Nice Job Breaking It, Hero/Western Animation

"Bubbles: This isn't making the town a better place! Mojo Jojo: Yes, it is... for me!"
 * In Jackie Chan Adventures, the defeat of the first season's Big Bad allows the antagonists of the second season back into the world. And he was much weaker than they were. Way to go, Jade... At the beginning of the third season Jackie himself destroys the talismans while trying to keep them away from two opposing forces, the very act of doing this causes the arc for that season.
 * In fact, this is how EVERY season starts. Find an ancient shield with a Talisman in it? Start the great Talisman hunt. Blow up Shendu? He became a spirit that released his seven siblings. Blow up the Talismans to stop Daolon Wong? Re-start the great Talisman hunt. Remove Wong's magic? Trying to reclaim it he unleashed the Oni. Those eight Demon Sorcerers you beat? The weapons used to defeat them are now charged with demonic energy Drago is absorbing to increase his own strength. If there had been a 6th season, it probably would have explored the consequences of sealing the Oni away.
 * In one episode of Totally Spies, the girls visit a small town in Italy, only to find it deserted, as a duel between two pizza-wielding brothers has chased everyone else out, after briefly fighting them both, the girls agree to sample each pizzas and decide who is the better chef for them, the girls decide they are equally good and advise them to set aside their differences. The brothers tearfully reconcile and agree to work together, the girls happily leave, assuming they mean to set up a joint restaurant. It turns out, they decide to pull a Villain Team-Up and destroy all other pizza chefs. So, yeah...
 * In an episode of The Powerpuff Girls, where the three girls and Professor Utonium move to a much larger city than The City of Townsville, which is reversely named the Town of Citysville, The Powerpuff Girls think it's a good idea to continue fighting crime in their new location. After stopping a couple of robbers by destroying the bridge they were trying to get away on, the mayor of Citysville complains to them. "At what point did you think it would be a good idea to blow up the Citysville Bridge? Those robbers stole $4000 in cash. But it's going to cost MILLIONS of dollars to replace the bridge!!!" This catches the girls off guard because, in every single episode prior, plenty of buildings get destroyed Godzilla-style and nobody seems to care a thing about it, as long as the monster is gone. Moral: There is a significant difference between destroying a few buildings in the process of preventing a giant monster from razing the entire town, and stopping a pair of petty crooks.
 * This is also a major part of the premise of The Movie, where Mojo tricks the girls into helping him build his volcano observatory and a machine that he claims will "help the town and make it a better place" but actually helps him take over.

""Risking my life to save people I hate for reasons I don't quite understand!""
 * In "Fallen Arches", a group of elderly supervillains known as the Ministry of Pain come out of retirement, but Blossom refuses to fight them out of a misguided sense of "respecting your elders". This only convinces everyone that the Powerpuffs are afraid of the Ministry's notorious reputation. Blossom then tries to convince the equally-elderly superhero duo of Captain Righteous and Lefty to settle their differences and come out of retirement. The episode ends with all the elderly supers hospitalized, and a news reporter talking about how the whole farce could have been avoided if only the Powerpuff Girls had done something. Nice going, Blossom!
 * The Simpsons has a send-up of the David vs. Goliath legend, in which King David (Bart) fights Goliath Jr. (Nelson) and loses, with Goliath Jr. taking over as king. After some Training From Hell, he comes back and does a Nice Job of slaying the giant. The Breaking It part comes when he's told that Goliath Jr. was the best king the city had ever had, building roads, libraries, and hospitals, and David is arrested for megacide. Whoops!
 * Arguably parodied in the episode You Only Move Twice, when Homer takes a job in another city working for Hank Scorpio. Homer turns out to actually be pretty good at his job, successfully setting up the nuclear reactor Scorpio needed for his plan to succeed, and unwittingly preventing Scorpio's plans from being derailed when "James Bond Bont" tries to stop him. When the family moves back to Springfield, Scorpio sends Homer a thank-you note, stating that he couldn't have taken control of the East Coast without Homer's help.
 * This trope defines Homer's relationship with his family. His Jerkass attitude always ends up hurting the feelings of or angering his family. Many episodes have been focused on his lousy parenting skills and sometimes troubled marriage (almost always his fault).
 * Turned Up to Eleven and Deconstructed in the movie, where Homer lands Springfield in more trouble than it's ever been, completely pisses off his family, and spends the rest of the film facing the consequences of his actions and trying to fix everything.
 * Although, in his defense, not only does he make it all right again, he also sums up modern heroism surprisingly well:

"Herriman: Good heavens! What's happening? Bloo: You've peeved him off, that's what's happening!"
 * Homer subverts this trope in the episode "Boy Scouts N' The Hood" when Bart joins the Junior Campers (an Expy for the Boy Scouts) and has to take Homer along on a father-son river rafting trip. They're paired with Ned Flanders and his son, and Homer makes things go From Bad to Worse. Homer loses their map and gets them separated from all the other father-son pairs, and they end up drifting out to sea. They quickly run out of food and water because of Homer's Jerkass behavior, and he makes their raft spring a leak. However, Homer ultimately saves them when he realizes that there's a Krusty Burger on a nearby offshore oil rig, and his amazing sense of smell leads them to it. They get food and a ride back to Springfield, and Bart congratulates his father. It also turns out that Homer actually did Bart and the Flanderses a favour by getting them separated from the other rafts. We see what the other father-son teams go through, and it turns out to be a rather unpleasant experience.
 * Transformers Animated has a Whack a Mole episode in which the wrong Autobot was arrested. Wasp goes on to become insane and vengeful in solitary confinement until he finally breaks out to get revenge on Bumblebee.  Well, slag.
 * There's also the first Season Finale, where Prime decides the AllSpark key isn't safe with Sari and has Ratchet hold onto it... who then loses it a couple scenes later as he was alone when trying to defend it.
 * At the very end of Beast Wars, Optimus and the Maximals stop Megatron from destroying the Ark and the Autobots on it, preventing a time storm that would destroy the Maximals and made the Predacons dominant. They then tie Megatron to the bottom of the shuttle and bring him back to Cybertron to stand trial. All seems well until Megatron manages to break free from his shackles in a time warp, landing on Cybertron long before the Maximals, becoming a dictator and extracting the sparks of every Cybertronian on the planet, leading to the events in Beast Machines.
 * From the villainous perspective: according to the Beast Wars: Transmetals game, had Megatron's plan to kill Optimus Prime succeeded, there would have been no Autobot Matrix of Leadership to stop Unicron from destroying Cybertron, dooming both races.
 * Silverbolt pulls this off twice in the second season. In "Bad Spark", he unthinkingly detonates the energon crystals on which Protoform X's stasis pod has crashed, heavily damaging himself and his comrades Cheetor and Optimus Primal as well as releasing the monster that would become Rampage -- in fact, it's possible that the energon storm he created might have actually jolted Rampage back to life in the first place. And then, in "The Agenda", he helps Blackarachnia open the blasted-shut tunnel leading to the Ark, thus giving Megatron direct access to the Autobots and Decepticons contained within and giving him the opportunity to attempt his "destroy Optimus Prime to change reality" gambit. Love Makes You Dumb indeed.
 * Occurs twice in the second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series: first when the turtles "kill" the Shredder in the "Return to New York" which sparks a gang war between different factions trying to fill the power vacuum; the second when they steal the Heart of Tengu from The Foot to trade for a cure for the mutated Donatello. Unbeknownst to them, the Heart was the only thing binding a quintet of elemental mystics to the Foot's will; with its theft and subsequent destruction, the mystics were free to resurrect their master, the original (and demonic) Shredder.
 * Occurred at least one time in the first TMNT series involving Donatello's inventions such as when Donatello created a clone of himself to do all the handyman's work. Except for that his clone doesn't follow orders and a glitch made him stronger and smarter than him. The clone soon worked for the mob boss Pinky McFingers to create millions of cloned rats to attack the city. It's up for the Turtles to fix this.
 * In an episode of South Park, people have been spontaneously combusting. Scientist Randy Marsh discovers that this was caused by people holding in their farts, so he tells people not to hold it in. Unfortunately, the constant release of flatulence begins to cause global warming.
 * Speaking of South Park... who knew that Peruvian Pan Flute Bands were the only thing holding back the hordes of Mutant Guinea Creatures intent on destroying the Earth?, that's who.
 * And who would have known that hybrid vehicles while emitting less smog, they tend to make the people who drive them emit a more obnoxious gas called smug?
 * The Imaginationland episodes begin with Cartman and his friends trying to capture a leprechaun (with Kyle agreeing to suck his balls if Cartman proves his claims, as per the Dead Baby Comedy nature of the show), but once they capture it, the leprechaun proclaims, "I was sent to warn of a terrorist attack, but you boys have made me late. Now the terrorists will prevail! The end is near!"
 * In the episode "Woodland Critter Christmas", Stan is sent by the critters to kill a mountain lion who has been terrorizing them for years. He succeeds in the deed and later finds out she had cubs and would die without her. To make matters worse, the critters are evil and wish to resurrect The Antichrist, which the mountain lion was trying to prevent. Then again, this is a story by Cartman.
 * In the Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy episode "Ed Overboard", Marie and Lee kidnap Ed to pacify May, and Edd and Eddy call upon the aid of the Urban Rangers (Rolf, Johnny, and Jimmy), to help them rescue him. While Rolf was distracting the Kankers, Jimmy and Jonny proceed to help Ed down from a tree he's tied to, but Ed offers to distract the Kankers while the Urban Rangers get "help" (ignoring Johnny's protests of "We are the help!") and proceeds to blow their cover.
 * Stroker and Hoop pretty much abide by this trope, no sooner then they think they've fixed things. It only proceeds to get worse due to their blundering.
 * Used in nearly every episode of Jimmy Neutron, and all of the movies. Jimmy's blinding arrogance has even resulted in Christmas nearly getting cancelled!
 * In the Justice League episode "The Terror Beyond", Superman, Wonder Woman, and Hawkgirl find Dr. Fate and Aquaman seemingly torturing Solomon Grundy. Fate doesn't even try to explain what he's doing, so the Leaguers stop him by roundly kicking his and his friends' butts. At which point Ichthultu rips a hole between dimensions and starts wiggling its tentacles at the League. Quoth Dr. Fate: "I was trying to prevent that."
 * Who do the Major League Baseball official scorekeepers credit with the "Nice Job Breaking It, Hero" on that one? At first, it seems obvious that Supes, Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl get it but if Dr. Fate had simply said, "Wait, I can explain!" the whole episode probably wouldn't have happened. Stupid grey areas.
 * They both take credit, Fate for his silence and the league for jumping to conclusions. Given their past history, Superman and Dr. Fate really should've been more trusting of each other.
 * Though in all fairness, Fate did say once he started the spell, he was not able to stop it, which explains why he didn't take the time to stop chanting and explain everything which would have likely, took too much time.
 * Justice League has a few other moments. There's the fight between Superman and Captain Marvel in "Clash" which destroys Lex's shiny new city, though . Then there's the episode where their Kill Sat gets jacked by Luthor, fired at a populated city, and they get blamed for it. Not exactly their fault, but they did make the thing without consulting anyone.
 * And again in "Eclisped" when Hawkgirl, after seeing a magic crystal capable of possessing anyone who touches it finally leave a human host, decides to smash said crystal into a million pieces. Flash dodges the pieces. The rest of the league don't.
 * Danny Phantom has been manipulated into doing this a number of times. It usually turns out alright, but the one time it didn't, someone hit the Reset Button.
 * Sam also does this once in "Memory Blank".
 * Xavier: Renegade Angel is pretty much the poster boy for this trope. As Xavier's attempts to "help" people invariably lead to the deaths of hundreds.
 * In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends movie, Frankie manages to reason with the clingy godlike friend World. And it looks like everything is solved. Until Herriman bursts into the room, takes Frankie off, and scolds World.....Who turns into a Tyke Bomb. Nice going, Mr H.


 * Avatar: The Last Airbender, season 2. Politically destabilizing Ba Sing Se may have felt right, but it was a very, very, bad idea.
 * Then a few episodes later, Katara sees Zuko serving tea and instantly runs to inform the authorities. If she had investigated further, confronted him herself or thought about the situation for more than a second, Zuko never would have been put in a position to turn to Azula's side to begin with. (And Aang probably would have finished his last chakra.)
 * The "Gaang" in general could've seen the Kyoshi Warriors and made sure that it was them. Otherwise, they would've realized that it was Azula's group instead and they wouldn't have learned about the invasion plan.
 * In the battle for the Northern Air Temple, the Mechanist deploys a balloon to defeat the attacking Fire Nation forces, but the balloon crashes. The retreating Fire Nation forces take the balloon and are able to mass-produce balloons and zeppelins to augment their military.
 * In X-Men: Evolution, Magneto destroys a Giant Spider that he thinks is the second key to releasing Apocalypse. Turns out the spider was actually a guardian preventing Apocalypse from escaping. Destroying it opened the second door. Oops.
 * In Wolverine and the X-Men, Wolverine goes and gets himself captured by going in alone.  Especially surprising (and satisfying) because otherwise the series takes Wolverine's Canon Sue status Up to Eleven. The only one typically allowed to do anything right (except Nightcrawler in his solo episodes) is the one who had a big hand in screwing up the future due to his own bullheadedness.
 * In Brother Bear, the central point of the story is that Kenai pursues and kills a bear he blames for his brother's death. Later on, he realizes to his horror.
 * Coop is very good at it. In one episode of Megas XLR he finds a planet where giant sentient robots have apparently been enslaved by a mysterious alien, and helps them regain freedom. At the end of the episode it's revealed, that . In other episode an attack he used against a villain was so strong, that.
 * Had the series continued, Coop would have been responsible for creating the Glorft, making a Stable Time Loop that allowed Coop to find Megas in the first place. That means every bad thing that happened in the entire show was Coop's fault in one way or another.
 * Don't forget destroying New Jersey every episode.
 * In Season 4 of Winx Club, Yay, awesome! Except that   Oops.
 * Don't forget the CGI movie.
 * This also happened in The Real Ghostbusters.
 * In "Bustman's Holiday", Ray inherits a castle in Scotland and the Ghostbusters go over to check it out. They stumble upon what the castle's caretaker calls a "keystone ghost" and capture it, but soon more ghosts start popping up. The caretaker reminds them that it was a keystone ghost, and that
 * In the Direct to DVD film Tinkerbell, Tink's reckless actions ruin all of the fairies' preparations for spring, threatening to cause a chain reaction that disrupts all the seasons, which would result in an ecological catastrophe. Only her brilliant inventions get the fairies back on schedule.
 * Ben 10 Alien Force has an example of this in "Time Heals". Gwen successfully goes back in time and prevents Kevin's monstrous mutation ... It gets worse when you realize that, unlike some other examples on this page, where the hero had no idea what their actions would do, Gwen was warned by time-traveler Paradox not to go through with her plan. True, he didn't actually come right out and say what exactly would happen, but if a near-omnipotent time-traveler who can see multiple timelines and futures, and usually doesn't visit unless something is really important, tells you not to do something, you should probably listen. Of course, Paradox probably knew Gwen wouldn't listen, but that doesn't give her an excuse.
 * This happens multiple times per season in Xiaolin Showdown. The biggest screw-ups are caused by Omi in the finales of seasons 2 and 3 (more details needed).
 * The biggest one was arguably when he.
 * Let's not forget the episode in season 2 when  It's funny because it also literally broke, so it fits into this trope twice as well.
 * This frequently happened in Superfriends, especially during the Challenge of the Superfriends era with Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom. A common plotline was for the Legion to con the Justice League into doing their dirty work, retrieving whatever Phlebotinum the plot requires for the villains to threaten the world. In one notable episode, Luthor developed the technology to control solar flares and sent an enormous solar flare to incinerate the Hall of Justice. The Justice League triggered the HOJ's global force-field to prevent the flare from impacting with the Earth. The flare instead bonded with the forcefield, spreading across the upper atmosphere and scorching the Earth, killing all life. A trio of Sufficiently Advanced Aliens chose to reverse the flow of time to avoid this catastrophe, and then moved the moon to eclipse the sun to block the flare. There were no signs of destructive tides as a result, oddly enough.
 * Used as a Secret Test of Character in an episode of Adventure Time. After Finn saves a trio of gnomes from a fire pit, they go on a sudden old-lady killing spree, claiming every action of Finn's as justification for the death of additional old ladies. Jake reseals them quickly and delivers a surprisingly straight Aesop (for this show, anyway) to Finn: aside from the fact that the old ladies were fake, the gnomes acting like jerks is in no way evidence that Finn isn't righteous.
 * Late in Thundercats', Mumm-Ra fails for the last time, so the Ancient Spirits of Evil banish him to a pocket dimension as punishment. The heroes decide to celebrate by blowing up Mumm-Ra's pyramid. This pisses the Ancient Spirits of Evil off so much that they bring Mumm-Ra back and give him another chance.
 * Ron Stoppable, of Kim Possible, is directly responsible for Senior Senior Senior becoming a super villain, after pointing out how easy it would be for him to turn his vacation home into an evil fortress.
 * Owl from Winnie the Pooh on two occasions.
 * Pooh's Grand Adventure: Pooh receives a letter from Christopher Robin, saying he is going to school. When Pooh, unable to read it, brings it to Owl, he misreads School as Skull. Cue Disney Acid Sequence, and an Adventure which could have been easily avoided.
 * The Tigger Movie: Tigger becomes lonely, because nobody will bounce with him. Roo innocently asks him if there are other Tiggers he can bounce with, and they go visit Owl, who suggests looking up Tigger's family tree. Owl doesn't seem to understand Tigger takes this literally.
 * Roo could probably count as this as well, when he has everyone send a letter to Tigger, claiming to be his family. While this is true, Tigger thinks it's from other Tiggers. He then thinks his "Tigger Family" are coming to visit him. Oops.
 * The entire premise of The Fairly Odd Parents, Timmy Turner never being careful for what he wishes for.
 * In Gargoyles, the heroes found a woman who had been mutated into a gargoyle-like creature by Doctor Tim Curry, who was working for Xanatos. The heroes bust into the lab to rescue her, not knowing that Xanatos had forced Doctor Tim Curry to create an antidote, and he was on the verge of administering it. In the ensuing fight, the vial containing the antidote is smashed, they drag the mutated woman out of a hole in the roof, and throw Doctor Tim Curry into his own vat of electric eels, which means that any knowledge of how to create the antidote dies with him.
 * Archie's Weird Mysteries.
 * In the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic episode "Swarm of the Century", Twilight Sparkle uses her magic powers to stop a swarm of locust-like Parasprites from eating all the food in town. It works; the Parasprites stop eating food and go after everything else.
 * In "Over a Barrel", a territorial dispute between settler ponies and Native American buffalo is about to turn into an all-out war. The buffalo reconsider... until Pinkie Pie sings her annoying "sharing" song from earlier in the episode, provoking the buffalo leader into going through with the battle.
 * In the first episode of the second season, the Cutie Mark Crusaders accidentally free Discord by fighting in front of his statue prison.
 * Twilight gets probably the biggest one in the series thus far when it's revealed
 * And then in season two's episode "Lesson Zero", when Twilight goes crazy because she's in danger of missing the deadline for her weekly friendship report because her friends haven't had a disagreement all. After desperately seeking a problem to solve, she sets out to engineer a problem so she can write to Princess Celestia about it. To cut a long story short, this culminates in dozens of brainwashed ponies being engaged in an all-out brawl over possession of a tattered old plush toy.
 * This happens again in the season two finale "A Canterlot Wedding". Seeing the very questionable actions of Princess Cadence leads Twilight to believe that she has somehow become evil and tries to warn everypony about what she's learn. This makes her come off as rather crazy and her friends end up shunning her, including Celestia.
 * At the end of the Teen Titans episode "Trust", Robin gives a communicator to Hot Spot. Except it wasn't Hot Spot but the Voluntary Shapeshifting villain he fought the whole time. This allowed the Brotherhood of Evil to track all of the Titans' allies. While Robin didn't intentionally give the item to the villain, he was handed the Idiot Ball so he didn't suspect the possibility.
 * During the two part Family Guy episode "Stewie Kills Lois", Brian tells Stewie that he's (in so many words) all talk which basically caused the events of that episode up to and including....
 * In the episode "Back To The Pilot", Stewie and Brian go back to the first episode via Stewie's time machine to help Brian remember where he lost a tennis ball. Once they return back to the present time, Brian reveals that he told his former self about the September 11 attacks ahead of time, allowing him to stop them from ever happening, much to the chagrin of Stewie, who warned Brian not to alter the past. While watching the local news, it is also discovered that former President George W. Bush, who has lost the 2004 election, has returned to Texas and seceded from the United States, along with the rest of the southern U.S., resulting in a second Civil War. Dismayed, Stewie questions Brian for his actions. Brian insists that things will still be better five years in the future. To make sure, Stewie and Brian then travel to the future, in which the characters appear as a series of three-dimensional objects. They then look at the outside world, only to find utter chaos and destruction. Upon research, Stewie learns that the civil war has led to nuclear attacks all across the eastern United States, resulting in seventeen million deaths (as opposed to the three thousand lives lost in 9/11).
 * In the episode "New Kidney in Town", Peter becomes addicted to Red Bull, annoying, in particular, Lois, who attempts to rectify the situation by disposing of the drink behind his back. Not to pin the idiocy of him ingesting kerosene squarely on you Lois, but nice job not handling his addiction in a more direct manner. Your husband could have lost his life.
 * The title character of Tutenstein pretty much screws up in every episode.
 * In episode 2 of The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan, the kids successfully rescue Boo Blew from kidnappers...only to discover they've nabbed a lookalike who didn't want to be "rescued" and blown his cover as a double for Mr. Blew.
 * Episode 26 of Scooby Doo Mystery Inc has Velma being blamed for the dissolution of the gang after the ep's "ghost" is unmasked to be
 * Danger Mouse: The serial "Day Of The Suds" has Danger Mouse disposing of Baron Greenback's army of renegade washing machines but then gets hounded by a nosy TV reporter for not only disrupting London's need to do their dirty laundry but for the subsequent creation of a giant suds monster caused by the strewn detergent, the sparks from the damaged cables and the fuel used to run the machines during their rampage.
 * Cyberchase: In the very first episode, the kids were squabbling over how to use a library map. This allowed Hacker in Cyberspace to breach Motherboard's defenses and infect her with a virus that there's practically no way to cure.
 * The end of Monster Allergy season 1 has Zick absorbing the Monster-Saur with Magnacat and his minion Viziosed inside. Hurray! But in season 2, episode 13, Oops.
 * Speaking of season 1, there is one. Zick having absorbed Bristlebeard, a Dark Phantom, turned out to be a bad idea since that results in Magnacat, whom he devoured in the last episode, released.
 * Mike The Knight is a TV show that THRIVES on this. Every episode, Mike breaks things in the first half, and fixes them in the second. Every. Episode.
 * In the Hunger episode of Dilbert, Dilbert genetically engineers a new type of vegetable called the tomeato to solve the problem of world hunger. When he sets up a tomeato farm in Elbonia, the tomeato plants suck all the nutritional value out of the mud, Elbonia's primary resource. When it's discovered that tomeatos are highly explosive, the Elbonians build tomeato-based weapons of mass destruction to bully their neighbors with.
 * In Transformers Prime, Bulkhead's crashing of the Nemesis in an attempt to escape it inadvertently prompted Megatron to relapse back into his Dark Energon habit.
 * Pretty much the entire plot of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo revolves around this trope with Scooby and Shaggy being forced to travel the world returning 13 ghosts to the Chest of Demons because they were the ones who were tricked into unleashing them in the first place.
 * In Samurai Jack the emperor tries to kill the (literal) evil that is harming his country. He shoots a poisoned arrow into it, and it gains self awareness giving birth to Aku, the Big Bad.