Examples of Too Dumb to Live in Animated Films
- In The 3 Little Pigs: The Movie, while camping in a creepy woods for the night, a scared Wally says they should have stayed on the farm... to which Felix irritatedly points out that he'd be a pork pie by now had he done so.
- In Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Sa'Luk foolishly touches an artifact he knows can turn anything to gold. The result is a golden statue of Sa'Luk.
- Two intances of this occur in Beauty and the Beast: The first is when Belle's father, Maurice and his horse (Phillippe) arrive at a crossroads on their way to the fair. Phillipe clearly tries to pull Maurice towards the brighter, more cheerful path on the left, while Marucie adamantly chooses the foogy, eerily lit path on the right. The second is when Belle goes in the West Wing, despite the fact that the Beast (who, by the way, has serious temper issues) explicitly told her not to go there. She should count herself lucky that the only thing he did was shout at her to leave.
- In The Book of Life, at least three of the deceased Sanchezes died by trying some stunts as bullfighters, all believing that "(Insert subject here) are for cowards":
- Luis tried fighting three bulls at once because "fighting just one bull is for cowards".
- Jorge tried fighting a bull with just one arm and leg because "fighting with two arms and legs is for cowards".
- Carmelo fought a bull without using a cape, because "using a cape is for cowards".
- FernGully 2: The Magical Rescue: The poachers could have easily stopped the truck they were driving and kicked Budgie off of it, but instead elected to murder her by decoupling their trailer with her on it.
- A Goofy Movie: Goofy driving through traffic while reading a road map during the "Out On the Open Road" music number was already bone-headed enough. After the musical number, Goofy does this again and unknowingly drifts into the opposing lane, right in the path of an incoming freight truck. Goofy doesn't even notice the truck's loud honking because he was too busy reading the map and humming to himself. Had Max not gotten them back in their lane in time, they really would have gotten killed.Max: Dad! You're gonna get us killed! Why don't you just give me the map!?Goofy: Oh, no thanks, son. Navigatin's a pretty big responsibility!
- In Grave of the Fireflies, the main character, Seita, endures incredible hardships with his sister during and after WWII. Most of that hardship is a result of him running out on his kinda-mean-but-not-that-bad aunt's house to live in a cave. One of the reasons the aunt resents him is that instead of working, he goofed off during the day. And instead of getting a job, he runs off with his toddler sister. Even when things become so bad that their lives are threatened, instead of simply asking his aunt to take them back, he sticks it out, while his sister eats mudballs out of hunger. And then both he and his sister die. In several interviews, the author of the original novel and the film's director said that Seita is a prideful teen who could not endure minor blows to his ego and turned against rest of the world which resulted in tragedy. In another interview, the director went as far as to say that the widowed aunt's words were not particularly cruel considering the situation and Seita killed his sister trying to to achieve an impossible fantasynote .
- In Hercules (Pure Magic), Hercules mentions that the Hydra's middle head is immortal. The other heads immediately become so jealous that they jump into a volcano to test this immortality, even though that would also kill them (and the immortal head is the only one who can ressurrect the other heads when they're destroyed).
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame: While Frollo is a cunning man, he acts on this trope near the end of the film when he climbs on top of the gargoyle to kill Esmerelda. Considering that he is standing up straight on the over-hanging gargoyle, with no support whatsoever, means his body weight causes the aging statue to crack.
- The dodos seen in Ice Age qualify: when the protagonists first encounter them, they're at regiment strength. After one rhubarb with the pathetic sloth Sid, they manage to topple off a precipice. Every last one.
- Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend in Inside Out, misreads a sign above Abstract Thought that reads "DANGER" as "shortcut", despite Sadness warning him that they shouldn't go in there to get to the Train of Thought and should go around the other way. They go in anyways and change into abstract versions of themselves that fall apart. They nearly get stuck in the chamber and get killed until Sadness tells them to fall on their faces to escape. Thanks to this, they wind up missing the train.
- The Jungle Book (1967):
- Mowgli, especially during his second encounter with Kaa, where knowing that Kaa wants to eat him, still thinks that Kaa wants to help him, and looks into his eyes long enough to be hypnotized. If Shere Khan hadn't shown up, Mowgli would have been dead.
- Also when Mowgli first encounters Shere Khan he stands up to him and refuses to run away even when Shere Khan gives him a head start and instead grabs a small stick to fight back. When Shere Khan catches on to what he intends to do, he speeds up his counting and charges at Mowgli, even causing him to drop the stick. And he would have killed Mowgli if Baloo hadn't shown up in time.
- The Lion King (1994): Scar has a Villainous Breakdown caused by this. He manipulates Simba into accepting responsibility for Mufasa's death upon his return to the Pridelands. While dangling Simba off Pride Rock, he pulls Simba close for some Evil Gloating... by confessing he killed Mufasa. One Heroic Second Wind later, Simba has Scar on the ropes, and then he tries to get out of that by blaming the hyenas for his own actions and seemingly accepted Simba's demand that he "run away and never return" — before viciously attacking Simba instead. He pays for that dearly for these actions.
- Heihei in Moana is comically stupid. His Establishing Character Moment is him trying to eat a rock bigger than his head. After spitting it back up, he then immediately tries to eat the same rock again. Heihei is shown doing all sorts of stupid things throughout the film, such as constantly walking off the boat (in the middle of the ocean) or when food is put down in front of him he pecks the ground everywhere except where the food is. This is entirely Played for Laughs — as Heihei is also too dumb to die.
- A clownfish in Padak has the brilliant idea to wake up the titular Padak (a hungry mackerel who is bigger than the clownfish) and yell at her to get out of the clownfish tank she’s been placed in.
- Pinocchio from Pinocchio (1992) is warned by the Cricket not to go to Dunceland, because his wanting of a life of just fun has caused him many problems in the past. However, Pinocchio goes there and pays it dearly. He almost ends being drowned in the sea as a donkey.
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish:
- The Death Montage shows that Puss used up most of his nine lives idiotically, such as stopping in the middle of a Running of the Bulls event to flirt with a local señorita and getting trampled, drunkenly leaping off a clock tower trying to land on his feet, lifting a ludicrously heavy dumbbell without a spotter, or trying to shoot himself out of a cannon. This is why Death himself comes after Puss; watching him waste his lives on such frivolously foolhardy stunts, while still proclaiming himself immortal, enraged Death so much that he decided to come after Puss to personally end his last life.
- Early in the film, Big Jack Horner hires a pair of criminals called the Serpent Sisters to find him the map to the Wishing Star, promising them their weight in gold. One of them, Jo, repeatedly interrupts him, then jumps on his Berserk Button (reminding him that he's just a nursery rhyme character rather than a fairy tale character). Big Jack Horner, remembering his promise, offers the Serpent Sisters the Midas Touch, which Jo enthusiastically grabs without realizing what it will do to her. The other, Jan, having realized even before Jo touched the Midas Touch that she was treading on very dangerous ground, wisely accepts the gold statue of her sister as payment and gets as far away from the Horner pie factory as she can.
- Jack Horner in the final battle completely ignores the fact that the Wishing Star is beginning to crumble and fall apart. Rather than escape like everyone else, he continues to frivolously try and gather the pieces of the map to make his wish, which leads to his defeat.
- Sausage Party: Druggie leaves a metal axe hanging on the wall, which gets him killed. He also fails to realize that swearing off food will result in him starving to death. Lampshaded by Frank:Frank: (to Barry) You got lucky and killed a stupid one!
- Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword, Miss Mirimoto seriously thinks the black samurai will take orders from her just because she released him from the sword of doom. Predictably the black samurai is having none of it.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The titular Snow White gets explicitly warned not to trust any strangers should one come by and not to let anyone in the house while the dwarves are away. Then the Queen shows up disguised as an old peddler woman and Snow White falls for the Queen's Wounded Gazelle Gambit and the whole story she spun about a "magic wishing apple". Zero points for guessing what happened after Snow White ate said apple.
- A pack of Velociraptors in Speckles: The Tarbosaurus. After catching up to their prey slowly descending into the quicksand it had gotten itself stuck into moments earlier, the lead raptor leaps onto the back of their victim to finish the job of killing it — and he gets stuck in the quicksand himself. The rest of the pack hesitates for barely five seconds before taking off as we cut to the pack leader drowning in the swamp.
- Trolls: Quite honestly, most of the Trolls qualify — after escaping from the Bergens in the opening prologue, they establish a new home in the forest, but don't bother with any defenses or warnings against any possible future discovery by the Bergens. Similarly, Branch tells Princess Poppy that her loud singing and boisterous party celebrations might attract the Bergens, but she blithely dismisses his warnings with terrible consequences.
- Up: How Russell manages to make it throughout the film is a mystery. The kid has the survival instincts of a lemming. Seeing as how it's Pixar, though...
- Gene and the other Nicelanders from Wreck-It Ralph have their town in danger of being destroyed, thanks to the eponymous Villain Protagonist leaving them. To clarify, Ralph is a Punch-Clock Villain, playing the bad guy in Fix-It Felix, Jr., with the Nicelanders as the NPCs. However, Ralph and Felix are the only ones who seem aware that Ralph is the most important asset of the game. Without him, the game won't function, which will cause it to be decommissioned, which will make every resident either dead or homeless. Instead of respecting this, the Jerkass Nicelanders shun him and are generally mean to him, which leads to Ralph leaving the game to prove that he can be a good guy. Not only does this mean that Ralph isn't in the game (which, again, is vitally important), but by the time he comes back the game is only a few hours away from being unplugged, and in the meantime Felix has vanished while trying to find Ralph to bring him back.
