Idiot Ball/Film

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of characters holding the Idiot Ball in Film include:

Films -- Animation

  • Thumbelina. Every time she gets kidnapped, she keeps letting the kidnappers take advantage of her. She could be excused since she's lived a sheltered life, but common sense should have stepped in at some point and while she does eventually stand up for herself, it's not until the last ten minutes of the movie. Yeah...
  • Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers has Mickey getting this temporarily when confronting Pete about his wrongdoing. He stands tall and alone against someone much bigger and stronger than he is instead of making a strategic retreat to get Goofy (who he doesn't know has been captured) or some other reinforcements.
  • Aladdin is taken in by a suspicious creepy old man who shows up in his jail cell, despite being pretty savvy and street-smart up to and after this point, just because he has to in order to facilitate the plot/genie.
    • Given how harsh the law seems to be in Agrabah, I.E. getting your hand cut off for stealing, the penalty for kidnapping the princess is almost certainly death. Aladdin was going with the option that looked less likely to get him killed.
      • And if nothing else, at least it gets him out of the jail cell. Given how good Aladdin is at ducking and running, it's not unreasonable for him to go with the logic 'sure, this guy is almost certainly ultra skeevy, but if I can get so much as two minutes' head start...'
  • In Rugrats Go Wild, Spike seems to be pretty clever for a dog. He spends a musical number dodging and humiliating a huge leopard... but then he stupidly mentions that there's a group of lost, helpless infants somewhere on the island, and the leopard immediately goes looking for them to eat them.

Films -- Live-Action

  • Both versions of The Time Machine involve their protagonists holding Idiot Balls at different times. In the original, the protagonist falls asleep at the wheel, finds himself in a cave and reasons that he has to keep going forward in time until the cave is no longer there. Later, he gets out of a dome by going back to his own time, moving the time machine into his backyard and then going back to the future. Why didn't he think of that in the cave? In the remake, the protagonist can't figure out why he can't save his girlfriend even though any viewer who's ever seen a time travel movie can. Genre Blindness doesn't cut it.
    • And by the way, the reason is because he invented the time machine for the purpose of saving her, so if she never died, he never had a reason to invent the time machine and therefore couldn't have saved her in the first place.
    • Being fair, a psychologically obsessed person is never going to come to the conclusion that their efforts are entirely futile without outside prompting -- if they were capable of being objective about their situation, they wouldn't be obsessed in the first place. So not sure if this is Idiot Ball or Idiot Plot.
  • In Open Graves, the hero wishes to reverse time to a week ago, without wishing for his memories to remain, and thus damns himself to a horrific time-loop. What makes it especially idiotic is, even the villain granting the wish takes pity on him, warns him that it is a stupid wish, and gives him a chance to try a different wish. He does it anyway.
  • Parodied in Scary Movie, when the "Walking Dead teens" are in the theater wondering who the killer could be—when the Killer is right in plain sight in his Grim Reaper costume, mopping up the blood from his most recent victim.
  • Roger Ebert also ponders this during his review of Paranormal Activity 2:

"The movie numbers the days as they tick away, and along about Day #12 I'm thinking, why are these people still here? The screening I attended was treated to a surprise appearance by three stars of that cable show about Chicago's Paranormal Detectives. These are real Chicago detectives. If the Sloats lived in Chicago, they'd have a SWAT team out there by Day #7."

  • In Pulp Fiction, Butch's storyline requires a number of idiot balls. Butch decides to risk going back to his apartment to get his watch, a precious family heirloom, despite the fact that he knows people are out to kill him. When it gets to his apartment, no-one seems to be there, so he decides to hang out and cook some Pop-Tarts rather than thank the gods for his good fortune and flee immediately. It turns out that Wallace and Vincent were waiting for Butch at his apartment, but Wallace decided to go get some snacks and had to leave his MAC-11 machine pistol behind. Vincent meanwhile went to use the restroom, leaving Wallace's gun sitting out in plain sight. Vincent had already shown several previous instances of stupidity.
  • Played for Laughs in Pirates of the Caribbean. A crew finds Elizabeth's dress on board after she sneaks on board, prompting a mad rush to find the stowaway naked lady. None of them even stop to think said lady would be wearing men's clothes?
    • Does it count as the Idiot Ball if they're all supposed to be idiots? (Note that the one smart guy in the bunch—Barbosa—easily figures out where and how Elizabeth is hiding.)
  • One must seriously wonder why the workers in Metropolis do not notice a difference between the moderate, kind, and properly-postured Maria and her psychotic, scowling, hunched over robotic duplicate.
  • King Leonidas in 300 brusquely rejects Ephialtes's offer to join his army because his deformity would cause a weakness in the ranks. Leonidas apparently doesn't realize that pissing off a man who knows your position's only weakness isn't such a smart idea. He also never thinks to suggest that Ephialtes fight with the other Greeks, who are mere "brawlers." It's also worth noting that the Spartans only fight a single battle in formation before breaking up into single-man wrecking crews anyway. There are several possible justifications for this. The first is that Spartans despised deformity, and it is true to Spartan culture for Leonidas to reject him out of hand. It also may be a case of Delios being an Unreliable Narrator who embellishes the truth to make a better story. The real life Ephialtes was a regular man who was simply greedy.
    • More like Frank Miller was embellishing the truth (no surprise there). History doesn't say much of anything about Ephialtes (who may or may not have been from Sparta); he was probably motivated by greed, but even that's far from certain. Regardless, Leonidas wasn't concerned about him revealing the goat path mainly because he knew he wasn't going to win the battle. The whole point was to unite the divisive Greek factions and give the Athenian navy time to mobilize. Although he didn't get to take quite as many Persians with him as he wanted, he succeeded. More reckless bravery than idiocy.
    • In the comic, Ephialtes is shown to attempt suicide by jumping off a cliff right after Leonidas rejects him. He is later found alive by the Persians and decides to collaborate. Hence perhaps Leonidas thought he was dead and thus no longer any threat? This does not happen in the movie though.
  • At the end of Firefox where the climax is dependent on the fact that Clint Eastwood's character has momentarily forgotten to think in Russian, even though he's been kicking the snot out of everybody for the last fifteen minutes by doing just that.
  • Trinity gets a big one in The Matrix. It's right after they've rescued Morpheus and are in the subway waiting for the phone. After Morpheus "wakes up" Trinity decides right then and there, when they both know they're not safe yet, to tell Neo about something important the Oracle told her. The phone just keeps ringing while they both ponder this, conveniently enough time for Smith to catch up with them so he and Neo can have their final fight.
  • Marlene from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle holds it firmly in her hands when she reveals to Peyton that she knows who she is, prompting Peyton to lure her to her death.
  • In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Prince Nuada and Princess Nuala share a telepathic link that lets them know what the other is thinking and causes them to share any physical damage they incur. When Nuada is sentenced to death, Nuala accepts the verdict, sacrificing herself to prevent her brother's scheme. When Nuada escapes, Nuala tries to stop him, but she could, at any time, kill herself to stop him, as she was already prepared to do earlier. In a later scene, she allows herself to be taken to the heroes' headquarters, but neglects to inform them that Nuada can find her anywhere and knows everything they tell her, allowing him to progress in his scheme. When Nuada throws his magic bean into the gutter, Nuala neglects telling the others to keep it away from water until it's too late for them to do anything. Only in the end does Nuala finally put two and two together and kill herself to stop Nuada.
    • Abe gets it rather badly shortly after spinning the "my brother knows everything I know" idiot ball—what does he do when he is informed of this rather critical piece of information? Go inform HQ that they'll probably be getting a PO'd elf prince breaking in? Work on evacuating everyone to safety? No, he and Hellboy get drunk and sing love songs.
    • At any point in the movie someone could have thwarted the prince's plan by destroying part or all of the crown that controlled the Golden Army, which is exactly what they end up doing in the end.
  • Nero, from the new[when?] Star Trek movie has just seen his planet destroyed, and immediately falls into a time warp, sending him some 100 years into the past. What's his first idea? Destroy the planet of the man who was too slow in saving his planet. Not once, NOT ONCE is it ever mentioned that HE IS IN THE PAST. Had Nero simply returned to Romulus, he could have told his home of the disaster in the coming future, AND given knowledge of superior technology a century ahead of the times. The Romulans being the kind of folk they are would then take this technology, refit their ships, decimate the Federation and remember to evacuate their planet before their sun explodes (if they can't solve the problem altogether). He has 25 years to realize that his plan is stupid. Never crosses his mind.
    • He's gone insane from the loss of his home, people, and family. He even says at one point that the Romulus of this time isn't his Romulus.
      • Particularly since going back in time caused a split timeline. Whatever happens to the Romulus of the new timeline, his home and family are irrevocably destroyed.
  • In Star Trek Generations the Enterprise-D was destroyed because four of the seven main characters passed the Idiot Ball around.
    • First up: Mr. Worf. Gee, what's the typical way to penetrate shields besides just pouring fire into them? Match frequencies with the shields! How is that halted? Rotate shield frequencies! Even if the Duras Sisters picked it up again, it'd take time and a quick eye to pick it up from Geordi's bugged visor again.
      • Even better, just tell Data to do the exact same thing that he did in "The Best of Both Worlds" - change the shield frequencies, constantly at a speed only he can keep up with. The Borg couldn't keep up, how is some Klingon supposed to?
    • Second up with the Idiot Ball is Commander Riker. He should have told Worf to fire at will. The Enterprise is one of Starfleet's big sticks, she should have been mercilessly whaling on that Klingon rust bucket. Even without shields, the Enterprise is covered stem to stern in phaser arrays, and is loaded with torpedoes. Instead, we get one piddly phaser strike before Data's technobabble solution.
    • The idiot ball then gets passed down to Engineering into Geordi's hands, after the Duras Sisters bite the dust. Gee, that main powerplant channeling immense energy has a chance to explode if it catastrophically malfunctions, it would be a great idea if the ship's designers worked in a means to dump it overboard if it did! Even stranger is the fact that they DO have a core ejection system. It is mentioned in the Enterprise-gets-destroyed-and-stuck-in-a-time-loop episode. The core ejector on Galaxy-class starships never seems to work (the cited episode, "Cause and Effect," being a good example), and maybe Geordi had figured that out and was just telling it like it is. This punts the idiot ball back to Starfleet's ship designers.
    • And again, back up to the bridge, into Troi's hands. Woman Driver jokes aside... seriously: Wouldn't it make sense to fly away from the planet with its looming gravity pull as well as the other half of the ship counting down to explode? The only plausible explanation is that the saucer section didn't have enough power to escape the gravity well or that it was damaged in the main hull's explosion. This one in particular is a hilarious Idiot Ball hand-off because Troi's incompetence doesn't even BEGIN with her it begins with Riker (again!) shouting, "DEANNA! TAKE THE HELM!" Okay so... what? Riker, who has been stated to be one of the best pilots in Starfleet, is commanding the Ship's Counselor to fly the goddamned ship? The therapist? Who failed her officer's exams how many times? Her? Piloting the Federation flagship in the middle of a freaking crisis situation? ... Really?!
      • Her first maneuver? Turn all the main weapons away from the enemy, and turn the engineering section toward the enemy. Deanna's crap piloting killed the Enterprise-D.
    • Captain Picard. While his crew was playing Idiot Ball Hot Potato, his plan to prevent a genocidal maniac from blowing up a star...was to beam down to the villain's base alone and try to talk him out of it. To be fair, he didn't know that Soren was packing a force field, but it's never clear why Picard went down without his phaser or communicator. When that fails, Picard changes strategies by sitting on a rock and waiting until he conveniently spots a hole in the force field. After he gets sucked into the nexus, he learns from Guinan's ghost that he can leave the nexus and go anywhere, anytime. Given this supreme tactical advantage, he plans to go right back to the planet's surface where Soren was kicking his ass and was moments away from winning, rather than an earlier time and place, such as when he was speaking to Soren in Ten Forward and could get his hands on a phaser to make a public arrest. Even better, he asks Guinan, who has no fighting skills at all, to come back and help him (she refers him to Kirk instead, since she's only a ghost).
    • The Duras sisters are none too bright either. They agree to turn over Geordi and give the Enterprise Soran's location on the planet because Picard promised to take Geordi's place after talking with Soran. With Picard on the planet surface and Geordi safe aboard, Riker could easily have ordered Picard beamed back up and obliterated Soran's launch site from orbit. Meanwhile the sisters hang around, having lost their only bargaining chip, apparently so they can destroy the Enterprise rather than allow it to get blown up when the star goes nova.
  • Most of the trapped characters in the Saw movies. One very small point in their defense is that people might not mentally be at their best when they're about to die.
  • The Doctor's Wife in Blindness is the only sighted person in the entire asylum. So what does she do when a blind guy in another ward starts waving a gun that he can't aim, stealing food and possessions, and demanding women? Why, lead a bunch of other women to him and let him rape all of them, herself included.
  • Lyra at the end of Northern Lights. She just goes to sleep, knowing full well her father/uncle is hiding something. She decides not to ask the alethiometer for details because she's afraid to know the truth, which is not at all in sync with her character—probably Because Destiny Says So.
  • Every James Bond villain, by explaining the whole plot to James Bond, and then putting him in an easily-escapable trap with an inept guard. (Naturally, this is lampshaded in Austin Powers, where Scott says "Why don't you just shoot him?" And Dr. Evil doesn't explain, but simply cuts him off by going "SHHH!" every time, saying "I've got a whole bag of 'SHHH!' right here!")
  • In Dreamscape, Max von Sydow figures out Christopher Plummer's evil plan and tells him so, right to his face. The response? "Have You Told Anyone Else?"?
  • Mom and Dad Save The World involves a literal Idiot Ball. One of the weapons used on the Planet Spengo is called a Light Grenade. If you pick it up, you disappear in a flash of light, leaving the grenade behind. The clever part is that the grenade says "Pick Me Up" on the side. That works because the people of Spengo are really, really stupid. A squad of attackers encounters a Grenade, and several cutscenes later, we see the squad has been reduced to two or three, surrounded by empty uniforms and scattered helmets, staring intently at the grenade. One says, "We're gonna need reinforcements."
    • The entire planet is an Idiot Ball. Says so within minutes of the film starting.
  • In Anchorman, Ron Burgundy jumps into a pit full of hostile bears to "save" his girlfriend, then realizes he has no plan and immediately regrets the decision.
  • Ethan Glance in Space Cowboys. He decides to, without telling anyone, take an unauthorized spacewalk on the secret orders of Bob Gerson, and with everyone shouting at him not to connect the PAM rockets on the IKON satellite, decides to do it anyway, thinking that doing so will allow him to singlehandedly move the satellite into a stable orbit (which has dozens of problems even if he was successful). But when he connects it, the satellite activates, swings around, crashes into the docked space shuttle damaging it, and the satellite starts jettisoning its outer casing. One of the panels hits Ethan, somehow just knocking him out though it doesn't damage his helmet enough for it to leak air, and leaving him unconscious tethered to an activated Soviet orbital platform. The movie ends without touching on what happened to Ethan when he got back to Earth, but if he survived, he likely faces:
    • An expulsion from NASA, considering his actions lead to the destruction of expensive NASA equipment.
    • Jail time considering he endangering NASA astronauts, damaged Russian equipment, and jeopardized the lives of thousands or even millions, because even if the missile warheads didn't detonate in the atmosphere (nuclear weapons aren't like gunpowder, and they require everything working perfectly to create critical mass), they would still shower weapons-grade nuclear material on the ground or water below, creating an environmental catastrophe.
    • Life imprisonment, court martial, or even capital punishment for collaborating with Bob Gerson, knowingly withholding critical mission information, and following secret orders which could have caused nuclear catastrophe.
  • The Black Guy's death in the first Resident Evil, getting ginsu'd by a moving laser grid... Watching the scene, one wonders: why didn't he just take a few more steps back?
    • Red Queen would've just inched the beam a few steps forward. That trap...really had no escape. The Idiot Ball moment was everyone deciding to walk in without checking the psychotic computer for another boobytrap and not trying to, say, shoot the lights.
      • Roger Ebert thinks the hallway itself is holding the ball, by wondering that if the laser grid is indeed inescapable, then what was the point of the escapable patterns in the first place?
        • To be efficient.
        • Alternately, to lure people into the hallway. If the first laser pattern looks absolutely impenetrable, people will quite reasonably give up on trying to get past it -- which means they never actually go close enough for the lasers to reach them. On the other hand, laying out the first couple of laser patterns as easily-avoidable schmuck bait gets you more people in the kill zone.
    • In Resident Evil Apocalypse, the STARS sniper gets to hold it. The first we see of him has him sniping zombies. The first he hits in the chest, then seeing that didn't kill it, he gives it a headshot. When he spots LJ, he calmly pops the head of the zombie sneaking up to him. So, we've established that he has learning skills and has figured out that if something doesn't die from a shot to the chest, to shoot it in the head. Then Nemesis shows up. Sniper guy puts a round through Nemesis's chest; despite this exact same tactic not killing the regular zombies less than a minute ago, he is shocked that Nemesis, clearly much bigger and tougher than a zombie, doesn't die. So, does he take a headshot, like he did before? Nope. Another bullet to the chest, another round of "Why isn't it dead?!" and the sniper is blown up before he can take a third shot.
    • Also from the second movie, when the survivors need to find and rescue Angela, the daughter of Doctor Ashford, who will send in a rescue chopper to pick them up once they have Angela. So Jill arrives alongside Terri and LJ, who they had just picked up. Jill is a trained officer, and LJ has guns as well, so Jill suggests they separate and hands Terri a gun. A clearly nervous Terri points out the fact that she has never even held a gun in her life. Does Jill care about this important piece of info? Does she stop for two seconds to consider that maybe it's best if Terri remains with her rather than sending an untrained civilian off on her own when there are zombies and other deadly creatures roaming the entire city? Nope. She just stupidly sends Terri on her way, and she is quickly killed off by a group of zombified children. Though admittedly, Terri herself holds the idiot ball for not insisting on sticking to one of the others like glue.
    • In Resident Evil Extinction, LJ gets bitten through no real fault of his own, and becomes a Zombie Infectee. He survived the second movie just fine, has been travelling with other survivors for five years, yet he tells no one he's been bitten.
  • In Silent Running, Lowell has spent eight years as the sole botanist taking care of one of the last living forests, preserved in a space station. He's implied to be the only person to still care about preserving nature and is the best man qualified to oversee the return of nature to Earth. Despite all this, towards the end of the film he suffers a crisis because he simply can't figure out why his forest is dying. In the climax, he suddenly remembers that plants need sunlight! Why did it take him that long to figure that out???
  • Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,
    • During the Vulgaria plot Jeremy and Jemimah are left alone and instructed to not go outside for any reason, because they would immediately be caught by the Child Catcher and imprisoned. When the thinly-disguised Child Catcher shows up trying to tempt the hungry children outside with delicious treats, Jeremy immediately wants to go outside and get something to eat, but Jemimah reminds him of the danger and says it's probably a trick. A moment later, however, she changes her mind and they both go outside and into the colorful stranger's wagon... only to be surprised that it was actually a trick and they've been imprisoned in a cage. And worst of all, there are no delicious treats inside!
    • And the townsfolk are perfectly happy to shout "No! It's a trap!" from their doors, but apparently can't be bothered to oh, say, pick up the children and/or drag them inside?
      • Children are outlawed - picking up the children and taking them inside would have gotten them arrested, so taking no action beyond a verbal warning (itself possibly risky) is understandable.
    • The Child Catcher himself does this in the climax - did he really think he could handle a veritable army of them on his own? Took him about fifteen seconds to realize he couldn't before he panicked and tried to run, but didn't get far.
  • The Big Bad in Gamer. He's a tech genius and pretty media savvy, but makes two mistakes so laughable... First, the end reveals that he has the ability to take control of the Hero at anytime, he neglects to do this anytime during the film when it would be most advantageous to do so... like taking control for a split-second while the hero is playing Slayers, something he could easily do and make it look like a normal death in the game. Instead, he just hires a goon to kill him in game. Then he waits to usurp control of the hero until he is in the same room with him, and the hero has a weapon! Idiot ball indeed. Secondly, for someone so tech and media savvy to fall for the oldest trick in the book, having his villainous monologue broadcast to the world, is so pathetic that it doesn't bear a second thought.
  • In the first Jurassic Park movie, while Grant and Ellie are holding back a velociraptor, a gun that was knocked out of Grant's hands and is just barely out of their reach. Lex is meanwhile hacking into the security system, and Tim, not doing anything else, decides to just stand off to the side cheering her on instead of picking up Grant's gun.
    • The the sequel The Lost World. "Not into the long grass! Long grass!" Sage advice, the only problem being he was running into the long grass to tell them...
      • Also from the second film is Sarah, a scientist who disregards every piece of common sense in existence in regards to interacting with wildlife, and Nick, who sabotages the hunting party's every step regardless of the cost in lives. Both are responsible for every death on the island.
  • In Highlander II the Quickening, the villain picks up a massive idiot ball (yes, I know, let's ignore the nonsensical pissing over the canon for a moment). Connor is old and probably going to die in the next 10 years from natural causes. The villain, despite waiting for the last 500 years for the exiles to do whatever it was they were doing and finally claim the prize, decides that killing Connor is paramount and sends his mooks to try and kill him. Instead of waiting a few extra years for the guy who is nearing death, has no means of interstellar travel and no interest in returning, to die, he sends his insane and incompetent mooks to try and kill him. They instead get killed, which turns Connor young and immortal again. So the villain then heads to Earth to face off in person, instead of sending less incompetent mooks to kill him.
    • What makes it even worse is that the blithering idiocy of this plan is lampshaded not just by Conner, BUT ALSO BY THE TWO DUMBASS INSANO REJECTS HE SENT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
  • Lily and Zach in The Secret Life of Bees live in the Deep South during the 1960s. You'd think they'd be aware that black men were killed for even looking at white women during that time. They sit together in the black section of the town movie theater and, unsurprisingly, Zach is carted off by the local rednecks. He escapes, but not before the emotionally fragile May, distraught over what happened, commits suicide. Good job kids.
  • Fracture (2007) - The fact that there'll be a 'fracture' in the villain's otherwise great plan is well foreshadowed not only with the title, but also with a rather complicated prop. Will it be the planting of a gun? Or an unexpected friend to the DA judge? Maybe the DA will take justice in his own hands...? Well... he just admits everything upfront in a BBG monologue, not suspecting that the man of law might be wearing a wire. Can't blame him though - the cash was on some kind of digital sound recorder, maybe like the one built into his cell phone.
    • It's worse than that. As he points out himself, the villain still would have gotten away with it because one can't be tried twice for the same offense in the American legal system. If only he hadn't forgotten that the first time he was charged with ATTEMPTED murder, meaning when his victim died it was possible to try him with murder, a different crime.
  • Zombieland: In a zombie-infected world, Bill Murray chooses to frighten armed strangers while dressed as a zombie. He announces his plan to Woody Harrelson, who also thinks it's a good idea. It doesn't go well. To be fair, they were high at the time.
  • In Reste Avec Moi, a elderly man is being beaten to death with a pipe in a case of road rage. The man's adult daughter and a group of big burly men just stand there and gape, leaving the daughter's husband to run over and stop the attack - which results in his losing control and nearly beating the attacker to death (for which he is arrested).
  • Duncan in one scene in Mystery Team. Though nowhere near the "boy genius" he claims to be, he is still shown as being competent and the smartest of the group... except for the scene where he drank dog urine to disinfect his HAND.
  • In the film Cobra, the final confrontation between the titular police officer and the villain (a serial killer named the Night Stalker) begins by the villain pointing out that cops have to play by the rules even when dealing with a man as evil as him and as such couldn't just gun him down. Now this would be a perfectly logical and interesting argument if Cobra hadn't gunned down at least two dozen men in a car chase five minutes beforehand. Not only this, but he's well aware from the news that Cobra is trigger happy and is famous for solving problems with his gun. Why he thought a man with the body count of at least thirty would care if he shot a serial killer guilty of molesting a child in cold blood is, perhaps, best left to himself.
    • Being fair, Cobra is a police officer so even though he's killed hundreds of people in legal self-defense you could still possibly believe him unwilling to commit cold-blooded murder. Because generally, cops are assumed to be law-abiding unless proven corrupt, and Cobra isn't corrupt; just hot-headed and brutal. Admittedly, you'd be wrong, but at least there was a sort-of logical train of thought you could follow to come to this conclusion.
  • In Masters of the Universe, Evil-Lyn tricks Julie into handing her the Cosmic Key by disguising herself as Julie's dead mother. Not once does Julie question how her mother is alive, where her father could be, or why her mother would want the Cosmic Key.
    • Somewhat understandable - grief can make people extremely irrational, and her mother had only recently died. She also felt somewhat responsible for her mother's death.
  • The police drama Blitz is a pretty intense and tight movie about tracking a vengeful cop-killing lunatic, but at one point it hits a scene that would have completely derailed the entire movie if a single character had not acted like a moronic sheep. An informant is moments away from telling a reporter the name of the killer, but he first decides to go count the money he's being paid in the bathroom of the pub where they're meeting. The killer, however, knows he's there and follows him into the bathroom. The killer confronts the informant, who quivers in panicked fright, until the killer calmly and almost casually pulls him into a bathroom stall and drowns him. If the informant had instead bolted for the door leading back into the crowded, public pub where at least a dozen people were located and started screaming for help at the top of his lungs, he likely not only would have survived but the killer would have been caught either in the pub or immediately afterward once his name became public knowledge.
  • Tank Girl. Tank Girl, Jet Girl, and Sam probably could have gotten clear of Liquid Silver without much trouble after taking the Madam hostage, but instead Tank Girl decides to stop for a musical number and as a result Sam is recaptured by W&P.
  • Toward the end of Twilight, Bella's mother visits her in the hospital after Bella was assaulted by a vampire before being saved by Edward. The vampire crushed her leg, threw her into a mirror where a shard cut into her femoral artery, and bit her wrist. Humans can't know about this. So Carlisle explained to Bella's mother what happened: Bella fell down TWO flights of stairs and THEN INTO A WINDOW!! The idiot ball is being held by Bella's mother, father, and the hospital staff for believing such a ludicrous story!
  • Justified in noir film Where Danger Lives to explain why the hero runs off with The Vamp: he has a bad concussion and isn't thinking straight.
  • In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Kirk enabled his ship to be damaged and many of his crew lost when he ignored regulations dictating a defensive posture with shields up when being approached by a non-communicative ship.
  • In John Carter, Dejah gets to hold one when the main villain gets on his knees, gives her his sword, and tells her to just kill him if she doesn't want to marry him. She has been very vocal about how staunchly against it she is the whole movie, she's a fully capable swordswoman, and she puts the sword to his neck... Her next scene has her in a wedding gown.
    • To be fair, killing him doesn't change the fact that her home city is entirely outclassed by the warlord's army, that they're already inside the gates, and that nothing except the warlord's own orders for them to wait and see what happens could stop them from burning the entire place to the ground. That's exactly why the warlord is grandstanding like this; she knows she's in a corner, and he knows that she knows she's in a corner.
  • Clash of the Titans : The vain Queen Cassiopeia had the nerve to proclaim that her daughter, Andromeda, was more beautiful than the city's patron goddess, Thetis ... and she did this inside of Thetis's own temple, no less. In typical form for the Greek gods, Thetis does not take kindly to the insult, and as punishment, she demands that Andromeda be sacrificed to the Kraken, or else the entire city would be destroyed.
    • Also, at the beginning of the film, the arrogant and vengeful King Acrisius of Argos condemns his own daughter, Danae, and her infant child, Perseus - who happens to be the son of Zeus, the leader of the gods - to the sea. It never seems to occur to Acrisius that Zeus just might be a little P.O.'ed by this. (Zeus commanded Poseidon to unleash the Kraken on Argos, destroying the entire kingdom. Acrisius may not have noticed, however, since he was busy being crushed to death by Zeus's hand.)
  • In the original novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the heroine's attempt to reach a lovely-looking garden doesn't go well. After discovering a key that opens the tiny door that leads there - which she can't possibly fit into - she finds a shrinking potion, but after using it, finds she left the key on a table she now cannot reach. Then she finds a cake that makes her grow, and is now where she started, and finally, she shrinks again using the White Rabbit's fan, but again, doesn't have the key and is worse off than ever. Fast forward about eight years - to the 2010 movie, where Alice is a teenager - and she's back at the same place with the same set-up, and it seems she might make the same mistake again, the Doormouse (who is watching) wondering how she couldn't figure it out by now. Subverted, however, as she eventually does, making sure to hold onto the key while she takes the potion.
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