History Main / LawfulStupid

* Uther Lightbringer and Jaina Proudmoore in the opening roleplay of the Culling of Stratholme instance in ''[[World of Warcraft]]''. Despite knowing that the scourge plague has no cure, and despite knowing that fairly soon the city will play host to multitudes of mindless, plague-spreading zombies, they both react extremely negatively to Arthas' realisation that the only sane choice is to raze the city to the ground, as the idea of it is just too distasteful and "evil" - to the point where Uther questions Arthas' sanity and right to the throne, and Jaina abandons him rather than mount any kind of argument other than "You can't...". Note that at no point did either of them come up with a feasible alternative, and also note that culling Stratholme did result in the plague being limited in that area.

* Uther Lightbringer and Jaina Proudmoore in the opening roleplay of the Culling of Stratholme instance in ''[[World of Warcraft]]. Despite knowing that the scourge plague has no cure, and despite knowing that fairly soon the city will play host to multitudes of mindless, plague-spreading zombies, they both react extremely negatively to Arthas' realisation that the only sane choice is to raze the city to the ground, as the idea of it is just too distasteful and "evil" - to the point where Uther questions Arthas' sanity and right to the throne, and Jaina abandons him rather than mount any kind of argument other than "You can't...". Note that at no point did either of them come up with a feasible alternative, and also note that culling Stratholme did result in the plague being limited in that area.

Also known as Lawful Anal (or [[IncrediblyLamePun Awful Good]]), these people often call themselves LawfulGood, but seem to completely forget about the "Good" part. Rather, they lean toward such rigid adherence to the law that anybody who breaks any law, anywhere, for any reason, is the enemy. Even saying an unkind word to someone is an act of pure evil, and the Lawful Stupid can and will act as [[JudgeJuryAndExecutioner judge, jury, and executioner]]. [[LeeroyJenkins They refuse to hide from even overwhelming threats,]] and believe that letting evil win in any sort of way (by, say, helping the village to [[AttackAttackAttack retreat]] from the advancing dark army) is against their alignment. Of course naturally, they are too stupid to be evil of course, that is why they are called Lawful Stupid not LawfulEvil

**** Not really. Carrot and stick is reward AND punishement as incentive. So it's quite correct as it is. "Worship us and get to my plane of existance, or don't and go to the wall of the faithless". Still can be very easilly considered evil though. On another note, on Faerun there is pretty much nowhere without access to some god. Any culture that doesn't originally have one, will have all of them running to get the potential worshipers first than the rest.

*** Trying once and failing is hardly an excuse. Less Kelemvor follows the creed of [[TheSimpsons Homer Simpsons]]: "''You tried and you failed. The Lesson is: Never try.''"

** Another Lawful Stupid moment from Kelemvor is present in ''NeverwinterNights2 -- Mask of The Betrayer''. [[spoiler:He claims he can't deal with the spirit eater curse because it would be overiding another god (this appears to be a moral rather then physical issue), nevermind that said god is more or less dead, but Kelemvor is said god's ''successor'']]. Basically, he is refusing to do his own damn job. How does this guy get away with "neutral"?

* In ''{{Claymore}}'', Priscilla was pretty much this in spades prior to [[spoiler:turning yoma]].

* Ser Cauthrien, a female knight who is TheDragon to the main (human) antagonist [[KnightTemplar Loghain]] in ''DragonAge''. Although she is aware of most of the awful things done by her master, including betraying the King and the Grey Wardens at Ostagar, she keeps trying to justify him because of her misguided sense of loyalty and duty, and will eventually attack the protagonist who seeks to stop Loghain's plans.

->'''''Lawful Stupid'' -- ''"[[WhoDares How dare you]] [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking break the traffic laws!]] [[AllCrimesAreEqual Taste steel, fiend!]]"'''''

* The [[Babylon5 Minbari vendetta against Captain Sheridan]] smacks of this -- Sheridan's "crime" was no worse than scaling guerilla warfare tactics to starship combat (a perfectly reasonable strategy given the lopsided matchup between the Earth and Minbari forces), but the Minbari treated it as a war crime on a par with mass-murdering civilians.

** For being too GenreSavvy, Mace Windu had to die. But what if he had killed Palpatine in that instance? Could he have done it....?

->"Screw What's Right, I'm Following The Rules!"

*** Except that in the specific case being mentioned the ''real'' reason he refused to distribute the cure was because a ''second'' sapient species on the planet would be doomed if he did so. Given the choice between not interfering and dooming a species which was already doomed, or helping them and dooming the species that would otherwise live, and lacking a reasonable third option of transplanting the former species, he ''reluctantly'' decided that non-interference was the only reasonable choice. Sadly, despite specifically stating this all on-screen, many viewers [[{{FanDumb}} still don't get it]].

* Steven of [[http://pandora.xepher.net/daily/ Daily Grind]] reveres with unwavering Lawful Stupidity the by-laws of the secret society that raised him from orphanhood. Even after it turned out that [[spoiler: he was the only member who took them seriously]] and the rest were [[spoiler: variously crooks and dupes]] so that he had to [[spoiler: kill off everyone else]] (as stipulated in the by-laws for this situation) and [[spoiler: restart the society from scratch]]. He's only Lawful when the law in question is the by-laws, however. On the rare occasions where the by-laws do not dictate what to do, he's an almost likable NeutralGood.

Also compare HonorBeforeReason, which has a tendency to overlap with this if done badly. Compare and contrast ChaoticStupid, StupidGood, StupidEvil, and StupidNeutral. . KnightTemplar usually fall under this alignment.

* Steven of [[http://pandora.xepher.net/daily/cast.html Daily Grind]] reveres with unwavering Lawful Stupidity the by-laws of the secret society that raised him from orphanhood. Even after it turned out that [[spoiler: he was the only member who took them seriously]] and the rest were [[spoiler: variously crooks and dupes]] so that he had to [[spoiler: kill off everyone else]] (as stipulated in the by-laws for this situation) and [[spoiler: restart the society from scratch]]. He's only Lawful when the law in question is the by-laws, however. On the rare occasions where the by-laws do not dictate what to do, he's an almost likable NeutralGood.

**** Not really. Carrot and stick is reward AND punishement as incentive. So it's quite correct as it is. "Worship us and get to my plane of existance, or don't and go to the wall of the faithless". Still can be very easilly considered evil though. On another note, on Faerun there is pretty much nowhere without acess to some god. Any culture that doesn't originally have one, will have all of them running to get the potential worshipers first than the rest.

Basically, this trope is a Lawful character carrying he IdiotBall because that is the Lawful thing to do