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{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]] in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
* In [['Salem's Lot]] by [[Stephen King]], Susan Norton, despite being warned by Ben Mears and Matt Burke that they should stay away from the Marsten House for now, goes there all on her own to see if there's really a vampire there. What's more, on the way she encounters twelve year old Mark Petrie who actually has warded off a vampire the previous night. Now, with proof and a new ally, does she suggest that the two of them go back to town and get reinforcements to return in force? No, she and Mark go up to the house all on their own. What do you think happens?▼
{{deathtrope}}
▲* In ''[['Salem's Lot]]'' by [[Stephen King]], Susan Norton, despite being warned by Ben Mears and Matt Burke that they should stay away from the Marsten House for now, goes there all on her own to see if there's really a vampire there. What's more, on the way she encounters twelve year old Mark Petrie who actually has warded off a vampire the previous night. Now, with proof and a new ally, does she suggest that the two of them go back to town and get reinforcements to return in force? No, she and Mark go up to the house all on their own. What do you think happens?
* In the ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' novels this pretty much sums up the New Republic/Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. The Old Republic lasted "a thousand generations". The New Republic lasted less than one, largely because it was so mired in politics that it was wholly unable to adequately respond to an extragalactic invasion. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our [[Rebel Leader|passionately individualistic heroes]] the invaders are eventually stopped and the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances is formed. During it's brief existence it has allowed a [[Galactic Conqueror|Sith Lord]] to exploit a legal technicality to seize power, the second time this had occurred in less than a century. Once our heroes sort that out, the GFFA then arbitrarily appoints a [[General Failure|former enemy who once tried, unsuccessfully, to destroy their capital planet]] as their new Chief of State for no apparent reason other than that a real election would be too much trouble and there were seemingly no qualified candidates amongst the ranks of their own government. Needless to say, more trouble quickly ensues. All of this keeps the Jedi in a role of [[La Résistance|constantly having to oppose their own government]] and likewise routinely being out of favor with said government, who are deeply offended by the Jedi's ceaseless attempts to stop their lemming-like drive towards self-destruction.
* Carpathia's plan in Left Behind is to follow every step of the divine plan that leads to his inevitable defeat, as opposing to try and Screw Destiny by, for example, ruling fairly and trying to create a better world, or just nuking the whole planet to spite Him. Well okay, he did intend to deviate from the plan at the last possible minute by waiting until Jesus actually returned and then shooting him. This works about as well as you'd expect.
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* Victor [[Frankenstein]] of [[Mary Shelley]]'s [[Frankenstein (novel)|original novel]], decides to run away from, and afterwards basically forget about, his ''completely successful'' [[Frankenstein's Monster|experiment in the creation of new life]], after he decides that the result is uglier looking than he expected. He is then surprised when said creation feels epically neglected and decides to kill him.
** Not only that, but all the monster wants is familial love at first and then a female companion. Victor starts making one to appease it, then gets afraid the two of them would spawn a race of monsters, so he destroys the unfinished female, which prompts the monster to commit new murders in revenge. Victor never considers that he could just leave out some of the plumbing. ''Not only that'', but despite knowing the monster has a history of killing the people that he, Victor, loves, despite knowing that it considers him guilty for the death of its 'bride', despite its explicit warning that it will "be with you on your wedding night," when Victor marries Elizabeth he assumes that ''he'' is the monster's next target, and sends his new wife away to wait in her room completely unprotected. The results are predictable.
* The Kzinti from [[Larry Niven
** They did so ''before'' they were that dumb. They were tribal warrior primitives before they overthrew the spacefarers and stole their tech. Then they used the biotech they'd stolen to genetically engineer themselves to be perfect - as defined by a primitive tribal warrior culture, i.e. massively aggressive, status-conscious, and utterly truthful. They actually rebuilt their descendants to be ''unable'' to [[Rules Lawyer]] their honor code. This doesn't change much until evolution kicks back in... once they attack humans.
* ''[[Discworld]]'': [[Terry Pratchett]] explores this being intentional in ''[[
** [[
** By the usual [[Genre Savvy]] ''[[Discworld]]'' population, any examples of Too Dumb to Live that result in the person getting killed are marked down as "[[The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much|suicide]]" by the City Watch. There are a ''lot'' of ways to commit suicide in Ankh-Morpork. Walking into the Drum calling yourself "Vincent the Invulnerable" is just the icing on the cake.
** Calling a dwarf ''short stuff'' or ''lawn gnome'' is also suicide, considering the insulted dwarf most likely possesses a very sharp pickaxe about his person.
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** Don't forget the locked door they break through has a sign that warns, "If you enter here YOU WILL DIE!" Among other skull and crossbones-type warnings.
* This is a long standing complaint of fans of Romance fiction who use the abbreviation TSTL (Too Stupid to Live) to describe any heroine (or hero) who drives the plot by sending all reason and common sense on sabbatical while pursuing the love of their lives.
* [[Older Than Print]]: ''[[Little Red Riding Hood]]''. [[Terry Pratchett]] said it best in ''[[
{{quote|"... some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family."}}
* T'Lana from the ''[[Star Trek]]'' pocket books is a very short-lived character in the current{{when}} Borg [[Story Arc]] for just this reason. From the first book she is introduced in she immediately questions the judgment of practically everybody on board the ship who isn't a [[Fantastic Racism|Vulcan]], she objects to nearly every action anyone ranked above her takes, and spearheads a mutiny with other members of the senior staff against [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Picard]], only to give command back to him refusing to simply admit that she fucked up majorly. Even [[Star Trek: The Original Series|Spock]] eventually just walks away during a conversation with her, after calling her the
* ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]''. Ma Su. Good God, Ma Su. During the Shu Kingdom's expedition against the Wei Kingdom, Ma Su was put in charge of defending Jie Ting, a very important location for the Shu forces. The location is near a mountain so Ma Su thought it would be a good idea to camp at the top of the mountain. Normally this would be a good idea,
* The trolls in ''[[The Hobbit]]'' spend all night arguing about how they're going to cook Bilbo and the dwarves, apparently forgetting [[Taken for Granite|what happens when sunlight hits them]].
** Of course, the implication was that Gandalf successfully got them so busy arguing that they simply lost track of the time and didn't notice it was getting to dawn. Of course, one would assume that with such a weakness, the trolls would have the sense to take better care, but yeah...
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* Pippin in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''. Even if you don't count the first time ("Ooh, we're in a dark scary place that Gandalf wants us to move through quickly, but there's a big hole in the ground and I wanna see how deep it is... let's drop a stone!"), there's still this lovely number. "I have to look at it! I'll take it from the wizard when he's sleeping! But, hey! This time he doesn't have a perfectly good reason for not letting me see the shiny rock that Saruman used to communicate with Sauron! Even though he's older than the world and I already killed him once."
** It's pretty explicit that the palantiri are addictive for people who aren't very strong-willed, at least if the person they've got on speed-dial is Sauron.
** And wasn't throwing the rock down the deep hole an accident? In the movie, they simply decided to tone down his too-dumb-to-live factor a bit and make it an accident. It was wholly on purpose in the book.
* Bella Swan of ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]''. Bella ''NEEDS'' to be changed over so she'll have the strength to lug around that big-ass [[Idiot Ball]] she's been strapped to ever since she saw Edward Cullen walk into the school cafeteria.
** A dedicated [[Spork]]er put it best while describing the cliff-diving incident in ''New Moon'':
{{quote|"She's not just [[Tempting Fate]]. She's rolling around on fate's bed. Naked. With one of her girlfriends. Pouring baby oil on each other. Begging fate to join in on the fun. Um, if you'll excuse me, I need to, uh . . . [[A Date with Rosie Palms|take five]]."}}
{{quote|"I have never met anyone so prone to life threatening idiocy."}}
* The unnamed SMERSH agent who executes Le Chiffre and his crew at the end of ''[[Casino Royale]]''. This has the interesting side effect of saving Bond's life. Despite knowing that Bond is a resourceful, and therefore dangerous, foreign service agent, he declines to kill him, basically giving the reason that his superior did not file the paperwork that would give the order for him to kill any opposing spies that he happened to encounter over the course of his mission. He also acknowledges that, under ordinary circumstances, he'd be under orders to kill Bond. But, that order wasn't specifically given, so he's just going to carve a brand onto Bond's body (to help them identify Bond in the future, a randomly dickish move that serves no purpose other than to make Bond hate SMERSH just a little bit more) and leave him be. Come on!
** To be fair, the SMERSH agent works for an organization that kills its own people for undertaking independent projects without prior permission from headquarters first. Indeed, the SMERSH agent is there to kill Le Chiffre precisely because Le Chiffre had had an excess of initiative in trying to fulfill his mission (and thus lost SMERSH's money when he took risks with it). Under those circumstances, we can hardly blame the guy for deciding not to shoot Bond—not when 'independent action' is literally a death sentence in his organization. So while there is still a lot of stupidity in this scene its not the agent's stupidity, its his boss's.
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# She was on the Saganami Island unarmed combat team. Add to that that she's from a heavy-gravity planet ''and her family had been genetically modified to cope with that'', he was lucky to get away with ''just'' broken bones.
** Pretty much any flag officer in the Solarian League Navy. Seriously. The only one shown yet who's even remotely competent is planning to defect from the League as soon as possible. The rest are self-serving, belligerent assholes who all ignore the ''many'' reports of their enemy's vastly superior technology. And then get blown to chunky salsa for their pains.
**Also it must be remembered that Solarian naval officers are not naval officers. They just look on the Solarian navy as another set of counters in the internal power game that has gone on for hundreds of years and ignored neobarbs, who [[Sarcasm Mode|aren't real people don't you know.]] They are often highly intelligent as [[The Chessmaster|chessmasters]] within the game of gaining power in the League. But that is only assuming everyone plays by the same rules and the rules are that the Solarian League is the end of all things. The Manties play by different rules, and Solarian naval officers are shocked, shocked, when Manties have the audacity to actually shoot back.
** Not to mention that Honor herself has demonstrated a pattern of sneaky tactics, misdirection, concealing her intentions and disguising her forces. Her enemies, who have often studied her tactics in detail, then routinely see exactly what she wants them to see, decide "Oh, she's just screwed up this time", and charge straight into her traps. The one time they didn't? Was the one time she was actually running a bluff.
*** Also, the time Admiral Theisman was 'fooled' by her bluff, he actually ''knew the entire time'' that it was a bluff. The only reason he took a dive and pretended to fall for it anyway is because he thought the entire mission he'd been assigned was a giant pile of idiocy and quite cheerfully leapt at the first politically-acceptable excuse he found to call mission abort.
* Governor Aubert of [[David Weber]]'s ''[[In Fury Born]]'' is a subversion. When we first meet him, he's ignoring the warnings of the elite Marines stationed on Gyangtse, instead listening to the advice of his even stupider advisor, Salgado, which results in a major uprising by separatist forces. However, when said uprising occurs, Aubert realizes his stupidity, fires his advisor, and aids the Marines in resolving the conflict.
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* Michael from the ''[[Knight and Rogue Series]]'' makes a habit of seeking out killers, and will knowingly walk into traps that are pretty much always set to get him, a man with no legal rights, framed for a hanging crime. Even if this is to save lives or try and at least see who's setting you up, when you're the sort of protagonist who usually gets at least two good beating a book and have people wanting you executed just for getting into a street fight, this is a ''very'' bad idea.
* ''[[In Death]]'': Some of the murder victims completely qualify for this trope. Tiara Kent from ''Eternity In Death'' stands out the most, because she had a boyfriend who had her convinced that he was a vampire and he could make her into one. She shut off the security system like he asked her to, and never considered that he needed to keep his face from being seen on the cameras. She drank a concoction like he asked her to, and never considered that it might contain rape drugs and other [[Sarcasm Mode|lovely]] ingredients in it. She has sex with him, and he drains her blood, resulting in her death. She didn't change into a vampire, by the way. Eve and Peabody even discuss the victim's stupidity, and Peabody explains that the victim was a rich, spoiled girl who was not known for her brains.
* In a case where [[Too Dumb to Live]] is apparently contagious, Robert Bloch's [[Cthulhu Mythos]] story "Fane of the Black Pharaoh" concerns an
* For the most part in the [[Percy Jackson and The Olympians|Percy Jackson series]] everyone more or less arguably suffers from this with the protagonists routinely walking right into obvious traps set by monsters or in one particularly egregious example when the rag tag group of heroes is in a junk yard of Hephaestus within which they are told explicitly [[Schmuck Bait|not to touch or take anything]] the characters of course proceed to do that, with one even going so far as to [[It Makes Sense in Context|take a bite out of a crown.]] What follows is a character death that could have so easily been avoided that the [[You Can't Fight Fate]] message of the series became somewhat of a [[Wall Banger]] at that moment.
* A few examples in [[The Bible]]:
** Samson
*** It's most likely that Samson didn't know cutting his hair would result in his disempowerment. He had done pretty much every bad thing one could do as a Nazarite such as never drinking alcohol. [[Jerkass|He simply didn't care]]. When his wife cut his hair it was the final straw that caused God to finally revoke his powers.
** Said enemies, the Philistines, deserve a mention as well for allowing Samson to grow his hair back, even though they know it's what his superhuman strength springs from.▼
****The book did have him praying before he got his strength back, which would suggest that God was interested in Samson's state of mind rather than just his hair.
** Also, the Pharaoh, who, even after Moses utterly desolates his kingdom with all manner of destructive "miracles", still somehow decides that he's going to hunt all the Hebrews down and bring them back to be his slaves.▼
▲**
*** According to the Bible, he did it because [[God Is Evil|God basically forced him to.]] Earlier in the story, he also wanted to let the Hebrews go when the plagues kept happening, but God [[Mind Control|"hardened Pharaoh's heart."]]▼
▲**
***That is only one interpretation. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Non-Calvinists believe]](ask a theologian for a more complicated answer if you want to bother)that God only hardens the hearts of people who are asking for it and if Pharaoh had really wanted to let them go he would have let them go. Cyrus was perfectly happy to although he was not keeping Jews(well not all of them anyway)as slaves.▼
▲***
** Apparently, despite having just created a universe massive beyond human comprehension, he decides to put his first two humans right next to a tree which, if they ate the fruit, would ruin everything. Whats more, he does this despite being all-knowing, and thus knowing exactly what will happen.▼
▲****That is only one interpretation. [[Your Mileage May Vary|Non-Calvinists believe]] (ask a theologian for a more complicated answer if you want to bother) that God only hardens the hearts of people who are asking for it and if Pharaoh had really wanted to let them go he would have let them go. Cyrus was perfectly happy to although he was not keeping Jews (well not all of them anyway) as slaves.
* Ivan in "Tsarevich Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf." He double-subverts [[Youngest Child Wins]] in that, while in many other fairy tales the older siblings are the ones to disregard the instructions and the youngest wins by doing what they're supposed to, Ivan is the one who repeatedly touches things he's been specifically told not to while trying to steal the Firebird etc., trips magical burglar alarms, and gets sent on one [[Fetch Quest]] after another as a consequence (and he keeps getting told that he wouldn't have had to resort to burglary if he'd just ''asked''). De-subverted because the wolf keeps bailing him out, even after he actually ''dies''.▼
***The Pharaoh might have been facing a personal [[Morton's Fork]]: Try to get the slaves back and fail horribly, or let them go and face your subjects - who now have to do all the work themselves ''and'' have just realised that you're not some hugely powerful demigod after all. If this was the way he saw it, chasing the Hebrews was [[YMMV|arguably]] still [[The Needs of the Many|the wrong decision]], so this trope may still apply.
* ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'': too many examples to count. Being [[Anyone Can Die|the kind of books they are]], they usually don't survive. Some examples:▼
▲**God: Apparently, despite having just created a universe massive beyond human comprehension, he decides to put his first two humans right next to a tree which, if they ate the fruit, would ruin everything.
** Viserys. Threatening the wife of a barbarian chieftain in front of said chieftain, with your sword out in the barbarian's holy city where it's forbidden? What could possibly go wrong?▼
***[[Your Mileage May Vary|At least one]] Christian denomination teaches that he [[Batman Gambit|wanted them to eat the fruit]] so they could experience what it's like to disobey - ''informed'' choice being an important part of humanity's experience on Earth.
** Ned. Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned, Ned. So here's the guy who has a crush on your wife and tells you explicitly not to trust him? Well, trust him! So the queen is fucking her twin brother, has three incest children and might have had a part in killing the king? Tell her that you know enough to get her killed! Oh, and said king? He is on his deathbed, this is the time to be tactful and not to tell him what you know, even though it could have saved the country from a civil war. Great job!▼
▲*
** Like father, like son. Congratulations on marrying the first girl you fucked, Robb, even though you have just broken your arranged marriage pact.▼
▲*
▲**
▲**
▲**
** Also, belittling the son you despised since he was born while said son - who is, by the way, convicted on charges on regicide and kinslaying and sentenced to die - is holding a crossbow at you is a great idea. Right, Tywin?
**
**
**
*
{{quote|'''Llewelyn:''' Here you are. Too dumb to live.}}
*
*In ''[[The Dresden Files]]'':
**Susan went into a party that she knew was full of vampires despite the fact Dresden repeatedly told her not to, because she wanted to interview one.
**In ''Ghost Story'', ghost Dresden got a good hit in on an opponent and then stood there gloating with a pop culture reference. There were two other enemies, one whom he downed but didn't eliminate (so in principle, maybe it would have gotten back up and hit him), and worse, one he didn't get a hit on at all. As he is literally being ripped apart, he laments his terrible math.
* [[Mother Goose|The Three Blind Mice]]; you'd think ''any'' mice, let alone blind ones, would know better than to tease the Farmer's Wife. They were lucky she ''only'' cut off their tails with a carving knife.
* [[The Big Bad Wolf]], specifically in ''[[The Three Little Pigs]]''. Big and bad, maybe, but not very bright. Guy really should have considered the ''purpose'' of a chimney before trying to break into a house that way.
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