Never My Fault / Western Animation

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• The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius:
  • In the episode "Journey to the Center of Carl", the other kids (mainly Cindy and Libby) blame Jimmy for his sick patch absorbing into their skin, even though they were the ones who asked for it in the first place. Though it's still a little justified in that they're practically calling him out on something that he didn't know about the patch until it happened to him at exactly the same time.
  • In "The Vanishing Act", Cindy blames Jimmy for getting him, her, Sheen, Carl, and his crush Betty Quinlan lost in another dimension behind the vanishing box Jimmy made for Betty, despite the fact that Cindy was the one who caused the problem in the first place, which was even lampshaded by Jimmy himself. This does not placate her as she states he was the one who made the box.
  • Most of Jimmy's inventions are often the cause of the catastrophes that precipitate in Retroville, but on some occasions, he does try to warn the citizens of a major adverse effect some of them can have if they either hold on to them or don't use them wisely, but they end up ignoring his warnings. When something bad does happen to them, they end up blaming Jimmy for the problem instead of apologizing and admitting he was right all along. This is especially shown in "Attack of the Twonkies" when after being ignored by Jimmy's warning to not keep the Twonkies as pets, they cause them to morph into monstrous animals by playing music around them, and Carl ends up being the first to blame Jimmy for it, which luckily, Jimmy calls him out on. Although to be fair, the citizens, at times, call Jimmy out less on the problem itself and mostly on the fact that he didn't warn them in a way they could understand him.
• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Robotnik demotes Coconuts after being tricked by Sonic, despite Coconuts not being around when it happened. "I'M the boss! I can blame whoever I want!"
• In the All Grown Up! episode, "All Broke Up", Tommy's friends hear about his girlfriend Rachel moving away and assume that he's hiding a lot of emotional pain about it even when he says to their faces otherwise. After Tommy takes Dil's advice to "give them what they want", he pretends to have trouble getting over the loss of Rachel to try and get his friends to stop bugging him. Tommy's friends arrange for Rachel to come back, unaware that Tommy has started dating Anita. Both girls get angry at Tommy and leave him. Finally, Tommy's friends turn on him too, though they instigated the issue (though they are completely cool by the next episode without any explanation).
• American Dad!:
  • In "Camp Refoogee", Ozomatli, the leader of the rebel camp neighboring Stan's refugee camp, cuts off his subordinate's arm as a punishment for handing him a kaleidoscope instead of a proper telescope. Later during the competition between the two camps, during the egg toss, Ozomatli throws an egg to the now one-armed subordinate, who misses due to this impairment, so Ozomatli punishes him again by cutting off his other arm. Then during the talent competition, when Stan and Steve's dance routine beats Ozomatli's ventriloquism act, his dummy holds out his arm in shame knowing that he's going to lose it.
  • In "Moon Over Isla Island", after Stan leaves Roger Smith alone at the mall, Roger comes up to him and complains that he bought a pair of gaudy pants with a golden dragon filigree because Stan wasn't around to tell him how stupid they looked.
    • "100 Years a Solid Fool" had a whole holiday centered around this. Several years earlier, Stan was hunting Roger, then currently living as a Colombian drug lord and beloved head of a village. Stan's attempt to expose Roger's criminal activity to the citizens backfired and the former was subjected to a Humiliation Conga instead, so Roger declared that day Fool's Day, where people are given a day to blame their past mistakes on an unflattering, Incan-looking caricature of Stan looking the way he did after Roger punched him in the groin.
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Master Shake lives this trope to extremes. If he caused something, no matter what, he'll shift blame to anyone in the immediate area. He once wrote a self-help book dedicated to people living like this, and it didn't sell at all. True to Shake, he blames this not on his advice, but Frylock shutting his website down. He often delves deep into Insane Troll Logic to find a way to blame someone else. His protests never fool anyone around him, though, and they often call him out on his behavior; still, he manages to be a Karma Houdini most of the time.
• Arcane: The Season 1 finale has Jinx telling Vi that she's solely responsible for the transformation of Powder into Jinx. While Vi did (unintentionally) abandon her sister, Jinx has been making her own decisions ever since they were separated (as Ekko noted a couple episodes earlier). Ultimately, Vi only played a small part, and even if Jinx is legitimately mentally ill all her actions are way more on her than Vi.
• Every episode of Archer showcases how Sterling Archer's idiocy and bumbling turn any mission into a disaster. Archer almost never takes responsibility for his screwups and blames others for it. To be fair, much of the time, Archer still ends up saving the day but it wouldn't have needed to be so bad if he could come clean on his failings now and then.
  • Several times, the team try to cut Archer out of a mission only for him to force his way onto things and (usually because he has no idea what is going on), screw things up, then seriously state that had the gang let him in from the start, everything would have worked out fine.
• Arthur:
  • A crux of the Sibling Rivalry between Arthur and D.W.
    D.W.: (in the "Two Sides of the Story" song) Why do I always get blamed for things I don't do, Mom?
  • In "Arthur's Big Hit", she breaks his model plane despite his warnings and because she thinks it could fly. She denies responsibility before he punches her in retaliation.
  • Arthur gets one in "Sick as a Dog". After Pal falls ill, Arthur initially accuses D.W. of causing Pal's sickness, until he finds out it was he who got Pal sick by feeding him pancakes, old candy, and a whole hot dog (with mustard). Unlike D.W., however, Arthur genuinely apologizes to her for it.
  • In "D.W. Thinks Big", cousin Cora (who is even more of a brat than the title character of the episode) blames D.W. for her gold locket getting ruined, when in fact Cora (albeit perhaps accidentally) tugged on it and broke down into tears at the end result. D.W. truthfully denies she had done anything at all when Aunt Jessica scolds her.
  • Brain, of all characters, has this in "Desk Wars", when he is resentful towards Muffy for him getting sent to another desk in the classroom (for context, it's a hot summer day and he previously sat close to an electric fan), eventually culminating in a chain reaction of threats to destroy others' property, trashing the classroom in the process. In fact, although Muffy was inconsiderate to put up a "dust ruffle" around her and Brain's desks, him opting to complain about it and argue with her led to Mr. Ratburn ordering him to sit elsewhere. On top of that, when the students later (briefly) argue over who was to blame for the fight, he claims he didn't do anything.
• Beautifully pointed out by the DA in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Trial", when she concludes that "Batman did not create any of you, you created him!" after all of the villains play this trope straight in their testimonies. Subverted when the villains actually acknowledge that Batman was not responsible for the way they turned out, but decide to kill him anyway in revenge for him beating them again and again.
  • A perfect example of the above-mentioned is Poison Ivy in her debut episode. She blames Harvey Dent for the (near) extinction of the Wild Thorny Rose, managing to preserve one before bulldozers eradicate the rest to make way for Stonegate Penitentiary. Unfortunately she doesn't do anything to revitalize the species, I.E. clone it, which is absolutely within her skill set, nor does she bother to try and avoid the scenario entirely simply by explaining the species is endangered so it can be relocated and preserved. Rather Ivy opts to synthesize a Drugged Lipstick from it and try to vampishly assassinate Dent, which ultimately leads to Batman investigating her and Poison Ivy's private greenhouse inadvertently erupting into flames during their scuffle. All in all, Ivy herself is more to blame for it almost going extinct.
  • Detective Harvey Bullock occasionally does this as well. For example, in "P.O.V.", he blames the failure of a sting operation on Batman (who was watching, but didn't actually do anything) when it was entirely due to his incompetence.
    Bullock: I was closing in when this loud noise tipped 'em. [kicks over a can, revealing his presence] Must've been Batman.
• The Batman featured several villains who became what they were because they refused to take responsibility for their actions.
  • Mr. Freeze blamed Batman and a homeless drifter for his accidental mutation that occurred after stealing diamonds. He even freezes the homeless man in an act of revenge. Batman actually does blame himself for a while, before getting back on his feet and calling Freeze out, saying it was his own fault for what happened.
  • Cluemaster was dedicated to killing three people he perceived as responsible for his humiliation as a child. What actually happened was he kept winning a game show but lost, fair and square, by getting a question wrong. Being a spoiled brat, he had his mother sue the show for being rigged and spent decades plotting revenge while becoming obese. Batman once again calls out his enemy, throwing away a promising future with his vast intellect all for revenge on something he legitimately got wrong on people who don't even remember him.
  • Harley Quinn snaps and becomes Joker's girlfriend and partner, and desires revenge on the network that cancelled her show. Her show was cancelled because of her insane attitude and unorthodox methods, which include giving advice to a girl to disobey her mother to date a boy she wasn't allowed to see and harassing Bruce Wayne with a jilted ex when Bruce was trying to talk about a charity fund.
• Ben 10:
  • In the original series, Kevin blamed Ben for his mutation from the Omnitrix, even though as Ben pointed out Kevin was the one at fault for absorbing power from the Omnitrix in the first place and not controlling his powers and insanity. This reached a point where he even blamed Ben for his imprisonment in the Null Void, which was also Kevin's fault for teaming up with Vilgax to steal the Omnitrix from Ben and trying to kill him. Fortunately, this was averted in Alien Force where after the Time Skip Kevin undergoes a Heel–Face Turn and learned to control his powers and is now more aware of his mistakes and past actions.
  • With Kevin redeemed, his Suspiciously Similar Substitute Albedo fills the role in Alien Force, blaming Ben and Azmuth for him being trapped as a clone of Ben as a result of making an Omnitrix replica coded to Ben's DNA and for Azmuth refusing to help him get his Galvan form back. However, Azmuth had already warned Albedo of the danger of there being two Omnitrixes, but Albedo ignored him and tried to take Ben's Omnitrix and committed many heinous actions to cure his condition, so Azmuth was right to trap him in that form.
  • In the Omniverse episode "Ben Again," Eon wants Professor Paradox's chrono-navigator so he can rule all of creation. Paradox warns him that only he can use the navigator, as in anyone else's hands it could damage causality. When Eon does get it and things do go wrong, he immediately accuses Paradox of tricking him; as Paradox justifiably points out to him afterwards, he had warned him of what would happen.
• Beware the Batman sees Humpty Dumpty blame Lt. Jim Gordon and crime boss Tobias Whale for dragging him into "their war" after nearly being killed for testifying against Whale. Problem is, he was already a willing participant as he was an accountant for Whale. And it continues as Batman called him out for not acting on the knowledge that an innocent man was sent up the river when Dumpty tried to force the man to kill Batman, Katana, Commissioner Gordon, Mayor Grange, and Whale for their roles in it.
• Big City Greens: After Chip Whistler inadvertently eats one of the Greens' fake produce, he chips his tooth from it and becomes their enemy. Why? Because he is not happy with what the produce did and blames them for it, when it was his own fault in the first place for ignoring Cricket's warning about the food being fake. Naturally, this was what Bill predicted.
• BoJack Horseman has some characters who cannot bring themselves to own up to their mistakes.
  • The titular character is the guiltiest of this trope; he tried to pass off blame for abandoning his old friend Herb Kazzaz, tried to downplay his affair with Todd's girlfriend in the third season, and he is most guilty of trying to put the responsibility of his flaws on his Hilariously Abusive Childhood.
  • Speaking of the incident with Todd's girlfriend, Todd himself sort of shares equal blame since he hasn't been paying a lot of attention to her, which led to the aforementioned affair with BoJack, though Todd does admit his fault in that matter later on in the series.
  • BoJack's mom Beatrice Horseman does not acknowledge her failure as a parent, instead saying that the ugliness of BoJack was all in him. She's basically worse than Bojack in this matter because at least bojack is able to take some responsabilities for what he did. Beatrice, in the other hand ? Even with the absolute proof she wasn't a good person, she refuse to see the truth
  • Minor character Pete blames BoJack for getting him and his friends drunk on Prom Night, when in truth he was very willing to take the alcohol.
  • Sarah Lynn's mother never acknowledges her contributions to making her daughter a drug addict.
• Bob's Burgers: Mr. Frond is not very well-liked by anyone. He's a guidance counselor who doesn't have any skill at relating to kids or getting along with them, and he clearly has no real interest in doing so despite his job. He instead tries to make a name for himself with ridiculous programs that he clearly doesn't think through and doesn't practice what he preaches when it comes to how students should act. He's extremely ego-driven and has annoyed the rest of the school faculty and openly acknowledges a lack of respect for the students' intelligence, including Tina. Also, he dated Linda's sister and, despite being someone who is just as lovesick as she is, he was found out to have cheated on her. He doesn't understand why the Belchers, Louise in particular, hate him in spite of all this.
• The Buzz Lightyear of Star Command episode "Plasma Monster" has Mira and XR building a really big gun, which they then use to shoot a laser at the monster of the episode's title. The conversation that follows:
  Mira: Hate to pat myself on the back, but how about that laser shot?
  XR: We fried that monster but good! Ha ha!
  Petra: You idiot! That monster is my boyfriend! (pushes XR down)
  XR: (to Mira) You idiot! That monster was her boyfriend!
• Camp Lakebottom: In one episode, Suzi and Buttsquat have jet skis. Suzi invites her brother to join her only to close a glass door on him every time he tries to accept her invitation. She blames him when the mechanism that opens and closes the door breaks.
• Castlevania (2017):
  • The Bishop was the one who had Dracula's wife murdered for "witchcraft" when she was a doctor who was trying to use what she learned from the Count to heal. This led to Dracula taking revenge on the human race as a whole. His monsters murdered every man, woman, and child they came across. The Bishop would pin the attacks on the Speakers, a group of nomadic magicians who were trying to aid the city in which he was currently residing. He claimed it was because of their magic, when it was actually because he murdered a defenseless woman and is only avoiding owning up to his mistakes. When the monsters enter the church, they reveal that this attitude of his has caused God to give him no protection, which leads to his gruesome death.
    Bishop: SHE WAS A WITCH!
    Demon: Lies? In your house of God?
  • In a more humorous instance of this trope, Trevor tries to assert to Sypha that he's a nice person, explaining that the reason he gets into fights so often is that everyone else is a jerk. She doesn't buy it.
    Trevor: I'm a nice person. I am! I know how to be nice.
    Sypha: No, you don't.
    Trevor: I do. I'm nice to everybody.
    Sypha: Then why are most of the stories you've told me in the last few days about you arriving somewhere and then getting punched in the face?
    Trevor: That's because... everyone else is a horrible piece of shit.
  • Somewhat similarly to Trevor, Isaac complains about being treated with inhospitality and rudeness wherever he goes, conspicuously ignoring the main reason for this reaction is he arrives leading an army of demons.
  • Big Bad Wannabe Carmilla may be the worst case of this next to the Bishop. As far as Carmilla is concerned, she's an innocent victim who's been abused by the crazy old men in the world and everything that goes wrong in her life and evil schemes is absolutely someone else's fault, never her own. Carmilla espeically blames her abusive former sire and uses him as her Freudian Excuse, conveniently overlooking the fact according to her very own account to Godbrand, she actually let herself be turned into a vampire under the promise that "the world" was going to be hers. Yet Carmilla is incapable of admitting her own greed is the root of her problems, nor is she able to acknowledge her own unprovoked cruelty to others.
• In Central Park, Season 1 "Live It Up Tonight", when Bitsy drops one of her earrings down an old prohibition tunnel and tells Helen to get it for her and she follows along, they get locked down there and Bitsy blames Helen for it despite making her go get her earring in the first place.
• Codename: Kids Next Door:
  • This was Numbuh 86's beef in her introduction episode, going hand-in-hand with her Drill Sergeant Nasty and Straw Feminist persona. She constantly blames Sector V (well, the men of Sector V) for everything going wrong in the mission despite the fact it was her overzealousness that hampered their efforts. Thankfully, karma stepped in at the end of the episode when she finds out she inadvertently screwed up an undercover mission of another operative (a girl operative at that, and one of the highest-ranking ones) and harshly gets chewed out for it.
  • When the Delightful Children have acquired the 4th ice cream flavor, they decide to add sprinkles to it. Numbuh Five tries to warn them not to do it because it's wrong to add toppings to good ice cream flavor. They ignore her and add it, and they end up causing the cave they're in to collapse. They blame Numbuh Five for tricking them even though she calls them out on not letting her finish her warning first.
  • Numbuh Five's rival Heinrich constantly does this whenever something bad happens to him through his own mistakes. Such as in his first episode where he locates a headpiece but is warned by Numbuh Five that any candy he eats will taste like asparagus if he's greedy. He doesn't believe her, puts on the headpiece, turns into a candy monster (just roll with it), and... the curse goes into effect. To which he blames Numbuh Five. When he got turned into a chocolate monster while trying to make real live chocolate bunnies: Nope, not his own actions, it's Numbuh Five's fault. But the real kicker is his last appearance where we learn of the "Guatemala Incident" he keeps sprouting on about: He was actually a girl that got turned into a boy due to a curse that took the best attributes a person cared about (in his-er, her case, her beauty) and turned them into caramel. He nearly ate all of them and thought he was stuck like that, thus blaming Numbuh Five for "abandoning" her. Uh... yeah. It's a good thing this brat still has Numbuh Five as a friend after all of this. Though it did work out in the end since Numbuh Five thought ahead and kept the last piece so she could help him/her return to normal. Though ironically the only reason it took so long to cure was that Heinrich was being too stubborn to listen to reason.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: A Running Gag is whenever Eustace scares or hurts Courage for fun, which results in Muriel promptly bashing him over the head with a rolling pin or whatever else may be handy at the time, after which Eustace angrily demands (or confusingly asks), "What did I do?!"
• Dan Vs.: Dan often falls towards this on many occasions. While most of his revenge schemes lean closer to Disproportionate Retribution, one particular instance that kickstarts this trope is shown in the episode "Neighbors", in which Dan's plan to get revenge on his new neighbors (who he already suspected as cannibals to begin with) was because their pie spilled on his car, even though Dan himself was the one who did the mess by dropping the pie onto it in the first place.
• Danny Phantom:
  • Valerie in the Chained Heat episode, though at least Danny has the nerve to call her out on it:
    Valerie: This is all your fault!
    Danny: Right, 'cause clearly the maniac who cuffed us and dragged us in here didn't have anything to do with it!
  • This is Sam Manson's defining character trait. When she screws up, she always blames either ignorance (such as when she accidentally wishes Danny's powers away) or someone else (either Danny, Tucker, Jazz, or even the ghosts).
• Darkwing Duck: Quackerjack's motivation for becoming a villain is that his toy company ended up going out of business. He blames the video game industry, completely ignorant to the fact that it was his extremely dangerous toys that cost him everything.
• Dexter's Laboratory: In the episode "Game Over," when Dee Dee repeatedly beats Dexter at video games and Dexter snaps and angrily declares that he doesn't want to play games with her anymore, Dee Dee angrily calls him a Sore Loser and storms off, not taking into consideration that the reason Dexter snapped at her like that is that every time she beat him at a game, she relentlessly rubbed it in his face.
• Donald Duck: In "How to Have An Accident at Home" and "How to Have an Accident at Work", Donald blames his mishaps on "fate" to the point that J.J. Fate himself shows up to demonstrate a series of accidents caused by Donald's own carelessness.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • In "The Duck Knight Returns!", Jim Starling, in his twisted mind, ultimately blames the actor that replaced him for endangering everyone in the studio (when it was really his own refusal to be replaced in his most famous role that caused all the problems), which serves as his motivation for becoming Negaduck.
  • Flintheart Glomgold tends to blame everyone but himself for the consequences of his own stupidity and poor decision-making, especially his Arch-Enemy Scrooge McDuck.
  Glomgold: This is all your fault, Scrooge!
  Scrooge: You shackled us together! You poured gasoline into the fire with no sense of consequence! What was I supposed to do?
  Glomgold: Make me...not do that?
• Ed, Edd n Eddy:
  • In "Stop, Look and Ed", the kids are talked into breaking the rules by Eddy, and when Edd finally decides to put an end to this by calling their parents, they all end up blaming Edd when it was their decision to break the rules in the first place. They also know that Eddy is the mastermind of the three Eds, so there was no reason for them at all to listen to what Eddy told them.
  • While they have a reason to dislike the Eds for their scams, they're the ones who made the decision to pay them for whatever scam the Eds devise and neither one of the Eds forced them to buy their merchandise, so the kids bring it upon themselves for being gullible enough to fall for the Eds' scams. Though even the Eds themselves are guilty of playing off of them without thinking about the consequences and some of their "Scams" are legit businesses.
  • Eddy, in particular, loves to see himself as a victim and likes to blame other people for his actions. Examples include:
    • In "For Your Ed Only", Eddy blames Edd for getting him and the other two Eds caught by Sarah after she discovers that they have her diary, completely ignoring the fact that Eddy stole the diary in the first place.
    • In "From Here To Ed", Eddy blames Edd for their failed attempt to get back at Kevin after the latter (unintentionally) ruined the Eds' scam.
    • In "Dueling Eds," Eddy drives Rolf into depression when he throws one of his sea cucumber balls at the fence, shaming him. When Edd and Ed nag him to apologise to Rolf, Eddy insists he didn't do anything.
    • Also, in the movie, Eddy accuses Edd of their scam that caused the injuries to the kids even though it was his scam he came up with. The moment when he finally admits that everything was his fault is one of the most tearjerking parts of the series, as he also admits that he hates himself.
    • In "If It Smells Like an Ed," after Jimmy reveals himself as the perpetrator, Eddy plays the victim card and demands that Jimmy sets him free. He ignores the fact that had he not given Jimmy a wedgie, he and the other Eds wouldn't have been in that situation.
    • In "Here's Mud In Your Ed," after finding out that Rolf and Jimmy scammed him, he again plays the victim card, ignoring the fact that he scammed Jimmy first.
  • Edd also does this quite a bit. He's always quick to point out how Eddy's greed or Ed's simplistic nature caused the downfall of the Eds' scams; however, he is the engineer behind said scams and most of them fail due to some technical error he refuses to take responsibility for (granted Ed and Eddy cause the damages...sometimes). This is brought to a head in the movie where Eddy calls him out on how he always finds a way to shove blame off himself and onto the others despite his hand in building and designing all the scams.
    • In "Will Work For Ed", after Ed suffers a pay deduction for lacking appropriate safety gear and tools when he shows up for work, Edd tells the enraged Eddy to let Ed learn from his mistakes — which rings pretty hollow when it was Edd himself who dressed Ed up and prepared him for his first day of work.
    • In Edd's dream world where Jimmy isn't wearing a retainer (their scam ruined his teeth so he "erased" his responsibility by pretending it didn't happen).
    • In "The Day the Ed Stood Still," after Ed attacks Eddy and busts through the garage door, Edd remarks that he warned him about Ed's overactive imagination and he can't control himself when it was Edd's idea to dress Ed up as a monster to begin with; Eddy even calls him on it.
    • He blames Eddy for leaving him and Ed to be kissed by the Kankers in "Don't Rain on My Ed". While it was incredibly selfish of Eddy to abandon them like that, Edd is also to blame, since the Kankers had him by the hat and he could have escaped if he'd simply let go of it and run.
• This trope drives most of the plot in the Elena of Avalor episode "Finders Leapers." During the exploration of the Maruvian Chamber, Esteban goes against Professor Mendoza's warnings to just chip away small portions of the wall and smashes it down, thus freeing one of the Duende; then his refusal to listen to Naomi's insistence that they need a plan allows the Duende to free one of his brothers; and finally, when they try to trap the Duendes to prevent them from freeing the third brother, he springs the trap too early and gets the group trapped in the chamber. All three times, he chooses to blame Naomi rather than accept responsibility, and after the third time, Elena calls him out over it, telling him point-blank that everything that's happened is his fault, not Naomi's.
  • The deconstruction of this trope is a major part of Esteban's character throughout the show. While he does feel guilt for his actions and says that he wants to make up for them, he ultimately gets cold feet every time and weasels his way out by deflecting blame onto others. When the truth of his betrayal and role in the deaths of Elena's parents are exposed, Elena eventually tells him upfront that no one is listening to his excuses anymore and that it's too late for him to redeem himself.
  • Meanwhile, Ash blames her husband Victor for depriving her of the daughter Carla's childhood when he and Carla moved on once they believed Ash wasn't coming back (because she stopped writing back for no reason). And later, she blames Elena for Carla getting recaptured, even though the reason why that happened was that Carla refused to join her after she petrified Victor after they argued.

F-J

• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • In the episode "Odd Jobs", the second job that Timmy gets his dad is being a pencil-themed professional wrestler. His opponent, unfortunately, has an extreme hatred of pencils and blames them for him failing elementary school. A flashback reveals that he had his costume and wrestler strength even as a child and broke every pencil that he attempted to write with.
  • In one episode, Vicky causes an avalanche that leaves Timmy and herself trapped in a cave and freezing to death, and then angrily tells Timmy that it's all his fault. Timmy, however, quickly points out that she was the one who caused the avalanche in the first place, and goes off on a "Reason You Suck" Speech about how Vicky is responsible for all of his misery and how, even if he dies, at least Vicky is going down with him.
  • Timmy himself is not exactly innocent of this trope either, though. It's fairly common for him to blame other people for his own wishes going awry, despite the fact that it's almost always his own lack of foresight that leads to said wishes going awry.
  • In another episode, Timmy's friend AJ gloats over his intelligence, prompting a jealous Timmy to wish himself smarter than AJ. When Timmy starts gloating and showing off, AJ acts as though he's being an obnoxious jerk for no real reason when in fact Timmy probably wouldn't have been showing off^note or made the wish in the first place, but there's no way AJ would know that part if he hadn't been gloating himself. However, AJ subverts this later on when he admits that if he hadn't been so busy gloating, Timmy might have agreed to let AJ help him study.
  • Mary Anne, an old evil godkid of Cosmo and Wanda's blames them for "deserting" her and plans to murder them for it when Timmy wishes her back to life. In perhaps the most extreme invocation of this trope, it turns out that Cosmo and Wanda were either taken away or quit because Mary Anne stole one of their wands, used it to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand and plunged the world into World War I, meaning that all of it was very clearly her fault. Yikes.
• Family Guy:
  • Brian notes that Peter Griffin is a terrible liar. The scene then cuts to Peter and one other man in an elevator. Peter farts. The other man looks at him. Peter's remark? "Um... That was you."
  • "To Love and Die in Dixie": Though Meg was already blaming Chris, Peter, mistaking the blame to be directed for having to relocate towards him, also blames Chris... even though it was Peter's fault in the first place for revealing Chris' identity to the crook who wanted him dead.
  • "Brian Sings and Swings": After hitting Brian with his car:
    Peter: I know we're not here to place blame or beat ourselves up, but I can't help feeling like this is somehow Meg's fault.
  • Stewie Griffin frequently meddles in Brian's attempts at finding women and gives him bad advice. When it inevitably fails and Brian confronts him, Stewie will always accuse him of trying to blame his incompetence on others. Not that Brian isn't capable of doing this on his own, such as cheating on Rita, his (older) fiancee, with a hot young thing, then saying he just needed one last fling before settling down with her. She doesn't buy it.
  • In "Brian Writes a Bestseller" when Brian Griffin is finally able to publish a well-liked self-help book by deliberately pandering to the lowest common denominator of reader, he slowly starts believing his own hype and goes on a talk show to discuss it. While there, the guests eviscerate the book as terrible — but rather than admit his own failings, Brian blames Stewie, who's working as his agent, for booking him on the show. Even at the end when Brian "apologizes" to Stewie, he still acts as if the whole incident was Stewie's fault.
    • This is generally the case for Brian, especially in regard to his writing career and track record with women. He's never willing to say that he's not a very good author or that he can be a jerk to his dates, instead insisting that everyone else has a problem.
    • Strangely enough, he ends up getting on Quagmire’s case when the latter tries to scapegoat his own mother for how he is rather than admit he’s responsible for his own transgressions. Quagmire doesn’t listen to him however and instead calls Brian a hypocrite, not for blaming others for his own actions, but for shielding a Christian woman (his mother) while Brian himself is an atheist.
  • Subverted with Lois in the episode "Meg and Quagmire." Here, Quagmire takes advantage of the fact that Meg is 18 and begins to court her. Lois encourages it, believing that nothing will actually happen. She tells Peter that it's just a ploy for attention and she'll rebel if they try to stop her, just as Lois herself did against her father. When Meg later goes up to Quagmire's sex cabin for the weekend, Lois calls Peter out for not stopping her, to which Peter rightfully retorts that Lois told him to stay out of Meg's business in the first place. Lois concedes he's right, and they immediately go out to stop them from doing the deed.
• Fanboy and Chum Chum: Boog and Lenny blame Fanboy and Chum Chum in "Monster in the Mist" for pretending they were the eponymous monster, when in fact it was Boog and Lenny's impaired vision that made them see it. Lenny could be forgiven, though, since his eyesight was handicapped by them.
• The Fantastic Four (1967): Victor Von Doom blames Reed Richards for the accident that ruined his face. Everything Reed did in this case was warning Doom about some miscalculations and Doom decided to ignore the warning.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • In "Eddie Monster", Eduardo runs away and needs to be listed because Bloo refuses to accept that it's actually his fault Eduardo ran away and instead blames the others for it. Even at the end of the episode, he tells the big guy that "I am very sorry for all the mean things... that all the others said about you."
  • In the Halloween Episode, "Nightmare on Wilson Way", the rest of the house decide to make Bloo think that he is trapped in a Zombie Apocalypse after getting fed up with his constant pranking. They ultimately take the prank too far, prompting a desperate and utterly terrified Bloo to give Mac some candy so he can go berserk and fight his way through them. It's only after Mac zooms out of the house to harass trick-or-treaters that they break character, and Bloo gets in trouble for what he did to Mac when it's really the others' fault for pushing him to take drastic measures to, in his own mind, keep himself and his creator from getting killed.
• Futurama does this from time to time.
  • Most memorably after Leela is blinded in "Bender Gets Made", she crashes the Planet Express ship through the roof of the building. Hermes, having seen everything, turns to Zoidberg and says: "That's coming out of YOUR pay." Zoidberg is reduced to tears. This is normal for the show, as Zoidberg is the primary Butt-Monkey.
  • Also done by Zapp Brannigan, usually blaming his egregious mistakes on Kif, his beleaguered lieutenant.
    Zapp Brannigan: Prepare to take the blame in 3, 2, 1...
    Kif: Aaah!
  • In "That's Lobstertainment!", Calculon grows vengeful against Bender, Zoidberg, and Harold Zoid for having him fund and star in a bomb of a movie that Bender promised would win him an Oscar. As things get worse for them, Bender puts it this way:
    Bender: Calculon's gonna kill us for sure. And it's all everyone else's fault.
  • In Bender's Big Score, Bender believes that he killed Fry while Brainwashed and Crazy.
    Amy: Awwww, don't blame yourself, Bender.
    Bender: I don't blame myself, I blame all of you!
    Amy: Us?! How can you possibly blame us?
    Bender: It ain't easy. It just proves how great I am.
  • In "The Future Holiday Spectacular," as Bender cruises for a Heel Realization and swerves at the last second:
    Bender: I thought they were selfish, yet in the end, it turns out it was I who thought they were selfish.
• Gargoyles:
  • Used for much more serious effect twice in identical instances with two different characters, Demona and Jon Canmore, as each realized (and then immediately denied) the full scope of the consequences of their actions:
    "What have I — what have they done to you?!"
  • This is one of Demona's defining character traits — she constantly finds a way to blame humans for her problems, even when things are clearly her own fault. It's lampshaded in the final episode of the "City of Stone" arc when the Weird Sisters put her in a trance and ask a series of questions.
    Demona: I will have vengeance for the betrayal of my clan. Vengeance for my pain.
    Seline: But who betrayed your clan?
    Luna: And who caused this pain?
    Demona: The Vikings destroyed my clan.
    Seline: Who betrayed the castle to the Vikings?
    Demona: The Hunter hunted us down.
    Phoebe: Who created the Hunter?
    Demona: Canmore destroyed the last of us.
    Luna: Who betrayed Macbeth to Canmore?
    • True to form, once the trance is lifted, Demona wastes no time in declaring "None of this was my fault!"
• Get Ace: In the Egg Sitting episode, Tina doesn't care for her and Ace's "baby" whatsoever (having Ace or her dad look after it instead) and the egg slips out of her fingers and cracks the moment she grabs ahold of it, failing the assignment for both of them. She gets mad at Ace for this, despite the fact the egg was safe for a week until she touched it.
• Grim's hatred for the titular characters in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is a result of this. His forced friendship with the two kids is really his own fault because he was so confident that he would beat them in the limbo contest in the pilot that he bet himself to be their best friend forever.
• Harley Quinn (2019): It takes a lot for Harley Quinn to accept how her flaws and mistakes cause trouble for her and her personal relationships. All her crew leaves her because she ignored them and failed to keep her promises to help them in favor of letting herself fall into the Joker's game of abuse. Afterwards, Harley complains about them abandoning her without acknowledging how her choice to hang out with the Joker instead of her friends got her into that mess. One of the biggest parts of her Character Development is learning to own up to her actions and take responsibility to become a better person who can have a healthy relationship with Ivy. Flashbacks also show her that she jumped willingly into Joker's toxin rather than being pushed as she believes (and as is true in some variations of her origin story).
• In an episode of House of Mouse, Donald offers to give Mickey the money he needs to pay the club's rent if he'll let Daisy do an act tonight. Mickey reluctantly accepts the offer, but after Donald reveals to Daisy that he paid Mickey to put her on stage, she declines, saying she wanted to get her act because she would be good at it, not out of monetary reasons. As she walks out, Donald complains to Mickey, "Now see what ya did?" Though in all fairness, Mickey wouldn't have needed to do this at all if he hadn't spent the rent money that Minnie gave him on cheese.
• This is one of the negative traits of demon sorcerer Shendu and his son Drago in Jackie Chan Adventures. They like to blame their conscripted underlings or Jackie Chan himself for their defeats, and this doesn't fly well with their comrades.
  • In "Queen of the Shadowkhan", Finn, Ratso, and Chow pin the blame for their failure in stopping Jackie from escaping with the archive on the Shadowkhan themselves^note (that's before Jade takes control of them). Shendu is not particularly happy with this.
    Shendu: The Shadowkhan are my puppets. They do only what I command. Are you suggesting this is my fault?!
• Jellystone!: The two times the disaster of the day are her fault ("Yogi's Tummy Troubles" and "Must Be Jelly"), Cindy's quick to say she's got nothing to do with it.
• Lucius on Jimmy Two-Shoes once destroyed every washroom in Miseryville to torment Jimmy...including his own. He immediately hands the detonator he used to Samy and says "Look what you've done!"
• Justice League:
  • The Atom is battling a (relatively) large nano-machine, and jokingly blames it on his assistant.
    The Atom: He's bigger than my car now, Katie. Personally, I blame you.
    Katie: How can it possibly be my fault?
    The Atom: Because otherwise it would be my fault. That can't be right. I'm a professor.
  • Just like his comics incarnation, Lex Luthor tends to do this. For instance, when he finds out that he's got radiation poisoning from exposure to Kryptonite, he blames Superman for it, even though it was his idea to carry a radioactive rock around in his pocket at all times without bothering with any kind of shielding. And before he blames him Superman even states he is willing to do whatever he could to help him.
    Luthor: This is your [Superman's] fault, all of it!

K-P

• Kaeloo:
  • In the episode "Let's Play Golf", Stumpy says something to Kaeloo shortly before she hits a golf ball. When Kaeloo fails to hit the ball, rather than admit her bad golf skills, she accuses Stumpy of making her lose her concentration by talking. Stumpy even lampshades this.
  • In Episode 131, Mr. Cat's bullying of Quack Quack leads to Kaeloo hitting him, which was quite justified. Instead of accepting that it was his fault for instigating the fight, Mr. Cat spends the rest of the episode refusing to talk to Kaeloo or make eye contact with her, because he thinks it was her fault.
• Kim Possible:
  • Gil blames Ron for his mutation into an amphibious creature due to the pollution of the lake from Camp Wannaweep. However, Ron had nothing to do with said mutation, as he didn't want to swim in the lake while Gil just took his place because he didn't want to do arts & crafts. There's also the fact that he's not even angry at the science camp, who caused said pollution, but that's hardly relevant.
  • In "Car Trouble", Ron fails the driving test. He uses a remote-controlled toy car to prove to Kim it wasn't his fault he failed, but that the school gymnasium was too close.
• King of the Hill:
  • When Hank makes Bobby take up a summer job, which involves him being Buck Strickland's personal caddy. Hank tells him to respect what Buck does and says, which escalates from receiving Buck's prized watch to doing some unethical things, even though he fails to realize what he is doing is wrong and enjoys the perks he mistakenly believes he is entitled to. When Hank is furious over this, he tells Bobby to return the watch, not believing Buck would willingly give it away. When Bobby refuses, Hank responds by telling him to live with him, since he believes he won't stay with him. The episode ends with Bobby getting grounded for the rest of the summer. Now, Bobby, along with Buck, were under serious danger from the people who Buck had tried backing out of giving his lost pool ante (including his watch), but Hank never accounts for any of his own parenting negligence here involving Bobby's said naivete, and that he was indirectly responsible for many of the events that transpired here in the first place, so the grounding just seems wrong and inordinately excessive.
  • Due to her extreme ego, Peggy Hill rarely admits to making mistakes and more rarely takes responsibility for them. She's gone as far as to accidentally kidnap a Mexican girl due to her clearly limited Spanish, accidentally destroy Hank's jeans, and let a man on death row trick her into smuggling cocaine because he claimed to look up to her. Almost every time this happens, she will attempt to put someone else in the blame (usually Hank) or try to downplay it as something simple (going as far as to compare laundry to surgery). That jeans incident also reveals she's not very good at sewing yet she claims it's the fault of her machine not being good, since Bobby used it without issue.
  • Dia-Bill-Ic Shock has Bill get diagnosed with diabetes, then encounter the jerkass doctor Weissman after having suffered two blood sugar spikes in a week from bingeing on junk food. Weissman tells Bill that he will inevitably lose his legs, and may as well get a wheelchair now. At the end, after having gotten his diabetes under control, Bill confronts the doctor Weissman over his grossly unprofessional behavior. Weissman tries to deny any wrongdoing, claiming to have only told Bill that he may eventually lose his legs if he didn't clean up his lifestyle. Bill doesn't buy it and beats up Weissman off-camera.
    Doctor Weissman: I never said anything that could constitute malpractice... under its current definition.
• Looney Tunes:
  • In the short The Turn-Tailed Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf gives his nephew a VERY biased account of his encounter with The Three Little Pigs. At times, he even accidentally breaks character while telling the story, making it pretty clear to the audience ( and, by the end of the short, his nephew) that it's a fabrication.
  • 1941's The Trial of Mr. Wolf, taking place in a courtroom trial, has the Big Bad Wolf telling of how he was terrorized by the grandmother of Red Riding Hood, who was after his pelt. The jury is comprised of twelve wolves who are ultimately agreed to finding the Big Bad Wolf not guilty. When Big Bad finishes his testimony, the jury finds it so far-fetched that they're now skeptical.
    Big Bad: (groping) And if that ain't the truth, I hope... uh, I hope I get run over by a streetcar! (a streetcar bursts through the wall and runs over him) Well... maybe I did exaggerate just a little.
  • In another cartoon entitled "Fox Pop", a fox overhears a radio broadcast talking about how foxes are popular and in season. Believing that foxes are getting a royal treatment, he gets himself taken into a fox farm (after disguising himself as a silver fox), only to find that he was going to be turned into a fur coat. After going through hell and escaping with his life (following a beating from a pack of hunting dogs), he blames his misfortune on the radio, steals it, and smashes it up. After telling his story to a pair of hawks (the premise of the episode being in a flashback Framing Device), they join him in smashing it.
• The Looney Tunes Show:
  • In the episode "The Float", Daffy decides that he wants to buy a yacht, but he obviously can't afford it. Thus, he tricks Porky into giving him all of his money by claiming that he needs a kidney transplant. Porky gives Daffy all of his money (and his clothes, which Daffy claims he's going to sell), and is soon reduced to sitting naked in a cold, dark house eating garbage while Daffy buys the yacht. When Bugs finds out about this, he tricks Daffy into letting it slip in front of Porky that he tricked him, resulting in an understandably enraged Porky going berserk and beating the crap out of Daffy. At one point, we get this exchange...
    Porky: How could you l-l-l-LIE to me?!
    Daffy: I'm sorry. I thought that if I told you what the money was for, you wouldn't give it to me.
    Porky: I W-W-W-WOULDN'T HAVE!
    Daffy:: You just proved my point! How am I the bad guy here?
  • In the same episode, after Bugs breaks up the fight, they discover that they floated away from the dock on the yacht because Daffy was too distracted by a hot dog cart to finish tying down the yacht. Bugs suggests that they put up the sails and sail back, only for Daffy to inform him that he didn't get any sails because he didn't have enough money for both the sails and a Jacuzzi, and he decided to get the Jacuzzi. Then Bugs suggests using the radio to call the Coast Guard, only for Daffy to tell him that he didn't have enough money to get a radio after buying the second Jacuzzi. In between Bugs' suggestions, Daffy claims that they should blame Porky for not giving him more money. When Porky points out to Daffy that he gave him everything he had, Daffy claims that it's not his fault that Porky wasn't more financially successful.
  • Also occurs in the episode "Here Comes the Pig" while Daffy and Porky are in Porky's car. After the cup of soda that he put on the dashboard in Porky's car spills and ruins his cell phone, Daffy claims that it's not his fault because the dashboard doesn't have a cup holder. Porky points out that there's a cup holder below the dashboard, but Daffy says that nobody would put their cup there, that the car was designed by idiots, and that Porky should do more research before making big purchases like a car. Then the car runs out of gas because Porky gave Daffy money to get gas while he used the bathroom at the gas station, and Daffy instead blew it on snacks, magazines, and a lottery ticket. Despite this, Daffy blames Porky for not giving him more money.
• The Loud House:
  • Ever since she was a baby, Lori Loud has had a farting problem. She also refuses to admit it, and will always blame her farts on anything, usually her shoes.
  • In "Brawl in the Family", while it is true that Lincoln's big mouth was a main cause of the fight getting worse, all of the sisters fail to notice the fact that them messing with Lincoln's life, inability to figure out the obvious and the protocol's many flaws are what's also worsening the fight. Even at the end, they still refuse to see the fact that leaving Lincoln out of it all and being so petty and selfish is what was truly the cause.
  • In "No Such Luck", Lynn is quick to blame Lincoln for her loss in her softball game and calls him bad luck, even though SHE was the one who threatened him with a baseball bat to compel him to come.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • Chloé Bourgeois is an Alpha Bitch who uses her father's status as the mayor as an excuse to commit cruel, mean-spirited acts. Her treatment involved mocking Nathaniel for having a crush on Marinette, humiliating Kim after his attempt to ask her out failed, and dropping Alix's family heirloom (admittedly an accident, but she didn't care). They would become targets for Hawk Moth to corrupt and would target her on some occasions, but she doesn't have the slightest inkling why because she "did nothing wrong".
  • In "Silencer", Bob Roth refuses to accept responsibility for the episode's conflict, instead blaming the band he plagiarized (especially Luka, who was transformed into the titular akuma, and Marinette, who was with him at the time). This comes back to bite him later; Ladybug and Chat Noir are so fed up with him by the end that they expose his lies to Paris right after rescuing Luka.
  • In "Evolution", Gabriel is given the idea to leave a USB drive containing the way to fix the Peacock Miraculous in the past, so that his wife Emilie doesn't use it while it's damaged, which ultimately leaves her comatose and has the perfect opportunity to do so. Instead, he gets baited into chasing Ladybug and Cat Noir, ruining his opportunity. All Ladybug did was set the bait; Gabriel had no compulsion to take it outside his own obsessions. When Nathalie calls him out, Gabriel insists that it's all Ladybug's fault. Nathalie doesn't buy it and quits on the spot. Gabriel blames Ladybug for that, too.
• Moral Orel: Clay Puppington practically lives by shifting blame. In one episode, he teaches Orel the same (thankfully, Orel didn't keep that lesson for long). Orel counsels Principal Fakey to do the same, regarding Fakey's infidelity. This extends to claiming he's been faithful and accusing his wife of cheating on him and giving him gonorrhea, while he's having sex with the woman who gave him the disease, as she tells him it's not that bad. He then states there's no decency in the world and goes home from school to throw her out. With his pants around his ankles the whole way. Clay's penchant for this trope goes so far that he blames Orel when Clay shot him in a drunken state. It's hard to say which is worse, the victim-blaming, or that the only time he admitted to shooting Orel, he claimed to be glad about it.
• My Adventures with Superman:
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist Amanda Waller is a Tautological Templar who refuses to entertain the idea that she could ever be in the wrong. When General Ripper Sam Lane points out the flaws in her logic regarding Superman, she simply says that they don't make mistakes and betrays him for it.
  • Anthony Ivo / Parasite has this as his Fatal Flaw. He constantly makes immoral and self-destructive decisions, and blames the fallout for them on Superman while doubling down on his terrible life choices. It reaches its apex in the "Zero Day" two-parter, where Ivo transforms himself into a grotesque monster and rampages through Metropolis, endangering countless innocent lives, all the while ranting about how it's all Superman's fault.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot: The Crust Cousins have it in for Jenny for getting them arrested by the police. The reason they were arrested: was for causing a fire that burned down the school by interfering with Jenny's circuitry while operating a laser, in order to ruin her.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In "Testing Testing 1, 2, 3" Rainbow Dash realizes she's going to fail the Wonderbolts history test, then turns around and blames Twilight for it, even though it was clearly her fault for not paying the slightest bit of attention when Twilight was trying to help her.
  • Lord Tirek hates his brother Scorpan for betraying him... despite the fact Scorpan tried his hardest to get Tirek to join him in performing a Heel–Face Turn with him, and Scorpan only betrayed him when Tirek left him with no other choice and thus Tirek has no one to blame but himself.
  • Recurring villain Queen Chrysalis is a frequent offender of this trope as whenever she is defeated, she would try and pass the blame to other sources rather than say that it was her own pride that's responsible. In "The Mean 6", she claims that Starlight turned her former subjects against her and while this is true, Starlight also did offer a Chrysalis a chance at redemption, to which Chrysalis refused and it was her own Control Freak nature and lack of actual care for her subjects that caused them to disown her as their leader to begin with, but Chrysalis refuses to see it that way. She also refuses to believe that the Magic of Friendship is a powerful force and instead sees it as a poisonous disease and insists that her defeats were due to the Mane 6 'cheating'.
• NASCAR Racers: Lyle blames Charger for losing his job as a Fastex driver but he was fired because Jack Fassler doesn't approve what Lyle does to earn his nickname as "The Collector".
• The Owl House:
  • Academic Alpha Bitch Amity Blight blames Luz for embarrassing her and getting her in trouble. While Luz was involved in those situations, they were ultimately caused by Amity's antagonistic, self-centered, and patronizing behavior. She put Luz in life-threatening danger just to maintain her status or to show superiority over her, and she even called Luz a bully when the latter was making clear attempts to make amends and befriend her. Amity was unable to understand simple, general, and genuine acts of compassion. It doesn't really help matters that Luz's Guilt Complex keeps her from calling Amity out, thinking that she really is to blame, and she goes along with it. Thankfully, Amity does have a Heel Realization with this when Luz tries to save her life, making Amity see that she didn't actually take the time to get to know her as a person.
  • This is Emperor Belos's Fatal Flaw. He's a Knight Templar who's absolutely convinced he's the good guy even while plotting to commit genocide on the inhabitants of the Boiling Isles out of racism and betraying and murdering his own allies, yet he twists any consequences he faces for his actions into an unprovoked attack with him as an innocent victim. In fact, the whole reason for all his plotting is because of his refusal to take responsibility for his actions. He's had centuries to see that the Boiling Isles's residents are no more inherently evil than humans are, but that would mean admitting he killed his own brother (who had married a witch) for no reason and Belos can't bring himself to compromise his delusions of heroism.
• Lucy in Peanuts. In the animated special It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, she pulls the football from Charlie Brown in an actual football game with a game-deciding last-second field goal on the line, and then later (with Peppermint Patty) blames him for missing. (Charlie Brown himself feels let down by this miss, even though it clearly wasn't his fault).
• The Penguins of Madagascar: Officer X keeps blaming the Penguins for getting him fired from Animal Control, despise the fact that he was actually fired for causing a vandalism spree out of frustration rather that anything that the Penguins did.
• Phineas and Ferb: Heinz Doofenshmirtz is the giving and, at one point, even the receiving, end of this;
  • Dr. Diminutive once "borrows" (read: stole) Doofenshmirtz's Schmaltz-inator and uses it for something he is arrested for. He blames Doof for his arrest just because it was Doof who invented the inator.
  • Doof blames Perry for his plans failing, even when he screws them up himself. In "That Sinking Feeling" he curses Perry when his lighthouse rocket ends up lodged in the Evil, Inc. building even though Perry had completely failed to foil him that time.
  • Also, when Doof failed to destroy the adult diaper factory, he blamed Perry despite acknowledging Perry had no role in it whatsoever.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998) has a surprising amount of moments like this, where both the villains and the heroes never take responsibility over their actions:
  • One episode has a fat cop named Mike Brikowski who, rather than actually trying to fight crime, sits around and eats donuts. When he's fired for being a terrible police officer, Brikowski immediately claims that it's because the Powerpuff Girls are cleaning up all the crime in the city and making the police obsolete, rather than admitting his own laziness and refusal to work (when he sees a news report of himself sleeping on the job, it's implied that he realizes he's at fault, but instead blames the girls out of jealousy towards their competence and recognition). He then tries to murder the Girls for all of this and tries to back up his actions by saying they make "cops look like bums" — the girls quickly correct him, insisting that they need the police and work with them to fight crime. True to form, the police arrive just in time to save them and arrest Brikowski.
    Brikowski: (about to be taken away) This is just another story of a good cop gone bad.
    Blossom: You're not a good cop gone bad. You're a bad cop gone worse!
  • Princess Morbucks always blames the girls for not accepting her as a Powerpuff Girl and then blames her father for not giving her enough money for "cool gadgets" (when he seems to give her more each time).
  • One episode features Straw Feminist Femme Fatale, a supervillain who claims she's committing crimes to fight the patriarchal systems of Townsville. She temporarily sways the girls to her views and makes them mini man-haters, but Miss Bellum and Miss Keane help them realize that Femme Fatale isn't noble in the slightest, especially because she hurts and robs other women. When they confront Femme Fatale with their new knowledge, she tries to repeat her old view that men are to blame for what she's doing when it's really all her own fault for being a jerk, but this time, the girls ignore her views and, after beating her up, take her to the slammer.
    Femme Fatale: (wearing prison stripes) You can't do this to me! Horizontal stripes make me look fat...
  • The Smith family, who live next door to the Girls, has this problem. Harold Smith, the family patriarch, dreams of being a supervillain (and is really, really bad at it), so when his wife invites the girls and Professor Utonium over for dinner, he tries "attacking" him with a ray gun that appears to be a common hairdryer. When the girls understandably fight back against the man they think is trying to kill their father, he ends up getting arrested, but his wife is somehow convinced that it's the girls' fault for ruining dinner and not her insane husband's (probably because they were one of the reasons he became a supervillain). This leads to a second episode in which the whole Smith family blames all of their problems on the Powerpuffs (except maybe their son, who claims to hate everything); they decide to become supervillains to fight them, never once considering their own culpability. This episode ends the same way the first one did: with not just Harold, but the entire family this time, being sent to the slammer.
    Narrator: What a fitting end for such an unfit family.
  • Blossom is implied to feel this way in "A Very Special Blossom" after she steals golf clubs to give to the Professor for Father's Day, as seen when she says "That's what drove me to crime!" when the Professor thinks it's his fault she did this for valuing a material possession more than his daughters.
  • When Buttercup is called out by Blossom for making fun of Elmer Sglue for his obsession with ingesting paste in "Paste Makes Waste", Buttercup simply responds with "Why am I the one always blamed for things around here?" Technically, a lot of the other kids were also making fun of him and she fell under their influence, but she might have taken it a step further than they did.
  • In the movie, when the girls enter self-imposed banishment when Mojo Jojo overruns Townsville with monkeys and the Professor seemingly rejects them, Blossom tries to shift the blame onto Buttercup by saying the game of tag that nearly destroyed the city wouldn't have started if Buttercup hadn't (accidentally) pushed Bubbles into the school.

R-Y

• In the Ready Jet Go! episode "Racing on Sunshine", the kids have to design solar-powered karts for the annual kid-kart derby. During the race, it gets cloudy. Jet and Sydney have batteries installed in their kid-karts so they can use the sun's energy later, but three-time champion Mitchell got too overconfident in winning the race and did not think to use the battery. He ends up coming in at 3rd place, and he blames the clouds blocking the sun instead of his own carelessness.
• Regular Show: In "Meat Your Maker", Rigby pins the blame over the anthropomorphic hot dogs on Benson by the end of the episode.
• Rick and Morty:
  • "Rick Potion #9" has this ping-pong between the titular characters after their world gets "Cronenberg"-ed. Morty Smith calls Rick out for screwing up the antidote for the virus and transforming the whole population into mutants, only to be called out himself by Rick Sanchez for wanting to slip Jessica the equivalent of a roofie in order to make her fall for him. Morty responds by admitting to his part in the fiasco and demands Rick do the same.
  • "The ABC's of Beth", Beth Smith tries to rescue her childhood friend Tommy so that she can prevent his dad from being executed for supposedly eating him. However, she refuses to apologize for the fact Tommy ended up trapped in an alternate dimension because she pushed him out of jealousy for having a loving dad. Both Tommy and Rick call her out on this.
  • "Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim's Morty" : At episode's end, which sees Rick, Summer, and Morty battle an evil sorcerer to free the former of a soul-bond with a dragon made into a slave, Rick blames Morty for the mess because Morty wanted the dragon, and has it count as Morty's one adventure per ten. However, nothing happened until Rick started interacting, and ultimately soul-bonded^note which is intercourse for dragons with the dragon, which set off the whole thing, and Rick gets away without being called out on it in the end even though it took Summer and Morty's help to save him.
  • During Evil Morty Motive Rant, he ponders the question of "What Is Evil?", during which he concludes that he is being labelled as "evil", simply because he is fed up with Rick's behavior and Protagonist-Centered Morality and wants to get away from him. He does acknowledge, however, the suffering and death he has inflicted upon both numerous Ricks and fellow Mortys as bad, though doesn't believe that is why he is considered "evil", as countless Ricks in the Central Finite Curve have done equal or worse things than him for even baser reasons.
• In Robot Chicken: Star Wars, the warmongering Darth Vader...sympathizes?... with a soldier who's so busy with work he can't spend time with his kid.
  Vader: (strangling a rebel) What have you done with those plans?! Gary here never sees his daughter because of people like you!
• This comes up three (or four) times in the Rocket Power movie "Race Across New Zealand". First, when Otto's dirtboard falls apart and he loses the race to Theodore and Reggie, he blames his loss on Reggie refusing to give him her board. Then, when he loses the windsurfing race to Theodore after Reggie blocked his path to get her dad to notice her, Otto blames the loss on Sam giving him bad directions based on false information supplied by the Big Bad, as well as Reggie blocking his path (though he's not wrong given the above circumstances). When Ray calls Reggie out on the act, she has a moment of her own, blaming her action on her dad shutting her out in favor of Otto. This actually causes Ray to realize that he might have also done this because he really was only focusing on Otto winning in order to get revenge on the Big Bad, which led to what he tried to blame Reggie for.
  • In general, Otto often invokes this. Perhaps the best example is in "Big Air Dare" where he decides to snowboard off the eponymous jump in spite of being forbidden to do so due to the jump only being for adults. He and a reluctant Reggie defy the warnings and compete against each other by racing down the jump. Reggie stops herself while Otto takes the jump and breaks his leg in the process. In "Otto's Big Break" (which actually aired right after the aforementioned episode), Otto blames Reggie for making him take the big jump.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In "Slumber Party", Angelica opens Tommy's bedroom window, getting Tommy sick as a result. When the adults find out that Tommy is sick, Angelica blames what she did on Chuckie, Phil, and Lil, who aren't even in that particular episode.
  • In "Angelica Nose Best", Angelica blames Spike for wrecking Didi's jigsaw puzzle, Fluffy for eating Grandpa Lou's chocolates, and the babies for breaking Charlotte's Priceless Ming Vase, all of which she was guilty of doing.
• Rupert:
  • In the episode "Rupert and the Missing Snow", Rupert Bear consults Will, chief assistant to the Clerk of the Weather, on why it hasn't snowed in Nutwood. After Will makes the insistence that Rupert is mistaken because the alarms indicating no snow haven't gone off, Rupert finds that the alarms haven't gone off because they weren't plugged in. Will then states that it is his assistant's fault the alarms weren't plugged in. After Rupert points out to Will that he doesn't have an assistant, Will replies that his lack of an assistant is why it is his assistant's fault.
  • "Rupert in Timeland" has Rupert's friend Podgy Pig mistake Father Time's machine for a giant vending machine and ends up breaking it. After Father Time finds out what Podgy had done, Podgy blames Rupert for his actions.
  • In "Rupert and the Hedgehog", Rupert ends up carving his father's topiary of a camel into a small hedgehog after his friend Bill Badger ruined it by trying to make changes to it. Bill frequently tries to pin the blame for his actions on Rupert, much to the young bear's ire.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Catra. Big time. Any time one of her plans goes wrong, she finds someone to whom she can pass the blame. Probably the best example of this is Season 3, where she nearly destroys Etheria and blames Adora for it because Adora isn't there to stop her. This also extends to her relationships with other people. In Season 1, when Adora defects to go and join the Rebellion, she invites Catra to come with her. Catra refuses and then becomes upset because Adora "abandoned" her. Following that, she constantly drives people away from her by lying to them, verbally abusing them, or refusing to help them when they need it. Then, when those people finally leave, Catra acts like they're the ones who have a problem, not her. Double Trouble eventually lampshades it while giving Catra "The Reason You Suck" Speech. She starts to grow out of this following a Heel–Face Turn in the final season, apologizing to Adora, Scorpia, and Entrapta for her mistreatment and putting her life at risk to help them several times, although she still shows signs of bitterness about Adora's defection right up to the final episode. Word of God is she that was more or less able to accept the truth and let go of her bitterness during their Love Confession.
  Double Trouble: It's you, wildcat. You drive them away.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Bart Star": Homer has a flashback to a floor gymnastics routine. Abe yells "You're gonna blow it" at him... and so he does, and Abe then gets mad at him. To add insult to injury, Abe's bitter condemnation to Homer — immediately after yelling this out — is "This is what I get for having faith in you."
  • In "Rosebud", Adolf Hitler blames losing World War II on a teddy bear.
  • Homer in full Jerkass mode always finds someone else to blame:
    Gabriel: Homer, your problem is quite simple. You're a drunken, childish buffoon.
    Homer: Which is society's fault because...
    Gabriel: It's your fault!
  • In "Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"", Homer tried to back out of donating a kidney to his dad (whose kidneys Homer was responsible for damaging):
    Homer: Oh, but I don't want them cutting up my soft, supple body! Why didn't someone tell me what I was volunteering for? This is everybody's fault but mine!
  • Sideshow Bob gives a slight variant in "Funeral for a Fiend".
    Bob: I did try to kill the Simpsons. I really did. But I would like to plead not guilty, on the grounds of insanity. Insanity, caused by my persecution, at the hands of (points at Bart) this- young- BOY!
  • In "Pokey Mom", Principal Skinner demands reformed prisoner Jack Crowley paint a cutesy mural on the school wall. Jack, under protest, does as he's told...and it's very poorly received by the crowd. When fingers point at Skinner, to save his own ass he neatly swings the situation around to make it Jack's fault. And then Jack himself does this when he burns both the mural and Skinner's car in retaliation, the latter of which he does in full public view. Even after that Jack tries to insist that he didn't do it.
  • In "Bart the Lover", Bart plays a prank on Mrs. Krabappel, which affects her more deeply than he expected, and comments "I can't help but feel partly responsible."
  • Summed up by Homer with this quote from "I'm with Cupid". "Guys, It's easy to blame ourselves, but it's even easier to blame Apu".
  • Ned Flanders could be seen as this due to being Egocentrically Religious: he will often do incredibly irresponsible things under the belief that God would protect him, such as sinking his whole life’s savings into a store that only caters to 1/9th of the population in "When Flanders Failed" while doing nothing to promote the store himself and his decision to not buy homeowner's insurance causing problems for him when his house is destroyed in "Hurricane Neddy"
• South Park:
  • This is one of Eric Cartman's defining traits. He just refuses to take any responsibility for anything bad that happens, even when it bites him in the butt.
  • Butters is used to being a scapegoat.
    Butters: It's great, you get to throw rocks at cars and if the driver gets angry, you blame me.
    Cartman: (after sending Butters to the store and then destroying the TV) It was just... I was just... BUTTERS YOU ASSHOLE!
  • Kenny's father refuses to own up to the fact that his own failings are the reason his family is poor, something his wife is quick to call him out on in their first proper appearance:
    Stuart: You know, [Kyle's] dad and I used to be best friends when we were teenagers. We would work together at Pizza Shack. But he got promoted and went off to community college and I didn't. And you know why? 'Cause your dad's Jewish!
    Carol: That ain't why, Stuart! It's because you are an alcoholic retard and he had dreams! Dreams of not eating frozen waffles for dinner every night!
    Stuart: Hey, is it my fault you don't know how to cook?!
    Carol: What am I supposed to do with frozen waffles, clamhead?! You put 'em in the toaster and you cook 'em!
    Stuart: You just don't know how to use spices and stuff.
  • In "Proper Condom Use", the parents are angry that the school is not teaching children about sex, something that is usually the responsibility of parents. At the end of the episode, they get called out on that by Chef, as the teachers they pick to explain are Mr. Mackey (who hasn't had sex in decades), Ms. Choksondik (who Does Not Like Men and thinks Sex Is Evil), and Mr. Garrison (no explanation necessary).
  • Butters is often a scapegoat for his own parents. In one episode, Butters is grounded because his dad mistakenly put Hamburger Helper in his milk.^note Technically speaking, Butters did make a mistake, but the way his father finds out about the mistake is so stupid that one questions his ability to live.
  • In "Fishsticks", Jimmy comes up with the funniest joke ever (according to the show, at least) while Cartman is lounging on the couch eating potato chips. Cartman quickly takes half the credit. When Kyle rightly questions Cartman's involvement in writing the joke, Cartman has a flashback and decides that, yes, he did do the lion's share of the work, and Jimmy's the one who is taking more credit than is due. Naturally, he blames Kyle for being jealous. Kyle tells him that Cartman is exactly this trope and is able to easily fool himself. Another flashback later, and Cartman is convinced that he did all the work (while fighting off Jew-bots as the Human Torch) and uses Kyle's logic to convince Jimmy that he's this trope.
  • "Pinewood Derby" has Randy cheat on the soapbox derby race he and Stan are participating in by stealing a hadron collider. After the winning boxcar launches into space and is found by aliens, things escalate into a "Fawlty Towers" Plot where everyone lies about not finding "space cash" while hiding it. When things come to a head, Stan, who never wanted to cheat in the first place, comes clean about the car they used not using the approved items in their kit. Randy praises him for telling the truth before punishing him, clearly not taking any responsibility.
  • In "Taming Strange" Mr. Mackey repeatedly defends Intellelink despite all the difficulties it causes. He appoints a new faculty member who will be responsible for overseeing Intellelink only to immediately blame her for the problem and conclude that the school has no choice but to continue with upgrades to the system.
  • PC Principal will always blame students or society for issues they have with him, even though their issues are rarely directly about the greater issue at hand and more that he institutes policies that only have an effect for a very limited few (often only a crying/manipulative Cartman) representing a "minority" which he is PC induced to cater to, lest he be seen as "not PC".
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Spider-Man/Peter Parker has his fair share (this being a Spider-Man cartoon and all):
  • In Season 2 Episode 3 Gwen gives Peter The Look and chews him out for not talking to her after their first kiss at the end of Season 1. Petey did try to talk to her, but she was the one who was avoiding him.
  • Harry does this in Season 1, claiming that he failed a test "'Cause Pete abandoned me!" In this case, his father Norman actually called him out on it. "You didn't fail because of Peter. Take some responsibility. If you want to pass a test, then study. You want to be popular? Be popular. Take control of your own destiny."
  • Also Sally blaming Peter for Liz breaking up with Flash in Season 1, and then in Season 2, claiming that he messed up the social order of the school.
  • Even Black Cat tears into him in "Opening Night", although this version is much more dramatic than most of the other examples. She yells at Spidey for her father choosing to stay in prison rather than escape with her. The man killed Uncle Ben, and she's crying because he didn't get away with it. Especially unfair, since she expected Spidey to pull off the Heroic Sacrifice to gas the escaped villains, and at one point even asked her father what he did to get on Spidey's bad side. Though one of the reasons is probably that she still doesn't understand what happened between them.
  • And Harry blaming Spider-Man for Norman's "death" at the end of Season 2, claiming Spider-Man "should've helped him" despite the fact that one, Spidey had just figured out Norman was Green Goblin. 2. Norman was trying to kill him. 3. Norman had hired the Chameleon to be him to throw Spidey off his tail and lie to Harry. Oh yeah, real nice reasoning, Harry. ^note  Harry was partially justified in that he thought Norman couldn't control his actions while under effect of the Goblin formula. Harry didn't know this unfortunate side effect is prevented when the user inhales the formula instead of drinking it.
  • Also, when they try out for the football team. Harry whines about Peter being better than him in the tryouts. He was the one who asked Peter to come along.
  • In general, Harry tends to do this quite a lot, which is likely a trait he picked up from his father Norman, whose catchphrase is "Don't apologize. I never do.". This nearly gets Norman killed in the very first episode where he refuses to apologize to the Vulture for stealing his life's work-while he's being flown above the city and being threatened with a long drop to the pavement. It may be possible to be a Magnificent Bastard and still be Too Dumb to Live, but you have to have to admire his dedication to that principle. ^note Norman is also an odd example in that while he never accepts any blame, he doesn't waste much time blaming others either. He seems to see it as natural for everyone to help themselves to whatever they want, and if they don't succeed it's their own fault for not being better at it.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series:
  • Quentin Beck blames Spider-Man for getting him send to prison because he intervened and caught him, so he becomes Mysterio to take revenge on him. He completely ignores the fact that his careless use of explosives is the reason he got send to prison. If anything, Spider-Man saving people from the explosives is the reason Beck didn't get a longer prison term.
    Mysterio: It's payback time.
    Spider-Man: Payback? For what?! You did it all to yourself!
    Mysterio: Yes, that's what my psychiatrist said, but you know what? His sessions never made me feel this good.
  • Eddie Brock always blamed Spidey for anything that went wrong with his career as a journalist. Being unable to expose Kurt Konnors as the Lizard was the only thing he could actually blame on Spidey. As for the others:
    • "The Spider Slayer": Eddie Brock announced on Jameson's TV network that Spider-Man was Flash Thompson. Sure, Flash might have decided to dress himself like Spidey to scare Peter Parker but it was Spidey's fault Jameson became a laughingstock for all his competitors (even FOX). Jameson agreed it was Spidey's fault but fired Brock because he (as far as he knew) couldn't fire Spidey.
    • "Return of the Spider Slayers": Eddie Brock had just got another job as a journalist when a Spider Slayer sent after him by someone who put him (and several others) in the trope's other end. Alistair Smythe blamed Spidey, Eddie, Jameson and Norman for his father's "death" despite it being his father's fault for sending the first Spider Slayer after Spidey and the Kingpin's for being The Man Behind the Man in that case. (Ironically, the Kingpin was sponsoring this revenge) The incident caused Eddie's new boss to believe him to be the trouble Jameson described him to be and fired him. Eddie blamed Spidey for losing this other job despite Spidey's only role in the whole thing was saving Eddie.
    • In the three-part episode "The Alien Costume", Eddie Brock was near the site where a space shuttle crashed and had the chance to photograph Rhino stealing something and Spidey trying to catch him. When Jameson arrived there out of concern for his son (who was one of the astronauts), Brock didn't mention Rhino and lied that Spidey stole something from there and offered photos to prove it if Jameson rehired him. Spider would later confront Eddie and Jameson, telling the truth and demanding Jameson to call off the reward. Jameson didn't believe there was a man in a rhinoceros suit. When Jameson's son recovered consciousness and confirmed Spidey's version, Brock was fired, lost his reputation, his health (he sneezed while muttering about everything he lost), and his apartment (he found a notice of eviction at the door) and blamed Spidey for all those losses.

• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series has its fair share (this being a Spider-Man cartoon and all). In the second episode, when Kingpin tricks Spidey into stealing a very important chip, Peter is kidnapped by an FBI agent who interrogates him and confiscates a videotape of a science lesson that Peter recorded for Mary-Jane, accusing Peter of being involved in biowarfare. The agent later calls Peter and berates him for wasting time giving him the tape.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Mr. Krabs just plain refuses to own up to anything he does:
    • In "Nasty Patty," he blames SpongeBob for "killing" the health inspector with their Nasty Patty even though he himself made the idea in the first place. When SpongeBob reminds him that it was his idea, Krabs retorts, "Well, you could've talked me out of it!"
    • As revealed in "Friend or Foe," his rivalry with Plankton began when they blamed each other for messing up the Krabby Patty formula, as it resulted in the death of their first customer. Both of them would later forget about this over their other motivations.
    • In "Krusty Love," he brings SpongeBob along on his date with Mrs. Puff and puts him in charge of his money to make sure he doesn't spend it all, but he nonetheless keeps demanding that SpongeBob buy increasingly unnecessary items for Mrs. Puff, all while lashing out at him for spending his money when he was the one who asked him to do so in the first place. When SpongeBob calls him on it, Mr. Krabs retorts that it's not his fault that SpongeBob is "loose with other people's money." At this point, SpongeBob snaps, gives Mr. Krabs a tongue-lashing, and storms off.
    • In "Can You Spare a Dime?", Squidward Tentacles quits his job due to being accused of stealing Mr. Krabs' first dime. SpongeBob takes Squidward in after the latter ends up homeless, and Squidward starts mooching off of SpongeBob after many months of staying. After getting so frustrated at Squidward, SpongeBob flips out and almost strangles Mr. Krabs to get him to hire Squidward back. Conveniently, Mr. Krabs' dime drops out of his pocket. Squidward is rehired, and then Krabs has another argument with Squidward about the latter putting the dime in his pants. Mr. Krabs refuses to own up to the fact that Squidward never really touched his dime and that he simply just misplaced it.
  • In "A Pal For Gary", SpongeBob blames Gary like it's the snail's fault for disturbing Puffy Fluffy, even though it's obvious to him (and the audience) that the pet is dangerous.
  • In "Hooky", as Squidward is being denigrated by an angry mob of customers who complain he's made terrible burgers that came out tasting like a boot (he mixed up a boot with the meat patties) and he keeps burning them to a solid black tone instead of transferring them to buns, or better yet the trash can, Squidward lashes out, "Why do you want to eat this stuff anyways?!"
  • Mrs. Puff, to some extent. True, SpongeBob is the reason why she's so grouchy and getting constantly injured, but she forgets the fact that she's not obligated to keep SpongeBob as a student and she can simply expel him if she's tired of him failing her classes. While her suffering isn't her fault, she is unintentionally playing a role in prolonging it due to her never thinking of expelling SpongeBob from her boating school. It also helps that she mentioned that SpongeBob was the only student who has ever failed her boating school.
  • In "Demolition Doofus", SpongeBob refuses to own up to causing Mrs. Puff to lose her puff; however, he did apologize for joking about her condition seconds before that.
    SpongeBob: Sheesh, I don't know what she's so upset about!
  • In "Little Yellow Book", The Bikini Bottomites call out Squidward for reading SpongeBob's diary, even though they read the diary too out of their own free will.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: In "Terminal Provocations", Fletcher spends most of the episode trying to deflect blame for screwing up the isolinear core, blaming everyone from Delta Shift to alien intruders to Q for it.
• Star vs. the Forces of Evil
  • Tom Lucitor claims that his lack of friends stems from others judging him by appearance instead of his many, many, many other glaring flaws that are completely his own doing. Subverted as he gradually starts to take responsibility though.
  • Star Butterfly solely blames Ruberiot for her Song Day disaster, claiming he's good at "ruining people's lives with songs", even though she was the one who willfully gave him the information to write the song that revealed her crush on Marco and the fact that she had lost Glossaryck and the Book of Spells.
  • The origins of the mewman-monster wars. When the early Butterfly queens seized the monsters' lands, they used propaganda to make themselves look good and blame everything on the monsters, who were actually oppressed and forced to live in dire poverty. While a few queens didn't believe it, others did and encouraged it.
  • Star accuses Moon Butterfly of this. When she wants to freeze Eclipsa again, Star remarks that Eclipsa wasn't the one who sought for Moon and offered her a dark spell, it was Moon that went to her, knowing about her, accepted the pact that came with the spell and used it, releasing Eclipsa, and now wants to go back in her words.
    • This is ultimately the reason for Moon Butterfly motive behind restarting the Solarian warrior program and giving Mina's regicide attempt against Eclipsa the jump start it needed. She held a grudge against Eclipsa for her interference during their fight with Meteora thus forcing her into the Realm of Magic and being separated from her family. Something that could've been avoided had she not acted rash during the original scenario.
    • It's implied Moon Butterfly put the blame on magic for her actions in the finale. Moon caused the problems in the finale by foolishly siding with Mina because of her unfair grudge again Eclipsa and her thinking she has control over the situation; that backfired, and Star is understandably angry at her mother. Moon is unsure of Star's plan to stop Mina by destroying magic but agrees to help Star destroy magic, and at the end of the episode she tells Star she freed them from the reign of magic, putting the blame for her actions on magic rather than herself.
  • In The Magic Book of Spells, Solaria Butterfly believed the monsters were at fault for the problems that happened, even jealous of the founding of the Butterfly Family, rather than seeing them as victims of her family's misdeeds. This was also why her relationship with Glossaryck was strained.
  • Completely ignores any responsibility Miss Heinous could take for her own more "heinous" actions in favor of blaming Star and Marco.
  • In "Marco Grows a Beard", Ludo had the wand within reach, with Star being held down by his minions. However, he was unable to take the wand, due to it being covered in hair. He later blames his minions for this failure, despite the fact that it was he who messed up. Toffee uses this to convince his army to turn on him.
  • Despite Toffee's motivation of revenge and claiming to have been wronged, he was the one who murdered the Queen who'd been nothing but kind to the monsters and was about to sign a peace treaty with the monsters when he did so, and thus his losing his finger is no one's fault but his own. This also means a large amount of the current Mewman/Monster tensions are directly his own fault.
• Star Wars:
  • Star Wars: The Clone Wars: After Ahsoka is framed for bombing the Jedi Temple hangar, Mace Windu leads the Jedi Council in voting to excommunicate her from the Jedi Order. Once her innocence is proved when Anakin brings Barriss and forces her to confess, only Plo Koon apologizes on behalf of the Council, while Mace himself rather tactlessly says the tribulations she's faced were the Force's way of testing her worthiness to become a Jedi Knight, instead of acknowledging he made a mistake in his judgement. Judging by the look on Ahsoka's face and the way she crosses her arms when he says this, she isn't impressed.
  • Star Wars Resistance: In "Fuel for the Fire", Jace Rucklin, a racer who: manipulated Kaz into sneaking him into his boss Yeager's office so he could steal dangerous hyperfuel by posing as his friend, and stole the fuel while Kaz wasn't looking; put far too much of said fuel into his racing ship, not knowing the (tiny) safe amount to use; and was then rescued by Kaz at great risk to himself from his ship before he could explode; blames Kaz for all of this afterwards. He even goes so far as to vow some kind of revenge upon Kaz for saving him from the consequences of his own actions.
• Steven Universe: In "Coach Steven", Sugilite blames Pearl for leaving her behind while she was destroying the Communication Hub, stranding her there. She ignores that the reason Pearl took Steven and left was because Sugilite's reckless job was causing debris to fly everywhere and was making it too dangerous for Steven. And Pearl wasn't even responsible for stranding Sugilite — she just escaped through the Warp Pad before a piece of debris (that Sugilite was responsible for) destroyed it.
• Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters: Gabe has a vendetta against Nathan for stealing his date, Erika. In actuality, Gabe ignored her during the date so he could show off around all of the girls at the dance, so she went to Nathan, someone who actually likes her.
• Superman: The Animated Series:
  • Livewire's origin as a villain is a result of this when she, as a Superman-bashing Shock Jock, decided to host a party in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm. Superman saves her life by preventing her from being struck by lightning, but she gains her electrical powers in the process by not watching where she was going. She blames Supers for "ruining" her life.
  • Also plays a part in Luminus's origin. As LexCorp employee Edward Lytener, he gave Lois Lane information on the company's unethical acts (which cost him his job) not because it was right, but to get her to notice him. When she didn't, he decided to kill her. When stopped by Superman, he turned his murderous attention to the hero for "making a mockery of [him] and [his] work." Yes, Eddie, it's Lois's fault you got fired and she won't date you. And how dare Supes stop you from burning her to a crisp with lasers?
  • Emil Hamilton justifies siding with Luthor by blaming Superman for threatening his life at the end of Superman: The Animated Series. The reason Superman had threatened him is that Hamilton had initially refused to help save a wounded Supergirl's life, due to Kryptonians being treated as criminals after Darkseid temporarily turned Superman Brainwashed and Crazy. Hamilton was more concerned about saving his own ass than helping someone he'd previously called a friend, or saving a heroine who had risked her life to protect Earth from her brainwashed cousin.
• SWAT Kats:
  • As revealed in the Origins Episode, when Chance and Jake (a.k.a. T-Bone and Razor) were still in the Enforcers, they were pursuing Dark Kat with their jet, only for Feral to order them to fall back and leave Dark Kat to him. When they refused, he actually knocked their jet out of the sky and into Enforcer headquarters, causing significant damage to the building and allowing Dark Kat to escape. Feral flat-out refused to acknowledge that the mess was his fault for interfering in the first place, even after Chance point-blank told him so, and placed all the blame on Chance and Jake, kicking them off the force and sentencing them to work at the salvage yard until they pay off the damages. It actually makes Chance and Jake upstaging him as the Swat Kats throughout the series very satisfying.
  • Chance and Jake themselves pull this off in the second episode of the series, though. They manage to capture a villain named Morbulus but decide to simply dump him in the sea so the Enforcers could pick him up there, this despite the Enforcers not being near them yet and the area where they dumped Morbulus being close to a rocky shore with access to the sewers. Naturally, Morbulus easily escapes into the sewers, and Feral calls the Swat Kats out on it. The one time Feral is right about them screwing up, they get angry and blame him for it (though not to his face), and to take it even further, even Callie blames Feral for what was clearly the Swat Kats' fault.
• In Tangled: The Series, Varian gets a bad case of this, blaming the royal family (Rapunzel in particular) for not helping him save his father when he needed them, when really it was his own fault that his father was trapped in crystal to begin with, because he disobeyed him.
  • While he eventually admitted to his mistakes, Cassandra falls hard into this. She always felt upstaged by others, but when she finds out she's Gothel's daughter, she blamed Rapunzel for upstaging her from birth even though Rapunzel was abused by Mother Gothel for 18 years, while she at least got a loving adoptive father.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012):
  • In a first season episode, after being turned into Spider Bytez, Vic attacks the Turtles in a rage, blaming them for his mutation. However, if he hadn't been acting like such a Fat Bastard to them throughout the episode, and screwed up their attempt to save him from the Kraang, he never would have come in contact with the mutagen in the first place.
  • In the second season, Mutagen Man begins blaming the Turtles for his transformation into this horrific Blob Monster, except that he ended up that way despite their attempts to stop him deliberately exposing himself to mutagen. It may be justified since it's implied that his mutation has destroyed his sanity.
  • Michelangelo has a habit of this. Such examples include saying that Donatello shouldn't have trusted him with the T-Pod in "I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman" (something Mikey himself wanted to test) and drinking Retro-Mutagen and blaming Donatello for not telling him that it was dangerous (the container of which had multiple signs on it telling Mikey specifically to not drink it) in "Mikey Gets Shellacne."
  • The Shredder adamantly refuses to take responsibility for any of his actions, whether it be the death of Tang Shen or Karai/Miwa being transformed into a snake mutant, blaming both on Splinter even though they're both clearly Shredder's own fault. Even when he's pumping multiple mind control worms into Karai's head, he still blames Splinter and the Turtles for "bringing such pain" upon her. Also, more recently, after Splinter's death is averted in "Earth's Last Stand", he states that it is because of Splinter that Karai is gone. As revealed in "The Super Shredder," all of this is because Shredder has genuinely convinced himself that he's done nothing wrong and that everything he does is Splinter's fault.
• Played for Drama in Teen Titans (2003) with Sixth Ranger Terra. Her paranoia that others will blame her for disasters that aren't her fault, as they have in the past, leads to her refusing to accept responsibility for disasters that actually are her fault. Indeed, this is the ultimate root of her entire Face–Heel Turn; she chooses to go to Slade after believing Beast Boy betrayed her (Robin just figured out her secret and didn't know it was supposed to be a secret) and then chooses of her own free will to repay her debt to Slade by infiltrating and betraying the Teen Titans. She even notes in the opening voiceover for "Aftershock Part 2" that she feels no guilt for betraying or seemingly murdering her former friends... and then gets upset when they return and treat her as a serious supervillain.
• Thomas & Friends:
  • In the 2015 special Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure Thomas causes a lot of accidents in the span of two days and lies about it claiming "it's not my fault!" when it clearly was, which seems to infuriate his Controller. He eventually learns his lesson by the end of the special.
• Timon & Pumbaa: In "Lemonade Stand-Off", Timon blames Pumbaa for the other animals not liking their lemonade and claims that he's not a good salesman. Despite the fact that Pumbaa was able to get the other animals to try their lemonade pretty easily, Timon is the one that MAKES the lemonade, and the animals only turned sour (no pun intended) on them AFTER THEY'D TASTED THE LEMONADE.
• Total Drama
  • Courtney rarely accepts her own failures, and when she does it's usually out of self-preservation rather than genuine remorse. Her profound lack of humility and constant excuses ultimately comes back to bite her in the ass.
  • In "3:10 to Crazytown", Duncan mentions that he picks on Harold because of how Harold got Courtney booted. Duncan did bully Harold to the extent that Courtney got eliminated as revenge.
  • In Island, Heather would sabotage other contestants with relish, but react with anger when they decided to get her back. When she swore revenge against Gwen for dumping Harold's red ant farm into her bed, Trent pointed out that Heather had read Gwen's diary out loud to the world the previous night; she brushed him off.
  • During his stay in the Playa Des Losers in Island, Noah seems to believe he was eliminated because he wasn't "bossy, manipulative or dangerous enough", and not because he spent most of his time snarking and refusing to help his team during the dodgeball challenge.
  • Amy always pins the blame on Samey for her mistakes.
• The Transformers: Megatron has a permanent case of denial when it comes to this.
  Megatron: We failed before through no fault of mine!
  — Heavy Metal War
• Transformers: Animated:
  • Played for Drama regarding what happened to Blackarachnia, aka Elita-1.
    • Sentinel Prime hates Optimus Prime because Optimus was unable to save Elita-1 from the giant spiders on an alien planet, even though it was Sentinel's idea to go to the planet and search for the energon that made the spiders huge in the first place.
      Sentinel: I'm sorry too. Sorry we ever went to that stupid planet in the first place. Besides, it's too late for apologies now, Optimus. Too late for all of us.
    • There are elements of this in Blackarachnia's behavior too. Even though she was just as eager to go to the planet and is strongly implied to have been responsible for talking Optimus into going, she lays all of the blame on Optimus. Oddly, she doesn't ever seem to hold as much of a grudge against Sentinel, even though it was his idea in the first place.
  • This trope is played straight in regard to both Meltdown and the Headmaster, both of whom turn to villainy because of their refusal to admit that they're at fault for their downfall.
    • Prometheus Black blames Professor Sumdac for his transformation into a mutant and the loss of his business, but he completely disregards the fact that he lost his funding because he failed to deliver a product and brought legal action on himself as a result of Colossus Rhodes' rampage when Black's bio-tech enhancements made him too aggressive. He also made the choice to experiment on Bumblebee's internal fluid sample after finding it in the aftermath of said rampage, and his careless mishandling of it in his lab caused his mutation into Meltdown.
    • Henry Masterson resents Professor Sumdac for rejecting his Headmaster Unit and firing him but ignores the fact that he should have thought twice before trying to introduce military technology to a Technological Pacifist. He also carelessly launched a rocket at the city during the demonstration of the Headmaster Unit and endangered civilian lives, which proves to Professor Sumdac that he's utterly irresponsible with technology and thus doesn't deserve to work at Sumdac Systems.
• Starscream has a tendency to this attitude in Transformers: Prime, especially in the season 3 episode "Thirst", where he openly blames Knock Out and Knock Out alone for a plan he came up with, with the latter only having put it in action after being persuaded.
  Starscream: [Towards Knock Out] Allow me to handle this... [Beat] IT'S KNOCK OUT'S FAULT!
  Knock Out: Precisely, my- WHAT?!
• Velma: This is a common flaw of Velma Dinkley's which is never admitting her mistakes:
  • She blames Daphne for ending their friendship and moving on with the hot girls, when it was her who cut things off first because of her jealousy.
  • After she calls the police and accuses Norville's dad of being the brain kidnapper based on circumstantial evidence, leading them to basically destroy Norville's home, she has the nerve to blame the police for it instead of herself. This causes Norville to finally see how terrible of a person she is, call her out on constantly mistreating him, and leave her.
• Wander over Yonder:
  • Brad Starlight thinks he's a hero who is following a prophecy to save a princess and marry her; but, he's actually her stalker who won't take no for an answer and gets beaten up, by her of all people. He refuses to admit he was wrong about everything and also places all the blame on Wander, despite that Wander was actively helping him but only stopped helping when Brad was revealed to be a delusional fraud and didn't do anything else after that.
  • It's one of Lord Hater's main flaws: he blames his losing status as a villain and lack of arsenal on par with Lord Dominator's on Peepers, rather than his wasting his resources on trivial things or his obsession with destroying Wander. Even when Peepers has to call him out on it, Hater either continues blaming Peepers or ignores him.
• Woody Woodpecker gets shanghaied by a pirate and his minion (1971's "Shanghai Woody") and goes about pecking holes all over the ship. The pirate captain goes about blaming his minion Ratt for it when he's the one who offered five pounds to Ratt to shanghai Woody.
• Yogi's Treasure Hunt: "This is all your fault, Muttley!" is Dick Dastardly's go-to catchphrase when one of his plans goes wrong.

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