History Main / HanlonsRazor

* About 90% of the plot of most Creator/MichaelCrichton novels is a blend of this and ''really'' bad luck in the form of multiple worst case scenarios coming true, combining, and then mutating into something even worse. Very few characters in his novels are actually ''evil'', they're mostly just lazy or short-sighted.

* ''Film/HotFuzz'': The MilkmanConspiracy of the Sandford Neighborhood Watch Alliance has been committing wanton murder for decades for the sake of making ''[[SeriousBusiness extremely damned sure]]'' that Sandford will win the Village of the Year award. The targets of said murders are people who are [[DisproportionateRetribution extremely tiny]] and [[EvilIsPetty petty]] possibilities to potentially ruin it, such as printing the local newspaper full of typos, being a bad actor, having an annoying laugh, being a street performer (a ''[[FauxHorrific living statue or a crusty juggler]]'') and owning a [=McMansion=]. When [[TheProtagonist Sergeant Nicholas Angel]] first catches wind of the NWA's conspiracy existing, he creates an elaborate theory for all of the murders involving a RealEstateScam and when [[TheReveal the truth comes to light]] he is [[DisappointedByTheMotive both baffled and horrified]] that the town became the murder capital of England for "no reason! No reason whatsoever!"

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'': The management of [[SuckECheeses Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria]] are either the most incompetent bunch of {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s on the far side of Aperture Science for not destroying the homicidal animatronics that are causing the downfall of their company ''or'' they are {{Card Carrying Villain}}s who willfully hire people just so the animatronics can kill them. Regardless of which, if an employee is discovered dead by the janitors, they clean and bleach the carpets, hide the body and file a Missing Persons report in a few months. Note that this isn't some clandestine cover-up, it's their ''advertised company policy''.

* There's still some debate as to whether the Holodomor, the famine caused by Stalin's agricultural collectivization policies in Ukraine, was the result of simple mismanagement or a deliberate genocide against a nation that had a (not undeserved) reputation as a breeding ground for counter-revolutionary sentiment. [[InvertedTrope This is]] ''Stalin'' -- how this trope applies to totalitarian dictators is an interesting question.

* During season 10 of the American version of ''Series/TheAmazingRace'', the smart (both had Master's degrees and one went to Harvard for undergrad), fit Cho brothers who ran towards the top of the pack at the beginning of the season formed a large alliance group with the back of the pack teams. Both the other teams and the audience assumed they were using the "ferning" strategy which is, in essence, intentionally working to keep around weaker teams to give you a leg up once you get to the finale. [[note]]The term was coined by sister show ''Series/{{Survivor}}'' where it's a more established strategy. Only one team on ''Amazing Race'', Jason and Amy fron season 22, have managed to pull it off. [[/note]] However, they weren't dragging along the weaker teams to thin out the crowd for themselves, they actually thought working with the weaker teams was a strategic move. This ended up being their downfall as well as the last of their allies weren't willing to repay their kindness of waiting around on them to finish and passed them up driving as soon as they got the chance.

* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', Booster [[AndNowYouMustMarryMe wants to marry Peach]] after [[SaveThePrincess accidentally kidnapping her]]. However, it quickly becomes clear that he has no idea what marriage is, and just thought that a wedding party sounded fun.

** [[UsefulNotes/TheSoundOfMartialMusic Field Marshall Konrad von Hoetzendorff]] had no idea what he was doing. He botched the initial phase of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, muddled his way through the Serbian and Polish campaigns of 1915, lost the 'back' of the army against Brusilov in 1916, and then totally destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Army in the 1918 Spring Offensives against Italy before resigning that July. One of ''scarily'' few things keeping him from losing the entire war for his country was the fact that on the other side, the leadership (a slew of Russian aristocrats and Luigi Cadorna) was even worse. On the few occasions that it wasn't, such as against Alexei Brusilov in Autumn 1916, his competence was on full display.

* ''Series/BetterOffTed'': While Veridian Dynamics are indeed involved in projects of dubious moral character (killer pumpkins, the bunny that will "snuggle" everyone within a 5 mile radius, etc.), nearly every bad company policy or consumer product is "usually" done without any intentional malice. The episode Racial Sensitivity is probably the best invocation of the trope.
--> '''Veronica''' (after complaints about the separate water fountains for black employees): Okay, they realize it didn't work. Although there's a lot of fighting upstairs about whether it was the idea or the execution.

* The various crimes of [[Series/ArrestedDevelopment The Bluth Family]] are done less out of actively criminal malice and more out of incredible amounts of [[ItsAllAboutMe short-sighted selfishness]] and both them and the people they surround themselves with being idiots. The event that starts the whole series -- [[StealingFromTheTill the discovery the family performed a multi-million-dollar theft of Bluth Industries' money]] -- was done purely because the family wanted to live large and (except for maybe George Sr., and it's a big "maybe" considering [[TheAllegedExpert the level of his lawyers]]) didn't knew this was a Federal-level crime.

* Zig-zagged in an episode of ''Series/BabylonFive''. A representative from a [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinist]] species tours Down Below - the station's slums - and is impressed because he believes humans have deliberately segregated the inferior of their species, going further than even his species. Of course, the slums are simply the result of poverty and neglect.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'': Mako is the root of the infamous LoveTriangle due to his [[BadLiar lying,]] [[TheDitherer dithering]], and overall lack of [[InnocentlyInsensitive tact]], though it's clear he was ''not'' [[TheCasanova "a player,"]] like [[CasanovaWannabe Wu]] initially thinks; rather, he's NotGoodWithPeople.

* In ''Film/SpacedInvaders'', you have a group of Martians who while close to Earth on Halloween, overhear a broadcast of Radio/WarOfTheWorlds. They end up mistaking it for an actual Martian war against Earth and proceed to join in the fight. In the end, a little girl named Kathy, who befriends them after discovering their mistake, summed it up best.

[[RomanticismVersusEnlightenment In the war between Romanticism and Enlightenment]], Hanlon's Razor is decidedly on the side of Enlightenment (if most bad things are the result of stupidity, incompetence, and ignorance, then one can make the future better through education and good design[=/=]idiot-proofing). Not to be confused with OccamsRazor, although the two can end up being [[InvokedTrope invoked]] together; many UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories, for example, assume complicated scenarios based on malicious intent to explain things which the two Razors would prefer to attribute to simple events based on incompetence. See also NoDelaysForTheWicked.

* ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' hung a ''big'' {{lampshade|Hanging}} on this trope in an episode debunking 9/11 UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories. [[spoiler:The existence of conspiracy theories is ''itself'' a government conspiracy; Washington failed to ''prevent'' twenty Muslim lunatics with box cutters killing 3,000 people, so they'd rather allow people to believe that they ''made'' it happen -- it actually makes the government look more formidable and in control than it is. They do this because the conspiracy theorists are going [[CassandraTruth to ignore them when they try to tell the truth]], so they might as well play to that crowd as well]].

* UsefulNotes/ConspiracyTheories always surround the unexpected deaths of major personages. It just doesn't seem ''right'' that [[DeathIsDramatic someone so big and important could]] [[DroppedABridgeOnHim just die]]! Over half a century after his assassination, people are ''still'' coming up with harebrained theories about who "really" killed UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy. Including one that postulates that the driver, who is clearly shown in the footage during the firing of the shot itself, was the real assassin. [[note]]Don't you see? He set up the perfect alibi! It's diabolical![[/note]]

## When Lelouch [[spoiler:gets captured by Schneizel and Kanon after his allegedly "private" meeting with Suzaku]], he blames Suzaku for it, even though Suzaku really had no idea [[spoiler: he was being followed]].
## Well... [[NiceJobBreakingItHero A good chunk of]] [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom the other characters]] [[SpannerInTheWorks end up doing this afterward]]. [[CerebusRollercoaster Long story short]], Lelouch and Suzaku manage to take advantage of the whole thing to [[spoiler: create a GenghisGambit where they take over the world and have Lelouch's death bring peace, which works]]. Ending on possibly one last example where [[spoiler: Nunnally's grief over her dead brother is ignored by a whole crowd surrounding them, who are just cheering for Suzaku disguised as Zero ''right above them'' for putting an end to Lelouch apparently being a monstrous emperor.]] On that note, part of this is because [[spoiler: Nunnally ended up figuring it all out at the very last second, while no one else is actually supposed to know. Kallen herself is implied to have figured it out as well.]]

** Bernard Ingham, who was the Chief Press Secretary to UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher, once gave a very British spin on the same idea: "Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory." Interestingly, however, this was said in 1985, as an ''actual government conspiracy organised by his boss'' was in its final stages - Thatcher's plan to break the power of the National Union Of Miners, culminating in the Miner's strikes of 1984-5 that, in large part due to Thatcher ordering that coal be stockpiled in preparation, ultimately failed - [[https://www.history.co.uk/article/how-thatcher-broke-the-miners-strike-but-at-what-cost as she had intended]].

** Bernard Ingham, who was the Chief Press Secretary to UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher, once gave a very British spin on the same idea: "Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory."

* One theory points out that the Tlatelolco Massacre was a big shitty misunderstanding from start to finish. In 1968, in Mexico a series of pro communist/anti government protest held by college students had made the government paranoid as the 1968 Mexico Olympics neared close and the country would be on the worldwide eye. The whole thing [[SerialEscalation started]] with a soccer game between two middle schools that turned awry and began to involve local street gangs that began to involve somehow, anti gov protesters, eventually to turn down the violence, the government decided to round up the teens into an old highschool which the students then barricaded to which the government responded by [[DisproportionateRetribution shooting a bazooka to the entrance]] of a very prized historical door which unleashed city wide peaceful protests, the government then started False Flag operations of vandalism in name of the students. The Tlatelolco march, the biggest protests in the history of the country was a plan to march to Tlatelolco Plaza with over 10,000 attendees. The protesters were fast rounded up by the military and then planted agents posing as students shot the military and all hell broke loose. Some new evidence points out that the military circling the protesters and the planted agents were two different operations with no knowledge that the other would be there that day, the agents were supposed to disband the protest by shooting to the air and the military was there to protect and contain the protest and to boot the agents (Olympia Batallion) were acting independently from higher executive orders.

* The death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in 1997 is generally accepted to be a tragic accident caused by her chaffeur being drunk while simultaneously trying to avoid the relentless Papparazzi who were more interested in getting pictures than road safety, yet conspiracy theorists still attribute the death to a deliberate hit arranged by Prince Charles, Mohammed Al Fayed, The Queen or any number of people.

** This is hardly the only instance of such a situation. The Confederate States of America for example, was notorious for it's horrific prison camps that bore an eerie resemblance to the concentration camps of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust, only their death camps were ''completely unintentional''; the Confederates were not trying to mass murder and torture their [=POWs=], the camps were just massively overpopulated, understaffed, and undersupplied, with disastrous results.

* In ''Film/SpacedInvaders'', you have a group of Martians who while close to Earth on Halloween, overhear a broadcast of Radio/WarOfTheWorlds. They end up mistaking it for an actual Martian war against Earth and proceed to join in the fight. HilarityEnsues. In the end, a little girl named Kathy, who befriends them after discovering their mistake, summed it up best.

* In ''[[VideoGame/StarControl Star Control II]]'', the Slylandro Probes seem bent on deconstructing everything in the galaxy to [[TheVirus create more probes]]. Why was this plague of Von Neumann probes unleashed upon creation? Answer: a programming slip-up. The Slylandro, being physiologically unable to build interstellar ships, purchased the self-replicating probes for peaceful exploration. Wanting to learn as much as they possibly could, they innocently made the probes' first priority finding unknown ships and civilisations, and ''also'' set the probes' program value for self-replicating to maximum. The result: the probes sought out ships and evidence of civilization... and then immediately destroyed them for raw materials to make more probes. HilarityEnsues. At least when it's brought to light, they're horrified and immediately look for ways to fix the mistake.

Many, many plots disregard it with cheerful abandon. This can be justified if the plot involves an AncientConspiracy, GovernmentConspiracy, or [[TheConspiracy similar]] antagonist with major ability to operate behind the scenes that makes the character question each and every occurence. The existence of a powerful, secretive, and malicious cabal makes for juicier storytelling than the idea that something bad happened because one of the people in power was lazy, short-sighted, impulsive, or just plain stupid. [[ConspiracyTheorist Of course, THEY would prefer that you believe THEM to be stupid instead of evil]]. Most aversions involve someone saying that the noise you heard was [[ItsProbablyNothing just the wind]].

** ''Film/BurnAfterReading'': All of the murder and mayhem that occurs happens because both sides in a blackmail attempt believe the [[MockGuffin utterly worthless information]] they [[MacGuffin are struggling over]] is ''that'' valuable out of sheer imbecility and stubborn pride. In the final scenes it is highlighted as an InUniverse example of the IdiotPlot by having the Director of the CIA, [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure one of the few people in the film]] with something resembling [[OnlySaneMan a sound mind]], flatly stating that he has no idea of what the hell just happened and only hopes he'll make sense of it at some point in the future if only to be sure [[LetUsNeverSpeakOfThisAgain he'll never have to deal with any similar messes ever again]].

* The [[CreepyCrows hellraven]] Utsuho Reiuji from ''VideoGame/TouhouChireidenSubterraneanAnimism'' ate a dead sun God, gained [[ILoveNuclearPower nuclear powers]] and immediately decided that she would use these powers to nuke the surface world into a blasted hellscape. Not out of any kind of malevolence, mind you, but simply because she failed to consider the possibility that the ideal circumstances for ''her'' to live and thrive in might not be the ideal circumstances for ''everyone else'' to do the same. That, and she was, perhaps understandably, under the temporary influence of a bad case of [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity power-induced crazy.]]

* The ''Literature/{{Duumvirate}}'' bumps into this trope more than once. And they ''run'' the conspiracy.
* Creator/RobertAHeinlein's novella ''The Logic of Empire'' brings this up as two characters discuss how slavery and its equivalents are allowed to exist even though it's both immoral and economically self-defeating. One character says that it's a product of deliberate malice, and the other replies, "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."
** See the Jargon entry, "Hanlon" may well have come from "Heinlein".

* PlayedForLaughs in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' FanFic ''Fanfic/{{Moonbeam}}'', where one of Luna's friends thinks Celestia is also a manipulative tyrant, only [[spoiler:she's really just bored and likes pulling harmless pranks.]] Even funnier as Luna figures this out in about 2 seconds, and said friend is the local GrumpyBear. Later, we find out Celestia's real reason is [[spoiler:so she can spend some time with the mane six, who are the closest things Celestia has to friends.]]

* In ''Machinima/FreemansMind [[VideoGame/HalfLife2 2]]'', after Barney's suggested route through the canals results in Gordon being a sitting duck for the Civil Protection cops, who are able to easily surround and shoot down at him from high ground as he tries to swim and navigate around obstacles, Gordon is left legitimately unable to tell whether Barney is just a bumbling idiot who has no idea what he's doing, or a diabolical genius who deliberately tried to get Gordon killed.