Poor Communication Kills / Western Animation

• Adventure Time: Princess Bubblegum is pretty much the main catalyst of this trope within the show.
  • In "Slumber Party Panic", Princess Bubblegum makes Finn give a "Royal Promise" to never tell anyone about the horde of candy zombies approaching the Candy Kingdom. Finn assumes that it's okay to tell Jake what happened after the zombies are dealt with, but learns too late that a Royal Promise is pretty much magically-binding. Next thing he knows, the Gumball Guardians are threatening him with "trial by fire" (which they only downgrade to "trial by math" when Bubblegum pleads for leniency on Finn's behalf).
  • In "What Have You Done?", Princess Bubblegum needs the Ice King to howl with pain. She tells Finn and Jake that part, but not why. And then leaves them to guard him. She was called away at the last moment, but it wouldn't have been particularly hard to say, "A plague is affecting my land and I need his howls to cure it."
  • In "From Bad to Worse", there's another Zombie Apocalypse, and PB eventually gets bitten. Right before she turns, she tells them "just let Science do the work!", but turns before she can finish the sentence. Finn, Jake, and their remaining allies try desperately to synthesize a cure, which fails miserably as they have no idea what they are doing. Eventually, they find out in time Science is the name of a hyper-intelligent lab rat who is able to reproduce the cure.
  • In "Burning Low", after learning about Finn's new relationship with Flame Princess, she tries to warn he and Jake that FP's physical instability risks world-ending catastrophe if she became too excited. Unfortunately, her warning came in the form of a long and boring lecture that neither really understood. Initially, this leads to Jake and later Finn to assume she is jealous. Finn doesn't assume so until she comes to talk to him again and gives him a speech about what you want against responsability, before capping it as him being her hero. What she meant was in regards to Finn wanting a relationship with FP, but he had a responsability to Ooo and that he was her hero. Finn understandably takes it as PB talking about her responsabilities impeded her getting into a relationship with Finn (which he is technically not wrong about, especially when you take the events of a prior episode, "Too Young", into consideration where PB expressed a desire to remain young alongside Finn, but had to return to 18 due to Lemongrab running the Candy kingdom to the ground.) Some heartache along with Flame Princess and Finn nearly suffocating happens. Bubblegum's tendency to not explain herself properly is tied to how she is a surprisingly secretative person who is not afraid to go amoral means to protect her kingdom.
  • In "The Lich", Billy tells Finn that he needs the gems of power from the Princesses' crowns to help save the world from the Lich. Finn steals the gems from the crowns, going so far as to attack Princess Bubblegum, without ever explaining why. As a result, PB is too late when she warns him that "Billy" is really the Lich.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Rob's Biggest Fatal Flaw, in both The Future and The Inquisition.
• Archer: Archer's unfamiliarity with radio protocol leads to repeated confusion when Ray tries to guide him through disarming a bomb over a bad connection.
  Ray: [after Archer cuts a wire and the countdown speed increases] What were the last two letters?!
  Archer: "B" as in "Butthole"! And "M" as in "Mancy"!
  Ray: WHAT?!
  Lana: [clears throat] "M" as in what?
• As the Kangaroo Court episode shows, Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender does not have a future as a defense attorney. More specifically, he was put on trial for "crimes" his past life had committed, and when his friends Katara and Sokka coach him with various innocence proving facts, he sort of... spazzes out.
  • There's also the communication gap of life-or-death proportions in "The Phoenix King". Zuko is outraged at the rest of the Gaang's seemingly slacking off when Sozin's Comet is due any day. Turns out they forgot to tell him that they've figured the Fire Nation already rules the whole world so they might as well just wait until after the comet's come and gone before fighting the Fire Lord again. Zuko then tells them the Fire Nation is going to use the comet to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground, which he's slightly more justified in withholding from the rest as he assumed they were still planning to have the fight before the comet arrived.
    Aang: Why didn't you tell me about your dad's crazy plan before?
    Zuko: I didn't think I had to. I assumed you were still going to fight him before the comet. No one told me you decided to wait!
  • Thankfully, though, he at least manages to bridge said communication gap, because everyone takes Sozin's Comet way more seriously after that!
• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: The episode "Everything Is Wonderful" fits this trope to a T. All Tony Stark has to do was inform business rival Simon Williams that the latter's company is going under and Stark himself was only purchasing it to save it. Instead of doing this flat-out, he remained aloof, inattentive, unfeeling, and cold as Simon was practically weeping at his feet. Hank Pym called him out on it, and even though Stark knew what he was doing, it still didn't drive him to run after Simon as he stormed out in a huff. And then Simon gets transformed into a being of pure energy, driven only to destroy Stark for his perceived callousness.
• Quite a few episodes of The Backyardigans are driven by this trope.
  • A prime example is "The Snow Fort": Tyrone and Pablo play Mounties guarding the world's biggest snowball inside a snow fort, prepared to defend it at all costs from raiders, while Uniqua and Tasha play a ski rescue team looking for someone in need of rescue. The rescue team finds the Mounties' snow fort and conclude that someone's in trouble inside, while the Mounties spot the rescue duo and assume them to be raiders; conflict ensues.
  • Another prime example is in “Eureka”, which, oddly enough, involves the same combination of Backyardigans from the previous example. Pablo and Tyrone are pretending to be prospectors hunting for gold, and Uniqua and Tasha are pretending to be paleontologists hunting for a rare dinosaur skeleton. Once each group is made aware of the other’s presence, they assume that they’re also searching for the thing that they’re also hunting for, and it’s not until they actually confront each other and attempt to stake their claim on anything found in the area that they realize the truth. After they all have a good laugh over the misunderstanding, the two groups decide to join forces to help each other find the gold and dinosaur bones.
• Beavis And Butthead: In "Tired", Beavis at first believes that Butt-Head was joking when he said he'd push Beavis down the hill in the giant tire.
  Butt-Head: Shut up and get in the tire, dumbass.
  [Beavis climbs into the tire.]
  Beavis: Wait, Butt-Head, I'm not ready y-aah-aaah-wait a minute!
  [Butt-Head laughs as he watches Beavis roll down the hill uncontrollably.]
• Ben 10: During the episode "Hunted", even though Tetrax was only pretending to work for Vilgax, Tetrax already knows from working for him before that Vilgax is dangerous enough to destroy an entire planet, and now has confirmation that he's after the Omnitrix, a device that could allow a person to conquer the universe. Tetrax could have warned Ben that the most dangerous person in the universe is after him, which would give Ben ample time to prepare and to move somewhere safe. Instead, he merely leaves Ben a hover-board and wishes him luck. Even worse, Tetrax comments on Ben's inexperience with Diamondhead, noting that the form has many powers Ben has yet to discover. Tetrax would know, because Diamondhead is the same specias as Tetrax, meaning that Tetrax could give first-hand knowledge of all the form's powers and personally train Ben. Given Ben's fight with Vilgax in Alien Force, Diamondhead's full power is a clear threat to Vilgax. But despite his criticism, Textrax offers no pointers, leaving Ben so unprepared that he nearly loses the Omnitrix and his life once Vilgax becomes personally involved.
• In an episode of The Boondocks, Huey and Uncle Ruckus need to get a not-so-friendly security guard out of a building that's about to explode, with Ruckus interrogating him for the password to the security system. Ruckus doesn't realize that the guard was telling him the password was "eatmyass" until Huey figures it out moments later.
• In episode eight of The Boys: Diabolical, after Homelander horrifically botches his first mission, he takes Black Noir's silence as condemnation, leading to Homelander destroying the facility they're in and making a bad situation worse. It's only after Black Noir kills the only remaining witness and writes out a cover story on a notepad that Homelander realizes he had nothing to worry about.
• In one episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, after a requested examination by Star Command, XR is diagnosed with mental fatigue. His superior sends him out on a mandated vacation that turns out to be a trap set up by XR's evil older brother, XL, so he can capture XR, switch heads with him, infiltrate Star Command disguised as XR, and plant a bomb. All of this could have been prevented if one of the LGM's didn't make a spelling error when XR had "metal fatigue" all this time.
• A downplayed case since nothing goes wrong as a result but in the Code Lyoko episode "Zero Gravity Zone", XANA unleashes a gravity-reversal scheme on the same day as Ulrich's soccer match. When Jeremie announces the need for a Lyoko mission, Ulrich insists he can't miss his game. Incensed and under the impression that Ulrich is skipping the mission to be a glory hound, Jeremie berates Ulrich severely enough to drive the older boy from the room in a complete funk. Afterwords, Odd reveals that Ulrich's father is constantly berating him for his poor grades and the only way Ulrich has any hope of pleasing him is when he plays soccer; to his credit, Jeremie feels terrible and later apologizes sincerely.
• In one episode of Chowder a rat that ordered a roast from the main cast burst out of his rat hole snarling and lunging at them. It's not until the very end after a harrowing car chase that he tells them that he is their customer.
  • Another episode had the gang selling food at a sports game. Truffles complains that no one has scored yet, but Mung tells her that there is no scoring in the game. Truffles assumes he’s being figurative and blows him off and tries to get one of the teams to score. She succeeds, but it turns out that if one teams wins, a Bowser-like creature throws the stadium the game was being held at and all in there in a giant crash can. Mung berates Truffles, even though most of this situation was his own fault for not explaining the whole situation.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Double D has a recurring problem with this, in part due to a mix of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and Cannot Spit It Out.
  • In "Dim Lit Ed", Edd organies a scavenger hunt to improve the average IQ of the cul-de-sac kids, but when they, along with the other Eds automatically assume the prize is a jawbreaker, he neglects to spell it out for them till the very end what the prize actually is, resulting in him receiving a thrashing. It's implied he meant for the prize to be a secret, but the kids seemed motivated into doing the scavenger hunt, even if he would have to tell them later that it wasn't a Jawbreaker.
  • In "The Day the Ed Stood Still", he and Eddy dress Ed up like a monster, and Ed soon becomes convinced he really has become a monster and goes on a rampage through the cul-de-sac. Not once does Double D try to explain to the terrified kids that the "monster" is just Ed in a costume; instead, he just acts like everyone already knows.
• In one episode of Family Guy where Joe is caught cheating on his wife, Bonnie, Joe weakly attempts to justify his cheating by saying Bonnie cheated on him when she was in Paris because Peter told him about it. Lois interjects by saying that Bonnie thought about cheating but she never actually did it. The entire situation came to be all because Peter wasn't fully paying attention to Lois.
  Joe: DAMMIT, PETER!
  Peter: Now, hold on. In my defense, it is my experience that I am generally correct about most things.
• In one episode of Futurama, Lrrr attacks Earth to demand that they show him the final episode of a 1000-year-old TV show, whose broadcast was interrupted. But all he says is "We demand McNeil", referring to the show's protagonist, Jenny McNeil. Earth's current president is also named McNeil, and he understandably panics and declares war in self-defence. Thousands are killed, the Hubble Space Telescope is destroyed, and President McNeil is eventually kidnapped and brought to Lrrr... who angrily vaporises him, thinking Earth is trying to pull a fast one on him when they seriously had no reason to suspect he was after anyone else. Only at this point does Lrrr do what he should have done from the start, and produces a picture of Jenny McNeil, at which point Fry realises what he actually wants.
• The relationship between Rex and his brother Cesar in season 3 of Generator Rex goes downhill because Cesar is too tight-lipped to explain why he is cooperating with Black Knight and helping her to collect the Meta-Nanites. He's planning to give that power to Rex.
• In Gravity Falls, the Author knows that the gravitational rift breaking could allow Bill Cipher to enter reality and conquer it. However, he tells Dipper not to tell Stan or Mabel about the interdimensional rift. This leads to disaster when Mabel gives it to a possessed Blendin Blandin in "Dipper and Mabel vs the Future", not knowing the importance of the object and setting up the three-part series finale.
• In Invincible (2021), Mark and Amber's relationship is strained by the fact that Mark's hiding his secret identity from her, and she throws a fit when he leaves during an attack. His best friend Will begs him for help after his boyfriend Rick is kidnapped when he goes out for drinks to help everyone calm down, but Mark's too distracted trying to deal with Amber and writes it off to go try to reason with her. As a result, Mark shows up too late to save Rick from being turned into a cyborg by a Mad Scientist, Will almost loses an arm, and to further rub salt in the wound Amber reveals later on that she knew all along, meaning the whole crisis could have been avoided if she was just a little more understanding with him.
  • Played for Laughs earlier on when Allen, an alien representative from the Coalition of Planets who attacked the Earth once before as an initiation test shows up and Mark has to explain to him mid-fight that he's on the wrong planet. Allen shows up once more in the season finale and tries to warn Mark about the Earth being flagged for conquest by the Viltrumites (i.e. his dad), but by that point Mark's well aware. He apologizes and says that if he had checked his records he could've warned him earlier, but Mark comforts him.
• Justice League:
  • A perfect example shows up in the "Fury" two-parter. Aresia was induced into the Amazons and trained in their code after her homeland was not only ravaged by male soldiers, but the ship she was on was attacked and sank by male pirates. Her life was saved by a male captain, and he got her to Themyscira before dying; while Hippolyta gave him a proper burial and took her in, she withheld his role in Aresia's survival because she felt he wasn't important. Over the years, Aresia's hatred of men festers to the point she attempts Gendercide, and only then does Hippolyta reveal this information; by that point, Aresia's beyond caring, reasoning that one man's act of kindness doesn't change anything, and continues with her plan.
  • In "Eclipsed", the whole thing could've been avoided if Mophir had just simply warn the soldiers in the cave about the dangers of the black stone it contain during the intro. Instead, he started a fight that he lost, one of the soldiers got his hands on the stone, and the evil snake spirit got free.
  • In "The Terror Beyond", Solomon Grundy has been "recruited" by Aquaman and Doctor Fate to help prevent a Cthluhu-Expy from coming unsealed. Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl come to stop them, believing they were up to no good. Rather than explaining the situation, Fate teleports Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Supes, and Grundy across the globe to have them fight it out, while he gets his ass handed to him by Hawkgirl. Great job, Doc.
  • Aquaman himself screws things up royal more than a few times by not bothering to, and often outright refusing to, explain what's going on due to his haughty royal arrogance and disdain for the "Surface Dwellers". In "The Enemy Below", him not bothering to try and communicate with the surface world gets him usurped temporarily and nearly causes The End of the World as We Know It, and had he not outright refused to tell Superman what's going on in "The Terror Beyond", they could have easily let Doctor Fate finish his ritual.
  • Near the end of the second season of Unlimited, the Watchtower's energy cannon is hacked into and used to blow up the headquarters of the Government Conspiracy, also destroying a good portion of a small town, for the sake of making the League look bad. The League goes out to help the survivors, and a man asks The Flash why they're helping when they shot at them in the first place. Instead of saying "Our satellite was hijacked by an enemy," Flash stutters out, "We didn't... I..."
  • Then there was the time Metron stopped time to warn Luthor not to continue in his attempt to revive Brainiac, but neglected to explain why, so Luthor took it to mean that Metron didn't want him to ally with Brainiac again and brushes him off. What Luthor didn't know and Metron refused to explain was that because Darkseid died in the same place, he was also a valid target for the ritual, and Tala would take her revenge on Luthor for using her as a Human Sacrifice by reviving Darkseid- something that Luthor genuinely doesn't want. Luthor even calls him out on it, but Metron gives a vague comment that makes it sound like Darkseid's return instead of Brainiac's is only the most likely option, not an absolute. Lex then threatens to shoot him if Metron doesn't help fix things (note, Metron is a god, being held up with a gun).
• King of the Hill: The episode "Cops and Robert" has Hank accidentally stealing a man's wallet after a misunderstanding where he thought the man took his. Hank does try to leave a message over the phone saying that he wants to give the man his wallet back, but the way he words it only makes him sound like he's coming over to raid his house. This results in the accidental victim snapping and chasing after Hank and his friends with a metal bat.
• The Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness episode "Shoot the Messenger". An Irrevocable Message plot gets kicked off when Po signs his autograph as "Never surrender!" on a peace treaty. This happens firstly because Tigress directs the messenger to Po's autograph line before he can say why he's there, and secondly because he then stays in the line without making any further attempt to explain things.
• In Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, Jumba discovers that Stitch is malfunctioning early on, and tells Pleakley. The two of them proceed to hide this information from everyone else until the very end of the movie for no reason. Consequently, Lilo and Stitch get into several fights due to Stitch losing control of himself, Nani gets increasingly frustrated as several of her appliances suddenly go missing (Jumba uses them as parts for the machine to fix Stitch), and Stitch eventually concludes that he's become too dangerous and flies off in the space ship containing the machine that can fix him without knowing that there is a machine that can fix him on the ship.
• In one episode of Little Wizards, the gnomes of the Woolly Woods, who have spent years living in fear of a giant named Gormalu, finally talk to him, and he explains that he isn't a real giant, but a cursed human youth who has been desperately trying to beg them for one of their magical golden apples, which will cure his curse, ever since the Evil Sorcerer cursed him in the first place. When the stunned king of the gnomes asks why Gormalu didn't tell them this, Gormalu points out that they always ran away whenever they saw him, despite his pleas.
• The Loud House: At the end of "Washed Up" when Flip is sailing everyone back to shore, Lily gets a surprise visit from the legendary Lake Eddy monster Plessy; she babbles to alert Lincoln she saw him, but Lincoln misinterprets her as wanting to go back to the deserted island, and she frowns in disgust.
• Megas XLR:
  • The Ultra Cadets enlist Jamie to save their world from a beast rampaging on it, not bothering to tell him the one thing he shouldn't do is throw it into a volcano. Afterwards, the empowered beast emerges and proceeds to decimates their planet again.
  • In "A Clockwork Megas", Coop frees "brainwashed robots" from being exterminated in a prison. Unfortunately, said prisoners happened to be the universe's most dangerous criminals, since the warden didn't bother to have taken the time to explain the situation to the heroes, instead of trying to have them annihilated.
• This ends up being part of the overarching plot of the second season of Milo Murphy's Law. An alien race is in danger, and they determine that Milo Murphy is the best candidate to save their world from destruction. Rather than directly coming to him and explaining the situation, they opt to abduct him. This is partly justified by fear - Milo being a Walking Disaster Area, and the danger facing them being like him amplified to a terrible degree - and isn't helped by malfunctioning translators causing him to think they want to eat him. Nonetheless, Milo's a Nice Guy, and given that he helped them anyway, they could've saved themselves a lot of trouble.
• Monkie Kid: A lot of the conflict with Lady Bone Demon in seasons 2 and 3 would not have happened had Monkey King been open with MK. Instead of telling him about Lady Bone Demon from the start and his plan to find something they could use against her, he lies about going on vacation and finding a solution before she could rise in power, which ended up being pointless as MK learned about her anyway and the lack of contact with Monkey King made him start to doubt himself. Then in season 3, he has MK and friends join him to find the rings that will recreate the Samadhi Fire, neglecting to mention that Mei, being descended from Ao Lie, who unintentional absorbed a part of the fire, had the secret fourth ring inside her, and had planned to find a way to take the ring without hurting her and absorb the fire into himself so he could fight Lady Bone Demon. He only mentions this when his plan, which he admits he was partially winging the whole time, falls apart at the end. Everyone, even MK, tells him that his plan was terrible from the start.
• In My Adventures with Superman, Clark spent most of his life having an Identity Breakdown and putting mental blocks on his powers because his father Jor-El's Virtual Ghost couldn't speak English.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: This is the Accidental Aesop of "Fugitive Flowers", an episode mostly devoted to What Measure Is a Non-Cute?. While the Crabnasties do look much uglier than the Flories, a big part of what led the ponies to side with the latter was the former's relentless efforts at ripping a trail of destruction through Dream Valley in an attempt to find the Flories and their refusal to stop and explain who they were and what they were doing.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: A good portion of the conflicts that happen throughout the show can be attributed to this trope. A few notable examples:
    • "Bridle Gossip": Zecora attempts to warn the cast that they've wandered into a patch of magical plants. Unfortunately, because she insists on rhyming everything, it ends up sounding like a threat, and when the effects of the plants kick in the cast blames Zecora for cursing them. It doesn't help that that they're already somewhat scared of her. It could, however, be justified on the basis that she was new in Ponyville and was still learning the local language.
    • "Swarm of the Century": Pinkie actually knows exactly how to rid the town of the Parasprites, but fails to explain this to anyone else outside of making non-sequitur comments that only make sense in context of the final explanation, causing a series of other problems when the others think she's just being Pinkie Pie and ignore her.
    • "A Bird in the Hoof": The episode's plot could have been entirely avoided entirely if Princess Celestia had simply mentioned that Philomena was a phoenix, though the fair share goes to Fluttershy for not asking.
    • "Party of One": Pinkie Pie interrogates Spike to find out why the other ponies are avoiding her after-birthday party for Gummy. Her aggression freaks him out and he takes her demand ("tell me that my friends are avoiding me because they don't like my parties and THEY DON'T WANT TO BE MY FRIENDS ANYMORE!") literally. She takes it as confirmation of her fears and becomes bitter and miserable. These two are already experts at Comically Missing the Point, so it's not really much of a change from the usual for either of them to act like that. Then it becomes really poorly understood for Pinkie herself, when she finds out they planned a party for her in her honor which she accuses of being a farewell party; but it turns out the party was for Pinkie's own birthday.
    • "Luna Eclipsed" has the problem of Luna's Fish out of Temporal Water-ness interfering with trying to reintegrate with modern society. Not helping matters is (once again) Pinkie Pie, who riles up the younger ponies by screeching "IT'S NIGHTMARE MOON!" and running, despite knowing she's not evil anymore and that she's trying to fit in. Things could have been solved earlier if Pinkie had mentioned something to Luna about it before, instead of after Luna decides to cancel Nightmare Night.
    • "A Canterlot Wedding": Twilight Sparkle notices her brother's bride acting suspiciously in a number of ways, but the most sensitive way she can express this is to burst in on the wedding rehearsal shouting that "SHE'S EVIL!" which only makes everyone turn against her. The lack of messages given to Twilight about the wedding early on due to heightened security, making her find out about the wedding just a day or two away from the actual wedding might have contributed to this. Twilight's lack of evidence might also be justified in the sense that she had no possible way of collecting any in this case, let alone any that could not be contradicted. Especially annoying because the episode immediately prior featured the lesson "Don't jump to conclusions'' and Twilight should have had it fresh in her mind.
    • "One Bad Apple": The entire plot of the episode could have been resolved in the first 10 minutes easily if the CMC had just talked to Applejack about it to begin with, which Sweetie Belle repeatedly tried to get the others to do to start with.
    • "Games Ponies Play": The cast mistakes a random tourist for the inspector they were supposed to host because they didn't think to ask for her name.
    • Celestia seems to have a knack for having poor communication. The fourth season finale has one of her schemes fail and, in a desperate move, she has Twilight absorb the alicorns' powers into herself. The problem is that she then forbids Twilight from telling the others about what happened, which includes the Face–Heel Turn of one of their friends. This, as you might guess, leads into a Near-Villain Victory that could have easily been avoided.
    • This seems to be a borderline Central Theme for at least the first half of Season 7, as "All Bottled Up"^note Starlight literally bottles up her anger and doesn't tell Trixie how upset she's making her. The bottled anger eventually breaks out and infects other ponies who proceed to berate Trixie until Starlight confesses her anger., "Rock Solid Friendship"^note Pinkie's interference gets in the way of a potential friendship between Maud and Starlight, and Starlight doesn't tell her this until Maud's already left., "Forever Filly"^note Rarity tries to spend the day with Sweetie Belle by doing all the things Sweetie Belle loved doing when she was younger, unaware that Sweetie Belle's grown out of them. Sweetie eventually snaps at her over it., "Parental Glidance"^note Rainbow is increasingly annoyed and embarrassed by her parents' overenthusiastic cheering until she explodes at them. "A Royal Problem"^note The Royal Sisters become increasingly bitter at how easily the other seems to have it compared to them and their lack of appreciation for each other. It takes a forced role swap for them to reconcile. and "Triple Threat"^note Spike ends up inviting Thorax and Ember to Ponyville on the same day and, fearful of a potential Dragons vs Changelings war because of their opposite personalities, tries to keep them separated throughout the day. They end up taking offense at the attempts when the truth comes out and ultimately help each other with their respective problems. all have conflicts that could have been avoided if everyone involved had just tried to talk things out rationally in advance before things boiled over.
    • "Shadow Play": Because Stygian wasn't open about feeling excluded from the Pillars of Equestria, or about his plan to copy their artifacts, and because the Pillars immediately assumed the worst about their friend and cast him out, Stygian ended up being corrupted by an evil force into the Pony of Shadows, and both he and the Pillars ended up sealed in Limbo centuries.
    • My Little Pony: Equestria Girls shows that all the human versions of the Mane Six suffer from this, as Sunset Shimmer is able to destroy their friendship simply by dropping a few pieces of misinformation that could easily be cleared up. Instead, they all assume the worst of each other, and it takes several years and the influence of Twilight before they think to actually talk to each other about what happened. After that, it takes about five minutes before they make up.
    • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, the Humane Five start a band, but start to squabble over issues like Rainbow hogging the spotlight, Rarity's focus on the costumes, etc. Sunset notices this, but doesn't feel like she's been a part of the group long enough to speak up. This allows the Dazzlings to take advantage of the tensions and achieve a Near-Villain Victory, though luckily Sunset realizes what's going on and stops the fighting. If they had simply worked the issues out when they first appeared, the Dazzlings could have been stopped earlier.
• In The Owl House, this is a major aspect of the Clawthorne sisters' backstories. In the season one finale ("Young Blood, Old Souls"), we learn that when they were teenagers, Lilith sought membership in the prestigious Emperor's Coven, and Edalyn (having Big Sister Worship at the time) likewise wanted to join. Except there was only one slot remaining and the two would have to face one another in a Wizard Duel for it. Knowing that she'd have no chance of defeating her prodigy of a younger sister in a fair fight, Lilith laid a curse on Edalyn in her sleep the night before the match. Except if Lilith actually talked to Eda instead of immediately running off at the news, she'd have learned that her sister was going to let her have the position right then and there, knowing that Lilith wanted it far more than her. Due to Lilith avoiding Eda, the latter was only able to communicate this the day of the duel. This wouldn't have been too bad, except instead of temporarily weakening her, the curse ended up being a permanent one that forcibly transforms Eda into a mindless beast if she doesn't regularly medicate against it. Lilith would go on to emotionally distance herself from Eda out of guilt, while Eda herself wouldn't learn the reason why her sister had changed so much until decades later.
• The Penguins of Madagascar episode "Maurice at Peace" opens with the Zoo receiving a half corrupted fax implying that Maurice only has 24 hours to live. Skipper insists that they make absolutely sure this is true, citing this trope as the reason.
  Skipper: Remember what happened to Manfredi and Johnson?
  Kowalski: The order was to smother them with affection.
  Private: But we only heard the first half...
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In "Unfair Science Fair Redux", Candace jumps to the conclusion that her best friend is dumping her when she gets the text message "CYL BFF". Cryptic, but one might expect a teenager glued to her phone to know that it meant "Call you later, best friends forever" and not "Candace, you loser. Bad friendships fail". Though this could be explained by Candace being flighty, high-strung and insecure.
  • In the episode "The Fast and the Phineas", Perry takes Mom's modified car through a car wash, which takes off all the modifications, leading Mom to believe the boys washed her car which she is delighted about. When Phineas and Ferb come home, Mom says to them vaguely, "I saw what you did today." Phineas doesn't notice her nor the car, and because of said vague statement, he believes she saw him on TV at the race and asks, "Yeah? How'd you like it?" to which she vaguely approves of. To top it off, he is not even confused one bit. Not helping is the fact Candace was just staring, slack-jawed and said nothing to clarify what happened.
  • In "That Sinking Feeling", Isabella is hit with this when Phineas invites her on the romantic cruise. From her perspective, she assumed Phineas has asked her out on a date and finally has the chance to hang with her crush, but in reality, he was inviting her to be a member of the ship's crew, and the cruise is actually for Baljeet and Mishti. The instant Isabella realizes who the cruise is really for, she's not at all happy about it.
  • In "Picture This", Candace realizes she can bust her brothers by using the photo transporter they made to teleport Linda to them so she's literally in the project. Upon taking Linda's photo, she repeatedly looks at the picture and shows it to Linda while saying "Aha!" over and over; Linda misinterprets this as Candace giving up her busting obsession and finally getting into the spirit of things.
  • In "Just Our Luck", Candace bakes a pie for Phineas and Ferb's "Bust Day". Phineas thinks she said "Bus Day", which isn't for a week.
  • In one episode, we're introduced to Peter the Panda's nemesis, Professor Mystery, who is angry at Doofenshmirtz because Peter the Panda is thwarting Doof instead of him (and before you ask, yes this is played exactly like a love who's angry about being cheated on). Doof explains that his problem is his lack of communication because "mystery is his allure." Peter the Panda doesn't know what he's thwarting or why so he's not interested.
• The Powerpuff Girls: In "Pet Feud", Professor warns the girls that BEEBO can only be fed once, and only once. They take the advice by heart; unfortunately, they fail to inform the other girls that BEEBO already ate, and thus, each girl feeds him once.
• Primal (2019): Spear is a caveman who communicates through grunts and growls, while Fang is a Tyrannosaur that makes the same noises any large reptile would. As a result, the two cannot communicate with each other outside of physical gestures. This normally doesn't have a huge detriment, but it becomes one when Spear encounters Red, a more ferocious dinosaur that sees humans as food. Fang tries desperately to the the two to stop fighting, neither understanding her actions. The end result is Fang accidently killing Red, who became her mate, causing Spear to react in horror when he realizes why she was trying to stop the fighting.
• Ready Jet Go!:
  • In "Mindy's Weather Report", Mindy, Sean, and Sydney try to tell Jet that there's a storm on Saturn, not in Boxwood Terrace. Jet keeps interrupting them, leads the entire neighborhood into believing that a storm is coming, and encourages them to prepare for nothing. It's only when Celery takes the kids to space that he realizes that the storm is not on Earth.
  • In "Detective Mindy", Mr. Peterson compares the kitchen counter (where his wife's sunglasses went missing) to a black hole. Mitchell doesn't ask his dad what he means by that, and thinks the kitchen counter is really a black hole, which drives the plot of the episode.
• In an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle upon hearing that the local bank is about to be robbed, the titular duo decide to go and warn everyone, but as soon as they run into the bank, Bullwinkle blurts out, "Hey! This is a stick-up!", resulting in everyone opening fire and Rocky and Bullwinkle. Rocky is just barely able to get them to stop.
• Rick and Morty:
  • Rick's efforts to become The Patriarch of the family become undone due to some misplaced words on telling Beth on whether she's a clone or not. Easily he could have said she wasn't and end it at that until he drove her paranoia further by saying she thinks would have to be terminated because she fully convinced herself that she's a clone. This sets off the events that have her go back to Jerry and they reconcile while Beth feels at ease regardless of whether or not she is a clone, leaving Rick incredibly pissed off.
  • In Season 7, Rick's Hive Mind ex-girlfriend Unity invades Earth to get his attention so he doesn't ruin his life over revenge against his Evil Doppelgänger again. Unfortunately, since she dumped him he screened her calls and acts hostile towards her when she tries to explain the situation in person(s). With his therapist mediating, Rick's forced to confront the fact that he handled the situation badly only after things spiraled out of control and the two part on bad terms after saving the Earth.
• Robot Chicken: A mother tries to teach her daughter Rosa what brittle means. This was because, she was curious to why her grandmother was walking so slow. In order to make the comparison, the mother said that being brittle is like being peanut brittle. Rosa misinterprets it as thinking she was made of the actual food of the same name. Hilarity Ensues.
  Rosa: Where's the peanut brittle, I want the peanut brittle!!!
• Samurai Jack: In the fifth season, Scaramouche discovers that Jack has lost his sword and immediately rushes off to tell Aku. He does and the two then track down Jack to kill him for good, only to find that Jack's regained his sword in the time since Scaramouche last saw him, meaning he has the ability to kill Aku again. Aku is extremely unimpressed with this revelation and responds by blowing up Scaramouche's head as punishment.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks:
  • "Much Ado About Boimler": The whole subplot aboard the Osler occurs because the medical specialist doesn't communicate any expectations to his passengers about how long their trip is supposed to last. The ship's spooky atmosphere and spartan accommodations don't help. It's unknown if the passengers themselves bothered to ask when they're supposed to arrive at The Farm, but, when Boimler does, the Edosian disregards the question.
  • "Veritas":
    • The ensigns believe that they are on trial for their lives and the lives of their senior officers. They eventually learn that they are actually at a party that is meant to celebrate the rescue of the person that seemed to be holding the trial. The dark atmosphere of the situation and them almost being killed by eels several times didn't help, nor did the senior officers failing to explain anything to them beforehand.
    • Tendi ended up on the mission after being asked if she's "the Cleaner" (a member of the black-ops squad) and she replies that she is (assigned to clean up the briefing room). Inverted in that, because she either didn't pay attention properly during the briefing or wasn't fully told what her job was for the black-ops mission, she didn't know what her "thing" was that she was supposed to do (beam the team back to the ship) when ordered, and instead just beats the crap out of a group of rushing Romulan guards while the other members of the black-ops team look on with surprise and confusion. Basically a large number of Romulans either got severely injured and/or died because Tendi wasn't given the proper information!
• In the Star Trek: Prodigy episode "Crossroads", the crew of the Protostar end up encountering Admiral Janeway and her crew, giving them the opportunity to explain their situation. However, a series of incidents prevent them from doing so:
  • Jankom Pog meets Noum, a fellow Tellerite that's part of the crew, and is caught off-guard when he learns that the word "Pog" is actually something of a Fantastic Slur meaning "runt".
  • Gywn learns that her father, the Diviner, is onboard Janeway's ship, the Dauntless, making her suspicious of the crew and think they're working together.
  • Dai ends up encountering Janeway, but Frex, a Starfleet officer the Protostar crew encountered a few episodes prior, beats him to the punch and accuses them of being terrorists that destroyed the comm relay he was on, forcing Dai to flee without explaining the situation.
• Steven Universe:
  • Happens with most characters, but the most notable examples come from Peridot. This trope is arguably her biggest character flaw, and one of the main reasons for her conflicts with the Crystal Gems (and anyone else for that matter). Even when she's trying to be nice, she is extremely bad at explaining herself in ways that others can understand. This trope actually serves as the climax of her redemption arc, where she fails to explain that she's contacting Homeworld not to betray the group and leave the Earth to perish to the Cluster, but to change the mind of one of their leaders and gain assistance in destroying said entity.
  • In The Movie, Steven's clumsy attempts at calming down an almost-redeemed Spinel backfire when it makes it look like he only tried to help her to get her to shut the injector down and now that his planet was safe, he was either going to reboot her again or worse, abandon her completely. What follows is a visceral meltdown where she projects all her self-loathing on Steven, assuming that he doesn't and can't love her because she's too damaged to be loved, ending with her trying to bait him into rebooting her again and when that fails, trying to kill him. The meltdown only ends when she finally acknowledges that she doesn't actually know why she wants to hurt someone who's both trying to help her and wasn't actually responsible for her trauma in the first place.
• Parodied in The Simpsons, when Fat Tony and his mob come to kill Homer in one episode, they find themselves under fire from an unknown sniper. Attempting to get a visual on their assailant, Fat Tony asks Johnny Tightlips if he saw the shooter. Unfortunately, Johnny "sees alotta things". Which isn't exactly that helpful in the current situation.
  • In another episode, Johnny Tightlips has been shot during a gunfight:
    Legs: Johnny Tightlips, where'd they hit ya?
    Johnny: I ain't sayin' nothin'.
    Legs: But what'll I tell the doctor?
    Johnny: Tell him to suck a lemon.
• South Park combined this with Political Overcorrectness once. The boys were trying to tell their parents, etc. that they were weirded out by Mr. Garrison's new lifestyle choice. The parents thought their use of "gay" was a slur aimed at homosexuals; the boys' used the word "gay" to mean Mr. Garrison is openly performing flagrant sexual acts in front of the entire class.
  • It doesn't help that when Mr. Garrison and his partner, Mr. Slave, are asked to make a speech in front of the parents, they're intentionally trying to be as offensive as possible with their homosexuality as part of a scheme for Mr. Garrison to goad the faculty into discrimination so he could get rich sueing them. He becomes increasingly frustrated as the audience can't stop talking about how "brave" they're being.
    • And just to top it off - Mr. Garrison and Mr. Slave are subsequently sent to the same "Rehabilitation Camp" as the boys had been sent to, since they "obviously [couldn't] tolerate your own behavior!"
  • There was also another episode, "Raisins", where Wendy broke up with Stan. Stan gets Jimmy to tell her that she is a "continuing source of inspiration to him". Unfortunately, Jimmy gets stuck on the first syllable of "continuing", so it sounds like he's saying "you are a cunt". Wendy is offended and walks away, and only then can Jimmy finish the sentence. Maybe not a good idea to send the boy with the ghastly stutter on this errand.
  • Subverted in "The F Word". When the boys write "fags get out!" to get rid of the obnoxiously loud Harley bikers, the town demands an explanation to why they wrote hate speech against homosexuals. The boys explain they were referring to the bikers and the whole misunderstanding is solved in a few minutes. However, the town still has to resolve the issue by the boys appealing to the dictionary's supervisors along with the obnoxious bikers.
  • The seires loves to play this for laughs. There's an episode-long example in which Subway spokesman Jared confesses that he only lost so much weight because of his aides, which everyone interprets as AIDS. By the end of the episode, he's angrily muttering to himself that he doesn't understand why everyone hates him for offering to give aides/AIDS to children, while literally beating a dead horse.
• Invoked in the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Chocolate With Nuts" with a character that is so insanely enthusiastic about the prospect of buying some chocolate from door-to-door salesmen Spongebob and Patrick that he scares them away for the entire episode, both afraid that they've pressed his Berserk Button instead. "CHOCOLAAATE!"
  • "Good Ol' Whatshisname" has two examples — first Mr. Krabs tells SpongeBob and Squidward to find out their customers' names, having read in a book that doing so will make them more likely to visit the Krusty Krab often. Squidward isn't interested in this, so Mr. Krabs turns it into a contest. "The employee who learns more names wins this," he says as he holds up a brochure. Squidward assumes that he was referring to the cruise vacation depicted in the brochure, but he would have remained disinterested in the contest if he realized that Mr. Krabs was literally presenting the brochure as the actual prize. Regardless, SpongBob and Squidward are tied, and Mr. Krabs points out a mystery guy whose name is unknown even to SpongeBob (who records the customers' names in a book). Squidward comes up to the guy and asks for his name. The guy responds, "What Zit Tooya". Unfortunately, it sounds like, "What's it to ya?" Squidward asks for his name again, this time under the pretense that he's entering it into a sweepstakes. Tooya gives his name again, but Squidward still misunderstands and resorts to stealing his wallet. In the end, by the time Squidward finds Tooya's name, the police arrests him for both the theft and running a stop sign as he made his getaway, and it isn't until Mr. Krabs visits him in jail when the misunderstanding about the brochure comes to light.
  • In "Tea At The Treedome", SpongeBob does ask Sandy for water, but Sandy assumes he means water for the flowers he brought.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
  • Ahsoka Tano suffers from this after getting framed for multiple murders, organizing a bombing of the Jedi Temple and conspiring with the enemy. Due to a series of unlikely events, any outside observers are led to believe that she is guilty. Inexplicably, she fails to tell anyone the complete chain of events from her point of view, despite multiple opportunities. Had she done so, it would have cast serious doubts on her guilt, and even a prejudiced prosecutor, not to mention the Jedi Order, would have wanted to interview/interrogate Barriss Offee and Asajj Ventress before ever putting Ahsoka on trial.
  • Ahsoka does it again in the final season when Darth Maul flat-out tells her that Anakin is being groomed by Darth Sidious, but she believes him to be either mistaken or lying and the two come to blows. Even though she could've told the Jedi about it, her distrust of them allows the Revenge of the Sith to go off without a hitch. Although to be fair, they were too far away and too late to have any real impact as Order 66 occurred just a few hours later.
• Thomas & Friends: In "Train Stops Play", Stepney is chased down by some cricketers in an old car named Caroline. Stepney's driver sees them speeding and honking frantically at him and tells Stepney to go faster, assuming they want a race. It isn't until they reach the next station and Caroline has broken down that they realize the cricketers were just trying to retrieve a ball that landed in one of Stepney's trucks.
• This puts everything into its Darkest Hour in DuckTales (2017). In the episode "Last Crash of the Sunchaser", Scrooge McDuck finally tells everyone the truth about the disappearance of Della Duck and her theft of the Spear of Selene. However, things turn sour as Huey, Dewey and Louie accuse Scrooge of not trying to save Della due to being a cheapskate, and Scrooge is too angered to tell them that he actually spent a significant fraction of his fortune trying to find her. This leaves Scrooge helpless when everyone abandons him just as Magica DeSpell makes her grand return.
• Total Drama: Deconstruction. Part of the reason things between Sky and Dave get so bad is the fact that Dave won't listen to what Sky is trying to tell him, and Sky does not directly tell him the reasons she does not want to date him. Sky and Dave both genuinely like each other, the problem is that Dave is coming on to her a little strong; while Sky does like Dave, she has a boyfriend at home she plans to break up with, and she wants to focus on the game and feels dating Dave would distract her. Their lack of communication therefore causes their relationship to deteriorate. To Sky's credit, when she and Dave were talking, she tried to explain that she does like him, but Dave interrupts her, saying they should just see where things go, and before Sky can tell Dave she has a boyfriend, Chris announce the challenge. The next few episodes, Sky foolishly thinks that Dave knows that she does not want to date someone while they're in the game, while Dave tries to do different things to get closer to her and impress her. Another problem is that Sky is receptive to Dave's advances, but still tries to turn him down, unintentionally sending Dave mixed messages. In episode "Hurl And Go Seek", angry that she lost the challenge and Dave is trying to impress her by beating her in the game and bragging to her, Sky tells Dave he has no chance of beating her or dating her, breaking Dave's heart. Later in the challenge, Sky calls him out on not listening to her, but without explaining that she has a boyfriend or that she wants to focus on the game. Both glare at each other, but calm down, and then Dave asks to be her boyfriend, and Sky angrily tells him no, leading to Dave voting himself off. This comes to a head in the final episode, where Dave is brought back in the final challenge as a helper for Sky. Sky kisses Dave to motivate him, telling him that she does really like him, and she just wants to focus on the challenges, because it's hard to team up with someone she wants to date. At first that works, and Dave is determined to win the challenge for her, but then Chris shows a clip from home that reveals Sky has a boyfriend named Keith. Sky, heartbroken, reveals in the confessional she plans to break up with Keith and she really likes Dave, admitting she messed up. But before she can tell him this, Dave refuse to listen to her, their relationship destroyed and Dave becoming bitter to her and determined to do anything to make Sky lose.
• Many of the worse parts of Transformers: Animated could have been avoided if Sumdac had told them about how he found their "friend" Megatron...
  • Megatron realized this too — the first thing he did when Sumdac noticed he had been reactivated was to make up a sob story about how he was ashamed of his ruined state and made Sumdac promise not to reveal his condition to his "fellow" Autobots.
• Work It Out Wombats!: In "Brother Day," Zeke does not enjoy himself on Brother Day because Malik didn't ask him what he wanted to do.

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