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Idiot Ball / Animated Films

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Characters grabbing the Idiot Ball in animated movies.


  • The Secret of NIMH 2: Timmy to the Rescue:
    • Timmy, whose constant arrogance and tendency to act before he thinks often puts himself and worse yet his friends in danger all throughout the movie.
    • Martin, for having run away from home out of jealousy of Timmy even when NIMH was still about searching for the rats.
    • Everybody in Thorn Valley, for having been so eager to fashion Timmy into a hero because of Nicodemus' warning of worse things yet to come from NIMH; ironically, their actions in reverence to this prophecy may have inadvertently put their home at even greater risk than it otherwise would've been; see Self-Fulfilling Prophecy on the film's page.
  • Thumbelina. Every time she gets kidnapped, she keeps letting the kidnappers take advantage of her. She could be excused since she's lived a sheltered life, but common sense should have stepped in at some point and while she does eventually stand up for herself, it's not until the last ten minutes of the movie. Yeah...
    • Let's not even get in to her not asking that goddamn bird to fly her home but instead trying to walk it.
  • Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers has Mickey getting this temporarily when confronting Pete about his wrongdoing. He stands tall and alone against someone much bigger and stronger than he is instead of making a strategic retreat to get Goofy (who he doesn't know has been captured) or some other reinforcements.
  • In Rugrats Go Wild!, Spike seems to be pretty clever for a dog. He spends a musical number dodging and humiliating a huge leopard... but then he stupidly mentions that there's a group of lost, helpless infants somewhere on the island, and the leopard immediately goes looking for them to eat them.
  • In Rise of the Guardians, Jack falls for Pitch's Batman Gambit, and searches through Pitch's lair, looking for his teeth. When he finds the teeth, and returns to the other Guardians, the others immediately come to the (admittedly reasonable) conclusion that Jack is in league with Pitch. Clearly, Jack found the teeth and the idiot ball in the lair, because at no point does Jack attempt to explain, and the whole thing could have been avoided with one sentence. "I found where Pitch is keeping the tooth fairies."
  • In Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, it's Peppermint Patty's diplomatic voting. For one thing, it's massively one-sided: it only deals with the girls and their decisions end up screwing over the boys (including kicking out the boys out of the house that they found and leaving them in the snow). Second of all, the things they vote for is things that would require simple common sense. Of course, it's Peppermint Patty — common sense and that girl never got along.
  • In Incredibles 2,
    • Violet and Dash repeatedly ignore the fact that removing the incredibly fragile mind control goggles that are controlling the other supers are all they need to do to win. This can be excused early on as they may have been caught off guard by the situation, but as the movie progresses it becomes ridiculous. Worse, they have powers nearly designed to snatch goggles (Super speed and invisibility) and make no attempts to do so. Even worse, at certain points the mind controlled supers are rendered unconscious at their feet, and they still don't take them off, they just leave them in that state for some reason.
    • Evelyn could've actually succeeded in her Evil Plan if she had used a mind control helmet or something, instead of easily removed destructible goggles.
    • Evelyn captures Elastigirl and rather than killing her, gives her enough time to regain her senses and defeat her because she decided to monologue about her Evil Plan.
    • She also reveals her identity to Elastigirl for no reason and was given multiple opportunities to brainwash her without disclosing her identity.
    • Evelyn, while falling to her death, kicks Elastigirl in her face, making it harder to save her life.
  • Despicable Me: To Vector for noticing that cookie he bit was metal and sparking and then NOT CARING about it.
  • Cars 2: Finn McMissile, whom the film presents as a seasoned and highly competent secret agent, believes that Mater is the American spy. Even when Mater shows no awareness of intelligence that he supposedly collected, causes constant setbacks for the mission, and even states multiple times that he's just an ordinary tow truck, Finn believes that Mater is just extremely dedicated to his cover story, until the plot finally demands that he realise the truth in the third act.
  • Dot and the Kangaroo: Everyone seems to take turns holding it in the final sequel, Dot in Space.
    • The Russians caused the entire plot of the film. They send Whyka into space where she becomes trapped in orbit (The Russian professor can't even recite the countdown properly!), then resolving to just blow up Whyka's rocket instead of sending someone out to rescue her. They don't even bother to inform anyone before blowing it up (Least of all, Dot or the Americans). This results in the shockwave that sends Dot's rocket off course and into another solar system altogether, leading to her and Whyka becoming stranded on the planet Pie-Arr-Squared.
    • The Americans are smart enough to recognise a security breach at Cape Kennedy when Dozey-Face tries to jump the perimeter fence, resulting in her and Dot almost getting electrocuted but once Dot is inside the complex, she remains completely undetected. Even disguising herself as part of a road-sign and trying to imitate Buster while donning his spacesuit is enough to fool everyone (The former instance should have been blatantly obvious if the security personnel in their jeep had just bothered to be a bit more observant and it doesn't help that all else who could potentially catch Dot out prove just as inattentive. All they had to do in the latter instance was just poke their head round the door, just in time to catch Dot before she put the helmet on or, failing that, take a closer look at the helmet long enough to realise she wasn't Buster and not even a monkey to boot. It never even occurs to them how Buster somehow acquired a musical watch!). It's only when Dot has been sent into space that everyone finally realises what's happened and the resulting confusing attempts at communication (Dot trying to contact Whyka, the Americans trying to contact Dot, no-one attempting to contact the Russians or vice-versa) and Dot's own mistakes mean Dot only just manages to rescue Whyka in time and we all know what happens next as explained above.
      • Also, considering what happened to Whyka, you'd think they would've learned from the Russians' mistake and realize that sending Buster on a rocket to the Moon was a bad idea (especially since he can't drive a rocket considering he is a monkey, as Grumble-Bones points out), but no, they go right ahead with it and once they realise Buster is still on Earth, they only end up adding to the already growing confusion between them and Dot and wasting time enough for the events described above to take place.
    • Dot is really open to interpretation here, as while she is smarter than the aforementioned and the following examples, once she leaves Australia for America, she is somehow unable to communicate with Buster or Whyka (or any creature on Pie-Arr-Squared that isn't a Roundy or a Squarey) at any point in the film despite having been able to communicate with animals that are not native to Australia as recently as the previous film which also involved her going to America. What is more, she is still somehow able to understand Whyka's barking in Russian (Though this, sort of, makes sense as she previously communicated successfully with animals in Russia before). When she's launched into space, she tries to contact Whyka but only gets through to the Americans but doesn't realise this at first and believes she's talking to Whyka, until the Americans point out her mistake. She also wastes much of her time trying to communicate with an old satellite before finally coming across Whyka's rocket (Also, despite having clearly heard Whyka's name enough times to remember it, she still refers to Whyka by her real-life counterpart's name at one point). Consequently, she successfully rescues Whyka but wastes further time by failing to realise her lifeline is tangled round the pilot's seat in Whyka's rocket. She does eventually realise this mistake and rectifies it but this means she is unable to get her rocket clear before Whyka's explodes, she then lands on the first planet she sees, assuming it to be Earth without bothering to try and contact anyone on the planet to make sure, other than announce she's coming down now (The fact she was in orbit above Earth the whole time she was rescuing Whyka should have allowed her to observe the planet long enough to recognise it and therefore be able to tell the planet she was heading for was NOT Earth. The lack of response from anyone on the surface of Pie-Arr-Squared and therefore, no one to successful guide her down as the Americans would have been smart enough to do, should also have served as an obvious sign she was headed for the wrong planet). She nosedives her rocket into the planet's surface where it becomes stuck and she only manages to dig herself and Whyka deeper when she tries to rescue her rocket herself. After being forced to flee across the wilderness of Pie-Arr-Squared, encountering quicksand, hostile trees, active volcanoes and rock-like creatures, she builds a campfire with which to cook pilly-fruit for herself and Whyka, when nothing seems to suggest the pilly-fruit couldn't have been eaten raw, but this also sends up smoke signals and a scent that alert the Roundy Army, who are on her trail (since she left fragments of her dress lying around and thought nothing of it), and Gorgo to her position. Luckily for her, Gorgo scares off the Roundies and spares her life. This also comes off as a sort of Idiot Hero moment for her as her escape from the Prison for Squares ultimately leads her to the The Party (Roley) which, in turn, leads to Papa Drop's defeat.
    • While Dozey-Face somewhat Took a Level in Dumbass in the previous film, she's at her peak here. While attempting to jump through the high electric fence, she grabs the barbed wire, resulting in electrocuting both her and Dot and triggering an alarm (fortunately, the people at Cape Kennedy dismissed it as a false alarm and made no attempt to catch Dot out despite having at least two opportunities to do so).
    • The Roundies are an interesting case and are also open to interpretation though the Roundy Sergeant fails to recognise a broken mirror when he sees one after Dot smashes it with a hairbrush to trick him or realize Dot is tricking him into releasing the prison gate so she could plan her escape ( both of which possibly fueling his motivation for hoping Gorgo eats Dot later in the film) and keeps claiming to have found Dot when he's only found fragments of her dress and even his own soldiers point this out to him.
      • The Roundy Sergeant is smart enough to know that without Dot, there is no way Papa Drop would be able to learn how to operate her rocket so he can use it to conquer the Universe as he would need (or rather have to force) Dot to show him, which was his reason for hoping Gorgo would eat Dot, even if it was mostly for the sake of saving his own skin and avoiding imprisonment as well as his own personal grudge against Dot for making a fool of him earlier in the film (Although this was partly because of his own stupidity as mentioned above, and considering he runs the Prison for Squaries, he deserved it). Plus, by this time, he has a reason for hoping Papa Drop's plan fails as Papa Drop has betrayed him by threatening to imprison him if he and his troops fail to recapture Dot. This still doesn't excuse his own selfishness and willingness to throw his own troops under a bus however as he changes his position when it is revealed that Gorgo only eats Dot's gag and is in fact the pet of The Party (a.k.a. Roley), and berates his troops for running away from Gorgo (which is extremely hypocritical since he himself ran away from Gorgo) and orders them to recapture Dot and The Party under the threat that the entire army will be imprisoned by Papa Drop, not even caring if his own troops get eaten by Gorgo. This only drives them to defect from him and side with Dot, The Party/Roley and Gorgo.
      • Given the Roundies coexisted peacefully with the Squaries before Papa Drop rose to power, it beggars belief that they even actually listened to the one member of their species who hated Squaries in the first place when it is implied in Poley's flashbacks that no one else appeared to have any problem with them, unless Papa Drop bullied and threatened them into doing so. After all, he does threaten to imprison anyone who dares to disagree with him, so it's possible most of them are just putting up a front in order to avoid this to the point of becoming a Stepford Smiler.
    • The Squaries, too. When Dot asks Poley why and her people don't escape from the Prison for Squaries to the mountains, it's because they fear quicksand, hostile trees, active volcanoes (even though they can float in mid-air and can easily wait until the volcano has finished erupting, like the Roundies did when they attempt to find and recapture Dot) and Gorgo (even though he's a herbivore, but still an alien dinosaur and therefore, potentially dangerous if he were to get riled up). She's basically saying they would rather stay in prison where they are subjected to slave labor, starvation, and abuse than risk their lives escaping (though it's possible that other Squaries, possibly including Poley's Disappeared Dad, have attempted to escape before and were either caught or fell victim to any one of the aforementioned dangers but this still doesn't excuse the fact that they could have merely floated to safety). Dot was basically the smart one in this scenario.
      • And when Dot is thrown into the Prison for Squaries by the Roundies, one of the Squaries accuses her of being a Roundy spy, even though she looks nothing remotely like a Roundy to begin with.
    • Papa Drop, for all his talk about being the "great me" and "much-loved leader", doesn't have the smarts to back it up nor the ability to think things through. For instance, he doesn't realize that the rehearsal rally held for him is actually a trap set by the Party ((his own son Roley in disguise)), if he imprisoned those who aren't round on other planets, he'd be imprisoning entire populations or if he put his entire army in prison for failing to recapture Dot ( which, even the Roundy Sergeant is smart enough to know, would basically hasten his defeat as this would leave Pie-Arr-Squared with no Army and therefore, completely defenseless, and no-one to stop Dot and Whyka from seeking out Roley/The Party and collaborating with each other since they, in turn, would have nothing up against them to prevent them from overthrowing him) and put his son Roley in charge, Roley would basically free all of the prisoners (including the Squaries). But his crowning moment of stupidity comes in the climax, where he thinks his own army has recaptured Dot as well as capturing both Gorgo and The Party/Roley when in reality they've joined the side of the trio (with the possible exception of the Roundy Sergeant). His stupidity, combined with his willingness to betray his fellow Roundies to satisfy his lust for power, proved to be his downfall.
    • Roley is a very interesting (for the most part, inverted) example. He appears to be a stuttering Extreme Doormat in his normal appearance, but as The Party, he is capable of blowing up statues of his tyrannical father, taming an giant alien dinosaur and rallying his own species into dethroning Papa Drop. He also seems to be aware of life on other planets, such as rabbits and dogs despite claiming not to hold such beliefs when Dot and Whyka encounter him as ''The Party'' although the very fact that he witnessed Dot and Whyka being brought to his father's attention and referred to as "creatures from space" presents him with proof. So maybe his stupidity is all a façade?
      • As "The Party", he negotiates with Dot before actually rescuing her, unless this is meant to be a Secret Test of Character on his part to see if Dot is trustworthy or not? This may explain why he does this when it is obvious that Gorgo trusts her otherwise he wouldn't have spared her (even if he is a herbivore) and she's hardly in a position that screams untrustworthy since she's lying on the ground, tied up and in need of help, not to mention she couldn't even scream for help just moments earlier and he would have observed people in her position many a time as a witness to his father's persecution of the Squaries
      • Unless his testing Dot is influenced by his being able to tell that Dot is neither a Roundy or a Squarey and therefore could be a spy for either side or neutral and therefore he has to make sure he is doing the right thing by rescuing her, though this still makes one wonder why he even bothered in the first place, given he would, and should, have recognised Dot from when she was originally brought to his father's attention and therefore, known right away she could be trusted.
    • Even Whyka to a certain degree, she should have at least been able to recognise Earth, having been trapped in orbit around the planet for however how much time had passed between her being launched into space and Dot rescuing her, and therefore be able to tell that the planet Dot was heading for was not Earth (It doesn't help that for some reason, Dot is only able to talk to animals native to Australia in this film and Whyka seems to only bark in Russian, according to Dot who still somehow manages to understand her which would otherwise make sense given she previously communicated successfully with animals in Russia before). Also, being a dog, she should have been able to sense if there was danger nearby when she and Dot are exploring the surface of Pie-Arr-Squared. The fact that the Roundies were lying in wait in the devastated village would have meant that, sentient balloons or not, they were still sentient and would have had a scent that would have been spread over wherever they were and had been and Whyka should have been able to pick this up. Although she could hardly have done anything to prevent Dot from being captured the first time, since Dot was standing up the whole time, she arguably could have intervened when Dot was recaptured as, this time, she was forced to lie down, given how the Roundies were restraining her. Whyka could have bitten or scratched at the Roundies while being careful not to injure Dot and possibly even tried to fight them (whenever they got close enough, of course) as it is shown she can walk (or at least run) on her hind legs when she chased a cat during her astronaut training. It eventually takes Gorgo to scare off the Roundies and The Party/Roley to rescue Dot, and not without some negotiating beforehand.

Alternative Title(s): Animated Film

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