Just Eat Gilligan: Difference between revisions

Not to be confused with [[Just Eat Him]]. When a villain falls prey to this trope, it is often [[Never Recycle Your Schemes]]. See also [[The Millstone]], when one character is the cause of this situation, and [[Fawlty Towers Plot]], when the source is a lie. If they ''did'' eat Gilligan, that would be an example of there being [[No Party Like a Donner Party]]. Contrast with [[For Want of a Nail]], [[Who Will Bell the Cat]].

If there are sound reasons given within the work for why the "single simple action" can't be taken, or won't work, ''it's not this trope. Don't add it as an example.'' If the characters do try the single simple solution and it doesn't work, it's ''also not this trope. Again, don't add it as an example.'' 

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* ''[[Ranma One Half|Ranma ½]]'' has the age old question of why the people cursed by the Jusenkyo springs didn't just cure themselves while they were still there.

{{quote| '''Yami Yugi:''' Did you even consider ''just asking me for it''? I mean, do you have any ''idea'' how much time and money you've wasted with this whole facade? People have ''died'' because you wanted a necklace! ''I killed a gay clown'', for Ra's sake!}}

** And again in the second season...

'''Marik''': "No, and even if we did, those EFF-tards would just censor it." }}

** In the ''Yu-Gi-Oh GX'' manga, Misawa admits that he could have just asked Judai for Asuka's phone number instead of dueling with him, but that his pride would not allow him to do so, and that he wanted to duel Judai.

* In ''[[Patlabor]]'', SV2 Division 2 is often derided for the massive collateral damage they cause while fighting crime... and 90% of those are caused by Ohta. Now, his gung-ho, gun-loving attitude is supposed to be played for laughs, and he is a [[Jerk With a Heart of Gold]] really, but just the same, getting rid of him would've saved much of SV2's troubles.

** Note that in the manga version, Ohta is shown to be less incompetent than his anime counterparts.

** Also note that one of the later TV shows, points out that Ohta ''is'' very skilled, "He's never hit a cockpit" Gotoh remarks. Besides, the only other suitable pilots were on command track/or slated to go back to the US in a year.

** This is reinforced in the second movie, where he cooly demonstrates that he's capable of aiming from the hip with their [[Humongous Mecha]] and nailing a moving target; the recruits he was drilling at the time couldn't fathom the purpose of the exercise but are impressed nonetheless.

* [[Blue Seed]] has this as its central concept. If they had just killed Momiji (normally, that is), the monsters will all be gone and peace would be restored. However, the basis of the series is to find a way to get rid of the monsters without killing her.

* ''[[Dragonball]] Z'' plot lines tend to play out along the following lines: A powerful foe appears, none of the Z fighters are strong enough to defeat him (or they spend so long messing around that he is allowed to reach full power), he kills lots of innocent people whilst the Z fighters train to become stronger, the villain is confronted and the strongest fighter barely manages to scrape through with a win, and then the magical dragon balls are used to wish all of the dead civilians back to life. However, The dragon balls grant ''wishes'', so the protagonists could wish for pretty much anything they want (within certain ill-defined boundaries). Not once does anyone think to wish for the villain to be weaker, or to be frozen in ice, or to be put to sleep, or to be transported to the centre of the sun. Vegeta is at least smart enough to try to wish himself to be more powerful, but this is only before his [[Heel Face Turn]] and so naturally he fails. The idea apparently never reoccurs to him. The show highlights the ridiculous ease with which the good guys are able to gather the balls so it is unclear why they never think to use them for anything other than resurrection. Even if they 'wasted' their wish by using it to destroy the villain the innocents would only remain dead for a year until the next wish could be made.

**** It was mentioned earlier that anyone chosen by the Goblet was put under a powerful, binding magical contract, which meant that they ''had'' to participate. Dumbledore warns of this when he tells the students who are of age to not sign up frivolously, but to be certain that they want to potentially go through with it.

**** On the other hand, the judges allowed him to continue after he went over the time limit in the water challenge. If they had stuck to the rules of the challenge, Harry would have been disqualified, and Voldemort would have stayed dead.

 

 

*** Series 6 shows what happens when a "fixed point" is altered; {{spoiler|it breaks history. The entire history of Earth is altered so it all takes place at once, and it's ''always'' the moment when time is broken.}}

* In ''[[Lost in Space]]'', Dr. Smith is a sanctimonious coward who constantly gets the whole ship in trouble through his greed. A great many potential future problems could have been solved simply by leaving him to get killed in the mess he's caused for himself. A later comic continuation by Innovation Comics partially addresses that by the Robinsons and West finally losing their patience with Smith, throwing him in one of the ship's cryo tubes and keeping him there. At least the movie adaptation gave an explanation as to why he wasn't immediately thrown out the airlock after his first treachery, and they ''did'' eventually leave him to die after his betraying them yet again.

*** In the original pilot (and the first few episodes) Dr. Smith was a scarily competent, utterly ruthless spy and saboteur who sneaks aboard the ship, {{spoiler|disables (or kills) a guard with his bare hands, reprograms the robot to sabotage the ship}}, and only stays aboard because he miscalculates the amount of time he has to get off (he may have been set up by his controllers so he wouldn't still be around to answer any embarrassing questions). He was changed into the bumbling, cowardly character we all love to hate because the producers (and Johnathan Harris himself) realized that otherwise, ''they couldn't possibly justify the rest of the crew '''not''' getting rid of him somehow''. In fact, Irwin Allen originally planned to kill off the character for exactly that reason, but was convinced it would be better to use him as comic relief.

* ''[[Power Rangers]]'': Many a fan has wondered why the [[Big Bad]] never just sends all the monsters at once instead of doing it one at a time, or simply launched an attack themselves if they were so powerful. Immediately, that is, not at the final episode where the heroes get an inexplicable power boost either. Similarly, more than a few seasons had the Rangers know exactly where the villain's base was located, but it never occurred to them to take three or four [[Humongous Mecha]] to the location and stomp on stuff until a final battle was forced.

** Then again, it's probably a giant waste of energy to send the robot to squish the not-yet-big monster. Zord fuel can't be cheap.

** "Why don't villains just blow up the Rangers' houses at night?" has also been dealt with, once again, by Ninja Storm. [[The Dragon]] suggests attacking them at the sports shop they work at, but Lothor says that a Ranger's power can only truly be destroyed while the Ranger is morphed. (Mind you, we've seen that prove untrue more than once in the past, but hey, they tried.)

* Of course, ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' usually avoids this trope by not using the same "[[Big Bad]] sends a minion to defeat the hero each week" format as [[Super Sentai]], but there are exceptions. More recent series (notably ''[[Kamen Rider Den-O|Den-O]]'' and ''[[Kamen Rider Kiva|Kiva]]'') have the villains start using mass produced [[Monster of the Week|MotWs]] as [[Mooks]], but by that point the hero's gotten his [[Super Mode]] and they're no challenge (as seen when Kiva takes out six with a single [[Finishing Move]]). Meanwhile, in ''[[Kamen Rider Double]],'' the villains of the week don't actually work for the [[Big Bad]], whose plan just requires ''observing'' the thugs he's sold powers to, and he is perfectly happy to have Kamen Riders fighting them and getting them to show their true strength.

*** If the [[The Venture Brothers|Guild of Calamitous Intent]] has taught us anything it's that provoking massively powerful superbeings with private armies is a bad idea. The good guys are five teenagers who are invariably placed against nigh-impossible odds. Escalating the war would cause the villain to actually get off their duff and start actively trying to destroy shit. Sure a few buildings are destroyed along the way but it's better than the alternative.

* Almost invariably in the early seasons, the [[Monster of the Week]] would be trashing the Power Rangers, and Rita would declare, "If you think you're having it rough now, wait until you see this!" before making the monster [[Make My Monster Grow|grow to a preposterous size]]. At this point the ''Power Rangers'' would use their cool toys and destroy the monster, every single time. If only Rita had left the monster at its original size, she could have won easily. For that matter, why didn't the Power Rangers just use their giant mechas on the "human-sized" monster? Another thing: every villain in ''Power Rangers'' ever has had the ability to teleport at will, anywhere, through walls, and even bring along passengers or cargo. Picture the cataclysmic implications if they were to use this power intelligently.

** In the Alien Rangers arc of MMPR, Goldar and Rito did ''just that,'' only with a bomb of the usual villains' making.

** Which is really strange, because in the rest of the many-parts episode, this monster didn't use [[Genre Savvy|Genre Savvyness]]. On the contrary, at this point he destroyed all the other weapons playing by the rules, just to show he could do it. And when the heroes get new weapons and match him, he won't be [[Genre Savvy]] anymore.

* In the third, fourth, and fifth seasons of ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'', more than half of the plots could have been resolved in ten seconds if the characters had chosen to just eat Jay Hogart. What did his victims do when they finally realized he was manipulating them? They glared at him really angrily, and sometimes even spoke harsh words. Some of these kids have beaten each other up because of his tricks, but when they find out the brawl was his fault, they don't even throw a punch at him. However, he does become a semi-helpful member of the cast in the sixth and seventh seasons.

*** What makes the above example even more ridiculous is that his reaction to experiencing those traumatising memories was to hallucinate, pick up a phaser and hold Naomi hostage in the Mess Hall, believing he was protecting children in a combat-zone. It took a while for Tuvok to talk him down. And that is one of the memories you want someone ''else'' to remember? The poor sod who next undergoes that could easily kill half of his crew, blow a hole in the side of the ship or get himself shot!

*** Also, is asking someone who witnessed the destruction of his homeworld, and has demonstrated long-lasting psychological scars from that event on more than one occasion, really the best person to give advice on subjecting people's mental health to images of a massacre? You'd think, given his background, he'd be against this?!

** If only [[Only Sane Man|Michael]] had moved away from his incompetent, irresponsible and immoral family, he wouldn't have to deal with their shenanigans. To his credit, he did try to leave in the beginning of season two. But the SEC was extra suspicious at that point.

** The show actually ends with the SEC coming after the Bluths again and Michael finally going, "Y'know what? ''Fuck this.''"

* In the obscure children's TV show ''The Legend of Tim Tyler'', the title "hero" sold his laugh to an evil baron for the ability to win any bet. It took until the end of the 13 part series for Tim Tyler to discover the one way to screw the baron over... to make a bet that he could laugh.

** In the German book ''Thimm Thalers Lächeln'', which seems to be the source, this is both lampshaded by Thimm and made plausible because he couldn't make this bet with just anyone - he was not allowed to tell anybody about the deal, so he had to find someone who figured it out by himself as a partner to his bet.

* ''[[Lost]]'' thrives on this, which is not surprising considering the connections to ''Gilligan's Island''. All the survivors of 815 had to do was to ''hold a big meeting and compare notes about this VERY odd island'' to keep their cool and work more as a cohesive group, but noooo.....

** This is what the survivors tried to do initially. Except there were people trying to act in the best interests of the group, such as Sayid and co. keeping the French transmission a secret. And then people acting in their own interests, like Kate trying to keep her past a secret or Sawyer making everyone hate him because he's a [[Jerkass Woobie]]. And then there's Locke, who... is Locke. Arguably, part of the show's point is that when left to their own devices, people are prone to conflict and self-destruction.

* In the first ''[[Spyro the Dragon]]'' game, you rescue around eighty full-grown dragons. Most of them give you some helpful advice, sure, but why don't any of them help you fight Gnasty? Because the game wouldn't be as fun, of course. The sequels at least give reasons for it, e.g in Gateway to Glimmer/Ripto's Rage, Spyro's the only dragon available. In Year of the Dragon, he's the only dragon who can fit through the hole left by the intruders.

** Given that the dragons you rescue in Gnasty's World are dragons you freed previously, the implication is probably that if the dragons helped fight him, they'd just be encased in crystal again.

* ''[[Terraria]]'' has the "Guide" who does things like letting monsters into your safe house, prompting many a player to think this trope.

 

** Lampshaded in one of his shorts. Wile E. explains that the reason he compulsively chases the roadrunner is because roadrunners are the most Goddamn delicious things on Earth, including a meat chart with all the flavors of a roadrunners various cuts laid out.

** A ''[[Looney Tunes (Comic Book)|Looney Tunes]]'' comic book does actually establish that Wile E. gets his food via mail order, and that catching Roadrunner is just his hobby. [[Word of God]], people.

*** There's at least one other short where he catches the Roadrunner, in a bit of a [[Take That]] to people who over-think cartoons. Two chubby bespectacled kids speaking in [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|big words]] watching the cartoon note that with his greater intellect, the Coyote should succeed, and explain exactly how in a very simple plan -- and the Coyote is listening, and then catches the Roadrunner! He's then informed by the director that he's now fired, as there can't be any more show. He surreptitiously lets the Roadrunner go, and says, "Oh, no, he's escaped!", and is hired again on the spot. The kids are then seen again, saying, "Oh, THAT'S why he never catches the Roadrunner."

*** The heights of Wile E.'s obsession is underscored by the large number of his plans that, had they succeeded, would have ''destroyed'' the Road Runner, or at least rendered its carcass inedible.

[[Category:Stupidity Tropes]]

[[Category:Just Eat Gilligan]]