's portrayal of London, as said nuke is actually a plane's egg, and it hatches a baby plane at the end of the episode.
Agent Mulder, several times during the run of The X Files. It's a miracle he only died twice in the nine years the show was on the air.
- In possibly the worst example, he learns that there are shapeshifters who are immune to gunshots and other conventional attacks and whose blood releases a toxic gas when exposed to air. Later in the same two-parter, he handcuffs himself to a suspect, who then changes to look like someone else. Mulder's response? He shoots him!
Shane Vendrell from The Shield. Stupid, racist hick cop who's put his and his entire corrupt team's necks on the line due to his attempts to work the system like his mentor, Vic Mackey. Never mind that twice, those schemes have cost innocent lives and given the ~~bad~~ worse guys reams of blackmail material. Oh, and he killed teammate Lem because he was afraid Lem was going to rat them out to the Feds. Never mind that they were making plans to sneak Lem to Mexico.
- Though not as street-smart as Vic, Shane does possess a low cunning that's allowed him to subvert this trope. Of course, the final season still has a few episodes left...
  - But ultimately he didn't, committing suicide and taking his wife and children with him in order to "preserve their innocence."
People from the civilian fleet tend to do this a lot in Battlestar Galactica.
- Just to provide an example. At least 1/3 of the civilian fleet is dependent upon the Galactica for water supplies, and the whole fleet is dependent on the Galactica as the only source of defence they have against the Cylons, not to mention its crew are the only proper organized force remaining so that even though they have a civilian government, it would be unable to function without the military running things. Then you have people like Zarek who wanted to bring it all down just a few days after the genocide of the Colonies (though he has gotten better about it), but he has always been a Well Intentioned Extremist anyway. Then you have the other civilians. Granted you don't want to be walked over all the time, but how do these actions make sense?: Refusing to supply your only defence as a protest; halting supply of the fleet's entire fuel, thus limiting their options hugely in the event of a Cylon attack; sabotaging the military and blowing yourself up because you think the fleet needs to make peace with the Cylons, when in fact the Colonies had already surrendered unconditionally, but the Cylons were not (at that time) amenable to opening a dialogue.
  - But inverted in beginning of Season 3: Cylons accept surrender this time and civilians seem to be living relatively normal lives, at least not much worse than they were before. The Cylons, despite running scary detention centers, are even working to make things better for them with water treatment plants, hydroponics, power supply, etc. Cue for the ex-military stranded on the planet to start a resistance which nearly gets everyone killed.
  - This is especially ridiculous considering that the Colonials live on New Caprica under sufferance from the Cylons. What does the dwindling and nearly extinct human race do? Begin suicide bombing the Cylons. Who are for all intents and purposes invincible thanks to their resurrection capabilities. Who when they do resurrect become more and more disillusioned about living with the humans they could nuke with very little effort. The only reason humanity survives is that the battlestars come back. It would have made much more sense to save everything for that big day, instead of risking the resistance's very existence by carrying out futile attacks or wasting resources in an attempt to kill easily-replaced figurehead President Baltar. At least Colonel Tigh, leader of the resistance, is portrayed as the Axe Crazy tunnel-visioned person he is, rather than an admirable hero, and the dubiousness of these actions is brought up during the Baltar trial in the post-exodus time of relative sanity.
  - The cylons weren't the target of the suicide bombings - that was the New Caprica Police (i.e., Vichy France). Still not a good idea (as many characters point out), but a better idea than it might seem.
- The Cylon aren't much better, either. Cavil's faction - "Let's reprogram the Raiders so they can shoot at members of our race!" Natalie's faction - "Centurions once rose against humans? And we control them with the Inhibitor? Let's remove it and let them rebel again, this time against members of our race!" How dumb is this? The result of two factions basically wiping each other out is entirely predictable.
  - Enslaving the Centurions and Raiders in the first place wasn't too smart as well.
In the CSI episode "Boom" from season 1, the team is investigating a bombing and receives offers of help from a guy who says he's a real amateur bomb enthusiast. Said guy is, of course, the primary suspect. The guy ends up blowing himself up by going to retrieve a bomb the real bomber placed in a high school.
Mohinder Suresh of Heroes fame. For someone who's supposed to be so intelligent, he manages to be pretty darn stupid. Perhaps the best example is how in the third season premiere, he decided to inject himself with a serum that he just randomly created without ANY regard to possible side effects. Too Dumb To Live indeed.
- The worst Too Dumb To Live of Heroes HAS to be Peter Petrelli 2nd season. not only does he end up with the villain of the season, but he repeatedly encounters trusted individuals straight up telling him that Adam is evil, including several of the people who worked with him to save New York earlier. Not to MENTION the fact that he watches as Adam casually and calmly BLOWS SOMEONE AWAY without any kind of comment on Peter's part. Only at the very end does he put two and two together and realize he is about to assist in genocide.
  - The worst Too Dumb To Live of Heroes is Peter Petrelli doing anything. If the man made a sandwich, it would have sand in it.
- The runner-up is everyone's reactions to Sylar. The guy is/was provably evil. He should be dead by now. They've had more chances to off that sadistic bastard than they've had hot dinners. And yet everyone lets him live or keeps him alive. Surely- surely- they could forego vivisection in favor of dissection? Just once?
A fair number of MacGyver antagonists are undone by their own stupidity: in the very second episode ("The Golden Triangle"), a dictator dies when he lunges at Mac with a sword, trips, falls down, and impales himself. In "Partners", Murdoc, who would become a recurring nemesis, is undone because when Mac throws a rock at him, Murdoc, one of the world's most notorious assassins, panics and drops a lit stick of dynamite. In "Kill Zone", a risk-taking scientist cavalierly waves around a container of mutated super-virus while insisting that nothing could possibly go wrong until her dog (For some reason, it's "Bring Your Dog To Work Day" at the xenovirology lab) concludes she wants to play fetch. It gets bad enough that in the Clip Show episode "Friends", Mac actually has a Ten Minute Retirement when he realizes that the only reason he's still alive is through an unlikely string of luck and the stupidity of others. And that's not even considering Locking Mac Gyver In The Store Cupboard.
- There was also the female antagonist in "Phoenix Under Siege", who throws a flying kick at Mac, misses entirely, and catapults herself right out of a high rise window.
- Murdoc, supposedly a master assassin, lives and breathes this trope thanks to his chronic inability to just shoot MacGyver (and, well, you know). So, Mac's standing two feet in front of a sheer drop? Great time to run him over with a car, Murdoc!
Many many many teams in Knightmare lost because of abject stupidity, like responding to an attacker by turning off the lights or seemingly taking great care to walk their dungeoneer off a cliff.
- Especially in the corridor of saws: "Right! No, left! No, right!" Goodbye dungeoneer...
Susan Mayer from Desperate Housewives is way too 'dumb to live', add her uncanny ability to misinterpret absolutely everything about everyone with her ungodly clumsiness and you just ask yourself how did she manage to live up to be twelve (let alone thirty... something). Oh, the characters of the series also ask themselves the very same thing.
Most of the cast of The Red Green Show suffers from this trope to some extent, but by far the best example is Bill. Whether it's pouring gasoline into a go-cart while the engine is still running, using his finger to test the sharpness of an axe, carrying chainsaws around in his coveralls, attempting to pole-vault off the roof of a moving vehicle, or sitting on a beanbag chair filled with propane and using a lit match to blow himself into the air to catch something that had drifted off into the sky, it's a miracle that Bill is not only still alive, but has all his limbs still intact.
Robin Maxwell in V: The Original Miniseries. First she wanders out of hiding, to be discovered by collaborator Daniel, which leads to the Maxwells having to move, Daniel's parents being arrested, and his grandfather being killed. Having learned nothing, she leaves hiding again, this time getting captured by the Visitors, which leads to the Resistance camp being attacked and her mother being killed. Not to mention actually falling for one of the Visitors' sweet talk - very dumb, even if it did lead to a useful Half Human Hybrid.
Marshall Wheeler of Black Hole High, who never seemed to realize that taking old technology made by a company known for suspicious dealings from the basement of a school that has a wormhole in it might not be the safest idea.
Damian Spinelli in General Hospital, with his Rain Man-esque computer skills, has to compensate somewhere... and it appears to be his common sense. For instance, he became trapped in a utility room in the eponymous hospital while it was on fire... because he was searching for a better internet connection.
Senator Kinsey in the first season of Stargate SG 1 is an interesting case. At first in his episode, he looks like a Living Lampshade, pointing every trope the series uses against the Stargate Program, then he gets through Genre Savvy to Dangerously Genre Savvy to Genre Blind and lingers in the last one until the last minutes of the episode, when he suddenly becomes Too Dumb To Live when he openly states that even if the Goa'uld do get to Earth, God will not let anything happen to America.
- Dude, the Go'auld!! The epitome of Too Dumb To Live. They could've pounded the Earth to dust in 36.4 seconds, but the morons decide to sit back, eat berries, and speak in that ridiculous vocoder-style. They figured, the Tau'ri were simply no match for them....no matter how many times, SG-1 personally served them their asses. When it did finally dawn on them that maybe, just maybe, these feeble humans and their reverse-engineering capabilities, nuclear weapons, and special forces training might actually be a threat; the Asgard stepped in and made them sign a Protected Planets Treaty - which is actually a big bluff, as the Asgard are too tied up fighting the Replicators to enforce it - which ended any hope of a direct assault against Earth, and gave Earth time to start building better weapons, discover the Ancients' base in Antartica, and build actual starships. Dumbasses for sure.
- Actually, SG-1 and the Stargate program get passed the Idiot Ball a fair bit too. Perfect example is with Big Bad Adria - they had an episode where she had lost her powers and they were standing at the top of really tall cliff. So what does Daniel do? He lectures her and then does exactly what she wants. One episode they had her and Ba'al in the same body. Shoot them? Nah! We'll try and take over Adria's body too until she gains back her powers and...well Hilarity does not Ensue. Ba'al's request that Sg-1 find all his clones and gather them in the same room is another example of Too Dumb To Live - big surprise, Ba'al was only out to help himself like the last million times. Sometimes when this troper watches the series she wonders exactly how Earth ever managed anything when our chosen representatives seem like they should be chewing the furniture and digging holes in the backyard.
Everything Virginia's father does in The Tenth Kingdom makes him Too Dumb To Live. Starting with the idiotic use of wishes. This is, however, part of the point of his character. There's a reason the Gypsy fortuneteller draws The Fool for him.
- Also the Buffoon and the Village Idiot.
- It is worth noting, however, that "The Fool" in Tarot has a completely different meaning than commonly assumed, which makes the use of it to lampshade this trope, while not an example itself, somewhere between Critical Research Failure and Viewers Are Morons.
In Malcolm In The Middle, season 1, each of the four brothers does something incredibly moronic:
- Reese pounds a nail into a spray can.
- Francis flips a knife high up into the air and extends his hand out to catch it.
- Malcolm hangs his head over an open pair of scissors while Reese stands behind him, about to pop a balloon.
- While one of the brothers cranks the pedal of an overturned bicycle, Dewey takes a bite out of the spinning wheel.
Several of the marks in Leverage. But especially the judge who, after disarming a pair of bank robbers, held everyone in the bank at gunpoint.
Princess Michelle Benjamin in Kings. A bunch of armed religious fanatics holed up in a warhouse, what does she do? Walk in sans body guard or wire to negotiate with them. What do they do? Take her hostage. Then in another episode she goes to comfort a quarantined plague victim without any protective gear!
In one episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the guys spoof a road safety movie from the 1950s. At the end, the protagonist's brother dies because he's too distracted looking over his shoulder and waving to notice the oncoming train. You can imagine the jokes made at his expense.
Tom Servo: The cop never said anything about doing intensely stupid things!
Londo spends about half of Babylon 5 allied with an entire species of Complete Monsters, apparently convinced they won't wipe out his species like they're going to do to every other living thing in the galaxy. When he does realize this he breaks contact with them, but then Lord Refa quickly picks up the fumbled Idiot Ball.
- To be entirely fair to Londo, the Shadows don't kill everything in sight. That's not their goal at all and in fact, while it's likely they would have betrayed the Centauri eventually, their goal wasn't to conquer them. The whole Take Over The World schtick was a ruse. Their real goal was Social Darwinism on an immense scale.
- Also, The Shadows began by offering him what he wanted most. As time goes on he finds himself more and more trapped by his decision. Yeah, it was a really stupid decion, but one of the themes of the series was living with the consiquences of your actions.
The new Discovery reality show The Colony saw an engineer say she would rather have toilet paper than electricity. Just proof that having an advanced degree doesn't make you smart.
In The Sopranos, after Vito gets brutally murdered by Phil Leotardo for being gay, one of Phil's men, Fat Dom goes to visit Silvio and Carlo, who were Vito's crew members, to apparently show sympathy for the death... only to start making crude jokes that imply they were involved in gay sex with him. Guess what happens.
The Big Bang Theory has a variation that this troper likes to call Too Socially Inept To Live. Many of the things Sheldon says and does would, in the real world, cause one to be arrested, hospitalized, possibly even killed.
- Sheldon's hardly the worst offender - in the real world, Howard would have been done for sexual harassment half a dozen times by now, and there'd be injunctions blocking him from about half of Pasadena.
Survivor has a couple examples of these, but one shining example is Erik, from Micronesia. There were five contestants left in the game: Four girls in an alliance, and Erik, all by himself. Erik wins immunity, guaranteeing he won't be eliminated next. Somehow, the girls convinced Erik to GIVE THEM the immunity idol, something never before done on the show (for a good reason). They immediately voted him out.
- The fact that Erik had watched every single episode of every single season just makes this more pathetic.
- More recently, one contestant (name forgotten, so he will be called Racist Guy) refers to a black woman as "ghetto trash". The other contestants all agree to vote him off... until this season's Manipulative Bastard, Russell, talks them down from it, since he thinks he might need Racist Guy. What does Racist Guy do? Try to defend his slur at Tribal Council. Russell instantly pulls his protection, and Racist Guy gets voted off.
  - James from Survivor: China. You have TWO HIDDEN IMMUNITY IDOLS, the first time ever anyone has managed that in the game. You have made it TO THE FINAL SEVEN. Knowing that you only have two more chances to play your two immunity idols, WHY WOULD YOU NOT PLAY ONE?!?! Suffice to say, he got voted out unanimously with two hidden immunities in his pocket.
Caroline (Echo's original personality) on Dollhouse. Her body actually seems better off without her.
One Girl Of The Week in Star Trek TOS had a guy obviously in love with her who was too dumb to live. Given that said girl had to spend four years on Vulcan to retain her sanity, I'm sure trying to make her feel strong emotions is a wonderful idea! Oh, and what better way to get a girl to like you than by ruining her career by murdering the ambassador she's accompanying? The ambassador is an eldritch abomination the mere sight of which can make humans go mad. Just walk up, look it straight in the whatever-seeing-organs-it-posesses, and kill it. What could possibly go wrong?
- Almost every Red Shirt on Star Trek TOS seems Too Dumb To Live in a way.
- From Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine's parents. A pair of scientists who plan to study the Borg by sneaking onto Borg Cubes. This could be considered TDTL all on it's own, but they also bring their young daughter along with them on their expedition.
- Also, the Borg themselves could arguably be considered Too Dumb Too Live. Namely because of their tendency to ignore intruders on their star ships until the intruders go out of their way to present an obvious threat (such as by shooting a drone). Of course, this makes it absurdly easy for Star Fleet officers to do stuff lie wander right into the very heart of Borg ships, plant a bunch of high explosives, steal valuable Borg technology, and beam safely out.

Close Live Action TV

Oh god, Brewster Rockit from Brewster Rockit: Space Guy. He graduated from the Air Force Academy and then served in NASA as a space shuttle pilot. Yet, he failed his intelligence exam because he kept eating the pencils. Yet, no matter what happens, he still manages to come on top by dint of unrelenting stupidity. Here's a few pointers.
- Comes up with writers block when trying to write a message to a rocket to save him from a stranded planet.
- Doesn't even know how to put on his clothes - actually has to write with pen "goes on feet" on his socks to know where to wear them.
- Fights a monster in an alien colluseum. His weapon of choice is a mailbox.
- This says it all.
- When Brewster Rockit suspects the crew of being duplicates from pod plants, he accuses one of the men of being a copy on account of his stupid blank expression (man ends up being his reflection in a window).
- When the technology goes on strike, Brewster is stuck on a broken escalator waving a sign "send help!" while crew members pass by.
- Cliff comes in second. He may not be as rock retarded as Brewster but his actions repeatedly go in the too dumb to live category.

Close Newspaper Comics

On occasion, Jesus's apostles. Some people can't understand "I will die, and rise again in three days" or the fact that Jesus can make more food when people are hungry.
- Granted, there's some room for doubt what with the extraordinary claims... except they've all seen him do this kind of thing before.
  - Translated into hilariousness best here.
The Benjamites in Judges. Among your people are some Depraved Bisexuals who wanted to rape a guy, who was forced to give up his concubine to save himself. Said concubine gets fatally raped and abused. Said guy tells the rest of Israel about it, and when they go all What The Hell, Hero? on the Benjamites, tell the Benjamites to give up the villains or get their asses kicked... The Benjamites refuse. Then subverted when the Benjamites defeat the rest of the Israelites at least twice before they get finally defeated.
In Greek mythology, Orpheus goes to the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice. Hades allows him to leave with her on one condition: that he stay in front of her and not turn around until they reach the upper world. So, naturally, what does Orpheus do? Turn around, of course, just as they were about to reach the surface. This time, however, Orpheus would lose Eurydice forever.
- That depends on the version—some say that Orpheus had actually stepped out of the underworld before turning around, but forgot to take into account that, being behind him, Euridice wouldn't have stepped out of the doorway yet. The terms, in this version at least, were to not look at her until she stepped outside. Still dumb, but not quite as dumb.

Close Religion And Myth

The Hand of Vecna is an Artifact Of Doom that requires its user to cut off his or her own hand/eye (there's also an eye of Vecna) and graft Vecna's in its place, the artifact grants its user magical power, but has a mind of its own and wants the user to follow its agenda. The hand can kill those who disobey. And those who obey, too! So, you're pretty much screwed either way.
- And that's not remotely as stupid as the Head of Vecna...
Generally anyone who sells their soul in Warhammer, a boost, albeit a very large one, in one's abilities does not justify becoming a monster. Also note the parents who give their mutant children to Beastmen in Warhammer Fantasy, yes it is understandable as the child would be killed otherwise, but it is stupid because these children have a habit of coming back with beastmen during a raid, then killing and feasting upon their own parents.
- And the dwarves. If three dwarves manning a cannon are killed by ogres, do they find a small group of ogres and ambush them? No. They hold a massive pitched battle to avenge the grudges, then write down all the casualties of that battle in the Book of Grudges, to avenge next time. How well is this working? They're dying out. Essentially, it's natural selection in action.
  - Declaring a constant war on the most powerful mages in the world, and the most skilled warriors (Elves, even if they are dying out), the most numerous enemies (Orcs), the toughest soldiers (Chaos) probably do not help the dwarves chance of lasting longer than a few years
In Warhammer 40000 however being Too Dumb To Live is epidemic almost to the point of an actual infectious disease. The Imperium is the most common offender (having among other things ignorance and blind fanaticism as official government policy might be a reason for that) but by far the worst are any and all servants of Chaos, a faction that performs regular human sacrifices for anything more complicated than boiling water and is engaged in a perpetual Enemy Civil War due to being, well, Chaos, yet they still have a constant stream of followers willing to embrace madness and slaughter for the miniscule probability of achieveing the "honour" of daemonic possession.
Having your intelligence drop to 0 in certain RP Gs will render you literally too dumb to live and lead to immediate character death. Presumably your character forgets how to breathe. Others just turn you into a human (or appropriate species) vegetable.

Close Tabletop Games

Phoenix Wright, great lawyer that he is, suffers from this on occasion in service to the plot; his own intuition has to be shunted aside for the player to have an active role. Sometimes, however, this justification fails. Take the third case of the first game, where he blithely confronts a blackmailer on her actions, knowing full well she has ties to the Yakuza. Only a Big Damn Heroes moment from Gumshoe keeps him from getting rubbed out. Actually, Wright does this in almost every single case in the first game, and always seems to do so in secluded places with no witnesses where his suspected murderer holds all the cards.
- Phoenix's moments of this don't even compare to that of Misty Fey and Godot, the former who dies as a result in the final case. When Godot finds out about about the plan Morgan Fey has to allow her daughter Pearl to become head of the Fey clan rather than Misty's daughter Maya, which is through Pearl reading a letter Morgan gives her instructing her to channel multiple murderer Dahlia's spirit and kill Maya, and finds said letter, he confronts Misty Fey about it. Rather than solving this conflict the easy way, which would be to hide the letter or warn Maya and Pearl about Morgan's plan... Misty channels Dahlia's spirit instead, in order to prevent Pearl from doing so, nevermind the danger she would be putting her daughter's life and her own life into that she could have easily prevented.
In Supreme Commander, an ally of your character touches an ancient alien device that is emitting a strange energy signature, in violation of a direct order from the commander in chief of the entire cybran nation. He survives, but you have to kill him and his robotic battle suit after the artifact takes over. You know it's a bad sign when the other AI characters start yelling at him, but the funny energy signature mentioned should have given it away.
In Age Of Empires III: The War Chiefs campaign Sheriff Billy Holme, cornered by his ex partner Chayton (Holme had a Face Heel Turn) chooses to back into a cliff face surrounded by TNT. After talking for a bit, Holme attempts a Quick Draw shot on Chayton, forgetting that A) his gun was at his back while Chayton had his at his side and B) Native Tribes have a quick reation time and Chayton was half Sioux. You can guess how it ends.
In 7 Days a Skeptic, something has been killing off the members of a starship. The three surviving crew members have just been attacked by the revived corpse of the captain, the first to die. They defeated it, but they're not sure whatever animated it is really dead. Then they realize they can flee the ship on the escape pods... after a good nights rest. In separate rooms. (Not to mention the fact that the escape pods are restricted access!)
- This is not so much an example for those involved, so much as the designer of the ship. They characters explicitly state that it takes twelve hours to fuel and ready the escape pods... yeah, the EMERGENCY ESCAPE PODS. The author admits it to be contrived in the commentary, in order to have it get up to the "7 Days" mentioned in the title.
- The entire ship is built for this trope. The engines just die at one point and the engineer don't know how to get them going again... and doesn't even care. The captain's suite has a manual override... on the inside. If I recall correctly, the source material says the ship was built on the assumption that nothing would ever go wrong, which is absurdly stupid to assume.
Bioshock: Dr Suchong, who created the Big Daddies, was having trouble imprinting the Big Daddies on the little sisters. In a audio diary it is shown that he got angry and slapped a little sister. You find his body drilled to his worktable.
- Mind you, if you listen to the whole audio log, Suchong explains that he's been having problems getting the protective instinct imprintation-thing working. His death at the Big Daddy's hands is supposed to ironically reveal that he he did, in fact, get the imprintation to work correctly, he just didn't know what triggered it...
Pretty much every target of an Escort Mission ever. Taking the longer but safer route? Nah, lets take the way through the heavily populated monster village!
- To say nothing of civilians who insist on going through a warzone at all for whatever retarded reason.
  - To say nothing of the civilian who decides that taking a convoluted and longer route meeting every enemy in the war zone rather than the shorter path (e.g. The Alchemist from Spyro The Dragon 2).
- Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has an inversion: There is a time limit on how long you have for your convoy to reach the target area, it's the player's choice at each crossroad whether to take the short path or the long path, and the shorter paths have more enemies.
- Another variation is if the escortee is combat-capable but lacks target priorization: see Oda Nobunaga in Samurai Warriors (Battle of Honnouji, Oda side while not playing as him), or Gilthares Fairbough in World Of Warcraft (in the Horde-exclusive Free From The Hold quest) for their tendency to fight whoever they come across, no matter how inconsequential the enemy or how far it would diverge them from their path.
- Inverted in Dynasty Warriors 6 (PS 2 version) if you're playing the Battle of Chang Ban as Wei... part of the Fake Difficulty comes from the fact that Liu Bei does prioritize fleeing due to his many civilian followers; that's the whole point of the mission for both sides.
God Of War 2: Our "hero" is a jaded, brutal, paranoid man-god who's storming through the city of Rhodes in an effort to destroy it in the name of Sparta. This is an extraordinarily capable man. So what does he do when Zeus sends down a heavenly sword, demands our guy drain his godly power into the blade and answers the man's suspicious question with a vaguely ominous response? Three guesses.
- And he does this after an epic quest to kill Ares, because he was personaly attacking Athens and destroying cities of other gods.
In Final Fantasy Tactics, Rapha (or Rafa in the original translation) becomes Too Dumb To Live in the Riovanes Castle Roof battle of Chapter 3, where Rapha charges blindly into Elmdore and his Assassins, even though she barely has any HP to withstand more than two hits and the Assassins can kill instantly. Considering the battle is lost if Rapha dies, and she starts out closer to the enemy than Ramza's party does, keeping her alive proves extremely frustrating for all but the fastest-moving parties. Her steadfast determination to get herself killed eventually prompted the "Rafa Syndrome" description for AI-controlled characters.
Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 has this with several missions that are an Escort Mission. Some of the units you have to protect are usually several levels lower than the enenmy party, yet they will gleefully run up and try to attack them when their damage is equivalent to poking someone with a stick. And yes, doing this will invariably activate the enemy's counter attack skill, which is likely to kill them in one hit. So be sure to have your Paladins covering them at all time, kay?
Civilians in every Arcade Shooter ever. Here's a tip, people: If you're a hostage or otherwise in a building full of nasty evil things and the heroes come to rescue you, get down on the floor in full view of the rescuers and don't get up until they tell you it's all clear. Do NOT jump out from behind crates and surprise them!
Lindsay in Dead Rising. We Could Have Avoided All This if she hadn't opened the mall's front door, which a horde of zombies is clawing at right now, in order to let her precious little poochy in. And did I mention that the dog is clearly also a zombie? (The glowing red eyes are a dead giveaway.) The devteam clearly knew what people would think of her, though, and in the bonus Infinity Mode, where food-hoarding survivors are trying to kill you just as hard as the zombies, she dies as soon as you see her.
Sims and Sims 2 are notorious for its less-than-intelligent behavior. The best known example is an accidental kitchen fire. Rather then flee the house, the Sims will scream and yell around the fire, occasionally then burning themselves to death. Another example is pathfinding. Rather than taking the shortest route through a house, a sim may decide to take a longer path, sometimes even leaving the house and re-entering it.
Truly, many AI characters are Too Dumb To Live in ways the programmers probably didn't intend. One example in Deus Ex: Miguel, the NSF member whom you may invite with you on your escape from the Majestic 12 prison. He doesn't believe in stealth and is liable to charge as soon as he sees an enemy, wielding only a combat knife. Has anyone ever managed to keep him alive all the way to the exit?
- Blame the AI; that's what everything in the game does. No matter what weapon they have, or how tough the opposition, they will always charge at the enemy until they get into range and start shooting or slashing away.
Astrid in Fire Emblem 9 when you first meet her. Despite being an archer and having barely any Speed, Defense or HP, she rushes straight towards the enemy and will usually be killed on the first turn if Ike doesn't get to her. Did I mention that in order to reach her on the first turn, you have to use half your party to shove Ike to her?
Some of the above examples are about characters taking on enemies far out of their league, but that's nothing compared to killing yourself directly. In Final Fantasy VI, check before sending Sabin, Gau, or Strago into a Collosseum fight. Each one may have learned a skill designed to hurt or heal others at the expense of his own life. No longer under control of the player, they may fail to realize that these moves make sense only in team battles, if ever. When fighting alone, it's instant defeat.
"Being on fire sure makes you thirsty! I feel like a good beer."
- The Dwarves will also drop everything to collect the fallen items of the dead, even if it's next to an Elephant or on fire.
  - Or a Flaming Elephant, on Fire.
Any incompetent player (or even your friends) in Left 4 Dead. Since the game is all about team work, anyone who keeps making dumb decisions (wasting items, rushing ahead of the team to go solo, etc.) will have the trope name shouted by the other players.
The early villain Judge Ghis from Final Fantasy XII. Upon receiving a very important and very powerful piece of rock, one that he knows kingdoms were conquered and vast resources spent to acquire, he decides to find out what it does. By hooking it up to his giant airship's power supply. You can probably guess what happens next. Derp derp, Judge Ghis, derp derp.
The pack beasts from Dungeon Siege tend to fall victim to this trope - you have to protect them very carefully, or they have a tendency to wander into the line of fire. It gets worse in the expansion, Legends of Arranna, when you get pack beasts which have attacks - they continue to target and attack enemies even when they're hopelessly outclassed. You waste more resurrection spells on the pack beasts than anyone else...
The Meat Sims in ''Perfect Dark have a horrible aim, run past you, and will stand still in order to make it easier for you to kill them. Playing against them in the Combat Simulator is like squeezing a stress ball.
- For a storyline example, try the Area 51 scientists who flood a room with Poison Gas while they are in said room. You have to wonder how they became scientists in the first place with that lack of judgment.
Pachamak from Sonic Adventure, who attempts to steal the power of the Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald despite knowing that 1) the Emeralds are guarded by a god, and 2) said god has a volatile temper.
- And before anyone who played Chronicles, no the fact that it was a desperate attempt to fight back against Imperator Ix does not make his actions any less moronic.
The eponymous Lemmings.
They're technically not alive, but Champions of Norrath has a level where you must escort souls to freedom. They don't bother to stay behind you, they run into lava, and when they're attacked they just stop and kneel, letting the enemies beat on them! What's worse, if all of them are killed you have to restart the level. And there are several of these escort levels.
Nearly every single character in every Silent Hill game, player characters, villains, minor characters and even characters who don't appear. Usually justified by them being a) trapped against their will, b) searching for someone important to them, c) completely batshit insane, or d) all of the above, and sometimes... it isn't.
Lampshaded in Star Trek Borg; an early puzzle requires the player to make repairs to a console. One of the wrong choices in the situation results in the player getting a lethal electric shock, after which Q (who is masquerading as the ship's doctor) scans the player's body and apologetically tells his shipmates that the player was "just too stupid to live."

Close Video Games

Fighter from Eight Bit Theater. In fact, he's so dumb he can't even BE killed.
- Fighter may in fact be Too Dumb To Die. Evidenced by the fact that he is the champion of Drownball due to being the only person who has ever lived through a game. This is explained in that he can hold his breath for so long because his brain uses very little oxygen.
Gordon Frohman from the Half-Life based comic Concerned is quite possibly the definition of too dumb to live as it's revealed near the end of the comic that he's been playing the entire game with the Buddha cheat on this whole time; he then turns it off, with predictable results.
The crocodiles from Pearls Before Swine frequently end up killing themselves or fellow crocs in their idiotic attempts to kill the Zebra ("zeeba neighba").
Ethan of Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Girl Genius: "I will shoot any man who tries to move this ship". Not only is this guy as good as dead, he just doomed the whole crew with him (well, assuming they could have made it out in time).
- Although if you read on, you'll find that the crew definitely did not comply. He even seems to have helped in their escape, albeit not as he'd have hoped!
- Also, it seems that Agatha only ordered the castle to chase them out.
- Background character mentioned only in passing, but: X The Destroyer is definitely an example.
Torg (and sometimes Riff) take this role occasionally in Sluggy Freelance. Probably the most extreme example was when they summoned a demon with the power to destroy the world just so it would give them a case of beer and $20 in cash. If the demon hadn't been a few cents shy of the full twenty, the series would have been a lot shorter.
Casey And Andy may be brilliant inventors, but they're literally Too Dumb To Live, since they get killed constantly. Trick juggling near unprotected anti-matter, skydiving but forgetting to pack the chutes, the wood-powered submarine with the chimney... The list is WAY too long.
Bob and George parodies this by noting that one of the main characters has the "extraordinary ability to not recognize life-threatening injuries." In other words - he's too stupid to die.
In Book 10 of Schlock Mercenary, the inhabitants of the Credomar Habitat use fuel-air explosives inside their space station as part of a protest march.
- And then there's the ones who kept enough anti-matter around to create an eighty-megaton explosion and didn't even bother to fire-proof the containers. As it turns out, fuel-air explosives and fullerened anti-matter don't mix...
Leo from VG Cats. The examples are too numerous to list them all, but one includes him going back in time and cutting off his younger self's arms, just to see if his own would turn into stumps. And they did.
- Given that Aeris had given his mother an abortion two strips previously and Leo recovered from that, and that young!Leo seems just as enthused about his future self's arms being cut off, Leo's a textbook case of Too Dumb To Die.
Joey from A Game of Fools. He drank bleach because it was legal to do so, brought a drawing compass instead of a directional compass on a camping trip, packed nothing but alcohol for said camping trip after reassuring his friends he had "planned everything", and at no point seems to realise the aliens that have abducted him and his friends mean him horrible, horrible harm.
Kaalinor of Anti-Heroes. Fortunately, he's already dead, so his stupidity can't cause him further harm.
Quentyn Quinn, Space Ranger Thus far has had to deal with nothing BUT this sort of alien... first with a crew of "space pirates" who manage to get eaten by their third would-be hijacking victim; then the blue-skinned Federation aliens who run their ship with an exposed antimatter reactor, have crackerbox computer security, fly shuttlecraft with the aerodynamics of a cement block, and use matter-transporter technology despite having at least one crewmember who has been been grotesquely mutated and deformed by its chronic use....

Close Web Comics

Belmont in A Day In Draculas Life thinks it is a wise idea to keep spamming Hydro Storm. If not for Maria's Big Damn Heroes moment, Belmont would have stayed in Dracula's mercy after finding himself on the bad end of Dracula's Unstoppable Rage, which resulted from all the spamming. The Super Smash Bros Brawl spin-off, A Day in Meta Knight's Life, has fun with this to deconstruct Character Tiers by having the Pikmin's Big Damn Heroes moment be a Double Subversion where they just increase Pit's intelligence increased by one rank, so Pit, no longer relying on his arrows (which besides being annoying can wreck any player without sufficient skill) at all, is at most a step above Too Dumb To Live when he is counteracting a (suddenly) Dangerously Genre Savvy Meta Knight's moves with ease.
The Interviewer guy of On The Set of 4th Edition normally is a Cosmic Plaything, getting killed by the creatures he interviews that don't get killed along side him. But when drunk, all survival instincts flee him at high velocity as, to demonstrate a skill challenge, he decides to hit on The Lady of Pain, who he knows is capable of nullifying gods and flaying people with a glance, and he outright tries to intimidate her into giving him her number. Of all the times he's been killed in these shows, this was the one time he deserved it.
Parodied by the Angry Video Game Nerd in his A Nightmare On Elm Street video.
AVGN: Front door, closet... front door, closet... closet.

Close Web Original

Inspector Gadget is a klutzy, incompetent detective that constantly needs help from his niece and dog.
- And doesn't even know they're helping. Heck, he rarely has the slightest clue what's going on.
Every single character in Drawn Together.
Hank and Dean from The Venture Brothers. In fact, they truly are too dumb to live: the show reveals that they have both died several times, mostly due to their own incredible stupidity. Describing them as "death-prone", their father keeps a few clones growing in the lab as a precaution.
Sealab 2021 has characters who, if not meeting this trope individually, meet it as a team. Many episodes end in the destruction of the Sealab (continuity means nothing).
- To say that the Sealab crew is Too Dumb To Live is an understatement; they're Too Dumb To Save The World, as evidenced in the episode "ASHDTV" where they get a combination asteroid smasher and HDTV intended for Spacelab, and despite warnings of a giant meteor heading towards Earth, ignore the TV's asteroid-destroying abilities and keep on watching TV.
It is amazing how long the eponymous character of Invader Zim has managed to survive, considering how often his idiocy has made things literally blow up in his face. GIR is a more extreme example, although being a robot, he's easily repaired.
If Spongebob Squarepants doesn't count - Patrick Star inclusive - nothing does.
The eponymous character in Chowder. Not only does he usually drive the plot along by either destroying something in stupidity or just by being incredibly stupid, but, well, apparently he's literally too dumb to live without someone directing him. This is a guy who once thought the proper way to put away a spoon was to shove it in an electrical outlet after all (and judging from the marks it happened more than once).
- But he's so cute!
Winx Club, "Secret Guardian": Bloom finds a book on herself at Cloud Tower's (witches' school) library, and decides to read it. This was not part of the mission's intent (to take Stella's ring from the witches, stolen one episode earlier), and it leads to CT's principal noticing their intrusion, resulting in the Winx being attacked by bugs, and then being stripped of their powers upon returning to their school.
While most of the cast of Aqua Teen Hunger Force qualifies for the Idiot Ball in some form, no one exemplifies Too Dumb To Live as well as Master Shake. Indeed, Shake repeatedly dies in many episodes (continuity is non-existent on the show), usually by his own stupidity. He has sliced himself in half with a katana, eaten a sandwich that he knew would send him to a hell dimension where an axe-wielding cyclops awaited to slice his head open, and has gone as far as committing suicide to ruin Meatwad's Ouija video game.
- Don't forget sucking out his own intestines (or contents if you will) with a vacuum cleaner to win a weight loss contest that he wasn't even a part of.
The Powerpuff Girls' Mayor of Townsville. This gets a Lampshade Hanging in an episode where the girls get sick of "saving the day" which as revealed turned out to be mostly mundane tasks like screwing in a lightbulb, at whch point they decide to take a vacation. But they can't get a break, having to walk the town through defeating a monster.
Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents, because the show has grown to depend on the same thing happening for every episode. The formula is "Timmy makes a stupid wish and spends the episode fixing it" the show's fantastic premise depends on his use of his unique ability, it's sort of a Catch-22, the show gets repetitive when he does do it, and they can't change it or they'll lose their show's unique premise.
Jimmy Neutron may be a genius, but it never seems to occur to him that inventing is a poor match for him, considering that many episodes consist of Jimmy making an invention that nearly kills everybody and makes a new one to fix it, which sometimes has problems of it's own. And then acting like he's a big hero for fixing the problem, even though it's his fault for causing it.
Most of the adults in South Park.
Brilliantly subverted by Fry in Futurama. Fry is so dumb that he lacks a certain brain function that even inanimate objects are said to have; ironically, it is the exact lack of this brain function that serves as a highly effective defense mechanism against extremely dangerous threats (i.e. threats that seek to destroy the entire Universe) that are capable of reading minds, rendering him entirely invisible and mostly undetectable to them. It often falls to Fry as the only person in the Universe who can save it, because his unique ability to survive against these threats derives directly from his being Too Dumb To Live. However, it's later revealed, that he lachs this brain function (delta brain waves), because he did the nasty in the pasty, as he so eloquently puts it.
- Zapp Brannigan is another odd case, he meets all the requirements except that his stupidity rarely hurts him personally. Even though the danger would be as likely to kill him as would anyone else in all but a few of the situations he causes through his epic stupidity/incompetence he always survives through dumb luck and/or fleeing in a cowardly fashion while everyone around him (aside from the rest of the main cast...usually) dies.
Bobby from King Of The Hill, who can be influenced by anything from white supremacist websites to his misogynist grandfather.
- Another case can be found on King of the Hill, Dale Gribble. When evidence proves he's not Joseph's father (John Redcorn is), despite being far away from his wife Nancy, he thinks he is, thinking that of all things Aliens either made Joseph, or transported his DNA to Nancy to impregnate her. His ignorance of this in favor of their cover story (that John Redcorn is giving Nancy medical massages) is generally what keeps Nancy and John Redcorn as complex characters.
  - In one episode based on his other Too Dumb To Live moments, he is being overprotective of his new seated lawnmower. When he sees John Redcorn climbing over the mower (parked outside of the bedroom window) to climb in at night, he exclaims "Get away from my mower and start massaging my wife!". John Redcorn's reply to Nancy afterward: "He's starting to take the fun out of this"
  - When Bill finally meets a woman, whose children unbeknownst to them have the same paternal DNA as Joseph, he immediately assumes somehow they are his kids, and exclaims "I can't sit by and watch my children be raised by an idiot", to which John Redcorn, who he is talking to, agrees.
  - When the minor characters are trying to get on a Reality show centered on Hank and his cousin (Z.Z.Top member Dusty Hill) John Redcorn admits, standing right next to Dale, "I slept with Hank's best friend's wife for 13 years". Nancy even runs away in the background. Instead of interpreting that like a normal human being, he thought Bill's ex-wife was the woman.
- Joseph Gribble is also pretty dumb, he looks nothing like Dale and everything like John Redcorn. I think he was actually dumbed down when he reached puberty. The fact that he's usually around his "dad" (and to an extent, Bobby) doesn't raise his I.Q. points any.
- This can be applied to about 75% of the cast. Luanne for joining what was clearly a cult. Peggy for falling for incredibly obvious scams, and joining said cult. Hank for putting up with a boss who if not for Hank, would be at best out on the street, at worst in jail for various crimes. An entire page could be made for Bill.
- Two Words: Jimmy Wichard.
Sentinel Prime of Transformers Animated. Constantly badmouthing his sort of kinda friend Optimus, even though he's much more compotent and has saved his life several times in the past? Check. Hiring an Axe Crazy Decepticon bounty hunter to capture fellow Decepticons so Sentinel can take take credit for them? Paying him with parts of his own ship (which he would need intact if he wanted to get back to Cybertron to get his rewards)? Interrogating Decepticons (who are much stronger then him) and not even bothering to put them back in their cells afterwards? The only reason Sentinel's gotten to his position (let alone survived) is because his only friend Optimus is too nice to make him pay for his mistakes. Or at least, not leave Sentinel's less dickish coworkers in the lurch.
- How about Blackarachnia? She's so caught up in her hatred and the "betrayal" of the Autobots that if she thought RATIONALLY (like what her Beast Wars counterpart did) she'd play the Autobots for all they're worth. Say if she had GONE with Optimus at his first offer, he'd likely have taken her to the original Allspark to see if it could be used on her. Not to mentions her further attempts to rid herself of her organic-half keep leading to near-death. As the Trans Wiki puts it "... Kind of looking like a damsel in distress there, Blackarachnia."
  - To be fair, their is NOTHING rational about Blackarachnia's fate. Her existence is probably like meeting Cthulhu for other Autobots, it's horrible and incomprehensible compared to their logical and machine-based world. And it's been implied the Transformation Trauma of going from pure cybernetic to technorganic mentally breaks a robot, like how Wasp becoming Waspinator drove him crazier.
- This troper feels that Starscream takes to cake for this instance. His constant attempts to kill Megatron, end with him being repeatedly killed (in a montage that is described as the 'best TF montage of all time' by the TF wiki and is a huge Crowning Moment Of Funny); only surviving to try again due to an All Spark fragment embedded in his head.
  - Nevermind his Animated incarnation, almost every Starscream has displayed this kind of thing at some point.
Gargoyles: Elisa in "Deadly Force" may qualify as Too Dumb To Live, given her negligence with her gun. Of course, she nearly died in that episode as a direct result of said negligence...
- In her defence, she later admits she was being neglectful, and is subsequently shown to be much more careful regarding gun safety.
  - Still, a cop shouldn't have made such a blatant mistake in the first place. Still, one of the gun episodes in cartoon that actually had consequences.
The anti-mutant bigots in X-Men Evolution take Bullying A Dragon to insanely suicidal levels, even given that this is the X-Men. Hey, that guy just accidentally knocked through a wall with his head. Let's beat him up! Why do you think you're even physically capable of doing that? That girl is threatening to blow up your car with a ball of lava, and you're threatening her. Why? Aren't you worried she'll blow up your car? And those are both from the same scene. Then there's the way they repeatedly knock Scott's glasses off...

Close Western Animation

The Darwin Awards chronicle people who are literally too dumb to live, and have thus removed themselves from the gene pool in incredibly stupid accidents.
- Though they didn't actually die, an honorable mention should go the two British Star Wars fans who tried to film a lightsaber duel scene... by filling glass tubes with gasoline and then lighting them.
  - And they weren't just ANY glass tubes, they were old FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULBS.
Saladin sent back at least one captured Crusader leader for thinking that God would protect the Crusader armies such that they wouldn't need a battle plan or well-stocked supplies or plans to get more supplies or any number of basic things that one needs to keep in mind when waging a single battle, let alone a war. Saladin, correctly, assumed that such an opponent was Not Worth Killing.
Giant Pandas. Reason they're dying out? Because they either don't want to mate, or don't know how. Some zoos even have to show male pandas videos of pandas mating - yes, panda porn - to get them to breed. I believe Sarmoti from Father Of The Pride said it best:
Sarmoti: God, you whole species is so meshuggah. No wonder you're going extinct!
- The narrator from Fight Club said it better:
  Narrator: I wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't screw to save its species.
- In the pandas' defense, this is done for pandas that were hand-reared by human beings, hence had never observed any sort of within-species interaction. In the wild, a young panda would probably get to see its mother mating at some point.
- When speaking of Giant Pandas, lot of people insist to consider them big teddy bears that just want to be hugged. I means, they are soft, big inoffensive herbivore, aren't them? WRONG.
Julius Caesar might fit. He apparently had been warned that a plot was afoot to assassinate him on the Ides of March, but dismissed his bodyguard and went to Pompey's Theater (where the Senate was meeting on that day) alone. However, some commentators believe that Caesar knew what he was doing, and was so ill with epilepsy and other ailments that he was going to basically use the plotters in a Xanatos Gambit to let him commit Suicide By Cop, essentially.
- Lampshaded in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in which Garak expresses disbelief that in reading Shakespeare's Julius Caeasr, he knew exactly what Brutus was up to before the second act, while Caesar himself was literally surrounded by a conspiracy that included his best friend, and didn't see it coming until the knife was already in his back.
- Also consider Caesar's pride. He probably would have rather died than show weakness. In reference to the above, "Julius Caesar" can hardly be considered the definitive life of Caesar. In addition, many of the ancient writers reveal that Caesar did suspect Brutus and Cassius, but again, was either to proud to show weakness, too nihilistic to do anything about it, or too overconfident. Of course, if I was Caesar, I might tend to be overconfident as well... And, as a matter of fact, Brutus was not Caesar's best friend, and their relationship was not as close as many have made it out to be.
Getting stuck in the early stages of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire can sometimes just be a case of very bad luck - there are sometimes questions on supposedly 'common knowledge' subjects such as nursery rhymes or TV soap operas. This wasn't the case on the French version for the man who couldn't identify the moon as being the object that orbited the Earth. Understandably when he 'asked the audience' many of them decided to stitch him up and deliberately picked the wrong answer, and he duly went with them. His other half in the audience looked more than mortified...
- Then there was that woman in America who thought that an elephant was bigger than the moon, despite 90+% of the audience and her friend disagreeing with her. (She then insults the friend by saying that she's not very smart). It was the first question as well.
  - That story is an urban myth.
- Two cases from Bulgaria - a guy who was stuck on "How many sides does a cube have?" - the host had to remind him that a cube looked like a box and even then the contestant insisted it had four sides. Then there was a girl who was struggling with the question "Which of the four is NOT a mammal?" - she immediately dismissed the shark and proceeded to choose between a whale and a bat... doesn't really sound bad until you realize she has majored in biology.
There has to be space here for William Henry Harrison, Idiot of Tippecanoe, also known as "You know what, I think I'll give a two hour speech in the freezing cold without a coat to show how badass I am."
- Except that Harrison didn't become ill until three weeks after his inauguration, making it very unlikely that his long speech was the cause of his death. (See The Other Wiki for details.)
  - Even if it didn't directly kill him, a) it couldn't have helped and b) that doesn't make it any less dumbass.
The Sun did an article about how nitrous oxide is an evil killer drug, citing as an example a man who opened a cylinder of it in an unventilated room, dying of asphyxiation.
Indira Gandhi. When you are attacking on of the holiest places of Sikhism, you might not want your bodyguards to be Sikhs. It's just not healthy.
Somali pirates attack French navy's flagship. (Ironically, none were actually killed.)
- That's dumb, but there have been dumber. Like the Somali pirates who attacked TWO US warships. Taking on a guided missile cruiser and an Aegis destroyer... when they were in a 30-foot fishing boat armed with RPGs!
This editor once heard a story about some kids who played Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol. Guess what happened.
- Probably nothing, since the story's circulated the internet numerous times without ever being given a source.
Soda vending machines have warnings on them about the danger of getting crushed by the falling machine while trying to get a free soda.

Close Real Life

Main Tropes Index

Troperville

Editing Help

Tools

Toys

Examples