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Fatal Flaw / Film

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    Films — Animation 
  • Aladdin: Jafar's Pride and Greed bring him down. He can't control his lust for more power no matter how strong he gets, and couldn't stand being second-best to the Genie, and that is precisely how he lost in the first movie.
  • The Bad Guys (2022):
    • Mr. Wolf has Pride. He thinks very highly of the Bad Guys' track record as cool villains and is a compulsive showboater, meaning he is very easily goaded into a vendetta against Governor Diane when she insults the group in public, nearly getting the group arrested after dragging them into a very high risk theft. Even when Wolf thinks a way out of it, he never once suspects he might get outgambitted, leading to Marmalade to reveal his own evil scheme and use the Bad Guys as patsies.
    • Mr. Snake's love for his Trademark Favorite Food, Guinea pigs, gets him in trouble twice in the film.
      • When Wolf suggests stealing the Golden Dolphin, Mr. Snake is adamantly against the plan because every thief who tried that heist failed and never stole again afterwards. He only agreed to the heist because the recipient of the Golden Dolphin is Professor Marmalade, a Guinea pig he could potentially eat.
      • When Marmalade has the Bad Guys break into an animal testing lab to rescue the Guinea pigs as part of the group's rehabilitation, Mr. Snake immediately goes to eat every single one, ruining the team's efforts to appear reformed.
  • Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker:
    • Exploited by Terry in his final fight against The Joker in a manner the original Batman himself never used: despite mocking others' failings, being trash-talked at is the thing Joker absolutely cannot stand. Joker always wanted to make Batman laugh, but when the new Batman does laugh, he's laughing at how pathetic the clown really is. It's so effective that Joker becomes a raving monster obsessed with ending Terry at all costs. When the Monster Clown flat-out yells "YOU'RE NOT BATMAN!", it's a sign Terry managed to get under the clown's skin. That Bruce talked about how the Joker loves to hear himself laugh even if others don't gave Terry the advantage he needed against the Clown Prince of Crime.
    • Similarly, it works to highlight that Bruce's own fatal flaw is his stubbornness and his constant assumption that he's right no matter what. It's this thinking that led him to push away his allies, and doing so with Terry not only gets him nearly killed, but leaves him alone when Mr. J himself shows up to pay Bruce a visit.
  • The Book of Life:
    • La Muerte loves making bets. Xibalba often exploits this weakness.
      Xibalba: I rule now.
      Grandpa Sanchez: She would never give control to you!
      Xibalba: She lost a bet.
      Grandpa Sanchez: *Beat* She would do that.
    • Xibalba’s cheating nature when it comes to bets. It's the main cause of the estrangement between him and La Muerte. It also indirectly leads to trouble for Manolo and San Angel.
  • Brave:
    • Merida's selfishness proves to be her biggest flaw, as her single-minded interest to fulfill her own dreams causes utter chaos in the kingdoms and cause her mother to nearly become a bear permanently.
    • Mor'du's is Pride. The Prince who became the Demon Bear was driven by his jealousy and a sense of insult at having to share his throne with his brothers. He waged war with brothers and drank a potion so he could have the strength to win the war. Rather than share the potion, he drank it all and turned into a monstrous bear. He then killed his brothers, killed any soldier who got in his way and then retreated into the ruins of his old castle. After enough time had passed, Mor'du came to regret his actions and hate himself for what he did.
  • Cats Don't Dance:
  • Flint from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is naive and always seeks the approval of others.
  • Coco:
    • Miguel's narrow-minded ambition. Miguel is so determined to fulfill his long-repressed aspirations that he denounces his loving (if flawed) family, performs a literal Kick the Dog moment, and nearly becomes a spirit. It also leads Miguel to forsake the good advice of others if they don't apply to his "here and now", generally rushing to what seems to be the most direct answer to his problems without considering the potential consequences.
    • The rest of the Riveras, specifically Imelda and Abuelita, all apply to Pride. Years of forbidding music from the family made them rigid and stubborn. Many parts of the movie show how reluctant they are to let go of the past and lift the ban on music (not even to support one of their own, who truly loves it). Even after Miguel runs away and the family searches for him, the matriarchs still refuse to compromise and let go of the ban or even try to understand why anyone would want them to. Even worse, because Imelda enforced the ban on music, the family missed multiple clues of what truly happened to her husband Héctor, and put him in danger of Final Death.
  • Coraline: The Beldam/Other Mother's is her inability to resist games. She actually lets Coraline collect the ghost eyes just to have some fun.
  • Encanto: Abuela Alma's greatest flaw is fear. She causes the story's conflict with her unrelenting desire to show that she and her family are worthy of the miracle they received by giving back to the community, because she's afraid that if they aren't worthy and the magic disappears, the house will crumble, the family will be homeless again and Pedro's death will be in vain. Ironically, it is this fear that causes her to put too much pressure on the family and the resulting disharmony is what causes the magic to vanish.
  • Frozen:
    • Elsa's main flaw is being overwhelmed by fear after an accident involving her powers nearly kills her sister and the trolls warn of the possibility of angry mobs if she doesn't learn control, and her Character Development revolves around learning how to deal to with it.
    • Played with in the case of Anna, who has two: naivete and impulsiveness. After her isolated childhood, she quickly falls for Hans and naively and impulsively agrees to a Fourth-Date Marriage. She also shows impulsiveness and naivete when she rushes after Elsa when the latter unleashes an Endless Winter, with no protection, no plan to bring Elsa back beyond talking her down somehow, no idea how she'd accomplish that, and no reason to be sure that Elsa isn't evil and intentionally cursing the land. As a result, she nearly dies when Elsa accidentally curses her and Hans leaves her to die. However, while her trust in Villain with Good Publicity Hans is misplaced, her trust in Not Evil, Just Misunderstood Elsa is validated, and the film shows Hans to be a talented actor who fools all the other characters and even the audience. The Reveal creates An Aesop for the audience as well as Character Development for Anna, who realizes her Wrong Genre Savvy mindset was wrong. She uses her experience to gain a more sophisticated understanding of love while keeping her large heart and optimism. Her unflappable bravery and loving nature saving herself, her sister, and the kingdom. Lampshaded repeatedly:
      Kristoff: That's your plan? My ice business is riding on you talking to your sister?
      Anna: Yup.
      Kristoff (after nearly being impaled by one of the spikes created by Elsa's magic): So you're not at all afraid of her?
      Anna: Why would I be?
      Olaf: Yeah. I bet Elsa's the nicest, gentlest, warmest person ever. (gets impaled on one of the spikes) Oh, look at that. I've been impaled.
  • In The Great Mouse Detective, Ratigan has two — his ego and temper. He's undoubtedly a criminal mastermind and Basil's arch-nemesis, but when he successfully leads Basil and Dawson into a trap, he can't resist putting Basil in a ridiculously convoluted death trap just to humiliate him and show off how thoroughly he bested his rival and Basil is able to get a Heroic Second Wind after a talking-to from Dawson and use the elements of the death trap against each other to escape. Later, when Basil successfully foils Ratigan's plan to kill the Queen and become ruler instead, Ratigan is so enraged over being publicly beaten he kidnaps Olivia out of spite and when Basil manages to save her right from under him and reunite her with her father, he undergoes such a Villainous Breakdown he becomes little more than a snarling beast and tries to beat Basil to death, only to fall from Big Ben to his doom himself.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Judge Claude Frollo's flaw is Psychological Projection, as he always faults others except for himself and can't separate his faith from his arrogance. Claiming to be Holier Than Thou while others are nothingburgers, he's actually a Bible-thumping, bigoted monster. His unhealthy obsession with Esmeralda is what leads to his eventual Villainous Breakdown. Lampshaded below by Clopin himself.
    Clopin: Judge Claude Frollo longed to purge the world of vice and sin
    And he saw corruption everywhere — except within.
  • Ice Age: Thanks to his rather abusive upbringing - where his parents and the rest of his family would repeatedly abandon him so he wouldn't be a hindrance to them - Sid has some major abandonment issues, which he becomes increasingly aware of throughout the movies. The Herd gave Sid a place where he belonged for the first time in his life, and in the third film, he comes to the stinging, sobering realization that he's more reliant on his friends for company than they're reliant on him: he spends a good chunk of that movie wondering what he's going to do with his life when they're all seemingly moving on with theirs. Sid can also be very needy for validation due to his low self-esteem, which stems from a similar origin as his abandonment issues. In the second film, Sid grows resentful of the fact that Manny and Diego apparently don't respect him, and he spends much of that movie trying to prove himself and gain approval from someone or something.
    • Many of the Predatory antagonists have their flaw of being fixed on eating the main characters which leads to their own doom one way or another. Examples of this include, Rudy (eating mostly anyone he decides to which leads to his fatal fall), Cretacous and maelstrom (eating the herd that leads to them being crushed) , the guanlong (eating Ellie which leads to them being trapped or falling to their deaths), the ten pterosaurs (eating Crash and Eddie which leads to them being knocked down and one in a near bursting state).
  • The Incredibles:
    • Mr. Incredible's stubbornness, temper, and inability to let go of his Glory Days as a superhero serve as a major problem for him. In the first movie, this is what almost gets him killed after accepting Syndrome's moonlighting offer. He's better in the second movie, but is clearly struggling with Helen being chosen to champion the cause of getting Supers made legal again.
    • Syndrome's flaw is that he wants to be acknowledged as a superhero simply by having "powers" which, for him, are provided by advanced technology. However, he shows no interest in actually cultivating the deeper aspects of character that make one a true hero like a desire for justice, self-sacrifice, or a willingness to help those who can't help themselves. It's a lesson he never learns.
    • Gilbert Huph's Lack of Empathy and abuse of power shown when he prevents Bob from stopping the mugging leads to him being thrown through several office walls and ending up in a full body cast.
  • Kung Fu Panda 3: Kai's flaw is his Greed. Oogway tried to warn him "the more you take, the less you have", meaning he'd never be satisfied with what power he had stolen and always wanted more. This, coupled with Po driving him into a Villainous Breakdown, is what undoes him. He was focused purely on stealing power for its own sake without refining or honing his own. When Po unloads all of his and his friends' Chi into him all at once, he lacks the skill to keep it in check and is overwhelmed.
  • The Lion King (1994):
  • The Lion King II: Simba's Pride:
    • Zira's Fatal Flaw is her thirst for vengeance. While she shows at Nuka's death and other times that she loves her children, her all-consuming thirst for vengeance causes her to be an Abusive Parent, ultimately causing the death of one of her children and the Heel–Face Turn of the other two, as well as her own demise.
    • And her son Nuka's is his craving for affection.
  • The Little Mermaid (1989):
    • Ariel's curiosity and recklessness frequently get her into some scrapes.
    • Her father, King Triton, has his hatred of humans and his very explosive temper; putting them together drove him into a fit of blind rage that made him destroy Ariel's grotto (and, very nearly, their relationship).
    • Sebastian's flaws are his Loose Lips and Blind Obedience to Triton. None of the events mentioned above would have happened if he kept his huge gob shut and listened to Ariel instead when she told him not to tell her father anything. This risks Ariel's respect for him.
    • Ursula's flaw is her penchant for cruelty and the fact that she doesn't pay attention to her surroundings. First, she taunts Ariel by gloating about how she'll kill Eric, ignoring Ariel while she aims. This allows Ariel to grab Ursula just before she fires, causing the shot to veer off and kill Flotsam and Jetsam instead (henchmen who were in the way because Ursula ordered them after Eric). Later, Ursula attempts to snipe a helpless Ariel, ignoring Eric, who has commandeered a ship, and he rams Ursula with a broken bowsprit.
  • Monsters, Inc.: Mike Wazowski has two major flaws in each film:
    • First, in ''Monsters University," it's his Pride in his abilities as a scarer. He certainly has the knowledge of scaring, but he lacks the imposing features of his peers. Not that it stops him from helping other monsters like him achieve this talent, but he thinks he's so scary that he fails to realize the fault with his own abilities until he gets trapped in the human world.
    • Then, in Monsters, Inc. itself, this flaw is his own selfishness, primarily over maintaining his and Sully's efforts to break the all-time scare record rather than help Boo get home, showing no concern for her throughout most of the film and doing everything he can to get rid of her as quick as he can.
  • Rameses of The Prince of Egypt has two: Pride and Stubbornness. Rameses is painted relatively sympathetically compared to other adaptations of the Pharaoh in the Bible, but these two traits are his downfall and what causes everyone in Egypt to suffer. These two traits are derived from trying to appease his father's wishes, so these traits are displayed tragically.
  • Medusa of The Rescuers gets screwed over by being a Bad Boss, as she bullies her sidekicks Snoops endlessly throughout the film, blames him for everything that goes wrong and refuses to share the Devil's Eye with him when Penny finally manages to retrieve it from the well. When Penny escapes, she even turns on her own pet crocodiles by riding them after Penny through the swamp and abusing them, resulting in both Snoops and the crocodiles turning against her.
  • Sing:
    • Meena loves to sing and has an amazing voice but suffers terribly from stage fright and confidence issues, preventing her from singing when she has the opportunity. Part of her story arc is to overcome this.
    • Buster has a bad habit of making people promises that he can't keep, under the assumption that he can discreetly fix it down the line. It happens in both movies, and in both cases, the eventual fallout is far worse than anything he could have predicted.
  • Song of the Sea: Ben’s stubbornness and holding grudges against people mess up his relationships with his family, especially his little sister.
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    • All the Spiders' flaw is their I Work Alone mindset. While they do team up to infiltrate Kingpin's place, they don't want to get anyone else involved because they don't want to lose anyone else that they love. Working with Miles helps them overcome that.
    • For Miles, it's his Deer in the Headlights approach to life and avoiding things that seem challenging. At his new school, he deliberately tries to fail tests because he would rather be with his old friends and school than take the opportunity at a better education. After getting his powers and when seeing the Green Goblin fight his Spiderman, Miles freezes up and is no help.
  • Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: Killer Frost's Fatal Flaw is Greed. She could have likely gotten away scot-free with her life had she just let Zoom keep the card and his goons finish off the rest of the helpless Squad, but she had to waste time double-crossing him and killing them to take the card for a payday, thus giving Copperhead time to break free of her ice and end up causing both of their deaths.
  • Toy Story: For Woody, his love for Andy. While this is his greatest strength, it's also been his downfall numerous times, especially if he's worried he might lose it. He lets this almost get the better of him when Buzz Lightyear comes along and steals the spotlight, causing his jealousy to get the better of him. Then, he nearly leaves his friends behind out of concern he's going to get thrown out if he gets torn again. Then, he fails to realize his friends' needs and almost destroys his relationship with them when they decide to leave Andy for good (though it's partially their own fault as well). Lastly, his failure to let go of Andy and try to prove his worth to Bonnie nearly gets his friends killed and almost destroys his relationship with Bo Peep.
  • Trolls World Tour: Poppy's fatal flaw is her belief that things will work out combined with her default response to obstacles being a harder push combines into a tendency to innocently steamroll her friends. She ends up not listening to them as she overbears to resolve what she sees as a problem.
  • Zootopia: Impulsiveness. It gets Judy bamboozled by Nick, almost costs her her career, and prompts her to try and steal an entire train car full of evidence instead of sneaking away with a small, but regulatory sample to show the ZPD.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Ron always reads what's on the teleprompter.
  • Rocky from Angels with Dirty Faces is loyal to a fault.
  • In Assault on a Queen, Victor is obsessed with jewels. This ultimately gets him killed when he attempts to escape and spots a massive diamond on the finger of one of the passengers. He breaks off his getaway and attempts to take the ring off her.
  • Back to the Future's Marty McFly and his compulsion to prove that he's not "chicken". This is eventually stamped out through Character Development.
  • Carlito's Way has a variation of this trope. Carlito's Fatal Flaw is either his determination to keep his "reformed" status or his ties to his criminal past. If he had gotten rid of one of the two, there might have been a happy ending.
  • In Canyon Passage, George is a gambling addict, and it is this addiction — combined with a desire to find an easy way to get rich quick (as opposed to Logan, who has gotten wealthy through hard work and the willingness to take risks) — that eventually destroys him, as his debts mount and drag him into theft, murder and eventually death, as he is shot by the posse as he attempts to escape town before he can be lynched.
  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: For Koba, it's Wrath, Fantastic Racism, and inability to understand why anyone would have sympathy for humans. At the start of the movie, Koba is a loyal and trustworthy friend of Caesar and Honorary Uncle towards his son, Blue Eyes. But then the humans show up, and Koba rapidly starts to go off the deep end. Koba understandably hates humans for the years he spent in their labs being tortured and experimented on. He cannot forgive or forget the pain humans have caused him, nor he is willing to risk any possibility of returning to his old life, and he cannot understand Caesar's decision to work with them for the sake of peace between humans and apes. Eventually, these flaws cause Koba to turn against Caesar and wage war against the human settlement. By the end of the movie, these three flaws have so utterly dominated Koba that he doesn't care how many apes die in his war, so long as he gets to kill humans and satisfy his unquenchable lust for revenge. Additionally, his violent tendencies are what turn the rest of the ape community against him during his climactic battle with Caesar, as he becomes so unhinged that he shoots any ape between him and Caesar.
  • Deadpool: For the title character, it's Vanity. Wade was rather proud of his looks before Weapon X and his subsequent deforming is why he doesn't approach Vanessa after he escapes and why he takes too long to warn her that Ajax might be after her, indirectly getting her kidnapped as a result. He refuses to believe that Vanessa or anyone else could love him because of his new face, pointedly ignoring how Weasel and Blind Al are fond of him for other reasons. Lampshaded in the Honest Trailer for the film, as Deadpool would do anything to get his fiancée back... "Except talk to her". In his own words.
  • Deadpool 2: For Firefist, it's lots of rage and especially his unwillingness to trust others.
  • Demolition Man: Dr. Cocteau is so convinced of the infallibility of his genius and desire to engineer society that he fails to consider that there are things no technocrat can anticipate, such as Phoenix getting around his Restraining Bolt brainwashing by just having one of his minions shoot Cocteau.
  • Django Unchained: Pride ends up screwing a lot of things up for a lot of people. Both Schultz and Candie end up dying because of wounded pride. Right before cementing his deal for Broomhilda, Schultz deliberately insults Candie by calling him "Mister" instead of "Monsieur". Enraged, Candie tries to force a victory over Schultz by making him shake hands to complete the deal, to which Schultz responds by killing him and being killed in turn.
  • In Draft Day the expected number 1 overall pick Bo Callahan is a great player and has the raw talent to become a franchise quarterback, but Sonny eventually didn't draft him since Callahan has personality problems.
  • In Exam, White loses the competition due to his own hubris.
  • Excalibur: Lust does some heavy lifting.
    • When Uther sees Cornwall's wife Igrayne, he absolutely has to have her and doesn't think about the consequences.
    • Arthur's queen Guenevere and champion Lancelot cannot resist each other, even after Lancelot has to fight a duel to prove that they are not having an affair. Arthur finds out.
  • Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald: Queenie Goldstein has Love Makes You Crazy. She genuinely loves the No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, but doesn't understand that the reason he refuses to marry her is to protect her (marriage between wizards and no-majs is illegal in the USA at the time the movie takes place) and takes extreme measures to force him into it, including putting him under a love charm and go to Europe so they can marry there. This coupled with her Berserk Button of people calling or thinking that she's crazy leads to her Face–Heel Turn at the end of the movie when she defects to Grindelwald's side.
  • The Fastest Gun Alive: George is a kind and honest man, but his desire to be taken seriously makes him show off his gunslinging skills and makes him a target of people like Harold who want to build Villain Cred. It's implied this has happened several times in the past.
  • Full Metal Jacket's resident Drill Sergeant Nasty, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, has a fatal flaw in his inability to deal with issues without using force, which ultimately gets him killed when his personal Butt-Monkey, Private Gomer Pyle, undergoes a psychotic breakdown (thanks in large part to his own treatment of him) and shoots him down after Hartman approaches him in his usual style instead of calling the MPs when Pyle has a loaded gun in his hands.
  • Gladiator
    • Maximus is an ardent patriot and his worst mistakes come because of his love of Rome. His acceptance of Emperor Marcus Aurelius's plea to help make it a republic again gets his family killed. His choice to become a Rebel Leader and try to make contact with his army gets him and his fellow gladiators killed.
    • Commodus likes to look cool all the time. His arrival on the German battlefield needs to be dramatic and his entrance into Rome needs to be a triumphant procession. Instead of disposing of Maximus outright, he makes it a Duel to the Death at the Colosseum. Maximus kills him despite being mortally wounded.
  • The Corleone Brothers in The Godfather all inherited a trait from their father (Sonny's charisma, Fredo's heart, and Michael's cunning) which they don't have in each other. Had they worked together, they would have been an unstoppable criminal empire.
  • Godzilla:
    • For Gigan, it's his cowardice. He works great with his allies and is an excellent fighter due to his sadism and love of cheating. The minute he takes even two hits from his foes, however, he runs like the wind, usually abandoning his allies in the process.
    • There are also some MonsterVerse examples (see below).
  • GoodFellas
    • Tommy's Hair-Trigger Temper, which drives him to kill a made man and leads to him getting whacked himself when his bosses find out about it.
    • Henry is greedy and sets up his own operation that gets him arrested. Worse is that he clearly hasn't learned anything by the end.
    • Jimmy's solution to everything is to kill them all. Henry turned against him as a result.
  • In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Johann tells the eponymous character his fatal flaw is his temper. He is soon proven correct when HB loses his cool and slugs him.
  • In The Hobbit trilogy:
    • Thorin's biggest flaw is his pride, as lampshaded by Gandalf.
    • Kíli's recklessness leads directly to his death.
    • His grandfather Thrór became so greedy and obsessed with filling his halls with gold that it attracted Smaug and eventually led to the downfall of Erebor.
  • Dr. Elsa Schneider in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade suffers from multiple flaws: ambition, greed, and vanity. Her ambition to get the holy grail at all costs turns fatal when she's faced with the decision to reach for the grail or give Indy her free hand. Overcome with greed, she reaches and cannot stop herself. Indiana can't hold her because, in her vanity, she wears fancy leather gloves on her hands, which promptly slip off. All these flaws contribute to her long plunge into Death by Materialism.
    • Donovan's is ignorance. A wealthy American socialite who shook hands with the Nazis to possess the Grail, but he has no appreciation for the history of the artifact he seeks — it's a magical artifact that can grant you eternal life, that was all he knew and all that mattered to him. This bites him in the ass in the end when he's faced with a room with hundreds of cups and the elderly guardian warns him that as the true Grail will give life, a "false one will take it away". Elsa is able to trick him into drinking the wrong one and he dies a horrible death from rapidly aging centuries in a matter of moments.
  • James Bond:
  • Jurassic World: Hoskins's manipulative nature and exploiting the Velociraptors for his evil deeds causes him to be eaten by one.
  • Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: Mills's massive lust for money ultimately bites him in the ass really hard after the film's climax. Once Maisie frees the trapped dinosaurs and they all stampede out of the manor, wrecking Mills's car and trampling his remaining mercenaries to death, the guy nonetheless has the guts to try and secure the Indominus rib sample for Wu, even as multiple predators begin ganging up behind him. Unsurprisingly, Mills winds up becoming an hors d'oeuvre for Rexy.
  • In Knives Out, Harlan's Control Freak tendencies, flair for drama, and Complexity Addiction are what lead to his death. He thinks he knows what's better than anyone, and when Marta believes she accidentally administered a fatal dose of morphine to him, Harlan overrides her desire to call an ambulance and orchestrates a complex cover-up via suicide to protect her. Detective Blanc explicitly said that if Harlan had simply listened to Marta, he would still be alive.
  • The Lord of the Rings: Pride for Saruman. He holds himself above everyone and everything, Saruman the Wise. His pride means he underestimates his enemies and forgets about the simpler things (like Gaia's Vengeance in the form of the Ents).
  • In the Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Steve Rogers/Captain America:
      • Steve Rogers's greatest trait and one of his major flaws is that he is a Determinator. He will refuse to stand down and compromise over things that he believes are worth fighting for. This leads to him going to extreme lengths to protect his friend Bucky from people who want him to pay for his crimes as the Winter Soldier as well as refusing to sign the Accords due to his belief that the heroes are the best ones to make the judgement call, not the government. All of this only leads to escalating the conflict in Captain America: Civil War.
      • Another big one for Steve is his steadfast, uncompromising Black-and-White Morality. Though his Incorruptible Pure Pureness is the reason why the super soldier serum worked for him in the first place, his views/morals leave him with the inability (or refusal) to see the grey in various situations. His resulting actions have led to disastrous long-term consequences in the MCU. He condemns the unsavory methods regularly utilized by Nick Fury and SHIELD yet fails to see that Dirty Business is a necessary evil at times and Fury does so in order to keep the Avengers' hands clean. When the Sokovia Accords are sanctioned, he is unwilling to play ball with the U.S. Government and actively fights against it, failing to recognize that said government has strong, solid reasons for passing said accords in the first place. His unceasing support of polarizing individuals like Bucky Barnes and Wanda Maximoff earns him enmity from his friends and allies. Albeit sympathetic, Bucky and Wanda are destructive weapons who have committed guilt-ridden atrocities that many would agree are unforgivable. Even after Steve retires and passes the Captain America mantle to Sam Wilson, his friend initially decides to pass on the offer. Despite meaning (and choosing) well, Cap fails to anticipate the population's reactions and the ramifications it would have on a guy like Sam (especially one struggling to take on a legacy as legendary as Steve's). So ultimately while Cap's decisions may have been morally justified, it doesn't mean they were the right ones.
    • Tony Stark/Iron Man:
      • His pride, impulsiveness, and It's All About Me tendencies are his primary flaws. His "run before you can walk" philosophy resulted in him and Pepper almost getting killed by the Mandarin because he basically told the Mandarin on live television, "Here is my address, come fight me". His desire to protect the world and save his friends without any real plan or even discussing things with said friends lead to the creation of Ultron. He has a very hard time giving up being Iron Man and because of this, in Civil War, Pepper breaks up with him because being Iron Man is more important than she is.
      • Additionally, another major flaw of Tony's is his need to try and fix his mistakes, which only makes things worse in the long run. When he first becomes Iron Man, he shuts down his weapons division, having seen firsthand just how destructive they are, but doing so hurts Stark Industries financial standing (at least for the first film, as they are able to bounce back). After the attack on New York (which in part was made possible thanks to Loki using his tower), he nearly destroys his relationship with Pepper and almost hands America to Aldrich Killian after spending months building more suits to protect the world. Then, in an attempt to try and rectify what happened with Ultron and make up with Pepper, he stubbornly refuses to listen to Cap's claims that both sides on the Superhuman Registration conflict are being played until it's almost too late, and even then, he falls out with Cap big time when the truth about his parents' deaths are revealed. With the Avengers divided, Earth is vulnerable to Thanos, and not only does Thanos win, but Tony is later forced to sacrifice himself in order to stop him once and for all. This even plays out posthumously, as him building an entire satellite defensive network and gifting it to an emotionally traumatized teenage superhero still grieving his death leads a bitter ex-employee to manipulate his way into stealing it and nearly killing a lot of innocent people.
  • Cypher from The Matrix's biggest flaw is his jaded cynicism and defeatism. He's been through the war long enough to lose his faith and doesn't buy any of this talk about beating the machines. Deep down, he wishes he were back in the Matrix instead of in the Real World. This flaw ultimately leads to him siding with the Machines and betraying the Resistance in return for permanent re-insertion into the Matrix.
  • MonsterVerse:
    • Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) seems to have cemented small-mindedness as Admiral Stenz's Fatal Flaw. He considers Monarch naive for their worshipful attitude to Godzilla despite respecting their expertise, seeing the Kaiju merely as "things". Depending on Alternative Character Interpretation, his role in King of the Monsters indicates he's either persistent in his distrust of the Kaiju despite his reasonable attributes, or he's choosing To Be Lawful rather than Good to a fault. Either way, his failure to wrap his head around the Kaiju as anything other than a potential threat and furthermore not taking Serizawa's advice more seriously has so far racked up two extreme cases of making things go From Bad to Worse.
    • From Preston Packard in Kong: Skull Island, it's his need for revenge. After Kong decimates the Sky Devils, Packard forms an obsessive grudge that overtakes any sympathetic traits he may have. Despite caring for his men and wanting to avenge their deaths, Packard needlessly puts his surviving troops in danger, getting even more of them killed. His hatred of journalists puts him at odds with Weaver, and he refuses to see her as anything else besides another enemy he has to deal with. It's Packard's unwillingness to let go of his personal vendettas or even compromise that turns him into even more of a monster than most of the predators that roam the island.
    • King Ghidorah in King of the Monsters gets this. While he relishes in the act of murdering victims in his vicinity, his sadistic thirst for pursuing others who've done nothing to him is his possible downfall. If he didn't go out of his way to fly after the people inside the Argo, he wouldn't have been assaulted by Godzilla who dragged him into the ocean (which is Godzilla's element and Ghidorah's Weaksauce Weakness) and had his left head horrifically bitten off.
    • For Emma Russell it's Pride. It's noted in the King of the Monsters novelization that once she's committed to something and has gotten it into her head that she's right about something, she can be very unmoving about it. This leads to her Face–Heel Turn towards being a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
    • In King of the Monsters, Emma's ex-husband Mark tends to run away from his problems instead of facing up to them in a more healthy manner. Being unable to properly accept his son's death is what led to him turning into a drunk wreck, which in turn caused his and Emma's marriage to fully collapse, and finally led to him running away to the mountains to be as far away from people and the coast as he could be. Emma calls him out on this with an Armor-Piercing Response.
  • Billy Valence's arrogance and refusal to listen to advice in More Dead Than Alive. Following a discussion about gunfights in the old days, Cain tells him never to holster an empty pistol. He is eventually killed when he beats Luke Santee to the draw only to discover that he never reloaded his pistol after murdering Ruffalo, and he tries to shoot Luke with an empty gun.
  • In Mortal Kombat: The Movie, Raiden states that each of the main heroes has one that they must overcome.
    • Johnny is afraid he is seen as fake so he rushes into any fight to prove he isn't. After Art Lean's death, he learns there is more at stake than just his ego.
    • Sonya doesn't trust others and ask anyone for help, most likely stemming from her past where Kano killed her partner.
    • Liu Kang has two. He first prioritizes his revenge against Shang Tsung for killing his brother rather than saving Earth, and he does so to hide the fact Liu feels responsible for his brother's death.
  • In The Patriot, Benjamin Martin recognizes that Lord Cornwallis is an excellent general and an honorable man, but also discerns that Cornwallis's pride in his abilities is a weakness that can be taken advantage of. The French officer observing the revolution with him isn't initially impressed with this observation, noting that he'd prefer that stupidity be the key weakness of his enemies. But Martin successfully exploits the pride of Cornwallis twice in the film:
    • First, he tricks Cornwallis at a negotiation into letting go of a group of Martin's men that have been captured with a ruse about exchanging them for captured British officers. While Martin does put some effort into the ruse, Cornwallis doesn't consider that Martin might be faking the story about the officers and doesn't take the time to corroborate Martin's tale, because he doesn't think someone will try to con him in such a manner. The British are less than pleased when it turns out that Martin was lying about taking officers captive and had simply set up some dummies in red coats to fool Cornwallis from a distance.
    • Much more importantly, in the climactic battle Martin exploits the disdain that Cornwallis has for the militia's fighting ability by staging a feigned retreat. Cornwallis, who expects the militia to be an undisciplined mob who would break and retreat early in battle, believes it to be a genuine rout and quickly orders a follow up attack to go after the "retreating" colonials... only for his men to walk into a devastating counterattack.
  • Plunkett & Macleane's main character Macleane has a weakness for women and gambling. Both get him into serious trouble.
  • Cassie Thompson from Promising Young Woman puts herself in dangerous situations with no regard for her safety, which is a product of her guilt for failing to protect her friend Nina from being raped and subsequently committing suicide. For most of the film, her audacity protects her from the consequences of rape-baiting, kidnapping, vandalism, and blackmail, but she finally underestimates her final target, Nina's rapist Al Monroe, and dies by Vorpal Pillow when her plan for revenge fails to take into account Al's obvious physical strength combined with desperation and adrenaline.
    • Additionally, Ryan, Cassie's love interest, has the critical flaw of being unable to take responsibility for his moral failures. He was present at Nina's rape but tries to shift responsibility away from himself by claiming he was too drunk to remember what happened, that Nina put herself in the situation, and that Cassie is in the wrong for pushing the issue. This weakness costs him his relationship with Cassie and implies at the end that he will lose his career and reputation when the tape showing his passive role in Nina's rape gets out.
  • Jigsaw's MO in Saw films is setting people up in traps (or as he calls them, tests and "games") where someone must overcome their Fatal Flaw or be destroyed. Nine times out of ten, they lose. His own fatal flaw is his envy. After the death of his unborn son and his cancer diagnosis, John is really just bitter and angry at the world, lashing out at people who 'waste' the lives that he could never have. It ultimately consumes him to the point that it kills him and leads to the death of his ex-wife, the only person in the world that still mattered to him.
  • In The School for Good and Evil (2022), Sophie's is superficiality. She's so obsessed with how people and circumstances look, she doesn't spare a thought for how they are. Prioritizing glamour over Good is why she consistently fails as a would-be princess.
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan:
    • Khan's obsession with taking his vengeance on Captain Kirk blinds him to some very bad mistakes and ultimately destroys him.
    • Kirk's hubris is his own fatal flaw; his unshakable belief in his own ingenuity and command instincts. Therefore, he's taken off guard by something that even raw cadet Saavik saw coming. And he arrogantly believes there's no such thing as a situation that he can't win. As his character develops throughout the film, he learns just how misguided he's been.
  • Star Wars:
    • In the prequels, Anakin Skywalker's fatal flaw is his arrogant insistence that he can do anything and his inability to let go of that which is important to him, ironically causing him to turn to The Dark Side in his narrow-minded effort to save Padmé at all costs. Outside of the films, he's established as having another fatal flaw in that he cares too much about those close to him and is willing to get very violent very fast to protect them, which includes using the Force to torture a Separatist leader for information on saving his padawan Ahsoka Tano.
    • Also in the prequels, Obi-Wan Kenobi's fatal flaw is his overprotectiveness of Anakin. It also largely contributed to his uneasy Master-Apprentice relationship with Anakin, who was very emotional and rather unstable, which led to Anakin turning to The Dark Side. By the end of the prequel trilogy, Obi-Wan had loved Anakin so much that he couldn't see what he had turned into.
    • The Jedi Order's complacency and political ineptness which led to them being all but wiped out at the end of the Clone Wars. Expanded material has strongly implied the whole reason Sidious chose to enter politics was exactly because it was one of the Order's weaknesses. Arguably hubris does play a role in Revenge of the Sith as Mace Windu only takes a few council members to confront a Sith Lord of unknown skill but one who hid from the Yoda himself despite being regularly in close proximity. The resulting fight gave Sidious the perfect excuse for Order 66 to give to the public.
    • As with most Sith Lords, Palpatine's flaw is his incredible hubris and overconfidence. This is what doomed many other villains in early stories he was a part of, including his own mentor, and eventually doomed him as well.
    • Kylo Ren's impulsive rage and need for revenge can dominate him and his thought processes, shown best in The Last Jedi when he has the Resistance all but dead to rights on Crait. The Resistance only has small skim-speeders against the First Order's heavy armor, TIE fighters, and a miniature Death Star array, but then Rey and Chewbacca show up in the Millennium Falcon and Kylo orders all of his air support away from the fight directly in front of him to pursue it, which was entirely the point of Rey and Chewie doing that even though it still doesn't end well for the Resistance. Shortly after this, Luke Skywalker appears and Kylo becomes so fixated on killing him that he loses his chance to crush the Resistance once and for all, leading to the events of the next film.
    • Luke's fatal flaw, though it doesn't affect him as much as others, is his impulsiveness. He receives a vision of his friends being tortured in Cloud City and rushes to save them with his Jedi training half-done at best; he comes out of it with one less hand. The biggest and most serious example, though, is in The Last Jedi when — after two conflicting accounts of what made Ben Solo turn to the Dark Side and become Kylo Ren — he admits that his impulsiveness is ultimately to blame after he detected a flash of the Dark Side in Ben and ignited his lightsaber, immediately regretting that he'd ever considered killing his nephew in cold blood, and regretting it more when Ben saw this and assumed that he was about to kill him, lashing out and destroying the revived Jedi Order as a result.
    • Rey's fatal flaw is a combination of stubbornness & Naivety;. She is very insistent for most of The Force Awakens and much of The Last Jedi on remaining on/returning to Jakku to wait for her family to return for her. However, she is in denial that her family is long gone and thus refuses the call, even when other characters like Maz Kanata point it out (To which Rey reacts in anger). So she is essentially wasting her life away on a Scavenger World that has no real prospect of a better life for her. Rey, despite her skill, doesn't have the best knowledge of people which causes her to misjudge them, especially in regards to Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. She believes that she can redeem him, despite Luke's warnings, but it simply leads to her being captured, tortured, and nearly killed. In fact, Rey and Kylo are on even more hostile terms because of her actions.
  • Norma from Sunset Boulevard is obsessed with being a movie star again despite her talent in finance. Made worse by her Butler Max who indulges her fantasy because he loves her.
  • Terminator Salvation: Hugh Ashdown is a military Consummate Professional with decades of experience. He believes that military might, gathered under effective leadership, is the only thing that can save humanity now. To a degree, he's right — but he also has very little concern for civilians, while John Connor clearly does. He finds Connor a useful tool for bringing new Resistance recruits but thinks he's too young and naïve to lead.
  • Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood thrives on animosity and he goes after enemies with a will. He drives away the boy he treated as his son and kills his arch-enemy without thought of consequence.
  • Transformers Film Series: Optimus Prime's fatal flaw is his idealism. After spending countless years fighting the Decepticons, Optimus wants to bring a peaceful end to the conflict. Unfortunately, his idealism puts him through many nasty hardships, which include losing an arm, getting temporarily killed, brainwashed, and betrayed by his best friend, his mentor and even the humans he swore to protect, all because Optimus wants to see the good in people.
  • Triple Frontier: The greed of several of the team members, particularly Redfly's insistence on taking more money than they can handle, is what causes the relatively simple plan to steal Lorea's money to derail horribly.
  • CLU in TRON: Legacy suffers from an unquenchable need for perfection. He inherited this from Kevin Flynn when he was programmed, but unlike Flynn, he is a program and is unable to learn from his mistakes.
  • Wall Street:
    • Bud Fox is too wide-eyed about Gordon Gekko's schemes, as Gekko is solely driven by greed and wants him to obtain insider information on companies by any means necessary, even if it's illegal. Bud also wants to be like Gekko but doesn't realize the costs of having such a lifestyle until it was too late.
    • For Gekko himself, it is his Greed and excessive hubris. Being a Corrupt Corporate Executive, he is solely driven to make a quick profit by using Bud Fox to obtain information via illegal methods. His New Era Speech to a group of investors even exemplifies his MO: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." It costs him greatly, as his reputation and familial relations are in complete tatters, as shown in the sequel.
  • X-Men Film Series: For Professor X, it's arrogance. He has a habit of attempting to control those who are close to him, with or without the help of his psychic abilities. He's more inclined to do this with the women in his life (e.g. his foster sister and his surrogate daughter) than with the men. This paternalistic attitude stems from him being born in the early 1930s as a privileged male (Xavier was a male chauvinist in X-Men: First Class), and as a highly-skilled telepath, he thinks he can understand a person better than s/he can know him/herself, and therefore he believes that he knows best in terms of what it is they truly "need."
    • X-Men: The Last Stand: Upon meeting Jean Grey, Xavier had placed constraints upon her powers which then led to the creation of the Phoenix, a Person of Mass Destruction who ends up vaporizing a lot of people, including Charles himself. Under the circumstances, her vast raw power, disregard for the sanctity of other minds, and the fact that her parents seemed to be outright afraid of her (and not without reason — pre-teen Jean is quite different from her warm-hearted and motherly adult self), this perhaps was not unwarranted.
    • X-Men: First Class:
      • Trying to control Raven's life drove her away from him, which eventually resulted in her becoming the assassin Mystique who shared Magneto's goal of mutant supremacy.
      • Instead of trusting Moira to not divulge his and his students' location to her CIA superiors, he simply erases her memories of them. To be fair, Charles was worried that the CIA would torture her for information, but it's still a symptom of him not having faith in a woman whom he cares about (an Implied Love Interest, in this case).
    • X-Men: Days of Future Past: Part of 1973 Xavier's Character Development revolves around realizing this and learning to trust instead of control. It pays off when he proves how much he trusts Raven's good nature to do the right thing, instead of attempting to manipulate her. She doesn't murder Trask, and the bad Sentinel future is averted.
    • X-Men: Apocalypse:
      • Xavier "repairs" the tragic mistake he had made with Jean in the original timeline by encouraging her to embrace her Phoenix power to its fullest extent, which allows her to defeat Apocalypse, and she ends up saving the world instead of becoming a mass-murdering villainess. By doing the opposite of what he did to Jean in X-Men: The Last Stand, Charles' fate is also reversed — he is rescued by her instead of being disintegrated.
      • He restores the memories that he took away from Moira in 1962, and although the long-term consequences with her are less severe than with Raven or Jean, they still bite him in the ass in a more subtle way. Xavier remains utterly smitten with Moira 21 years later (he's even jealous when he learns that she has an ex-husband), so his decision to rob her of a chunk of her past also robbed him of a potentially meaningful romance.

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