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It's All My Fault

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It's All My Fault (trope)
"They don't have any food stored for the winter! (sob, moaning) And it's all my fault!"

You see characters blaming themselves for major messes fairly often, especially when they're not the only ones who are suffering as a result. It's a universal phrase used in every genre and medium.

Frequent replies:

  • "It's not your fault": A stock reply to an apology, and like the main phrase, it's often followed by why. Often implies the main phrase as well. "There's no way you could have foreseen this" is also popular as is "You Did Everything You Could" when the other failed to prevent bad things from happening.
  • "I am also to blame"/"We're all to blame": As stated above, when the penitent one is neither completely blameless nor solely to blame.
  • "So what are you going to do about it?": This puts the emphasis on fixing the problem rather than assigning blame and offers the character a chance to redeem himself by cleaning up the mess he made.

In the future, it is likely that a Big Bad, The Rival, or an Evil Counterpart will take some opportunity to remind the character of this culpability.

May be the result of failing to make amends. May end up being a Career-Building Blunder. May be uttered by someone laboring under The Chains of Commanding. See also My God, What Have I Done?, in which case it typically is all "my" fault, and "I" have just realized the consequences of "my" actions, and Failure-to-Save Murder. When death ensued, see These Hands Have Killed. If a character has so many It's All My Fault moments that it becomes almost a character trait, it's a Guilt Complex. Characters may irrationally think of this if I Wished You Were Dead. Contrast with Never My Fault. May lead to a Guilt-Induced Nightmare. Someone else may counter with a "Not Your Fault" Reassurance.

Not to be confused with It's All About Me, which ironically provides a contrast to this trope (as someone's inflated ego would easily lead to them going all Never My Fault).


Example subpages

Other examples:

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    Advertising 
  • "American Honda Presents DC Comics' Supergirl": In the first issue of this seat belt safety Public Service Announcement, Steve Gordon -Supergirl's current boyfriend- is driving his little sister to the cinema when his car gets hit by a drunk driver. The man blames himself for driving while drunk and harming kids, Steve blames himself for his sister getting hurt, and Supergirl blames herself for Steve's coma since she was not around to help him (even though she was saving lives endangered by an earthquake, thus justifying her absence).

    Music 
  • Used to a Narmful degree by Tim Owens in Iced Earth's Gettysburg 1863. Granted, it is General Lee's fault, but is it really necessary?
  • Brad Paisley (ft. Alison Krauss): "Whiskey Lullaby" features a woman Drowning Her Sorrows when a man died of suicide after she broke his heart, to the point where she too is Driven to Suicide.
  • Dr. Light in The Protomen's rock opera Father of Death, says this trope word for word, feeling he allowed Dr. Wily to commit his hostile takeover.
  • Taylor Swift:
    • "Afterglow" from Lover by is her apology after having a pointless fight with someone she loves and hurting them.
      Why'd I have to break what I love so much?
      It's on your face, and I'm to blame, I need to say
      Hey, it's all me, in my head
      I'm the one who burned us down
    • "the 1" from folklore (2020) uses a variation:
      In my defense, I have none
      For digging up the grave another time
    • In "betty", James admits:
      The worst thing that I ever did
      Was what I did to you
  • The song "My Bad" by Brian Woodbury is about someone who compulsively apologizes any time something bad happens.

    Podcasts 

    Roleplay 
  • Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
    • One persistent effect of Zia's depression is that it leads her to blame herself for problems that aren't her fault- and, if they are, then she blows them out of proportion. She's been trying to fight against it, but her recovery has been slow.
    • Harriet's parents died in a car accident, but she blames herself for it since she argued with them before they left. This has shot her self-esteem to pieces and left her believing that she doesn't deserve to live.

    Tabletop Games 
  • GURPS gives us Guilt Complex. Characters with this disadvantage will always try to hoist the blame onto themselves, and if something bad really does happen, they risk suffering the debilitating Chronic Depression for some time.
  • In Ravenloft, having a Heel Realization and admitting the Act of Ultimate Darkness that landed them in Ravenloft was their fault is the only way for a Darklord to escape their Ironic Hell. However, it has been consistently stated that people who could admit their faults wouldn't have become Darklords in the first place, with Lord Soth being the only Darklord who ever managed to get himself thrown out of Ravenloft by the Dark Powers.
  • The Warhammer Fantasy character Durthu is a millennia-old tree man haunted by his own failures to protect the world's forests. Because he's an immensely old and powerful being, his own feelings of shame and self-blame have gained a life of their own and now haunt him day and night, endlessly repeating every thing he's ever blamed himself for into his mind. In-game, Durthu can direct these feelings, called the "Lamentations of Despair", at others and inflict an instant Death by Despair.

    Theatre 
  • In Cactus Flower, Julian reacts this way when he finds out that Toni really did try to kill herself over him and the letter she sent wasn't just a ploy:
    Julian: I'm a bastard. The biggest bastard in the whole world.
    Toni: Julian, please, you're starting to make it sound like bragging. (She rises and stands directly behind him) It wasn't really your fault. I knew what I was getting into. You've always told me the truth.
    Julian: I should have kept my mouth shut.
  • In Jasper in Deadland, Agnes and Jasper both blame themselves for getting the other stuck in Deadland.
  • In Moriarty: A New Sherlock Holmes Adventure, Sherlock Holmes blames himself for "letting" Professor Moriarty disappear from university, years ago, once he knew that Moriarty was a criminal. Whether or not his evidence would have been enough to convince the police to arrest the professor, however, is anyone's guess.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ace Attorney:
    • In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, Regina Berry says this when she realizes she was responsible for the accident that sent Bat into a coma, and thus partly responsible for Acro killing Regina's father in an attempt to get revenge on her.
    • Quercus Alba from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth does this a lot. It's to prop up his facade of being a frail old man when in reality he's the Big Bad.
    • Miles Edgeworth falls into this for about half a case during the finale of the first game (not counting the Bonus Case), until Phoenix manages to break him out of it. With Evidence.
  • AQUARIUM (2022): Aqua feels indebted to Theo for yelling at him as a child and causing him nightmares.
  • In Code:Realize, Victor was the one to create Zicterium, essentially inventing chemical warfare, and by extension, made it possible for Isaac to create the Horologium and Cardia. Though Victor isn't personally responsible for the crimes that other people have used Zicterium for, he still considers it very much his fault.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: When Taka asks to speak to Alter Ego in Chapter 3, it becomes very obvious that this trope is at least part of the reason behind his total breakdown following the deaths of Chihiro and Mondo. The trope is somewhat Averted in that he really isn't to blame, since the only thing he can come up with to place the responsibility on himself is that he wasn't present to prevent what happened, even though logically there was no reason why he should have been. (His questions for Alter Ego are "Do you hate Mondo?" and "Since I couldn't stop him, do you hate me?") Considering that he's meant to be the "Ultimate Moral Compass" and Mondo's closest friend, though, as well as being quite domineering with a tendency to try to take leadership over the whole group, it is very in-character for him to blame himself regardless.
  • The protagonist of Double Homework blames himself for the incident that killed 12 people. The media all seem to agree, while his friends, who don’t have all the facts, tell him that it’s all fine, even when he confesses his role in it to one of them. Both Tamara and Dennis (when he finds out) attempt to manipulate his guilt for their own purposes.
  • Galaxy Angel: On the third chapter of Eternal Lovers, Tact is forced to shoot down his girlfriend when her Emblem Frame goes out of control, severely injuring her. It didn't help that right before this happened they had an argument which heavily strained their relationship, and he spends hours in the infirmary waiting for her to wake up as he blames himself for hurting her.
  • Little Busters!: Said word for word by Kyousuke early on in Refrain in reference to the way Rin's social anxiety had hit critical levels to the point where she can't function normally in society anymore. Though in this case, it's mixed with I Did What I Had to Do, and while the consequences are certainly regrettable the reason behind the actions in the first place are more real now than ever.
  • In Magical Diary, during Damien's path, the player character blames herself for the injuries Damien caused her. Virginia is quick to dismiss this, but it doesn't comfort the PC much.
    Virginia: Don't say that! It is not your fault, it's his! No one saw this coming! He's dated lots of girls and broken all their hearts, you're not the first!
    Mary Sue: No, I'm just the only one stupid enough to agree to give him my soul.
  • Minotaur Hotel: Asterion feels this way about himself towards the supposed mistakes he made in his life, despite the fact that he was young when he made them. He also feels ashamed of himself for thinking that he could give the hotel a purpose after Clement sabotages it. Obviously, you tell him that it's not his fault.
  • In Mystic Messenger, we have V who has endured years of Domestic Abuse at the hands of his ex-fiance Rika to the point where he even blames himself for the eye injury that would eventually turn him blind and cause him to give up his career as a photographer. He blames himself completely for all of the bad things that've happened in his and Rika's life, including her deteriorating mental health even though it was Rika herself who decided to stop her own treatment and V was the one who tried (and failed) to persuade her to keep to it for her sake.
  • While he does recognize that, ultimately, Kakuya is to blame for everything, Akira from Spirit Hunter: NG feels a tremendous amount of guilt for getting his companions involved with spirits after Maruhashi is killed by one. It takes a pep talk from one of said companions, where they insist that they hold responsibility for their own actions, for him to get over it.
  • Super Robot Wars V: Tetsuya Tsurugi briefly considers himself the primary reason ZERO awakens and almost dooms the world, knowing that him and Great Mazinger are one of the primary triggers for ZERO's arrival.
  • Tavern Talk: In Tempest Tantrum, Melli blames herself for accidentally unleashing the fire spirit that causes the Primordial Storm all over Phesoa. The Innkeep can console her by assuring her that she can find a solution because she's saved the world before.
  • Theresia: Dear Emile gives us two doctors, Maylee and an unnamed man, the protagonist of Dear Martel. He blames himself for creating Epicari. Maylee comments that she has no intention of blaming him, and would rather create a solution. By the end of the game, it's revealed Maylee actually did blame herself.

    Web Animation 
  • Helluva Boss: Though he tries to hide it, Blitzo suffers from a massive guilt complex due to accidentally starting a fire that burned the circus he used to work at, which left Fizzarolli with horrific scars and (it's implied) killed his own mother. This ruined his friendship with Fizz (who believed that Blitzo started the fire on purpose out of jealousy) and possibly sent his sister Barbie Wire into a drug addiction and eventually into rehab; once she checks herself out in the present, Barbie makes it abundantly clear to Blitzo that she never wants to see him again. When Fizz confronts him about it in the present, Blitzo breaks down in tears and apologizes for the whole debacle.
  • HFIL: King Cold explains to Cell that the reason he's so ardent about getting everyone to reform and make their Heel Face Turns is because he blames himself for everyone being in HFIL in the first place. He's not technically wrong either: Freeza is his son, so is Cooler, most of the other morally compromised malefactors were in his employ, and Cell has some of his and Freeza's DNA and personality traits. The only ones who weren't there because of Cold were Guru (his causing the genocide of the albino Namekians predates Freeza's invasion) and Bojack, Zangya, and Lord Slug, who are unrelated to Cold's empire entirely. Of course, that's if King Cold is being sincere, since it's possible he's manipulating everyone for his own ends.
  • The Music Freaks: Zander’s reaction when Luke and his relationship becomes strained due to Unresolved Sexual Tension.
    Zander: I’m such an awful friend. Luke is so kind, he never puts himself first, he’s always looking out for others. I just end up pushing him away.
  • Red vs. Blue: A running gag in Season 11 involves various members of the Blood Gulch Crew, when confronted with certain questions or statements about their crashed ship, blame themselves for the ship's crashing. Rather than saying aloud that it's their fault, each person has a flashback to something they did on the ship that appears to be the cause of flashing red warning lights, then cuts back to the present where they either cite a Suspiciously Specific Denial or just dodge the topic. As a result, none of them know about the mistakes the others made. Subverted when it's eventually revealed that the only reason their ship survived a lethal tractor beam trap that was desiged to crash ships and kill everyone on board is because all the individual mistakes the crew caused resulted in the ship fighting itself to the point where it was even trying to go in different directions and different speeds all at the same time; the ship's contradictory behaviour countered the trap just enough to save their lives. In other words, while each disaster individually could have crashed the ship in normal circumstances, the combination of disasters ended up saving their lives instead.
  • RWBY: In stark contrast to James Ironwood (especially in Volumes 7 - 8, when his worst traits were exacerbated by his past bad decisions coming back to bite him in the ass and Salem's machinations), Ruby Rose developed a very bad tendency to hold herself as being responsible for just about anything that went wrong under her leadership, even if it was due to circumstances completely outside of her control. This was the result of Ozpin giving her a very poorly worded bit of advice during her early days, where he unintentionally insinuated that a leader cannot ever fail under any circumstances, otherwise people would abandon them. Due to Ruby's own inexperience with leadership, and her own heavily suppressed trauma regarding her mother, she ends up internalizing this so poorly that it ends up eventually breaking her in Volume 9. It takes a talk with the deity of that realm, the Blacksmith, and seeing a vision of her mother's past mistakes to begin to recognize how flawed this perception really is.
  • SNARLED: In "The Chalava", Monica says this verbatim when she declares the titular entity nearly harming her brother was her fault. Sadly, she's not too far off.
  • In Sodor: Dark Times, a Darker and Edgier fan video series of Thomas & Friends, Gordon and the Fat Controller blame themselves for Alfred (who had murdered Henry earlier) blowing up Knapford Station, resulting in the deaths of Thomas, Edward, James, and Percy, causing the latter to resign as controller.

    Webcomics 
  • In Clarissa, the titular protagonist addresses the audience directly on the subject of how best to avoid being sexually abused by daddy during bathtime. But in the end, we see she's actually been talking to herself in the mirror.
    Clarissa, glaring at herself: We all know whose fault this is ...
  • Chadam says this word-for-word when he fails to save a young boy, named Palco, from the Pallids and must confront the boy's mother and brother. Simkin tries to convince everyone that it wasn't Chadam's fault, but they aren't having it.
  • DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Dongtae blames himself for Byungchul's death, who might not have died and kickstarted the story had Dongtae not ignored the quest X gave him that particular night.
  • Dr. Frost: It’s revealed that this is how Professor Song feels about her sister Seol's suicide, and that her blaming Frost is a defense mechanism.
  • In El Goonish Shive, this is the last thing that goes through Grace's mind before she goes berserk and attacks Damien.
  • Karl of Emergency Exit say this when he finds out about Eddie and Jason's plan to fix his face by trading an artifact, despite the fact he was unaware of the plan while it was in progress.
  • In a less serious example than most Itto of Girl Genius tries to invoke this when he realizes the Baron isn't buying his story of sneaking into the labs alone though he still doesn't give up the names of any other students involved.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court:
    • Probably owing to her (almost) complete self-reliance through most of her childhood, Antimony blames herself for her father's disappearance and for failing to help the Ghost with the Sword (even though their meeting lasted less than a minute, most of which the Ghost spent trying to cut Annie's face off). Both times, Kat tells Annie she's being ridiculous.
    • Another example is Diego, who was in love with Jeanne (The Ghost with the Sword mentioned above) while she was alive. Any of the court robots (the originals were built by Diego) will respond to "Jeanne" with "She died and we did nothing." It was eventually revealed that Diego set Jeanne up to her fate because she didn't love him back, it really is his fault. Averted. Even on his deathbed he pins all of the blame on the other members of the Court involved in Jeanne's death.
    • Annie later blames herself for Coyote's death when Ysengrin turned on him after Coyote gave him his powers and the destruction Ysengrin inflicted on the Court. Probably because Coyote gave Ysengrin his power due to supposedly being impressed by Ysengrin's bonding with Annie. And because she helped free Jeanne from her curse, which while a good deed also removed the one power keeping Coyote (and by extension Ysengrin) from outright attacking the Court.
    • And still later, Annie blames herself for Loup destroying Reynardine's real body, in retaliation for his part in a failed capture attempt. They had no way of knowing the attempt was doomed from the start because of Jerrick being a part of the plan. Jerrick is actually an aspect of Loup in disguise.
  • Homestuck:
    • When a deceased doomed alternate timeline version of Dave finds out that his Bro died, his first question is "what did i do wrong". At the time the event occurred, Dave was psychically unconscious on a different planet, and could not have possibly done a thing to help (of course, he is a time traveller who revisited that point of the timeline several times, so he could theoretically have gone to help, but another alternate version of him was already helping and he still failed).
    • Also, WV. When he led the black and white pawns to battle, Jack Noir went and killed every single one of them. He blames himself for all of their deaths, and leads to a Harsher in Hindsight moment during [S] WV: Lead your men to victory! He's commanding a chess army.
    • And Karkat. While he may try to push the blame on his past selves for little things, like trolling Jade for most of her life, he always blames himself when things get really serious. Like failing to get Sollux into the Medium in time, not preventing Eridan from killing Kanaya and Feferi, not keeping an eye on Gamzee to prevent him from going Ax-Crazy, accidentally giving the kids' universe cancer... He's complex enough that this isn't exactly his defining trait, but it's damn close.
  • The "it's not your fault" variation is darkly twisted near the end of It's Walky!, when the Head Alien uses it to make Sal feel helpless.
  • In Little Lapses, Holly blames herself for getting her friends into a major fight because she didn't speak up earlier about Blue not wanting to play with them, believing that she didn't have a place to speak up for them since she's only been friends with them for a year. She also didn't object to Cinnabar's ideas to try cheering Blue up because Holly believed her ideas were lame, and combined with her reluctance to fight back, she feels useless to the team, until she tries consoling her friends over their argument.
  • In Motherly Scootaloo, this is one of Scootaloo's main flaws, blaming herself for things that couldn't possibly be her fault.
  • In Oglaf the ghostly Lizard of Guilt pesters Ivan into lashing out and yelling insults... in the middle of his trial for treason against the Mistress. In the last panel, the guards are posting a new "Apprentice Wanted" sign, and the Lizard of Guilt has a screaming guilt trip.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • Vaarsuvius blames him/herself for not having enough magical power to change the outcome of the Azure City battle and, since then, for failing to locate a missing friend who got separated during the battle. V's self-blame is anything but objective, since his/her friend is blocked from scrying by an abjuration that can only be broken with Epic-level magic, and V's contributions during the battle far outweighed his eventual limitations, but intellectually acknowledging this does little to stop the anguish.
    • And poor V plays this even straighter — and with more cause — upon realizing that it was V's own spell that wiped out the Draketooth family and every other bloodline they'd ever reproduced with.
      Vaarsuvius: My fault.
      Blackwing: Vaarsuvius?
      Vaarsuvius: I am the cause. It sprang from my brow.
    • Trying to avert this trope is partially Redcloak's motivation for his deeds, as expanded on in Start Of Darkness. While he has other reasons, another part is avoiding the guilt he feels for every goblin that died under his command. As his brother Right-Eye put it best...
      Right-Eye: It's all about whose fault it is... If I kill Xykon now, then it was all a waste. You ordered goblins to their deaths believing in the Plan- so if we abandon it now, then you were wrong. You let them die for nothing. You're willing to throw good lives after bad so that you don't have to admit that we were wrong to work with Xykon in the first place, much less help him cheat death.
  • Sleepless Domain:
    • Low self-esteem and Survivor Guilt combine to cause this in Undine. Her old team was wiped out after a monster attack, with Undine surviving only because Tessa sacrificed her power to save her. Between this and the possibility that the one behind the incident has a personal grudge against Undine, she fears it all happened because of her. An encounter with that person later leaves Undine unable to take pleasure from saving a civilian family from a monster because she fears it was her presence that brought about the attack in the first place. That Heartful Punch was very nearly killed as well only makes it worse.
    • Tessa also feels responsible for the fate of Team Alchemical. It was an argument with them over who should be leader that caused Tessa to sit out the night of the attack and arrive too late to help anyone but Undine. The reason she was so quick to give up her power for Undine was because, at that moment, she felt that any one of them deserved to live more than she did.
  • Sluggy Freelance:
    • Torg blames himself for failing to save Alt-Zoe. In fact, he blames himself more than he blames the guy who actually killed her.
    • Riff blames himself for Zoe getting horribly burned, mistakenly believing it was one of his malfunctioning inventions that started the fire.
  • Stagtown: Examined and deconstructed as the series goes on. Frankie, Felix, and Jeremy frequently blame themselves whenever something goes wrong in their ongoing fight against the entity controlling the town. In the Apocalyptic Log left behind by "Nova," she leaves a warning that the entity deliberately weaponizes guilt in order to force its victims to do what it wants. Ashley warns the trio that the entity's drawn to people who obsess over their mistakes. By the very end, Frankie realizes that the Stagtown entity deliberately enforces this mindset because it's so used to pulling Never My Fault and tries to incite guilt in its potential sacrifices so they'd be willing to act as a sin-eater and "atone."
    • In Stagtown's past following the carousel massacre, the townspeople started to believe the bad crops and hard winter were nature's punishment for their sins. They initially all blamed themselves and tried to "appease" the forest by leaving offerings, despite it going against their religion. When that failed, they decided to kill the rich man who commissioned the carousel in the first place. They thus burned his house down with his family trapped inside. When that failed, they tried to get a sin-eater to absolve the town but when he refused to help, they killed him too. This toxic mixture of both It's All My Fault and Never My Fault resulted in the town's collective guilt turning into an oil-like monstrosity that's spent years and trapping and gaslighting outsiders to find someone who will absolve them of their sins. Frankie calls the monster out on its cowardice, saying it was so afraid of being at fault that it kept blaming others for bad luck and bad timing, which only intensified as they committed even worse acts. She makes it turn on itself when she demands to know who specifically started all this if they expect her to act as a sin-eater, causing the individual souls to tear each other apart as they try to pass the blame on each other.
  • Tapiseri Soujourn: Soujourn blames herself for Caleb burning down the entire village in order to find her.
  • In Undead Friend Mahalah feels guilty for accidentally trapping her and Orrick in the game.'
  • unOrdinary: Arlo refuses to retake the "king" position after his attack on John to force him to show his true power level and ranking caused John to retaliate by attacking just about anyone who ticks him off, wreaking the school's "royalty" and putting several people in the hospital. Even after this Arlo is still having a hard time breaking with his stringent belief in the hierarchy or admitting the full extent of what he did to John, making his apologies land flat, but he fully admits the ensuing chaos and damage is his fault for not leaving someone alone just for refusing to participate in society's tier system.
  • Something of a character flaw for Ben from Weak Hero; though he can handle it when he's the one taking a beating, he can't stand the people around him getting hurt, and feels responsible for it even when it isn't this fault. In middle school, Alex keeps silent about fighting for Ben's honour, knowing that Ben would blame himself for it if he found out.

    Web Original 
  • In the web-novel Fragile, this appears in one of the story's more poignant scenes. Severin apologizes to Page for going insane because of how it hurts him (Page, that is, not Severin). An emotional episode ensues, in which Page assures Severin that not only is it not his fault, there wasn't anything he could do at all to prevent it.
  • In the Whateley Universe, Phase blames herself for what has happened to her own body. Word of God says that isn't true.
    • It took a long time for Tennyo to get over her guilt about the Star Stalker's actions before it merged with her, despite the fact that most of it took place before the Earth even existed. In some ways, she never has fully come to grips with it, in fact.
  • In one of the Muppet Viral Videos, two pumpkins unwittingly goad the Swedish Chef into using a bazooka on them.
    Pumpkin 1: Sorry 'bout that.
    Pumpkin 2: Neh, I blame myself.
  • The Nostalgia Critic tortures himself over Ma-Ti's death in Suburban Knights, realizing that even though he proved his friendship in the end, it was still partly his treatment of Ma-Ti that drove him to Heroic Suicide in the first place. He spends a year getting sadder and more obsessed with responsibility, and then in To Boldly Flee — to put it in simple terms — atones, apologizes and makes his own Heroic Suicide too.
  • In Entry #66 of Marble Hornets, Tim admits to Jay that he feels everything that happened to the cast of Marble Hornets is his fault because his exposure to the Operator as a child may have been what lured it to them in the first place.
  • EXO Next Door:
    • D.O. blames himself for only talking about himself and not realizing anything was wrong when Suho calls him after running away after leaving the hospital.
    • Chanyeol blames himself for Suho getting hurt in the first place, but as he was the one who knocked over the water bottle Suho tripped on, he's not entirely blameless.
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd says this when he reviews a bunch of games based on himself, and realizes that many of these games deliberately include some of the bad/frustrating game elements that he commonly complains about in his videos, such as arcing projectiles that are difficult to hit enemies with and nonsensical enemy design. When he sees the hypothetical overkill death trap he described in his Super Pitfall review made real, it's enough for him to subvert his catch phrase, "What were they thinking?!", into, "What was I thinking?!"
  • Critical Role has a multiple-person variant (a reversed Blame Game) when a quartet of dragons attack Emon and tell the inhabitants, "Your protectors brought this upon you." Keyleth is sure it's her fault, because her Aramente took them to the fire plane, where the dragon leader, Thordak, was trapped. Vax is certain it's his, because he was the one to finish Brimscythe, the last dragon to attack Emon. And Allura insists it's her doing, because she and her companions captured Thordak in the fire plan years before, back when they were protectors of Emon.

    Real Life 
  • In 1893, by giving and insisting on a crazy order, Vice Admiral Tryon caused his flagship, the Victoria, to collide with its fleetmate Camperdown, resulting in the loss of more than 300 lives. He chose to Going Down with the Ship. His last recorded words were exactly this: "It was all my fault".note 
  • Czarina Alexandra of Russia blamed herself for her son Alexis being born a hemophiliac in 1904. It ran in her family and had killed her brother and uncle. Medical science at the time had no real way of helping himnote , and to assuage her guilt, she turned to mysticism to help him to disastrous results.
  • As the troops were planning to disembark for the Normandy landings in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote two letters, the first one commending the troops for their efforts in securing the beaches and the liberation of France. He also wrote a second one in case the beach landings failed (which was a real possibility due to the bad weather, massively complex scheme, and stout German defenses), in which he diverted blame upon himself and not the troops. When the invasion proved successful, Eisenhower was going to toss the second letter away, but a junior officer read it and insisted it be preserved for historical value.
"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."
  • An absolutely epic example by Flight Director Gene Kranz after the Apollo 1 fire:
    "Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did. From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough and Competent'. Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control".
  • In the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee felt this and said as much after he lost the Battle of Gettysburg after his ill-conceived Pickett's Charge was repulsed. No doubt, part of that is that he was kicking himself for ignoring General Longstreet's advice to first manoeuvre around the Union Army to get between it and Washington DC, and then disregarding his warning that Pickett's Charge would be a costly debacle.
  • Whenever Steve Irwin was attacked or injured by an animal over the course of his career, he was always quick to stress that the blame was his, as they were only behaving according to their nature and it was his responsibility as a conservationist to be situationally aware and minimize stress for them in any interaction.

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Ann blames herself

Upon hearing her brother's message on how he wants to find N540 to cure her illness, Ann laments that it's her fault for losing control over the incident that injured him with an inflicted Eye Scream.

How well does it match the trope?

5 (2 votes)

Example of:

Main / ItsAllMyFault

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