Villain Fixing / Western Animation

Villains inadvertently ruining their own plans in western animation TV shows.

---

Examples:

A-G

• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: In the episode "Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad", Scratch and Grounder actually succeed in capturing Sonic and locking him in a cage. Then Coconuts shows up, and ties them up in a rope so he can claim the reward for himself. Sonic then points out to Coconuts that if the rope breaks, Scratch and Grounder will escape, and convinces him to put them in the cage. Coconuts does so, and Sonic escapes, locking all three robots in the cage.
• Amphibia: One recurring plot thread in Season 2 is Sasha and Captain Grime planning to overthrow King Andrias and take control of Amphibia. In the season finale, "True Colors", they succeed — and then immediately uncover King Andrias' true intentions. Unfortunately, Anne and the Plantars refuse to believe Sasha's warnings about Andrias and proceed to break what the villains just fixed, with disastrous consequences.
• Archie's Weird Mysteries: In "Misfortune Hunters", when Archie and the others confront the fortune hunters over the dagger that seals the monster, they try to ram the heroes' car to escape with the dagger. However, the monster has tied their rear wheels to a tree, causing them to wreck their own car in the attempt. While he's laughing and they're stunned by the crash, Archie grabs the dagger back.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Aang has one of his chakras blocked after getting hit by Azula's lightning while in the Avatar state. He can't get to that state anymore, and he's not skilled enough in the bending he's learned to take on Ozai. In the middle of the fight, Ozai goes in for a killshot, with Aang resisting with all the strength he has left. The blast throws Aang onto a small rock outcropping... right onto the scar caused by Azula's lightning attack. This unblocks the chakra, allowing Aang to reach the Avatar state and for asskicking to ensue. Cue Ozai's Oh, Crap! expression.
  • Sozin did this before the series started. If he hadn't tipped off the Air Nomad monks by aggressively taking down Earth Kingdom territories, Aang would have been caught in their surprise attack and the Avatar cycle would eventually have been tipped in favor of the Fire Nation.
  • Combustion Man manages to intercept a messenger hawk headed for the Fire Nation with the information that Aang is still alive, as Zuko wanted to eliminate Aang discreetly. This prevents the rest of the Fire Nation from learning about Aang until the Day of Black Sun.
    • This also applies to Zuko as well, as he wanted to keep the Avatar being alive a secret as much as the heroes did. Ozai doesn't even learn that the Avatar is alive until the day of the solar eclipse and by then, Zuko has finally pulled a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Combustion Man also has another moment of this in "The Western Air Temple". Prior to his appearance, the Gaang refuse to believe that Zuko has reformed and upon accidentally burning Toph's feet, are ready to go after him. But once Combustion Man attacks, Zuko arrives just in time to help defeat him, earning him some favour for the Gaang that ultimately allowed Zuko to regain their trust and become Aang's firebending teacher.
  • Ozai committed this three years before the story started. If he'd never banished his son, he would've won, as Zuko wouldn't have discovered himself with the help of Iroh and could have been as worse as Azula or Ozai. Zuko himself outright states this to him in the finale, calling it the best thing he could've ever done for him.
  • Azula has an instance of this in Book 3, when Zuko states he's angry over something he doesn't know about. Some prodding by Azula (as well as Mai and Ty Lee) caused Zuko to admit that he's angry at himself, which helps with the Character Development that leads to his Heel–Face Turn. This also leads to Mai's Heel–Face Turn a few episodes later when she sees Zuko about to be dumped in boiling water on Azula's orders and leads to Ty Lee's Heel–Face Turn in short order when Azula tries to attack Mai right in front of her for the latter's betrayal.
  • Even before the scene in "The Beach", which the above example explains, Zuko was worried if Ozai would finally be satisfied with him after coming home with the reputation of killing the Avatar. Azula calls him dumb and tells him that the only person he should be trying to satisfy is himself.
  • In The Legend of Korra, Amon uses his powers to remove Avatar Korra's ability to bend water, earth, and fire, the elements she had mastered. He also inadvertently unlocks her ability to bend air, and to connect to her former lives, one of whom gives her back all her bending, plus the ability to restore the bending of anyone else Amon had "equalised." As far as this trope goes, it's a doozy.
• Batman: The Animated Series:
  • In "Sideshow", Killer Croc escapes custody and ends up being taken in by a small group of former circus performers — each with a disfigurement — who treat him as one of their own. In fact, when Batman shows up to bring him in, they attack (and actually beat) the hero, and that might have been the end of it. But Croc can't help but steal their small retirement fund and go out of his way to kill them so there's no witnesses. He could have easily started a new life for himself, and Batman might have been willing to leave him alone. Hell, he could have even faked it long enough for Batman to leave if he wasn't dumb as a bag of hammers. But instead, he had to be himself.
  • In "Trial", the various Arkham inmates break out and capture Batman and the newly minted District Attorney of Gotham City, who herself is against the Dark Knight's vigilantism. The villains then place Batman on trial (with Joker as judge, Two-Face as prosecutor, Ventriloquist and Scarface as bailiff, and the rest as both the jury and the witnesses), "promising" to let them both go if the DA proves Batman was not responsible for creating them, as she herself claimed. She's not only able to prove that they were responsible for their own actions — and in fact they created him — but it gets rid of a major obstacle in Batman's crusade by having a prominent political figure stirring up public opinion against him, or worse yet, having him prosecuted for his activities. If anything, they proved to her exactly why Batman is needed — though she still admits (and the Dark Knight agrees) that they're both working towards a time where he's not required.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In "Four Star Spectacular!", while the Flash is fighting Mirror Master and his army of mirror duplicates, Abra Kadabra, a villain from the future, shows up to gloat because according to history, Mirror Master will kill him. One of Abra Kadabra's comments inadvertently gives Flash a hint on how to tell Mirror Master apart from his mirror duplicates, allowing Flash to defeat him. Abra Kadabra angrily says Flash can't change history, but Flash points out the villain himself did; if he never showed up, Flash would have lost.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: More often than not, Beavis and Butt-Head's stupidity will end up botching their attempts to screw others over, to the point of making things better. In "Jump!", they accidentally save the life of a suicidal jumper when they actually wanted him to kill himself for their own amusement.
• Ben 10:
  • Ultimate Alien: In the Series Finale, Dagon was crushing the heroes with little effort... until Vilgax made his move and absorbed his powers. His own ego pretty much does the rest.
  • Omniverse:
    • In "Special Delivery", Psyphon could have had his dwarf star back without any trouble if he had just returned the fish Ben needed to deliver. Instead, the idea that Ben would trade something so valuable for something so worthless is so confusing to him that he feels the need to voice the thought, thus explaining to Ben why it is valuable and making him refuse to return it. He also at one point had the star while Ben was busy with the other villains. He could have just walked away with it then.
    • When Ben becomes Gutrot for the first time and has no idea how to use the form, he simply asks the future Dr Animo to enlighten him. Future Animo proceeds to tell him the alien's name and specific powerset, which Ben of course uses to foil his plot.
• Code Lyoko:
  • XANA occasionally ends up helping the group by accident. For instance, in "Is Anybody Out There?", Odd gets devirtualized after he finds the activated tower. This proves to be extremely fortunate, because if it hasn't happened, no-one would have been around to type in the code "Scipio", and XANA would have stolen Aelita's memories!
  • A Krabe actually saves Odd's live in an early episode. He is about to fall into the digital sea (which entails permanent death); fortunately, the Krabe devirtualizes him before that can happen.
  • In "A Great Day", Sissi gets proof that Aelita isn't really Odd's cousin, and is going to expose them, with consequences that would certainly be terrible for the heroes and good for XANA. But then XANA possesses her, and in the process of trying to kill Ulrich, she accidentally destroys the evidence.
• Danny Phantom
  • In the special "Ultimate Enemy", Danny is trapped in the future by his evil future self, who went into the past to ensure his own creation. However, he makes two mistakes:
    • First, is outright telling Jazz where present Danny is on the assumption there is nothing she can do, which gives her an idea on how to find present Danny and gives him an idea on how to get back to the present.
    • Second, instead of trapping Danny in the thermos, Dark Danny traps him in the Ghost Zone, where their enemies want revenge. It is a bad idea because they'd possibly kill present-day Danny (which would erase Dark Danny from existence) but they don't, which allows Danny to live and learn the Ghostly Wail, a powerful ability that took Dark Danny a decade to master. While Dark Danny was never truly defeated by Danny (Clockwork would freeze time before the incident leading to Dark Danny's creation and seal him in the thermos), not trapping his past self more securely gave him the chance to learn from his mistakes and gain a new power in the process.
      Dark Danny: That power... it's not possible! I don't get that power for another ten years!
      Danny Phantom: Then I guess the future isn't as set in stone as you think it is! [shouts his Ghostly Wail]
  • Ghost Writer, the villain of the Christmas Episode, uses his Rewriting Reality powers to ruin Christmas for everyone and turn all of Danny's friends against him. When Danny gets the idea to head back to the Ghost Zone to confront Ghost Writer directly, he uses his powers so that he instead crashes a Christmas party with all of his Rogues Gallery. However, it turns out that ghosts have a Holiday Ceasefire and they instead respect the truce and invite Danny to their party. When Danny tells them about how Ghost Writer broke the truce, they team up with Danny to help put him in jail and fix all the damage in Amity Park.
• In the Donkey Kong Country episode, "Orangutango", Donkey Kong and King K. Rool face off in a dance-off where the prize is for one wish to be granted by the Crystal Coconut, which DK takes over after the Kong's lead dancer, Funky, hurts his ankle. King K. Rool practices with Klump, who continuously partakes in a strange dance with fast-paced music with a kazoo in the background, resulting in a running gag where K. Rool tells him, "I wish you wouldn't do that!". At the end of the episode, K. Rool ultimately wins the dance-off, and prepares to declare his wish to take over Kongo Bongo Island. However, Klump celebrates by doing the kazoo dance again, bringing K. Rool to exclaim loudly, "I WISH YOU WOULDN'T DO THAAAAT!", unconsciously making his wish for the Coconut to bonk Klump on the head and go back to its holding place. The tide changes and the Kongs knock the Kremlings away with their traps.
• In the five-part DuckTales (1987) special "Super DuckTales", the Beagle Boys alter freeway plans to have them go through the property Scrooge's money bin is on. As a result, Scrooge hires Fenton Crackshell as his accountant. Not only does it improve Fenton's life, but he ends up becoming Gizmoduck, who would be the bane of the Beagle Boys' existence for the remainder of the series.
• The major antagonists of DuckTales (2017) end up undoing their plans somehow, or at least making things a lot more difficult for them.
  • In Season 1, Magica de Spell arrives to finally destroy Scrooge McDuck once and for all and free herself from imprisonment in his number one dime. Unfortunately for her, she just happens to arrive to a despondent Scrooge, utterly crushed because his entire family had left and disowned him over what happened to Della Duck, the boys' mother and Donald's sister. It's this attack on Scrooge that motivates all of his family to try and rescue him, saving him from de Spell and (as Scrooge himself lampshades), strengthened their bond all the more.
  • In Season 2, General Lunaris manages to conquer the Earth thanks to successfully outwitting Scrooge at almost every turn, leaving him and what few allies left in a weakened state to the point they had no possible way of defeating him. However, Lunaris had made one crucial mistake earlier in the season that ended up costing him big time: Donald Duck. When the hapless duck ended up being imprisoned on the moon and narrowly escaping in an unstable prototype rocket, Lunaris assumed he perished in the atmosphere. However, Donald being Donald, he survived, allowing Della and the triplets to find him stranded on a deserted island with no one but a very suspicious sounding watermelon, and in turn reuniting them with their cousins Gladstone Gander and Feathery (not to mention the latter's very large sea creature), thus giving the Ducks a means to throw off Lunaris' plans big time. Well, that and Scrooge had to use the zany schemes of Flintheart Glomgold to catch him off guard.
  • Before Lunaris attacked Earth, Scrooge and Glomgold had a bet going during the season that the richest duck between the two of them got the fortune of the other. Glomgold, due to his ego, accepts the bet without a second thought, and is clearly losing by the end of the season. He enlists the help of other members of the rogue's gallery (Magica De Spell, Ma Beagle and the Beagle Boys, Mark Beaks, and Don Karnage). With all of their power combined, they storm McDuck Manor... and find out only Louie is home. Louie offers to help and takes them to Scrooge's Vault where the awards ceremony for the bet is being held. Thanks to Louie, Glomgold actually wins the bet (he has everyone pool their fortunes together, which is actually more than Scrooge has alone). Scrooge loses the bet to Glomgold... or so Glomgold thinks. Because Glomgold's legal name is "Duke Baloney", signing the paperwork "Flintheart Glomgold" cannot be the winner of the contest as he doesn't actually exist. That means all of his wealth, along with everything the other villains have, goes to his partner on the documents: Llewellyn Duck. Glomgold bankrupts his allies and loses everything. Had it not been for Lunaris's attack, Glomgold wouldn't have gotten his own fortune back either.
  • In Season 3, F.O.W.L. High Command aka Scrooge's own board of directors decides the events of the last two seasons and the constant chaos interrupting their schemes of larceny are solely the responsibility of the McDuck family, and they thus need to go. However, this trope ends up coming into play not once, but twice in the episode "Let's Get Dangerous!" When Taurus Bulba uses the R.A.M. Rod device to try and reshape reality, the various behind-the-scenes mishaps cause Scrooge to visit Saint Canard and ends up learning of what he's doing. Then, when Bradford Buzzard ends up paying a visit to chastise his henchman's failings, he ends up getting betrayed and thrown in a cell. Him getting rescued by the triplets and narrowly surviving death at the hands of Bushroot causes him to go on a Motive Rant against them, arousing massive suspicion from the three. Sure enough, Bradford ends up getting exposed as part of his poor attempts to hide his extraction request, causing Scrooge to learn F.O.W.L. is on his tail.
    • This gets even worse for F.O.W.L. in the finale. Bradford has Scrooge at his mercy, and has placed the entire McDuck clan in their Darkest Hour. Nearly all their allies and enemies have been captured and locked up behind bars, a splinter has occurred thanks to the revelation that Webby is Scrooge's clone, and her "grandmother" has kept this a secret from her for years, and forced Scrooge to sign a contract attached to the Papyrus of Binding, which Bradford worked on for decades to iron out any Loophole Abuse, to stop adventuring for good if he wants his family to be spared. All of this fits into Bradford's goal to rid the world of adventure due to childhood trauma caused by his grandmother, Isabella Finch, who brought him on adventures as a Tagalong Kid in an attempt to bond with him; the terrifying nature of these excursions only caused him to see any adventure as dangerous - and become hellbent on doing whatever it took to make himself feel safe, regardless of his own flimsy justification that he was trying to "save" the world from the "chaos" of adventure. So what does the bad guy in? Two things: despite all his efforts to remove any loopholes in the contract, he did leave one due to not understanding that family is the greatest adventure of all (when it's pointed out by the triplets, it cancels out the contract due to the Papyrus realizing that fulfilling the terms is impossible, as forcing Scrooge to give up adventuring would mean forcing him to abandon his family, which the contract was very clear he could have if he signed), but that he was the one told Della Duck about the Spear of Selene before it was ready so she'd take it for a test drive and get herself lost/killed, all so that Scrooge, upon seeing a family member potentially die as a result of adventuring, would finally forsake it for a "safer" life. But not only did she not die, the whole scheme ultimately proved to be completely unnecessary, since Della's kids were due any day and Scrooge would have more than likely retired to help her raise the boys, and Bradford's meddling only caused the very adventures he blames the McDuck family for over the course of the series, as the fallout of Della's disappearance and time on the moon directly led to Magica's attack and Lunaris' invasion of Earth (Magica used Scrooge's funk to create and manipulate Lena, causing a shadow apocalypse, and the Moonlanders used Della's ship prototypes to invade Earth, nearly succeeding). Had Bradford been smart enough to leave well enough alone, not only would have the series never occurred as it did, but he would have been able to keep F.O.W.L. going without Scrooge being any wiser to his schemes, and his ultimate fate would've never occurred.
• Exo Squad: The ExoFleet needs to make an alliance with the pirate clans to stand a chance against the Neosapien forces. Thing is, the pirates have decades of resentment towards the ExoFleet, and figure the Neosapiens will continue to not bother them, so they are going to turn down the alliance. Then Neosapien General Typhonus leads an attack, hoping to stop the alliance, but by attacking the pirates and giving Marsh a chance to rescue pirate leader Simbacca, he cemented the ExoFleet/pirate alliance. This leads to Neosapien leader Phaeton executing Typhonus, then replacing him with a clone.
• At the end of the first season of Frisky Dingo, Killface's son activates the Annihilatrix, which was designed to push the Earth into the Sun. Instead, it backfires and effectively reverses the damage caused by global warming.
• Same with G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero; a number of times the Joes are beaten, but Cobra Commander has to drive it in (often at the objections of Destro), somehow giving the Joes the chance to overcome their predicament. Strangely enough, Cobra's high-rankers prefer Serpentor to him because of this attitude, and yet Serpentor occasionally falls into this trope as well. At other times, however, the other high-ranking Cobra lieutenants do this by trying to step in and take credit for the scheme (just as often, if not more so, than the Commander), which causes it to fall apart.
• Gravity Falls:
  • In the Season 1 finale, Gideon succeeds in taking over the Mystery Shack and stealing Dipper's Journal 3. Dipper and Mabel, seeing no way to stop him, sadly agree to leave Gravity Falls to stay with their parents since Stan can no longer take care of them — but then Gideon, mistakenly thinking that Dipper also has Journal 1, hunts down the bus he and Mabel are leaving in, which gives Dipper and Mabel the opportunity and renewed motivation to finally take him down, expose him as a fraud to the town, and get the Mystery Shack back. They even lampshade this, wondering while Gideon is chasing them down why on earth he's doing this as he'd already won against them.
  • Before Bill Cipher unleashed Weirdmageddon, the Pines family was on the verge of breaking down — Mabel had succumbed to depression after realizing high school wasn't going to be what she'd hoped it would, her friends would be out of town and unable to celebrate her birthday, and Dipper was potentially about to leave her forever in favor of Ford. Stanley's relationship with Stanford was strained as he was ordered to abandon the Mystery Shack by the end of the summer and give Ford his identity and house back. Dipper planned on staying with Ford (and according to Word of God, Ford's influence would've eventually resulted in him turning into another Old Man McGucket). After Weirdmageddon, Stan and Ford finally reconciled their relationship and are going out on their childhood dream together, Mabel regains her confidence in her future, Dipper realizes that living with Ford is just running away from his insecurities about being a teenager and The Mystery Twins are back together and having the birthday of their life where they are treated as heroes and depart Gravity Falls on a high note. In other words, Bill inadvertently gave them the happy ending that they couldn't have earned in the first place. The Oddpocalypse Brings Out the Best in People, after all.
  • After Bill obliterated Time Baby in "Weirdmageddon Part 1", he inadvertently gave the people of the year 207̃012 their freedom from the tyrannical infant.

H-R

• In the stop-motion animation special Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Peter Cottontail and the villain Irontail are competing for the job of head Easter Bunny. Whoever delivers the most eggs wins. After missing delivering eggs on Easter, Peter tries to deliver the eggs on other holidays, but to no avail. In an attempt to make sure Peter never gets to unload his supply of Easter eggs, Irontail casts a spell on them that turns eggs green inside and out. Irontail believes that he's won — no one would want green eggs. But then, the next holiday Peter tries to deliver the eggs on turns out to be St. Patricks' Day. As a result, he successfully gives away all the green eggs, and becomes the head Easter Bunny. Irontail, meanwhile, is forced to sweep the bunny trail in the ending credits.
• The beginning of Season 2 of Jackie Chan Adventures has Valmont kicking the eponymous character off a cliff which results in Shendu possessing him and making them both less effective.
• Justice League: In "The Savage Time", Vandal Savage only freezes Adolf Hitler instead of, say killing him. As a consequence, when Vandal is beaten by the time-travelling Justice League, his subordinates release Hitler, who goes on to lose the war like he would have done in the first place, instead of another potentially more competent individual taking over. Even better: Word of God is that due to Savage's interference, the temporary removal of Hitler meant The Holocaust never occurred due to him being unable to implement it in the time left after Savage's defeat and Hitler's return to power.
• The Kid vs. Kat episode "How the Test Was Won" features Kat attempts to make Coop miss school and automatically fail a test that he has to do. In a great deal of irony, they not only fail, but also give Coop pointers about the subjects he had to study for said test:
  • Gravity: He allows himself to fall through the hole in the stairs before Kat could run him over with the boulder.
  • Pendulum: The paint cans in the basement move in an arc-like motion, which Coop easily maneuvered past.
  • Centrifugal force: He swing a rope at a lamp and spins around to get Kat off of him.
  • Inertia: Remains upward while flying in the air after crashing the wagon on the fire hydrant.
• In the first episode of Martha Speaks, a burgular breaking into the house feeds Martha the alphabet soup she needs to speak (she had stopped eating it because the family was mad at her for talking too much) allowing her to call the police on him.
• Done by the saurians in Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series:
  • When Lord Dragaunus explained to the ducks that they've lost, because he assumed that the Mask of Power was lost in limbo. But the new leader, Wildwing, decided to put it on which gave him the confidence to lead the Mighty Ducks against the Saurians.
  • Another was in the episode "Dungeon and Ducks", when the Saurians sent most of the ducks to a world where magic ruled to take over Earth. But that led to having to overthrow an evil sorcerer from that world which got them in home in time to foil the Saurians' plan.g
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • In the Season 2 finale, Twilight Sparkle calls out Princess Cadance and calls her evil, which nets her a royal "The Reason You Suck" Speech from her brother, all her friends turn on her, and even Princess Celestia is disappointed in her. Twilight herself is ashamed of her behavior and apologizes. Of course, had "Cadance" who is really Queen Chrysalis in disguise just left it at that she would have won. Unfortunately that just wasn't evil enough: instead she banishes Twilight to the caves below Canterlot where she meets the real Cadance, rescues her, and brings her topside to thwart the entire masquerade. But that still isn't enough, Queen Chrysalis seals her own fate with four crucial mistakes...
    • 1) When Twilight and Cadence return to the wedding to call her out, Chrysalis foolishly reveals her true identity, when she didn't have to. She can still win though.
    • 2) Twilight and Friends were captured by the Changelings and brought to her. She doesn't bother imprisoning them. Chrysalis' victory is still absolute at this point.
    • 3) Chrysalis completely ignores Twilight and her friends and gets caught up in a Villain Song reprisal, Twilight goes to free Cadence, who breaks the spell in Shining Armor. Keep in mind now, Chrysalis is still in total control here...
    • And finally 4) Chrysalis scoffs at The Power of Love despite having used the same power to defeat Celestia just minutes earlier. It backfires in her face and she's is instantly defeated in seconds.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom Part 2", if Tirek had stuck to his word to Discord, he wouldn't have given the Mane 6 the final key needed to beat him. Of course, Tirek had no way of knowing it would backfire at the time.
• The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Team of Terror", the Warlock has Superman at his mercy and is killing him with a kryptonite beam. His ally Satana sends a giant snake made out of plasto to crush the Man of Steel. The plastic blocks the kryptonitebeam and allows Superman to recover and escape.
• The "Tournament of Elements" arc of Ninjago sees an almost literally version of the trope example of 'kicking the dog and realigning a popped disc.' Lloyd is suffering back pain due to a poor mattress, and his roller derby performance is suffering because of it. Until the other competitors, trying to sabotage him, tackle Jay into him. This cures his back pain and helps him put up more of a fight.
• PAW Patrol does this in the Mighty Pups sub-series episode Pups vs. the Copycat from the show's sixth season, Mayor Humdinger is the one who begins destroying the Copycat's tower by just jumping and stomping on it due to it's very poor design (anyone should know that having the thickest part of a tower be on top is a bad idea) causing the Copycat to fly out of the danger, leaving Mayor Humdinger and his kitties behind on the now-collapsing tower.
• Phineas and Ferb does this almost Once per Episode; Doofenshmirtz's schemes and inventions end up erasing all evidence of Phineas and Ferb's invention of the day and, in return, saves them from getting busted.
• PJ Masks has a major one for Night Ninja in the Season 3 episode "Meet An Yu". Night Ninja and his Ninjalino's steal the dragon gong from the museum, and take it to Mystery Mountain where he intends to order the dragon that resides inside the gong to help him rob the pagoda of all it's relics. Too late does he learn that the dragon is actually An Yu, the defender of Mystery Mountain who was imprisoned in the gong, and by taking the gong back to Mystery Mountain, he allowed her to finally break free, giving the PJ Masks a new powerfull ally in the process.
• In The Powerpuff Girls (1998), Mojo Jojo is a recurring victim of this trope.
  • Used as the trope's example image, the episode "Just Another Manic Mojo", the Powerpuff Girls send a baseball through one of Mojo Jojo's windows. At first he is outraged, but he quickly comes up with a plan: Tell them to wait on the couch while he finds the baseball, all the while he actually aims a Death Ray at the girls from another room. The girls, however, keep getting distracted by the weird things in his lair, and keep leaving the couch, forcing him to abandon his Death Ray to put them back on the couch. Eventually he gets fed up and just grabs the baseball and kicks them out. The next day, to his horror, he is on the newspaper front page with the words "Mojo Jojo saves the day. Returns Powerpuff Ball".
    Mojo Jojo: CUUUUUURRRSEEEEEESSSSS!
  • The biggest example is the fact that he ended up inspiring the Professor to make the Powerpuff Girls, caused the Freak Lab Accident that created them, and gave them the drive to fight crime and made them accepted by the city, which was a crime-infested rat hole beforehand, pretty much making everything good in the series his fault to begin with.
    Mojo Jojo: It was me...it was me...it was me...
  • In one episode, an alien force defeats the girls using every single idea Mojo Jojo had ever come up with. Jojo gets so upset at the alien stealing his ideas ("YOU HAVE BROKEN. MY. DREAMS!") that he goes primal and physically forces the alien leader to submit, driving away the attack and becoming the hero.
  • Mojo Jojo did this again when he used the Professor's time machine to go back to the day when he was inspired to create the girls and prevent it from happening. As it turned out, his kidnapping of the Professor leading to the girls having to rescue him inspired him to try and create three perfect girls of his own. It wasn't until they returned to the present that the Professor realized that the girls that rescued him were his own girls. In other words, if Mojo Jojo had never tried to change the past, Professor Utonium would never have been inspired to create the Powerpuff Girls.
    Mojo Jojo: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
    Narrator: Yes!
  • In yet another episode, the Powerpuff Girls become deathly afraid of a boy who wanted to kiss them because they believe that his "cooties" are some kind of horrible disease. Mojo Jojo learns this and kidnaps the boy to bring him out whenever the girls confront him, which causes them to become too scared to fight him and let him run rampant with his evil schemes. He'd have won for good, had he not decided to torment the girls (even though they weren't even trying to stop him at this point) by trapping them in a pit with the boy, which lets the boy finally kiss one of them and them to discover that there's no such thing as cooties. Their fear of the boy gone, they promptly beat the crap out of Mojo Jojo.
• Invoked and lampshaded in the Regular Show episode "Do or Diaper". Muscle Man provokes Mordecai to agree to a bet which states that if Mordecai can kiss his Love Interest Margaret by Friday night, Muscle Man will have to wear a diaper for a week, and if he can't do it, obviously Mordecai would have to wear the diaper. Mordecai and Margaret go on a date, and in an unlucky series of events Margaret finds out about their bet when she notices Muscle Man and Rigby following them around the entire evening. Mordecai has to explain the bet he had with Muscle Man, which Margaret clearly isn't very happy about. Though to help her understand his actions and earn her forgiveness, he is forced to be honest and apologize to her, which leads to the Love Confession being dropped. It might seem like Muscle Man did Mordecai wrong by provoking him to agree to the bet and blowing his cover later, but he really made Mordecai learn something and helped deepen his and Margaret's relationship. Mordecai is even shown wearing the diaper with a smile at the end of the episode, explaining that "he's just happy because Margaret was having a great time on their date, and that means she must like him".
• In a tie-in Rose Petal Place book, Nastina gives Rose Petal a letter for a recording contract that will take her away from the garden for weeks, and volunteers to be in charge of the garden while she's gone so she can take it over. Rose Petal agrees to a trial run as she plans her departure, but Nastina mismanages the garden so badly, including locking Tumbles in a cage, that she decides to stay and not leave at all.
• In the Rupert episode "Rupert and the Crystal Kingdom", the way to turn Prince Lazuli's crystal palace into a Collapsing Lair is to strike a certain note on a crystal organ with a certain gem attached onto said organ. During the climax, Rupert and Princess Tiara are frantically hammering away at the keyboard, since they have no idea which key to hit, but can't find said note. A Chase Scene ensues where Prince Lazuli, while trying to stop them, falls against the keyboard, hitting just the right note.
  Rupert: [sincerely] Thank you, Prince Lazuli — we were looking for that key.

S-Y

• Aku sending Samurai Jack into the distant future is revealed to have backfired in the fifth season, after the Time Skip. A side-effect of the spell has rendered Jack unaging, meaning that Aku has basically made the only warrior who could kill him functionally immortal, and he's become so skilled after decades of fighting off Aku's minions that he apparently can't be killed. And when Jack does get back to the past in the Grand Finale, the extra 50 years of experience allows him to give Past!Aku such a Curb-Stomp Battle it's not even funny. Well, maybe just a little bit.
  • In XCVI, Aku kills the Scotsman. However, the runes on the warrior's sword allows the Scotsman to come back as a Celtic spirit. In the Grand Finale, he's able to use his ethereal powers to fight against Aku's demonic sorcery, giving the Big Damn Heroes an edge in the final battle.
  • In the penultimate episode, Aku takes control of Ashi's body using the portion of his essence she was born from. In the finale, Jack helps her retake control through The Power of Love and she retains Aku's powers, including his power of time travel, which she uses to take Jack back to the past to destroy Aku once and for all.
    • Also in the finale, on top of all the above, Aku's message of Jack's capture ultimately let Jack's allies know he needed their help, bringing them together to give Jack the time to escape and turn Ashi back.
    • Also in the finale, the only reason Aku confronted Jack in the first place is because Scaramouche told him Jack had lost his sword, i.e. the one thing in all the universe that could actually harm Aku. Expecting a Curb-Stomp Battle in his favor, Aku shows up to face Jack not realizing the sword was back.
• At one point in the Sandokan cartoon, the Rajah (the Big Bad) has captured Sandokan's island fortress, locked him and his men in their own cell and set a Rube Goldberg Device to blow them up once he and his own forces are a safe distance away. The heroes have no hope of escape, they're doomed...except that meanwhile the other antagonist, the Rajah's ally Lord James, has put in motion a plan of his own to arrange the kidnap of Sandokan's friend's daughter in order to lure Sandokan into a trap. When she's kidnapped, her father's lieutenant hurries to the island to seek Sandokan's help, finds the heroes locked up and defuses the bomb in the nick of time.
• She-Ra: Princess of Power:
  • In "Horde Prime Takes a Holiday", if not for Skeletor trying to take over Horde Prime's warship, Hordak would have frozen She-Ra and He-Man.
  • Hordak and Skeletor unknowingly do it to each other in "Loo-Kee Lends a Hand". If not for Skeletor's plan to capture Prince Adam, who knows how long would it take Loo-Kee to find Prince Adam and ask for his help or how much damage the Horde would have done by then? Also, if not for Hordak freezing time for the rebels, Loo-Kee wouldn't have gone to Eternia and ruined Skeletor's plan to break into Prince Adam's bedroom.
• In The Simpsons episode "Hungry, Hungry Homer", Homer is accused of being a liar when he tries to expose Howard K. Duff VIII, the greedy owner of the Isotopes' plan to move the team to Albuquerque. Homer actually stages a hunger strike, which the conniving Duff uses as an advantage, moving him to center field. But when it becomes clear that Homer will not give up, Duff unchains him and offers him a new deluxe hot dog, in front of a huge crowd. Homer very nearly succumbs to the temptation... but then notices the hot dog's toppings are all Southwestern ingredients. The crowd realizes this(and on top of it, the hot dog's wrapping says "Albuquerque Isotopes" on it and Duff is unable to bluff his way out now, even Duffman turning against him. Moral of story: Never assume the Big Eater you're trying to Bribe With Food can't recognize it.
  • One or two episodes had Homer only keeping his job because Bad Boss Mr. Burns intended to enact revenge against him at his leisure, at one point even hiring him back with a view toward Keeping the Enemy Close after he had been laid off by new management. The trouble is, Burns always forgets who Homer is, so all this does is ensure that Homer has Ultimate Job Security.
• In The Smurfs (1981) episode "The Gallant Smurf", young Prince Godfry falls in love with a maiden named Pricilla, but his overprotective and snobbish mother Queen Felicity objects to him wanting to marry a "poor, pitiful, penniless peasant", and gives this condition for anyone wishing to marry her son: Show her something she's never seen before. Queen Felicity is a very old woman who has seen almost everything. Most every suitor fails, and it when it looks like Hogatha may well succeed (she captures Grandpa Smurf, whom even she has never seen among the Smurfs) Godfry and Pricilla hug and make a tearful farewell, causing Felicity to groan and say she's "never seen such true love before". After Godfry asks her to repeat it, she realizes that she has just admitted Pricilla has met her condition. (Presumably, Felicity kept her word and let them wed, but we can only assume it.)
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Fear of a Krabby Patty", when Plankton disguises himself as a psychiatrist to examine SpongeBob who's developed a fear of krabby patties and tries to learn the formula from him, his final attempt at such is to hypnotize him to sleep into telling it to him. This is what cures his fear however, giving him a dream where he conquers such, and with that, he is ready to cook again.
  • In "Krabs a la Mode", Plankton turns down Mr. Krabs' thermostat, freezing the Krusty Krab all over in hopes no one will want to go there. However, SpongeBob creates ice skates out of frozen patties, and soon all the other customers want to join in, which inspires Mr. Krabs to turn the Krusty Krab into an ice rink, thus Plankton only resulted in making the Krusty Krab even more popular than ever.
  • In "Krusty Krushers", SpongeBob and Patrick are entered in a wrestling match between two tough competitors, but they do anything but fight them for the sake of thinking they're playing pretend. As a finishing move, they are put into a deep sleep with no way to wake them up, and the champions proceed to launch themselves high into the air and divebomb them. In the process of this however, Patrick suddenly gets a dream of his "iron bun" workout technique, causing him to unleash his steel buttocks from said workout to defeat the champions, granting he and SpongeBob the victory.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: In the Bad Batch arc, Wat Tambor's greed does in the entire Separatist campaign at Anaxes. To elaborate, Rex, Anakin and the titular Bad Batch discover that Tambor and Admiral Trench have been using the presumed-dead ARC trooper Echo as a Wetware CPU to counter Republic strategies, and set out to rescue him from the Techno Union on Skako Minor. At the end of "On the Wings of Keeradaks", after being informed that his droid forces have failed to recapture Echo, Tambor decides to hold off on informing the Separatist military about the loss because of the damage it will do to the Techno Union's profit margins, as he wants to find a way to recoup their investment first. In "Unfinished Business", this allows Echo to mislead Trench into a trap by feeding him false information, with Trench not finding out that the signals are coming from onboard his flagship until it's too late.
• Star Wars Rebels:
  • "Zero Hour" has two examples:
    • Grand Moff Tarkin orders Grand Admiral Thrawn to capture the Rebel commanders during his attack on the rebel base, as Tarkin wants to Make an Example of Them. This ultimately lets those same commanders escape with their lives, as it's clearly shown that had Thrawn been left to his own devices, he could have easily killed them all via Orbital Bombardment.
    • Governor Arihnda Pryce, in the middle of a Villainous Breakdown due to the losses the Mandalorian fighters are inflicting on the Imperial forces, orders Kallus Thrown Out the Airlock when he starts taunting her about it, instead of just having him shot where he stood — which gets him off the bridge and gives him the opportunity to escape the Chimaera.
    • The biggest offender comes from Captain Kassius Konstantine, who falls for Commander Sato's Batman Gambit and sends one of his Interdictor-class Star Destroyers (which kept the Rebels from fleeing into hyperspace) to intercept. Sato's ship ramps the destroyer, destroying them both, but allowing Ezra to escape and get help from Mandalore. This comes about in spite of the fact that Thrawn explicitly ordered Konstantine not to break formation, which, if he hadn't, would have ended the Rebellion right then and there.
  • Pryce does it again and with much more severe consequences in "Jedi Night": She blows up her own base's fuel depot in an attempt to kill Kanan, Hera, Ezra and Sabine, only to fail when Kanan commits a Heroic Sacrifice by holding off the explosion with the Force. But by doing so, she blew up the entire Imperial fuel supply on the planet, severely compromising Thrawn's TIE Defender project at a time when he was already having to argue against Orson Krennic's Death Star project for additional funding. In "DUME", a seething Thrawn chews her out by noting that she handed the Rebels a victory they wouldn't have achieved on their own. Given that the Defenders had been shown to utterly outmatch Rebel fighters and the Rebels depend heavily on fighter superiority, she effectively cost the Empire the entire war. Worse yet, as shown by the original trilogy, the Death Star ultimately fails in the short-term and only manages to martyr an entire planet, meaning that Palpatine wasted money on it for nothing.
• Steven Universe:
  • Yellow Diamond's desire to secure the Cluster, a geoweapon incubating inside the Earth that could destroy the planet if formed, is what leads the Crystal Gems to find out that it exists at all, letting them devise a plan to neutralize it — and even more than that, as Steven manages to use his Astral Projection powers to befriend it and get it to bubble itself, turing the Cluster into an ally when Yellow wakes it up in "Reunited".
  • "The Answer": Ruby did this before defecting to the Crystal Gems: according to Sapphire's prophecy, Rose and Pearl would poof her and then be captured, bringing an end to their rebellion. Ruby, who did not hear the prophecy, saves Sapphire and accidentally fuses with her in the process, which stuns everyone so much that Rose and Pearl have a chance to get away.
    • It's later revealed in "Now We're Only Falling Apart" that Ruby's actions had even more consequences for Homeworld than that: Before then, Rose Quartz, aka Pink Diamond, had only had the goal of scaring the Gems off Earth. Seeing Garnet, the first known cross-Gem fusion, led Rose to change her goal to making Earth a haven for outcast Gems, which led directly to a full-scale war.
  • "Reunited": During the climax, Yellow Diamond knocks Steven unconscious at the beginning of the final fight. This lets him use his Astral Projection powers to speak to Yellow and Blue Diamond in their heads and finally show them definitive proof that he has Pink Diamond's Gem.
  • It turns out that the biggest example of this trope on the show comes from the actions of White Diamond. Thousands of years before the show begins, before even the colonization of Earth and the Crystal Gem rebellion, she took away Pink Diamond's original Pearl because they'd gotten too familiar and gave her a new Pearl, intended to be more sensible and keep to her proper place. Given that this Pearl, our Pearl, was the one who inspired Pink to don her Rose Quartz disguise in the first place and helped her rebel against Homeworld, none of the show, including Steven's existence and his helping to redeem the Diamonds, would have happened without this long-ago action of White's.
  • In Steven Universe: The Movie, Spinel holds a powerless Steven by his wrist hundreds of metres above the ground as she prepares to let him plummet to his death. However, she decides to first taunt Steven over how pathetic he is. Spinel mockingly asks Steven how the supposed 'Savior of the Galaxy' came from a weakling like him. This prompts Steven to realize that while he did indeed start as a powerless child who didn't know what he was doing, overtime he grew and changed to be who is today. This gives Steven the final 'piece' he was missing to re-unlock his powers and he is able to figure out that Spinel can't be changed because he wants her to, but because she wants to. This in turn allows Spinel to make a genuine Heel–Face Turn and befriend the Diamonds in order to move on.
• Storm Hawks: The villains have done this to themselves and each-other a few times. Cyclonis banishing Ravess led to the latter supplying the Storm Hawks with vital information on Cyclonis' endgame out of spite in the second season, and in the Series Finale, Cyclonis attempting to empower the Dark Ace with Far Side energy both takes out her right-hand and disables the shields that were preventing her terra from being shot out of the sky.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987), Krang makes Super Rocksteady and Bebop robots which are incredibly strong and intelligent, and can effortlessly defeat the turtles — until the regular Rocksteady and Bebop accidentally expose them to lightning.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), the Utrom Shredder did a much better job of “fixing it”. Although he committed many horrendous crimes that caused anguish to so many people (murdering Splinter’s master, burning down Casey’s father’s store –- and possibly killing him too -– and kidnapping dozens of New Yorkers and turning them into horrid monsters), as Donatello explains, he originally put into motion a set of Disaster Dominoes that led to the Turtles’ very creation and his own undoing. (And the biggest irony is, he never learned this.) To summarize:
  Donatello: If the Shredder had never made the Utroms crash in the first place, they’d have never developed the ooze, and if they’d never developed the ooze, we’ve never have been mutated, and if we’d never have been mutated, we’d still be eating fish flakes in some kid’s aquarium right now!
  • In "Rogues in the House", the Turtles have been incapacitated and Shredder orders Karai to execute them to prove her loyalty. She's willing to do this and raises the blade, but Hun decides that this is too boring, and thus frees Leo so that they can duke it out. Leo lectures her during this fight, which ultimately persuades her not to kill them
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • The Season 2 finale shows Terra as The Mole, who promptly defeats all the Titans individually. She failed to finish the job, though, so five very angry Titans came back to teach her the error of her ways.
  • Another example, though not as big: When the Titans East had to watch Jump City while the core team was away fighting the Brotherhood of Evil, they have a very hard time getting the public to accept them. (Being newcomers and all, no-one recognizes them, or even worse, mistakes them for the core team). When Control Freak shows up gunning for revenge against the Titans, he's even worse; he doesn't accept them as "real Titans", and to prove it, sets up a series of attacks on the city designed to "test" them, which push them to their limits. (For example, Bumblebee has to stop a subway from reaching a certain station, as a bomb is mounted on the underside of the train which is timed to detonate upon arrival. The catch: She has to do it at miniature size.) However, the Titans East members avert all five disasters and pass with flying colors, and all of a sudden, they become heroes. You can't deny that they owed this to Control Freak. (They still arrested him, of course.)
  • Another major example: One big reason the Brotherhood of Evil was defeated at the end of Season 5 was because Madame Rouge, whom Jinx had worshipped, treated Jinx like garbage, one of two reasons (along with a Dating Catwoman situation with Kid Flash) that not only prompted Jinx's Heel–Face Turn, but convinced her to act as a Double Agent for the heroes during the Final Battle.
  • A very interesting one concerning this show and Teen Titans Go! In the TTG episode "The Fourth Wall", Control Freak reveals to the Titans that their universe used to be the old series universe, but he rebooted it so he can win an award. While it doesn't fix the series, he ends up angering the Titans when they find out what their old world used to be.
• In an episode of Thundarr the Barbarian called "Prophecy of Peril", the evil wizard Vashtar brought upon his own downfall in five ways:
  • First, by telling the heroes that the crystal they stole would tell how he would be defeated. While the heroes would probably figure out how to defeat him, it showed them to look for the 3 women to defeat him.
  • Second, the crystal had proven inaccessible to Vashtar, a more powerful wizard than Ariel was a sorceress. But when randomly shooting magic lasers at them, Vashtar destroys the crystal, releasing the prophecy — which is large and easy to hear, to boot.
  • Third, he thought he would be one step ahead by kidnapping one of the women and locked her in his dungeon. But, the one woman he kidnapped was in the past when the heroes can't get to. (And he knows this.) Also, instead of killing her or persuading her to join him, she believed that the wizard was a bad guy right away.
  • Fourth, while the first woman was a retired queen and understood responsibility to the people, the second was a hermit who didn't want to have a thing to do with other people, prophecies or defeating tyrants. Then the evil wizard enters her valley and starts blowing crap up, ticking her off and motivating her to join the heroes.
  • Fifth, when the woman he kidnapped escaped and got to the crystal, he hit her and the crystal with a beam that gives her angel wings and laser eye beams allowing her to escape and join the heroes to complete the prophecy.
• The Transformers:
  • The very first episode of the show has a massive one from Starscream. When Teletraan I is rebooted by a volcanic eruption, the beam that it uses to reformat the Transformers and bring them out of stasis hits Skywarp, who then uses it to revive the other Decepticons, who then leave with the Earth free for them to conquer... then Starscream fires a parting shot at the Ark in an attempt to bury it further and the resulting explosion knocks Optimus Prime into the beam, awakening him and allowing him to awaken the other Autobots, thus restarting the war.
  • The second half of the two-parter "Megatron's Master Plan". After the events of the first half in which the Decepticons successfully stage a False Flag Operation to get the Autobots exiled from Earth (albeit through an intense amount of Artistic License – Law), Chip Chase is able to escape to the Ark where he works on Teletraan I, only for Thrust to discover him and destroy the supercomputer. However, at the end of the first half, Megatron had used Teletraan I to set the Autobots on a one-way collision course with the Sun, meaning that Thrust had inadvertently screwed over his master's plan and allowed the Autobots to return back to Earth and liberate it from the Decepticons.
• In Transformers: Prime, a pair of Vehicon Mooks decide to Kick the Dog with an amnesic Optimus/Orion who is beginning to doubt Megatron's plans and protests against them. The beatdown causes Optimus's arm cannons to appear, the ones he had forgotten he had. Then, he uses them to easily defeat the Vehicons and head after Megatron.
  Optimus: I'm... armed?
  [Vehicons freeze in panic]
• In The Venture Bros. episode "Handsome Ransom", the Monarch corners Captain Sunshine in his sanctum solarium at night, powerless from lack of sunlight and emotionally crippled from seeing him wear Wonderboy's uniform. Rather than just shooting him, Monarch makes a drawn out gloating speech and pulls out a solar beam gun intended to burn him off. It backfires horribly, recharging Captain Sunshine and allowing him to burn alive all of Monarch's mooks, winning the day.
• Once in awhile on Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly's machinations would result in giving the other racers an advantage against him. In the debut episode, "See Saw To Arkansas", he gets the racers hung up on a cloverleaf highway exit system. When the narrator asks how he did, Dastardly turns the sign marking the exit around, and the racers immediately take it — flattening Dastardly in the process.
• Happens a few times in Xiaolin Showdown. Notably, Jack had come up with a brilliant and for once successful plan, convincing Omi that he was destined to turn evil and had to stay away from his teammates at all costs. This was going perfectly until his idiot henchmen blabbed the entire plan, snapping Omi out of his despair and allowing him to win the day.
• X-Men '97 begins in the wake of Henry Gyrich assassinating Professor Xavier. Following the brazen act of hate-fueled cruelty, along with the X-Men's heroics, anti-mutant sentiments have sharply decreased, and the hope of peaceful coexistence between humanity and mutantkind is closer than ever to realization.
• Yogi's Gang: When Yogi and his friends are ready to leave Smog City, Smokestag Smog tricks them into installing a motor that'll make their ark spread smoke through wherever they go. Once they wise up, they throw the motor away at the local dump, inspiring the townsfolk to stop polluting their atmosphere. Mr. Smog is even more responsible for his undoing because his smog is what ruined Yogi's gang's banana supply and made them land in Smog City in the first place.
• Young Justice (2010):
  • Deathstroke tells Lady Shiva and Cassandra that Tara Markov "washed out" and that he handed her to Granny, knowing that Batman was watching and made a lie to allow Tara to infiltrate the heroes when they "rescue" her. The problem was he did so without his mask, allowing Batman to read his microexpression and deduce Tara was still an agent of the League of Shadows, which he told the other heroes. The heroes respond by acting hospitable and welcoming to Tara, which led to her Heel–Face Turn and turning her back against the Light.
  • Savage's gambit to control Atlantis ends up backfiring on him spectacularly. His plan was to have Orm (who had been killed by Shiva last season) transplanted onto the cloned body of Arion, the first King of Atlantis, in order to take advantage of a prophecy involving Atlantis's true ruler. At the same time, he had created a clone of Orm to defuse any suspicions. However, his planning ends up being All for Nothing as when Orm attempted to wear Arion's Crown, which would have marked him as the true ruler, he was obliterated by its power as he was not the the one meant to wear it. In the ensuing fallout, Mera became King which united all of Atlantis and ended the strife, the clone of Orm reconciled with his brother and was set free, and Orin decided to rejoin the Justice League now that he was freed of his responsibilities as King. This was such a big loss to the Light that Doctor Fate appeared to Savage just to rub it in his face.

---