Springtime For Hitler / Western Animation: In-Universe Examples

Times where characters fail at failing in Western Animation.

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A-J

• The Addams Family: In the episode "The Day Gomez Failed", Gomez intentionally tried to fail at something, just for a change of pace. Naturally, his every attempt at failing actually succeeded. At the end of the episode, Morticia managed to cheer Gomez up by pointing out he had actually failed at failing, so, in the end, he succeeded in his goal. Well, his goal was to fail. He succeeded at failing by failing to fail, which itself is still a failure to succeed. Really, this could go on forever.
• Archer:
  • In one episode, a cardinal hires ISIS to protect the pope under the assumption that their less than stellar track record would cause them to get him killed instead. They successfully protect him, and the cardinal is arrested.
  • Back in the very first episode, the title character tries to convince everyone there is a mole in the office in order to get access to the mainframe and cover up his Hookers and Blow adventures. None of them bite, but all the gossip about it scares the real mole into revealing himself.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Prince Zuko has something like this in his Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter moment. He's trying to learn how to bend lightning, or at the very least, redirect it so it doesn't hurt him. Since he knows the universe hates him, he climbs a mountain during a storm and tries to goad the universe into striking him with lightning. He's trying to get struck by lightning so he can practice redirecting it, but the lightning doesn't even go near him.
• In the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Joker's Wild", an investor opens up a Joker-themed casino. It turns out that he incurred huge losses building the place, and changed to the Joker decor at the last minute, hoping the real Joker would be enraged and destroy the place so the original investor could collect the insurance. Batman is naturally suspicious, investigates, discovers the plot, and stops the casino from being blown up.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: In "A Very Special Episode", Beavis and Butt-Head nursed a wounded baby bird back to full health... even though they were trying to get it killed. They were mistakenly under the belief that the bird would only die after it had eaten, so they made sure it was properly nourished so this would happen, with Beavis even feeding it like a mother bird would. Naturally, this winds up having the opposite effect and helps give the baby bird a fighting chance to live.
• Big City Greens:
  • In "Suite Retreat", the Greens are staying at a hotel for the night to give Gramma privacy, but she misses their antics and wants them to come home. After Bill refuses due to sticking to their word, Gramma decides to infest their hotel room with vermin so they can be kicked out. There were no rats at the vermin shop, so she purchases a horde of hamsters instead, and secretly releases them into the room. Bill was about to ask for the money back, but instead, the bellhop feels sorry for them and apologizes, which leads to him upgrading the family to a better suite with the addition of staying an extra night. This shocks Gramma to the point the family hears her and learns of her plan.
  • In "Big Trouble" after Tilly forms a bad girl gang with Andromeda following her first punishment ever, she attempts to stir up trouble all over the city, but her attempts only result in good outcomes. She attempts at lying about a man's unusual new hairdo but it causes him to boost his confidence; she then attempts at mayhem by making a woman step in chewing gum on the sidewalk, but in doing so she falls into a man's arms and they immediately click with each other, even proposing within just a few seconds.
  • In "Horse Girl", Bill rents out a horse named Butterscotch and becomes so attached to her he considers keeping her. Tilly, who has a hatred of horses, is forced to hide it from Bill to keep up the appearance of father-daughter bonding; while on a picnic, Tilly uses horseshoes to sabotage the outing and puts the blame on Butterscotch to get Bill to change his mind. However, Bill interprets the mess as Butterscotch not wanting the day to end, and thus leads to him deciding to permanently keep her, to Tilly's anger and shock.
• Double subverted in the Bob's Burgers episode "The Quirk-ducers", a straight-up homage to the Trope Namer film. Louise tries to sabotage the pre-Thanksgiving Weekend school assembly that negates the half-day they're supposed to get by staging a production of Tina's turkey-themed erotic friend fiction since it's offensive enough for Mr. Frond to shut down after the first scene. In an ill-conceived move to guarantee a shut-down, Louise has the turkey slaughtering scene involve blasting real turkey guts all over the audience. She gets the play shut down, but she and the other kids she involved in the project have to spend their half-day cleaning up turkey guts as punishment.
• Bojack Horseman: In "Bojack the Feminist", Mr. Peanutbutter is upset that he isn't considered tough enough to play dangerous characters or get cast in anything dark or gritty, so he spends the whole episode trying to get in a fight, but everything he does ends up helping people in some way. In the end it's because of his clean, nice guy image that he gets cast in the gritty detective series Philbert after their original choice, Vance Waggoner, created too much controversy.
• In The Cleveland Show, the members of the Hip Hop Illuminati have Cleveland make Kenny West completely fail at his next big concert because they're sick of his big ego offending them. Kenny ends up enlisting Cleveland Jr. and his rejected school marching band members for a polka band concert...except Kenny ended up mixing rap with it, which won over his fans.
• Dan Vs.: In "Dan vs. Art", Dan seeks to ruin the reputation of Art Artstein by breaking into the museum and defacing Art's latest exhibit the night before it opens. However, critics think the vandalism is deep and symbolic, and Art rolls with it because he's only in it for the money. Dan is furious to realize that he just made Art more successful.
• Daria: In "The F Word", Mr. O'Neill assigns his class a project in which each student must attempt something they know for sure they'll fail at. Most succeed, with disastrous results, and even those who fail end up harming themselves somehow in the attempt. The point of the project was O'Neill's misguided idea from a teacher's learning lecture simply put that, failure is not a bad thing and can provide learning opportunities. What he failed to realize was that failure was not the goal itself, but the ability to learn from that failure; not just any failure would do. Later, when Daria attempts to cheer him up/get him out of his funk of seeing himself fail at something he was sure would work by saying he should complete the assigned project himself, he promptly calls it a load of hooey.
• DuckTales (1987): Launchpad's inability to properly land a plane is a Running Gag. In the Grand Finale, during a Race Against the Clock to stop a cursed artifact from turning the entire world (and everyone in it) to gold, Scrooge orders Launchpad to "just crash!" into the temple — Launchpad instead makes a perfect three-point landing, and even complains how he "had a chance to crash on purpose, and blew it."
• Dudley Do-Right:
  • In one cartoon, Dudley tries to get kicked out of the Mounties so that he can go undercover as a member of Snidely Whiplash's gang, but his efforts at committing crimes backfire. At one point he burns down a building, only to find that the building was scheduled for demolition, and is lauded by the government for saving them a fortune in taxpayers' money. Then he blows up a dam, but discovers that this solves the city's irrigation problem. He ultimately gets kicked out of the Mounties for eating peas with his horse's knife.
  • In another cartoon, Snidely Whiplash creates a robotic version of Dudley with the intent to kidnap and replace him with it so that Dudley wouldn't be able to interfere in his schemes and no one would realize he was missing. Unfortunately for Snidely, the robot proved to be a highly effective mountie and was able to foil crimes and capture criminals even better than the real Dudley, much to Whiplash's horror.
    Snidely Whiplash: (To his cronie) Homer, I think I've created a monster!
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Parent Hoods", Timmy's parents get arrested due to being mistaken for a pair of criminals called the Turnbaums. To free them, Timmy needs to get the Turnbaums arrested, so he sets up a Batman Gambit to get them to steal the Sacred Silver Sharpener so they'd be caught it in the act. To aid them, he uses an attractive woman to lure away the guards, helps the Turnbaums get through the museum's booby traps, and gives the password for the door to the chamber housing the Sharpener. Unfortunately, just when Timmy thinks the Turnbaums will be busted by the Mounties, they manage to make an escape in a rubber raft due to the Mounties being distracted by the attractive woman from earlier, forcing Timmy, Cosmo, and Wanda to go after the Turnbaums themselves.
• The Flintstones:
  • In "Feudin' and Fussin'", after Fred causes a rift between him and Barney and refuses to apologize, Barney decides to sell his house. Guilt-ridden, Fred decides to stop a Texan from buying it by giving him the "bad neighbor" bit, saying he'll be playing music on the lawn all day and night. However, it turns out the Texan is a music afficinado and he asks Fred if they can practice together.
  • In "Moonlights and Maintenance" Fred gets a second job working as a custodian in the Bedrock Towers apartment complex. Unfortunately, his job at the quarry has a strict no moonlighting policy and Mr. Slate intends to rent an apartment at the complex. Fred disguises himself with a wig and mustache and tries to dissuade his boss from moving to the apartment building. Unfortunately, every one of Fred's discouraging attempts backfires and make Mr. Slate more intrigued in the apartment to the point that he takes it after all.
• Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends:
  • Bloo attempts to get banned from supper to avoid eating the disgusting-looking food being offered, referred to only as "It". He attempts massive amounts of pranks to get banned, but it backfires on him spectacularly as everyone else except him gets banned instead, and his punishment is being forced to eat all of It. Just to give context, that episode's A-plot is about Mr. Herriman being paranoid over others finding out about his carrot addiction, leading him to punish everyone except Bloo because he was afraid they were "onto" him. It ended with Herriman (and Wilt) going to jail for stealing Madame Foster's jewelry (It Makes Sense in Context).
  • Bloo wants to get removed from the house so he doesn't have to fight "the new guy". To get himself banned from the house, he tells Mr. Herriman about pranks he has done, such as flooding the house, setting off 1000 lawnmowers on the grass and breaking every clock in the house. Everything is going well until Bloo mentions he's getting in a fight "with the new guy" (a huge bruiser who would surely kill Bloo), prompting Mr. Herriman to refuse to sign the release forms, forcing Bloo to fight the new guy, in the hopes that it would finally rid Herriman of Bloo and his shenanigans. Herriman's letting Bloo get away with his pranks so he will get beaten also backfires, when it turns out the new guy just wants to show Bloo his comedy routine. And then Double Subverted when Bloo gets himself beaten up anyway, when he badmouths his routine.
• Goof Troop: Pete wins ownership of a race horse that appears to be incapable of winning a race, so he instead offers shares of the horse's ownership in order to sell his used cars, giving away more percentages than are actually available. Goofy then discovers the only problem was a bad nail in the horse's shoe and, despite Pete's efforts to sabotage the horse (which Goofy thwarts by replacing Pete's sabotaged gear with a whole new set, then riding the horse himself instead of the overweight jockey Pete hired), rides the horse to a come-from-behind victory and ends up sending Pete to jail.
• Hey Arnold!: In the episode "It Girl", Helga is selected by a fashion expert to be a model and proves to be a hit. She eventually grows tired of all the publicity and acts as rude and obnoxious on the catwalk as possible to get fired, but her "rebellious" behavior only causes her to become even more popular. It isn't until she follows Arnold's advice to act nice instead that she successfully gets herself fired.
• The Jetsons: One episode had Judy entering a lyric contest where the prize was a date with her favourite musician, who George hated. Trying to sabotage her chances, George swapped her entry for a list of codes Elroy had made with a friend, assuming they would be too nonsensical. She still won the date.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: In order to escape an Arranged Marriage to the Weavil Princess, Beezy attempts to fail at the challenges he must pass to win the right to marry her. Unfortunately the weavils, who arranged the marriage entirely to get rid of her, makes sure he passes.

K-Z

• In one episode of Kaeloo, Kaeloo deliberately tries to lose a game so Stumpy can win for once. Due to Mr. Cat's interference, Kaeloo wins anyway.
• King of the Hill:
  • "Suite Smells of Excess": Hank and his friends sneak into the box seats at a Texas-Nebraska football game, only to discover it belongs to a famous Nebraska player. Late in the game, the Nebraska coach calls the box to ask for advice, and Hank (pretending to be the player) gives him a terrible suggestion so that Nebraska will lose — only for it to work perfectly against all odds, costing Texas the game. Specifically, Hank called for Nebraska, who was in possession of the ball and losing to Texas with only seconds to go in normal play, to run a "quick kick," which would turn the ball over to Texas (despite Texas already being ahead). However, the play is only complete once the ball comes to a stop, and a Texas player accidentally touches the ball, turning it into a fumble (and thus a live ball) into Texas' endzone, where a Nebraska player quickly pounced on it, scoring a touchdown and winning the game.
  • In "Cops and Robert", Dale comes up with a Zany Scheme where he applies for a job at the local Hooters equivalent, gets rejected, and sues for sexual discrimination. Much to his shock he gets hired anyway, and he actually does pretty well — the customers appreciate having a guy to talk to about sports and beer, so he gets even more tips than his busty, scantily-clad co-workers. Then Hank, Boomhauer, and Bill come running in from the B-plot, chased by an enraged man who trips and accidentally yanks down Dale's shorts. When he tries to sue for emotional damages, the boss agrees but still fires Dale due to the fact he was giving customers free appetizers which is employee theft.
  • Downplayed in "Six Characters in Search of a House," where the Hills need to have their home fail an inspection so that it would not be made for sale after a Zany Scheme from Peggy goes wrong. Hank, a good housekeeper, deliberately tries to make the home bad, and goes to Bill for several pointers. The well-known home inspector sees through it, figuring that only someone so good at taking care of a house could pull off such a detailed act of a failing one. Yet out of respect, he still officially fails the home so that the Hills could keep it.
• In My Life as a Teenage Robot, Sheldon, who has a one-sided crush on Robot Girl Jenny, creates a robot suit that he uses to pretend to be a Jerkass robot that will put Jenny off dating other robots and hopefully get her to consider dating humans like him instead. To his dismay, Jenny falls head-over-heels for "the Silver Shell" and no amount of jerkass behavior Sheldon performs while in the suit diminishes her crush any. Clearly, he was unaware that All Girls Want Bad Boys.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the episode "Green Isn't Your Color", the Shrinking Violet Fluttershy accidentally becomes a famous model. Fluttershy dislikes the attention and would quit, except for the fact that she doesn't want to disappoint her best friend Rarity, who's encouraged her to take the job. Secretly, though, Rarity is jealous of Fluttershy's newfound success, and almost wishes her failure out of spite. Twilight Sparkle, being the confidant for both secrets but finding the stress of keeping both parties unhappy too much to bear, comes up with a plan to make Fluttershy's next runway event be as ungraceful as possible using Twilight's magic. This works, initially, except that Rarity, being utterly disappointed in herself for her own feelings and completely unaware of Fluttershy's, decides to support her friend with cheerful applause. This, combined with Rarity's great fashion sense convincing the fashion-critical crowd that her opinion has weight, ends up making Fluttershy more popular than ever.
  • A minor example in one scene of "Spike at Your Service". In order to stop Spike from helping Applejack, Rainbow Dash has him do what she believes to be an impossible task: build a large rock tower for her to smash through. To her surprise, Spike actually succeeds at the task, forcing her to smash through it.
  • An extremely dramatic example occurred in the final season. To help Twilight gain the confidence needed to rule Equestria in Celestia and Luna's place, Discord, in his Trickster Mentor way, posed as the ancient monster Grogar and gathered together Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow into a Legion of Doom for Twilight and her friends to defeat. He had planned to act as a "safety net" to ensure things didn't get out of hand and believed there wasn't any real danger. What he didn't count on, however, was his recruits banding together behind his back, succeeding in actually finding Grogar's Bewitching Bell but keeping it for themselves, and using it against him. As such, he ended up creating an actual threat to Equestria.
• In one episode of Over the Garden Wall, Beatrice encourages Wirt to replace the bassoon player in the hopes of getting the boys and herself thrown off the boat. Instead, everyone on the boat loves the performance, and Beatrice sadly admits that Wirt is "good".
• In one episode The Real Ghostbusters, Walter Peck, still holding a grudge against the busters, attempts to put them out of business by making a fake call about a ghost haunting a government facility, figuring that they'd get in trouble for the collateral damage he figured they would cause. Unfortunately, his plan backfired when it turns out there actually was a ghost plaguing the lab, and he ended up increasing the busters' fame when they saved the government millions by catching the specter.
• In the Robot Chicken episode "We Are a Humble Factory", Star Trek: The Next Generation producer Rick Berman responds to Wesley Crusher's anti-fandom by creating Snirkles, a character intentionally designed with all the worst characterization traits possible. He ends up becoming a hit among the Star Trek fandom, instead (telling them "Kill Wesley, keep Snirkles").
• Rocko's Modern Life:
  • In "Gutter Ball", Ed Bighead, wanting to win a bowling trophy to make up for a humiliating failure in his youth, is forced to manage his wife's bowling team in the finals of a tournament. When the opposing team drops out, Ed believes they win by default, only to learn the rules say the trophy can't be awarded unless there's a game, so he convinces Rocko, Heffer, and Filbert (who've never bowled before) to be the opposition, hoping to give his team an easy win. Unfortunately, due to a combination of Beginner's Luck and his wife's team being worse than Ed thought, Rocko and his friends manage to put up a close game.
  • In "Camera Shy", though by no means done intentionally, the strange "edits" that Rocko's home movie receives winds up making it a worldwide phenomenon. Unfortunately, he does not want his parents to see the video... and naturally, they do, but for some reason, they love it. He even wins an award for the video. Of course, it still showed him nude, but that's beside the point.
  • In "Wacky Delly", Ralph Bighead (who later went by "Rachel") wants to get out of a contract for a second show, so he uses Heffer's idea of making a cartoon about "deli meats", and even lets Rocko and his friends help him make the cartoon. Ralph hopes the resulting mish-mash will be canceled quickly and he can get on with a career as a serious artist. Unfortunately for Ralph, Wacky Delly becomes a hit. Ralph then attempts to sabotage production, which includes episodes that are overexposed film, a still image of a jar of mayonnaise, and nothing at all, each of which gets the show praise from people who think the show is some sort of high art. Finally, Ralph attempts to flood all of Holl-o-wood by melting the ice caps with an orbital laser, and that doesn't work either. A speech from Rocko inspires Ralph to make the show "real art," so he makes a high-brow Fantasia-like episode, which gets the show promptly canceled like Ralph wanted.
  • In "Teed Off", Ed Bighead has been asked to deliberately throw a golf match against the CEO of his company. In fact, he has confederates in this plan secretly (but not-so-subtly) dropping pianos on the balls after Ed hits them. It works well at first, but then Heffer discovers that Ed's allies are cheating and starts cheating in Ed's favor. Like with the pianos, no one notices Heffer doing anything (despite him being extremely conspicuous), and Ed gets blamed for every successful shot.
• In an episode of Sabrina: The Animated Series, while on their way to school on a rainy day, Harvey falls through a hole in a 100-year old wooden bridge into the river and eventually washed up on shore. Upon Sabrina reaching him, Harvey comes to and is convinced that Sabrina saved his life, and the rest of the town believes this is so, too. Unable to handle the guilt of having undeserved praise, Sabrina and Salem go back to earlier during the day to prevent Harvey from falling in the river and thus Sabrina being pinned as a hero. This works, only for the school bus to get caught in the hole and for Sabrina to indirectly save the bus, so now she's believed to be an even bigger hero. Not wanting this, Sabrina goes back to even earlier in the day with an incantation to destroy the bridge before anything bad can happen to anyone because of it. The incantation destroys a nearby dam, forcing Sabrina to warn and get everybody out of Greendale before it's flooded. After this, she's considered to be such a hero that among other things they'll rename the school after her and she gets a call from the President. With even more undeserved praise, Sabrina decides to go back 100 years in the past when the bridge was brand new and use an incantation to turn it to stone, only for some men to see her actions and when she gets back to the present, Sabrina isn't hailed as a hero, but as a god, with the town renamed Sabrinaville and everyone in it named Sabrina (even the males). Realizing that her efforts were for naught, in the normal present, Sabrina does what she should have done in the first place and tell the reporter that Harvey just assumed she saved him and that she's no hero.
• Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated: In the Hex Girls' first appearance in the show, the culprit for their trouble reveals he'd previously tried sabotaging their careers by deliberately writing bad songs for them. He just didn't count on the Hex Girls being so good at their craft that not only did they not notice, it didn't matter — they made the songs good anyhow.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Homer the Smithers", Mr. Burns pushes Smithers into taking a vacation. Worried that someone might overshadow him, Smithers decides to find someone so incompetent that he'll have to return early (and after 714 matches, decides just to have Homer take over). Unfortunately, Homer is so terrible that Mr. Burns quickly learns how to do everything himself, allowing him to fire Smithers once he returns.
  • In "Homer's Enemy", Frank Grimes tries to humiliate Homer Simpson and show the world how much of a buffoon Homer is by tricking him into entering a power plant model-designing contest for kids. Except Homer wins the top prize. This pushes Grimes far off the edge, and he goes on a rampage resulting in his own death.
  • In "Team Homer", Mr. Burns's performance is dragging down Homer's bowling team, so Moe says Burns might end up having a little "accident". As Burns limps into the bowling alley, complaining of a knee injury and saying he'll have to withdraw, Moe leaps out (in a ski mask) and bashes his knee with a tire iron, popping it back into place and allowing him to stay on.
  • In "Homer Scissorhands", Homer becomes a successful hairdresser, but soon tires of having to hear his female clients going on and on about their lives while he cuts their hair. In an effort to drive away business, he deliberately attempts to cut a client's hair badly...and ends up giving her a spectacular haircut that wows everyone.
  • A Played for Drama example comes up in "Bart the Mother" when Nelson dares Bart to shoot a bird perched up on a nearby tree with his new BB gun. Not wanting to be thought of as a coward, Bart agrees, but decides to deliberately miss as to not harm her. Unfortunately, the gun has crooked sights, and his "miss" causes him to perfectly shoot right through the bird's neck and kill it instantly to his horror. To make up for killing the mom, Bart does nurse the two eggs to hatching, but they are Bolivian Tree Lizards which end up populating themselves in Springfield and kill off the pigeon population.
  • In "Bart on the Road", Bart chooses to stay home with Marge on "Go to Work With Your Parents Day", insisting that it's his way of showing support for women in the workplace. After Marge reads that being a housewife makes her ineligible, Lisa slyly notes that Patty and Selma are two professional women, resulting in Marge deciding it would be good for Bart to spend a day at the DMV. Bart, of course, is horrified.
  • In "Lisa's First Word", Krusty and his fast food restaurant, Krusty Burger, hold a promotion during the 1984 Summer Olympics where they print game cards for different events and if the US won that event, customers can redeem the card for a free Krusty Burger. Krusty and his accomplices think they will get very rich since the game cards have been rigged to favor Communist countries that were good on those events. Unfortunately, they just learn the Soviet Union and other Communist countries have boycotted the Olympics, meaning those Communist-favored games will now be won by the US. Inspired by a true story (except for the rigging of the cards).
  • In "In Marge We Trust", when Marge criticizes Reverend Lovejoy for his lifeless and unhelpful sermons, he says "I don't see you volunteering to make things better.", and to his surprise, she actually agrees to, and Springfielders end up trusting her spiritual guidance more than his, sparking a Crisis of Faith in him.
• Skunk Fu!:
  • In one episode, Skunk makes an ill-conceived bet with Baboon for control of the Valley over a game. In a rare occurrence, Baboon actually wins, but fortunately, Panda convinced Dragon to make a counter-bet against Baboon's team based on his track record.
    Baboon: Even when I win, I lose!
  • "The Art of Stealing" has Skunk steal a magic crystal, which Rabbit tells him that it’s a bad thing since it’s a source of Dragon’s power and threatens to tell Panda about it if he doesn’t act as his servant. When Panda finds out about the crystal, he congratulates Skunk for the exact reason Rabbit told him.
• South Park:
  • In the episode "The Death Camp of Tolerance", Mr. Garrison attempts to get fired by acting in a grotesquely Depraved Homosexual manner so he can sue the school for discrimination. However, everyone in town is primed to be politically correct towards him, so when the students raise their objections to his behavior, their parents merely assume that their kids are being homophobic and end up shipping them to the title camp to teach them a lesson. Chef suffers the same fate for reporting Mr. Garrison's behavior to the principal. Much to his horror, however, Garrison finds his "bravery" being applauded by everyone in town to the extent that he receives an award for it. Instead of accepting, Garrison and his 'assistant' demonstrated the kind of behavior that scared the kids, only to be further applauded for his 'courage'. He screams at the assembled crowd that he should have been fired for his behavior regardless of his sexuality, and actually asked to be fired so that he could sue. While it made the parents realize their kids weren't homophobic, just disgusted with Mr. Garrison, and didn't deserve to be sent to tolerance camp, Garrison ended up sent there; while the reason given was that "[he] isn't tolerant of [his] own behavior", the real reason was punishment by the principal for trying to bilk money from the school. (Of course, Mr. Slave thinks the camp sounds really fun).
  • In "Jakovasaurs", the town stages a fake game show for Jakov to "win" the prize of airfare to somewhere that isn't South Park. The problem is that Jakov is too dumb to win a contest that's rigged in his favor, and Officer Barbrady is too dumb to let him win.
    Mayor: What color is blue?
    Jakov: I DON'T KNOW!
    Barbrady: Blue?
    Mayor: What?!?
    Barbrady: Blue is blue?
  • At the beginning of "The Wacky Molestation Adventure", after Kyle asks to go to a concert where the band's name alone tips them off that they shouldn't let him, they say he first needs to clean out the garage, shovel the snow out of the driveway, and bring democracy to Cuba. This results in Kyle writing a letter that moves Fidel Castro to tears and decide to fufil his wish, because he didn't know that the last one was supposed to be impossible. Although shocked, Kyle's parents still refuse to let him go to the concert, this time outright admitting that "you can't go because we were never going to let you go".
  • In the episode "The Losing Edge", the boys deliberately try to lose all their baseball games because they find the sport extremely boring and don't want to go regional. Turns out every other team feels the same way, and they're all "better at sucking". The teams' losing strategies even developed over time, feats like hitting the ball right into the opposition's hand shows that losing can actually be more impressive than winning.
  • In the episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs", the boys write a book that would be so inhumanely disgusting it would be banned. They put the on Butters, but everyone loves the book despite making them vomit regularly. Butters then writes a follow-up called The Poop That Took a Pee, which the boys find so stupid it will get Butters banned, but readers love this as well. However, someone is inspired to kill the Kardishans because of the book, which finally gets Butters's work banned. Also subverted in that The Poop That Took a Pee was implied to only be successful because no one would admit that the book wasn't as 'good' as the previous work.
  • The episode "Sarcastaball", has Randy Marsh complain about football becoming too safe by sarcastically claiming the game should be played wearing bras and tinfoil hats, while hugging instead of tackling. This being South Park, they take him at face value and create the sport. The more sarcastic Randy gets, the more seriously the world agrees.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • Played with in the episode "Bossy Boots". Pearl gets a part-time job at the Krusty Krab which she quickly decides she doesn't want, and since her father won't just let her quit, she instead tries to get fired by transforming the restaurant into a hip teenage hangout at great expense. The restaurant ends up more successful than ever, but her ruse has the desired effect on the employees: SpongeBob wants the old grease trap back, and Mr. Krabs is unhappy at all the money being spent. Krabs still can't bring himself to fire her, though, and it's only when Pearl breaks down and confesses she's been trying to get fired that SpongeBob finally sacks her on Krabs' behalf.
  • In "Krabs a la Mode", Mr. Krabs refuses to turn down the thermostat at the Krusty Krab because "heat costs money". Plankton sees this weakness and decides to freeze the Krusty Krab out of business by turning the thermostat down to low levels, causing the Krusty Krab to freeze all over and become an indoor ice age, making it too chilly to walk around in and the floors are too slippery. The plan backfires however, once SpongeBob creates ice skates out of frozen patties to help him get around the restaurant easier, and soon the Krusty Krab turns into an ice rink complete with ice skating, hockey, a Clamboni ride, and the customers wearing winter gear, thus Plankton only resulted in making the Krusty Krab even more popular than ever.
  • In "House Fancy", Squidward can't stand when his snobbish rival, Squilliam Fancyson, has a Big Fancy House with at least four stories on House Fancy (with guest voice Alton Brown as Nicholas Withers), so he claims to have a fancier house than Squilliam's, even though he doesn't stand a chance of outdoing Squilliam after his bluff is called. After discovering a faded spot on his wall when he moves the portrait after moving some of the furniture around, he desperately hires Spongebob to paint the wall, which backfires when SpongeBob covers the entire living room in paint, and SpongeBob leaves the vacuum turned on, which explodes from vacuuming up the entire living room and turns Squidward's house into debris, which Withers sees as an Accidental Art sculpture, and Squidward's "masterpiece" ends up being featured on "House Fancy", with Squidward's ruined house knocking Squilliam out of the spotlight.
• Talespin: In "Flying Dupes", a disguised Thembrian named Wally tricked Baloo into delivering a package to the High Marshall, with it actually being a bomb. The plan was for the bomb to be discovered at the checkpoints, where Cape Suzette would be accused of attempting to blow up the High Marshall, who would then declare war on them and put Wally's bomb factory back in business. Unfortunately, Wally underestimated Baloo, who managed to finagle Colonel Spigot into helping him get through the checkpoints before the bomb was discovered. Needless to say, the High Marshall actually being blown up is not part of Wally's plan.
  Wally: If the High Marshall goes through the roof, bomb sales will go through the floor!
• Total Drama World Tour: Thanks to his animal-hurting curse, DJ begins trying to lose, only to finally turn around the Curb-Stomp Battle that Team Victory had been suffering. Naturally, when he starts trying to win again, he's eliminated.
• 2 Stupid Dogs:
  • The Dogs appear on a take-off of The Price Is Right, and try to lose in order to get a dog food consolation by deliberately bidding low on an expensive rug. Somehow, they go on to play the pricing game after the closest contestants are both fifty cents away from the actual price of the rug. Said pricing game has them guessing everything at one dollar, and winning every prize, save one: dog food worth ninety-nine cents. Then it's the wheel spinning bit where the smaller dog shoves the wheel away from the winning space to the five-cent space, but is told by the Bob Barker wannabe that he cheated, so they "win" yet again.
  • In another episode, the Dogs are in Vegas waiting for a hot dog buffet to open. But just before the doors open, they happen to pull a slot machine that wins the jackpot. Now the owner tries to get the Dogs to keep playing so they'll lose the money, but the Dogs keep winning, draining the casino's funds. Finally, the owner begs the dogs to call off one last roulette bet, but too late. Instead, he offers to take over the bet, and when the dogs insist on 100 trips through the hot dog buffet and a limo ride out of town, he agrees. The trope averts right there as the roulette spin loses, but it simply means everyone's happy: the casino has its money back and the Dogs finally get to eat.
• Zeke's Pad: In "A Little Sketchy", a miniaturized Zeke and Jay take control of Rachel's brain, so that she will plow her rehearsal for a minor part in a play, and thus not spoil Zeke's vacation. They make Rachel look like an absolute fool by making her do animal noises, walk into the wall, and say inappropriate things. By the time she auditions, she's a wreck. But it backfires when Rachel's emotional performance winds up earning her the lead role.

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