Never My Fault / Live-Action Films

• Ace Ventura: Ray Finkle blames Dan Marino for the missed field goal that cost the Dolphins the Super Bowl, saying that if Marino had held the ball "laces out" like he was supposed to, Finkle would never have missed that kick. Though Finkle's life was certainly no bed of roses after missing that kick — every Dolphins fan blamed him, and he ended up going to a mental hospital after suffering a mental breakdown — Finkle resorts to assuming a missing woman's identity, killing Roger Podacter when he found out what Finkle had done, kidnapping Marino, and stealing the Dolphins' animal mascot Snowflake for revenge, all instead of admitting that any of the fault for missing the kick lay with himself.
• Andhadhun: Simi blames Manohar for the death of her husband Mr. Sinha since Manohar brought the gun and more egregiously refuses to take responsibility for murdering Mrs. D'Sa in cold blood when Akash calls her out on it.
• Are We Done Yet?: Nick tries to blame Chuck for the malfunctioning house when he should have hired an inspector in the first place.
• Avengers: Endgame: Upon seeing how the people of the future reacted to his present self's actions, 2014 Thanos realizes his plan to save the universe by eliminating half of life to help the other thrive is impossible... because the survivors are ungrateful and reject his gift of sparing them out of mourning for their lost loved ones. He then modifies his plan to kill off all life with the Stones and create a new universe that will work the way he wants it to.
• Bridesmaids: Annie heaps a great deal of blame on her best friend's newer, richer, prettier friend, but not all the disaster that befalls Annie in the film — losing her job because she called a customer a C-word, wrecking her car because her taillights were broken, chewing out a potential love interest who was only trying to help her find her feet — is the fault of the new woman. Said love interest eventually calls her out on this, apparently regarding the car accident but subtextually over the latter.
• Bruce Almighty: The main character suffers what could reasonably be considered the worst day of his life, blaming all of it on God. While some of what happens to him genuinely isn't his fault (getting passed over for a promotion at work was simply a matter of his rival being more popular, and getting assaulted by thugs after he stuck up for a homeless man was well-intentioned, even if he should've known better than to threaten dangerous criminals and assume they'd just walk away) most of the rest was entirely his own fault. He lost his job because he threw a tantrum on live TV over not getting a promotion, his girlfriend was on the verge of breaking up with him because he'd been emotionally neglecting her, and his car crashed because he was too busy ranting to notice the many, many signs warning him of road work ahead. And yet, he continues blaming all this on God... right up until God decides to have a chat with him about it.
• Caddyshack: Rodney Dangerfield drops his anchor into another boat. The other boat sinks, yet all Rodney says is "You scratched my anchor!" It's "okay" because the other guy is a gigantic dick, and though Dangerfield is even more of a dick than that to him, he's a charming, amicable schmoozer to everyone else.
• A decidedly non-comedic version in Chinatown, where Big Bad Noah Cross absolves himself of blame for driving his daughter Evelyn away (by which we mean, he raped and impregnated her when she was fifteen), claiming that "in the right time and the right place, [most people] are capable of anything."
• In Cliffhanger, Hal Tucker brought his girlfriend — who has absolutely zero experience climbing — on a climbing trip to one of the most insanely difficult and tough-to-reach locations in the canyon. He also has a recurring knee injury which strands them both on one of the most dangerous cliffs possible. He also gives her defective equipment that fails halfway through their rescue. She's left dangling exactly halfway between cliffs, where nobody except Gabe has any hope of reaching her. She completely freaks out and is blatantly unable to climb back up to save herself, so Gabe climbs out to try and save her. Gabe nearly succeeds—grabbing her and holding on for as long as humanly possible before she slips out of her glove and falls. Hal naturally blames Gabe for her death.
• Dead Poets Society: Neil Perry's father blames Keating for his son's suicide, even though it was largely his own fault.
• Denial: David Irving sues Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a racist and a Holocaust denier, despite the fact he has repeatedly denied the Holocaust occurred. During the trial itself, Lipstadt's barrister Richard Rampton has several of Irving's blatantly racist statements read along, which includes an entry in his diary where Irving admits to teaching his infant daughter a ditty about being proud she's an Aryan and not a "Jew or Sectarian", and never marrying outside the white race; Irving still denies he said anything racist.
  Rampton: Racist, Mr. Irving? Anti-Semitic, Mr. Irving?
  Irving: I do not think so.
  Rampton: Teaching your little child this kind of poison?
  Irving: Do you think a nine-month old can understand words spoken in English, or any other sort of language?
  Rampton: This poor little child has been taught a racist ditty by her racist and perverted father!
  Irving: [smirks] Have you ever read Edward Lear? Hilaire Belloc?
  Rampton: They haven't brought a libel action, Mr. Irving, you have! You sued because you said we had called you a racist and an extremist.
  Irving: Yes. But I am not a racist.
  Rampton: Mr. Irving, look at the words on the page.
• Downfall (2004): As it becomes more and more obvious Germany is about to lose the war, Hitler blames everyone for it: first his generals, then the SS, then his inner circle, until finally he declares the German people lost because they were weak and deserved it. He never, ever, once blames himself.
• First Girl I Loved: Cliff accuses Anne of leading him on into having sex (though she did no such thing, only viewing him as a friend), when in fact the circumstances show he raped her.
• Four Lions: After Faisal accidentally blows himself up, Omar furiously chews out Barry for orchestrating the events that ultimately led up to Faisal dying, one of these including Barry recruiting Hassan. Barry proceeds to blame Hassan for killing Faisal.
• In the original Ghostbusters film, Walter Peck gets the Ghostbusters arrested for causing an explosion he himself had caused, in spite of their explicit warnings. Egon's response? "Your mother!"
• The Ghost Ship: Merriam warns Captain Stone about the need to fix a dangerous piece of equipment and is twice ignored. After it breaks, Stone refuses to take responsibility and chides Merriam for wanting him to exert his authority in a way that would show that he had made a mistake.
• GoldenEye: Janus/Ex-MI6 agent turned Big Bad Friend Alec Trevelyan comes off as a hypocrite for blaming James Bond for scarring his face, mainly because Bond set the bombs planted in the Arkhangelsk chemical factory for three minutes instead of the six minutes Janus intended. He omits the important detail that by the time 007 did that, Janus/Trevelyan had faked his death, which is what made Bond shorten the timer. It's implied he was really hoping that Bond would keep the timer the same no matter what apparently happened, and that in his perspective, cutting the timer in half had confirmed his suspicions that James cares more about getting the job done.
  Bond: Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?
  Janus/Trevelyan: No, you were supposed to die for me. (Beat) And, by the way, I did think about asking you to join my little scheme but somehow I knew, 007's loyalty was always to the mission, never to his friend.
• Guyana: Crime of the Century: Johnson always attributes his mistakes to the lies spread by defectors, US politicians, the relatives of the members asking for their beloved ones' return, and critics of his church in general. This attitude is also shared with many people within his inner circle.
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000): After the Grinch steals their Christmas, Augustus blames Cindy Lou for inviting the Grinch to their Whobilation when it was his own taunts that drove the Grinch to the theft in the first place.
• The Internship concludes with Team Lyle — including film protagonists Bill and Nick — being declared the winners of the competition between various intern teams because Team Lyle showed their ‘Googliness’ by working as a team and playing to each other's strengths. Upon hearing that announcement, Graham, the leader of another team, immediately starts criticising his own group for not showing team spirit, ignoring the fact that the reason they didn’t have that was because he insisted on trying to control everything rather than letting the rest of the group contribute and balance things out.
• Juice: Bishop blames Raheem, for trying to take the gun away from him, resulting in the latter being killed by Bishop with it.
• Used rather darkly in The Last King of Scotland, after Idi Amin has realized that exiling the Asian population of Uganda was a serious political mistake.
  Amin: You should have told me not to throw out the Asians in the first place.
  Nicholas: I did!
  Amin: But you did not persuade me!
• Epitomized by the comic duo Laurel and Hardy. Whenever things went wrong, Hardy would blame Laurel (regardless of what part of the blame he truly carried) with a reproachful "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"
  • This schtick is borrowed by Illuminatus!! where various different figures appear dressed as Laurel and Hardy, e.g. The Flood, everyone except Noah and Co have been drowned for their sins by a vengeful God. Jehovah (as Ollie) turns to Lucifer (as Stan) and says, "Now look what you made me do!" Lucifer cries. Hiroshima, a mushroom cloud rises above the city. Tens of thousands have been killed in a split second. President Truman (as Ollie) turns to Albert Einstein (as Stan) and says, "Now look what you made me do!" Einstein cries. etc.
• Looney Tunes: Back in Action:
  • Mr. Chairman insists that the ACME equipment functions perfectly and that Wil.E.Coyote must not be using it properly.
  • After Bugs' first scene without Daffy, the Warner Brothers threaten to fire Kate if they don't get Daffy back even though firing him was their own decision in the first place.
• The Lost World: Jurassic Park: The "heroes" never once admit that they are solely responsible for every death in the film as well as their being without communications and having to make the dangerous trek through carnivore-infested territory to hail some rescue helicopters. They were the ones who released the dinosaurs resulting in all the communications equipment being destroyed, they are the ones who attempted to treat the baby T. rex and lured the adults to the area, and then they turn around and outright blame the "villains" (who saved their lives in spite of their fatal sabotage, no less) for their mutual predicament.
• Mary Poppins: The bankers pressure 8-year-old Michael hard to open a savings account with his tuppence instead of using it to feed the birds like he wants to. When he opens his hand a bit, the elder Dawes snatches the money without waiting to be given it. Michael flips out and yells for Dawes to give it back. Customers overhear and, assuming there is something wrong, start demanding their money back, and there is a run on the bank. The bankers in no way acknowledge their own culpability, and instead blame Michael's father, firing him.
• M*A*S*H: Major Frank Burns was a terrible doctor and would often have patients die on him, causing him to claim it was God's will, or someone else's fault. In the case we see in the movie, he placed the blame on Private Boone for bringing the wrong instrument (in actuality, the patient died before Boone even got back). Even so, poor Boone was reduced to tears thinking he killed him, leaving Trapper, who saw what happened, to give Major Burns a well-deserved punch.
• A Matter of Faith:
  • After Stephen barges his way in, tries to get Professor Kaman to teach creationism, and accepts Professor Kaman's offer to debate his side, Stephen seems to treat it like he was forced to do this debate.
  • Professor Portland acts like him being fired was entirely Kaman's fault, even though he was knowingly violating the school's policy by not teaching evolution like he was supposed to and instead teaching creationism, despite it not being constitutionally allowed.
• Men in Black 3: Played with; Boris The Animal blames himself for his failure, but quite literally. When he goes back to the past and rendezvous with his past self, he immediately criticizes the latter's incompetence. It's kind of bizarre since they are the one and the same but Boris still invokes this.
  Boris: You PATHETIC waste of Boglodite flesh! I'd kill you now if I didn't value my own life.
• Muppets Most Wanted has a more downplayed example, as Fozzie appears to be quite embarrassed by this, but when Kermit asks Fozzie why he didn't notice that he — Fozzie's best friend — had his identity stolen by a criminal, Fozzie tries to justify his mistake ("He looked like you and talked like you! Well, okay, he didn't talk like you, but he said he had a cold!"). Then, when Kermit angrily calls out Fozzie and Walter for not noticing like Animal did, Fozzie says that it's not as bad as it sounds, whereas Walter says that it is indeed as bad as it sounds.
• Mutiny on the Buses: After Arthur backs a bus into a bus stop, he refuses to take responsibility for it and blames it on the bus' gears.
• The Lifetime film The Neighbor In The Window features Karen Morgan being accused of abusing and neglecting her son by her new neighbor, Lisa Beasley. Karen eventually determines that Lisa is suffering from False Victim Syndrome, where Lisa basically twists any facts around to convince even herself that she's the victim of the situation.
• The real reason for all the events in Now You See Me is a case of Disproportionate Retribution by the son of a magician who died trying the ultimate escape trick. He blames everyone but his father for his father's death, including Thaddeus Bradley (for exposing his father's tricks and "forcing" him to undertake the risky endeavor), Arthur Tressler (for owning the insurance company that refused to pay out on his father's policy citing suicide), and the company that made the safe his father died in (apparently, he expects safes not to deform when dropped into a river). Naturally, we're expected to side with him. Naturally, the sequel will involve a Cycle of Revenge, in which the son of Arthur Tressler seeks to avenge what was done to his father.
• Pitch Perfect: The Barden Bellas' original team captain, Audrey, continually insists on sticking to 'tradition', which results in her spending most of the first film insisting that the Bellas stick to their usual song and dance routines even when the judges can be heard commenting that the Bellas are becoming boring due to such focus. When the Bellas get low marks, Audrey continually accuses the rest of the team of making mistakes rather than acknowledge the need to adapt, until Becca's resignation forces her to accept the need to change.
• The Princess Diaries: Lana (as usual) insults Mia and attempts to bully her and Mia's friend Jeremiah. Mia responds by shoving her ice cream cone on Lana's cheerleading outfit. After being humiliated, Lana tries to whine to Ms. Gupta about what Mia did. Ms. Gupta only sarcastically advises her to get it dry-cleaned. Lana ignores the fact that had she not tried to bully Mia and Jeremiah, she wouldn't have gotten coned in the first place.
• The Rapture: Mary essentially pressures Sharon into killing her so that she'll go to heaven quicker. Instead of encouraging Mary to accept the mystery, live, and have faith in God — the by-the-book Christian response to such calls to action — Sharon kills her and then spends the rest of the movie angrily blaming God for her own actions.
• A non-comedic example can be seen in Repo! The Genetic Opera where Rotti and his kids use a constant chorus of this to convince Nathan that It's All My Fault.
• The Richest Cat in the World: Oscar Kohlmeyer left the bulk of his estate (five million dollars) to his cat while his nephew got only twenty-five thousand dollars and only if he didn't contest the will. The nephew's greedy wife forced her Henpecked Husband to contest and, after they lost the case, she blamed him for losing the twenty-five thousand dollars.
• RoboCop 2 has a twisted example as OCP seeks to shift the blame for the RoboCop 2 debacle to to Dr. Juliette Faxx for picking drug lord Cain's brain. The twisted part comes in as, outside of the CEO looking the other way, the whole thing was indeed Faxx's fault and the one who suggested pinning it on her, Johnson, opposed her insane ideas along the way and is the only one who isn't to blame.
• The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause:
  Jack Frost: (examines a sign he's "supervised" the elves putting up) Very nice! I've done it!
  (the sign falls down and shatters, and he glares at the elves)
  Jack Frost: Look what you've done!
• In the Saw movies, despite Jigsaw's claims that he is trying to help his victims, it never seems to work, as most of his victims are killed. The few that survive their game are severely traumatized. And he claims the people that died were missing an essential part of themselves, the 'survival instinct,' so to speak. Apparently, if you aren't willing to do absolutely anything (up to and including committing murder) to survive, you simply don't value your own life enough. Jigsaw also never admits to being responsible for the deaths he causes, even in the tests where someone deliberately has to die for someone else to live. They're making the choice, not him; never mind that he is responsible for putting them in a life-or-death scenario in the first place.
• Secret Honor: Richard Nixon blames everyone but himself for the Watergate scandal and his subsequent fall from grace, from his fellow politicians to his family to the American public itself. The only time he accepts responsibility is for his role in Alger Hiss's imprisonment, and even then he places a good chunk of the blame on the man's wife.
  Nixon: Your honor, the defendant is only guilty of being Richard Milhouse Nixon!
• In The School for Good and Evil (2022), Tedros falls out of love with Sophie when she stays hidden while Agatha rescues him in the Trial by Tale. Rather than acknowledge she just proved to care more about being Tedros' princess than Tedros, Sophie accuses Agatha of trying to steal her destiny and her prince.
• Schindler's List: Amon Goeth is a sadistic Nazi concentration camp commandant in love with Helen, his Jewish maid. When he is about to kiss/possibly rape her, he hesitates only to claim she seduced him (even though she is absolutely terrified of him due to his physical and emotional abuse) before viciously beating her.
• The recurrent motive of nearly every Ghostface in the Scream series, is they blame their hardships in life on Sidney Prescott. This reaches an extreme in Scream 3 when the killer, Roman, in fact The Chessmaster for all the past killings in the series, pins everything on Sidney and her mother (being the illegitimate son of the latter from an affair (or assault by coercion — it's fuzzy) who she refused to accept). Sidney finally snaps from this and explodes in a livid tirade that she is utterly sick of the Ghostfaces blaming their twisted psyches on her, and that they only murder people because they are horrible fucked up people who are unable to take responsibility for their own lives. Naturally this does little but provoke a high octane murderous tantrum from the killer.
  Sidney: Why don't you take some FUCKING responsibility?!
  Roman: goes apeshit* DAMN IT, FUCKING DAMN IT! FUCK YOU!
  Sidney: FUCK YOU!!
• Seven Years in Tibet: Heinrich conceals the severity of an injury of his, which leads to the climb leader nearly dying when he is unable to support their weight. He refuses to accept responsibility when the leader confronts him over this.
  Heinrich: It's not your problem.
  Leader: Actually, it is my problem. It's my life.
  Heinrich: What?
  Leader: When you conceal a serious injury and put my life at risk... I consider that my problem.
  Heinrich: No, you put your life at risk. I saved it, so shut up!
  […]
  Leader: The next time you lie about an injury, Heinrich... you're off the team.
  Heinrich: Try it.
• SHAZAM! (2019):
  • Sivana's brother and father blame him for the car accident that left Sivana's father in a wheelchair. Sivana was 10 at the time; his father was the one who got distracted and wasn't wearing a seatbelt.
  • Marilyn Batson refuses to acknowledge that her abandonment of Billy may have caused him to become emotionally damaged. She desperately tries to have him assure her that he was fine without her and just wanted to check up.
  • Sivana himself blames the Wizard Shazam for rejecting him as a champion and being told he would never be worthy made him who he is. He conveniently forgets that he gave in to temptation of the Seven Deadly Sins and was reaching for the Eye of Sin when Shazam stopped him.
• The Social Network: Sean particularly has this problem. He blamed the Winklevii and/or Manningham for "planting" the coke and calling the cops for catching him with underage interns. He also doesn't seem to get how record companies would be pissed to see you take money away from them, chalking it up to the companies not having a sense of humor.
• Spider-Man Trilogy:
  • Harry blaming Peter for his father's death, even after finding out that his father was the Green Goblin. And in the third movie he at first refuses to help Peter save MJ at the end, blaming Peter for disfiguring his face. It was Harry's own stupid fault for throwing a grenade at Peter in the first place.
  • Doctor Octopus in both the novelization and the video game of the second movie blames Spider-Man for his wife's death, when it was the Doctor's own experiment that led to Rosie's death. The video game adaptation has him snap out of his evil personality and admit that it was his own vanity that killed her. Ironically, his film incarnation avoids this completely by having Doctor Octopus completely uninterested in Spider-Man up until he's paid to kidnap him. And it's more the arms that are giving him this mindset.
  • Eddie Brock hates Peter for costing him the staff job at the Bugle. Yeah, Peter may have been under the control of a symbiote that was making him act a bit differently, but there are consequences to framing a man for robbery and falsifying journalistic documents, Eddie. Photoshop aside, why you thought it was a good idea to plagiarize the only other man in the city who takes pictures of Spider-Man is anybody's guess (dollars to doughnuts he'd recognize his own freaking work). This is actually Truth in Television: people who plagiarize rarely admit that what they're doing is wrong, and/or tell themselves they're a special case.
• Star Wars:
  • C-3PO is famous for this, especially in A New Hope when he decides to go a different direction than R2-D2 in the Tatooine desert.
    R2-D2: [beckoning whistle]
    C-3PO: Where do you think you're going?
    R2-D2: [squawk]
    C-3PO: Well, I'm not going that way. It's much too rocky. This way is much easier.
    R2-D2: [beep]
    C-3PO: What makes you think there are settlements over there?
    R2-D2: [beeping and whistling]
    C-3PO: Don't get technical with me.
    R2-D2: [angry squawks]
    C-3PO: What mission? What are you talking about?
    R2-D2: [beeping and whistling]
    C-3PO: I've just about had enough of you. Go that way. You'll be malfunctioning within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile. [kicks R2]
    R2-D2: [startled beep]
    C-3PO: [walks off] And don't let me catch you following me begging for help, because you won't get it.
    R2-D2: [sad whistling leading into a loud yelp]
    C-3PO: [turns around] No more adventures! I'm not going that way.
    R2-D2: [angry honk and some muttering]
    [next scene]
    C-3PO: That malfunctioning little twerp. This is all his fault. He tricked me into going this way. But he'll do no better.
  • In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker blames Obi-Wan Kenobi for turning Padmé Amidala against him. It couldn't have been your sharp descent into violent murder and villainy, no...
    Anakin: You turned her against me!
    Obi-Wan: You have done that yourself.
    Anakin: You will not TAKE HER FROM ME!
    Obi-Wan: Your anger and lust for power have already done that.
• Strays (2023):
  • Doug blames Reggie for the problems he caused himself, such as his girlfriend leaving him after Reggie comes in carrying another woman's panties.
  • Bug acts like Emma's parents attempting to have him euthanized was completely uncalled for and an act of betrayal after months of loyalty to Emma... when he was the one who savagely bit her after she startled him by stepping on his leg. Reggie evens calls Bug out on this when he's reconsidering his revenge on Doug.
• Stuck: Brandi blames Tom for the car accident that sets off the plot, completely ignoring that she was driving while intoxicated and on the phone and wasn’t paying attention, while Tom was just some unfortunate pedestrian she happened to hit. She then drags him to her home and tries to let him bleed out to avoid consequences, continuing to blame him. It gets to the point where she angrily asks why he’s trying to ruin her life while she beats him with a 2x4 to stop him from calling out for help while he bleeds to death.
• The Three Stooges: Moe is always quick to pin blame and administer physical punishment against Larry and Curly (or Shemp), even when whatever hilarious accident that had happened to Moe was his own fault.
• Invoked at the conclusion of Truth & Lies, after Cody is arrested for trying to kill Taylor and her mother Allison out of a sense of Misplaced Retribution after his parents died in a car crash with Alison's husband/Taylor's father that killed the other man. Cody is last shown being taken into a police car yelling that he'll be out of prison with the sympathy for his story, but when his actions led to a teenage girl committing suicide and he tried to kill a police detective Alison can assure Taylor that he doesn't have a leg to stand on.
• Vertical Limit: Vaughn accuses Tom of being the reason for the climbing team getting caught in the storm in the first place on the grounds that Tom was the official team leader, even though Tom kept insisting that they should turn back and Vaughn just kept offering new arguments to support going on until it was too late.
• In A Very Brady Sequel, conceited Marcia becomes the only one of the Brady Kids not to think, "This is all my fault!" after their mother gets kidnapped. Instead, Marcia thinks, "This is all Jan's fault."
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: When Mr. Wonka denies Charlie the lifetime supply of chocolate because of the Fizzy Lifting Drinks incident, Grandpa Joe is positively livid, gives Mr. Wonka a What the Hell, Hero? speech accusing him of being an "inhuman monster" who cruelly strung Charlie along, and vows to get back at Wonka by selling the Everlasting Gobstopper to Slugworth. Grandpa Joe doesn't take into consideration that not only did he push Charlie into signing Wonka's contract without bothering to read it, but it was his idea to take the Fizzy Lifting Drinks in the first place.
• One of Gary King's traits in The World's End:
  Andy: You're late.
  Gary: No, I'm not.
  Andy: Yes you are. You said 3:00. It's almost 4:00.
  Gary: Yeah, 3 fore 4:00.
  Andy: You know your problem, Gary? You're never wrong.
  Gary: How's that a problem?
• Near the end of X-Men: First Class, after Erik Lensherr deflects a bullet that hits Charles Xavier, Erik immediately blames the wound on Moira for shooting at him in the first place. Xavier immediately calls Erik out on who is really to blame.