Idiot Ball: Difference between revisions

* Sarah Jane Smith in ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' story ''The Temptation of Sarah Jane'', and her temptation to stop her parents' death, with numerous lampshade hangings. Thankfully, she's a good actor, and it's built up (she is also [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know how screwed she is).

* ''[[The Mentalist]]'': Way to go, Jane. It's a brilliant idea to ''break into a suspect's house'' to get proof he's a hitman. Jane would have gotten away with it if he hadn't ''made himself a cup of tea and left his fingerprints and DNA on the cup''. [[Sarcasm Mode|Shockingly, the suspect was released]].

{{quote|'''Avon:''' None of us showed conspicuous intelligence on this occasion.}}

** Perhaps it was Idiot Dodgeball?

** In "Walking Distance", Martin Sloan finds himself in his own past where he encounters his mom and dad and a younger version of himself. Instead of playing it cool, he acts like an idiot, scaring his mom and his dad. When he encounters the younger version of himself, he chases him, then later finds him and does the same thing again. Instead of offering some sage advice to his younger self, he gives himself a broken leg, which causes him to limp the rest of his life.

** In "Escape Clause", Walter Bedeker is given immortality and is unable to feel pain. Instead of setting out to have a long and happy life, he defrauds several businesses and confesses to killing his wife, which he didn't do. In court, he works to get himself convicted so he could try out the electric chair, but is then given life in prison instead, although it's not explained what he would have done after going to the electric chair. It is at this point that he uses the "Escape Clause" which causes his own death rather than face life in prison. At this point, he has apparently forgotten that in addition to being ageless, he is also invulnerable. How easy would it then be to escape from prison if he doesn't have to fear injury or death? He could wait for an opportunity and make a break for the barbed wire or electrified fence and just climb over it. What are guard dogs or gunshots to someone who is invulnerable? In the very least, he could wait it out.

* The final storyline of ''[[Kamen Rider Blade]]'' dealt with trying to stop the Joker from winning the Battle Fight and causing [[The End of the World as We Know It]] {{spoiler|the problem being they don't want to seal him because he's become a human and friend. [[The Lancer|Tachibana]] suggests unsealing the Human Undead and then sealing the other two, but no one wants to seal Joker still, leading to him being the winner and Blade having to turn into another Joker to [[Take a Third Option]] and save both. Alright, fair enough. Except for the fact Kamen Rider Leangle has the power to unseal Undead and they've got the Tarantula Undead, whose a very nice guy who had no intent of doing anything wrong and they spent a storyline trying to ''prevent'' from being sealed. If they'd just unsealed him before sealing the Catagory King of Diamonds Undead, then the entire final storyline wouldn't have happened in the first place! Leangle even attempts this ''after'' Joker wins but the Undead can no longer be unsealed by then, but nothing was stopping him before!}}

* There are many specific examples for ''[[Smallville]]'', most of which are listed under [[Idiot Plot]]. There is, however, one very general one: Any time someone is spying on Clark, expect him to suddenly start talking about how his [[Kryptonite Factor|only weakness is meteor rocks]]. Not kryptonite, meteor rocks. That way the [[Monster of the Week]] knows what he's talking about, and can use it against him.

** and yet Spike pointed out they looked grey when they got back to the library in part 2, so it's probable that it did have a visual effect noticable by the other characters, that was largley ignored. Discord himself also qualifies due to not realizing everyone was in a much more unified mood upon their second attempt to "friend him". and that they weren't grey anymore.

** Twilight ''did'' notice that her friends were acting strangely. The fact that she didn't suspect of Discord's influence (at first at least) is probably due to the fact that she couldn't imagine him cheating on the rules ''he'' sets up for the game by [[Mind Rape|Mind Raping]] all of them (which he didn't (well, partially), with the exception of Fluttershy and maybe Rainbow Dash too). It also sure helps that the maze was '''very''' big (as seen in some scenes), so they probably travelled separeted for some hours at least, which maybe made Twilight think that they acted like that because of stress and fear, rather than Discord's influence. As for Spike, he maybe was tslking about how grumpy they were looking, not necessarly the color.

* In [[Voltron Force]] [[S 2 E 1]] (''Inside the Music''), Pidge picks up the Idiot Ball and runs with it for a touchdown. He's so heavily invested in keeping his secret identity as the mastermind of the band "Stereolactic" a secret, that he doesn't even tell his [[True Companions]]. This results in the [[Kid Sidekick|Cadets]] wasting time and effort chasing him down, believing that he's the Drule agent, that could have been used finding the real agent.