Idiot Plot/Literature

Examples of the Idiot Plot in Literature include:

Angels & Demons has a huge gaping hole that not a single character sees. Great care is given to say how undetectable the antimatter containment is. The protagonists even go so far as to wipe out power to entire city blocks so that they can look for the containment device without any background noise. Yet no one thinks to look for the camera pointed at the containment device "that is actively broadcasting". Since they are receiving video, there is a signal. Since there is a signal, it can be triangulated.
- Unless the signal is being run through a landline to a remotely sited transmitter, or through relays, or through the Internet, or...
Left Behind is full of this, especially in the early books.
- A nuclear assault on Israel ends in no casualties. You'd think that evangelists of every religion would be trying to link it to their own, there would likely be a large amount of conversions, and hard-core atheists would be trying to desperately come up with explanations as to how it could be a natural occurrence. Instead, everyone seems to just go about their business as if it hadn't happened.
- Every child in the world disappears in the rapture, but some adults do too. All of these adults are "real true Christians." Somehow, this exceedingly obvious pattern is not noted.
- Carpathia's Techno Babble explanation for said disappearances is apparently accepted readily. Apparently all the scientists who would rebuke it for its inaccuracies forgot everything they knew.
  - All the true scientists capable of rebuking it were also real true Christians and were raptured, of course.
- Most of Carpathia's machinations require this to work. Asking countries to destroy most of their nuclear weapons and give the remainder to him? And they fall for it?
  - ... he's the Antichrist. He has mind control superpowers. Acting incredibly stupid around the guy with Satan's own version of the Jedi Mind Trick is to be expected. Its the rest of the book that's full of inexplicable dumb.
    - Mind tricks would affect only those in close contact, however. Soon others would notice them acting in outrageous ways and treat them as crazy or compromised. High-ranked people are watched by allies and enemies alike, so once enough of them start acting strange after meeting This One Guy, the pattern would be noticed. And if it's not possible to stop or contain the problem, someone could be freaked out enough to try and "accidentally lose" his way a few fast and very energetic things from beyond visual range.
      - The Antichrist's powers are vaguely set as 'somewhere short of God Almighty's', and that's their only known limitation.
- Honorable mention should also go to the Global Community Faith. Carpathia gets some religious leaders together, they hold a press conference announcing that as of now, all religions are now united into a new, only vaguely defined, faith. And everyone except newly converted PMD Christians and the Jews are happy to go along with it.
Mentioned in one of Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers stories: One character mentions he's having trouble writing his story without it turning into an Idiot Plot, and was trying to find a way to prevent characters from asking the obvious question that would resolve the mystery. Their guest then causes another Idiot Plot in much the same way.
Tom Godwin's short story "The Cold Equations" was originally a brutal, much-needed subversion of early 1950s Science Fiction and its omnipotent men of SCIENCE!. That trend is over and done with, so attention is instead drawn to the idiotically negligent design and procedure choices of the ship builders. This results in a Broken Aesop.
- To further explain the above: in order for the story to occur as written it requires a spaceship to be designed with enough interior wasted space and mass to allow a stowaway to not only fit inside but be able to conceal herself from the pilot's line of sight, despite the spaceship being intended to function under the most extreme of weight limits. It requires a space mission to be planned with such a nonexistent margin of error that so much as 100-120 lbs. of additional mass (the stowaway in question is described as a relatively small young woman) at takeoff will result in their being insufficient fuel to safely land unless the excess mass is jettisoned, despite the fact that such a nonexistent margin of error would imply that only the most precise of computer-controlled navigation would have any hope of maintaining exact course and speed (if the fuel margin is so narrow that a minor weight difference can put you outside your flight envelope, try to imagine what being a few seconds early or late with an engine burn is going to do) and this is a manually-piloted ship. It requires the pilot to do his 'make sure the ship is carrying no excess mass aboard' check after takeoff instead of before takeoff. And it requires the stowaway to be entirely ignorant of the fact that courier missions of this type are under extreme weight limits and that her presence onboard will require her to either be spaced halfway through or else cause a fatal crash on landing. So, from the original designer of the spaceship on up, literally every person of relevance to the plot, even those who never appear onstage, has to make a major unforced error in order for the plot to exist at all. This is the Trope Codifier here, folks.
  - The really ironic thing? The person in this story who is most called out for being an idiot (the stowaway) is actually the least idiotic person in this whole mess. In that unlike everyone else her error was one of ignorance and not stupidity, and in addition she is the only person who actually has any excuse for being ignorant, because unlike everybody else in this mess she is simply a civilian passenger, not a trained space pilot or engineer.
    - Which also means that an untrained civilian passenger was allowed onboard a spaceship without any kind of basic safety briefing, and that there is no security guard outside the courier ship hangar to warn people of this thing, and that there is also no warning sign on the door. We can add 'the captain and crew of the mothership' to the list of people who have to act like idiots in order for the plot to exist.
  - With such a tiny margin of error and at least 1950-s level of automation, it would make more sense to remove pilot and life support altogether, launch the mission with autopilot (with a slightly improved variant of missile IR guidance it could even decelerate into a stable orbit) and leave the final approach and landing to remote control of the receiving port. Which would probably significantly improve the margin of error as well. More if they'd skip landing, leave the courier rocket on orbit and drop the payload in reentry module(s).
  - For that matter, why a courier must deliver to surface on its own at all? Park it in an orbital dock, haul cargo down in shuttles or drop capsules. If it's not an one-way mission, refuel the courier and send it back on the next scheduled visit. The planet doesn't have orbital infrastructure, not even a single orbital shuttle port to support limited courier functionality? Or at least its own orbital shuttles? It's a colony in another star system, all those colonists had to get down to the ground somehow in the first place. Were they shuttled down, then the shuttle dock removed? They don't have to maintain navigation/communication/surveillance satellites? Orbital telescopes to look for incoming stones and suchlike? This makes sense only if the colonies are mistrusted and deliberately hobbled.
Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time:
- It is so full of potentially lethal errors in judgement by both the protagonists and antagonists that a strong argument could be made for the series consisting almost exclusively of Idiot Plot, particularly in the latter books.
- The self-absorption and patronising behavior of almost every single ridiculously misandristic Aes Sedai, female politician, noblewoman and varied other females is one of the most famous things about the Wheel of Time books.
  - Aes Sedai acquired reputation of weasels whose every other word is twisted and even they know that people don't trusts them. You'd think that either they'd get a clue and try to fix this problem rather than just whining about it - or absolute political bankrupcy would follow. It's so easy to blame them for anything (honestly or not) and wave away objections that not just Whitecloaks, but everyone and their dog would readily believe that Aes Sedai are child-eating evil witches, and then their status will hold on brute force alone, but almost no one will want to become Aes Sedai, while anyone opposing them will be seen as heroes until proven otherwise. The end. Instead: mind-controlling magic users whom people don't even pretend to trust walk around openly, and this setup somehow remains mostly stable for centuries.
- The greater majority of the protagonists' problems are caused by their own lapses in judgement and failure to communicate, to the point that it would take hours to list them all. They refuse to work together, they run off by themselves in secret (repeatedly), they almost never ask for help, and even those that *should* trust one another withhold secrets for no good reason. Not only does it allow the antagonists to win many of their conflicts, it also prevents the heroes from gaining the strength they need to oppose the Dark One. Fortunately, the antagonists also have this failing.
- The White Tower rebellion plotline has turned into this. One side of the conflict has rediscovered several lost spells, has a large army led by a famous general, and has surrounded the White Tower, preventing most movement. The other side, inside the tower, are at each other's throats, constantly in-fighting, and are vastly outnumbered due to their leader being Too Dumb to Live. Not to mention the fact that the Chosen One will never make a treaty with the Tower because their leader ordered his kidnapping, and beating. Granted, the Black Ajah is doing its best to foster these problems, but one would think that the Tower's ruling body would, at some point, notice that they are in a ridiculously weak position, their leader is a fool, and remove her from power. And all this is going on with the final battle over the fate of the world just around the corner...
- The whole thing ends with the White Tower raising Egwene and only because Elaida was captured by the Seanchan followed by Egwene calling the entire tower Aes Sedai disgraces because only Sylviana had the balls to do what was right.
Twilight.
- If Bella were smart enough to stay away from Edward, there would be no series, period. For the first book specifically, almost every plot point is introduced because Bella does something idiotic. About the only plot point not directly caused by Bella is Tyler's death van, which was just a flimsy excuse to get the story running.
- Bella's decision to wander Port Angeles alone, as it got dark, and in the back alleys, is how The Reveal is set up. A particularly gifted level of stupidity was required for her to do so, since Port Angeles (not a large city) is notably deficient in back alleys. Roving gangs of rapists are also uncommon.
- Bella's decision to lead an innocent boy along to gain information is how the Love Triangle is set up.
- Bella's decision to go to a meadow, alone, with an admitted Serial Killer, and let him wander around behind her, is how the great romance is begun.
- Bella's decision to do as James said - regardless of the likelihood of him actually had her mother or the fact there were two more-than-capable vampires with her who could have at least given some advice - is what causes the climax.
  - The James plot could have actually been resolved even easier if the Cullens had just fought him earlier. The odds were seven-against-three in their favor. Oh, what's that? James' ally Laurent wasn't willing to fight for him? Okay, seven-against-two. Laurent goes on about how the Cullens are sure to lose because James is such an amazing fighter, but in the end, it only takes Jasper and Emmett to kill him anyway—if the whole Cullen family had attacked him and Victoria in Forks, they could have easily won without Bella getting horribly beat up beforehand.
- In the film version of Twilight, Bella feels insulted when Edward doesn't talk to her so she spends weeks (possibly even a month or more) waiting to tell him off for being a jerk. As pointed out by Riff Trax, a normal person would've moved on after a few days or so.
In New Moon:
- Bella's decision to go cliff-diving without any prior experience, anyone else to help her out or save her, and any knowledge of how deep the water she's jumping into is, is how the climax of the story is set up to bring Edward home.
- Arguably most of the second and third act of New Moon fits this. Edward has spent all of Twilight and the beginning of this book talking about how he loves Bella more than anything in the world, but is constantly terrified of something bad happening to her. She is then nearly killed by Jasper at the party. Then Edward tries to tell her that he doesn't love her anymore (in order to keep her safe) before leaving. Bella spends the rest of the book completely believing this, without ever once considering that he lied to her or attempting to talk to him about it. Even when she knows that he curled up in a ball and didn't do anything while they were apart, even when she knows that he left to commit suicide when she supposedly died, even when he hugs and kisses her and clings to her when she shows up alive, even when he returns to America with her, she still is either convinced that he's putting on an act for her or doing it out of guilt, or that she's dreaming.
- Also from New Moon: Despite living in the present and having enough money to have every form of technology ever, Edward immediately takes Jacob's word for it that Bella has died, rather than check his email/phone for any messages about it, check Forks' newspapers for Bella's obituary, call anyone else to confirm what he heard, etc.
- Not to mention—Jacob never SAYS that Bella died. He says that "[Charlie Swan's] not here. He's at the funeral." Which he is. He's at Harry Clearwater's. Edward is the one who jumps to the conclusion that Alice's vision of Bella's death has to be accurate...even though most funerals do not take place on the day of the person's death. Edward doesn't even call back and ask Jacob whose funeral Chief Swan is attending.
- Which is even worse when you consider that Alice was the one who had the vision and he had Alice's cell phone number!!! There was no reason he couldn't have called Alice directly! Alice herself doesn't help though, as she apparently thought it was a grand idea to hang around with Bella for a few days, instead of calling Rosalie and Edward and telling them "Never mind, Bella's alive after all".
- Not to mention the fact that Bella was still alive and, upon realizing Edward had left the country, went into a deep depression that had her bedridden for months. Her father, for some bizarre reason, didn't even bother to do anything (e.g send her to a psychiatrist) even though she was having severe night terrors and wouldn't leave her bedroom for months.
- Or rather, he didn't try very hard. He brought it up to her once or twice that she might want to consider seeking professional help, but backed down when she demurred. Charlie's quite the milquetoast for a sheriff.
- Not only is Bella an idiot, she's actually a human Idiot Ball! Anyone who comes into contact with her (most notably Edward) starts making random, ridiculous decisions and being generally Too Dumb to Live. Even the villains. Lets face it, how many of their thoroughly inept "wicked schemes" would have came close to working if the good guys hadn't been a group of shambling, dunderheaded simpletons?
In Eclipse:
- The Cullens know that there's at least one newborn tearing up Seattle and they know that Victoria has been trying to kill Bella since the previous book. They then learn that there is a newborn army being built in Seattle and that a vampire has apparently broken into Bella's room and stolen one of her shirts. Common sense would dictate that Victoria had the newborn army made and ordered the theft of Bella's shirt so that the army could track her down and kill her. It's not until a good number of chapters later that they figure out that Victoria was behind the theft of the shirt and it's not until the actual climax that they realize that Victoria was behind the army of newborns.
- This is particularly stupid given that Edward can read minds and Jasper can influence emotions. Logically, Edward could have gone to Seattle, read the minds of at least some of the newborns and/or their victims and determined who was behind this army, while Jasper projected calmness on the newborns that Edward discovered. The army members would have been identified, their secrets uncovered and their attacks rendered useless with comparative ease—and no one ever considers this. Not even Jasper, who is canonically the strategist.
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner only gels with the plot of Eclipse because the characters have all been severely lobotomized. Despite the fact that Bree knows that Riley is kidnapping teenagers to become vampires, that he makes no effort to protect them once they've become vampires, and that (as she later remembers) he kidnapped her himself, breaking her arm in the process and terrifying her. It's not until the very last few pages that she actually gets it in her head that he's a bad guy. This novella also makes Breaking Dawn into this trope, because Bree mentally gives Edward her knowledge of the events leading up to the battle, which includes how the Volturi were willing to turn a blind eye to Victoria's plans, in the hope of the Cullens being killed. This means that Edward at least was well aware that the Volturi were actively trying to get his family killed...but in Breaking Dawn, he was quite shocked at the idea of the group being so corrupt.
Bram Stoker's Dracula:
- The title character would have never sunk his fangs in Mina's neck if the heroes had remembered anything they'd learned about vampires during their ordeal with Lucy. Especially since Mina was displaying all the symptoms of being a vampire victim that Lucy displayed earlier... Exacerbated by the fact that Mina was with her when Lucy was first attacked and started displaying those symptoms. And they had Van Helsing with them the whole time.
- The way Lucy's mom undermines every effort to save her. Really looks like she's doing it on purpose.
- Also for an all powerful vampire, you'd think Dracula would have had more common sense. Such as taking Lucy with him after fully vamping her rather than leaving her behind. Not only did he give the heroes an example of what a vampire was like and what they could do - he practically led the heroes straight to him. What's the point of making undead women if you're not going to use 'em?
Another vampire example, the entire plot of Barb Hendee's Hunting Memories depends on the heroine's (using that term loosely, since she is a mass murderess) stubborn refusal to even consider the possibility that the villain (arguably, he is just defending himself) has completely given up after the end of the first novel, and will never try again, even though he was clearly a fanatic. One of her companions, who knew the villain much better, didn't think he'd just give up.
The Draka stories by S.M. Stirling.
- There's this empire in Africa which conquers everything it can grab (talking about whole continents here), enslaves pretty much everyone, has an extremely supremacist ideology, plus supreme technology, acts like it's independent even while being a British colony, but no one - whether Nazis, Communists or good democrats - decides to do anything to stop them.
- The premise is that the Draka are a sort of Evil Twin society to the United States. Historically, no major nation decided to stop the US from becoming powerful from 1812 up to World War Two. The catch, and this is where the idiocy comes in, is that the US wasn't deliberately expanding into the spheres of interest of countries powerful enough to stop it, except for a few minor border clashes with the British Empire over a river valley here and there. Whereas the Draka do, especially during their alternate version of World War I.
- There's more idiocy to that, because during much of their power grab the Draka are still a British Dominion, and not once does the British Empire even attempt to slap them down despite repeated brutal, hostile and illegal actions.
- There's an attempt at justifying it in the story, arguing that the British Empire was so traumatized by the loss of Canada in the War of 1812 that it didn't feel powerful enough to impose its will on the colonies. (In Real Life, the British Empire at the height of its power barely won a war against two insignificant republics in a small part of what's now South Africa - it's an open question how it would have fared against a heavily militarized, technologically advanced power controlling a large part of a continent.) The Draka are also very careful not to tread on Britain's toes until they are powerful enough to get away with it.
- Completely left unaddressed is the presence of France in the presumptive Drakan empire. The French presence in west Africa was well-established by the time the Draka get there, and France is almost as powerful as Britain during the 19th century (they have the second-largest navy in the world, and the largest modern army, during this period). Why there wasn't a more generalized conflict between Britain and France over a rogue British colony impinging upon the French sphere of influence (or why the French didn't just send the Draka home with their asses firmly kicked) is an exercise for the reader.
- This site does a good job of pointing out most (though not all) of the flaws in logic, not to mention the blatantly illegal things done by the Draka while they are still firmly under British rule (illegal under 19th century British rule that is).
Pretty much everything that PG Wodehouse ever wrote, but the man was so incredibly good at it, you barely notice. Plus, let's face it; when you're dealing with characters like Bertie Wooster, what else do you expect?
Being There, both novel and film, is a satire that uses an Idiot Plot to help make its point. The whole story hinges on how people who believe themselves to be sensible and intelligent nevertheless jump to their own, desired conclusions time after time in their dealings with Chance the Gardener, never asking the questions most people would be tempted to ask based on what he says. This is partially because he appears to be a sensible, intelligent person himself, but is in fact an imbecile who doesn't understand what's going on and thus isn't able to correct others.
The entire Dutch novel Descartes' Dochter (Descartes' Daughter), which revolves around the discovery of a lost manuscript of Descartes. When the main character Henriette returns home to her girlfriend Maartje in a coat covered in blood, Maartje gives up trying to find out what happened after a half-assed attempt at questioning, and the two proceed to make love. Later in the story, when Henriette murders her own mother, Maartje does not go to the police, does not get the hell away from Henriette, but e-mails the French professor she has been corresponding with about it. Who responds with only some vague philosophical stuff about "the gift". Later on, Maartje converses with a German professor about a lost manuscript of Kant that has turned up. When the German professor hears that Maartje has also been corresponding about it with that French guy (the actual French philosopher Jean Luc Marion), she exclaims: "Oh no! A Catholic!" and takes a train to Holland straight away, where she is immediately murdered by Henriette. Later, Henriette lures Maartje into the toilet on a train and then kills her. Serves her right for being too dumb to live.
Tristan and Isolde is a juggling convention of Idiot Balls. Most egregious examples:
- Tristan is finally allowed to marry Isolde after a bunch of totally epic adventures ending in winning her heart while he's naked in a bath even though she had sworn to kill him. So he decides she'll marry king Mark instead. She hates him for it.
- They accidentally drink the Love Potion meant for Isolde and Mark. They don't even consider asking king Mark permission to marry or anything. Granted, an oath is a pretty big thing, but so is permanent magic, and it's not like Mark cared that much.
- Tristan meets another woman (also named Isolde), is asked if he wants to marry her, and says "OK" completely out of the blue in a Diabolus Ex Machina. He immediately regrets it and refuses to have sex with her, making her jealous. Then the first Isolde also gets jealous, despite knowing the effects of the Love Potion are permanent and exclusive.
Kathy Reichs' Temperance "Bones" Brennan novels depend strongly on this trope for about half the plot, and nearly every major climax. This is particularly true when the climax involves the main character, who seems to pick up the Idiot Ball on nearly every possible occasion. Particularly when it would get her into yet another life-threatening situation by going somewhere alone and unarmed, no matter how many people are telling her not to, which she does in the majority of the novels. When other characters do this, it's either because they've picked up her Idiot Ball, or because they're Too Obsessed/Absent-Minded/Naive/Fluff-headed To Live.
Digital Fortress is a particularly bad example. Even if you ignore the fact that the plot relies on every single person in the world not knowing the very basics of cryptography, it still doesn't make much sense.
To Kill a Mockingbird:
- The Tom Robinson trial only hangs together if every white person in town save the Finches totes an Idiot Ball into the courtroom. When presented with obvious, incontrovertible proof of his innocence, neither the Prosecutor, Judge, or the Jury is smart enough to acquit him. 'Cause they're racist. Unfortunately, very much Truth in Television at the time.
- Tom's real crime in the eyes of the town is not the rape, of which he's obviously innocent, but that he admits to feeling sorry for Mayella. The way the prosecuting lawyer leaps on that heartbreaking slip of the tongue says it all. Most likely he would have been found guilty anyway, but the fact that a black man admitted to feeling sorry for a white woman meant that most of the characters didn't even feel bad about it.
Pretty much all of the fifth Magic Kingdom of Landover novel is a textbook Idiot Plot. Due to writing himself into a corner at the end of the fourth book, the author ended up having a situation on his hands where his main cast had every reason to suspect that the main focus of the book (the main characters' daughter getting kidnapped by the series' recurring Big Bad Nightshade and being turned against them) was going to happen. So they end up absolutely discounting the possibility with the exact same excuses several times, all of which are based around the assumption that a Diabolus Ex Nihilo called Rydall of Marnhull is telling them the truth. Even though they openly express skepticism that he's ever telling the truth and all evidence from day one suggests that he is not. And it takes them the entire book to come to the conclusion they would have reached in 5 minutes had the plot not required them to discount it.
Dismissed with Prejudice by J. A. Jance. Let's see, the back cover tells us about a Japanese businessman found dead of an apparent suicide. But an error in the ancient ritual pointed to... murder! The actual problem, according to a Japanese-American investigator, is that the scene is "totally wrong" for the ritual suicide. But we have a Caucasian medical examiner persist with his theory of suicide. A couple days later, we discovered that the victim was indeed murdered—bludgeoned over the head. "We couldn't see it until after we moved the body."
The protagonist of Vollidiot (Complete idiot), a novel by German writer Tommy Yaud is.. well... Played for Laughs, though.
House Rules is often criticized for this. Many reviewers note that the entire premise of House Rules depends on absolutely nobody asking Jacob whether he committed the murder or not. His mother and lawyer immediately organise an insanity defence instead. This is particularly glaring because one of the traits of Jacob's Asperger's is that he's terrible at lying. The plot would also be over in fifty pages if Theo didn't sit through his brother's arrest, jail time and trial, and all the strain this causes on his family, without telling anyone that he broke into Jess's house on the day of the "murder" and saw her fall down and hit her head. All right, maybe he's frightened of being charged with causing her accidental death, but when he finally owns up that doesn't seem to have occurred to him.
Andromeda Nebula is a perfect example of Idiot Plot. Starship crew was trapped on the planet of Iron Star because watchkeepers just didn't want to wake their commander (despite they knew that he wanted to drive the ship in this area himself). On the planet they've found another Earthian starship, abandoned because it's crew was terminated by local agressive fauna. The last member of dying crew left a record, which contained nothing helpful... and the advice not to leave the ship - more than senseless, considering the fact that this record could be picked only by someone who had already left his ship. And it is just the beginning...
Blacklisted by Gena Showalter has a mild version of this. The Alien Investigation and Removal agency hunts down and arrests high schooler Camille and her crush Erik. First of all, why would she follow him, when he apparently seems to be a drug dealer? Even if you hand wave that to blind love, why would AIR not just ask her if she was with him or not? As seen in the companion book, their policy is to keep civilians out of their business. Instead they assume that she a drug dealer too and shoot and arrest her.
The Fetch Quest that forms the plot of Hothouse Flower and The Nine Plants of Desire would never have happened had Lila not told Exley about the titular plants, which he stole. The protagonists' lack of foresight also adds complications to the plot.
The Deadly Mission of Phineas Snodgrass. So a man travels back in time and pretty much literally Gives Radio to the Romans. Okay, that's not the Idiot Plot. The society which this man creates develops the scientific method much more quickly than it arose in Real Life, and as a result is fully-modernized by around the sixth century and is practically Raygun Gothic by the Middle Ages. And the writer expects us to believe that in all that time no one in that scientifically-minded society ever noticed the massive overpopulation problem that was arising or took any steps to mitigate or prevent it? You'd think that, with no religious restrictions against such things, that reliable birth control would be invented as soon as their society advanced enough to discover modern medicine and learn what causes reproduction. It pretty much stretches Willing Suspension of Disbelief that the only way this advanced society could think to save themselves from an overpopulation-induced catastrophe was to send another person back in time to prevent their society from being founded. What are they, suicidal? It's also a colossal Did Not Do the Research, as the Romans had a cultural lack of compunction about Offing the Offspring, as well as already understanding several modern birth control methods.
- And if everything else fails, the traditional way of dealing with overpopulation is simple: start a war, losses for territories is a "win-win" deal (for survivors, that is). Of course, as often as not it backfires... but really, Romans missed this one?
A debatable one in Dirty Little Secrets by C.J. Omololu. Lucy is the daughter of a compulsive hoarder who comes home one day to find her mother dead under a stack of junk. She starts to dial 911, but panics and doesn't dial. She was afraid that her friends might find out about how messy her house was and pity her. In the end, she burns the house down. She only calls her brother once, and gives up. Instead, she tries to clean up the house so it at least looks presentable. If she had just called 911 after cleaning up the house somewhat, she probably could have been better off. If she had even called her brother a second time, she probably could have avoided having to burn the house down.
Harry Potter: The minor side-plot that gives name to the sixth book rests entirely upon it. It's traditional in British schools for teachers to keep their favourite moth-eaten, scrawled on textbooks in the book cupboard with the books normally passed out to the children who forget their books, resulting in plenty of amusing anecdotes about the fights kids get into to avoid being the one stuck with that torn copy despite the fact it's often the most useful book to end up with. Rowling clearly played on this, right down to Ron and Harry fighting over who got stuck with it, and yet somehow they were both completely incapable of ever wondering if it belonged to either the current or past Potions Master. Not even Hermione was capable of wondering what really should have been an obvious first suspicion for a British kid in a British school system to have. Of course, if they had jumped to the logical suspicion, the sixth book reveal would have happened at the start instead of the end - although that would not have changed the overall plot of the book in any significant way.
- In the Muggle British school system. Whether or not Wizarding schoolteachers do it is an open question.
  - Both characters who are arguing over that book had been in the Muggle school system for the first eleven years of their life. Even if nobody else in the class knows this trope, they should.
- Continuing with the problems with Harry Potter, you really have to question why Dumbledore just didn't keep Harry in the loop. Some claim he didn't tell Harry everything as some sort of test to prove himself, but why? Or he wants to give Harry a normal childhood so he tries to protect him from it all, but Harry's evidently never going to get to be a normal kid since he ends up running into Voldemort practically all the time, so why keep sheltering him and never telling him anything? Why risk Harry getting killed if he's the only one who can kill Voldemort? Dumbledore does so little to prepare Harry and after Dumbledore's death, Harry has absolutely no guidance and can't talk to anyone except two other students. Dumbledore knew he'd be dying in advance so why didn't he leave him something more than a few cryptic clues? You also have to question Dumbledore's wisdom in telling all the students at the start of the first book, among them Fred and George, whose curiousity will almost certainly be piqued because of the warning, not to try to get past a certain door. A certain door that can be unlocked with an alohomora charm and has an enormous, extremely dangerous multi-headed dog behind it, ready to maim anyone, adventurous student or not, who gets near? This is only one of the Idiot Balls flying around. Voldemort takes his own turn by never killing Harry when he has the chance. If he had, the books would have ended far sooner.
  - It still qualifies as this trope because Dumbledore is still being an idiot, but its actually an in-character idiocy. The two major driving forces of Dumbledore's character are intellectual arrogance (a character flaw he has struggled with since childhood) and his guilt over having almost become a Dark Wizard like his old friend Grindelwald and how it took the accidental death of his sister (possibly at his hand) to turn him away from that path. And so for the rest of his life Dumbledore goes around being the worst sort of patronizing overprotective mentor -- out of a mix of 'nobody else will die on my watch if I never involve them in anything potentially dangerous' and a 'I know best and nobody else can possibly handle this as well as I could' mixture of impulses.
- You also have to wonder why Dumbledore didn't just confront Draco the minute he learned the kid was trying to kill him. The case can be made that doing so would have wrecked Dumbledore's plan to have Snape kill him and win favor with Voldemort, but c'mon....does Rowling really expect us to believe that Dumbles KNEW Draco would smuggle Death Eaters into the school at the end of the year?
- But all of the above pales into absolute insignificance when you consider that the entire plot of the story ceases to exist if James and Lily Potter had simply had the wherewithal to use one of themselves as their Secret-Keeper. To further draw a line underneath the idiocy, later on in the series multiple characters (Dumbledore for Grimmauld Place, Bill Weasley for Shell Cottage, and Arthur Weasley for whereever the Weasleys were hiding in book 7) will all use themselves as their own Secret-Keepers for Fidelius Charms they have themselves cast, thus demonstrating not only this tactic's possibility but also its usefulness.
Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos doesn't just abuse this trope, but positively runs on it in its entirety. The book is basically nothing but the characters acting like utter morons and the author dropping a Contrived Coincidence in their way all the time.
Lady Penitent series by Lisa Smedman. So far the only arguments in favour of its plot making any sense boil down to: "Q1: Why these characters do such idiotic thing as [K,L,M]..? A1: Uh... They are but pawn on the Divine Chessboard! Q2: Why these gods do such idiotic things as [X,Y,Z]..? A2: Uh... It's all symbolic, actually it reflects their worshipers' actions!". Which is supplemented by how many things happen in contradiction to both how they happened in the previous lore and what common sense says on the issue, but everyone and his familiar for some reason stake their lives and more on such development, despite lack of previous experience or reliable information. Of course, the series' purpose was to introduce "changes" of Forgotten Realms into an unrelated setting under the same brand in the first place, and it was given to an author already proven to be uninterested in the existing lore, so it falls under They Just Didn't Care.