Basic Trope: Characters verbally realize their conflict wouldn't have existed had one of them sought the help of the others.
- Straight: Alice and Bob want to defeat Emperor Evulz. Their friend Charles offers them a huge glowing bomb to blow up the Emperor's castle, but they decline. After Alice and Bob defeat Emperor Evulz, Alice realizes, "We could have avoided this ugly mess if we had just accepted the bomb."
- Exaggerated: It's a show with three seasons, and is all about Alice and Bob repeatedly attempting to defeat Emperor Evulz. Charles offers them his bomb several times per episode. At the end of the series, Emperor Evulz is defeated. Alice realizes, "We could have avoided this horrible and brutal TV show if we had taken that bomb on day one."
- Downplayed:
- Wilfred the wizard offers Alice and Bob a spellbook that would help to defeat Emperor Evulz. Bob realizes that they could have avoided part of the plot if Wilfred had helped.
- The way that they could have avoided the plot is not immediately obvious, and Alice only thinks of it six months after the fact.
- Justified:
- Charles had the solution, but Alice and Bob ignored him because he's a Cloudcuckoolander/Jerkass Hate Sink/dumb.
- Alice and Bob are the ones who are Cloudcuckoolanders/jerks/hate sinks/dumb and refuse to listen to Charles because of this, dragging everybody else in the cast (good and evil) down with them.
- Charles has not been right about anything so far, so how are Alice and Bob supposed to know that he would be right about this?
- Just because Charlie sees a way to "prevent" the plot (use the bomb), it doesn't means that it's a solution that would work (ex. Evulz' lieutenants get incredibly pissed that Evulz was killed with a bomb, becoming even more dangerous in their retaliation). Alice and Bob just don't feel like they can afford to take that chance.
- Alice and Bob assume that Evulz will have an anti-giant-glowing-bomb ward on his castle, because it's a well-known spell and it would be stupid not to have one. It's only after they defeat Evulz the hard way and get a chance to investigate the castle defenses that they find out the bomb would have worked after all.
- Alice and Bob didn't notice that Charlie offered them a bomb, or they forgot that he did once.
- Inverted:
- Alice and Bob want to get Charles and Diana to stop fighting, possibly as part of An Aesop that it's sometimes okay to lie. Alice invites Diana to a lawn party, and Bob invites Charles, but Alice and Bob don't tell Charles and Diana that the other is coming. At the end, Bob says, "It's a good thing we lied to our friends, Alice, or we'd have to try something else to reunite them."
- "You know, our plan A always fails, so maybe we should start with plan B from now on. We'll save ourselves a whole lot of headaches."
- Emperor Evulz realizes that he could have avoided his conflict with Alice and Bob by hiring better guards for his castle.
- Alice and Bob instantly accept Charlie's bomb when offered and use it to try to blow Evulz up. The bomb turns out to be completely worthless. Alice and Bob are forced to fight Evulz in a long and arduous action sequence.
- Subverted: When Alice and Bob realize that they could have avoided the plot, Charles confesses that his "bomb" was fake.
- Double Subverted: Although they could have used it to bash the Emperor's head in.
- Parodied: Charles has the power to instantly be able to tell others how they could have avoided something happening.
- Zig Zagged: Alice tells Bob, "This ugly mess would never have happened if we had accepted the bomb from Charles", to which Bob replies, "Well, it would have been a lot longer if we had taken that annoying orphan girl along with us."
- Averted:
- No one acknowledges a way that the plot could have been avoided.
- The plot could not possibly have been avoided.
- Enforced: "We need to illustrate our message that all wars are pointless. Let's throw in a way that the plot could have been avoided."
- Lampshaded:
- "What do you mean we "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot? You're just a sore loser!"
- "Welp, good to know that I was right about you guys being too stupid to see how badly that would've ended. You're on your own, brave heroes."
- Invoked: Charles wants Alice and Bob to fail for his own personal amusement, so he deliberately acts like a Cloudcuckoolander in the hope that they'll ignore him.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz defeats and imprisons Alice and Bob. Charles takes over as The Hero, using his bomb (of course) to assassinate the Emperor.
- Defied:
- Alice and Bob realize from the beginning that Charles may be on to something.
- Charles forces Alice and Bob to take the bomb, and accompanies them to the castle.
- Unknown to Alice, Bob and Charlie (but shown to the audience), Evulz takes steps to become inmune to Charlie's bomb. The long-winded, dangerous method it is, even if it technically was always plan "A".
- Discussed: "Maybe we should go back and get that bomb from Charles." "Don't be silly! How would that help us?"
- Conversed: "Why didn't they just take the bomb? That would have made a lot more sense!"
- Implied: Not applicable. (To fit this trope, the characters must acknowledge that they could have avoided the plot. If it's just implied and not spoken, then it isn't an example of this trope.)
- Deconstructed:
- Alice and Bob regret not accepting help from Charles. Meanwhile, Charles dislikes them for not accepting his bomb.
- Charles decides to go "screw it" and use the bomb himself to take Evulz down with him, making him a martyr while posthumously discrediting Alice and Bob.
- Charles does give the bomb...however, turns it it was more than Bob, Alice and Evulz could handle...resulting in a chain reaction of explosions and thousands of death or injured...which leads to Charles on the run.
- Reconstructed:
- Charles knows that Alice and Bob ignored him because he seemed crazy, and reassures them that it was no one's fault that they ignored him.
- Killing Evulz only solves the problem partially. Alice and Bob make sure that Charlie's sacrifice was not in vain, but they still think that Charlie didn't knew the whole picture.
- Played For Laughs: Charles repeatedly offers Alice and Bob the bomb as a Running Gag.
- Played For Drama: Alice and Bob die in the Emperor's dungeon, Charles and his bomb are long gone, and The Bad Guy Wins. A Downer Ending could have been avoided if Alice and Bob had only accepted help from Charles.
- Played For Horror:
- Charles tell Alice and Bob to not touch anything in the museum, especially that thing with the history of being cursed. They touch it. All of the deaths and mutilations that follow (because of the Curse they unleash) are strictly their fault, and Charlie makes damned sure they know it.
- Charlie tells Alice and Bob that they could have stopped Evulz with the bomb. Alice and Bob, who became quite fed up with the human race as a result of the conflict, make a pithy joke about not wishing to let a perfectly good bomb go to waste as they strap Charlie to the device and set it off.
- Charlie himself decides to demonstrate just how well the bomb could've worked in the death of Evulz by strapping both Alice and Bob to the bomb, angrily berating them for not listening to him, screaming how all of this was their fault and could've easily been avoided if they just listened for a few seconds.
You know, we "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot if you had just looked at the main page instead.
