Mistakes Are Not the End of the World

Oh, everyone makes mistakes
Oh, yes they do
Your sister and your brother and your dad and mother too
Big people, small people, matter of fact, all people
Everyone makes mistakes, so why can't you?

Linus: Well, I can understand how you feel. You worked hard, studying for the spelling bee, and I suppose you feel you let everyone down, and you made a fool out of yourself and everything. But did you notice something, Charlie Brown?
Charlie Brown: What's that?
Linus: The world didn't come to an end.

— A Boy Named Charlie Brown

Mistakes. Sometimes they're bad as they seem, sometimes they're good happy accidents, and sometimes you can learn from them. But one thing is certain: most people, if not everyone, makes them, some more than others. After all, it is quite difficult to account for a number of issues sometimes, especially if distracted, and that landing on one's feet and doing one's best is what counts. However, not everybody is happy with or realizes this, as sometimes they need to learn a lesson and that's what this trope is.

Usually, this is how this trope will play out: a character makes a mistake. It might be something they're just learning to do or something they're already a pro at, or maybe it had a consequence that could disappoint other people like it made them lose a game or something.

Then, the character will have either or a combination of these feelings: embarrassed because they think everyone will laugh at or shun them for making the mistake or they'll lose their reputation as a good [whatever], or sad because they think they'll never be able to do the thing they're learning, weren't cut out to do something they were previously good at after all, or think that the consequence (e.g. making their team lose) was their fault. How they act on these feelings may vary: they might just cry or sulk, they might shy away, or they might try to give up the thing they made a mistake doing or go to ridiculous extremes to try to avoid making other mistakes.

They might also try to prevent anyone from knowing about their mistake, which will, at least in enough stories, inevitably fail. Common ways they'll try to prevent people from knowing are hiding the evidence (for example, trying to fix the Priceless Ming Vase or hide the stained dress) and blaming other people or the weather, which might fail because the lie is just too implausible and will usually lead to a second lesson: that lying is wrong.

Then, they'll learn that their mistake, and mistakes in general, are fine and normal. Maybe their role model reveals the fact that they make mistakes too, or made similar mistakes when they were first learning to do the thing the character is learning. Maybe all it takes is a Rousing Speech stating how everyone makes mistakes and (if it was a mistake at something they're still learning) that practice makes perfect. Maybe they learn it of their own accord, often because they have to try what they failed at again, sometimes even to save someone's life. Anyway, they're happy now. Sometimes this happens over the course of a whole plot, sometimes just a single scene or a subplot.

It must be noted that often the attitude is that mistakes are more forgivable if the mistake-maker has tried their best. The less effort they took to avoid making the mistake, the more likely they are to be at least partially blamed for it (which is why trying to invoke this trope on yourself to pull a Never My Fault is almost guaranteed to fail). However, if they did not realize that effort needed to be made or did not know how to make the effort (and it wasn't easy for them to learn how), they are more likely to be forgiven for not making effort, provided that they learn from the mistake as much as possible. As such, this trope is related to the Sliding Scale of Unavoidable vs. Unforgivable.

Often serves as An Aesop. One idiom that basically sums up this trope is "To err is human", sometimes with "To forgive is divine" attached to it. Hence, it's acting in the spirit of God to forgive. The "everyone/we all" or other statements regarding making mistakes are, indeed, one of the more common phrases in media, being a way to tell people that, at least generally, its okay to make mistakes - and with the possible addition that those who cast stones of harsh judgment may well be living in glass houses.

An obvious (and regular) subversion of this Trope is that someone tries to bring up this lesson, only for the failure to become Worse with Context and thus the lecture becomes that this mistake is "the end of the world".

Common in children's entertainment. A variation is seen in the Toilet Training Plot which lets the kid know that having accidents is okay. The mistake may become a Career-Building Blunder if someone's boss invokes the trope. The B Grade (where a straight-A student is sad/afraid/shocked because they got a B) often leads to this trope, but it's not quite a sub-trope because sometimes it only shows up as a brief gag. May stem from an It's All My Fault moment. If the mistake causes a lot of misery, the speaker (or the writer) will enforce that Misery Builds Character. This trope might be used to bring a character out of a 10-Minute Retirement. See also Necessary Fail, where something bad happening today leads to something good happening in the future.

Compare A Lesson in Defeat for when mistakes are necessary to learn humility. Contrast Can't Get Away with Nuthin', because sometimes with that trope, even if you do something accidentally it's unacceptable. Compare and contrast The Perfectionist, for whom this lesson could be met either with begrudging acceptance ("I know, but it doesn't make the mistake I made any less annoying") or outright hostility. If they lie to cover a mistake, the work may have an Honesty Aesop as well. See also Serious Business and Felony Misdemeanor where characters treat a mistake like The End of the World as We Know It.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Pokémon: At the end of the Indigo League, after both Ash and Ritchie lose their respective matches, Ritchie helps Ash realize that losing is an invaluable part of being a Pokemon Trainer. He also states that losing doesn't have to be the end of their journey as long as they learn from it, which Ash takes to heart from that moment forward.
• In Zombie Land Saga this becomes a Wham Line in the last episode for Sakura whenever she hears Ai saying it, as she realizes that maybe being massively unlucky is okay.

Fan Works

• Zigzagged in The Wonder Years fanfiction A Time to Kill, a Time to Heal. Kevin and Paul are taking R.O.T.C. courses in college and when their side loses during an exercise, their instructor tells them that it's OK to make mistakes, but only while in training and only if they can learn something from the mistake that they can use to their advantage in the next exercise.
  Guys, it doesn't matter who screwed up. It doesn't matter how many times you screw up. As long as nobody gets hurt for real and no property gets damaged, this is the place to screw up. As long as you learn something from each screwup that you can file away for future use, and you do your best to keep from making the same screwup over and over, that's more valuable than getting things right. I'd rather have each one of you get shot a thousand times with blanks out here if it keeps one of you from getting shot once with a real bullet on a real battlefield.
• The lesson that Storm has to learn in Total Drama Legacy. In one episode, it's revealed that Storm's greatest fear is getting anything below a C+ on a test. Because Storm was blessed with incredible physical and mental strength, she grew up only knowing success, and never learned that failure is natural and a part of life. After failing a mock test designed to trick her as part of the "Phobia Factor" challenge, Storm breaks down crying and fails to conquer her fear. Once the challenge is over, Serena comforts Storm, reassuring her that failure is a part of life and a single mistake doesn't diminish her status as a genius. It's thanks to Serena's encouraging words that Storm learns to accept failure, which results in her taking her loss gracefully when she gets eliminated.
• Turning a New Leaf: After failing to make it past the second round of the Sports Festival, Kaibara is upset that he wasn't able to keep his promise to All Might to "show the world that he is here!" However, All Might reassures him that it's not his fault; even he's been tricked by opponents in the past, after all. All Might also notes that Sir Nighteye has been harassing him, believing that HE should get to dictate who the next bearer of One For All is; if Kaibara had made it to the third round and showed off his Quirk, Nighteye likely would have realized who Toshinori had chosen and started harassing Kaibara.
• What You Knead: When Kakashi attempts to make bread for the first time, it turns out inedible... and he realizes that for once, making a mistake didn't matter. Unlike on his ANBU missions, nothing serious was at stake. This epiphany spurs him to latch onto baking as a form of stress relief, gradually teaching himself the ropes... and even though he still makes some pretty epic blunders along the way, he considers it all part of the learning process.

Films — Animation

• One song from Belle's Magical World has the upbeat, if grammatically incorrect, lyric "a little give, a little take, a little it's OK to make a small mistake."
• A Boy Named Charlie Brown provides a semi-cynical example, which is the one sweet point in a borderline Downer Ending: after Charlie Brown got second place in the national spelling bee because he didn't recall how to spell "beagle" right, every positive thing he gained over the course of the movie is lost in a second, especially his boosted self-esteem. Linus has to give it to Charlie in the bluntest of manners: "the world didn't come to an end". Not that he got second place in the national spelling bee, not that his true friends are those who won't ridicule him over this (except Lucy, of course), and not reminding Charlie again that his classmates missed him while he was out on the competition, but that this is just one mistake and he's still got the rest of his life to live.
• "The Song of the Heart" from Happy Feet and as performed by Prince has this in its lyrics.
  Look, everybody makes mistakes- oh yeah, not one or two (Right!) / But that don't make the dirty little things they say about you true!
• This is the entire moral of Meet the Robinsons, to the point that the titular family literally celebrates whenever a failure occurs.
• Rooster has this philosophy on The Secret Life of Pets 2 and isn't big on Max trying to shelter his owner's young son, Liam, from everything.
  Rooster: Oh, so he got really high up in this hypothetical tree? Kid gets hurt, he learns not to do it again. You know how many electric cords I've chewed?
  Max: Like multiple cords?
  Rooster: One. It shocked me. I walked backward for a week, but I never chewed a cord again.

Films — Live-Action

• In Captain Marvel (2019), Carol's former mentor tries to imply that she's inferior because whenever she tried a sport in the past, she'd fall down on her first try. Carol retorts that this doesn't make her inferior because she would always get up and try again.
• Star Wars: A significant theme in The Last Jedi, with a ghostly Yoda teaching Luke that the greatest teacher is failure.

Literature

• In Dreadnought, a novel based on Star Trek, Captaincy Candidate Piper is forced to command a Federation warship named Dreadnought whose crew consists of inexperienced cadets. She tries to convince herself that mistakes won't hurt because it's just a simulation.
• In The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, a girl named Beatrice never made a mistake in her life but freaks out when she makes her first mistake, yet inexplicably is fine with mistakes when she makes her second.
• In "I Want to Go Home", a Muppet Kids book, when Fozzie has a sleepover at Kermit's house, he attempts to help Kermit's family wash the dishes after dinner. When he tries to wash a dish, it slips out of his hands, falls on the floor, and breaks. When Fozzie feels horrible about breaking the dish, Kermit tells him not to feel bad, and that he breaks things by accident all the time, but Fozzie still feels bad because he was a guest at Kermit's house.
• In the kids' book Lulu's Loo, Lulu is a little girl who still wets her pants and her mother says it's no big deal.
• In the Peanuts book "You're a Big Brother, Charlie Brown!", set during Sally's infancy, Charlie yells at Sally for messing up his favorite jigsaw puzzle and then feels bad about it. He tells Linus, who informs him that mistakes happen and that siblings can get along, telling him not to feel too bad. However, Lucy then yells at him for taking her comic book. ^note This book is based on a strip in which Lucy told Charlie Brown that she went through a similar experience when Linus was a baby. Her reason for yelling at Linus was because she was still mad at him for that incident.
• In The Potty Book, Henry and Hannah wet their pants and their parents say it's OK. Downplayed as this only takes up one page.
• Roys Bedoys: The moral of “Don’t Give Up, Roys Bedoys!” is not to give up something just because you failed the first time, since everything takes practice.
• Sesame Street books:
  • In "Potty Time with Abby", Abby says that she sometimes makes mistakes while potty training (either the usual mistake of not getting there on time or her trademark mistake of turning things into pumpkins). She tells the readers that making mistakes while potty training is normal.
  • In "P is for Potty", Elmo's cousin Albie wets his pants and Elmo and Mae (Elmo's mom) reassure him that it is OK and that Elmo used to wet his pants as well.
  • In "Everyone Makes Mistakes", Big Bird accidentally knocks over some laundry and tries to lie about it but learns that it's fine to make mistakes.
  • In "Toilet Time", it shows the main cast as toddlers^note  although for some reason Zoe is older than Big Bird and Ernie, Bert, and Grover are the same age as Zoe, whereas in the show, Ernie, Bert, and Grover are adults, Zoe's a preschooler and Big Bird's a first grader and Ernie's page says that Ernie sometimes has accidents and has the message "That's OK, Ernie!".
• In the kids' book Super Pooper and Whizz Kid, a cat and a dog tell the readers how to use the toilet and at the end, they say, "Remember— accidents happen and that's OK.".
• The Time To book "Time to Pee" ends with a sign saying, "P.S. Don't worry if you don't get it right the first time; you'll get another chance."
• Who Wet My Pants: The dog reassures Reuben that "it could happen to anyone" regarding his wet pants.

Live-Action TV

• In one episode of Death in Paradise, Camille's request for a transfer is blocked by her superior Humphrey, because he secretly fancies her and wants her to stay a part of his team, but he relents when he realises that he's harming her career prospects for a very selfish reason. When he reveals to her that he resubmitted the transfer request on her behalf, he tells her "Someone once taught me that mistakes don't matter; what matters is what you do to put them right."
• Doctor Who: In "Robots of Death," the Doctor and robot detective D-84 are trying to figure out who's behind the robot reprogramming. "There is only the crew...and you," D-84 insists. The Doctor retorts, "But you don't know what he looks like." D-84 momentarily goes into a Heroic BSoD at this, but the Doctor pulls him back on his feet: "Yes, you failed, but congratulations—failure is one of the basic freedoms!"
• In "Dancer Dave" from Helpsters, Dave isn't sure he wants to do his dance because he might a mistake. Cody tells him that he just have to do his best and that it's okay to make mistakes, that sometimes when she "mistake a make," nobody even notices.
• This is a theme of pretty much any reality-cooking show with Gordon Ramsay, particularly his renovation shows such as Kitchen Nightmares or Hotel Hell. Of course, since it's Ramsay, there's likely to be plenty of shouting and a fair of cursing. Still - 200,000 dollars (euros, pounds, quids, whatever) in debt, he wouldn't be trying if he thought that past mistakes were enough to make the situation beyond salvation. Even in the shows, mistakes are still likely to be made, and in a kitchen service, you have to push past them or that will be what sinks you.
• Odd Squad:
  • In "Behind Enemy Mimes", Olympia and Otis attempt to be perfect and not make mistakes in front of Oprah when she accompanies them on a mission to defeat a trio of mimes, defeat their silence ray, and save O'Donahue (working undercover for Precinct 13579) from infiltration of the trio. Their goal is to impress her in order to make her think that they're great agents, but Oprah manages to figure out the first and second clues that O'Donahue leaves behind, much to their chagrin. However, when the agents try to find the third clue located on the sixth floor of a hotel, Oprah ends up making a mistake of her own and believes that a rug sitting on the floor outside of the elevators is one that O'Donahue made and is the clue they're looking for. Olympia and Otis figure out the real clue in the form of a smoke alarm and a light separated by a large wooden X on the ceiling and are afraid to tell their boss that she's wrong out of fear that she'll get angry at them, but when they do, she doesn't get angry in the slightest and tells them that "everyone makes mistakes sometimes, even the boss", much to their surprise.
  • This is the Aesop of the episode "Jeremy". Opal, being The Perfectionist, is afraid of messing up and making a mistake in front of the eponymous Odd Squad fan, believing that he will view her and the rest of the Mobile Unit as a Broken Pedestal if they do. When the agents manage to inadvertently lock the van, Opal tries her best to hide it from Jeremy as she's too embarrassed to admit the team's mistake to him, but her teammates believe that they should tell him the truth. Opal manages to let the secret out when a villain known as Monsieur Papier-Mache attacks and confesses to Jeremy, but he realizes that she didn't want to let him down and tells her that she and her teammates could never let him down because he loves Odd Squad enough to realize that they, and by extension those in the organization, have no malicious intent behind their actions.
  • At the end of "Train of Thoughts", Oswald, impersonating his idol Detective Shmumbers, realizes that he made a mistake in believing that number patterns are the only patterns in existence, deeming Orla the real Detective Shmumbers and offering his monocle to her. She refuses, stating that what she learned from reading the Detective Shmumbers books is that even the eponymous detective makes mistakes, but she never gives up — which is exactly what Oswald did.
• On Out of the Box, the episode "Making Mistakes" was about this and featured the song "Turn a Mistake into Something Great."
  Turn a mistake into something great / Try and see it from a new point of view / If we make a mistake, we can try to create something different and totally new!
• The Shining Time Station episode "And the Band Played Off" features a song called "Learn From Your Mistakes" about how mistakes aren't completely bad because they can be educational. It also provides advice on how to prevent certain mistakes.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation:
  • Played with in "Peak Performance": Data (an android) loses a game to an alien and spends a lot of time checking himself for a malfunction. Pulaski and Troi (the latter of which is unusual as she's known Data for a long time and can sense emotions) both think he's discouraged and give him a speech on how mistakes are OK, but it turns out he's not discouraged, in fact, he has no emotions — he just couldn't logically see how the alien was skilled enough to win against an android. Eventually, Data wins by playing hyper-defensively until the alien gives up.
  • In "Coming of Age", Wesley fails his entrance exam to Starfleet Academy and believes he's failed the people he knows too, but Picard tells him that failing an entrance exam is fine the first time as long as you improve before trying again.
  • In "A Matter of Honor," Bendon is a member of the Benzite species, and has a high opinion of his own abilities, but also a strong desire to please. He messes up by not immediately reporting the bacterial colony which is growing on the Enterprise hull because on a Benzite ship, one would never report such a thing until they had completed their full analysis and come up with a proposed solution. He feels that he failed and can never recover, but Wesley tells him that he just made an error, that "Captain Picard may not like them, but he knows they turn up from time to time."
• An episode of Young Sheldon has Sheldon getting upset over getting 95% on a science test because he used a different method of working out one question to the one his teacher was expecting, and spending the rest of the episode trying to get the teacher to admit that his method was equally as valid as the accepted one. The teacher eventually realises that Sheldon's method is correct, and presents him with a re-graded paper, hoping to demonstrate to him that mistakes aren't always a bad thing, as long as you own up to them and treat them as a learning opportunity. While old Sheldon, narrating the episode, claims to have taken this moral to heart, he also claims that on the day when he finally does make a mistake, he's fully prepared to own up to it... the gag being, of course, that by now Sheldon has amply demonstrated than in his older age he would rather die than accept (let alone admit) that he made a mistake.

Music

• The children's song "Uh-Oh, It's an Accident!" is about how accidents (such as bonking your head, wetting the bed, falling off a chair, or "going potty in underwear") are a part of life and teach us to be more careful in the future.
• "Falling For The First Time" by the Barenaked Ladies is about a perfectionist learning that there can be a joy in failure.
• "Sometimes" by 1551 (Achievement Hunter member Jeremy Dooley's side Rap Rock project) is all about this.

Puppet Shows

• Bear in the Big Blue House:
  • Played with in one episode. Pip and Pop are having trouble using the hula hoops they just got but they actually don't realize they're making mistakes— they think the hoops are broken or need batteries. When Bear tells them that they're just inexperienced and need to practice, they are totally fine with it, although later, they let everyone know that "if it hits the ground [unintentionally], then that's OK" during their song.
  • In "When You've Got to Go", Ojo cries about having wet herself, but Bear reassures her that accidents "can happen to anyone".
  • In "Oops, My Mistake", Bear sings a song called "Oops, I Goofed Again", about how making mistakes is not a big deal.
• This was a big theme in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Mister Rogers himself would even insist sometimes when he made a mistake during the filming of the program that it be left in to show young audience members that grown-ups too could make mistakes. There was even an entire week of episodes that was specifically about the subject of making mistakes and how to deal with it.
• Oobi: "Recital!" has Oobi at his piano recital to perform Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. While his friend Angus is nervous, he is successful in playing Mary Had a Little Lamb, meanwhile, the laidback and courageous Oobi seems to be doing the same, until he messes up the last note, after trying and failing again a couple times, he panics and runs off backstage. Where his pianist, Inka, teaches him that nobody's perfect, and Oobi's other friend, Kako, tells him it's okay to make mistakes. Oobi then goes back and plays the song successfully, much to the applause of his friends and everyone at the recital.
• Sesame Street:
  • In one episode, the Count makes a counting error (counting the same number twice) and this makes him not want to count anymore because he fears of making another mistake. Unfortunately, all the jobs he applies for involve counting. When Elmo makes the same error and says he will give up counting, the Count changes his mind.
  • "Elmo's Potty Time" has a song called "Accidents Happen" about how it's fine to have accidents while potty training.
  • The song "Everyone Makes Mistakes" is sung by Big Bird to various characters stating how making mistakes is universal and normal.
  • In one episode, Rosita writes the "R" in her name backwards, Big Bird fails to dunk a ball, Zoe and Abby fall over while dancing, Bert forgets the lyrics to a song, Cookie Monster burns some cookies, the Two-Headed Monster fails to drum, and Elmo makes a math error. A woman appears and sings a song called "The Power of Yet", which is about how they aren't able to do what they're trying to do yet, the word "yet" implying that they will be able to in the future.
  • One animated skit has this as a Double Aesop, the second Aesop being not to lie. A girl named Cookie breaks the window while trying to play baseball with her cat Lucy. She imagines lying to her mother that Lucy broke the window but then imagines "them" (presumably her parents and possibly other family members) punishing Lucy by not letting her in the house and she'd have to bunk with Bruno, their dog, who wouldn't like having her in his kennel so she'd run away. This makes Cookie cry and fess up to her mother, who tells her that she's brave for telling the truth and to be more careful in the future but that sometimes, things don't work out and accidents happen.
  • Played with in one episode. Linda breaks Ruthie's pitcher but doesn't notice because she's in a hurry and deaf. Elmo, however, thinks Linda is afraid to tell Ruthie, so he asks Ruthie what "someone" should do if they're afraid to admit that they broke the pitcher. Ruthie thinks that Elmo is the one who broke the pitcher and is afraid to tell, so she tells him about a time she accidentally broke her uncle's lamp but when she told him, he wasn't mad because it was an accident. Eventually, everyone finds out what really happened to the pitcher.
  • Downplayed in the episode where Elmo learns to roller-blade. People talk about how it's OK to fall down and he just needs practice, but he mostly acts like he already knows that.
  • The song "Trying and Trying Again" has lyrics such as "don't be afraid because you are small and don't be afraid that you may fall, you can get it after all, it just takes time."
  • In Episode 5033, Lucky the Bulldozer gets uspet for making mistakes on his first day working for Biff and Sully. Big Bird and Nina teach him to tell himself "I can do it!" and keep trying.

Video Games

• Downplayed in "Elmo's Potty Time", an online game based on Sesame Street. Louie tells Elmo that "it's OK to have accidents", even though Elmo didn't have one.
  Louie: It's OK to have accidents, but you listened to your body and you didn't have one.
• God of War (PS4) and God of War Ragnarök essentially invoke this trope when Kratos and Atreus discuss how, instead of "being sorry", they need to "be better".
• In Hades, one of the cutscenes of Hades showing Tough Love to his son Zagreus is accompanied by a quote showing that he believes in this trope:
  Hades: Do not speak to me of failure - failure is the greatest instructor of all. Your life is a series of mistakes - do not make the same one twice.

Web Animation

• This concept, as applied to game design, is part of the topic in the Extra Credits episode "Fail Faster." You will make mistakes of both the technical and conceptual variety, but learning from those mistakes is part of the design world. The real danger is obsessing over releasing a 'perfect' creation that never materializes. A similar topic is discussed in the episode "Kill Your Darlings" where the lesson is to not be afraid of declaring a failure just because you like a concept, but to recognize if something is a mistake and accept that letting go of something you liked doesn't end your creative endeavors forever.
• In an animation on Hector's World, Hector signs up his younger friend Tama for a video game using his personal details, but it turns out that the arcade is being run by a criminal group called the Info Gang who sells personal information to other criminals. Hector worries that he's a bad person (or dolphin) but Kui tells him that although he knows to do better in the future, he is not bad because he would never endanger Tama on purpose.

Webcomics

• Maxim #70 of The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries, the Big Book of War in Schlock Mercenary states, "Failure is not an option - it is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do." Even on the battlefield, failure doesn't have to be the end of the world as long as you're able to think on your feet and regroup.

Web Videos

• Dr Glaucomflecken: In the sketch "Surgical Complications", Surgery encounters a resident who had something go wrong in surgery, resulting in harm to the patient. After confirming that it wasn't Anesthesia's fault, Surgery explains to the resident that the only way to completely avoid surgical complications is to stop operating, that it's a good thing the resident feels terrible about it because it means that he cares, and that, after he explains everything to the patient and their family, he should use it as a learning experience, figuring out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. He also recommends therapy.
• Exaggerated a Twisted Translations video which has the lyric "If you are wrong, you are cool."

Western Animation

• One episode of Arthur has Arthur having to give a piano recital to the rest of the school and being terrified of being mocked if he messes up. He ends up playing the piece almost perfectly, with one wrong note near the end, but still gets a round of applause from the school, genuine compliments from Binky on his "unique interpretation" of the end of the tune, and reassurance from his Grandma that he was the only person who noticed or cared about the wrong note.
• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang hides the fact that he ran away from his home at the Southern Air Temple due to threats to be separated from his father figure, Monk Gyatso. He comes to regret this when it is revealed that the Air Nomad Genocide wiped them all out in a search for him, only he finds out by the discovery of their rotting corpses. He hides this from his new companions for a short while, even though it is likely what ensured his survival. During his spiritual training under Guru Pathik, the Hermit Guru teaches him to let go, accept his failings, and move forward.
• On Butterbean's Cafe, with a busy cafe and a lot on their plate, Butterbean and her friends do sometimes make mistakes. Handling them with grace and finding ways to fix things are important themes on the show.
• In the episode "Daniel Makes a Mistake / Baking Mistakes" from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Daniel and his friends make a number of mistakes and learn that "It's okay to make mistakes / Try to fix them and learn from them, too."
• This is a specifically stated show philosophy on Dragon Tales. According to the show's parent FAQ, one of the program's three primary educational goals was "to help children understand that to try and not succeed fully is a valuable and natural part of learning." Installments of the program frequently showed this philosophy in action, such as in "Knot a Problem" when it takes many tries before Max finally gets the hang of tying knots.
• This is the basic Aesop of "Franklin's Soccer Field Folly" from Franklin. During a soccer match, Franklin accidentally gets his shell turned around backwards and unable to see properly, ends up scoring on his own goal. Everyone laughs about it, but he personally doesn't find it funny. What really gets his goat, though, is that throughout the day his best friend Bear continues to make light of the incident. He eventually snaps at him in a way that shocks him and all of his friends. When he gets home, he explains what happened to his parents. Mr. Turtle then shares a story of a time when he belched in the middle of a recital of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" at school. After a brief moment of shocked embarrassment, there was nothing else for it but for him to laugh it off himself. Mrs. Turtle then shares her own story of being out shopping with Franklin's little sister Harriet that morning. She grabbed an orange from a precariously placed stack and the entire pile toppled onto the floor. Harriet got a good laugh out of it and Mrs. Muskrat, who happened to be there shopping also, quipped that the forgot to put oranges on her shopping list and stopped to help pick them up. Hearing these stories helps Franklin to see that he was too hard on Bear and he ends up inviting him to dinner to apologize. During the dinner, Bear has trouble squirting the mustard for his hot dog and ends up getting it all over his shirt. Franklin busts out giggling and after a brief moment, Bear looks down at his shirt and quips "Mustard, anyone?" resulting in an "Everybody Laughs" Ending.
• Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus frequently invites people to "take chances, make mistakes, and get messy".
• In the Martha Speaks episode "Martha Fails the Course", Martha fails an agility course because she's too big for the equipment and Francois (the agility course's owner) laughs at her. Martha doesn't even want to walk anymore for fear of falling over and being made fun of, but eventually, she learns that mistakes are fine and can even be funny.
• In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom gets the illness mentioned in the title because she tried to get a cutie mark by brewing a potion at Zecora's hut without her permission. Zecora cures her and tells her not to feel bad because, as she puts it, "With each mistake you learn something new, growing into a better you."
• In "Hope Castle" on PB&J Otter, Munchy makes a tower out of sand and asks his friends what they think. Peanut tells him that it's a little crooked, but he and his friends tell him in song to "Try, Try Again."
  If at first you fall on your face / Try again, try again / Remember the tortoise won that race / And just try, try again...
• In the Peg + Cat episode "The Allergy Problem", Peg is sneezing a lot and thinks she's allergic to Cat, then a bird accidentally takes Cat away. Thinking he ran away, Peg goes off with Ramone in search of him and a whale accidentally swallows them, along with Cat. When they get back, Peg miscounts something before finding out that what she's really allergic to is clovers. After so many mistakes made by different characters, everyone sings a song about how mistakes are not a big deal.
• A common theme in Ready Jet Go! is that no one and nothing is perfect and it's okay to make mistakes because that's how you learn. Sean, The Perfectionist, always gets frustrated when mistakes are made, but over time, he grows more open to trying and failing. Jet even has his own song about trying and failing: "If you try and you make a mess, who cares if it's not a success?".
• Shimmer and Shine: In Season 1, the titular genies-in-training always screw up Leah's wishes and wind up granting things too literally. Nevertheless, Leah forgives them and reminds them they always make mistakes and work to fix them. The first wish of the day is followed by a Once per Episode dance number dedicated to this.
• In The Simpsons episode "Homer's Enemy", Frank Grimes observes that Homer is an incompetent worker at the power plant, but Lenny shrugs it off by saying that everyone makes mistakes, which is why pencils have erasers (he misses the point that Grimes is trying to bring up, which is that multiple near-meltdowns are not the kind of "mistake" that should just be allowed to slide, but that's Springfield for you).
• Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015): In the season 1 episode "One of Our Mini-Cons Is Missing", Jetstorm comes to Earth in a self-imposed exile since he made a mistake and thus fears the wrath of his master Drift. The mistake is eventually revealed to be that he polished Drift's sword incorrectly. By the end of the episode, Drift reminds him that making mistakes is natural when learning, and welcomes him back.
• In the VeggieTales episode, "Silly Sing-Along 2: The End of Silliness?", Larry goes into a deep depression when his mess-up of "The Song of the Cebu" (from Josh and the Big Wall) leads to the cancellation of the show's "Silly Songs With Larry" segment. Jimmy tries to assure Larry that it's not the end of the world just because he messed up on a song.
• In Winston's Potty Chair, Winston feels ashamed of himself when he has a potty accident while reading a book about dinosaurs. His dad assures him that he's a big boy and that he'll use the potty next time.
• A key lesson taught in the Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum episode "We Are the Wright Brothers", and briefly in "I Am Anna Pavlova".
• In one episode of Xiaolin Showdown, Omi and the gang tell Master Fung that they lost a shen gong wu. He tells them that it's not the end of the world and to learn from their mistakes, but when he finds out which shen gong wu they lost he cries "But that can only mean the end of the world!".

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