History Main / VillainBall

* The villain insists on taking care of something personally when there's no reason an expendable mook couldn't do it, possibly due to the belief that he's SurroundedByIdiots.

** In the two-episode story "A Canterlot Wedding", Twilight Sparkle is the only one who suspects the character of Princess Cadance, who's marrying Twilight's brother, though she doesn't guess that it's actually Queen Chrysalis who had taken Cadance's place. At the end of the first part, Chrysalis manages to convince everyone, including Twilight herself, that Twilight is being a horrible person and only accusing her because she's possessive of her brother. That would have neutralised the only threat to her plans, but it's just not evil enough, so she has to go and imprison her in the same place where the real Cadance was, apparently trying to make Twilight kill her -- only to lead to her eventual defeat after Twilight doesn't and they flee together to stop the wedding. It's also a bit more complicated than that, with a bit of a BugWar in there and whatnot, but the way the good guys win in the end would not have been possible if the real Cadance had not been freed. Or with Twilight moping alone somewhere after being told not to even attend the wedding.

* The leader of the [[RubberForeheadAliens Psychlos]] from the ''Literature/BattlefieldEarth'' novel and film does a lot of things that make the viewer/reader shout, "WhatAnIdiot." In an especially stupid move, the leader teaches the hero, Jonny "Goodboy" Tyler, [[InstantExpert everything about Psychlos in a matter of seconds]], in an attempt to get him to assist their enslavement of Earth. Naturally, it comes back to bite him in the ass at the end in a ''big'' way.

!!Examples:

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* Light in ''Manga/DeathNote'' does this a high amount of times:
** He kills Lind L. Tailor on national television purely out of spite because Tailor insulted him, [[BerserkButton telling him outright that what he was doing was evil]], allowing the real L to significantly narrow down where he could be.
** He spends a predominant amount of time trying to play cat-and-mouse with L for the sake of "answering his challenge." While L's initial gambit and some guesses about the schedule managed to narrow things down somewhat, there was still a massive pool of millions of possible suspects to sift through. Light makes L's job much easier by performing kills with the insider information he's obtained--narrowing down the selection from millions of people to hundreds and then dozens, until L can investigate suspects one by one. He does provide an explanation for this, but it's nakedly obvious that he's doing what he does because he thinks anything ''but'' facing L head-on and trying to get as close to him as possible would be admitting defeat.
** He kills the FBI agent Raye Penber, not knowing that the agent already came to believe that Light was innocent.
** He admits he is Kira to Naomi Misora, when he's written down her name in the notebook in front of her, in broad daylight on a city street, purely to see the look on her face before she dies. Had Aizawa been paying slightly more attention before he walked out of earshot, or had he not been using an umbrella due to the providencial rain, Light would've been caught.
** The final time leads to his downfall: [[spoiler:when he believes that the SPK task force are about to die because Mikami has written their names in his notebook, he gloats that he's won... except, unfortunately for him, they don't]].
* ''Manga/GoldenWind'' is less of a story of [[TheHero Giorno]] overthrowing a really superior villain and more of Passione's boss [[spoiler: [[BigBad Diavolo]]]] starting from an unassailable position and then [[NiceJobFixingItVillain digging a hole for himself]]:
** In his attempts to make his drugs the only drugs on the market, he alienates some of his followers, including [[TheLancer Bucciarati]], which starts the plot.
** Brutally killing Sorbet and Gelato as a message of how he didn't want anyone finding out his identity. This led to La Squadra, ''a very competent and dangerous assassin team'', rebelling two years before the plot. Their leader, Risotto Nero, basically has an InstantDeathRadius. He also ends up doing something similar with Bucciarati's group.
** Instead of simply waiting for Trish to be delivered to him and then killing her behind Bucciarati's back, letting him think she had started a new life somewhere... The Boss thought it was a good idea to snatch her from him, knowing full well that: Bucciarati is an altruistic man, that he's an experienced Stand user, and that his friends are ''literally down the street and nothing is stopping them from entering the building and finding them''. Granted, the sheer brokenness of his Stand meant none of them would be a real threat to him, but still.
** His entire plan to bring Trish to him so he can kill her qualifies, [[SelfFulfillingProphecy since the entire situation was his own fault]]. The only enemies he was shown to have that even knew she existed were [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal ex-Passione members who he drove out of the organization]] with his BadBoss tendencies, and pretty much the only reason Trish became a liability was that because his roping her into his affairs for his plan ''made her'' one. Up until he dragged her into his business, she had absolutely no connection to him that anyone could trace back to him, her physical resemblance to him would only be a problem if his aim to hide his own appearance had already failed, Spice Girl's resemblance to King Crimson only even became a potential problem because his dragging her into danger awakened it, and she knew pretty much nothing about him until the revelation that he wanted to kill her spurred her to look into his past.
** The six or seven times that the MundaneSolution [[JustEatGilligan of using the tank-destroying strength of King Crimson and its ability to erase time]] was avoided usually because of his rampant paranoia. If he wasn't so desperate to never show himself, the show would have ended about midway through.
** For that matter, he could have killed Nero in ''seconds'' if he wasn't so determined to wait until the last minute to show himself. If Aerosmith hadn't come in when it did, The Boss would be dead ''five volumes before Part 5 actually ended''. By the secondary antagonist of the part, no less.
** His lack of foresight in the decision to give away all, but one of the Arrows to others after gaining a Stand, keeping it for Stand User recruitment, without testing the limitations of its capabilities. It leads to him trying to utilize it again years later with people- including ones he failed to kill in the past- hindering him to the point he becomes the victim of the power he could've used on himself years back to avoid his convoluted plan to get it back.
** In spite of his paranoia of thoroughly erasing his past as well as any potential opposition to come back to haunt him, he doesn't check if [[spoiler: Polnareff]] is dead after defeating him, leading him to come back to hinder him years later by preventing the Boss from utilizing the Arrow for his own ends- leading to the body-swap scenario that ultimately causes his defeat due to him making assumptions without checking thoroughly.
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'':
** Sasuke Uchiha during the Five Kage Summit Arc. Instead of acting like a shinobi and staying hidden, he decides to meet the investigating Samurai head on and brutally kill most of them. When the Raikage and his bodyguards C and Darui arrive, he tries to take on three powerful ninjas alone. He gets soaked and electrocuted, then caught in C's blinding genjutsu. Even though he can see through it, A and Darui nearly blitz him, and Suigetsu and Jugo have to save him. Later on, he acts similarly when Karin was taken hostage by Danzo. Instead of going for a headshot, he decides to [[ShootTheHostage shoot through Karin to kill Danzo]], because he reasons that Karin has [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness outlived her usefulness]].
** Pain, during his climactic fight against Naruto. When he has Naruto at his mercy, he proceeds to blow up Konoha and then almost kill Hinata [[ForcedToWatch right in front of him]] instead of just taking him to the Akatsuki. [[BerserkButton This causes]] [[RageBreakingPoint Naruto to snap]] and give in to the [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Kyuubi]], and his six-tailed and eight-tailed forms proceed to kick Pain's ass.
** Orochimaru had a tendency to do things that were counterproductive towards his goals for no real reason other than that [[ForTheEvulz he likes being a dick]]. An example is when he killed the Kazekage... after the Kazekage had agreed to help him attack Konoha, which means getting his help was pointless. Later, during his fight with the Third Hokage, he deliberately dragged the fight out purely to make the Third psychologically suffer; this allowed the Third to cast a jutsu that cost Orochimaru the use of his arms.
** [[spoiler:Madara Uchiha catches it when trying to get his second eye back. [[WhatAnIdiot He tries to convince Obito to give the Rinnegan back voluntarily and is surprised when Obito refuses]]. This is despite Obito saying he never considered them allies, and had already betrayed Madara's plan by becoming the Ten-Tails Jinchuuriki. And later, he wastes time fighting Guy instead of trying to retrieve his eye and prevent Obito from resurrecting Naruto.]]
** [[spoiler:Black Zetsu during the revival of Kaguya. After activating the Infinite Tsukuyomi, he backstabs Madara and uses him as fodder for Kaguya's resurrection, but also showed that he knows about the seals on Naruto and Sasuke's hands that will seal Kaguya if they touch her together. It would make a lot more sense to just wait for Madara to kill Naruto and Sasuke, which was likely to happen, leaving no one physically able to stop Kaguya.]]
* ''Anime/YuGiOh'': Given Yugi's Duel Monsters track record, [[CombatPragmatist just shooting him]] sure would be an easier way of killing him than challenging him to a duel every time! They would also accomplish any other goals like destroying/ taking over the world much faster if they didn't let it all rest on a one-on-one duel with him, a tradition Saiou/Sartorius finally breaks in ''[[Anime/YuGiOhGX GX]].''
** The series do what they can in terms of justifying it; most of the MacGuffin collections can ''only'' change hands in a duel and so forth. Then there was that time one of the "Player Killers" in the Duelist Kingdom arc decided to protest his defeat by Yugi... using a pair of ''flamethrowers''. It didn't work. Yami's Mind Crush on the other hand worked just fine.
*** This is how Saiou breaks the tradition. He pretends to be playing along with this, and then while the hero is bound in the fight, he sets off ThePlan. Because all he needs to do is press a button, he can do it during the match. Judai/Jaden and his duel spirits can't leave the match. Of course, he started to break it when Judai first challenged him to the duel and Saiou's reaction was, paraphrased, "No. I've got what I need. I don't need to duel you." The only reason he did duel Judai was because Neos manifested to keep Saiou from getting the keys to the SORA satellite. *THEN* he used the duel in order to weaken Neos, which allowed him to steal the satellite keys and give them to his nearest brainwashed flunky, who could and did run off to get the satellite going while Judai was tied up in the duel. Saiou (or more precisely, the Light of Ruin/Destruction) didn't count on Kenzan/Hassleberry and Mizuchi/Serena, Saiou's own sister, teaming up to put a halt to things.
** Naturally, ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' has a field day with this issue.
** In ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'', all Jean has to do to defeat Yusei after a long and extensive duel is end his turn since Yusei has no cards left in his deck and would automatically lose once his turn began, however he gets caught up in the thrill of the duel and attacks Yusei who defends with a card in his hand and depletes Jean's life points.
* ''Anime/OjamajoDoremi'': Incumbent [[AlphaBitch Tamaki]] and Masaharu are contesting the class election. This divides the class into two. Masaharu can't stand it and decides to concede the election to Tamaki. In response she says, "How can a candidate back out? We need to have a righteous contest, right? I'd rather you do that." Her (main) reasoning comes across as even more idiotic: [[HonorBeforeReason "My pride won't allow a win without a fight"]], rather than [[PragmaticVillainy "No one will vote for someone who wants us to clean the room 3 times a day]] [[note]]not when my policy is to clean once every 3 days[[/note]]". It's supposedly awesome that Tamaki's attempt to whitewash Masaharu in the election ends up backfiring, but then he announces his intention to have a neighborhood cleanup, and that has everyone freaking.
* ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' had Cell ''intentionally'' hold the villain ball during his fight with Gohan. After cryptic words from Goku, [[BewareTheNiceOnes describing Gohan's hidden potential]], Cell goes through '''extreme''' measures to draw it out for the sake of having a challenge. This included creating clones of himself to [[NoHoldsBarredBeatdown beat the living hell]] out of Gohan's TrueCompanions and finally killing [[FriendToAllLivingThings Android 16]] in front of him. Considering how much of a MartialPacifist Gohan had become now since his year-in-a-day in the [[PhantomZone Room of Spirit and Time]], this could be considered a Deconstruction of this trope because of everything Cell had to do to finally push him past his RageBreakingPoint. Unfortunately for Cell, he got [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor exactly what]] [[GoneHorriblyRight he wanted.]]
** Garlic Jr. holds one of these in the movie ''[[Anime/DragonBallZDeadZone Dead Zone]]''. He obtains the Dragon Balls and successfully uses them to wish for immortality, allowing him to utterly dominate the heroes in combat since they can't kill him. Instead of just killing them like this, Garlic Jr. opens a portal to the [[PhantomZone Dead Zone]], hoping to suck the heroes in. Of course, the heroes instead knock ''him'' into the portal, trapping him forever. At least until an anime {{filler}} arc where he escapes...and makes ''the exact same mistake'' again, this time removing any hope of return. Of course Garlic Jr. is completely off his rocker, which "''might''" have been contributing factor.
** This is essentially how Frieza was defeated. After surviving the Spirit Bomb, Frieza, instead of just killing the exhausted Goku right then and there, shoots Piccolo and leaves him near-death, [[WhyAmITicking blows up Krillin]], and then explicitly [[WouldHurtAChild threatens Gohan's life]], all right in front of Goku himself. He ends up pissing Goku off enough to make him go [[SuperMode Super Saiyan]] for the first time, leading directly to Frieza's undoing.
*** In the anime, he ''does'' try to shoot Goku immediately, only for Piccolo to [[TakingTheBullet push Goku out of the way]], after which Frieza lets his sadism (his FatalFlaw) get the better of him.
** Frieza picks it up ''again'' after becoming [[{{Cyborg}} Mecha-Frieza]] and going to Earth with his father, King Cold. While Cold [[NoNonsenseNemesis originally planned for them to just blow up the planet from space and be done with it]], Frieza insists on landing and personally killing everyone to make Goku suffer. Within minutes of landing, they're met with [[FutureBadass Future Trunks]], who slaughters them both effortlessly.
** And once ''again'' Frieza grabs it in the ''[[Anime/DragonBallZResurrectionF Resurrection 'F']]'' movie and its corresponding ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'' arc. When he is restored to life, he spends two months in training until he achieves a form that has power comparable to Goku's. Rather than continue to train in order to master this form and its power, and build up his empire to its former glory, Frieza impatiently rushes to Earth in order to get his revenge. As a result, his soldiers are decimated and, after going toe to toe with Goku for a while, his new form burns itself out of energy and leaves Frieza vulnerable to another humiliating defeat. [[spoiler:Thankfully, when he's revived again at the end of the ''Tournament of Power'' arc, he decides to put down the ball and goes off to rebuild his empire.]]
** Freiza holds this ball even when it comes to his ignorant attitude towards training and obtaining more power. Due to his [[FantasticRacism condescension towards the Saiyan race]], as well as his own arrogance and ego, he believes he never needs to train very hard or put any effort into a fight to overcome his enemies in battle. He just assumes his natural ability and superiority will pull through. In more recent times, this is starting to bite him in the ass. As of the end of Super, he is at best on par with Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Vegeta when in his golden form (the result of the one occasion where he actually decided to train for a short period of time, which resulted in a phenomenal power boost). Because he doesn't train anywhere near as hard as Goku or Vegeta, he is unable to defeat them, therefore preventing him from regaining his dominion over the universe. If he actually decided to train half as hard as someone like Vegeta does, he likely could easily overwhelm his enemies. Instead, he has found himself on the receiving end of [[CurbstompBattle serious beatings]] from the likes of Toppo, Jiren and Broly thanks to his inability to put his arrogance aside and realise he needs to train harder to become stronger.
** Both King Piccolo and the current Piccolo flew to the sky and wanted to kill Goku with a dramatic attack. Both times, Goku got the time to prepare the final blow or to escape. Then he won. In the case of King Piccolo, he succeeded in breaking Goku's legs and left arm... but forgot to take out his ''right arm'' as well, leading to his demise.
** Cooler, after being reasonably smart in [[Anime/DragonBallZCoolersRevenge his first outing,]] grabbed a colossal one and never let go in his second. In his quest to drain worlds of life, he inexplicably decides to conquer New Namek, a planet with no real resources and only a few dozen people living on it under the protection of the protagonists, and doesn't even make use of its Dragon Balls. He has a giant mechanical space thing that lets him produce hundreds of Meta-Coolers that are individually stronger than the strongest protagonists. With that in mind, he spends most of the runtime instead utilizing much weaker robots so that the other characters can have something to fight, and initially sends in just one Meta-Cooler that Goku and Vegeta manage to take down. After his Meta-Coolers have thrashed the protagonists, he decides to take them to right in front of his vulnerable core, and tries to drain their power despite the fact that they're weaker than he is (and somehow, they still manage to overload him).
** In ''Anime/DragonBallGT'', Naturon Shenron has Goku on the ropes for most of their fight after assimilating Pan. By the end, he decides to rub his seeming victory in Goku's face by showing him Pan while he's apparently beaten before killing him; as it turns out, Goku was just pulling off a WoundedGazelleGambit and saves Pan before blowing Naturon away.
* The antagonists of ''VisualNovel/OokamiKakushi'' have a tendency to incapacitate their victims in a manner that would guarantee death within minutes, then leave them alive long enough to warn someone else of their plans. [[spoiler: Ironically, it's what one, Sakaki, does to the other, Kasai]]. Afterwards, it is now [[spoiler: Sakaki]]'s turn to carry the Villain Ball around like a child carries a lollipop. From the aforementioned leaving his victim alive long enough to warn someone of his plan, to leaving the control station unguarded right after doing what he came to do, to his sudden inability to shoot anyone while also gaining the ability to rant and rave and ''just stand there''...
* ''LightNovel/TheDevilIsAPartTimer'': After seemingly killing a powerless Maou, Lucifer decides to get flashy before he kills Emi by blowing up a bridge and terrifying countless innocent people; said fear recharges Maou's powers and enables him to squash Lucifer like a bug. Especially idiotic since, as a FallenAngel and a demon himself, Lucifer ''knew'' that the fear generated by the people on Earth is the source of both his ''and'' Maou's powers.
* Byaku at the end of the ''Manga/{{Kekkaishi}}'' anime. [[spoiler: Yoshimori had willingly come to the Kokoboro and was demanding they bring him Kaguro. Byaku had never shown any particular loyalty to his lieutenants thus far, and had particular reason not to be attached to Kaguro. But instead of trying to make a deal with Yoshimori, he orders Shion to try to break Yoshimori's spirit and weaken his powers.]]
* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEED'' For all the [[KickTheDog dog-kicking]] Muruta Azrael did up to that point, he was [[VillainHasAPoint completely in the right]] when he pointed out to Natarle that ZAFT's G.E.N.E.S.I.S. superweapon was a threat to Earth and had to be destroyed ASAP. So instead of using the EnemyMine moment to make peace with his embattled ship captain, he instead decides to launch the Alliance's nuclear missiles [[NukeEm at the PLANT colonies]], which would have done absolutely nothing about G.E.N.E.S.I.S.
* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamSEEDDestiny'' Lord Djibril just had to send the Destroy Gundam to attack Europe to make an example of anyone who dares to defy Blue Cosmos. Durandal later exposes Blue Cosmos attack and the rest of their crimes to the world, which made the nations of the Earth to turn against and turning the war to Durandal's favor.
* ''Anime/CodeGeass'''s Lelouch tends to juggle a lot of balls. As a result, every once in a while, he grabs his villain ball and behaves in an excessively evil manner.
** In the last arc of the series, Lelouch makes himself look a like a villain and kidnaps [[spoiler: the heads of the UFN]]. In truth, this is to use himself as a human shield, while everyone tries to fight him. The real point is to convince the actual villain, Schneizel, to grab his own villain ball, help out the people trying to kill Lelouch, and fire his super-weapons at the battlefield. What this does is open a big hole in his invincible, space-worthy, battlefortress. If he didn't do that, he would have been able to move into orbit, well outside of the reach of anyone else, able to bombard the world at will, which was his goal all along. He changes it just to get a shot against Lelouch, which, as you can guess, resulted in Lelouch's forces developing a countermeasure, boarding the battlecruiser, taking control of it, and capturing Schneizel.
* ''Manga/{{InuYasha}}'':
** When he has Inuyasha on the ropes thanks to his impenetrable {{Deflector Shield|s}}, Taigokumaru proceeds to gloat to Shiori, the one powering said shield, about how he [[YouKilledMyFather killed her father]], which gives Shiori the incentive she needs to expel him from the barrier and leave him open to Inuyasha's attacks.
** Hakudoshi picks up the ball when he decides to [[EvilGloating brag]] to Inuyasha and co. about how he intends to betray Naraku... ''[[WhatAnIdiot right in front of Naraku himself]]''. As a result, Naraku [[PowerNullifier disables]] his barrier and recalls the Saimyosho, giving Miroku free rein to suck Hakudoshi into the Wind Tunnel.
** Naraku himself is prone to this despite being a ManipulativeBastard. During Sango's introduction, he dupes her into thinking that Inuyasha had attacked her village and slaughtered everyone in order to get her to fight him to the death. It almost worked... but then Inuyasha subdues her and tracks down Naraku, who, when questioned, freely admits that ''he'' was the one who destroyed her village.
* ''Manga/RosarioPlusVampire'': [[MonsterOfTheWeek Tamao Ichinose]] initially has the upper hand against Inner Moka, because [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent mermaids]] are stronger in water and water happens to be a [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampire's]] [[WeaksauceWeakness weakness]]. However, she is easily tricked into jumping out of the water after Inner Moka and losing her advantage; thus, Moka K.O.'s her with a single kick to the face.
* ''Anime/BloodCTheLastDark'': Kuto boasts to Saya that she can't kill humans and thus can't touch him... and then turns himself into an Elder Bairn, giving Saya the perfect opportunity to tear him apart.
* ''Anime/PokemonTheSeries'': Team Rocket, ''always''. Nine times out of ten, it will be that they almost got away with the Pokémon/item/food, but then decided to grab Pikachu as well, which ''always'' triggers Ash's interference and their defeat.
* In ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'' main antagonist Fate [[spoiler:captured Asuna while Negi was distracted and replaced her with a perfect copy]]. Negi's group didn't even notice, nor did any of his allies, even Jack Rakan. At this point, Fate had everything he needed to accomplish his goal of [[spoiler:destroying the Magic World and taking all of its inhabitants to an inescapable dream world]] but apparently "winning" isn't enough, so he attacked the Governor's Ball where Negi was currently embroiled with an apparent new enemy, Kurt Godel. Though he does successfully [[spoiler:eliminate Jack Rakan and a couple minor allies]] he completely reveals his hand in the process, including [[spoiler:blowing the secret that Asuna was captured long ago and used to power a series of potent artifacts]]. If his group hadn't felt the need to pick a pointless fight, they would have won before anyone even noticed them.
* ''Manga/FairyTail'':
** The ONLY reason Vidaldus doesn't ultimately win is because he'd rather use his powers to [[spoiler: watch a CatFight between Lucy and Juvia rather than hypnotizing them both]].
** {{Invoked|Trope}} by Azuma, who's [[BloodKnight so eager]] to face off against Erza Scarlet that he not only refuses to drain her magic power when he uses his [[GreenThumb magic]] to usurp control of the Sirius Tree and drain the rest of Fairy Tail's power to let his guild Grimoire Heart win, but [[IGaveMyWord swears]] to give it all back if she can beat him in combat just so he can force her to come at him with everything she's got. Luckily for the heroes and unluckily for his team, [[HonorBeforeReason Azuma holds to that deal when he loses]], which leads to Grimoire Heart's defeat.
* In ''Manga/MyHeroAcademia'', SmugSnake Seiji Shishikura spends much of his encounter with Bakugo, Kirishima, and Kaminari waxing poetic on his agreement with the more stringent rules of the Provisional Hero Licensing Exam. In fact, he agrees so much that he would much rather take his time as a participant in the first portion of the exam separating the wheat from the chaff rather than actually passing the test, which he could easily do as he'd already incapacitated several rival students beforehand. Between this and his arrogance making him underestimate his opponents from U.A., Shishikura is taken out within a chapter.
* ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'': When he has Kirito pinned down in ALO, rather than just finish him off and be done with it, Sugou/Oberon decides to indulge his sadism by slowly [[YourMindMakesItReal decreasing the Pain Absorber]] to "give him something to look forward to", and then [[ForcedToWatch make him watch]] while he [[AttemptedRape sexually assaults]] [[LoveInterests Asuna]]. This buys Kayaba's VirtualGhost time to save Kirito and grant him admin privileges, leading to the Pain Absorber being used against Sugou himself and Sugou being chopped up and left with permanent injuries IRL. Though Sugou had no way of foreseeing Kayaba's intervention, deciding to torment Kirito before killing him was still a stupid move.
* ''Manga/{{Gleipnir}}'': Hikawa needs a special coin under Clair's possession in order to regain her human form, but decides the best way to get the coin is to steal it and kill Shuichi and Clair should they resist. Unfortunately, she badly underestimates the protagonists and ends up getting killed in the ensuing fight. She didn't even need to steal the coin, she could have just asked the protagonists about it, since they are on the same boat and they could have searched for more coins together. It's just that her desperation to regain her humanity got the better of her and she went into attack mode. The story needed a StarterVillain for the protagonists to defeat and poor Hikawa got drafted.
* In the ''Anime/KirbyRightBackAtYa'' episode "Mumbies Madness", Dedede’s latest monster, the titular Mumbies, is easily winning its fight with Kirby. However, Dedede then decides to throw a bomb wrapped up like Mumbies at Kirby to finish him off himself. Kirby inhales the bomb and transforms, allowing him to turn the tide and defeat Mumbies. Naturally, Escargoon calls Dedede out on this stupid move.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]
* ''Franchise/ANightmareOnElmStreet'': Rather than kill his victims outright, Freddy prefers to draw out their torment for his own amusement, overconfident in their inability to effectively fight back. This has given many of his victims a chance to escape or find the means to defeat him, and [[Film/FreddyVsJason Jason]] [[KillSteal stole one of his kills]] because of this. Of course, seeing how he always finds a way to come back, and over the course of the franchise has successfully murdered ''all the teenagers in Springfield'', his lack-a-daisical approach can be justified.
* In ''Film/ChildsPlay'' Chucky has the perfect disguise (the form of a doll) yet goes around killing random people in the most obvious ways to the point that people actually start to believe he's behind all of it (which is true). Apparently, he doesn't understand that he should just transfer his soul as quickly as possible.
* ''Film/TheDarkCrystal'': One of the Skeksis stabs Kira ''after'' she throws the Shard to Jen, even though holding her hostage is the one thing that might've stopped him from using it. Instead, they're reduced to pleading with him to stop when Kira's blood is fresh on their hands and he's got nothing left to lose; yeah, like that's going to work.
* Multiple ''Franchise/StarWars'' examples:
** The only reason Han Solo ''could'' shoot first in ''Film/ANewHope'' was because Greedo took the time to gloat instead of shooting when he had the chance.
** While it is mostly relegated to Expanded Universe media, it is pointed out that blowing up Alderaan pissed people off greatly rather than instilling fear into them, driving them to support the Rebellion (that said Rebels blew up the Death Star and thus showcased that there was still hope helped, too). This is not the first time the Tarkin Doctrine backfired, but it sure was the greatest (and for poor Wilhuff, it was the ''last'').
** ''Film/RogueOne'' also showcased a very good example with Tarkin ordering the destruction of Scarif (the place where ''all'' of the Empire's research was stored) when the Imperial security forces on the ground had already killed almost all of the raiding Rebels and Vader's task force was already seconds behind the Death Star to wipe out the forces in space, just for the hell of it (and killing Krennic, maybe). If not for this, then the Imperials would have figured out what the stolen plans were without being forced to chase after Princess Leia, causing the entire original trilogy to happen. The novelization even adds an additional moment of irony with Krennic figuring out the weakness in the battle station a split second before being vaporized by the Death Star's beam.
** In ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'', this is exactly what happens to Anakin after being warned by Obi Wan that he can't win because of the higher ground, and (though he leaves this unsaid) through his own experience, knows (how) not to waste this advantage, like Darth Maul did.
** Also in ''Revenge'', [[BigBad Palpatine]] almost got hit by one of the senate platforms during his battle with Yoda because he was busy ''[[EvilLaugh laughing maniacally]]''.
** In ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'', after Luke refuses to turn to the Dark Side, Palpatine tries to kill him slowly and painfully with Force Lightning (rather than, say, quickly with a lightsaber or something), right in front of Darth Vader, who has a tendency to go nuts when you target his loved ones. While Vader and Sidious agreed beforehand to kill Luke if he refused to join them, Vader has been slowly turning away from the Dark Side due to the love for his recently discovered son and Palpatine is [[EvilCannotComprehendGood too deluded to see it]] and as a result, Vader fully rejects the Dark Side and throws Sidious to his death.
* Khan in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' escaped exile, stole a starship, and marooned its crew in his place. As his right hand man points out, they can do anything they want. But Khan is determined to have his revenge on Kirk, an agenda which of course leads to his own death. Khan himself is aware of this, and lampshades it with his frequent ''Literature/MobyDick'' quotes.
* Shinzon in ''Film/StarTrekNemesis'', after successfully convincing Picard that he an his people want peace with Federation, then uses MindRape on Troi, which has nothing to do with his plan and alerts Picard and the Enterprise crew he is up to no good.
* The sheriff in ''Film/FirstBlood'' could have avoided a lot of death and bloodshed had he simply let the wandering Vietnam veteran get something to eat, but instead chose to throw his weight around and treat the guy like a criminal. Not a smart thing to do to John Franchise/{{Rambo}}... {{Justified|Trope}}, Rambo never mentions that he's a returned Nam vet, so the sheriff literally doesn't know what he's dealing with. [[PermaStubble Plus, Rambo doesn't exactly look like]] [[GoodHairEvilHair an upstanding citizen.]] It may be more a case of WrongGenreSavvy than anything else. It goes differently in the original book - the sheriff lets Rambo buy some food to go, and ''then'' gives him a ride out of town. He doesn't actually arrest him until Rambo turns up in town again after having been asked to leave (and escorted out) on multiple occasions.
* In ''Film/DreamHouse'', [[spoiler: Jack Patterson]] clutches the villain ball during the climax. First, he [[spoiler: shoots his accomplice Boyce]] without making sure that [[spoiler:[[NotQuiteDead he was dead]] ]]. Second, he ties up [[spoiler: Ann]] instead of killing [[spoiler: her]]. Not only does [[spoiler: Peter Ward rescue Ann, Boyce pours a flammable liquid onto Jack's escape path, resulting in Jack getting burned]].
* Willy Bank and Terry Benedict in ''Film/OceansThirteen''. The former's outright betrayal of Reuben leading to Ocean and co. seeking justice is the impetus for the plot; knowing full well their reputation as capable of beating the odds. The latter in his insistence to betray them and get several diamonds.
* It does not always happen to the BigBad in many ''Film/JamesBond'' films:
** In ''Film/{{Thunderball}}'', Count Lippe, alias "sub-operator G", was handed the ball and attacked an unsuspecting off-duty Bond, tipping him off about what was happening in the fitness center. As a result, he was [[YouHaveFailedMe properly dealt with]] by his boss.
*** [[Literature/{{Thunderball}} The novel version]], at least, has Count Lippe trying to kill Bond because he (mistakenly) believed that Bond had penetrated his cover and was there to take ''him'' out. However, like the movie version, he fails and is "properly dealt with" for his failure. Ironically, Bond never figures out that Lippe was working for SPECTRE at all, although Felix Leiter eventually puts the pieces together.
** In another Bond film, ''Film/{{Octopussy}}'', Bond finds himself trapped in a KnifeOutline by Grishka, the remaining half of a pair of knife-throwing twins, whose brother Mishka had been killed by Bond earlier. Grishka has one knife remaining, so what does he do? He tells Bond "[[AndThisIsFor And this is for my brother!]]", and charges towards Bond! Bond manages to take one of the knives out of the outline and throws it at Grishka, adding "And ''that's'' for 009!" [[note]] the Double-0 agent killed at the start of the movie[[/note]].
** In ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'' Grant could have easily shot Bond at any point, killed Tatiana, made it look like a murder-suicide and carried out the plan without a problem. Instead he chose to gloat and be greedy, letting Bond trick him. Even if he hadn't, his initial plan of shooting Bond until Bond kissed his feet would have probably put the plans in serious danger. This is what you get when you hire a [[PsychoForHire semi-intelligent sadistic psychopath]] to be your primary assassin, KGB.
** In general, the ''James Bond'' villains are bad enough [[BondVillainStupidity to name a whole separate trope]] -- for instance, instead of simply killing Bond, they [[Film/DrNo beat him up and leave him in a somewhat easily escapable cell]], [[Film/LiveAndLetDie leave him in the middle of an alligator farm]], and [[BlofeldPloy shoot a mook that failed them instead]].
* The plot of each of ''Film/TheTransporter'' films basically doesn't kick-off until someone higher in the criminal food-chain than the [[VillainProtagonist Protagonist]] grabs the Villain Ball and doesn't let go until they've done something [[GenreBlindness horribly cliche'd]].
* In ''Film/TheUntouchables1987'', Mafia hitman Frank Nitti murders [[spoiler: Jimmy Malone]] by writing his apartment address [[GoingByTheMatchbook on a matchbook]]. Unfortunately for him, he forgets to dispose of it after his hit. When he bumps into Eliot Ness, he offers the matchbook to light his cigarette with. Ness sees the address, and putting two and two together, chases Nitti and [[spoiler: pushes him off a roof [[CarCushion onto a car]].]]
** Nitti also can't leave well enough alone! [[spoiler: Ness pulls him up to the roof after considering shooting him when he's hanging by a rope but then Nitti starts gloating about killing Malone, saying that he "died screaming like a stuck pig" which is what finally makes Ness throw him off the roof.]]
* In ''Film/{{George of the Jungle}} 2'', Beatrice and Lyle's plan probably would have worked if they thought of hypnotizing Junior too.
* In ''Film/DrillbitTaylor'', [[spoiler:Filkins finally got caught only because he attempted to murder the protagonists with a samurai sword right in front of the police]].
* In the film adaptation of ''Film/JamesAndTheGiantPeach'', James' aunts attempt to take him back by pretending to be kind guardians, but it doesn't take them long to drop the act and attempt to kill James with axes right in front of a large crowd, including at least one cop. [[PoliceAreUseless Though the cop really doesn't do much in response to this.]]
* ''Film/WhoFramedRogerRabbit'': Judge Doom had a perfect chance to stab incapacitated Eddie with his SwordCane, but he just had to go for the slower and more gruesome road roller option, which gave Eddie time to escape. TheReveal regarding Doom should tell you exactly why he went for the more ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes''-esque manner of taking him out as opposed to the quick way.
* In ''Film/{{Hancock}}'', every character who refers to the title superhero as an "asshole":
** When Hancock voluntarily admits himself to prison, he's surrounded by most of the inmates he helped bring in. All of these people know firsthand what he's capable of, and yet two of them persist in impeding him when he threatens to shove an inmate's head up the ass of another. Why were the other inmates surprised, anyway?
** The French boy, Michel (who continually bullies Ray's son), has already seen Hancock demonstrate his powers on several occasions when he lands in front of Ray's home. When Michel keeps calling Hancock an asshole, he gets thrown miles up into the sky for his trouble. (In his defense, Michel probably thought that Hancock WouldntHurtAChild.)
** The bank robber who attempts to threaten Hancock with a dead man's switch detonator connected to C4 placed on all the hostages. He plainly sees Hancock taking off the metal shade off a lamp and turning it into a makeshift sawblade ''while he's calling the guy sent to stop him an asshole''. Is it any wonder that he got his hand lopped off after ignoring repeated warnings?
*** Even worse considering that he's just witnessed Hancock take out his fellow bankrobbers one at a time, by flying in and grabbing them at high-speed before exiting out of the opposite window!
* ''Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse:''
** Weaponized InUniverse by Iron Man in ''Film/TheAvengers2012'', when he points out that Loki's ''entire plan'' of making personal enemies of every single force on Earth that could stop him is this in order to buy enough time for his new suit of armor to be ready for deployment.
---> '''Tony Stark:''' You're missing the point. There's no throne. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes, and maybe it's too much for us, but it's all on you. Because if we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it.
** At the climax of ''Film/AvengersAgeOfUltron'', Ultron kidnaps Black Widow for literally no reason except that he wanted someone to [[EvilGloating gloat]] to. This gives her the opportunity to transmit the location of his humanity-destroying device to the other Avengers, allowing them to show up and stop him. He also has a chance to escape Sokovia in a stolen Quinjet, but is caught by the Hulk after stupidly deciding to circle back for one last futile attack on the Avengers.
* Blackjack and his band of outlaws in ''Film/{{Purgatory}}''. They ride into a weird little town whose pacifistic, religious inhabitants give them food and drink including alcohol, stable their horses, put them up in the hotel, and doctor their wounds all without payment. Said inhabitants really don't want trouble, to the point of not doing anything when the outlaws steal ammunition. The outlaws could just take the hospitality and go, stealing stuff on the way out. Was it ''really'' necessary to keep trying to kill people, wreck stuff, and rape the women, to the point where the townsfolk, who are actually dead famous outlaws, finally decide it's enough?
* Terl in ''Film/BattlefieldEarth''. Teaching your slaves [[InstantExpert everything to know about your civilization in an instant]] can only end badly, ''especially'' if you're supposedly doing it to help [[TakeOverTheWorld conquer their planet]]. Introducing your pet human to inspiring documents from the American Revolution will only make things worse. Holding your pet human's girlfriend hostage just [[ItsPersonal makes things personal]]. Abusing your henchman only serves to set up the MistreatmentInducedBetrayal in the final act. And not launching an all-out crackdown when the man-animals rebel and attack with air support... not a good idea Terl doesn't even notice [[spoiler:an exploding collar Jonny straps to his arm in a melee, and proceeds to amputate his own limb when he triumphantly hits the detonator]]. His ([[DullSurprise non]])reaction shot is priceless. He appears to read the BizarroUniverse inversion of the EvilOverlordList, telling him exactly what to do ''wrong''.
* In ''Film/TheRunningMan'', Killian convinces Richards to go on the show by offering to spare his rebel friends. When Richards agrees, Killian backstabs him and sends them into the arena anyway. However, without the rebels Ben Richards could never have found the hidden base and escaped the arena, and without Richards the rebels would have been immediately killed. All of them together were able to ultimately bring down the show and (it is implied) the entire government.
* Every decision Zod makes in ''Film/ManOfSteel''. He threatens to kill everyone unless Clark Kent reveals himself instead of just coming peacefully and telling him that they need a blood sample to revive their people. He kidnaps Lois Lane just to annoy Superman which leads to his escape and he insists on terraforming Earth instead of travelling to another planet that is unoccupied or at least lacking a Superman.
* In ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian2011'', Conan hangs helplessly from a bridge while the heroine Tamara is transforming into an evil sorceress. All Khalar Zym has to do, is keep his distance from Conan for about 30 seconds to win everything, and be unstoppable forever. So why exactly does he walk along the bridge, and get in Conan's face?
* The [[VillainProtagonist protagonists]] of ''Film/PainAndGain'' are fucking morons. If you were to make a drinking game out of every mistake they make, you'd die of alcohol poisoning by the end of the movie. Even worse, this is one of those 'based on a true story' films that is actually fairly accurate most of the time. The real life criminals really WERE that stupid, something the film itself has to stop at least TWICE to explain, yes, THEY REALLY DID DO THAT.
* The entire plot of ''Film/BeverlyHillsCop'' depends on the fact that Victor Maitland is an idiot. If he had just played dumb and told Axel that he had no idea who would want to kill Michael Tandino, that, yes, he uses bearer bonds in his business all the time, which is completely normal in the art world, and no, he has no idea why Michael would have brought bearer bonds with him to Detroit, that would have been the end of the movie, as Axel at that point had no real basis of suspicion against him. Instead, he calls in a group of thugs to his office to have Axel thrown out, as in literally thrown through a plate glass window, at which point Axel is certain that Maitland is behind it all. Then there's the fact that when Maitland catches Axel and Jenny in one of his warehouses, having discovered a crate of cocaine, instead of having them both killed then and there, when he has them completely at his mercy, he kidnaps Jenny, taking her back to his house, while leaving Axel there not to be killed, at least not right away, but first to be beaten up by two thugs. That of course leaves enough time for Billy to rescue Axel, and for Axel, Billy, and Sgt. Taggart to rescue Jenny. If Maitland had had a triple-digit IQ, the movie would have been much shorter.
* In ''Film/TheOmen1976'' and ''Film/DamienOmenII'', the first two movies of ''Film/TheOmen'' series, Damien seems unstoppable and unbeatable. Then comes ''Film/OmenIIITheFinalConflict'', where his plan to prevent the Second Coming ends in an EpicFail and he's finally taken down because he takes the [[NiceJobBreakingItHerod completely wrong approach]], assuming Christ will return to the world the same way he did the first time. Simply reading the Book of Revelations could have tipped him off to the rather huge flaw in his plan. The interesting thing, is that Damien found out he was TheAntiChrist [[AdaptationInducedPlotHole by reading the Book of Revelations.]]
* ''Film/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2014'':
** Sacks and his mentor the Shredder pass it between them, possibly due to one raising the other, with BadBoss tendencies (most notably killing a loyal mook to explain a nefarious plan to the turtles moments before they planned to exsanguinate the lot) or just stopping mid fight perhaps out of {{pride}}.
** Let's discuss the evil plan: [[spoiler:use a chemical weapon on New York so you can sell them the cure you ''haven't tested'' yet with a 15 year old chemical disbursement system that comes directly from your headquarters in the biggest and most modern metropolis in the world. So you can make money]]. No trials, no production set up, and no one thought that ''everyone would notice'' that your skyscraper was at the heart of all of it.
* In ''Film/HomeAlone'', Marv delights in going that extra mile to KickTheDog for a field goal after running a touchdown by plugging all the drains and turning on all the faucets in the homes they rob, leaving the already ransacked houses flooded. Even ''Harry'' calls him out for how [[EvenEvilHasStandards dickish]] and [[PragmaticVillainy pointless]] it is, but Marv just insists he does it because they're "The Wet Bandits". Of course when they get arrested in the end, their calling card served to provide the police a list of [[HoistByHisOwnPetard every single home they robbed]] and kept them from otherwise being able to reasonably deny robbing any home other than Kevin's where they were caught red-handed.
* In ''Film/HomeAlone2LostInNewYork'', Harry and Marv plan to rob Duncan's Toy Chest at midnight on Christmas Eve. When they stumble upon Kevin, they pick it up by attempting to kidnap him and grasp it even further by ''telling him their exact plans.'' Needless to say, this comes back to bite them when Kevin foils their robbery that night. Granted, Kevin is just a kid, but you'd think they'd know better after what happened in the last movie. What makes this worse is that Kevin had absolutely no way of knowing they were in New York nor did they stand to gain anything from bothering him other than {{revenge|BeforeReason}}.
* Nearly every ghostly/demonic antagonist in series like ''Film/{{Insidious}}'', ''Film/{{Sinister}}'', and ''Film/ParanormalActivity''. The monsters in these movies are invisible, ghostly/incorporeal, and many of the protagonists don't even believe they exist at the beginning, meaning they literally could not have more of an element of surprise for whatever goal they're aiming for. Instead of simply taking care of business right away, without anyone even noticing they're there, the ghosts/demons always opt to spend quite a long time simply moving and breaking things in the targets' homes, making noises, and drawing attention to themselves.
* ''Film/RoboCop2014'': Despite being skilled at shifting anything into his or the company's favor earlier in the movie [[spoiler: chief executive officer of Omnicorp Sellars]] catches this and runs home with it.
** [[spoiler: Sellars could have simply kept Murphy at bay with the RestrainingBolt that stopped important assets from being attacked and stuck to the story that Murphy was going rogue. Murphy's family may have even believed it at this point after seeing him storm the roof and attempt to attack Sellars. Instead Sellars picks up a pistol and brags about how Murphy is just a machine and how he could kill his family, which gives Murphy the resolve he needs to break programming and shoot him.]]
* ''Film/UnderSiege'', of all films, manages to avert this trope. Both Krill and Strannix manage to keep their wits about them. The only things that could possibly qualify are when Krill decides to chuck Ryback in the meat locker for no reason (though Krill has been established as enough of an asshole that it has already torpedoed his career, so it's petty and cruel but not out of character) and Strannix only sending two men to deal with Ryback when they take the ship (not being able to figure out that Ryback is played by Creator/StevenSeagal). After that, they do everything exactly right, including ordering their men out in large groups, maintaining radio contact and picking their fights. It pays off for them too, Ryback (unusually for a Steven Seagal-flick) spends most of it on the back foot.
* Zorg from ''Film/TheFifthElement'' helps bring on the end of the universe, intending for his MegaCorp to make money cleaning up the damage despite the fact that he and anyone who could pay him would be destroyed with it.
* The [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment cheeseball starring vehicle for musician]] Music/BillyRayCyrus ''Radical Jack'' has a pretty silly one at the end. Billy Ray has already crashed the illegal arms deal and killed the bad guys when, what do you know, the ''[[TheManBehindTheMan real]]'' villain turns out to be the guy who recruited him to stop the arms deal, and he was using Billy Ray to wipe out his competition. What makes this so stupid is that our be-mulleted hero never suspected a thing about the guy, never stumbled across any evidence of his criminal dealings, and no indication was ever given that the other weapon smugglers knew of his involvement, either. The baddie could have "apprehended" the last wounded villain, quietly disposed of him, and gotten away scot-free, but he apparently couldn't resist pointlessly giving himself away by gloating in Billy Ray's face.
* In ''Film/{{Serenity}}'', the Operative killing [[spoiler: all of Mal's contacts, and especially Shepherd Book]], is what galvanizes Mal into taking action and finding out the secret the Alliance is trying to hide.
* ''Film/XMenApocalypse'' would have been over in a few hours (at most) if [[Characters/MarvelComicsApocalypse Apocalypse]] had just used his {{Story Breaker Power}}s to do things himself. Instead, he spends much of the film gathering followers, causing destruction, and generally giving the heroes every opportunity to fight back. Given [[AGodAmI he sees himself as a god]], [[EvilIsHammy theatrics]] and arrogance can probably be blamed for this.
* In ''Film/TheMatrix'' when Smith is fighting Neo in the subway, he pummels Neo to the point the poor guy is sprawled on the floor in a stunned stupor. Had he just hauled off and stomped the guy's head, or snapped his neck, or really any number of things, the movie would be over, The Oracle was wrong, the humans lose, Smith wins, tune in next week for another exciting episode of ''That Wacky Matrix''. Of course Smith, being Smith, hears an oncoming train and decides it'd be more poetic to drag Neo to the tracks, pin him down in front of the train, and indulge in some EvilGloating. Naturally this gives Neo ample time and drive to snap out of it, drop a BondOneLiner, and hurl Smith off [[HoistByHisOwnPetard into the path of the coming train]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* In one episode of ''Series/AgentsOfSHIELD'', the "Centipede" organisation is looking to experiment on a pyrokinetic in order to improve their Extremis formula so that their future soldiers won't explode. They start by kidnapping him which ends up getting S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention. Then they ''do'' convince him to work with them, but when they find out it's his platelets that makes him fireproof, they render him unconscious and take them by force leading to his RoaringRampageOfRevenge. This is more jarring as they had already paid a hacker a million dollars for a list of superhumans. Couldn't they just have told Chan the truth about the experiments and paid him for the trouble?
* ''Series/BestFriendsWhenever'': [[spoiler: It's pretty obvious that Janet Smythe wants to get her hands on Shelby and Cyd, yet she should know better than to leave their arms free allowing them to jump. She did design the future lab, but it's poorly made]].
* In ''Series/BeverlyHills90210'' Jeremy catches Annie breaking into his house to steal a necklace he bought after she had had to pawn it (the necklace is a key part of the contested inheritance Jeremy's grandmother left to Annie in her will and she needs it to prove she deserves the money). Rather than simply call the cops and have Annie arrested there and then (he hadn't broken any laws while she definitely had) Jeremy locks her in his bedroom and indulges in EvilGloating about how he hated his grandmother allowing Annie to [[EngineeredPublicConfession record him on her Blackberry and send the message to her lawyers.]]
* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'':
** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E4BeautyAndTheBeasts Beauty and the Beasts]]", [[HulkingOut Pete Clarner]] is beating up Buffy and has her at his mercy when a [[AxCrazy feral]] Angel shows up and attacks him. After a brief fight, Pete tosses Angel aside, but doesn't make sure he's actually down before turning back to Buffy; Angel takes advantage of his distraction to throttle Pete with [[ChainPain the chains binding his wrists]] and [[NeckSnap snap his neck]].
** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E1TheFreshman The Freshman]]", [[MonsterOfTheWeek Sunday]] has the better of Buffy for most of the episode, even managing to sprain her arm. When she seemingly has Buffy at her mercy, she [[KickTheDog deliberately breaks Buffy's Class Protector Award]] under the belief that it would demoralize her further. Instead, Sunday only pisses Buffy off enough to get her to pull off a HeroicSecondWind and dust her.
--->'''Buffy''': When you look back at this, in the three seconds it takes to turn to dust, I think you'll find the mistake was touching my stuff.
** In every one of his appearances, Ethan Rayne shows up in Sunnydale and stirs up some trouble, and decides to stay and admire the result of his actions for kicks, which ''always'' gives Buffy and the Scoobies enough time to track him down, beat him up, and put a stop to it. In his last TV appearance, "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS4E12ANewMan A New Man]]", he even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] it:
--->'''Ethan''': I've gotta learn to just do the damage and leave town. It's the "stay-and-gloat" that gets me every time.
* ''Series/BurnNotice'':
** Brennen is generally quite cunning, except that he can never quite figure out that leaving Michael unattended for any length of time is a bad idea.
** Larry however seemed to have learned from this; in one episode he said he wasn't letting Michael out of his sight because he knew Mike would do something to sabotage his plan.
* [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Peter Fleming]] ([=AKA=] Chess) hires a duo of assassins to kill ''Series/TheCape''. They fail but find out his SecretIdentity. When one of them meets with Fleming, he is about to give him a flash-drive with their research, when Fleming loses his temper and fires them. Being a professional, the assassin is no longer obligated to help Fleming, so he gives the flash-drive to the Cape. All Fleming had to do was wait 2 seconds, and he would've had the Cape by the balls.
* In ''Series/{{Caprica}}'', Diego is ordered by the Holy Mother to kill Lacey and MakeItLookLikeAnAccident. Instead of killing her in a clean and deniable way as ordered, he can't resist the impulse to play a sadistic power game, and tries to force her lover Odin [[ShootYourMate to kill her]] as a DeadlyGraduation. This inevitably gets Diego killed instead, and Lacey is so upset that she sets a horde of killer robots on the entire Soldiers of the One leadership. Nice one, Diego.
* The ''Series/CaptainPowerAndTheSoldiersOfTheFuture'' episode "The Mirror in Darkness" has Dread using a fake Power to trick survivors into unwitting digitization. The first time we see him, it's convincing to ''us''. But the second time, we know the plot, and the real Power is waiting for him. The fake then suddenly yells his head off, and generally acts like a dick, before the real Power shows up.
* ''{{Series/Chuck}}'': After his FaceHeelTurn in "Chuck Versus the Other Guy", Daniel Shaw has Chuck at gunpoint when he's about to kill Chuck's partner/girlfriend Sarah, but decides to spare him and doesn't even disarm him, seemingly working on the same assumption as everyone else (both in-and-out-of-universe) that Chuck isn't able to shoot to kill. However, about a week earlier Shaw has issued a kill order on a traitor with Chuck as the trigger man. Knowing Chuck's squeamishness about killing, Shaw has Sarah relay the order, deducing that the only way Chuck would comply is if he thinks he's doing it for her. In the end it's Chuck's friend Casey who kills the traitor, but everyone else thinks Chuck did it, meaning Shaw has no reason to think he was wrong. So as far Shaw knows, he's not only threatening the only thing Chuck would kill for but ''already has'', and yet he's somehow as surprised as everyone else when Chuck, out of other options, actually three-taps him in the chest.
* [[PickACard Pick a]] ''Series/DoctorWho'' [[PickACard villain. Any]] ''Series/DoctorWho'' [[PickACard villain.]] Special mention must go to [[EvilCounterpart the Master]], however, who even originally had a BeardOfEvil and is explicitly more interested in messing with the Doctor than actually ruling the world. Michelle Gomez's incarnation described the two of them trying to kill each other to be "sort of our texting."
-->'''The Doctor:''' You'd delay an execution to pull the wings off a fly.
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': While many events were beyond their control, there were more than a few times that the Lannisters and friends screwed themselves over. (MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Highlights include:
** Lord Tywin Lannister's and Queen Regent Cersei Lannister's spiteful and, often, rather petty abuse they give to their very competent relative (son and brother, respectively) Tyrion Lannister for the crimes of "murder" and being a supposed DepravedDwarf, the latter of which is slightly true, but nonetheless exaggerated by the pair (the effect of Tyrion constantly being ostracized and mocked while his often stunning successes are downplayed and dismissed leads to him striking out against the ungrateful bastards. This directly leads to the family's downfall.
** Tywin revealing to Tyrion, for no other reason than to be an asshole, that Tyrion's first wife is actually a former whore who Tywin then ''gives'' to his men to be raped/paid for sex while Tyrion watches (leading to Tyrion's eventual cynicism and bitterness, his aforementioned outcast status, and to some very long-term bad blood).
** Tywin giving Tyrion a KangarooCourt trial after Cersei accuses him of killing Joffrey because he was at the scene of the crime, which was a blatantly obvious FrameUp job by some unknown third party (leading to Tyrion's breakdown and setting him up for execution).
** And finally, Tywin's actions when Tyrion goes to confront him after being set free by his brother, Ser Jaime Lannister, and his friend, Lord "Master of Whisperers" Varys: Upon stumbling across Tyrion's ex-girlfriend Shae (another prostitute), in his father's bed she freaks out and attacks him with a knife which forces him to kill her. Tywin (while taking a shit on the toilet) decides to mock Tyrion (after the aforementioned ex's death) even as Tyrion is pointing a crossbow at his chest. Yeah...
** Season 7 finale spoilers: [[spoiler:Littlefinger. Oh, Littlefinger. Throughout the series, he pulls strings from the shadows, manipulating a great many people for, essentially, his depraved "love" for Catelyn Stark, and later her daughter Sansa. This ultimately earns him Sansa's distrust, but in Season 6 she is forced to rely upon him for aid, to which he responds by saving the day. As a result, he is once again welcome in her presence, even if she can never fully trust him again, and he ends up becoming her main advisor for a brief time. Unfortunately, ChronicBackstabbingDisorder strikes and he attempts to manipulate her and the rest of her family in such a manner as to have her sister killed/imprisoned and her brother removed from power, to be replaced by Sansa. Sansa saw through it. Had he done nothing but continue to support the Starks' forces, or even acted to mend the rifts between the three siblings, he would have regained more of the trust he'd lost - but by trying to break the family, he united them against him, and lost dearly]].
* ''Series/GossipGirl'': Bart Bass is shocked that his evil plan to have a plane with his son Chuck explode failed. So he ends up in a roof-top argument that eventually ends with Bart falling off the roof. Instead of just faking Chuck dying from an overdose of the many many drugs that he takes or just getting a minion to shoot him.
* ''Series/ICarly'': Missy in "iReunite With Missy". Missy tries to regain her old "best friend" position off Sam, by [[BitchInSheepsClothing treating her nicely around people, but indirectly attacking her in ways that force Sam away from Carly]]. Sam herself is unsure if Missy is trying to hurt her, or if she's jealous of Missy. The evil plot is ruined when Missy gives Sam a MotiveRant for no reason. This pushes Sam to ask Freddie for help. Carly has no clue until she [[RightBehindMe overhears]] [[EvilGloating Missy gloating]] about the cruise Freddie gave up to get rid of her.
* The very first episode of ''Series/InTheHeatOfTheNight'' has a white woman be murdered and a black man arrested as the only suspect because he and the victim allegedly had bad blood between them and spoke the night she was murdered. Because there's no actual evidence against him ''and'' he has an alibi, he's set to walk in 24 hours... so the henchmen of the father of the ''actual'' murderer go to his cell and murder him... because... racism or something, and then go on to beat the hell out of Tibbs because... racism or something. These two acts are ''solely'' what implicates them in the original murder owing to the slapdash way they try to frame the murder as a suicide [[note]]They left the cell door open and, as Gillespie points out, who would kill themselves to get out of a night stay in a jail cell?[[/note]] and the fact that they'd have needed keys to get into the police station. The same keys the janitor wore on his belt the next day, and the same keys he ''stupidly wore'' while they attacked Tibbs which, naturally, Tibbs recognized. These people being henchmen of the father of the murderer gave Gillespie and Tibbs enough probable cause to investigate the actual murderer and find hard evidence that implicated him. Had they just sat back and done nothing, said suspect would have been released, and the original murder would have gone cold with no leads.
* Fletcher "The Ice-Pick" Nix from ''Series/{{Justified}}'' is sent by Arnett to rob Delmar Coates, a very wealthy man. Instead of wearing a mask, which he doesn't like to as he's "too pretty", he forces him to play a rigged dueling game and kills the pizza guy he sent to ref the game. Worse still his MO is known by the police, making both murders entirely pointless. When Nix is prevented from meeting up with Arnett, Nix kidnaps protagonist Raylan Givens' ex-wife Winona, and makes Raylan play his game, despite that fact that he has reason to go after Raylan but he has heard of Raylan's reputation and can't resist testing himself against him, rather than flee with the several hundred thousand dollars worth of watches he now has on his person.
* After achieving his [[OneWingedAngel Black Hole]] form, [[PlanetEater Evolto]], the true BigBad of ''Series/KamenRiderBuild'', decides not to go forward with his original plan of destroying the Earth because he's decided that humans are too interesting and wants to spend more time tormenting them. {{Subverted|Trope}} later when it's revealed that Evolto was just buying time for the Black Pandora Panel to be completed so he could absorb it to become even more powerful and gain the power to destroy planets faster. And then it's {{double subver|sion}}ted in the FinalBattle when a Black Pandora Panel-empowered Evolto opts to drag out the destruction of Earth so he can [[{{Sadist}} enjoy the heroes' despair as their planet is destroyed]] for a bit longer. This ends up buying the Kamen Riders enough time to force the Panel out of Evolto and avert his destruction of Earth.
* In ''Series/LoisAndClark'': [[Characters/SupermanTheCharacter Kal-El]] became the ruler of New Krypton to prevent Lord Nor from doing so. Lord Nor charged Kal-El with treason and a KangarooCourt held under Kryptonian Law sentenced him to death. Right after Kal-El is led off, a Kryptonian bursts in and tells Nor that Metropolis refuses to surrender. Nor responds by vaporizing him with heat vision and ordering his men to destroy Metropolis. ''All of that is done in front of the chief prosecutor'', leading him to a a massive HeroicBSOD. Then, another person comes to the prosecutor and points out the TrialByCombat law is still technically in the books...
* This crowning jewel from ''Series/{{Merlin|2008}}''. Morgana and Morgause's plan in "The Eye of the Phoenix" is to give Arthur a bracelet that will suck out his life force. What's so stupid about this? Nothing, only that it needs Morgana to light an effigy of Arthur, which she chooses to do ''in her unlocked bedroom'' at the ''exact hour of the night'' her maid Guinevere would come in to tidy up. When said maid finds her, she acts very suspiciously, and the next day, tries to make up for it by giving her the night off and making her more suspicious, thus leading to Gwen hiding in her room and discovering her in the act.
* ''Series/MurdochMysteries'' season 9 opener "Nolo Contendre" has former-Chief Constable Giles and George Crabtree remarking on why people are in prison, and it boils down to this concept. When George first cites prisoners act in a form of "rashness" that resulted in their crimes, Giles asks, "Or is it the inability to imagine the series of events that led them to their present circumstance and correctly assess its probability? Stupidity, Crabtree. Thought-stunting, bat-blind stupidity is the sine qua non of incarceration." Crabtree understands and then notes [[spoiler:since both of them are prisoners too, they too suffered the same stupidity]]. Giles can only agree with the comment.
* ''Series/OnceUponATime'':
** HeroicNeutral Emma was perfectly willing to leave her son Henry with his adoptive mother Regina ([[Literature/SnowWhite The Evil Queen]]), but Regina shows off her GenreBlindness, her inability to simply keep her mouth shut, and this trope to convince Emma to stay by threatening to "destroy" her if she has designs on Henry. Emma ends up TheChosenOne that can break the curse that gave Regina her power in the first place.
** Regina holds the ball several times during the first season. She believes [[MagnificentBastard Rumplestiltskin]] won't remember the deal he made with her to enact the curse, despite the fact that he ''created'' the curse so could easily make a loophole (which turns out to be that he regained his memories upon hearing Emma's name). She also attempts to frame Mary Margaret with his help, after he suggests something "tragic" should happen to Kathryn Nolan, and he uses those ExactWords to simply have Kathryn disappear for a while then reappear at the last minute, and all the evidence leads to Regina. She holds it again in the penultimate episode and season finale, when she attempts to put [[TheChosenOne Emma]] under the sleeping curse and gloats about how she won. However, this backfires when Henry eats the turnover meant for Emma in order to prove to her it's poisoned, and the chain of events results in the curse being broken. Bear in mind that at the point Regina gave Emma the poisoned turnover, Emma had just finished telling Regina that she was planning to leave town because she'd come to the conclusion that her presence and the constant fighting between her and Regina was doing Henry more harm than good. All Regina has to do is let Emma go, and she wins. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Say it with me]].
* ''{{Series/Sherlock}}'':
** The gangster. Seriously, dude? Tying a war-veteran to a chair ''and'' making an attempt on Sherlock's life? [[BadassAdorable It REALLY gets John pissed, and he calmly, coldly KILLS the gangster.]]
** The Golem from "[[Recap/SherlockS01E03TheGreatGame The Great Game]]". Grabs Sherlock in a headlock in an attempt to strangle him or snap his neck, which leads to [[BadassAdorable one good-looking (and extremely pissed-off) war veteran to threaten death on the guy.]]
** Both of the {{Big Bad}}s of the first two series are otherwise very clever, and (seemingly) nearly beat Sherlock, but each makes a stupid and critical mistake that [[spoiler:directly leads to his death]]:
*** Moriarty (BigBad of Series 1 & 2): It appears that Sherlock will have to [[spoiler:kill himself to save his friends from assassination, since Moriarty states that this is the only way to call off the snipers]]. However, in his EvilGloating, he gets carried away and adds "I'm certainly not going to do it." Sherlock then realizes that [[spoiler:Moriarty himself can call off the snipers, and convinces him that he'll do whatever it takes to make him stop the executions. This leads to Moriarty killing himself to prevent Sherlock from doing so. Even though we find out later that Sherlock had a plan to fake his own death, Moriarty's mistake was what lead to ''his'' death]].
*** Magnussen (BigBad of Series 3): In the "[[Recap/SherlockS03E03HisLastVow His Last Vow]]" episode, he reveals to Sherlock and John that [[spoiler:his {{Blackmail}} files are in fact not hard copies; they exist solely in his head]]. While this is a smart idea in that it prevents them from being hacked or stolen, he makes the mistake of [[EvilGloating rubbing this fact in their faces]]--and then ''really'' overdoes it by [[TooDumbToLive revealing that John is Sherlock's pressure point and flicking John's face repeatedly to exercise his power and control]], which ''seriously'' pisses them both off. This is ''after'' he hired people to kidnap John and throw him in a bonfire (from which Sherlock saved him). As a result, Sherlock realizes that he can solve the problem by [[spoiler:[[WhyDontYouJustShootHim simply killing Magnussen]]--[[BoomHeadshot which he promptly does]]]].
*** Moriarty could be considered a form of PyrrhicVictory as [[spoiler: his suicide]] does actually force Sherlock to do what he wants [[spoiler: even if Sherlock gets out of it]] and allows him to die on his own terms [[spoiler: while knowing there's Eurus's plan on the back burner to boot]]. Magnussen, though, is a grade-A example of the writers staple-gunning the Villain Ball to a character's hand, as up to that point he's actually been winning by wits and the only way out for Sherlock is for him to abruptly switch alignments to Chaotic Stupid and giving away the fatal information.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'':
** Ba'al can't seem to make up his mind if he wants to have the Villain Ball or not. Half the time he's charging around like an idiot coming up with ridiculously complex and stupid plans to DESTROY THE UNIVERSE or somesuch nonsense, and then the other half of the time he's acting as the CEO for a major company and fully intends to just live on Earth peacefully. It then gets even more ridiculous when SG-1 force him to take action and the entire thing dissolves into a massive I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-is-happening with the end result revealing Baal actually really likes the Tau'ri and would probably quite happily be a fairly good ally, if we'd just stop shooting him. Then when the SGC realises this and attempts to join forces with Ba'al, he backstabs them. Scary thing is, compared to the other System Lords, Ba'al is ''the smart one''.
*** The Goa'uld as a whole carry individual Villain Balls. It's a side-effect of the sarcophagus technology they use to achieve immortality, which compromises their capacity for rational thought. The existence of the Tok'Ra proves that without the sarcophagus, they still have arrogance in spades, but they're not evil as a whole.
** In general, Goa'uld communication orbs [[VisualPun double as villain balls]]. Since only the bad guys use them, they are an easy way to make distinctions. Once a spy in Tok'Ra was uncovered because Jack O'Neil had seen him with such an orb.
** In ''Film/StargateContinuum'', Baal plans to alter the timeline and use his foreknowledge in order to conquer the rival System Lords and the rest of the galaxy. This plan works out wonderfully, but instead of conquering Earth like his underlings want, he decides to pull out a cell phone he brought with him from the other timeline and call the US President to [[NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine arrange for lunch]]. His underlings don't take too kindly to him wearing a villain ball and kill him to deal with the humans the ol' fashioned way.
** Suppose you've formed a cult using a brainwashing chemical, but any electrical shock will free someone and render them permanently immune. Do you A) take reasonable steps to keep your cultists from unnecessary exposure to electricity, or B) arm all your minions with electricity-shooting alien stun weapons, so that any idiot who shoots themselves in the foot will be free and armed with an easy way to free everyone else. If you chose B), congratulations, you must be Seth!
* ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'';
** The [[NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering Xindi Council]] spend most of the third season juggling this. The most obvious example however was their decision to prematurely deploy a prototype superweapon to attack Earth, instead of waiting just another year to get their full-scale PlanetDestroyer ready, which becomes even more ridiculous since we later learn that they've been building this thing for ''decades'' already! Instead, their foolishness and impatience gives humanity enough time to learn of the Xindi's existence, track down their weapon and avert the disaster. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Oops]].
** Where the prime universe Jonathan Archer is willing to learn and experiences significant character development as he leads ''Enterprise'' in making contact with other races, his Mirror Universe counterpart is an arrogant individual who is often motivated to gain the respect he feels he is 'entitled' to while constantly aware that he only inspires his followers out of fear. A particular example is when he stages a mutiny against his captain and then tries to ''ask'' the man for the identity of the spy the admiralty placed on ''Enterprise''; as the captain points out to Archer, the admiralty would hardly tell him who the spy was in such circumstances.
* In ''Series/StrangerThings'', Agent Connie Frazier murders [[spoiler: Benny Hammond]] just because he ''met'' Eleven, even though he believed her cover story and was cooperating with her. While the intent was probably to prevent knowledge of Eleven's existence from spreading, it actually had the opposite effect, as the investigation into [[spoiler: Benny]]'s death is what led to [[CowboyCop Hopper]] finding out about her. For bonus points, later in the series when Hopper is threatening to expose Hawkins' Lab, it's mentioned that they can't just kill him too because a second death this soon would be too suspicious. Shame they wasted the first one, huh?
* Every villain on ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' has underestimated the Winchester brothers, and every single one of them has ended up dead or otherwise incapacitated. Crowley is the only one so far who is smart enough not to succumb to hubris and takes them seriously as a threat.
-->'''Crowley''': ''"Don't worry about them?" What, like Lucifer didn't worry? Or Michael, or Lilith, or Alastair, or Azazel didn't worry? Am I the only game piece on the board who DOESN'T underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?!''
::
Of course, Crowley isn't ''totally'' immune to this. In Season 6, he decides to play RulesLawyer with Bobby's contract, using the fine print to avoid giving him back his soul. ''Of course'' this gets the Winchesters on his case, with them going as far as learning his human identity, which gives them a way to perma-kill him. To make matters worse: 1) Crowley usually advises against swindling people during deals specifically to make himself seem more trustworthy, and 2) he pulled this all off at a time when he most wanted to be operating in secret [[spoiler:and his silent partner, Castiel, has to bail his ass out]].
* In the third season of ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', the Governor has already grabbed hold of the villain ball after Glenn and Maggie [[spoiler:are captured by Merle]], he's fully prepared to prepared to go into the prison and wipe out Rick's group because...? However, then Rick and co. break into Woodbury and rescue them with Michonne's help, who then goes off on her own, kills the Governor's [[spoiler:zombified daughter]] and stabs out his eye, meaning ItsPersonal and he grabs the ball ''so hard''.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'', [[BigBad Von Bolt]] is ''really'' bad for these, though to be fair he's probably all kinds of senile...
** His plan to get rid of [[spoiler:Hawke and Lash]] was a clear-cut case of this. Granted the former wasn't much of a loss and ''was'' getting suspicious, but the latter's was gleefully in it ForTheEvulz and more than happy to serve Black Hole, one of the best [=COs=] in the game, [[spoiler:and was responsible for designing almost all of their technology. In fact, had the Bolt Guard not gone out of their way to treat Hawke and Lash as garbage and didn't try to get rid of them, they'd have never [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal defected to the Allies]]: without Hawke and Lash's crucial intel on the location of Black Hole's crystal installations the Allies wouldn't have found them in time and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard the Bolt Guard would have won the war]].]]
** As is his ''entire scheme.'' [[spoiler:So he builds a device that drains the energy from the land that he intends to use to become immortal, and because Omega Land is 70% water he puts it on the bottom of the ocean where the withering of the land won't be noticed until it's too late. If he'd stopped there he'd have succeeded and there'd be no issue. Instead, to distract the Allies from the desertification they won't even know is happening he builds a second device in a massive desert as a decoy. And ''then'' he invades the land because... evil or something. In other words he has a pretty amazing plan... and then just [[ComplexityAddiction keeps heaping on as much things as possible]] that ''undermine'' his plan, like starting a war, incentivizing the allies to chase him, betraying Hawke and Lash, and in general doing everything in his power to ensure his original plan failed. It's especially hilarious as, when he takes command for the final mission, he has the gall to claim he "dislikes battles" as if nearly all of his actions thus far have been starting dozens of meaningless battles that held his actual plan back]]!
* In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII'', [[spoiler:Warren Vidic, the BigBad of the modern era, kidnapped Desmond's father. He then demands that Desmond trade the [[ArtifactOfDoom Apple of Eden]] for his father's life... while seemingly forgetting that said Apple grants its user MindControl powers. In other words, he just personally invited his ArchEnemy, who is understandably quite pissed off, to his headquarters, and even told him to bring a nigh-omnipotent weapon with him to rescue his father]]. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong
* ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'': Tchernobog, a GodOfEvil, has learned that Caleb, his most skilled warrior, grows more powerful the more people he kills, and concludes from this that Caleb might one day grow exceptionally strong if he kills enough people, and therefore he should try to kill him and absorb his power. To that end, he does everything in his power to put Caleb on the path to a RoaringRampageOfRevenge: kicking him out of the cult, slaughtering his friends along with his lover, and killing him for good measure (he gets better), so that Caleb will return to life and cut a swathe through the Cabal, gaining unfathomable power in the process. Somehow, it doesn't occur to him that Caleb might have gotten strong enough to kill ''him'' along the way, nor that Caleb, as far as the viewer can tell, started out as completely loyal to Tchernobog and is absent any kind of moral compass.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania 64}}'', Dracula spends most of the game disguised as a kid named Malus. This is not known to the player or the game's characters, though there is this bizarre moment where you come across Malus and suddenly appears evil, but your character ignores that the next time they see him, depending on the ending. In the bad ending, Dracula will actually [[SmartBall have a clever plan for a change]] and not reveal himself, though both endings give some hint that Malus is really him; his eyes [[RedEyesTakeWarning turn red]], and in Carrie's he gets her to promise to marry him and mutters that now they have a binding contract. Either way, he had a good plan going: Stay disguised and kill the hero when he least suspects it in one, or in the other apparently using some curse to force her to one day marry you. In the good ending, however, he throws that out the window and just reveals himself and reveals in his supposed invincibility, leading to his temporary defeat.
* ''VideoGame/DeathEndReQuest'':
** Nearly the entire plot of the first game stems from Aphesis being so unapologetically evil that they wouldn't give a second thought to [[spoiler:gunning down the best friend of the AI that they were building]]. Were they able to control themselves just this once, their plans for world conquest might have continued unimpeded. Instead, [[spoiler:Iris is pissed beyond belief, which leads to Aphesis's attempt to kill her that results in the destruction of her body but more glitches and more [[AIIsACrapshoot Ludens]] that lock Aphesis out of cancelled MMO "World's Odyssey". The Ludens then create a copy of said best friend, Shina Ninomiya, which leads to a mysterious e-mail being sent to Arata Mizunashi which sets the game into motion]].
** Ripuka, who is completely AxCrazy unlike [[BlueAndOrangeMorality the other Ludens]], interrupts a battle with the heroes in the final chapter to [[spoiler:scream at the God of Death for pretending to be a neutral party]]. Arata, who thought that "he" was the supposed [[spoiler:God of Death]], realizes that this confirms his suspicions that [[spoiler:his world is just like World's Odyssey]] and then [[spoiler:turns to [[BreakingTheFourthWall you, the player]] for help]], which gives the party the strength to finally fight on Ripuka's level. Unless she actually ''does'' agree with the other Ludens and this is some gambit to help the heroes, Ripuka's actions are pointless and directly lead to her downfall.
** ''Death end;re Quest 2'' has [[spoiler:Julietta]] put all of the pieces in place for their evil plan to [[spoiler:take the demon god Marbas' power for herself and use it to destroy the world]]. The final phase of the plan is to sacrifice [[spoiler: someone from Marbas' blood lineage, with protagonist Mai Toyama's sister Sanae being kidnapped for that purpose, and take the god's power in their place]]. Neither the Fallen Ending nor the True Ending have the BigBad take the completely logical step of [[spoiler:killing both Toyama sisters]], which results in [[spoiler:Marbas possessing Mai and granting her the power to effortlessly murder the members of Julietta's cult. This goes double for the Fallen Ending, where Julietta takes the time to rub the death of Mai's closest friends in her face but doesn't finish Mai off]].
* ''VideoGame/DeusExHumanRevolution'': WakeUpCallBoss Barrett [[spoiler:tells you the ''exact address'' of his co-conspirators (right down to the specific apartment) for no reason before he attempts to kill the both of you. This was, in fact, Jensen's only lead to Shanghai to continue the plot, otherwise the villains' plan would have gone off without a hitch]].
* ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIII'': Inverted. Upon discovering that there was a legendary sword tailor-made for beings like him, Zoma poured on the suffering of the populace of the "dark world" for three years to bide and grow in strength, until he was mighty enough to destroy the thing with his bare hands. This, incidentally, happened well before the Hero appeared.
* In ''VideoGame/EternalSonata'', your party is forced to surrender party member Polka to CardCarryingVillain Count Waltz. Waltz successfully convinces Polka that if she surrenders peacefully then no harm will come to the party or her, and he will call off his army. Polka (in turn) successfully convinces the rest of the party to allow her to go with Waltz and sacrifice her freedom for the greater good. Waltz's plan would have worked perfectly... if he ''hadn't'' decided to punctuate his victory by ''slapping Polka in clear view of everyone'', proving he was a lying prick and prompting Polka (and the rest of the party) to attack.
* ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'' example: Gilgamesh. If you just stopped playing around with the heroes and just [[StormOfBlades Babylowned]] them to death then you wouldn't keep dying. This happens in both the Fate and the Unlimited Blade Works routes: in Fate, he [[spoiler: gives Shirou the time he needed to project Avalon by using a charge attack when he can [[StormOfBlades bladespam]] anyone to death in an instant]]. In UBW, he insists on [[spoiler: dueling Shirou one-on-one sans armor while in Shirou's [[FieldOfBlades Reality Marble]] rather than just equipping his [[NighInvulnerability Nigh-Invulnerable]] armor or using [[InfinityPlusOneSword Ea]] right off the bat. This results in a very literal disarmament and being shoved into a space-time rift]]. Then again, if he didn't have the constant Pride Villain Ball he would be completely unstoppable.
** Not completely. He could still potentially be taken out by a particularly well-executed ambush. [[spoiler:Like the one Sakura pulls in Heaven's Feel.]] Though you could argue that not immediately going out and unleashing his full power at the very beginning of the war is already holding the Villain Ball, since he could probably easily win in an hour or less if he were smart enough to try that.
*** Hell, he probably could have even beaten that situation if he had gotten lucky with what weapons appeared from the [[StormOfBlades Babyl-spam]]. If he managed to shoot out [[AntiMagic Rule Breaker]] or [[LightNovel/FateZero Zero Lancer's]] anti-regeneration spear, then [[spoiler:Sakura]] would have been dead. Or he could have just kept shooting until one of his weapons overwhelmed her regen. [[TooDumbToLive But no, he stops, poses and gets eaten.]]
** It's grown to such a point that fans are starting to joke that one of Gilgamesh's Noble Phantasms in [[HyperspaceArsenal the Gate Of Babylon]] is either a Villain Ball or an IdiotBall. That, or he has a hidden Passive Phantasm.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'': Heidegger and Scarlett fall into this near the end, when Professor Hojo [[spoiler: purposely overloads the Sister Ray, which would result in Midgar City's destruction.]] Instead of letting the heroes defeat Hojo, the two instead [[spoiler: confront them with a giant robot, which ends with the two getting killed once the robot blew up]].
* Nergal in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' has ridiculous dark magic prowess, the ability to teleport anywhere seemingly at will, and for large chunks of the story, he has everything he needs to complete his evil plan. At several points, he had the heroes dead to rights, and at nearly any stage, he could have simply warped over to the good guys, killed them all, and taken what he needed, but he instead splurges most of his resources on generating armies of mooks that he doesn't actually really need, and when he does confront the good guys, he rarely does much more than posture maliciously. His experiments have [[TheDarkSideWillMakeYouForget apparently taken a mental toll on him]], but it's never implied that he's meant to be ''stupid''.
* While the child killer in the ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' series manages to [[KarmaHoudini get away with his crimes]], come [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys3 the third game]], he clutches the ball hard when he returns to the long-dead pizzeria and dismantles the animatronics for no clear reason. [[spoiler:This frees his victims, and he hides in the Spring Bonnie suit he originally used. The very deadly springlock suit that can kill a person if the springlocks get even a tiny bit wet. [[TooDumbToLive In a room with a leaky ceiling. And since he was an employee of the company at the time, he should know how dangerous the suit is]]. Suffice to say, [[CruelAndUnusualDeath it doesn't end well for him]].]]
* ''VideoGame/GodOfWarChainsOfOlympus'': [[spoiler:Persephone]] had just gotten Kratos to cast aside his blades and renounce his powers as the Ghost of Sparta so that he can be with his daughter in the Elysian Fields. All she needs to do in order to win is ''leave him alone'' for a few hours so that her plan can be completed while he's playing with Calliope. Instead, she makes a point of telling him that she's the villain of the game (something he didn't have the slightest inkling of until she explained her plan), and that thanks to his actions the world will soon be destroyed, and that the Elysian Plains and all the spirits living there will be destroyed with it. This motivates Kratos to reclaim his powers and save the world.
* [[{{Yakuza}} The Empress]] in ''VideoGame/AHatInTime'', who otherwise is an intelligent and cunning individual, suddenly clutches the Villain Ball like it's her beloved kitten and refuses to let go during ''Rush Hour''. Firstly, she leaves the door to her massive treasure room ''wide open'', which allows Hat Kid to wander in and help herself to the time pieces. Then when she catches Hat Kid red-handed stealing from her, rather than use the OneHitKO attack she retaliates with if you smack her in an earlier chapter, she puts a one million dollar bounty on your head and lets her underlings take care of you. ''Then'', when you're more than able to evade her underlings, rather than just charge in and claw you to ribbons she uses a rocket launcher from a distance which you're able to use to blast open your escape routes. '''''Then''''', even though you dupe her into this numerous times, she never realizes she should put down the rocket launcher and just charge in and claw you to ribbons since you'd have nowhere to go. By the time she finally realizes she should just come after you in person it works without a hitch and she gets you trapped in an elevator alone with her, but by then it's too late as the cops show up and she's forced to leave you unharmed to save face.
* In ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'', BigBad Ganondorf [[spoiler:Obtains the complete Triforce]] after defeating the Hyrulean Forces. Instead of eliminating his enemies in one fell swoop, he disappears from the battlefield [[spoiler:leaving his generals Zant & Ghirahim to lead his army and decides to use its power to summon more monsters to serve him]]. However the Hyrulean Forces manage to [[spoiler:defeat Zant and Ghirahim in Gerudo Desert after summoning their allies from across time]]. They then return to Hyrule Castle [[spoiler:which Ganondorf had transformed into Ganon's Tower]] and [[spoiler:defeat Ganondorf who uses the Triforce to transform into Ganon, only to be defeated by the combined might of the Hyrulean Forces and their allies]].
* In ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'', [[spoiler:Hades, the BigBad of the game, puts Mimicuties in Pit's path when they are [[EnemyMine temporarily teamed up]]]]. It actually is much better than most examples because it's entirely in character for him.
* From ''[[VideoGame/TheKingofFighters The King of Fighters XIII]]'': [[spoiler:Sure Saiki, one of your strongest minions who has nothing but loyalty for you offers to fight in your stead, which would really help if you needed to duck into the door to the past in a hurry... and your response is to kill him for no reason other than that he spoke up to you. Yeah, that's REALLY going to help. Especially when you follow it via taking over the body of your own descendant ''despite knowing clearly that he is NOT to be trusted'']].
* The Gurlukovich Mercenaries from ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2SonsOfLiberty'' decide to defend several key points of the tanker ship they've seized with infrared sensors tied into Semtex explosives. Say that out loud. They are defending key points of the tanker they themselves are on ''and'' need to keep afloat because they've yet to take the cargo they're after with a security system that will sink the ship along with [[HoistByHisOwnPetard its cargo, all their own men, and their bosses]] if tripped.
* In the ''Franchise/MortalKombat'' series, Shao Kahn will often leave himself open to attacks by taunting his opponent.
* Invoked in ''VideoGame/Mother3'', when King P[[spoiler:orky Minch]] decides to drop the party into a passage leading to the final needle, noting that it would be boring if he didn't give them a chance to stop his plans. It makes sense when considering he still has the mind of a child despite his advanced age; he's acting exactly how a villain "should" act from his perspective.
* In ''VideoGame/TheNightmareBeforeChristmasOogiesRevenge'', if Oogie had not left Jack a TrailOfBreadCrumbs to follow and skipped to cutting Halloween off from the Hinterlands and killing Santa he would have succeeded. Heck, if he didn't make his presence so well known to Jack he might have been able to lull him into a false sense of victory and captured him (he even already had a cell for him), making room for himself as the Seven Holidays King in the absence of all the other leaders.
* [[spoiler:Matt Engarde]] in the final case of ''VisualNovel/PhoenixWrightAceAttorneyJusticeForAll'' would have been able to get away scot-free if he didn't betray the assassin he hires simply because he doesn't trust other people and believes that not even assassins are above blackmail. Said action allows Wright to trap him in a MortonsFork situation.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** Lampshaded by a Team Plasma grunt in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', in N's Castle. He states that the reason why other villain teams (Rocket and Galactic being mentioned in particular) failed was because they made themselves and their plans public. Plasma on the other hand had been secretly building and preparing for their ultimate plan while masquerading as PETA-esque Pokémon liberators.
** Lysandre has his turn with the ball in ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' by announcing his plans to the protagonists for no particular reason. If he had just kept his mouth shut, he would have succeeded.
** Both ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'' and ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon'' feature one so blatant that ''Hau'' of all people is the one to call it out. [[EvilAllAlong Faba]] holds the key to go deeper into [[spoiler:Aether Paradise]], and tricks Hau and Gladion into going somewhere else to buy himself more time. When they go back, they find Faba has backed himself up with some grunts. Hau asks if he holds the key, which Faba confirms... and Hau then points out that if he had just hid somewhere instead of getting backup, that would have slowed them down a lot more.
** In ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonExplorers'', [[spoiler:Darkrai]] could've easily ensured the success of his initial plan if he had taken more action against the hero, rather then deciding to lay low after his initial attack [[spoiler:that ends up causing their transformation into a Pokémon]].
** In ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeonGatesToInfinity'', [[spoiler:Kyurem]] has an even bigger case of this when he decides to show mercy to the hero for the sake of their partner, despite them being the only remaining obstacle to his plans and being in the position to finish them off. Assuming that a threat of further violence would dissuade the two from opposing him further when the entire world is going to be destroyed if they don't take any action obviously didn't work out in the end...
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Reincarnation}}'' series of Flash games, damned souls are given a second shot at life if they manage to escape from Hell, and devils can't bring them back until they give proof that they deserve to go to hell a second time. They gladly go back to a life of crime or worse without even being tempted into it, pretty much earning them a quick trip back to Hell.
* Despite his alleged intelligence, Albert Wesker runs all the way for a touchdown with the Villain Ball in the original ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil1''. He could have just shot Jill/Chris without a word, but he simply had to brag about his plan, about how he blackmailed Barry, and show off the Tyrant. Three strikes and he's out: shot by Barry and impaled by the Tyrant. Later on the games ended up {{retcon}}ning it that being killed was part of his plan all along, as it was needed to activate the [[SuperSerum experimental virus]] he was injected with. Because clearly that was [[ComplexityAddiction the only way he could possibly die]].
* [[spoiler: "James Marcus"]] from ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil0'' with regards to attacking Billy and Rebecca. His plan had nothing to do with them, they were unaware of his plan and were only looking for a means to escape, and he doesn't have the same excuse as the mindless monsters that attack anything without reason. Unfortunately he claims to be "very territorial" and repeatedly goes after them, and of course it ends quite badly for him.
* Osmund Saddler's evil plan in ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' would have stood a much better chance of succeeding if he hadn't decided to [[EvilGloating monologue]] about it in front of Leon Kennedy and [[spoiler:inject him with the parasite]] while he was conscious. Then there's the fact that he keeps around a machine that can [[spoiler:kill the parasite without harming the host]], without any previous experience at using it or the need of a password or other lock-out mechanism. Saddler is often considered the smartest Resident Evil villain, which should tell you something.
** Even dumber, Saddler's plan was to infect the president's daughter (Ashley) and send her back to the president without anyone knowing she was infected so she'd kill the president and, due to sheer luck, he managed to infect Leon as well. His plan had ''succeeded'' the second Leon freed her with the added bonus that the president would soon have an infected ''bodyguard'' as well as daughter. However instead of kicking back with a beer and watching them "escape" he confronts them, blabs his whole plan, and then ''DOES EVERYTHING IN HIS POWER TO PREVENT THEIR ESCAPE'' culminating in capturing and locking up Ashley on the island that houses the parasite-removal machine mentioned above. His only "justification" for this (using that term ''loosely'' by the way) is he intended to hold her for ransom to make some money, and needless to say he's more responsible for his plan falling to pieces than Leon's sheer bad-assery (consider also that [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat if Saddler's plan succeeded, he would've had access the entire U.S. Treasury]]).
* In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil5'', Wesker ''could'' have spent the extra five minutes it would have taken to kill Chris and Sheva but no, he instead sends the BrainwashedAndCrazy Jill who is still [[FightingFromTheInside managing to fight his control]] while he wanders off to do evil. It's not like they could break the brainwashing, she could blab all the details needed to foil his plan, and ultimately come to their rescue in the end. [[spoiler:Except spoiler: that's totally what happens.]]
** [[https://youtu.be/oVYxnYc_CPw?t=57s Wesker later finds himself in a situation]] in which he has the barrel of his gun pressed against Chris's forehead during a heated battle inside an airplane. What does he do? [[WhyDontYouJustShootHim Finally kill the one man who's been an incredible pain in the ass for years, leaving him unopposed in his plan for world domination?]] Of course not. He chooses to gloat.
* ''VideoGame/{{Return of the Obra Dinn}}'' has [[spoiler:Second Mate Edward Nichols. Sure, he kills an innocent guy [[HeKnowsTooMuch for stopping the theft]] and has a Formosan guard [[FrameUp take the fall and get wrongfully executed for it]] and kills another topman for trying to rescue the Formosan royalty and reclaiming their treasure. When returning to the ''Obra Dinn'' after a kidnapping plan that goes awry because of the mermaids, he disposes of the bodies of his fellow mutineers. He then leaves his dead captives on the lifeboats, along with the stolen treasure, ''in front of his assassin who doesn't understand English''. Let's just say that things [[KarmicDeath ended horribly for Nichols, because he deserved it]]]].
* In ''VideoGame/SaintsRowIV'', BigBad Zinyak [[spoiler:destroys the Earth]]. The narrator proceeds to point out that, had he stayed his hand, pragmatism would have driven the Saints to choose to lie low... but his dastardly deed only made them determined to defeat him instead.
* ''VideoGame/ShadowHearts'' Covenant has its first main villain, [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade Grigori Rasputin]], the leader of Sapeintes Gladio, turn out to be quite a firm holder of the ball. Despite having been photographed by Princess Anastasia issuing orders to his soldier Victor to be the one to kill Tsar Alexander, and out in the open in Petrograd, he only sends one monster after her which gets wasted by [[BigDamnHeroes Yuri's party]]. While he loosens the grip a bit by making it look like the party and Anastasia were attempting to kill her brother Prince Alexei, he still uses his man Victor to be the one to carry the hit on the Tsar that Yuri saves him from. That's when Anastasia comes in and presents the evidence of Rasputin's treachery.
* In ''VideoGame/SlyCooperThievesInTime'', everything about Cyrille Le Paradox's EvilPlan to TimeTravelForFunAndProfit is this. Sly even [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech points out how stupid it was]]; Le Paradox already had a big power base and was a VillainWithGoodPublicity, but he decided to target Sly's ancestors specifically [[EvilIsPetty to satisfy his bloated ego]], which not only triggered the Cooper Gang's interference in the first place, but also led [[FriendOnTheForce Carmelita]] to discover his secret treasure smuggling ring. In short, Le Paradox lost everything he had because he couldn't resist showing off.
* In many ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' games, Dr. Eggman has (on numerous occasions) either unleashed or sought to unleash a creature of extreme power ([[VideoGame/SonicAdventure th]][[VideoGame/SonicUnleashed re]][[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2006 e]] [[VideoGame/SonicAdventure2 gods]] and [[VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog one prototype of the ultimate lifeform]] for starters). For a while, his plans go great, and he usually is a step or two ahead of his nemesis, Sonic. However, just when his plans are at their highest, everything goes horribly wrong. The monster reaches its highest potential, and then Eggman realizes that he made a huge mistake and ends up having to work with Sonic to get rid of his own mess. The villain ball part comes when you realize something: Given his past experiences, why in the hell would he continue this pattern just to be embarrassed and defeated? Also, he constantly blabs about his schemes to the ''one guy who always defeats him'', even going so far as to have a '''worldwide broadcast about his plan when Sonic and his gang didn't have an idea of it before then'''. The only thing you can't accuse Eggman of is not trying to kill Sonic with his godlike creatures, because that is just something he naturally fails at, but is in no control of whatsoever.
** [[spoiler: Until ''VideoGame/SonicColors'', where he nails it, and actually does a very good job at controlling the creatures of the hour and using them for evil purposes - until Sonic comes along, obviously.]]
** [[spoiler: The games after Colours tend to zig-zag this. By ''VideoGame/SonicGenerations'', he ''was'' able to harness a powerful entity called the Time Eater, though at the point he found it the Time Eater was just a mass of...stuff in space, and required TWO Eggmen to control it. He actually does a good job of controlling the Deadly Six in ''VideoGame/SonicLostWorld'', only losing control over them because of Sonic's near-suicidal lack of impulse control. Nevertheless by manipulating Sonic and friends, he manages to stay one step ahead. He actually would have won...[[ItMakesSenseInContext were it not for Zomnom's sandwich.]]]]
** And in ''VideoGame/SonicBoom'', his counterpart goes right back into the old ways with style, losing control of Lyric in ''Rise of Lyric'' and generally falling out of the plot thereafter. He then loses control of what becomes the BigBad of ''Fire and Ice'', and there's also all the times he loses control of his machines in the show...pretty much the only robots who DON'T betray him are his weaker mook robots and Orbot and Cubot (who STILL often go behind his back at times).
* In ''VideoGame/SplinterCellDoubleAgent'' Version 1, you have three options when dealing with the cruise ship: let it blow up, simply jam the signal, or get Enrica Villablanca's disarm code and transmit it to the bomb. Using the disarm code prevents the blast ''and'', as Enrica was the only one who knew it, Emile shoots her dead without so much as a question as he believes she's the only one who could have done it. Emile doesn't keep her alive for questioning to see if she was working alone and doesn't cast any blame on the man she was working with: the new guy in his group who Emile knows nothing about other than that he has the stealth and computer cracking abilities to have gotten his hands on the code if he wanted to. This is egregious even if you have perfect JBA trust and have never been caught doing anything suspicious, let alone if you've been caught doing suspicious things or have low trust with them, as Enrica's been a loyal lieutenant of his for ''years''.
* In ''VideoGame/{{StarCraft|I}}'', Arcturus Mengsk decides to not send Kerrigan the requested dropship when the Zerg overrun Tarsonis for apparently no reason at all. She's been his most important lieutenant who had never shown any sign of not being completely loyal to him, and there seems to be no reason at all why saving her would have been impossible. The result of this is that Kerrigan gets captured alive and turned into a general and eventually supreme commander of the Zerg and Raynor deserting him, both becoming his most dangerous enemies. Up until that point, there has been no indication that he would have wanted [[UriahGambit to get rid of her]] or that she even contemplated turning against him. All it does is create two powerful armies that want to kill him. Justified by the [[VideoGame/StarcraftII sequel]] and the novel ''I, Mengsk''. It was revenge: [[spoiler:Kerrigan was the Ghost that assassinated Mengsk's family (and for added insult, stuck his head on a pike), so the moment [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness She Outlived Her Usefulness]] as a soldier, he left her for dead. Not helping matters was that she couldn't remember because Ghosts are frequently mind-wiped. RevengeBeforeReason bites him in the ass, as Mengsk unhinges himself over the years after getting his ass handed to him by Kerrigan, and wages an unnecessary, unwinnable war against her because he is incapable of imagining that she and Raynor might want to be left alone]].
* ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'':
** Bowser, archfoe of Mario, just can't stop kidnapping Princess Peach even when doing so is actually a hindrance to his plan. This is most blatant in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioGalaxy'', where Bowser's plan is to steal all the power stars in space, then use them to power a huge machine at the center of the universe that will give him control of every galaxy there is. When the game opens, he seems to be pretty far into his plans, and Mario has no idea they're even happening. The only reason Mario finds out is because Bowser decides to kidnap Peach right in front of Mario, setting the plumber on his trail with just enough time to stop his schemes. Bowser also does this in ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' where his plan is actually pretty clever: have his kids turn the seven kings of the Mushroom Worlds into animals, forcing Mario and Luigi to travel far and wide to help them. While they're distracted, Bowser kidnaps Peach. This one worked like a charm -- until Bowser sends Mario a taunting letter telling him exactly where to find the Princess.
** In ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiDreamTeam'' - main villain Antasma kidnaps Peach and plans to steal her power. But then instead he teams up with Bowser. Unlike most examples Antasma's plan is to get out of the Dream World and find the Dream Stone, and he needs power to do this, irrespective of source. When Bowser suggests kidnapping Peach, Antasma simply says that they can come back for her later. Bowser agrees, marking this the second time ever Bowser hasn't attempted to kidnap the Princess as part of the main plot. The other time was in ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory Bowser's Inside Story]]'', where his attempt at kidnapping Peach isn't even mentioned in the game until right at the end.
* ''VideoGame/TombRaider'':
** Natla hires Lara to find a piece of the ancient Scion hidden in Qualupec's Tomb, and then sends Larson to kill her and take it from her. Why she didn't just wait for Lara to bring it back as per their agreement is anyone's guess, since she could have just as easily sent goons to try and kill Lara if ''Lara'' decided to hedge on their agreement. This backfires spectacularly as not only does Lara take out Larson but also decides she's going to go after the other two Scion pieces just for the thrill of it, leading her to foil Natla's entire plan.
** At two separate points in the game both Pierre and Larson actually beat Lara to a piece of the Scion. Do they take the damned thing and piece out? No, they stand their ground, gloat, and try and kill Lara purely out of spite, which ends about as well as you'd expect for them: the woman who's had no problem gunning down Atlantean monsters by the dozen [[SarcasmMode surprisingly]] has no problem gunning down armed gunmen one on one. At least in Larson's defense he claims he "still has a pain in his brain" from the last time they met, implying he might be suffering brain damage from being shot and roundhouse kicked to the head, but you'd expect Pierre, a world class treasure hunter on Lara's level, to know better and not be so petty, especially since he had no beef whatsoever with Lara and ''especially'' since Lara spent the last three levels or so outgunning him every single time they tangled.
* The artifact Illidan stole in ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' although named "The Eye of Sargeras" was in fact a Villain Ball of titanic proportions. See for yourself: he wants to use the said ball to destroy the Frozen Throne - the seat of the Lich King and thus eliminate the Undead army that threatens the world. Unfortunately, the side effects of the ball's operation include severe earth tremors hence Illidan's brother Malfurion jumps to conclusion that Illidan is up to destroying the world and sets forth to stop him. Does Illidan bother to clarify the situation and explain his plan which would without doubt be backed by Malfurion? He does, but only AFTER Malfurion destroys the Eye. That is a prime example of what happens when a Villain Ball collides with a HeroBall.
** Not really. While Illidan can be blamed for not explaining what he was doing, the reason Malfurion was trying to stop him is because the Eye was tearing the world apart. Not much point in stopping the bad guy if you break the world in the process, huh?
** On the other hand Illidan was doing it for Kil'Jaeden had he succeeded, we can quite imagine what he might have rewarded Illidan had he finished the deed.
* At the end of ''VideoGame/WarioLand3'', if [[spoiler:[[MonsterClown Rudy]] just let Wario go with the treasure he collected as he promised after being freed, he would have had free rein to TakeOverTheWorld. Instead, Rudy [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness tries to kill Wario because he no longer needs him]], forcing Wario to kill him]].
* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'':
** Arthas in ''Wrath of the Lich King''. So hard. Any dumb thing that the evil guy can do just to prove his credentials, he does. Like telling the most important part of his army (who, by a strange coincidence, are one of about three parts of his army who have free will) that they were BAIT for a guy who was supposed to mow them down in seconds, but didn't even show up for said fight until they already lost. Did we mention he laughed at them, too? Oh, and he delivered the weapon that can beat him to said guy in this ploy. OH, and it turns out that after betraying and alienating his officer corps, he's having a tough time finding commanders. Whoops! ''And that's just one example.''
*** There's also his tendency of finding his few surviving commanders in mortal danger and deciding that if they can't survive the battle then too bad. You'd think after losing every single known lieutenant he has he'd stop throwing their lives away.
*** Well, he is the Lich King. It's not like when they die he can't just bring them back anyway. But really, why waste the time? Kill the snots that are screwing with you and just be done with it already.
*** {{Subverted|Trope}} when it turns out this was an EvilPlan on his part -- he actually wanted to find a group of heroes capable of standing up to him, at which point he could kill them and reanimate them as his CoDragons of a new, more powerful army (because, hey, they're undead. Just kill a few dozen people and you're on your way). He nearly won too, were it not for [[HeroicWillpower unforeseeable circumstance]].
*** [[DoubleSubversion ...Which was a Villain Ball in itself.]] Besides the fact that the process of obtaining these few heroes he wanted so bad had involved the destruction of loads of infrastructure and loss of huge strategic gains, at the same time we learn Arthas was building us up to be his champions, we also learn that if the Lich King dies, the mindless Scourge will be left uncontrolled and wipe out all life on Azeroth in a ZombieApocalypse... Which means the Scourge, as it was, was already powerful enough to defeat the Alliance and the Horde. [[ComplexityAddiction Why Arthas felt he needed the heroes when he already possessed an unstoppable army is anyone's guess.]] To repeat: even a mindless horde would be more effective than the Scourge are under Arthas's leadership. All hail Arthas, TheMillstone King! Sort of a plot point in his case, what little vestige of his humanity was left was [[FightingFromTheInside subtly influencing Arthas into plotting his own demise]]. In the end, the only man who could stop Arthas was Arthas himself.
** Deathwing was even worse in ''Cataclysm''. In the Dragon Soul raid, after Thrall shoots him with the titular object, Deathwing flies back to the Maelstrom and tries to cause another Cataclysm. He apparently could have done this at any time, yet inexplicably waited until his enemies had killed all of his lieutenants, united the other Dragon Aspects, retrieved one of the few weapons powerful enough to kill him, and attacked him with it a couple times to try. At least Arthas had the somewhat flimsy excuse of wanting to make the player characters his champions, with Deathwing the writers didn't even try to justify it.
*** To be fair, he ''is'' pretty much batshit insane by that time.
** Everything about Garrosh; [[{{Jerkass}} his personality]], [[MasterRace his goals]], [[WeaponOfMassDestruction his methods]], [[MoralEventHorizon his actions]]... It's all a result of and contributing to the biggest Villain Ball in World of Warcraft history, which will lead to his becoming the end boss of the Mists of Pandaria expansion. While killing the Horde warchief is obviously an endgame goal for the Alliance, everything he's doing in using the Horde as his personal war machine to dominate the world is turning more and more of the Horde against him as well. Hell, the expansion wasn't even released yet and some of the leaders were already conspiring against him, [[TheScrappy alongside the playerbase]].
** Nearly EVERY end raid boss that was based in some sort of lore apparently selected the ball crafting profession and specced "villain ball". Only a few bosses don't seem that out of place.
*** Edwin Van Cleef actually had a good enough plan that he got away with the major part of it and would have succeeded at the rest had the Player Characters not been handed the solution to the mystery on a silver platter, and only confronted the players when they pretty much trapped him in a cave with only one viable exit. So... yeah, basically just the one guy.
** Sylvanas Windrunner always had a spotty record but she entered ''Legion'' decidedly carrying this ball. Reasoning that a war with the Alliance was inevitable, she decided to initiate it on her terms. Over the course of a month she slaughtered civilians, put Darnassus and its civilians to the torch, and turned the Undercity into an uninhabitable wasteland in a failed attempt to assassinate the Alliance leadership. All of this has only succeeded in further unifying the Alliance against the Horde while leaving many of her own allies disillusioned with her reign.
[[/folder]]

* ''[[https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/sheltered-rwby-pseudo-crossover.713359/ Sheltered]]'' (a {{Anime/Shelter}}/{{WebAnimation/RWBY}} fic) features a ''spectacular'' fuck-up on the part of Jacques Schnee, Weiss' father, who in his greed attempts to force Rin to sign away all overship rights to her ship, including the intellectual property rights, hoping to secure exclusive access to advanced alien technology. Beforehand, Rin had little reason to think the Schnee patriarch would attempt to exploit her - had he played the long game and entered a partnership with her, he would have still secured an extremely lucrative source of profit, but instead he decides to attempt to basically claim ''everything'' from her, and it backfires ''hard''. He initially attempts this when Weiss is away for an extended period of time, hoping Rin would skip over the legalization of the documents she's been sent, only for her to properly study them in detail. He then attempts to directly pressure Rin by using a combination of gaslighting her via fake audio from Weiss, cutting off any communication with the world outside of the Schnee estate to prevent her from trying to contact Weiss beyond that, and locking her in her room. Unfortunately for him, this causes Rin to become desperate enough to remotely order her ship to come to her to get her out of there, and she also first uses her semblance in the process. Jacques' blunter is so spectacular in scope that in order to avoid getting metaphorically crucified by General Ironwood and Weiss, he stages things to make it look like Rin was kidnapped in a White Fang attack (and the resulting security revamp likely having its own consequences later down the line), but he also hires mercenaries in an attempt to re-secure Rin after she lands in Menagerie, which goes ''poorly'' thanks to Ghira Belladonna and his forces, and it also scares her off ''again'', causing her to become paranoid enough to try to slip under the radar, suspecting that Weiss and Ironwood were potentially in on this scheme and had betrayed her trust (even later, when Rin is informed that Weiss is attending Beacon, she is too hesitant to contact her directly out of fear that she was under her father's thumb and might report back to him). Rin eventually ends up living with Taiyang Xiao Long and his daughters Yang and Ruby, who manage to secure her trust, and this ends up causing the technology that Jacques' craves to end up being used by a ''competing company''. In his greed and impatience, Jacques scares off the golden goose, and ends up having to scramble to cover up his blunder, which would make things even worse for him if ''anyone'' from Atlas found out the truth. In the words of one forum poster...

** [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Dolores Umbridge]] also holds the Villain Ball. In the [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix fifth book]], her answer to everything is to pass a decree; this actually gives students and teachers more ways to rebel. She goes as far as to ban the Quibbler, which had an interview with Harry, and having any student caught reading it expelled. As Hermione points out to Harry, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain banning it]] is a [[StreisandEffect sure way]] to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity ensure ''everyone'']] [[ForbiddenFruit reads it!]] And then there's the whole bit about calling a horde of pissed-off centaurs "filthy half-breeds" for no good reason other than to show how [[FantasticRacism racist she is]]. [[NothingIsScarier The results of that little stunt are never shown]], other than her traumatized state at the end.

** Suppose you've formed a cult using a brainwashing chemical, but any electrical shock will free someone and render them permanently immune. Do you A) Take reasonable steps to keep your cultists from unnecessary exposure to electricity, or B) Arm all your minions with electricity-shooting alien stun weapons, so that any idiot who shoots themselves in the foot will be free and armed with an easy way to free everyone else. If you chose B), congratulations, you must be Seth!

** The [[NotSoOmniscientCouncilOfBickering Xindi Council]] spend most of the third season juggling this. The most obvious example however was their decision to prematurely deploy a prototype superweapon to attack Earth, instead of waiting just another year to get their full-scale PlanetDestroyer ready, which becomes even more ridiculous since we later learn that they've been building this thing for ''decades'' already! Instead, their foolishness and impatience gives Humanity enough time to learn of the Xindi's existence, track down their weapon and avert the disaster. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Oops]].

** Regina holds the ball several times during the first season. She believes [[MagnificentBastard Rumplestiltskin]] won't remember the deal he made with her to enact the curse, despite the fact that he ''created'' the curse so could easily make a loophole (which turns out to be that he regained his memories upon hearing Emma's name). She also attempts to frame Mary Margaret with his help, after he suggests something "tragic" should happen to Kathryn Nolan, and he uses those ExactWords to simply have her disappear for a while then reappear at the last minute, and all the evidence leads to her. She holds it again in the penultimate episode and season finale, when she attempts to put [[TheChosenOne Emma]] under the sleeping curse and gloats about how she won. However, this backfires when Henry eats the turnover meant for Emma in order to prove to her it's poisoned, and the chain of events results in the curse being broken. Bear in mind that at the point Regina gave Emma the poisoned turnover, Emma had just finished telling Regina that she was planning to leave town because she'd come to the conclusion that her presence and the constant fighting between her and Regina was doing Henry more harm than good. All Regina has to do is let Emma go, and she wins. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Say it with me]].

** Regina holds the ball several times during the first season. She believes [[MagnificentBastard Rumplestiltskin]] won't remember the deal he made with her to enact the curse, despite the fact that he ''created'' the curse so could easily make a loophole. She also attempts to frame Mary Margaret with his help, after he suggests something "tragic" should happen to Kathryn Nolan, and he uses those ExactWords to simply have her disappear for a while then reappear at the last minute, and all the evidence leads to her. She holds it again in the penultimate episode and season finale, when she attempts to put [[TheChosenOne Emma]] under the sleeping curse and gloats about how she won. However, this backfires when Henry eats the turnover meant for Emma in order to prove to her it's poisoned, and the chain of events results in the curse being broken. Bear in mind that at the point Regina gave Emma the poisoned turnover, Emma had just finished telling Regina that she was planning to leave town because she'd come to the conclusion that her presence and the constant fighting between her and Regina was doing Henry more harm than good. All Regina has to do is let Emma go, and she wins. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Say it with me]].

** Tyrion Lannister tells [[spoiler:Tywin]] that if he uses a certain word, he will shoot him. Of course the word is uttered. Given [[spoiler:Tywin's utter contempt for his son it is quite likely he used the word on purpose, never thinking Tyrion would actually shoot him especially while on the privy and is quite in character]]. In ''Literature/ADanceWithDragons'', [[spoiler:Janos Slynt insults Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, in front of the entire Night's Watch, and flat-out refuses to obey his orders. So Snow chops off his head. It's even more satisfying to the readers because Snow doesn't know how Slynt's betrayal contributed to his father's death. It's probably one of the most satisfying [[KarmicDeath Karmic Deaths]] in the entire series]].

* The leader of the [[RubberForeheadAliens Psychlos]] from the ''Literature/BattlefieldEarth'' novel and film does a lot of things that make the viewer/reader shout, "WhatAnIdiot" In an especially stupid move, the leader teaches the hero, Jonny "Goodboy" Tyler, [[InstantExpert everything about Psychlos in a matter of seconds]], in an attempt to get him to assist their enslavement of Earth. Naturally, it comes back to bite him in the ass at the end in a ''big'' way.

** [[TyrantTakesTheHelm Dolores Umbridge]] also holds the Villain Ball. In the [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix fifth book]], her answer to everything is to pass a decree, this actually gives students and teachers more ways to rebel. She goes as far as to ban the Quibbler, which had an interview with Harry, and having any student caught reading it expelled. As Hermione points out to Harry, [[NiceJobFixingItVillain banning it]] is a [[StreisandEffect sure way]] to [[NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity ensure ''everyone'']] [[ForbiddenFruit reads it!]] And then there's the whole bit about calling a horde of pissed-off centaurs "filthy half-breeds" for no good reason other than to show how [[FantasticRacism racist she is]]. [[NothingIsScarier The results of that little stunt are never shown]], other than her traumatized state at the end.

* In Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' series, [[spoiler:US President Earl Warren]] grabs it hard when he orders a nuclear missile launched at the Race's colonization fleet, at literally no possible gain for himself (it only kills enough of the Race to seriously piss them off) and everything to lose if he's found out. May not count in that the ship is the one containing almost all administrative personnel, regardless of how people may feel about bureaucracy the Race thrived on it. The Colonization attempt being disorganized may have lead to the Race being forced to learn to adapt however and it is unsaid whether the American intelligence apparatus could have known which ship to target (though it is likely).

* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'': In the episode "The Deserter", if Zhao hadn't gotten so angry at Aang's taunting, he wouldn't have burnt his entire fleet down to cinders. And then, he [[spoiler: kills the moon spirit]] in the season finale. Note that if he had just [[spoiler:kept it in the bag he caught it in]] and ran to safety, the Fire Nation would have [[spoiler:conquered the Northern Water Tribe]] and probably ''won the war''. Instead he [[spoiler:got himself killed by [[FanNickname Koizilla]]]].

* In ''VideoGame/HyruleWarriors'', BigBad Ganondorf [[spoiler:Obtains the complete Triforce]] after defeating the Hyrulean Forces. Instead eliminating his enemies in one fell swoop, he disappears from the battlefield [[spoiler:leaving his generals Zant & Ghirahim to lead his army and decides to use its power to summon more monsters to serve him]]. However the Hyrulean Forces manage to [[spoiler:defeat Zant and Ghirahim in Gerudo Desert after summoning their allies from across time]]. They then return to Hyrule Castle [[spoiler:which Ganondorf had transformed into Ganon's Tower]] and [[spoiler:defeat Ganondorf who uses the Triforce to transform into Ganon, only to be defeated by the combined might of the Hyrulean Forces and their allies]].

** Regina holds the ball several times during the first season. She believes [[MagnificentBastard Rumplestiltskin]] won't remember the deal he made with her to enact the curse, despite the fact that he ''created'' the curse so could easily make a loophole. She also attempts to frame Mary Margaret with his help, after he suggests something "tragic" should happen to Kathryn Nolan, and uses those ExactWords to simply have her disappear for a while than reappear at the last minute, and all the evidence leads to her. She holds it again in the penultimate episode and season finale, when she attempts to put [[TheChosenOne Emma]] under the sleeping curse and gloats about how she won. However, this backfires when Henry eats the turnover meant for Emma, and the chain of events results in the curse being broken. Bear in mind that at the point Regina gave Emma the poisoned turnover, Emma had just finished telling Regina that she was planning to leave town because she'd come to the conclusion that her presence and the constant fighting between her and Regina was doing Henry more harm than good. All Regina has to do is let Emma go, and she wins. [[NiceJobFixingItVillain Say it with me]].

** HeroicNeutral Emma was perfectly willing to leave her son Henry with his adoptive mother Regina ([[Literature/SnowWhite The Evil Queen]]), but Regina shows off her GenreBlindness, her inability to simply keep her mouth shut, and this trope to convince Emma to stay by threatening to "destroy" her. Emma ends up TheChosenOne that can break the curse that gave Regina her power in the first place.

** HeroicNeutral Emma was perfectly willing to leave her son Henry with his adoptive mother Regina ([[Literature/SnowWhite The Evil Queen]]), but Regina shows off her GenreBlindness, her inability to simply keep her mouth shut, and this trope to convince Emma to stay. Emma ends up TheChosenOne that can break the curse that gave Regina her power in the first place.

* In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' #555 and ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 Supergirl Vol. 2]]'' issue #20 two-part story, Parasite and a clone of his put in motion a convoluted plan to kill off Franchise/{{Superman}} and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} simultaneously, which failed because they didn't think of searching their costumes before locking them in a DeathTrap. And because the clone felt the need to gloat prior to sealing Supergirl in.

* In the ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]] storyline ''ComicBook/JudgmentInInfinity'', the Adjudicator makes one stupid mistake after another during the final segment. He brings the eleven heroines into his ship because he wants to keep some "specimens", fires small eye beams at Wonder Woman when she breaks out of her cage instead of shooting a big unblockable blast or teleporting her into some airless world, and then he is cajoled into starting to monologue when he is about to obliterate Diana and her companions, which results in his undoing.

* Shown in the Website/DeviantART page [[http://www.deviantart.com/art/Elastigirl-on-the-Rack-647744836 here]], a ''really'' stupid villain tries to use a stretch rack on [[WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles Elastigirl]]; doesn't seem to be working...

** Lotso from ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory3'' has two occassions:

* In ''Series/LoisAndClark'': [[Franchise/{{Superman}} Kal-El]] became the ruler of New Krypton to prevent Lord Nor from doing so. Lord Nor charged Kal-El with treason and a KangarooCourt held under Kryptonian Law sentenced him to death. Right after Kal-El is led off, a Kryptonian bursts in and tells Nor that Metropolis refuses to surrender. Nor responds by vaporizing him with heat vision and ordering his men to destroy Metropolis. ''All of that is done in front of the chief prosecutor'', leading him to a a massive HeroicBSOD. Then, another person comes to the prosecutor and points out the TrialByCombat law is still technically in the books...

* This Trope seems to be {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' episode "Monkey See, Doggy Two". As the name of the episode suggests, Mojo Jojo is not only [[NeverRecycleYourSchemes trying the same "turn humanity into dogs with an ancient Egyptian artifact" plan that he tried (which failed) in his first appearance (episode-wise)]] but he spends half the episode explaining to the Girls the steps he's taken to correct the flaws that made it fail the first time. They patiently listen, and then simply beat the crud out of him, causing the plan to fail even worse than it did before. [[note]]For those wondering, the plan failed because Mojo Jojo assumed the girls weren't a threat after turning them into dogs, and got bitten in the butt by Buttercup, dropping the artifact. Mojo sought to prevent any biting on the repeat attempt, so he put a metal plate over his butt, and ''didn't turn the girls into dogs.''[[/note]]

"Evil sows the seeds of its own destruction", says the fortune cookie. Regardless of how savvy they might otherwise be, villains tend to inherently draw heroic attention to themselves that leads to their demise, or at least the demise of their EvilPlan. Even if their success is seemingly assured, they can't seem to help but do something evil that serves no purpose other than giving TheHero the extra [[ItsPersonal motivation]] and [[AlwaysClose opportunity]] to wreck everything, and he will.

* Slade in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' would be a full-time MagnificentBastard if he'd just learn not to give in to his sadistic impulses unnecessarily. As it is, this has gotten in the way of his plans by providing an out for one minion and turning another against him (which got him lava fried). Of course, this does mean that for a SmugSnake, he's still very effective and creepy, but he could be so much more...

* ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'': Although powerful and intelligent, Cinder's impatience, sadism and pettiness often sabotages the villains' plans through constant gloating to victims, attempts to steal Maiden powers, and seeking revenge against her enemies. [[spoiler:It leads to Ruby maiming her during a TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening when she delays killing Pyrrha to gloat; it costs the villains the Relic of Knowledge when she sabotages Salem's plan just to go after the Spring Maiden and Ruby; and it costs her the Winter Maiden's power when her gloating allows Fria to fend her off just long enough for help to arrive. In Volume 8, Watts lampshades this during a powerful TheReasonYouSuckSpeech that reduces her to tears and forces her to re-evaluate her behaviour.]]

* In ''VideoGame/{{Castlevania 64}}'', Dracula spends most of the game disguised as a kid named Malus. This is not known to the player or the game's characters, though there is this bizarre moment where you come across Malus and suddenly appears evil, but your character ignores that the next time they see him, depending on the ending. In the bad ending, Dracula will actually [[SmartBall have a clever plan for a change]] and not reveal himself, though both endings give some hit that Malus is really him, his eyes [[RedEyesTakeWarning turn red]], and in Carrie's he gets her to promise to marry him, and mutters that now they have a binding contract. Either way, he had a good plan going. Stay disguised and kill the hero when he least suspects it in one, or in the other apparently using some curse to force her to one day marry you. In the good ending, however, he throws that out the window and just reveals himself and reveals in his supposed invincibility, forgetting that he's been defeated, oh I've lost count how many times in the past, leading to his temporary death (Dracula [[DeathIsCheap has more extra lives then you do]]). In the good ending he does have a moment of cleverness after being defeated the first time. He reverts to his child form and tries to pretend to be an ordinary kid who was possessed. [[IdiotBall Right when your character reaches out to him]], Vincent the vampire hunter (who only survives in the good ending) [[BigDamnHeroes saves you]] by exposing the ruse with holy water. Cue FinalBoss fight.

* ''Manga/VentoAureo'' is less of a story of [[TheHero Giorno]] overthrowing a really superior villain and more of Passione's boss [[spoiler: [[BigBad Diavolo]]]] starting from an unassailable position and then [[NiceJobFixingItVillain digging a hole for himself]]:

* In ''Film/TheUntouchables'', Mafia hitman Frank Nitti murders [[spoiler: Jimmy Malone]] by writing his apartment address [[GoingByTheMatchbook on a matchbook]]. Unfortunately for him, he forgets to dispose of it after his hit. When he bumps into Eliot Ness, he offers the matchbook to light his cigarette with. Ness sees the address, and putting two and two together, chases Nitti and [[spoiler: pushes him off a roof [[CarCushion onto a car]].]]

* [[BigBad Von Bolt's]] plan to get rid of [[spoiler:Hawke and Lash]] in ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'' was a clear-cut case of this. Granted the former wasn't much of a loss and ''was'' getting suspicious, but the latter's was gleefully in it ForTheEvulz and more than happy to serve Black Hole, one of the best [=COs=] in the game, [[spoiler:and was responsible for designing almost all of their technology. In fact, had the Bolt Guard not gone out of their way to treat Hawke and Lash as garbage and didn't try to get rid of them, they'd have never [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal defected to the Allies]]: without Hawke and Lash's crucial intel on the location of Black Hole's crystal installations the Allies wouldn't have found them in time and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard the Bolt Guard would have won the war]].]]