Main Plot Induced Stupidity Discussion

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SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)

Mar 23rd 2021 at 7:37:16 AM •••

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Plot Induced Stupidity v Idiot Ball, started by SomeSortOfTroper on Jun 4th 2010 at 8:31:30 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

SeptimusHeap MOD (Edited uphill both ways)

Mar 23rd 2021 at 7:14:43 AM •••

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Countdown to Merger, started by SomeSortOfTroper on Dec 8th 2010 at 3:55:35 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Angeldog2437 Since: Jun, 2010

Dec 11th 2010 at 10:43:13 AM •••

Um, why was the page image removed?

SomeSortOfTroper Since: Jan, 2001

Jun 4th 2010 at 11:39:01 AM •••

This thing is riddled with normal Idiot Ball examples. I suspect that this is due to the fact that idiot ball is about stupidity being induced to service the plot and this is actually about specifically forgetting some highly useful abilities or powers (cf. nearly all superheroes at some point).

I have removed faulty examples and started up a troper repair shop discussion. I will place bad examples here to be studied

Idiot Ball examples- Live Action TV

The writers of Torchwood slipped an Idiot Ball to Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones in the fourth episode of Children of Earth. They confronted the enemy with nothing to back up their bluff and no contingency plan in case things went wrong (which they did, almost immediately).
- Of course, Jack and Ianto wouldn't have been in that position had the Idiot Ball not previously been held by the British Government, which decided that the best way to keep Jack quiet about the 456 was to blow him up along with the Hub (where Torchwood kept the alien tech they'd acquired), thereby depriving themselves of their foremost expert on E Ts and a potential source of weaponry.
  - Which was caused by the British Government holding the idiot ball in the sixties. They needed someone to hand of orphans to aliens, an act that needed no special skills and involved lying to children and being okay with being responsible for their deaths. Government officials thought the act was justified, and at least one person believed they might go to a better place, but who did they get to do it? The one guy who can't die and would have knowledge of what the government did forever.
    - So basically the British government has been holding the idiot ball for the past fifty years.
    - Many Britons would agree that this is Truth in Television
In Dexter, Sgt. Doakes forgot everything he learned as a Miami detective and a Special Forces operator and got himself captured by Dexter in the second season. When confronting Dexter on the pier, Doakes made a mistake that is beaten out of every rookie cop back in the academy. He allowed a suspect to approach him while holding him at gunpoint while standing too close to him. Doakes had been established as having a military Special Forces background and had seen action in Papa Doc's Haiti. He was also an experienced detective on Miami's police force. This was a man with a lot of experience confronting dangerous people and winning. Doakes should have blown Dexter away the instant Dexter twitched a muscle in his direction.
- Although Doakes also needed to clear his name of the Bay Harbor Butcher murders, and Dexter was someone who was believed to be a target of Doakes. Had he shot Dexter (even if he had survived) it would have hurt his case. Not to mention how recent incidents might have made Doakes uneasy about shooting an unarmed man.
- In the Original Series episode "The Enemy Within", crewmembers are trapped on the surface because the transporter is broken. Why don't they send down a shuttlecraft to rescue them? The film-making reason was because the Galileo 7 Shuttlecraft set hadn't been built yet, but we know the REAL reason. The crew are morons.
- The Star Trek The Next Generation episode "Justice", where Wesley breaks an idyllic world's trivial law by accidentally stepping on flowers and faces the death sentence. One wonders how Star Fleet manages to not have its personnel constantly imprisoned or executed if they fail to check the laws of every planet they visit before they authorize shore leave there.
  - It's made even worse in this case since near the start of the episode Worf told the Captain that he'd read the laws and they were fairly standard. I have to wonder about the Federation's laws if randomly applied death sentences are fairly standard.
    - Even worse than that. It would almost be acceptable if a law about 'stepping on flowers' was a crazy exception in the middle of a bunch of sane death penalty laws for things like murder, but what happened was Wesley had entered a secret, random 'punishment zone', where the laws are enforced extremely harshly to keep everyone in line all the time, as they never know of they're in a punishment zone. Any violation of the law in a punishment zone is that harsh, and their entire system of justice has, as the basis, everyone being in constant worry they're in such a zone. And somehow Worf just totally missed this.

Idiot Ball-Video Games

A good video game example is Quistis in Final Fantasy VIII during the "parade assassination attempt" sequence: she leaves her post during the critical phase of a meticulously planned mission, with half the party in tow, just to traipse halfway across the city so she can apologise to Rinoa for an earlier misunderstanding. Her professionalism had been questionable as a teacher, but as a mission leader (and the senior See D member) she'd been fairly level-headed up to that point.
- There's also something to be said for Rinoa's plan to give Edea an Odine bangle, which hinges on the idea that Edea is ignorant of what Odine jewelry does, and would still wear it after realizing her Sorceress powers were suppressed; the second half of the first disc is a a huge game of Idiot Ball Bombardment.
Plot-induced stupidity is common in video games with railroad plots. In pretty much any Legend of Zelda game Link must pull the Master Sword out of a stone to advance the plot, but it invariably releases unspeakable evil. You knew quite well in Ocarina of Time that the Master Sword was keeping Ganon from getting the Triforce, but you actually can't defeat Ganon without letting him get insanely more powerful first. Same goes with pretty much any Legend of Zelda sequence where the game waits patiently for you to do something stupid, of your own free will, because it's impossible to beat the game otherwise. Then it can claim later that there was a better option, but Your Character Wouldn't Have Done That.
- This plot point is subverted in TP, as getting the Master Sword not only not release Ganondorf, it also gives you two formidable weapons — the sword itself and the curse fragment. While the curse itself was caused by unspeakable evil (i.e. the Big Bad's), it gets "released" from Link in a way that you can control it. An example from TP that does follow this trope? The fact that a bratty preteen and his toddler brother (this is Talo and Malo, for those of you who have played) can block your way to the rest of the game and not move until you give him the wooden sword. I thought that a very easy way around this is simply to have him whip the brat into submission and drop the sword at the spring, and/or have it be destroyed when he gets attacked by the Bulblins, or have him drop it when he changes to wolf for the first time.
The game Portal does the same thing in the boss sequence. You can wait all day but nothing's going to happen until you destroy GLaDOS' morality core.
While the characters of Silent Hill are not known for their intelligence, Eileen from the fourth game deserves special mention. After she and Henry discover the history behind the game's antagonist, she suddenly decides to leave Henry, her only protection against the hundreds of lethal monsters roaming around, in an effort to "help" Walter, a man who not only brutally murdered eighteen people, two of them children, but savagely beat her almost to death only a few hours ago, all for the purpose of Henry having to kill Walter before she dies in the Final Boss fight, earning her the much coveted title of the most useless and irritating character in the entire series.
- In her defense, by that point in time, she's in varying degrees of possessed. I know it's something of a Hand Wave, but still... one can only speculate how much is Idiot Ball, and how much is just doing as she's told.
Daxter may be a bit of a dork, but he's not the drooling imbecile people make him out to be. Yet in The Lost Frontier, he somehow mistakes a machine in the Aeropan Research Rig for a candy machine. Then he gets doused in Dark Eco.
'Valkyria Chronicles'' plays with this one in places throughout the game, but the most glaringly obvious and stupid one is when Alicia comes to Welkin, distraught and nearly in tears over her Valkyria powers and the huge responsibility that's been dumped on her, seeking his help. Welkin has been nothing but affectionate and reassuring throughout the whole game, as well as a genius who can solve any problem with his big genius brains, but he chooses this moment to casually ignore Alicia, and she runs off, chastising herself for being such a whiner. The only reason he does this is to set up the next major scene, when Alicia tries to kill herself because Welkin wouldn't acknowledge her pain and he rushes in for the last-second Cooldown Hug.
In Commandos games your two main weapons are stealth and discretion. And subtlety. Ok, you three main weapons are stealth, discretion and subtlety. And quietly picking enemies up one by one. However, not futher then in the second mission of Commandos 2 a team of pistol-armed seamen (not marines, mind you, just a regular sub crew) rush at a bunch of Nazies gunz blazing, they are immediately captured (a CI moment for Nazis as well as normally they'd just shoot them), and you spend the rest of the mission bailing the nincompoops out.

Western Animation

Manga & Anime

All the main cast (save Judai) of Yu-Gi-Oh GX during the third season seem to become complete ignoramuses when it comes to the game of Duel Monsters; once it hits the fan and they're confronted by Dueling Zombies and homicidal Duel Monsters, instead of using their uber-dueling skills to defend themselves or getting the hell out of Dodge and not add to the problem (as dueling during the first part of the season only added fuel to the fire), they chose door #3 and just sat on their asses until they got captured and killed off. The worst offender has to be Sho, who purposely keeps his distance from Judai and the rest of the gang for some reason all his own, even when his intervention as their close and dear friend could've helped avoided most of the latter-half problems altogether.
- Also happens in its parent series when Yugi, for no apparent reason, hands over his Exodia cards to Insector Haga (Weevil Underwood), a very shady generic bad character, who promptly tosses them off the boat they were on. The loss seems to be for no other reason than to ensure Yugi doesn't win all his duels with Exodia stomping. This is mocked in the Abridged Series, where Yugi flat-out says "You're clearly evil, but I see no reason not to trust you".
- In the episodes where Marik fights Yugi using Slifer the Sky Dragon, Yugi has only 1100 points left. Why doesn't he summon a monster to attack him directly? With all those cards he drew, he certainly should have more than enough. Or better that, just put Revival Jam in attack mode and do it (Granted, that stops Revival Jam from defending Slifer from then on, but you've already won!).
  - This is reversed in episode 55, Joey vs. Rare Hunter (Exodia guy). The Rare Hunter (2500 LP) sets a monster in defense mode and has no other cards on the field. Joey has Alligator's Sword and Panther Warrior (and scapegoat tokens) on the field. He then sacrifices his two monsters to summon Red Eyes Black Dragon and simply destroy the facedown card instead of summoning a monster with at least 1000 attack points and winning.
    - Marik gets repayment later, when Mai pulls a truly idiotic move during the Quarter-Final of the Battle City Tournament. She has three harpy ladies on her field, Marik is wide open. Instead of simply finishing him right then and there, she shoe-horns the duel away by trying to summon Marik's Egyptian God Card, which she can't even control.
- There's also the GX first season finale; all of the Seven Star Assassins have been defeated, and the spirit keys are safe and sound. That should be the end of it, right? Unfortunately, the plot demands that Judai have one final duel with the Assassins' leader, who must have the Sacred Beast cards in the vault that the spirit keys unlock. So, how do the writers solve that? By having Manjyome get talked into using the spirit keys as part of an ante for a duel between her and Asuka, the other part being Asuka going on a date with him, despite everyone clearly knowing by that point (and Asuka herself pointing out) that the keys will only unlock the vault if they're won through a duel. He loses, of course, causing the keys to float off and unlock the vault by themselves, setting up for the final showdown.
- A somewhat lesser (as it depended on the Hand, which the opponent can't see) but still noticeable example from 5D's: Yusei is facing a Magnificent Bastard called Jean. Jean's masterful strategy has caught Yusei in a double-bind: if Jean destroys Yusei's last monster, his Life Points will be wiped out by Jean's Spell card even though the monster's in Defense Position. However, if Jean simply ends his turn, Yusei will lose anyway, as Jean has managed to deck him out. So, basically, Yusei has to win on Jean's turn, and it all depends on what move Jean himself makes. Jean goes for the monster, which enables Yusei to dump a card from his Hand that increases his monster's defense, essentially suiciding Jean's monster and costing him the duel. While this makes perfect sense from a plot perspective (Yusei really needed to win right there or the protagonists would be booted from the tournament), it's still rather odd, given Jean's established character, that he'd fail to take every last card into account.
In Naruto during the Forest of Death arc, Haruno Sakura uses her ninja training to stab an enemy in a non-vital spot, then she bites him and hangs on for a bludgeoning rather than attack in any other way. After the time jump, she gets herself impaled by flinging herself in the path of an attacking ninja rather than deflecting him from his target.
- This echoes the instance in Tsunade's fight with Orochimaru, where Tsunade throws herself between Orochimaru and Naruto and is impaled for her efforts.
  - Tsunade, at least, had Super Healing Skills.
  - This is a such a common example of a Stupid Sacrifice that it's barely worth mentioning. People have been jumping in front of attacks that they could deflect or push the target out of the way of for years.
- Sakura's response to Naruto and Sasuke charging each other with Rasengan and Chidori is to run between them when they are unable to change their course to avoid hitting her. She avoids a most likely fatal injury only thanks to Kakashi.
  - She's the victim of PIS so often Pre-Timeskip, it makes you question the quality of the Konoha Ninja Academy, considering she was one of the TOP students in their class.
  - Let's just assume that, while Sakura may be one of their top "students" pre-timeskip, she was certainly lacking in hands-on, practical intelligence. There's a difference between studying well/memorizing facts and being able to think clearly in a tense situation.
- Sakura trying to kill Sasuke with a poisoned kunai. To be more specific: trying to kill a high-A or S class ninja with a weapon that requires her to be RIGHT NEXT TO HIM TO USE.
  - Then there's that fact that Sasuke is immune to poison due to training with snakes for the past three years.
    - Not to mention her needing rescuing from TWO fatal attacks in that fight by both of her teammates.
      - In her defense, not that she has a lot in that case, she didn't seem to know about Sasuke's poison immunity and perhaps she was applying Occam's Razor to the situation. In this world, usually the best and simplest way to take someone out IS to put a kunai in them. But as the troper noted above, she should've known better than thinking JUST a poisoned kunai would be enough.
Read or Die: Yomiko Readman could have made her life so much easier if she had actually bothered to exploit all the literary tropes her enemies often followed. After reading so much, she could have become this site's number one contributor if she were real.
- Speaking of which, a major source of Team Rocket's failures is the fact that they use a hot air balloon as a method of transportation. If they can build the funds for giant robots almost Once an Episode, why can't they purchase a vehicle that's more durable and can travel faster?

Comic Books

Silver Surfer: To get into a story with an Evil Twin, a Mad Scientist convinces the Surfer to get into his duplicating machine. The Surfer pretty much says "Well, I've been screwed over by a Mad Scientist before, and I sense evil in you, but what the hell."
Marvel's CivilWar was full of PIS moments, but the biggest one has to be in the last issue, when the feuding superheroes continue their battle after being transported to New York City- causing destruction and even casualties, despite the fact that most of them were trained specifically to avoid that from happening! (Destruction in comics is usually caused by the *villains* the heroes fight, and would have been greater without their interference.)
Technological jargon aside, the Merged Hulk often seemed to be unaware that he had Bruce Banner's smarts as well as the original Hulk's strength.
It seems to apply whenever a Shapeshifter or any character otherwise capable of warping perceptions uses this ability to frame a hero. All other characters promptly forget these abilities exist and take the incriminating footage or eye witness accounts as incontrovertible proof and generally won't even give the accused the chance to speak, never mind a fair trial. Examples include The Ultimates where Captain America is framed for killing Hawkeye's family and Nick Fury, who really should know better, or, at least, enough to investigate the possibility, beats the living crap out of him, and the currently ongoing World Against Superman arc, where Supergirl and others are framed for killing Mon-El.
Marvel's Sentry attempts a justified use of this trope by making the most powerful character on Earth crippled by mental health problems.
The Authority also uses a justified form of this trope. The Doctor, the most powerful member of the group, is consistently unable to function because he is an inveterate coward and/or dosed up on heroine.
'''(Ed- note these justifications take away "Plot Induced" and forgetting other people's powers and the nature of the world they live and other just general stupidity is not forgetting their own powers.)

Film

The Strangers elevates this trope to an art: not one of the three victims seems to have any self-preservation instinct or intelligence, especially the friend who sees devastation and goes blithely in only to be shot dead by the male lead who's hiding with his idiot girlfriend in the closet. Also, James goes outside the house to get a radio, leaving his girlfriend in the UNPROTECTED house. For all that she does, Kristen could even be already dead: she whimpers and moans her way through the film and there's not even the satisfaction of seeing her croak!
Most of the victims in 2008's version of Prom Night, especially the lead female Donna and her female friends seem to be complete idiots; Claire sees the killer coming for her and does not move an inch, Lisa manages to get herself trapped pretty idiotically, Donna even gets a freaking premonition and still does not get a freaking clue, but most idiotic of all is the reasoning of the uncle, who does not want the police to ruin his niece's prom, the police for underprotecting Donna and basically letting her boyfriend Bobby get killed, basically get fooled by a shave from the killer, and a whole slew of other things I should type the whole freaking script to reveal.
The Karate Kid Part Three: Daniel-san survived a fight to the death in Part Two and has at the point been studying Karate under Mr. Miyagi for over a year but he is being beaten up and terrorized by Johnny Lawrence 2.0 all because they could not think to do anything else but recycle the Plot of the Original film.
- There's also the part where they're afraid of the millionaire villain's wealth and the influence that it brings, and feel helpless to counter it. Entirely forgetting that in the last movie Mr. Miyagi reconciled with his old childhood friend, who is about ten hojillion times wealthier and more powerful than the villain, and could have stopped his financial manipulations by rolling over in bed.
House Of Wax, the 2005 remake, just displays this on a level affecting everyone, from the sexy young teens who think it's okay to chuck beer bottles at a truck that pulls up to your camp, or to stick your finger through a metal grating when the killer has tied you up underground and is now talking with your boyfriend just above you (and the grate is just under the killer, who can see you, and cuts off the tip of your finger in a quick swoop), or that you've finally gotten the upper hand on one of the killers, bashed him in the head with a big-ass stick, then DROP the stick and try to run when your Achilles tendon has been sliced. Then there's that whole thing about building a house made of wax in LOUISIANA.

Literature

Edited by SomeSortOfTroper

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