Idiot Ball: Difference between revisions

* ''[[The Crucible]]'' probably wouldn't have resulted in a [[Downer Ending]] if Elizabeth said to the court that Proctor cheated on her. Abigail along with the girls would have been thrown out of the court, and no one would've been hanged. Instead, the honest woman lies, resulting in [[Karma Houdini|Abigail proven innocent]], and eventually Proctor's death. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]].

** Not quite a case of the Idiot Ball- she had no idea who mentioned the affair or why she was being brought in to the trial- if it was Abigail, then John was standing accused and telling the truth could get him locked up or hanged; if it was John (and it was), then it was a desperate attempt to end the madness by exposing the lead accuser as a liar and a slut and undermining her credibility. The judge has her dragged in and refuses to let her so much as look at her husband, or anyone else, never mind tell her what this was all about. She gambled that it was Abigail (since this was the best-case scenario; if it was John he was damned either way), and the gamble failed. But a [[Witch Hunt]] is pretty damn stressful at the best of times, when you aren't pregnant and you and your friends and husband aren't facing the noose because the whole town has gone mad.

* In ''[[Atlanta Nights]]'' Bruce Lucent spends a chapter trying to find out if his parents were his bio-parents when it turns out he's {{spoiler|black}} when his parents aren't.

** Nobody else noticed either.

 

== Live-[[Action TV]] ==

* ''[[Falling Skies]]'' has a few in just one episode. Tom tells us a few times that Pope is [[Designated Villain|a really bad guy]], so when they take him to find motorbikes he's guarded by Dai. Dai and Pope end up in a back of the bike shop and for some reason Dai turns his back on Pope and looks for something. Pope then knocks him out and flees from the group. In the same bike shop one of the skitters [[Wall Crawl|wall crawls]] his way to an advantageous spot above Tom and Dai who are completely focused on escape from the [[Child Soldier|child soldiers]], so what does it do? It jumps on the desk below it, makes a bunch of noise and gets filled with lead.

* ''[[Friends]]'', when Monica believed that Chandler found sharks sexually arousing ("The One with the Sharks").

*** As of Season 6, the idiot balls now seem to be superglued to the Winchester brothers' hands. Most of their wangst—and the survival of so many individuals—could have been prevented if not for their incredibly dumb decisions.

* In ''[[Numb3rs]]'' the entire FBI hauls around an idiot ball the size of the shop. While for the sake of the plot [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief|it's all right]] that every case they meet requires advanced math to solve, it does not explain why the FBI is incapable of any police work. One of the more outrageous example concerns a fugitive whom the FBI has been after for months. They know the man is on the run, but has not left his home county. Even with that they still cannot find him, but even worse is the fact that the show's resident math genius uses advanced math to reveal to the FBI that the fugitive ''is regularly stopping at his old home to visit his wife''. Indeed, at no point in those long months has it ever occurred to any of the FBI's agents that the fugitive who's staying in his home county may be contacting his loved ones and that they could just catch him by putting up surveillance on the man's wife. The whole show is like this, featuring FBI agents whose only qualifications are that they are damn good at kicking down doors while shouting for people to drop their weapons.

** The Smart Ball seemed to go to all the bit-characters, making them practically [[Mary Sue]] perfect in order to make the regular actors look idiotic... and more annoyingly than ordinary [[Mary Sue]] characters, since it would usually end up with the regular characters being injured or humiliated in some way, but they were also center-stage while the bit-characters were barely visible.

* ''[[CSI]]'''s season 8 pilot gave the Idiot Ball to Sara, who should have encountered basic survival stuff at some point during her lifetime, either from a job safety kind of lecture (given how much wandering the CSIs do) or from a case involving a dead guy in the wilderness, as both San Francisco and Las Vegas have nearby places to get lost and noob hikers to get lost in them.

** Perhaps the best use of this, though, is during the Rank Two fight, in which leaves the Idiot Ball out for the player to grab. Periodically, the boss will [[Playing Possum|just collapse on the ground and start weeping]]. If the player decides that this is a perfect opportunity to take her out, the boss immediately parries the blow, and proceeds to beat Travis to death, regardless of his current health.

*** There is a catch to this though. There are two different animations, one is her [[Playing Possum]] and the other animation is the real deal. She is open for attack should the latter occur.

** Not only does Tychus decide to take a giant prototype mecha out for a rampage walk, supposing that the default mode-of-action to be taken during communication cutoff is to "thrash their bases, right?", but he also {{spoiler|chooses the worst possible timing to betray his friends, [[Too Dumb to Live|attempting to kill de-zergified Kerrigan when surrounded by her boyfriend and his loyalists]]. [[What an Idiot!|On a lava planet with nothing but zerg and hostile forces around his current position]]}}.

** Also, Raynor finds out that {{spoiler|Tychus}} has a killswitch transponder, but instead of ditching him as a liability or somehow neutralizing the transponder, he displays his impressive knack for leadership by just passively wondering what has {{spoiler|Tychus}} gotten himself into.

* The entire playable cast grabs the idiot ball at one point in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]''. They're trying to stop Sephiroth from getting the [[Artifact of Doom|Black Materia]], and they know that Cloud is vulnerable to being [[Brainwashed]] by Sephiroth. So what do they do once they've reached the Black Materia first? ''They give it to Cloud.''

** This is made even worse by the fact that Cloud ''told'' them not to give it to him, under any circumstances. The character holding the Black Materia is left behind before the big confrontation, and told to stay put. Then, Sephiroth uses an illusion to trick them into thinking Cloud is in trouble, they rush forward to help, and when they see Cloud surrounded by a group of Shinra, they calmly hand it over.

* ''[[Silent Hill]]'' games [[Stupidity Is the Only Option|often force the player to accept the Idiot Ball in order to advance]], possibly deliberately as part of the ongoing torturous [[Mind Screw]]. Consider the number of times in one particular game that the player is asked whether James will stick his arm into a dark hole or leap into a pit whose bottom he cannot see.

** James is a different case entirely - his suicidal actions are supposed to instead be a demonstration of how completely uncaring he is about his own life. At first, this seems Idiot Ball, but once you {{spoiler|find out what he did to his wife}} you realize that in reality James' willingness to jump possibly to his death and stick his arms into dangerous holes with no apparent regard for his own safety is actually a show of his {{spoiler|own guilt}}. The fact that he'll do it before he even truly {{spoiler|remembers what he's done}} actually ends up being like [[Fridge Brilliance]].

* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Heaven's Feel example. Rin, what on EARTH possessed you to taunt {{spoiler|[[Super-Powered Evil Side|Dark Sakura]]'s}} [[Rape as Backstory|'family life']]

* In ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]'' all of Daein is handed a massive idiot ball, {{spoiler|instead of going after Begion's senate who hold the blood contract that they're using to black mail them with, they decide to fight Sanaki's army who are trying get rid of the corrupted senate.}} The massive idiot ball comes in into play when its {{spoiler|apparent that the one they should kill to destroy the blood contract is Lekain the instantiated the contract instead of having Pellas pull a [[Senseless Sacrifice]].}}

* In ''[[The Reconstruction]]'', after {{spoiler|the Watchers are killed}} and the party decides to wait for someone to show up and tell them what to do, the only attempt {{spoiler|Tezkhra}} ([[Optional Party Member|if you have him in your party]]) makes to stop them from {{spoiler|trancing out}} is saying that they should tell him if they "feel anything unusual". Even though he knows that {{spoiler|emitter radiation, which they're currently being exposed to, causes trancing if people sit around and do nothing, which is ''exactly what they said they would do''}}. He should at least have done something to {{spoiler|keep ''himself'' from trancing}}... But despite all this, he just goes along with them and sits there like an idiot.

* In [[Saints Row: The Third|Saint's Row The Third]], Senator Monica Hughes seems to be almost completely encased in an idiot ball, given that she handed over her constituents to the trigger-happy morons at STAG in order to stop a gang war, and didn't even consider the possibility that introducing a large military organization armed with incendiary and explosive weapons into the already-violent city might make things worse. {{spoiler|And if the Daedelus is unleashed at the end, the "Butcher of Steelport' ends up becoming the de facto ''Mayor'' of Steelport. Then again, since both Killbane and Temple are both dead by that point, thus leaving the Saints in power, one could argue that the Daedalus ''does'', in fact, play a role in ending Steelport's gang problem.}}

{{quote|'''Patrick''':[[Lampshade Hanging|You said you were Spongebob, Spongebob.]]

'''Spongebob''':*[[It Makes Sense in Context|Impersonating Mr Krabs]]*[[Dumbass Has a Point|Argh, It's true, Mister Squidward.]] Now get back to work! }}

* This very web page is referenced and linked to in [http://news.toonzone.net/article.php?ID=22845 Ed Liu's Toon Zone review] of ''[[The Flintstones]]'' [[Sequelitis|sequel series]] ''[[The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show|The Pebbles and Bamm Bamm Show]]''. To wit:

** "[Pebbles is] the one most often saddled with the Idiot Ball, since most of the episodes rely on her misunderstanding something and then finding the worst possible way to fix her mistakes."

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]

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[[Category:Ball Index]]