History NiceJobBreakingItHero / LiveActionTV

** Congratulations, Ned! Ignoring Littlefinger and Renly's advice and showing mercy to Cersei's illegitmate children by warning Cersei you know about them has led to Cersei and Joffrey ruling, your guards all being killed, Robert's death, which is the very reason you became Hand in the first place, you being arrested and eventually killed, the death of several of your family members and the destruction of your entire House! Varys called him out on this the following episode, pointing some of this out.

** Jon and Daenerys as of the end of Season 7. [[spoiler:Jon & Friends go north of the Wall to attempt to capture a Wight to bring back to prove the threat to Cersei. While out there, they get surrounded by White Walkers and their army and trapped on an island in a frozen lake. They manage to get word to Daenerys, who arrives with her three dragons to help. During the fight, the Night's King stabs Viserion with a magical ice-lance, causing him to crash into the frozen lake and die. After Daenerys and the others get away, the Night's King has his army pull Viserion's body out of the lake, and raises him as an undead dragon. He then rides undead Viserion and uses him to attack the Wall with his fire breath. Viserion's attack causes the wall to shatter, leaving a gaping hole in it, which allows the army of the Dead unhindered access to the Seven Kingdoms.]]

** Season 7 can be summarized as "Tyrion Lannister Ruins Everything". Let's list his failures in order:
*** Proposes a military strategy that results in all of Daenerys's Westerosi allies being killed or captured.
*** Allows Cersei to play him in order to convince the heroes that she will join them against the White Walkers, giving her the chance to retake the continent.
*** Convinces Jon and Daenerys to send an expedition north to capture a wight. After it predictably goes horribly wrong, he then fails to dissuade Daenerys from bailing out their allies. This allows the Night King to gain access to an undead dragon. In short, Tyrion ''broke the wall'' for a scheme that was doomed from the start.

*** The assassination attempt on Daenerys that he orchestrated was bungled, and Khal Drogo EXTREMELY pissed off, pushing him to start preparing an invasion of the Seven Kingdoms. This was almost certainly his planned result however, being part of the conspiracy backing the invasion.

* ''Series/{{Sherlock}}'': Nice job going in the cabbie, Sherlock. You put your life at risk. Now [[BadassAdorable John]] has to save your rear end.

** And for a hat trick of "smart people doing dumb things", we go to ''Series/PowerRangersBeastMorphers''. A young Nate Silva was messing with Morph-X, snake DNA and old Morphers in a way to get them to work differently. All of them failed until he used a [[Series/PowerRangersRPM Cell Shift Morpher]]. Scott Truman's Cell Shift Morpher [[spoiler:still infected with the Venjix Virus, the same one Dr K. made]]. The two bonded with what was inside, casting a piece of it off into Grid Battleforce's computer systems. The result of all this? Evox.

** And for a hat trick of "smart people doing dumb things", we go to ''Series/PowerRangersBeastMorphers''. A young Nate Silva was messing with Morph-X, snake DNA and old Morphers in a way to get them to work differently. All of them failed until he used a [[Series/PowerRangersRPM Cell Shift Morpher]]. Scott Truman's Cell Shift Morpher [[spoiler:still infected with the Venjix Virus, the same one Dr K. made]]. The two bonded with what was inside, casting a piece of it off into the computer systems, creating Evox.

** Not the most heroic example, but "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS7E9ForceOfNature Force of Nature]]" has a good one: Two Hekaran scientists try to warn Picard and his crew that the use of [[FasterThanLightTravel warp drive]] near their planet could cause a dangerous subspace rift. Their theory is possible but still unprovable, and Picard decides to recommend further research, but the female scientist gets fed up and decides to prove the theory herself--by blowing up her own ship to generate enough energy to create the rift. Yes, she proves her theory, but she creates the very rift she had sought to prevent, thus endangering a nearby disabled ship and making it harder for the ''Enterprise'' to rescue the crew, not to mention the environmental changes to her planet because of the rift.

** [[spoiler:After Angel and his team assassinate all members of the Circle of Black Thorns]], the evil forces of the world decide to pull out all the stops and unleash every available evil creature on LA.

** Kirk and company go to the MirrorUniverse, and Kirk gets Mirror Spock to try reforming TheEmpire. So he does. When next we visit it, it turns out that the reforms made weakened the empire to the point of being unable to defend against the Klingon/Cardassian LegionOfDoom. Humans and Vulcans are now slaves. Way to go, Jim. (This gets {{retcon}}ned into the Expanded Universe as [[spoiler: Spock playing out a ''really long'' BatmanGambit; he ''could'' have made reforms without weakening the Empire, but he didn't believe they'd last beyond his death.]])
** "The Devil in the Dark". Turns out that monster you shot? It was an alien nanny who was only acting in defense of the nursery. And those weird stones that you've been trying to crack open? They're the babies.

** In retrospect, the ending of "Space Seed", which set in motion the events in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''.

** At the start of the episode "The High Ground", Doctor Crusher uses her DoctorsOrders to demand to stay at the scene of a terrorist bombing to help, in spite of the dangers it presented. Naturally, she's quickly kidnapped, setting in motion events that nearly sees the Enterprise destroyed, almost brings the hammer of the Federation down on the planet, causes the deaths of several crewmen as well as the WellIntentionedExtremist terrorist leader, and does nothing but add to the already unstable political climate of the planet they're on. Yay morals?
** Not the most heroic example, but "Force of Nature" has a good one: Two Hekaran scientists try to warn Picard and his crew that the use of [[FasterThanLightTravel warp drive]] near their planet could cause a dangerous subspace rift. Their theory is possible but still unprovable, and Picard decides to recommend further research, but the female scientist gets fed up and decides to prove the theory herself--by blowing up her own ship to generate enough energy to create the rift. Yes, she proves her theory, but she creates the very rift she had sought to prevent, thus endangering a nearby disabled ship and making it harder for the ''Enterprise'' to rescue the crew, not to mention the environmental changes to her planet because of the rift.

** In "The Ship," Sisko and a Vorta enemy share the blame. Sisko wants a crashed Dominion ship, and the Vorta wants to rescue an injured Changeling. But because both refuse to negotiate or trust each other, this leads to the deaths of the Changeling, the Vorta's Jem'Hadar, and most of Sisko's landing party.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''

* ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'':
** Generally speaking, the problem in any given episode was probably caused by them at some point:
** On Gwen's very first day on the job, she tossed a screwdriver, accidentally breaking open an alien meteor and leading to the deaths of Carys' friend and ex-boyfriend as well as an entire sperm donation center.
** Two people were killed and the whole planet was put in danger because Ianto secretly stashed his Cyberman girlfriend in the basement.
** The entire team play {{Unwitting Pawn}}s in "They Keep Killing Suzie".
** In the episode "End of Days", Owen Harper's opening of the rift rescued his boss and his best friend from being trapped in the wrong decade forever, but it also caused a wave of anachronisms including ancient soldiers in the streets and an outbreak of the bubonic plague in Wales. This despite Ianto practically begging Owen not to open the rift, and even shooting him to try to prevent it. Instead of learning from this colossal mistake, the rest of the team eventually side with Owen and do the exact same thing, again, to flush out the results of the prior opening. Which works, but unleashes Abaddon. Predictably, things get worse before they get better.
** Jack's [[spoiler:resurrecting Owen]] led him to a [[AndIMustScream much worse fate]] in "Exit Wounds."
** Not to mention how it [[spoiler:nearly]] killed everybody in "Dead Man Walking" and did kill [[spoiler:12]] people.

** In "Children of Earth", Jack and Ianto have gone storming into the alien's base guns blazing in order to, erm...[[spoiler:threaten it, pissing it off enough to release a deadly virus, killing everyone in the building, including Ianto]].

* ''Series/PowerRangersRPM'':
** Dr. K was being imprisoned unjustly by the government so they could use her as a researcher. She uploads a computer virus into their systems, and is apprehended by secret agents before she can install the firewall. The virus goes on to nuke the planet, wiping out pretty much all ecosystems, and either killing or enslaving every human not in the DomedHometown of Corinth. Doctor K manages to escape thanks to some friends bailing her out. Nice job getting your freedom, doctor. Nice job protecting America, secret agents.

** Early in Season 5, [[spoiler:Walt and Jesse formulate a plan with Mike to use a powerful supermagnet to destroy a laptop belonging to Gus that has incriminating security footage of the three working for Gus's drug empire. The plan works, but in the ensuing chaos, they break a photo frame, revealing papers containing offshore bank accounts of people Gus paid to silence people involved in his business, plus an account set aside for Mike's granddaughter, which the DEA immediately seizes. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Gus saw fit to keep his laptop heavily encrypted, so the DEA couldn't find out what was on it anyway.]]

** When Faith begins to go bad after staking the Deputy Mayor, Buffy and Giles plan to deal with it ''without'' alerting the Watcher's Council, but Wesley finds out anyway after eavesdropping on them and immediately calls in a special ops team to bring her in. In the process of doing so, he [[WhatAnIdiot completely ruins]] Angel's attempts to get through to her just as he was beginning to succeed, setting off a sequence of events that lead to Faith becoming [[CorruptPolitician Mayor Wilkins]]' [[TheDragon dragon]].

*** In "Ozymandias", when Skyler [[spoiler:realizes Hank is dead and believes Walt killed him (he didn't, but he was indirectly responsible for it, not to mention everything else), instead of doing the smart thing by picking up the phone and calling the police to try to get Walt arrested, [[RevengeBeforeReason picks up a kitchen knife]], initially under pretense of [[GetOut making him leave the house]]. But Walt didn't fall for it, since she just accused him of killing Hank, he knew she wasn't really going to let him [[KarmaHoudini go scot-free and more easily avoid the Feds since she refused to call them]]. He knew she'd attack him for Hank's death and the other sins she couldn't stop, even if he went out the door, so he tried to talk her out of it. Instead, she slashed him anyway, [[BerserkButton forcing Walt to take extremes by tackling her and trying to forcibly take the knife before she can cut him again.]] [[BrokenPedestal This cements Walt Jr. turning against his father and wanting him dead, despite that he was too good to pick up a knife to attack his evil father.]] He throws Walt off Skyler and calls the police like ''she'' should have. [[OhCrap And Skyler realized too late that Walt didn't believe that the infant Holly could turn against him like Skyler and Junior could and he would take her with him.]]]]

** Also used in the episode "The Ring":

** Happens in the season four episode "Fear Itself":

** Cordelia [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor wishes]] that Buffy never came to Sunnydale, while near vengeance demon Anya. Yep, nice job causing a CrapsackWorld[=\=]TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, libby.

** Due to [[RapeAsDrama all the shit she was dealing with]], rather than just subduing Warren, she humiliates him, and lets him get away. Several hours later he shows up with a gun, shoots her, and kills Tara, resulting in an [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge extremely pissed off Willow]].

** Early in Season 5, [[spoiler:Walt and Jesse formulate a plan with Mike to use a powerful supermagnet to destroy a laptop belonging to Gus that has incriminating security footage of the three working for Gus's drug empire. The plan works, but in the ensuing chaos, they break a photo frame, revealing a not containing offshore bank accounts of people Gus paid to silence people involved in his business, plus an account set aside for Mike's granddaughter, which the DEA immediately seizes. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Gus saw fit to keep his laptop heavily encrypted, so the DEA couldn't find out what was on it anyway.]]

* Given that they're a RagtagBunchOfMisfits tasked with [[TimePolice defending time itself]], the * ''Series/{{Lexx}}'': The destruction of Fire at the end of Season 3 leads directly to the destruction of Water, and then the subsequent flooding of Earth with the reincarnations of everyone who had been sent to Fire (Hell).

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** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS14E4TheFaceOfEvil The Face of Evil]]" reveals the long-term implications of some ill-advised world-saving the Fourth Doctor did while still experiencing post-regenerative trauma and having a minimal idea who he was and what was going on. He ditched UNIT to travel in the TARDIS, rebooted a computer by giving it his own personality, and all this did was drive it mad and cause it to become an evil computer "god" with his own face. On the bright side, this also "created" his future companion and friend Leela, a woman from the civilisation created by the mad computer.

** House taking a mental patient out to give him his life-long dream of being able to fly leads to [[spoiler:the guy actually believing he can and jumping off a building.]]

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks Genesis of the Daleks]]", a story in which the Fourth Doctor was given the opportunity to prevent the creation of the Daleks by touching two wires together, opened multiple cans of worms in this regard:

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E1WarriorsOfTheDeep The Fifth Doctor basically killed off both sides of a conflict by accident]] while trying to negotiate a truce. And [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E5BlackOrchid accidentally killed a damaged man who was only trying to find the woman he loved]]. Not to mention [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock caused the extinction of the dinosaurs]]. The Fifth Doctor had a lot of those ...

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E9ColdBlood "Cold Blood"]]: Ambrose giving in to her distress over what was happening to her various family members and letting herself be goaded into killing Alaya gives GeneralRipper Restac all the excuse she needs to declare war. In the process of trying to stop this, [[spoiler:Rory is eventually killed and {{retgone}}d.]]
** The supposed villains got one in "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E12ThePandoricaOpens The Pandorica Opens]]": The Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, the Autons, [[ContinuityPorn the Draconians, the Atraxi, the Judoon]], [[CanonImmigrant the Chelonians]] and others all band together to build [[SchmuckBait a puzzle the Doctor can't resist to trap him]]. They do this to keep him trapped for all eternity [[BondVillainStupidity to prevent him from causing the TARDIS from exploding]] and destroying all of creation. It turns out The Doctor was the only one that could have prevented said explosion, which occurs in his absence. Oops... This is why villains should never try to be BigDamnHeroes.

*** In "Ozymandias," when Skyler [[spoiler:realizes Hank is dead and believes Walt killed him (he didn't, but he was indirectly responsible for it, not to mention everything else), instead of doing the smart thing by picking up the phone and calling the police to try to get Walt arrested, [[RevengeBeforeReason picks up a kitchen knife]], initially under pretense of [[GetOut making him leave the house]]. But Walt didn't fall for it, since she just accused him of killing Hank, he knew she wasn't really going to let him [[KarmaHoudini go scot-free and more easily avoid the Feds since she refused to call them]]. He knew she'd attack him for Hank's death and the other sins she couldn't stop, even if he went out the door, so he tried to talk her out of it. Instead, she slashed him anyway, [[BerserkButton forcing Walt to take extremes by tackling her and trying to forcibly take the knife before she can cut him again.]] [[BrokenPedestal This cements Walt Jr. turning against his father and wanting him dead, despite that he was too good to pick up a knife to attack his evil father.]] He throws Walt off Skyler and calls the police like ''she'' should have. [[OhCrap And Skyler realized too late that Walt didn't believe that the infant Holly could turn against him like Skyler and Junior could and he would take her with him.]]]]

** "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E6TheArk The Ark]]" contains two major ones in the same story. The Doctor arrives on board a generation ship, unwittingly exposing everyone within to the common cold. This turns into a plague due to their lack of resistance and many people die until the Doctor can engineer a cure. This would be bad enough if a TARDIS glitch didn't cause him to accidentally travel hundreds of years further in time to the future, revealing that the plague had created conditions for the humans' slave race to rebel and enslave the humans.

*** Bonus points for the Time War. The Doctor "ended it" by killing off the Daleks and the Time Lords, right? Wrong! Some Daleks have escaped and are regular villains in the new series. The Doctor has been good at keeping the Time Lords dead, though. Nice job, Doctor. [[spoiler: ([[MyGreatestSecondChance Well, until the 50th anniversary special]].)]]

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E7TheLongGame The Long Game]]", the Doctor thinks he's saving the world by shutting down a space station that controls an Earth-spanning propaganda regime. In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E12BadWolf Bad Wolf]]", however, he returns to Satellite 5, a century later — and learns that as a result of the shutdown, Earth has become technologically and socially stagnant, and the station itself has become a clearinghouse for lethal reality shows, secretly run by the Daleks.

** Eleven runs into this again during "[[Recap/DoctorWho2010CSAChristmasCarol A Christmas Carol]]". He resorts to going back in time and rewriting the entire childhood of Kazran, the only man who can save a spaceship from crashing, [[spoiler:only for Kazran to end up exactly as bitter and jaded as he was already, just for different reasons. Then, when Kazran finally ''does'' agree to help, the all-important machine no longer recognises him as the man it's programmed to obey.]] And of course, the Doctor's rewrite involved an act of kindness that kind of backfired: [[spoiler:he let Abigail out of her cryogenic prison every Christmas, not realizing that every day she left was one day closer to her death — up until she had one day of life left. When Kazran realized this, it brought about the bitterness mentioned above]].

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", Hitler thanks the Doctor for saving his life. (Technically, this was Mels'[[spoiler:/River Song's/Melody Pond's]] fault since she threatened the Doctor at gunpoint, shot the TARDIS and caused it to crash at the wrong time.) Doesn't stop the Doctor from saying this:

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E13TheWeddingOfRiverSong The Wedding of River Song]]", in an attempt to save the Doctor's life, River Song [[spoiler: tries to overcome her programming to shoot the Doctor by wasting all her shots, breaking what should be a fixed point in time. As such, all of causality breaks down, and all of existence on Earth happens at once. The Doctor berates her for her willingness to hurt all of reality for him, but in an odd turn for a hero, she doesn't care. In the end, it turns out the Doctor had his own plan for getting out of it, so she really need not have bothered]].

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS2E4TheRomans The Romans]]", the Doctor accidentally gives Nero the idea to burn Rome. And has a {{Squee}} reaction.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E2ToothAndClaw Tooth and Claw]]", the Tenth Doctor and Rose save UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria from a werewolf, but because they act like selfish, immature adrenaline junkies, she decides to found the Torchwood Institute to protect the British Empire against extraterrestrial threats. They then spend a good century robbing and murdering innocent alien passers-by, and nearly destroying the human race several times ForScience

** In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E11Utopia "Utopia"]], Martha Jones inadvertently manages to intrigue Professor Yana enough to [[spoiler:have the PerceptionFilter on his Chameleon Arch pocket watch fail, leading him to open it and turning him back into the Master.]]
** At the end of "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E16TheWatersOfMars The Waters of Mars]]", it's heavily implied that [[spoiler:the Doctor broke Time itself. Or, rather, he would have if Adelaide had not made the ultimate sacrifice to set things straight.]]
** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS31E3VictoryOfTheDaleks Victory of the Daleks]]" the Doctor's attempt to force the Daleks to admit their true intentions culminates in him screaming "[[LargeHam I AM THE DOCTOR, AND YOU ARE THE DALEKS!]]" Unfortunately, this "testimony" causes the Daleks' Progenitor device to accept that they are the Daleks (it didn't recognise them as they weren't "pure"). At this point they reveal their true identity, start killing people and make more Daleks which proceed to turn on all the lights in London during the Blitz, make an earnest attempt at blowing up the Earth and then '''escape to their own time period to recover and rebuild'''. Nice job endangering the entire universe throughout the whole of history, Doctor.

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E7AGoodManGoesToWar A Good Man Goes to War]]", the Doctor's name inspires such fear that he can end conflicts without fighting and no loss of life, which is what the doctor always wanted. Unfortunately, the enemies were so fearful of the doctor that they [[spoiler:stole Amy and Rory's newborn daughter, Melody and raised her as a weapon to kill the Doctor]]. The Doctor doesn't realize he created this until River Song [[spoiler:who is Melody Pond as an adult]] calls him out and points out this ''was'' his doing:

** In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS32E8LetsKillHitler Let's Kill Hitler]]", Hitler thanks the Doctor for saving his life. (Technically, this was Mels'[[spoiler:/River Song's/Melody Pond's]] fault since she threatened the Doctor at gunpoint, shot the TARDIS and caused it to crash at the wrong time. Doesn't stop the Doctor from saying this: