This trope has become a recurring issue with Marinette. Thomas Astruc has stated that each episode needs to have Marinette make a mistake and learn a lesson; sometimes this leads to lessons that don't seem entirely healthy or bad situations that she only minimally contributed to being blamed entirely on her, and it's become hard to ignore that no other character is treated this way, even when it's their actions that cause the conflict.
- In "Rogercop," Marinette refusing to be groundlessly singled out for a search based only on Chloé's biases and invoking Everyone Is a Suspect due to the lack of any real evidence on whom the thief is somehow gets seen as being no better than Chloé and her father's kneejerk accusations. It's particularly egregious when even Marinette making a general statement about how the thief must be someone in the classroom is portrayed as her accusing her entire class of stealing. Compounding it is how Marinette didn't even exclude herself from her statements (though she did insist Adrien couldn't be the thief due to her crush on him), admitting she's also a suspect and agreeing to having her bag searched as long as the same is done to everyone else so that it's fair.
- In "The Gamer," Marinette wanting to compete for a spot in an Ultimate Mecha Strike III video game tournament just to spend time with Adrien is framed as wrong, since representing the school in a tournament is Serious Business and not an excuse to flirt with her crush. However, Marinette had as much of a right as anyone else in her school did to at least tryout for the tournament, as it was open to all students. Moreover, since only the two students with the highest scores in tryouts would move on to the actual tournament, Marinette would only be selected to compete with Adrien if she earned the spot by proving she's the best at Ultimate Mecha Strike III.
- After securing a spot in the tournament alongside Adrien, Marinette gets called out again, this time because she took Max's place, as he had practiced all year so he could compete and cared about the tournament way more than she did. Later, Marinette apparently learns a lesson about competing for the right reasons and thinking of other people's feelings, with her giving up her spot in the tournament to Max being portrayed as her doing the right thing. Regardless of her motives, though, Marinette qualified over Max after getting the highest score in tryouts fair and square, meaning she proved she was better at video games than he was. Having Max represent the school in her place anyway goes against the earlier emphasis of how the tryouts are meant to select the best students to represent the school. Not only that, but Max's subsequent akumatization is blamed entirely on Marinette (fairly) beating him, even though Adrien had also qualified over him due to having the second-highest score, with Max only coming in third. She's somewhat vindicated when Adrien gives up his spot instead and says Marinette should represent the school due to being the best player. However, while Adrien is portrayed as being in the right, none of the people who reproached Marinette earlier properly apologize or acknowledge she earned and deserved the right to represent the school all along. There's also the fact that nobody points out Adrien's hypocrisy, as he's dropping out so that someone who did worse than him in the tryouts can take his place. In fact, Max never apologizes for or gets called out on his own selfishness and entitled, unsportsmanlike behavior, instead getting to compete in the tournament like he wanted despite still not having earned his spot in the competition fairly.
- In "Antibug," Ladybug didn't listen to Chloé when she told her where the akumatized object was, something Cat Noir scolds Ladybug for. This was presented as Marinette needing to learn a lesson about listening and relying on other people. Considering Chloé had lied to them earlier about anything happening with Sabrina when they asked her for clues, then kept getting in the way and not listening to Ladybug's instructions during the actual fight, not to mention many of Chloé's regular bullying antics, berating Ladybug for not listening to Chloé seems particularly off. How was Ladybug supposed to know that this was the one time Chloé was actually telling the truth?
- The show portrays Kagami's akumatization in "Riposte" as being Marinette's fault due to the latter supposedly making a bad call in favor of Adrien in his bout with Kagami. However, not only was it never confirmed that Marinette's call was incorrect (and a Freeze-Frame Bonus even implies that Marinette was right), but Marinette said from the beginning that she wasn't sure who struck first and simply that she thought it was Adrien. True, she could have abstained, but she had been put on the spot while still new to the rules of fencing, and given she was only there to try out for the team, it wasn't on her to make a formal ruling on whom the winner was, and she had no reason to believe her uncertain opinion would count as one anyway. D'Argencourt is arguably more to blame for putting pressure on Marinette to give an answer, then ignoring both the fact that she said she couldn't be certain and Adrien's opinion that Kagami won to officially declare Adrien the winner, all so he could seemingly spite Kagami for her earlier rudeness.
- In "Malediktator," Marinette and the rest of the class are portrayed as being in the wrong for wanting to celebrate that Chloé is leaving Paris, which Adrien objects to because she's his friend. The thing is, the entire class has been suffering from Chloé's bullying since before the series began, so it's hard to fault them for celebrating her departure.
- In "Chrismaster," the titular villain is akumatized because of a lie Marinette told him, and the episode frames this as wrong and has Marinette learning An Aesop about honesty and integrity; at the end of the episode, she directly learns that telling the truth in the first place would have solved her problem immediately. What horrible lie did Marinette tell to start this whole mess? She told a six-ish-year-old boy that she was one of Santa's elves, to get him to stop asking personal questions when he saw a stash of gifts in her room. Alya used a similar white lie to get Manon under control back in "Stormy Weather" (claiming to be a wish-granting unicorn to distract her from playing with Marinette's things), which was framed as an appropriate way to handle her. Chris is clearly at an age where he believes in Santa, and even the adults in the episode (and Cat Noir) gleefully react to Santa's presence. Not to mention the show makes it abundantly clear that lying to protect a secret identity is not only okay, but the unambiguously right thing to do. Yet Marinette's brief, age-appropriate story to entertain and distract a young child who is invading her privacy is wrong.
- "Volpina": Ladybug is widely blamed for Lila's akumatization, specifically her extremely harsh way of calling Lila out and humiliating her in front of Adrien. While it can be argued that way she called out Lila was out of line, the episode presents Ladybug calling out Lila at all as somehow being worse than Lila: a) lying about her relationship with Ladybug on the Ladyblog, which is publicly known and read, b) making false promises to people, c) stealing Adrien's book and throwing it in the trash, which Marinette witnessed, d) violating Adrien's personal space and repeatedly touching him without his consent, e) pretending to be a superheroine (which would have fooled Adrien/Cat Noir himself) to manipulate him into liking her, and f) using said false story about being a superheroine to disparage Ladybug to Adrien. Ladybug would have had no cause to humiliate Lila if Lila hadn't been lying about her in the first place.
- "Zombizou": When Marinette grows angry with Chloé for vandalizing her gift for Mme. Bustier, this is presented as a bad thing, as it leads to Mme. Bustier getting akumatized. The teacher's suggestion—forgiving Chloé and treating her vandalism as a contribution while telling Marinette to be a good example to Chloé—is shown to be the aesop, even though Chloé never apologizes to Marinette or seems to learn her lesson. It also puts Marinette in the position of being responsible for her bully's personal growth.
- A similar thing happens at the end of "Chameleon," with Adrien's now-infamous advice to "take the high road" with Lila's lies; again, this is presented as Marinette needing to learn to let her bully have a chance at redemption, rather than self-care. Thankfully, this ends up corrected way later in "Revelation," where Adrien admits he was wrong and that his strategy only gave Lila an incentive to become worse.
- A similar pattern exists with Ladybug being presented as causing Cat Noir a lot of pain over her rejections of him, with the show focusing on the pain Cat Noir is in (plus the implications that the Love Square is endgame, so therefore Ladybug will wind up with Cat Noir anyway) rather than on how Ladybug might be feeling with her boundaries being crossed again and again. Instead, Ladybug is portrayed as being cold, irresponsible, or just outright wrong about Cat Noir's feelings.
- One case that doesn't (just) involve Marinette is the ending of "Timebreaker" when Alix states that she should never have asked someone else to hold onto the watch for her and learns a lesson about her own responsibilities. But it's hard to see why this is presented as irresponsible, considering that her only other option at that point was to carry the watch while racing Kim, meaning an obvious risk of dropping and breaking it. At best, you could argue she should have left it with her father at the restaurant to take home, but that just raises the question of why he didn't suggest as much when he knew she was about to leave to go skating. Really, Alix's only mistake was not choosing someone smart enough to remember they have pockets (or a purse, in Marinette's case).
