People who never admit responsibility in comic strips.
- In a session with the chaplain, Beetle Bailey is complaining that Sarge has it in for him. He then lists many mistakes he himself has made. When the chaplain answers that Beetle can't blame Sarge for all that, Beetle replies, "Lt. Fuzz, then."
- Bloom County; In 1988, the Meadow Party nominated Bill the Cat — likely the most unelectable candidate in history - for President. Naturally, he lost, and his campaign manager Milo blamed everyone and everything but the obvious:Milo: Our organization was underfinanced! note
Opus (Turning to the reader) Two weeks later, and fingers are still pointing.
Milo: Our volunteers were unmotivated!note Our ads were late!note Our literature was weak!note
Opus: Our candidate barfed a hairball on Connie Chung.
Milo: It's the media's fault! - This trope is by far Calvin's biggest flaw:
- The Boy of Destiny makes it crystal clear; if he gets bad grades, it's his parents' fault for not doing the work for him.
- At one point, Calvin blames Hobbes for breaking the battery case of a beanie, even though Calvin was the one who broke it. Played with in that after Hobbes calls him out on it, saying he had just been sitting there watching Calvin work when it snapped. Calvin then tearfully admits that he knows and that having Hobbes take the blame will make him feel better.
- On top of that was Calvin's decision to not take part in elections when he's an adult, with the final reasoning of "It's easier to blame things than fix them."
- One arc has Calvin accidentally break his father's binoculars, and Calvin outright states to Hobbes that this is his father's fault for trusting him with it.
- While Calvin acknowledges the seriousness of environmental issues, he doesn't realize how he contributes to them. In a one-shot strip, he complains about global warming and says that it's something his generation will have to live with once his parents' generation is gone, causing his mother to wryly note that he's the kid who "wants to be chauffeured anywhere more than a block away." The Mars arc involves him and Hobbes going to Mars to escape Earth's pollution, but after Calvin litters, they realize that human behavior needs to change.
- Another Running Gag is that Calvin often tries to blame Hobbes for whatever he's gotten into trouble for.Hobbes: And when you do get caught, I really wish you'd stop trying to pin your crimes on me!
Calvin: Oh don't you start! - Really, this is a major part of Calvin's character. It's not a coincidence that he shares his name with John Calvin, who believed in predestination and thus that free will and responsibility were mere illusions. But unlike his namesake who considered this a theological argument for why almost all of mankind was incapable of salvation by nature, Calvin uses it as a reason for why he shouldn't be punished for anything he does at all.
- Calvin is repeatedly shown to be a fan of beliefs or philosophies which absolve him of personal responsibility or morality, such as fatalism, nihilism, or astrology. The story just as often puts Calvin in his place for thinking he could shirk accountability, such as when Calvin says anything bad that he does was fated to happen is immediately followed by Hobbes pushing him into a mud puddle and saying it was fated to happen.
- In another one-shot strip, Calvin had a conversation with his dad concluding that anything and everything bad he does is everyone else's fault and believing himself to be nothing more than an innocent pawn living in a toxic society. His dad's response?"Then you need to build more character. Go shovel the walk."
- Dilbert:
- The Pointy-Haired Boss's attitude through and through. In one comic, he says that whenever he and Dilbert talk, he ends up yelling, which must mean Dilbert has poor interpersonal skills and forces him to take a class to improve them. Dilbert responds: "It looks like you've gained weight. Would you like me to exercise to take care of that too?"
- Tina double-subverts this: when she's on the cusp of realizing that her low pay is her own fault, she pulls another party to blame out of thin air in this
strip.
- For Better or for Worse: When Thèrése divorces Anthony, he places all of the blame on her feet for her infidelity and emotional distance to their daughter. However, most of the issues are his fault: He convinced her to live in the suburbs (which she disliked) and have a baby (although she didn’t really want children), did nothing about her PPD, and lied about taking on childcare because he assumed that she would want to be a stay at home mother after birth. To make matters worse, he emotionally cheated on her with his ex girlfriend Elizabeth during their relationship. Nobody calls Anthony out on any of this and they blame Thèrése for everything.
- Gaston Lagaffe, the titular clumsy anti-hero is nearly responsible of every problems happening in the office, but he always find a way to blame it on the others.
- In the gaming comic Knights of the Dinner Table, anything bad that happens to Bob, Dave, and Brian is always somebody else's fault. No exceptions.
- In their Hackmaster role-playing campaign, the boys' characters, called The Untouchable Trio, have burned villages to the ground, started wars, committed mass murder, devastated nations ... Yet, whenever the Untouchable Trio encountered trouble from people knowing them by reputation and hating them, the boys would immediately start whining about how they were always getting "screwed over." When the Untouchable Trio was arrested and taken under imperial guard to stand trial for their crimes, Bob accused B.A. (the group's GM) of having a vendetta against their characters. It never seemed to occur to Bob that being put in prison just might be a logical consequence of killing thousands of innocent people.
- When Sara tried to run the group through an adventure she had designed (and won an award for), the boys kept wasting time hunting small animals for easy experience, and doing other trivial activities that had nothing to do with the adventure. When the game went sour as a result, Bob blamed Sara, asking her, "You claim this piece of *** took top honors?"
- In one storyline, B.A. ran the group through the module The Biggest Damn Dungeon Ever, which was rated as being an extremely dangerous adventure. The group kept sending their 1st-level characters into the deadliest part of the dungeon, and when their characters always died, the boys blamed B.A., and insinuated that he was cheating.
- Lucy from Peanuts is quick to blame others for things that were often her fault in the first place, the worst example of this being "It's Your First Kiss Charlie Brown". It's an important football game -an actual game with points and a ref and all- and she pulls the ball away from Charlie Brown four times. Again, a real game, not playing in a field. Then she blames Charlie Brown when the team loses, and team captain Peppermint Patty yells at him too.
- The titular character of Old Master Q displays this attitude in a few comic strips he stars in. Notably, one of them have him losing a tennis match, so he decides... to whack the ref.
- One Phoebe and Her Unicorn storyline involves a duck-billed dragon named Bill confronting Phoebe and telling her to stop hanging out with Marigold, claiming the unicorn destroyed his house. Marigold later reveals that Bill had a house made of chocolate, and he ate it after she pointed out it looked delicious, before blaming her for making him give into temptation.
