It's important to have goals. It gives a person something to strive for and a benchmark by which they can measure progress and ultimate success. Some are content with simple and humble goals, like having a pet or getting married.
This trope is not for the humble; this trope is when people see reaching for the stars as the starting point.
The Overly Ambitious Goal is when an individual or group has a goal they're willing to achieve that, to someone In-Universe, might seem naive at best (particularly if the ambitious party is on the younger side) or outright impossible at worst. The one(s) pursuing this goal generally won't care about how difficult it seems beyond the actual practical aspects; indeed, the impossibility of the goal might be downright appealing in some cases. To them, the possibility of stopping might not even be worth considering.
After years, if not millennia, of stories revolving around pursuing great ambitions, it might seem as almost a given that a narrative of someone trying to achieve a goal will have them achieve it by the end (at least for the heroes; villains tend to have a mixed success rate at best), usually with the aesop that nothing is impossible if you're willing to put in the work towards it, often paired with a lesson about The Power of Friendship if cooperating with others was integral in succeeding.
However, some authors have a love of subverting expectations, and so it is not unheard of for a story to give a moment of This Is Reality and provide a Downer Ending, or at least a Cliffhanger where our hero(es) have been served a major defeat or setback, and the series will resume with the character deciding whether or not to continue pursuing their original goal(s). Sometimes the goal may be so difficult that it will consume all of a person's time and energy, with nothing left for anything else. Even if they attain the goals in question, they will likely lose elsewhere, possibly leading to a Pyrrhic Victory. However, this is not to say that all cases of "not achieving the goal" are merely due to an author's desire for drama or tragedy. Others might suggest that actually achieving the goal was never the point. It's the Journey That Counts, and the character sets an impossible goal deliberately for the sake of always striving towards it.
This trope can be used with heroes, villains and "average" people, as the goal doesn't have to be inherently good or evil, just incredibly ambitious in the eyes of others.
Sometimes the goals are Serious Business, and Played for Drama. Other times they're Played for Laughs (though the characters may still treat them as Serious Business, even if the narrative doesn't).
Note that the goal must be considered overly ambitious or likely unattainable In-Universe to qualify. Anything that the audience might consider impossible but is perfectly attainable within the story does not count as this trope. Conversely, a goal that may be humble to us but seemingly impossible to achieve In-Universe may qualify (e.g. safely raising a happy family is relatively mundane to us, less so to those living in a radioactive wasteland populated by cannibals).
Super-Trope to Visionary Villain.
May overlap with Tragic Dream, Absurd Career Goals, and Chose the Hard Road. Godhood Seekers and Immortality Seekers usually count as this.
See also Goal in Life and Series Goal.
Examples:
- Asteroid in Love: When Mira informs her seniors of the Earth Sciences Club that she wants to discover an asteroid, Mari notes it's a "pretty lofty goal." When Suzu asks if that means it's a hard thing to do, Mari notes that while there are rare cases of asteroids being discovered by school students, it's extremely rare, and the straight-laced Mikage further notes the club's Club Stub status means it's practically impossible to do so.
- BanG Dream!:
- Afterglow has a goal of reaching Boudukan as a band. Indeed, a degree of friction occurs with the band when Ran, now facing the very real prospect of having to take over her family's flower arranging school after high school, determines for the group that they need to reach that goal before they finish their third year of high school, lest family and educational obligations begin to tear them apart.
- In season 3, with the advent of the BanG Dream contest, many of the bands in the series determined to try and become one of the three finalists and take the award, save Afterglow, who have their own plans to get to Boudukan. Roselia seeks to reach their goal by adhering to their band leader Yukina's perfectionism. This bites them hard in a popularity contest where they lose marginally to RAISE-A-SUILEN, and then Sayo drives herself to collapse trying to meet Yukina's expectations. RAISE-A-SUILEN seeks to ride a wave of popularity and high energy, with carefully crafted lyrics and tunes, but their songwriter/manager CHU2 has a dictatorial style, and lashes out at everyone, driving the band to nearly break up. And Poppin' Party decide to just be themselves and have as much fun as possible, which actually works for them as it shows the public that they're more interested in making fun songs than in trying to be the best, which earns them public support. The three bands each make it to the finals, and each takes home an award: Best Song for Roselia, Best Performance for RAISE-A-SUILEN, and Best Band for Poppin' Party.
- In several issues of Beyblade, the main character of the current story makes it clear he want to become the N°1 blader in the world, with starting points ranging to anywhere from complete loser of a school club to mysterious and skilled stranger, so it's expectable it sometimes comes off as this, like in the case of Beyblade Burst.
- Chidori RSC: Hikari informs the rest of the Rifle Shooting Club that her goal is to reach the Olympics. During their first trip to Japanese Nationals, they do manage to win the team round, but Hikari has a lackluster performance during the individual matches the next day. She does steel her resolve, and recommits to trying to reach the Olympics. Season 1 of the anime ends with that note, but with no indication of whether or not she'll meet her goal.
- Chihayafuru:
- Chihaya's goal, ever since she first learned about the game of karuta, is to one day earn the title of Queen. At the end of the series, she manages to achieve her goal.
- During season 2, Chihaya lays out several goals for her karuta club; train her team to make it to nationals, have the newbies trained and ready to play by that time, have the veterans take first in their ranks at nationals, have Taichi rank up to Level A, and win the team rounds at Nationals. Her team says they can't believe they know someone so greedy. They achieve almost all of their goals by the end of the season, putting Misuzawa on the map in the karuta world. However, her raw determination for karuta and lack of focus on anything else ends with her childhood friend and Love Interest Taichi leaving the karuta club after an Anguished Declaration of Love to her, and Chihaya quitting after realizing that she crushed Taichi with her ignorance. She returns when she learns that Arata, the boy who introduced her to ''karuata'' has formed a club of his own, and Taichi pursues the top spot for himself, independent of the club.
- DEAD ROCK: Yakuto comes to the titular school to kill God, a Demiurge Archetype who is also his Evil Principal. Most of Yakuto's classmates think he's a suicidal madman, since he's a mere mortal demon and God is the omnipotent overlord of all existence. Even those who directly oppose Yakuto's goal make no effort to stop him because they're convinced he's doomed to fail.
- My Hero Academia: In this universe, becoming a superhero is actually a pretty common and realistic goal... that is, if you have a suitable quirk. For the quirkless Izuku Midoriya, however, it's a dream nobody believed he could achieve. His own mother failed to reassure him that he could be a hero when he was sobbing and looking for comfort following the diagnosis. He was bullied at school for having said goal, constantly mocked and reminded of his very unlikely odds. Even All Might, his hero, responded to his question with Brutal Honesty, pointing out the dangers of the job and how even heroes with powerful quirks can get hurt and telling him that he cannot be a hero. But All Might changes his mind when he watches Izuku rushing to save Bakugo from the Sludge Villain, when the actual pros all stood back, and decides to give Izuku the opportunity to achieve his dream by transferring his quirk to the boy. The rest of the series follows Izuku's rise to becoming a great hero, beating the odds and learning to use his new and powerful quirk correctly.
- Naruto: Naruto Uzumaki's dream is to become Hokagenote , while at the start of the story he was regarded as a loser and is discriminated for unknown reasons. He gets strong enough for that in the second half of the story, and achieves his goal in the end.
- One Piece: Monkey D. Luffy's dream is to become the King of the Pirates. Everyone who hears of this (which is a lot of people, as Luffy is never shy about telling people) thinks he's either incredibly naïve or has a death wish, considering the dangers presented by both the Grand Line (which has been nicknamed "the pirate's graveyard") and the other pirates vying for the same title, many of whom are incredible powerhouses, while Luffy initially just seems to be a kid from the East Blue with some weird stretchy powers. Over time, however, more and more people think he actually has a shot of reaching his dream as Luffy's list of accomplishments grows and his bounty alongside it, especially after he's declared to be a new member of the Four Emperors by the World Government.
- The other Straw Hats also have a few: Roronoa Zoro want to become the greatest swordsman in the world, even after his curb-stomp defeat against Mihawk (he then also vows never to lose a swordfight again), Nico Robin wants to uncover all the truth about the "Void Century", which implies finding the Rio Poneglyph, Jinbei want the peace between two people who deeply hate each other... also, a few of the other crewmates' dreams cannot be fully achieved without reaching Laugh Tale.
- Tashigi, a Marine soldier, wants to find all the Meitos (extremely-high quality swords), and take away all the ones used by pirates or criminals, including Mihawk's.
- This trope is a staple of Pokémon the Series, where almost all of the main cast are destined to set goals that are either completely unachievable or so vaguely defined they might as well be. Whether it's Ash Ketchum aiming To Be a Master, the Team Rocket trio endlessly chasing after Ash's Pikachu, or any of Ash's friends aiming to be the greatest in their own fields, do not expect these goals to ever become reality. Even after becoming the World's Best Warrior, Ash still doesn't consider himself to be a Pokémon Master, eventually deciding he can only be one if he befriends every Pokémon in the world.
- Twin Spica: The story is about a bunch of kids who go to a recently opened space school with the goal of becoming astronauts in the future. It's stated throughout the series that while space travel might become easy and commonplace sometime in the future, becoming an astronaut in the present is reserved for an elite few and the vast majority of students in the school will necessarily fail at that goal. In the end, it's only the main protagonist Asumi who passes the final exam, and it's implied it's because she's been training hard for it since she was a toddler. Her friends go on to pursue different careers, albeit retaining the goal of becoming astronauts sometime in the distant future.
- Raise yourselves up (We're done): Alya and the majority of Miss Bustier's students aim to raise enough money to take a trip to New York at the end of the school year... without any financial support from the school itself, or the help of Marinette or Chloé, who they've banned from participating. Over the course of the year, it's made painfully clear that none of them know the first thing about how to fundraise, much less handle everything else required to organize a trip of that scope, like getting it approved in the first place or get their passports.
- Eddie the Eagle: Eddie's lifelong ambition is to become an Olympic Athlete, something he's constantly working towards in ways both big (training in an endless list of sports until something sticks) and small (primarily drinking milk to get stronger bones). Most everyone around him, however, sees his goal as something way out of his reach, not helped by how the committee changes the rules to lock him out. He's often told to give up or is otherwise bullied for his effort. With Peary's help, Eddie just barely manages to get into the Olympics and achieves his dream... but that's where said dream stops, as he originally lacked the ambition to actually perform well in the games. He even fights with Peary about it, getting frustrated when he's told to push even harder than he already had; however, he soon realizes that most of the people around him still don't believe in or accept him, and that his antics had only made him into a public spectacle. He resolves to take things more seriously and goes for the harder jump.
- In the novella "The Body" by Stephen King (which was later adapted into the movie Stand by Me), Gordon's close friend Teddy is obsessed with joining the Army, and is constantly in the school's career guidance office looking for new literature about the Army. However, he wears extremely thick glasses and has hearing so poor that he must wear a hearing aid, so it's apparent to the school's guidance counselor that he would never pass the physical for military service. When the guidance counselor gently pointed this out to him and suggested he might think about a different career, Teddy's enraged reaction earned him detention.
- Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship!: Captain Hiro decides in the first book that the goal of his mercenary career is to own a detached house on a planet surface. This sounds like a Mundane Wish but is acknowledged to be a lofty goal even by Japanese standards: in the Grakkan Empire, planetside housing is extremely expensive and permits are usually reserved for nobility. By the end of volume 8, though, he's acquired plenty of money, a knighthood, and settlement rights on a new colony in House Daleinwald's domain, but decides his career is too fulfilling for him to settle down just yet.
- The Brittas Empire: "Two Little Boys" establishes that Brittas' Goal in Life consists of several aims - namely the setting up of a world government, promoting team spirit, building a sense of community and belonging, abolition of crime, fairer allocation of the world's resources, a religious revival, and the end of war. Brittas acknowledges that these goals are lofty, which is why he had split them up with his twin brother Horatio. Unfortunately, both of them also have the sort of annoying personality that ensures that they're unlikely to make much progress towards these goals.
- Kamen Rider Zi-O: Ordinary High-School Student Sougo Tokiwa's dream since his childhood is to become a king, in modern times where it is unlikely and people around him always tell him to get some sense with varying degrees of politeness. Fortunately, time travelers from the future show up and tell him that his dream will become true. Unfortunately, they come because his future self is a planetary-scale tyrant, so Sougo's challenge shifts from having to become a king at all to having to Screw Destiny while still trying to become a good king.
- The Office (US): "Scotts Tots" Earlier in his career, Michael Scott promised a group of kindergardeners that he'd pay for their college education (despite barely having the means to pay for even one person's education) because he truly believed he'd be rich enough to do so. Ten years later, Scott is in fact not a billionaire, and those kids are now high schoolers and expecting him to keep his promise, so he delivers...laptop batteries. Though it's been argued
that the kids are also at fault for never looking up how feasible Scott's promise was in the first place.
- Red Dwarf: In Back to Earth, Kryten comments on Rimmer's "hilariously unrealistic life goals", to which Rimmer responds that Kryten will pay for that comment when he's Lord of the Space Fleet. Back when there even was a Space Fleet, he was a Second Technician responsible for maintaining the vending machines on a commercial mining vessel, and had failed the officer's exam eleven times.
- Man of La Mancha: Discussed and reconstructed. The theme of "The Impossible Dream (The Quest)", and indeed of Don Quixote as a character, is that it is worth striving for the ideal and the good with everything you have, even if you and everyone around you knows it's impossible to achieve. He, and the musical, argue that the trying itself, the quest, is what's noble, despite the end result.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go [...]This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
- Braking Point *: Aiden Jackson becomes further irate and was desperate in wanting to sign up to either of the top three teams (Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes) after being fed up with Konnersport due to its underperformance and having a very unreliable car. All these because "he's too good for the team" and, with those said top three teams, he wanted to win for himself and become the world champion. Eventually, he chose to stay in Konnersport at the end of the 2023 season. And he got what he bargained for by the end of the 2025 season, but only if you choose him over Callie Meyer.
- Crisis Core: Zack Fair's greatest dream is to become a hero like Sephiroth, and he joins SOLDIER to realize that goal. No real time is spent exploring what that means from Zack's perspective, and when he states his goal to SOLDIER Director Lazard Deusericus, Lazard isn't dismissive, but somewhat lampshades how impossible it is because of its vagueness and loftiness. By the end of the game, he does achieve his dream, though not in the way he would expect, and in a way no one will ever know.
Lazard: By the way, what is your dream? To become First [Class], is it?
Zack: No. It's... [strikes a bold pose] to become a hero!
Lazard: Ah, good. Unattainable dreams are the best kind.
Zack: Uhh, thanks? - Day of the Tentacle: After Purple Tentacle mutates to grow arms, his first impulse is to conquer the world. Through a series of spinning newspapers you can follow his steps towards this goal in the present, while one of your three characters is stuck in the future, where he fully succeeded.
- Hazbin Hotel: Charlie Morningstar, the main protagonist of the series, has the goal of finding a humane solution to Hell's overpopulation problem by redeeming sinners so they can go to Heaven. Predictably, most of the other characters find this goal laughable.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Big Pink Loser", Patrick wants to win an award like SpongeBob, and SpongeBob tells Patrick he’ll have to achieve something. Patrick’s first idea is to defeat the giant monkey man and save the 9th dimension. SpongeBob thinks that seems hard, so he suggests Patrick think of something smaller. Patrick then suggests that he could defeat the little monkey man and save the 8th dimension. SpongeBob still thinks Patrick should aim for a more achievable goal, so Patrick suggests becoming a doctor or a fireman. SpongeBob then tells Patrick to go for the smallest accomplishment he can think of, and Patrick suggests getting a job at the Krusty Krab, which SpongeBob agrees with.
- President Kennedy in the early 1960s declared that it was his goal to have America win the space race by being the first to land on the moon. While Kennedy would not live to see the fruition of his stated goal, it was less than a decade from his speech before Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the lunar surface.
- Military recruiters often must address lofty goals when interviewing applicants for the military, as some people who don't have the required perfect, uncorrected 20/20 vision will want to be pilots, or the maximum recommended height to serve in the cramped quarters of an M-1 Abrams is about six feet, so anyone who really wants to serve on a M-1 but is appreciably taller than that is in for disappointment. Let's not even get into all the recent college graduates who barely scraped by with a "C" average, who have to be told that if they apply for Officer Candidate School, they're going to compete against hundreds of other candidates with "A" or "B" averages.
