Wall Banger/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Whoops! Looks like we found some cartoon story screw-ups here, too. It would have been nice if someone had spent a few minutes working these out before sending them to air.

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Ben 10

Ben 10

  • In Ben 10 episode "Kevin 11", Ben gets persuaded to sneak into a warehouse and steal a new video game before it's released. Suddenly, police in full SWAT gear arrive in cruisers and helicopters, and immediately start attacking with tear gas and bullets. This is so extreme, it doesn't just break the Willing Suspension of Disbelief—it kills it, stomps on it a few times, cuts it up into little pieces, incinerates it, scatters the ashes, and desecrates the memorial site.
    • Everyone noticed it. The commentary for the episode notes "Sumo Slammer games must have really, really tight security!" Of course, it could be theorized that the police were there due to Kevin's presence and not because of the video game; who knows how long that little psycho had been causing trouble with his powers?
  • The computer-that-wasn't-broken from "Ready To Rumble." What the Fuck, Gwen?
  • "Don't Drink the Water" left a massive Plot Hole. It has Ben and Grandpa Max being de-aged by them being soaked in the water of a carnival dunking booth that turned out to be water from the fountain of youth. Thing was, in the context of the plot, there was no reason for the water to be in the booth in the first place.
    • It was Fridge Brilliance: the person who was running the booth needed to keep taking the water to be immortal. Being dunked in the booth a few times a day would cover it. He just got hit with the Idiot Ball and caused other people to get hit with it.

Alien Force

  • Ben 10 Alien Force has its own when one sees that all of a sudden the characters are fighting their grandma, with lethal power being used on both sides. Only Kevin, who is not related to her, is worried. It's all forgiven as if it were nothing even though they fought with enough power to kill her and vice versa. Yeah, they were trying to stop her from forcing her way on her granddaughter, but there was no need for either side to use force if they have a good relationship.
    • They decided in that episode that Gwen was part alien and didn't have magic powers. Okay, but later in the series, she's using magic books, with some half-assed excuse for it about Anodites and "mana". Just make up your minds, guys!
    • Worse, Gwen is 1/4 Anodite. 1/4. Yet somehow, she is able to transform into a full Anodite and use all the full powers of an Anodite as well! How the hell do those kind of genetics WORK?
    • Gwen's grandmother was Easily Forgiven. After she has already defeated Ben and Kevin and could have left, she attempts to kill them. Then Gwen appears and she realizes Gwen's her granddaughter and has alien powers. But she is more interested in Gwen's alien powers than in any familial relationship—Ben is her grandson, but she hardly cares. She attempts to destroy Gwen's body and kidnap her spirit - "the energy being within" - showing no regard for the wellbeing of her grandson. Gwen manages to talk her down, and she leaves on good terms. Nobody calls her out over trying to kidnap one grandchild and murder another. The kids were defending Gwen; the grandmother just wanted a new person on her planet.
    • Grandma Verdona reappears way, way later, and she's still as much of a bitch as ever, totally dismissing her other granddaughter, Sunny, while telling Gwen she's "her favorite granddaughter" right in front of Sunny. Not only is this blatantly playing favorites, but it's extremely hypocritical. So Gwen, a goody-goody, mature, responsible girl, is her favorite over Sunny, a wild, out-of-control, hedonistic free spirit....even though the latter description is exactly what Verdona was...and in many ways still is? And she's supposed to be one of the good guys?
  • The Retconning of the Plumbers from a defunct Earth organization dedicated to secret security of the planet against aliens to a massive, fully-active, galaxy-spanning police force. OK, well, if it's such a big, well-known presence throughout the universe, then why is it called the Plumbers, which would symbolize being an underground group, like it originally was when it was just limited to Earth! Why did the intergalactic Plumbers never do anything in the original series if they existed? And how can the Omnitrix symbol be the symbol of the Plumbers' badge when Azmuth, who created the Omnitrix, was an isolated hermit who didn't care about the rest of the universe, let alone it's laws?
  • Vilgax's Badass and Villain Decay in the third and final season of Alien Force.
  • Related to the aforementioned Retconning of the Plumbers, the 'Inferno' episode makes it pretty clear that the Earth is not top priority. Apparently the Plumbers have been keeping entirely terrestrial weirdness secret from humanity for reasons that are never explained and the Earth is purchased out from under the human race's feet.

Ultimate Alien

  • Ben 10 Ultimate Alien already has one at the beginning of the second episode, in which Ben, while busy stopping the Forever Knights in an alien tech tank from robbing a museum, gets called by Gwen. Gwen has apparently decided that a tennis match is more important than stopping the Forever Knights from damaging artifacts, endangering lives, and getting some unknown thing. Then, everyone makes a huge deal of his showing up at the tennis match. She acts like it's his fault, claiming he made a grand entrance when all he did was walk in with his ticket. It was the announcer who made a big deal over his walking in.
  • In the third episode, Kevin starts suggesting that they should kill villains that go after Ben's family. Now, this was probably done to make an overdue connection between post Heel Face Turn Kevin and pre Heel Face Turn Kevin, who was quite violent. The problem is that this isn't his family they're talking about! Kevin would be concerned for Ben's family, yes; but having him feel murderous anger toward the villains going after them when Ben and Gwen (who have reasons) don't? Killing his father's killer was one thing. Threatening to kill villains who aren't harming him on a personal level is another.
    • In that same episode, Charmcaster is working for Zombozo as little more than a Mook. Given what we've seen of her before and especially given what we see of her later, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
  • Speaking of Kevin and killing, he went crazy. As a result, Ben decides that he needs to be "put down". OK, WHAT?! Firstly, since when does Ben actively try to kill his enemies? Secondly, two episodes prior, Ben had a heartwarming talk with Kevin about how he's like an older brother to him. But he shows practically no inner conflict about killing Kevin!
    • There's also Ben's hypocrisy saying that Kevin's out of control when he's viciously beating old enemies for info.
    • Also, the reason Kevin went crazy. It's not because of his past as a sociopath or his troubled youth or any temptation to cross over to the "dark side". Nope, it's because his species goes insane whenever they absorb energy. Nothing bad he did then or now is his fault at all. What? Really, writers, is that the best explanation you can come up with for a character pulling a Heel Face Turn AND Face Heel Turn?
  • Then came the season finale. Not only are the Andromeda aliens killed by Aggregor inexplicably revived; not only is Darkstar decayed as a threat; but also, after all that angst and Wangst concerning Kevin, Ben and Gwen fighting over what to do with him, Kevin committing atrocities, etc.... Kevin is restored to sanity, an apology and instant forgiveness follows, and everything is back to normal with the team. Really? Kevin just apologizes, and Ben forgives him after wanting to kill him so much? Gwen forgives him for raping...er, draining her of her powers? Kevin forgives Ben for wanting to kill him? He forgives HIMSELF for all he's done? No-one wanted Kevin to die; but if you're writing an epic, serious storyline, then you have to have consequences!
  • Hey, wasn't it stated by the characters that the big thing to work on after the Aggregor (and then Kevin) situation was over with was finding a way back to the Magical Land to help Charmcaster? Why aren't we even getting a mention of that being worked on in Season 2?
  • Bringing Elena Validus and her father from the live action movie into the TV show just to kill them off. Seriously, what the hell? Julie being blatantly made out to be better than Elena in the episode also makes this a possible case of Derailing Love Interests.
    • Oops, looks like Elena's not dead, she's back as a complete Yandere villain now, still being used as an Evil Counterpart to Julie, and willing to kill her and Ben. They're even making it clear that this is Elena doing this, NOT just the Swarm Queen possesing her. There's no "possible case" about it now, this is Derailing Love Interests.
  • Pierce is killed by the Forever Knights, just so that they can be a bigger threat now. Such a casual throwing away of a character....it's a male version of Stuffed in The Fridge! Oh, and no-one ever finds out about it, and it's not spoken of again.
  • Ben's defeat of a monster made from the "trash island" in the Pacific Ocean, after it's moved to the coast of San Francisco to get more trash. Since it's a Blob Monster he can't beat it conventionally. Then he sees that the waves in the ocean are eroding it. This inspires him to do the only logical thing: use Way Big (a giant alien) to run in a circle around the monster fast enough to create a tornado that hurls it into space on course for the Sun. This series has never been good with the laws of physics and tends to abuse New Powers as the Plot Demands, but this solution came right the fuck out of nowhere, kicked physics in the nuts, and pretty much gave a middle finger to any sense of rationality. Worst of all, it's a complete tangent to the observed weakness Ben was presumably trying to exploit.
  • Vilgax's Not So Different speech toward Ben in the series finale. Really? Are we seriously supposed to believe that Ben is anything like Vilgax even though there's been no evidence of that at all before?


Codename: Kids Next Door

  • A REAL Codename: Kids Next Door wallbanger would be Nigel staying in a relationship with Lizzie past her introduction, which involved her mind-controlling him to DESTROY his friends so that they could have time together. Easily Forgiven indeed!
  • An even bigger wallbanger? She acts like the biggest completely spoiled whiny jealous kid throughout the entire series. Two particularly cranium-bashing examples are when the KND are trying to save recess and when Lizzie breaks up with Nigel. In the first one, Nigel gives a Rousing Speech about how kids should have the right to be able to go outside and be free to play and, well, be kids. Lizzie is moved to tears...because she thinks Nigel has decided to give up on his "silly" mission to have a "romantic dinner" with her. In the latter example, she breaks up with Nigel because he's not a "good enough" boyfriend for her because he's always off on missions (Oh, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her). No....just no. Numbah One is often risking his life for the sake of other kids, and yet we're supposed to feel bad for Lizzie just because he's not the boyfriend she wanted? Again, NO! If Lizzie wanted Nigel to stop being in the KND for his own safety, that would be one thing (As any boyfriend/girlfriend of someone with a very dangerous job can agree with that sentiment). But, being a whiny Jerkass towards him just because he's not dedicating his very being into being your "perfect boyfriend"? You don't deserve anyone, much less Nigel Uno.
  • The episode where Numbuh 4's family are sent to live on the fake moon. Basically, in that episode it's revealed that the Apollo Moon Landing missions were faked because the KND can't let adults know about their Moon Base. Okay, this show does have a Conspiracy Kitchen Sink, but there are two problems with this. One is that the evil adults already know about the existence of the Moon Base so all they're doing is preventing the progress of humanity, as benign adults are the ones interested in space travel, which would also benefit children, and also, the more extreme problem is that it's explained that the Kids Next Door created a fake moon on Earth that they somehow managed not only to redirect all the rockets towards, but every single adult in both the American and Soviet space programs fell for it without question. This is despite the fact that the astronauts' radio transmissions would have given the location away. Then, once Numbuh 4 wants to rejoin his friends, the higher-ups engineer an "alien invasion" consisting of broomsticks with buckets on top, which the adults mistake for real aliens, so the adult space program decides to nuke the moon. What happens next is possibly the absolute lowest point in the series. The Kids Next Door destroy their fake moon site (after everyone is evacuated, of course) and then send a fake video to the adult space program which consists of a live action clip of Numbuh 3 popping a balloon. And the adults believe the balloon is the real moon. I know that this series has one of the strongest Extra Strength Masquerades in existence, but come on.
    • There's also the bit of Fridge Logic that suggests that since they don't want adults to know about the moon base, they must have no idea what a telescope does.
  • The end of Heinrich's ongoing story was most likely slapped together because the series was ending. That's the only explanation for how lousy it was. The cause of the feud between Numbah 5 and Heinrich as revealed to be because Heinrich didn't listen to Abigail when she warned him about eating magic caramel. Only, the truth is really "her" and "Henrietta". They did this so abruptly to Heinrich, it couldn't not be this.
  • The Crossover with The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy where everyone is stupid enough to believe Mandy when she pretended to be Numbah One by just dressing like him.


Ed, Edd n Eddy

IMPORTANT NOTE: It's not a wall banger because the Eds (or your favorite character) got beat up. Please only put if the punishment was disproportionate or for a rather low reason.

  • Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy's crown example is "If It Smells Like an Ed." All fans should be aware of the episode...ALL. After Eddy (and Eddy ONLY) gave Jimmy a wedgie, everyone else laughs at him. To get revenge, Jimmy then targets all three Eds by framing them for stealing several neighborhood items. Unfortunately, the Eds are unable to clear their name and have to choose between getting beaten up by the other kids or getting attacked by the Kanker Sisters. They choose option A as the lesser of two evils, but end up getting both options because Jimmy DIDN'T THINK THEY SUFFERED ENOUGH.
    • Another thing in this episode: when the paintbrush disappears, Sarah immediately assumes Ed took it despite lack of proof, and everyone else just goes with her.
  • The episode "To Sir With Ed" has Nazz treating Eddy like a baby and sending him to bed for something he didn't even do. Nazz then has a party at Eddy's house without inviting him or asking permission from his parents...and she's supposed to be babysitting him.
    • Nazz appears to be about the same age as Eddy, maybe a few months older. Getting a babysitter that's the same age as the person who she's watching is missing the point of babysitters. Early Installment Weirdness, but it's a pity.
  • "A Town Called Ed." Say what you may want to about the Eds; but in this story, they only wanted to watch a monster truck marathon with the others. They try to point out that they own Peach Creek and so should be allowed to join them, but they get brushed off. It doesn't help that it turns out that the missing last page reveals that Eddy's ancestor bet it and lost to Lord Kanker.
  • "Stop, Look, Ed": After deciding that rules are for fools, Eddy attempts to persuade everyone to break any rule whatsoever in order to have a good time. Naturally, Edd still wants to obey the rules. Near the end of the episode, Edd calls everyone's parents. After panicking, the kids imprison all 3 Eds in a net. Anyone else see what's wrong with that last sentence? That's right: Edd acted alone—he ADMITS it—but ALL the Eds are punished! How is that fair? It's almost as bad as "If It Smells Like an Ed" (ALMOST).
    • Eddy seemed to have taken a hit from the Idiot Ball at the last minute. Out of either panic or loyalty he tried to defend Edd by saying he "broke a rule, like us." Still doesn't change the fact that Ed got caged with them even though he was pretty much oblivious to Edd's treachery until after Edd announced it.
  • The show is prone to these for comedy. Sometimes, they sabotage themselves for no good reason. Like with the episode they were making tacos. Why would it have been so expensive to just buy some actual materials to make tacos, if they don't already have things like cheese and vegetables laying around their kitchens anyway? Or in one flashback, they broke Jimmy's jaw with a creampuff that just randomly had a bowling pin in it. What was the point of inserting that? If they have the time and materials for so many poor replicas of scam components, why don't they simply acquire the actual thing and be done with it?
  • The fact that Double D is usually punished with Ed and Eddy. It's usually almost never his fault.
  • "Postcards from the Ed": In that one, both Ed AND Edd are punished for Eddy's (and Eddy's alone) scam killing Plank's parents. In fact, both of the former tried to stop the latter. However, once Johnny 2x4 has discovered the accidental "murder", ALL THREE are literally up a tree, surrounded by mugsters Plank knows. While Eddy (as usual) deserved it, and Ed being punished could be justified as "betraying" Johnny's trust, EDD did absolutely NOTHING to deserve this retribution. He even tried to STOP him, as said before. But of course, like said before, he receives an unjustified punishing.
  • The Halloween episode. Ed went around kicking the kids' asses because he saw one too many horror movies; Edd and Eddy STILL GET HURT BY IT. Eddy didn't even have a scam that episode; he just wanted to go to Spook-E-Ville. Double D did nothing wrong, as usual.
    • And worst of all they didn't attack Ed whom was responsible for their injuries in the first place.


The Fairly Oddparents

  • In the Reality Television parody episode of The Fairly OddParents, Timmy is allowed to say that he just considers Cosmo and Wanda tools to grant his wishes as a one-line throwaway gag, with no comeuppance... when in the entire rest of the series, his considering them his friends is considered important. Entire episodes, and even an entire movie, have revolved around the consequences of his forgetting this and treating them as tools.
  • The Laser-Guided Amnesia at the end of the Wishology, which hits the Reset Button on a good deal of Character Development for the secondary characters.
    • Also in the Wishology, whenever Timmy drives a motorcycle, he falls off and the motorcycle zooms ahead; but he's able to ride the Time Scooter and his cheap bike just fine in earlier episodes. In part two, almost everyone who is smart enough to make rockets is also dumb enough to send them up without being inside.
    • When Timmy's parents were acting like Timmy was selfish for not wishing them up things, Cosmo and Wanda don't call them out on the fact that they've been neglecting him, even forgetting to take him on a family vacation earlier in the special. That is selfish of Cosmo and Wanda; sure, bad parents are job security for fairy godparents, but it's still a bad thing.
  • A recent episode, "Manic Mom Day," had Wanda switch Timmy's brain with his Mom's as a way to show him a Mom's life is not easy. This would be more acceptable if the "Mom" was not Mrs. Turner, a woman who has openly spent her son's college fund on herself, who occasionally forgets to make him dinner, and who generally neglects him.
  • In Seasons 6 and 7, Tootie was changed from a sympathetic character who suffered the same plight as Timmy to yet another annoyance/enemy that he has to face every day.
  • Mr. Crocker was unable to recognize Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof as real fairies in the episode "Take & Fake." Let's repeat that: Mr. Crocker was unable to tell that FAIRY GODPARENTS!!! were floating right in front of him. Sure, they're at a costume party...but that's no excuse, considering that Crocker, of all people, should be able to recognize a fairy right away.
    • Furthermore, he doesn't recognize Poof even though the episode takes place after "Bad Heir Day." Earth to Denzel, you know Denzel Jr. AKA DJ, aka Poof? That fairy whom you raised briefly as your own son and formed a loving bond with? He's! Floating! RIGHT! IN! FRONT! OF! YOU!
  • In "Playdate of Doom", Foop escapes from Abracatraz and tricks Cosmo and Wanda into thinking that Jorgen authorized his release and that he's reformed and ready for a playdate with Poof. He then spends the episode tricking them into thinking Poof is misbehaving so they'll put Poof in a playpen that will send him to a pocket dimension. That Cosmo and Wanda would trust Foop, who had previously tried to destroy two worlds and kill Poof, anywhere near their son based on the (nonexistent) word of Jorgen destroys their credibility as parents. They never once suspect that Foop might be behind everything. Timmy finds out quickly and tries to warn them. Newsflash, Wanda, you're the Only Sane Being of this show, not Timmy!
  • Crocker gets another one of these in the episode "Teacher's Pet". The episode itself was bad enough (seriously, what's with the mix-n-match critters instead of, ya know, an episode about being Crocker's pet?); but the BIGGEST Wall Banger is in the beginning when Crocker praises AJ for being a good student and then berates Timmy for being a poor student. This is Mr. Crocker we're talking about, right!? The SAME Mr. Crocker who used to love making kids miserable and handed out "F"s with absolute sadistic glee?! What happened to ya, man?
  • The It's a Wonderful Plot subversion episode, "It's A Wishful Life." Many fans were turned off by this cruel subversion done by Jorgen Von Strangle to Timmy. Among the many ridiculous claims it made: without Timmy, A.J. would have a full head of hair, Francis would not be a grey skinned bully, Chester would have a triple wide trailer on gold blocks, and the Chicago Cubs would win the World Series. A number of fans view this episode as a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
    • Timmy never considered asking to see what Tootie's life is like without him.
  • "Spellementary School" aka "We hate Foop and we want you to know it". Poof is loved by everyone and ridiculous levels of Sue/Stuism, the running gag is - literally - "Foop, spelled backwards" in order to crush every possibility for Foop to feel better, inflicting Status Quo at the end for no good reason other than not having to write a better plot, and at the end, he gets beat up by Cosmo with a shovel.
  • The episode "Twistory" has a huge Wall Banger going against it. Long story short, the episode revolves around Timmy bringing the founding fathers (Well, only ones children would easily recognize like George Washington) to modern times to interview them for history class. This causes history to change (Even though historical events are far more complicated than that) so that the US remained a British colony. The wall banger? In the alternate history, nearly everyone speaks in a stereotypical Cockney accent, have terrible hygene, and have not progressed socially, technologically, or whatnot past the 1700s. The episode is so full of Unfortunate Implications that it's little wonder it rarely (if at all) gets shown during reruns of the series.


Family Guy

BEFORE YOU EDIT THIS FOLDER- As Family Guy entries tend to attract this kind of complaining: This is not a place to complain about the Seasonal Rot. Nor to complain about Seth MacFarlane's directing. It is a place for those particular moments within the show you felt were truly horrible, idiotic, or insulting. If you feel that moment was the absolute low point for the show, please see the Dethroning Moment of Suck page for Family Guy. In particular, please try to avoid commenting on the decline in episode quality. Yes, these entries are symptoms of that, but this isn't the place for it, and it only drags the page down.

  • Everything about "Not All Dogs Go To Heaven" (particularly the A-story where Meg becomes a born-again Christian after watching a religious show starring Kirk Cameron) has angered a lot of tropers. To list the specifics would take up too much time and space, so Family Guy has its own Dethroning Moment of Suck page here dedicated to this episode (and other dethroning moments of suck). Please list them here.
  • The episode "Stew-roids" had two wall bangers:
    • First, Buff Stewie (what else can you call him?) has next to no development and was just an excuse for jokes. They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
    • Second, why did Connie become popular again after Chris' downfall when it was Neil who orcheastrated it?
  • Seth MacFarlane ought to be glad he didn't have much to do with the episode "McStroke"—he was participating in the writers' strike of 2007-2008 at the time, and FOX finished the episode and aired it without Seth's permission (which MacFarlane has called a "colossal dick move"). "McStroke" has a parade of facepalm moments. Following an awkward non-joke about stem cell treatment, Peter crusades to bring down the restaurant where he pigged out on hamburgers and gave himself a stroke. Brian mentions Peter's own culpability exactly once; it never comes up again, not even when a judge throws out his lawsuit (it's because the business has a superb legal team, natch, although a case this ridiculous shouldn't have required their services). Then they visit the McBurgerTown corporate headquarters to find... a slaughterhouse? Okay, we'll chalk it up to Rule of Funny here, because surely they're building up to something hilarious, right? But then they meet a cow who tells them of the horrors perpetrated against his species by restaurant chain, and they use his testimony to bring down the company. WHAT!? How does that work? Who watching this show—or even in the show—didn't already know that beef comes from cows? The revelation that a fast food company uses meat that fresh should instantly quadruple their business! Rule of Funny utterly fails to cover this because it isn't funny. It's just stupid.
    • Hell, if a restaurant used meat that fresh, that would be the main focus of their advertising.
    • However, all this was saved by the mustache sequence. Why couldn't the whole episode have just kept its focus on that?
    • They also have a wasted opportunity with Ricardo Montalbán. They had him as a cow, but they make no jokes about 'soft Corinthian leather'! For shame.
  • The episode "Brian's Got a Brand New Bag." Brian dates an older woman, attracting intense ridicule from his family, and makes a huge deal about how he truly loves her and how she's not at all what one would expect a woman of her age (50) to be like. After this, however, out of nowhere, she starts acting stereotypically "old" (needing pills, breaking her hip, talking in out-of-date language, etc.), causing Brian to rethink staying with her, which ultimately ends in his cheating on her and getting dumped. The problem here is that up until about halfway through the episode, she never showed any of these issues. It's as if they suddenly manifested out of nowhere to ensure that the relationship would fail like all of Brian's previous ones, protecting the Status Quo Is God. To make things worse, there was an earlier episode ("Brian Wallows; Peter Swallows") where Brian dated Pearl (the elderly shut-in who used to sing jingles and tried to launch a legitimate music career, only to be booed off the stage at Carnegie Hall) and she didn't act anything like the woman in "Brian's Got A Brand New Bag."
    • Worse yet, with the application of a little Fridge Logic: going by the airdate, the fifty year old girlfriend would have been twenty five in 1984. Lois and Peter are hypocrites to make fun of how old she was when they're less than a decade younger.
      • Speaking of, another episode revealed Glen Quagmire to be sixty-one, despite looking way younger. No one gives him any flack for that, given his constant womanizing.
      • And an earlier episode claims Brian to be 8 years old (56). So it's OK for men to be 50+ years old, but any woman over the age of 30 is obviously abhorrent and should be avoided.
  • "Big Man on Hippocampus", starting from when Peter is diagnosed with amnesia and continuing through the end of the episode. Peter forgetting who his family was is understandable; forgetting what a telephone is, less so.
    • Also, Lois acts all hurt and tearful about the amnesiac Peter becoming a bachelor because he can't remember their commitment, saying that being married is supposed to mean "being faithful". Yeeeah, what about at the beginning of the episode, where LOIS, under NO amnesia and in front of Peter, kisses the host of "Family Feud" and tells him "I wanna be your wedding ring" in a sexual voice. So Lois can be unfaithful to Peter, but Peter can't be unfaithful to her afterward? Especially given that Peter has an excuse, while Lois has none? That the episode is expecting us to feel sorry for Lois and ignore her hypocrisy is a big Wallbanger.
  • Much has been said about Quagmire's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Brian on this wiki. It is related to the Wall Banger that is the hypocrisy of Glen Quagmire. Quagmire tears a strip off Brian for abandoning his son, hitting on Lois, and only liking women for their bodies. But Quagmire's abandoned hundreds of illegitimate children, rooted through Lois's trash and stolen her hair and undergarments, and committed multiple rapes of both the "regular" and statutory kind. And where the hell does Quagmire get off beating up Brian for having sex with his transgender father? Brian didn't know that was Glen's father! And that relationship was consensual. There should be any number of people who would want to do to Quagmire what Quagmire did to Brian...
    • Note well: in the very same episode, when Quagmire's sister is getting beaten by her boyfriend, Quagmire runs outside to yell at Brian over his sister getting beaten. He's blaming Brian for something that isn't his fault without motivation, and chewing Brian out is more important to him than trying to rescue his own sister.
      • Wasn't the point Quagmire was making not that that Brian does all of those things, but that he acts intellectually and morally superior to everyone all the time in spite of them? That's one thing Quagmire himself doesn't do. The fact that he himself acknowledges his flaws and asks him "what gives you the right to judge anyone?" does seem to support this.
        • And he's not "a big alcoholic bore" either. Then again one could argue that having Quagmire lampshade the show's flaws has involved ironically diluting his personality and making him an Author Avatar too (his voice pitch even seems to convert more into Brian's throughout the speech amusingly enough). Also note the speech is about the one element in his resentment that isn't caused by Kafka Komedy (e.g. "Quagmire's Dad"). It's not really a justified Take That, Scrappy! if you're punishing a character for actions that aren't connected to their flaws or even their fault.
  • The episode "Jungle Love". This episode extends Lois's abusive behavior to Chris. She spends a good minute trying to convince Chris to tolerate school and realize it's not all bad, and then baits him to Freshmen-targeting high schoolers the minute he sets foot on school grounds. Granted, Lois's character these days is inconsistent and dependent on Comedic Sociopathy, but it's hard to take the Aesop the episode is handing us seriously after that. (Though, since this is Family Guy, that may be the point).
  • The entire episode "Padre de Familia" (which was one of the episodes Seth MacFarlane didn't do because of the 2007-2008 Writer Guild of America strike). Peter is fired from his job because he is an illegal immigrant, even though 1) his mother is American and 2) he's married to a citizen of America.
    • Don't forget the Fridge Logic that Peter had to have shown that he was a citizen many years earlier for say, his driver's license, or something like that. Not the best thought out episode ever. Still, it had its funny points.
  • There's a moment in the episode "Friends of Peter G." in which Brian said that people were fine without religion for years, followed by a cutaway in which people lived peacefully, but started slaughtering each other after the birth of Jesus was announced. This flashback has two Wall Bangers: first, that it implies that there was no religion before the birth of Jesus, and second, that religion is the cause of all evil. Seriously, no amount of Rule of Funny can't save such a massive Critical Research Failure.
    • To me that scene seemed to be making fun of people who actually believe that religion is inherently evil, not condoning it.
  • There's a few wall-bangers in the "Road To The Multiverse" episode, but two particularly bad ones bugged me.
    • In the "Japan didn't quit" multiverse, why would everyone be stuck in the Edo era? Did nobody involved in production realize that Japan was only able to threaten the Pacific rim in World War II because they abandoned samurai and Westernized so rapidly? An American family enculturated by an invading Japan would bear more resemblance to a non-invaded American family of the same time than to a Japanese family from the pre-Meiji eras. And why would everyone end every sentence with "da yo"? It'd be roughly equivalent to shouting every sentence and ending it with "DUH!" or "MAN, TOTALLY!" in English.
    • Walt Disney was not outspokenly anti-Semitic, did not ally himself with the Nazis (and may have actually helped win World War II), and employed Jews on his staff. Granted, his vision of America was steeped in a conservative and strongly Christian light, and according to The Other Wiki, the rumors of anti-Semitism sprang up due to his membership in a reactionary filmmaker's organization, but there's no evidence that he himself championed anti-Semitic philosophies. And given how nobody seems to care when the show normally tries to humiliate or kill Mort (e.g., everyone's favorite Schindler's List joke), why would it be a deal-breaker here for an otherwise-perfect universe? Although...there were a couple Walt Disney Productions that leaned on popular ethnic stereotypes of the time, and thankfully, Family Guy has never sunk that low for a laugh.
    • Don't forget the "we'd be living in the Future right now if Christianity never existed." Uh, time out, here... 1. Christianity actually helped PRESERVE lost Roman sciences and arts during the Dark Ages. 2. The biggest cause of the Dark Ages was the burning of the Library of Alexandria by the Muslim caliphate and the destruction of the Roman Empire, both of which set back centralized research and development several centuries.
      • On the other hand, the Muslims preserved a lot of science and advanced scientifically while Europe didn't, and Muslim knowledge came back to Europe during the Crusades, which was what helped lead them out of the Dark Ages.
        • Your timeline is a bit off - the Dark Ages (remember that the term refers to the gap between the fall of Rome and the founding of the Holy Roman Empire), were already over for centuries by the time of the Crusades, likewise the al-Andalusian contributions to European scholarship. The primary authority leading Europe out of the Dark Ages was the aforementioned Holy Roman Empire, just as the primary scholastic revival was centered around the Catholic monasteries.
    • In the "People/Dog role reversal universe", apparently what 'breed' of dog you are is completely random, regardless of the 'breed' of your parents. That would be like the coupling of a white man and black woman giving birth to a Japanese baby.
    • Ok, in one gag of the episode, Brian and Stewie end up in a Flintstones-esque universe with Peter as Fred and Lois as Wilma. The joke? Nothing but "rock" puns. Um, the writers of the show do know that The Flintstones was essentially The Honeymooners with cavemen, right? It wasn't just "Rock Puns".
      • Also, Stewie's and Brian's reaction of utter boredom and annoyance at the Flintstones-esqe universe. Uh, writer's of Family Guy? You do realize that The Flintstones was the longest-running cartoon sitcom for years until The Simpsons came and beat that record, pretty much paving the way for night-time cartoon sitcoms of the future. Without that kind of success, your show probably would've never existed in the first place.
  • "Seahorse Seashell Party" had one of the most sadistic Yank the Dog's Chain in animation history. After finally standing up to her family and calling them all out for being terrible, sadistic, and downright abusing human beings, she looks back on the following breakdown and starts to show regret for saying exactly what they've needed to be told for a long time now. Ultimately she comes to realize that if your family's going to tear each other apart without you being the focus of their abuses, it's okay to not stand up for yourself. What. The. Fuck.
  • "The Father, The Son, and The Holy Fonz" has a scene that has Peter, Francis, and Brian sharing some common ground by stating how much they dislike Madonna. Now, disliking someone due to personal choices they've made in their lives, fine. A bit harsh, but, nothing too serious. But, the wall banger comes in when the group calls Madonna a "liar" just because La Isla Bonita isn't a real place (Peter stated he couldn't find it on a map). Yes, because no one has ever created a fictional location before. Oh, except for Hogwarts, Isla Nublar (Isla Sorna in later books/films), and, oh yeah, QUAHOG!
  • "Stewie Loves Lois" - Lois finds Peter in the kitchen, and remarks that he looks awful before asking him what happened. He tells her he was raped...and she laughs! yeah. This would not be so bad if she had laughed after he explained everything and she realized he mistook his prostate exam for sexual molestation. Laughing right after the phrase "I was raped" is uttered by a clearly distraught Peter though makes it seem like she finds the notion of Peter getting raped funny, and that's just wrong.

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

  • Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends has "Everyone Knows It's Bendy," in which an imaginary friend is dropped off at the home because the child is ill-behaved. Turns out that this given friend is, for lack of a better phrase, a total goit, who likes to pin the blame for his misdeeds on others. After all the main imaginary friends cast get it in the backend, Bloo hatches up a rather elaborate scheme to get Bendy into trouble, the upshot being that he's causing one hell of a mess to do so. By the end of the episode, Bloo gets into more trouble because he loudly announced that he just framed Bendy, Bendy apparently gets off scot free, and remotes are flung in the general direction of the TV.
    • The real complaint about this? Wilt's honesty (and longer time of residence) doesn't give him any immunity against Bendy's framejob.
    • The episode never elaborated on what happened to Bendy afterwards. His absence in later episodes may hint that he got kicked out at some point. Bloo DID word his justification badly:

"Bloo! You flooded the whole house!"
"Yeah, but Bendy stole a cookie!"

    • The episode was so widely hated that the writers of the show themselves apologized for it.
      • Except for the episode's head writer Lauren Faust, who went as far as saying that it was one of her personal favorites.
      • Apparently she's changed her mind about that and has also apologized.
  • Speaking of Karma Houdini, who could forget Goofball, who got away with being a complete jackass for the whole episode just because he wasn't lying about being an imaginary friend?
  • The entire plot of "I Only Have Surprise For You" requires Bloo to be a Jerkass to a level even greater than usual, and to have always been so much of one that it becomes impossible to imagine why Mac would care about him at all. And, in the end, it turns out that everyone was in on the scheme to humiliate Mac with an elaborate and embarrassing surprise party -- even characters like Wilt, Mr. Herriman, and Frankie who would normally never ever go along with something like this.
    • Well, everyone except Eduardo. He just does what the invitations tell him.
      • In the flashbacks of past surprise parties, you can actually see Mac's MOM in the crowd. Why on earth would she let Bloo humiliate her own son?!
  • It was nominated for an Emmy, but - so much pain, so much anger, and so much stupidity could have been avoided in "Go Goo Go" if Frankie and Mr. Herriman just gave Mac a proper chance to explain things instead of spewing the "THROW YOUR GIRLFRIEND OUT AND FUCK YOU!!" bile at him over and over.
  • "Foster's Goes to Europe", not only for never making it to Europe, but also for Madame Foster taking Mac's tickets and getting away with it. Literally.
    • Just as bad, if not worse, is that the entire episode is spent with everyone goofing around, wasting time, revealing they haven't even packed yet, despite Mac saying as soon as he shows up that they have to go now, right this minute if they want to catch their plane. Even Frankie and Mr. Herriman, who should know better are doing this! And then they not only act shocked when Mac tries to call his mother, rightfully thinking they've missed the flight anyway, but when the tickets turn out to be stolen and they can't go, everyone gets mad at him! Well, gee, guys, maybe this wouldn't have ever happened if you'd all gotten your asses in gear, had prepared ahead of time, and not fooled-a-freaking-round!
  • In "The Buck Swaps Here," Wilt gets heat stroke while helping Madame Foster carry stuff off the bus for a swap meet and nearly dies. He is ignored for the rest of the episode because everyone else is too busy with more important things, like trying to get Eduardo to buy them stupid crap with a $100 bill he found. Some caretakers these people are. Frankie even calls him out for being "selfish" for asking Eduardo to buy him a drink! (Okay, it was directed toward everyone who was badgering Eduardo, but still.)


Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius

  • Jimmy Neutron has fought Chicken egg aliens, living pants, a midget mad scientist, a robot, lots of robot, he has built a robot dog, has a laboratory, breathes in space, fought more aliens, saved the world with a secret agent, stopped a renegade burger restaurant mascot, shrunk down to the size of a bacteria to extract mitochondria from them, went to the depths of ocean, and has done many more, but HE DOESN'T BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • Also, he's a huge dick about it to Carl and others who believe in Santa; Cindy and Libby try to get some justified revenge on him....and Santa gives them coal for it in the end. And Jimmy saves Christmas from what he AS USUAL caused himself, so he gets rewarded and excused for his behavior earlier.
  • The episode where Jimmy builds a jetpack fueled by gold. That's right—a jetpack fueled by a valuable, non-renewable resource!
  • You mean like a jetpack fueled by...oil?
  • The episode "Science Fair Affair" has Jimmy managing to win the Nobel Prize after his father enters his oil substitute machine to the judge. This oil machine detects garbage and converts it into oil substitute. Then some random kid shows off his bomb of an experiment that sprays mud on the judges; then the machine sucks them up. After the other kids save them, the Nobel Prize judge takes away the prize from Jimmy, saying "I can't believe you're not in jail!". Oh right, reject a potential solution to Earth's oil crisis because of a near death experience that WASN'T THE INVENTOR'S FAULT, and ignore the real trial-and-error process behind inventing and that Jimmy didn't make the large-scale version of the machine.
    • Hugh explicitly stated that he sent the blueprints to the Nobel Committee. That means they built it, and did so incorrectly.
    • Obviously, the Nobel Prize man was part of the Free Energy Suppression Conspiracy.
    • Why didn't they just build a funnel to throw trash into instead of having an automated vacuum? That fact alone should have been a wallbanger, by both Jimmy (for designing a dirt-seeking vacuum) and the committee (they should have foreseen the problems with a Dirt Seeking Vacuum that throws things into shredders!).
  • Also on Jimmy Neutron, there was an episode where Jimmy invented a device that could rewind a person's actions. Not only is it explicitly stated to do specifically that, it's even mentioned that because it only does that, it doesn't affect the time-space continuum. Minutes later, it gets set to rewind the main characters by 200 million years. It does exactly what Jimmy claimed it didn't and sends the characters 200 million years into the past with no change whatsoever to them, complete with fears that they'll mess up the future.
    • According to his father, all he did was press 'two, zero, zero, and the big blue button'. Since the device only ever rewound at most 5 minutes or so every single time except for the 200 million years thing, it's a wonder how it got accidentally set to such a massive time out of nowhere, unless the blue button functions as a secondary activation switch that multiplies the input by 1 million years. But even if we accept that, there's no explanation on how he is able to use the device the way he intends every single time afterwards.
    • What makes this episode even more of a Wallbanger is that, according to the show, the Cretaceous period was 200 million years ago, and leptictidia lived during the Cretaceous.
  • The episode where Jimmy makes a bunch of clones of himself to do a bunch of chores while he goes to see an astronomical event that only happens every couple thousand years. At the end, he simply freezes them all so that he can "declone" them, except for the evil clone who got away.
    • What's funny is that the entire Blade Runner movie exists to point out how much of a Wall Banger this is—how clones are people, too, and how inhumane and cruel "decloning" (or, in that movie's words, "retiring") is.
    • When Evil Jimmy came back, he made an evil clone of Earth! When Jimmy is on Evil Earth, he runs to the clones of his parents for help. After all, "they may be evil, but they're still my parents, right?" Riiiight. Technically, they're his parents' offspring, his siblings, if anything. Oh, yeah, and they've never even seen him before. But they're still his parents!
    • If the writers are using "clone" to mean "copy" in those two episodes - this program is, in theory, about a kid who loves science. The sound contradicts the sense here.
  • The episode "Stranded", where the plot is set in motion over an argument between Jimmy and Cindy over whether or not the equator can be seen by the human eye. Students are taught, well before 5th grade, that the equator is a theoretical reference point, just like all other lines of latitude and longitude. And, despite being nearly as smart as Jimmy, Cindy seems to believe it's visible.
    • Cindy really just wanted to know if there is an indication (for instance, a curve on the water) of where the Equator is. Jimmy interpreted it as if Cindy was looking for a literal line. Poor Communication Kills?
    • And after all that is over, Cindy says Australia is a continent, but Jimmy says otherwise. Everyone who's at least been through first grade knows that Australia is the only continent that's its own country. Sheesh, and here I thought Jimmy was the smart guy.
      • What? At first grade they told me that Australia is part of a continent named Oceania with New Zealand...
      • Australia is indeed its own continent and a country, while Oceania refers to the region Australia and New Zealand are in.


Kim Possible

  • One Kim Possible episode had Shego trapped in a shallow crocodile alligator trap. It wouldn't be hard for her to escape the pit; she can shoot energy beams with her hands, has very sharp nails, is skilled at Kung Fu, and can jump several meters up in the air in a single leap. Yet she just stands there whining about how she needs help to escape. Nothing can justify the stupidity of that scene.
    • Not even Rule of Funny?
      • No, it's just that stupid.
    • Senor Senior, Sr., didn't think Shego was in any danger. He just asked her not to harm his alligators. Three guesses how Shego took that request.
    • Note: it is very possible that the writers deliberately downplay Shego's powers and abilities to make sure that she can't win.
  • "Bad Boy": The show often operates on Rule of Funny, but in most episodes, the villains do make an attempt to hide their main bases of operations from the authorities, mainly by location (such as a remote mountain, underwater, a haunted island) or by hiding the true purpose from the public and the authorities (disguising the evil lair as a cupcake factory or a university, to name two examples.) This episode features a villains' convention taking place at the Tri-City Convention Center, a public place smack-dab in the middle of a major urban area. Particularly Egregious because convention centers in real life have control over what conventions they hold. Someone had to know that a large number of heinous criminals were gathering at a public place to engage in crime-related activities, but did nothing to stop them.
  • The need to worship the god of status quo also provides us with this one from "Ron Millionaire": Ron carries around the whole $100m? Seriously?
    • And since Bueno Nacho is still in business after that episode despite the bad publicity it must have received during the Li'l Diablo Incident in "So The Drama," shouldn't Ron still be receiving royalties?
    • Maybe after the incident in the episode, Wade might have set up some kind of account in-between Bueno Nacho and Ron... It could be possible, being a 10 year old supergenius.
  • And then there's the show's finale. For some, it was a Crowning Moment of Awesome. But when Ron suddenly awakes his full Mystical Monkey Powers and starts beating the aliens all by himself, it just went from bad to worse; and it keeps doing that even when it seemed impossible. It's Fan Service of the most popular character, but it isn't Character Development and doesn't leave a good message. Ron is suddenly told he's ready; he somehow agrees; and then, suddenly, he's the most kick-ass character of the show, leaving Kim (and maybe Shego) as nothing but a damsel in distress in the final episode of the show with her own name! Almost as if to suggest women can't be good enough to be the real heroes of the story...
    • Many people believe that the ending defines everything that came before it. This finale is about the culmination of Ron Stoppable's journey—the implication being that Kim's own story was finished before the Grand Finale. (Stupid Post Script Season...)
      • The theme of the show was originally teamwork and The Power of Friendship, like in A Sitch in Time, not "oooh look at Ron he's cool now!" There is an ongoing debate about whether this was a good idea.


King of the Hill

  • The King of the Hill episode "The Accidental Terrorist". Long story short, Hank protested a car dealer by putting up some fliers at night. But some rebellious "friends" had other ideas and blew up a bunch of cars. Guess who gets ALL the blame? Yup. And nothing gets resolved—not only does everyone think Hank was a terrorist (though he walked, thanks to the same car dealer who ripped him off earlier), but the real terrorists got away. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
    • It's worse than that. The dealer doesn't help Hank because he believes he's innocent (he doesn't); he helps Hank because Hank can drag the case out longer than the dealer can afford. There are worse reasons, but still...
  • In the episode where Lucky tries to get his GED, Peggy decides to sabotage him because he's planning to ask Luanne to marry him after he passes the test. Lucky fails. Then it's revealed that Luanne is pregnant, making Peggy want them to get married. Lucky was clearly smart enough and on track to get his GED before Peggy sabotaged him; but in the rest of the episode, everyone acts as if it was Lucky's fault he failed. Peggy suffers no consequences beyond Hank being mad at her for about five seconds when she reveals what she did. The episode ends with Peggy kicking Lucky in the chest.
    • No one thought to have Lucky simply re-take the frikkin GED! Okay, so you have to wait six months between attempts. It could still have made for an interesting plot next season...
    • The unbelievable number of things that are downright horrific that go unpunished or get misattributed has become almost comical. Look, we understand that Hank Hill is the embodiment of everything good, kind, and American. Everyone else, compared to him, is amoral scum. Now would you please get back to telling stories, Mike Judge!?
      • Mike Judge was unaware that the show had Jumped the Shark, and failed to realize that it was always at its best when it dealt with real situations and didn't have Hank's peer group acting like lunatics. At some point, someone clearly felt that it was best to replace reasonable situations with INSANE ones, including turning Luanne into a total ditz (in the early episodes, she may not have been that bright, but she did know how to fix a car, despite Cotton Hill's sexist remarks about it) and Peggy into a know-it-all-know-nothing Jerkass with the worst grasp on Spanish ever.
  • Another glaring one is the Broken Aesop episode when Bobby becomes the Longhorn's Mascot. Apparently, it is an 'honor' to be beaten up by the other team's marching band, risking brain damage, broken bones, and maybe even crushed organs. Everyone was expecting Bobby to 'take it like a man' and get beaten up. When he understandably RAN, he was treated like crap by everyone. Has everyone forgot that it was the late 20th century and that HAZING laws were in place? And a teacher knocked Bobby's books out of his hands, tells him to pick them up and, when he does, she kicks them and orders him to pick them up again. Such a thing would get any teacher FIRED and blacklisted from schooling. A lot of King of the Hill fans hate this episode due to the fact that apparently-being beaten up for tired, old traditions is a good thing.
    • Maybe it's just me, but I assumed the point was that it WASN'T a good thing and that these people are fucked up. The whole time you're supposed to be on Bobby's side about the whole "running away from getting his ass beat" issue.
      • Unfortunately, the ending of the episode ruins that. Because when Bobby shows up and allows himself to be beaten by the other team's marching band, its treated as a good thing, complete with Hank and Peggy watching like proud parents as their son gets mauled, all for the sake of horrific "tradition".
      • What self-respecting school would allow a rival school to defile one of its hallowed symbols, anyway?
  • I forget the name of the episode, but there's this episode where Bobby sees a magic show and Hank tries to get Peggy to tell him the explanations for all the tricks or something. Anyway, Bobby has to do a project for Sunday school, so he does a magic show called "The Amazing Jesus" to represent Jesus' miracles. And he's good at it, but after Sunday school Bobby is yelled at by Hank and Peggy for "making a mockery of Jesus." What? Bobby was just being CREATIVE, not making a mockery of Jesus! Heck, it's something you'd EXPECT out of a young boy at a Sunday school! The rest of the Sunday school class even LIKED it, but Hank and Peggy didn't even care how skilled his tricks were or how creative the show was! What the heck?
    • Um, you do remember that the end of the scene was Bobby's setup of the crucifixion, right?
      • The crucifixion is part of Christianity.
      • He was going to burn a cross for the trick, which has Unfortunate Implications in multiple ways.
      • While Bobby managing to re-create Jesus's miracles via magic tricks actually is very creative and doubtlessly took a lot of preparation and practice, there are other implications that can be taken from this. Doing what Jesus did through simple tricks can be taken to mean that Jesus himself was nothing being a con artist (helped along by Bobby melodramatically saying "The Amazing Jesus" before every miracle, which can be taken to sound sarcastic). Although Bobby was totally innocent (and rather creative) in his project, Christians would naturally be offended by such a statement.
        • If Bobby was SMARTER at the time, instead of Too Dumb to Live, he could have made the project about false messiahs that existed at the same time as Jesus, showing that while what Jesus did were actual miracles (Like how he didn't need to hide things to make water turn into wine or make a bunch of bread appear), the false messiahs were doing simple tricks that anyone could replicate. But of course, Bobby is a moron in the earlier seasons.
        • Maybe Bobby just didn't know how offensive it was. It's not like Hank and Peggy told him how offensively sarcastic he was being, or told him that there are people who could be offended by that; they just yell at him.
  • Apres Hank, Le Deluge- Hank had to save the entire city when the flooding was making the dam nearly break. When he comes to the shelter, Bill, who has gone mad with power, has become shelter leader and calls Hank 'the Arlen Flooder'. The entirety of the people in the shelter are Too Dumb to Live, trusting Bill with their safety, and forgetting, if its not for Hank, ALL OF THEM WOULD BE DEAD. Finally, when the episode ends, Bill becomes a Karma Houdini and the people are still stupid.
  • In the final episode aired, Just Another Manic Kahn Day, Hank's ignorance of anything outside of his comfort zone turns into potentially fatal stupidity. He starts by assuming the medicine Kahn has to pick up (treatment for his manic depression) is something his wife makes him take for petty reasons, and talks Kahn out of waiting in line for it. After realizing he was wrong, Hank gets the medicine for Kahn and suggests he take the entire bottle at once to make it act quickly.
    • I actually thought that was their way of averting the "Hank's always right" thing. OBVIOUSLY Kahn should've never stopped taking his medicine and OBVIOUSLY taking the whole bottle wouldn't really be a good thing. The fact that these are common knowledge and yet Hank still made a stupid decision means that he isn't always right (regardless of how every other recent episode said otherwise).
      • I didn't think the episode was supporting him, but making Hank that stupid felt weird, showing him as wrong could have been done without reducing his intelligence to Homer levels.
  • Four Wave Intersection. One of the biggest Wall bangers in the series. Summary: Huge heat wave in Arlen, Bobby sees a commercial for a water park and gets a season pass. He wants to ride the Endless Wave but the guy in charge won't let him because he's not a "local". Then when they decide to go to a higher up he practically tells the guy "Do whatever you want to him." First off, not letting someone go on because of where they're from is discrimination, and from how the higher up acted, its not the first time someone's complained about this idiot. SO WHY IS HE STILL EMPLOYED THERE?!?!?! And with them throwing Bobby down the waterslide like that, he could've broken his neck. Know what would've happened then? Lawsuits, lawsuits and more lawsuits. So instead of firing someone who is not doing their job and performing illegal discrimination, they just let him stay there and hope no one gets hurt. The only thing that prevents this from becoming a DMOS is that the B plot is one of Bills better moments in the series.
  • One episode deals with Bobby getting into Tarot cards. Hank, of course, is horrified. Bobby makes friends with a guy at a store who is into Tarot cards. Do we get an aesop about how people who try strange things can be normal? Nope, the guy turns out to be a loser who lives in his mom's basement, dresses up in wizard robes, tries to cast magic spells, and is friends with a bunch of other guys who seem to be just as pathetic as him. By the end of the episode, Bobby realizes how uncool they are and insults them with Hank. It doesn't help that when he left the group, they all tried to destroy him just by saying a spell that included the words "Destroyitcus Bobbyus". Yep, Hank is proven right again because as we all know, Hank is always right.
    • Another walbanger is that the LARP group actually believe in what they're doing going so far as to try and make Bobby drink dog's blood as a ritual. This goes beyond unbelievable and falls into Chick Tract and Mazes and Monsters levels of stupidity. Do the writers of KOTH even know what LARP groups or Dungeons & Dragons players are really like? Because, they certainly are not like the people portrayed in this episode.
  • Serpunt. Let me sum it up as briefly as possible. Bobby gets a pet python from Lucky (Which, by the way, would've cost Lucky a pretty penny since pythons in general cost about $100). Bobby's python escapes. Two corrupt exterminators cause a city-wide panic about the snake in Texas (You know, where snakes including HIGHLY VENOMOUS rattlers are commonplace). Dale finds the snake, again Bobby's pet, and brutally kills it rather than humanely capture it and return to its owner. The snake wasn't even being a threat to anyone. It never attacked anyone in the episode. Notice a problem?


Peanuts

  • In It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown is in a football team during an important game as the place kicker, but Lucy is assigned to hold the ball for the kicks. Sure enough, she pulls the (in)famous and inevitable ball-pulling prank four times (or is that five?) -- twice on field goal attempts, which eventually leads to them losing the game by one point (that difference coming from Chuck "missing" the extra point after their first touchdown as a result of one of the pranks). It's clear that the writers never thought that Lucy pulling this prank in the open (especially under the circumstances shown the last time she does it) would get her humiliated. There must have been hundreds of witnesses who could see Lucy's interference. But the whole team angrily blames Charlie Brown instead, and he naturally doesn't bother to defend himself even when Lucy rubs it in at a party later. It didn't matter in the grander scheme (Chuck even gets to kiss The Red-Headed Girl at the party), but many viewers wrote protest letters about this stupid Plot Hole.
    • It can be argued that the kiss doesn't count because Chuck doesn't remember it the next morning.
    • The other two times are on kickoffs—the opening kickoff, and the one immediately following the missed PAT. That second kickoff is the only time Chuck thinks that the game is too important for Lucy to pull the prank. (And yes, Linus does pin the blame on Chuck for screwing up that kickoff.)
    • The backlash forced the writers into a minor Retcon in future showings. After the missed field goals, watch Peppermint Patty at the bottom of the pile. Her mouth moves, but her original dialogue, blaming things on Charlie Brown, has been backmasked and silenced.
  • Similarly, in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, the script goes completely overboard to make Charlie Brown miserable. For instance, Charlie Brown is apparently given an assignment to do a book report on War and Peace over the Christmas holiday break. Considering that the book is famous for being over 1,000 pages, no sane elementary school teacher would impose such an impossible project on a child (although this is based on a storyline from the strips). Furthermore, when Charlie Brown attends Peppermint Patty's New Year's Eve party and takes some time outside to read the book, Patty complains that she can't find him for the countdown despite his being just outside the front door.
    • The idea of an elementary school class being forced to read War and Peace over winter break is absurdly funny in its own right, but no one else in the class seems to have this assignment -- only Charlie Brown!
    • Also in Happy New Year, Charlie Brown: while Charlie Brown is sleeping, the Little Red-Haired Girl shows up, and Linus goes dancing with her. Keep in mind that Linus is supposed to be one of the few cast members of Peanuts who doesn't treat Charlie Brown like crap, and he clearly knows of Charlie's feelings for the redhead. The writers apparently decided "Screw that!" and gave Charlie Brown a good reason to stop being friends with Linus. (It wasn't taken, but...)
      • A similar thing happens in Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown.
    • And to rub salt into the wound, Charlie Brown got a D- on the assignment because his teacher somehow thought he wasn't going to be able to read the damn book and write about it in such a short amount of time (when she presumably assigned it to him). And his next book to read is Crime and Punishment. Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, indeed.
      • War and Peace contains illegitimacy, seduction, attempted suicide, allegations of incest and abortion, gruesome battlefield injuries, and no-anaesthetic amputation. It's hard to believe that a teacher could get away with assigning it to a grade-school kid even for an all-year book report.
    • It should be noted that this plot did play out in the comics, but the book in question here was Gulliver's Travels, a much smaller and easier book.
  • Let's just make this general statement: The rules of the Peanuts universe clearly state that Charlie Brown is never allowed to be happy or succeed at anything—but in the comic strip, it didn't happen because other characters had sudden bursts of incredible stupidity or out-of-character callousness. The specials, on the other hand...
  • Another example is the summer camp and boat race in Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown. The gang split up between boys and girls, each with a boat, and went up against a trio of jerks and their vicious, over-aggressive cat. Unfortunately, throwing all characterization to the wind, all the girls not only started behaving like The Load and The Millstone by not doing anything at all to help the gang win, but they also berated Charlie Brown every time things didn't go their way. It's in character for Sally or Lucy to behave like spoiled brats... but Peppermint Patty? Even kind, sweet Marcie, possibly the most gentle female character in the Peanuts world, was derailed into a jerk out of the blue just to make things miserable for Charlie.
    • It could be a logical extension of Peppermint Patty's over-competitiveness and Marcie's tendency to be dominated by her friend's personalities... Also, since Charlie Brown gets appointed leader of the combined group and then immediately tells the girls to shut up, this is kind of awesome. Now, the guys letting the girls force them to sleep outside when it's snowing outside - in summer... go figure....
      • The problem is, on previous occasions (both in the animated show and the strips), despite her respect for Peppermint Patty, Marcie did not hesitate to call her out when Patty was behaving in a stupid or overbearing manner. So, it was morally dissonant (at best) that she didn't do it this time.
    • Another problem is that the girls were voting on just about everything - even whether to save the boys from the freezing river. If that's the democratic method, this troper's voting Republican.
      • Worse, they never give the boys a chance to vote. The girls kick the boys out of a cabin they found in the name of "democracy". When Charlie Brown tries to protest, Peppermint Patty yells, "Don't you believe in democracy?" She does, however, get called out (by Charlie Brown, no less) when she complains that their breakfast is just cold cereal and milk instead of hotcakes and such.
    • Yet another problem with the movie: Lucy tells Sally that mountain climbers wear chains so that "when one falls, they all fall." That sounds pretty dumb on its own, but it sounds like she could have just as easily said "when one falls, they all die." Didn't the script writers think about how grim that sounds? There's little kids being crabby, and then there's...that. Who's willing to take bets that Lucy is going to grow up to be the next Hannibal Lecter?
  • Bon Voyage Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!) features one gigantic combo of Idiot Ball and What the Hell, Hero? in the Chateau fire sequence. To recap, Linus and the Baron's daughter are trapped on a high window ledge because the chateau is on fire. Linus throws down his blanket to the rest of the kids to act as a makeshift trampoline. The kids use it to safely catch the Baron's daughter and then drop the blanket before Linus can jump down, leaving him stranded on the burning ledge. Snoopy manages to save him with a makeshift Soft Water pool, but still...
    • The fact that they're all very much panicking could be used as a bit of an excuse, mainly because after Charlie Brown raises the alarm and Pierre calls for the fire fighters, Snoopy is the only useful main character after that. Even the Baron's running around in circles.
  • Someone mentioned "Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown" in an entry further up. For the curious, it, similar to the "HNYCB" example, is another instance of Linus screwing over Charlie Brown. While the aforementioned example may have been unintentional, this case has absolutely no excuse. Basically, C.B. sees a nice girl in the audience of a football game on TV, and he and Linus go over to her house to chat. Charlie gets nervous, however, and asks Linus to introduce him to the girl while he, Charlie, hides behind a tree. Linus goes up, and the door opens. Instantly, Linus is absolutely smitten, mainly because she also has a Security Blanket just like him! Linus spends the entire day there without mentioning poor Charlie Brown once. But It Gets Worse, when Linus leaves, Charlie chastises Linus for not even having him over. But Linus, who is supposed to be Charlie's best friend, doesn't even bother to listen, sending poor Chuck running for home. Nothing is even resolved, the show ends with Linus continuing to hang out with the girl while Chuck sits miserably at the brick wall. The Character Derailment of Linus in the New Years special was bad enough, but this time, the storymen just went too far.


Scooby Doo

  • Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase: So... a professor and his students create a device able to transport people and objects between different dimensions in the cyber world, and they choose to show this revolutionary technology to a bunch of hippies and their retarded dog? Did they honestly believe the Scooby Gang could stop a walking sentient computer virus capable of controlling the world's technology - that would be a job important enough for the government, don't you think?
    • The fact that there even is a walking sentient computer virus would count.
    • The sentient computer virus thing is mostly Rule of Cool. The problem I had with it was when Daphne said that every villain they ever faced was in the game. So... the gang only faced 7 or 8 villains throughout their entire career?
    • The gang was on their way there just to play the new game. The virus appearing the night before was a coincidence. And the gang was zapped into the game by the guy who made the virus.
  • Following on the above, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island: They go to New Orleans, and follow a complete stranger to a deserted island after telling her they're looking for REAL ghosts. They don't tell anyone else where they went. There they find that the creepy landowner and the stranger are really immortals from the colonial era. They became immortal after praying to their cat-god for power and vengeance against pirates who killed their innocent puritan cat-worshipping families. The pirates' zombies haunt the island trying to warn everyone about the evil anthropomorphic cat ladies who will suck out your souls and do voodoo. Also, a formerly undercover FBI agent says he'll tell his superiors about the crazy cat ladies but he doesn't think he'll be believed. Yeah, bye FBI, hello mental institution. Also, why hasn't anyone noticed that the inhabitants of the house and the crazy boatman haven't aged for something like 200 years? What was the point of the catfish and the catfish hunter? And if the Morgan Moonscar guy could write neat messages, why didn't he write something like "TENANTS WILL EAT YOU" or "SIMONE IS ANTHRO CAT"? Why do the pirate zombies care? They preyed off of innocents before, why should they care if more innocents are consumed? You know what, this movie has so much fail that it can't be put down.
  • What's New, Scooby-Doo?, Episode: "E-Scream", the gang deals with some little creatures who have a virus which causes them to become violent. The episode ends with the revelation that it's just a VR video game,[1] and the critters don't exist. Hmmmmm, so I guess the intro scene, which wasn't part of the video game, and involved some dudes playing with said critters was forgotten by everyone?

The Secret of NIMH 2

  • The Secret of NIMH 2, a Lighter and Softer direct-to-video sequel made without Don Bluth's input, has a whole slew of these, both in itself and relating to the original film. In the original film, the Rats help Mrs. Brisby save Timothy because they owe Jonathan. In this film, it is stated outright that Timothy has been prophesied to save Thorn Valley and the Rats. Bonus demerits because it's a self-fulfilling one.
  • The colony of Thorn Valley, a major plot point in the first film, is finally shown. It's a foolishly massive construct complete with concentric irrigation rings and very tall buildings. If the rats were trying to craft a colony invisible to human eyes, then they failed miserably. The rats still make trips into the conveniently close city to steal garbage despite their setting up Thorn Valley to get rid of their dependence on humans.
  • The directions to Thorn Valley are "South by south by south.", the directional equivalent of 555. These directions don't make geographical sense, and that becomes painful when these directions become an important plot point.
  • The escape of a Mouse of NIMH, who is the daughter of two Mice who failed to escape. (They figure out who she is when she gives her last name.) The survival of the Mice is explained (we should be used to animated filmmakers ignoring exhaust fans); but how this one escaped isn't... well, how she escaped her cage—we see her walk out the front door of NIMH in the flashback, which is itself a problem. We also don't know how she got anywhere near Thorn Valley. Anyhow, what explanation she did give made it sound like Mice were staying at NIMH voluntarily.
    • The explanation for the Mice not escaping NIMH was that they were forced to hide in the basement to recover from injuries falling down the vent. By the time they were able to leave, the scientists found them again. There's no explanation why only one of the mice tried to escape using the "South by South by South" directions though.
  • Mr. Ages refers to the supposedly dead mice as "The Lost Six." But in the first movie, there were eleven mice, and all were sucked into the air shafts except two, Jonathan Brisby and Mr. Ages. So, eleven minus two equals...six? Did the writers even watch the first movie?
    • This almost sense—there were six in the book (Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH)--but not in the movie. If you look at the beginning, they not only altered the clip from the original of nine mice going down the shaft to six but also changed the art style.
    • The sequel makes other references to the novel not present in the original movie (eg. Brutus' Jerkass Facade, Timmy journeying to Thorn Valley). It may make sense that they took references from the novel more than the original movie. Some of the new characters, while a contrast from the original cast, are Bluth-ish in design (eg. Cecil looks like a concept that would fit better in Thumbelina). It seems the staff looked at almost all possible reference media except the original movie.
  • The rats of Thorn Valley idolise Jonathan Brisby like a hero—they have a statue of him—but his wife seems to get no credit whatsoever. We don't know the full extent of Jonathan's heroics, but we do know those of his wife; she was a perfectly normal mouse who sabotaged the farmer's tractor, spoke to the Great Owl, found the secret colony, successfully drugged the cat (a feat her husband had failed at), warned the rats of NIMH's approach, and unlocked the power of the amulet to raise her house and save her children. Shouldn't she at least get a plaque?
    • Furthermore, what happened to the amulet in the sequel?
  • The plot twist that Timmy's brother Martin is the villain. Sure, the Cain and Abel trope is used many times in media but this one is worth mention. Why? Because, for one, it came out of the left field (he was captured and tested off screen outside), two, it totally derails the idea that Dr. Valentine was the bad guy (he now has the mind of a dog) and three, it makes the prophecy a self-fulfilling one. (Martin was jealous that Timmy was the Chosen One and Timmy didn't think he was up to the task, so Martin goes off to stop Dr. Valentine, gets himself captured, and well, this happens..) The only good thing to come out of it was the illogical result of Martin now being a British (voiced by Eric Idle) Large Ham. At least that was entertaining.


The Simpsons

  • The Simpsons: "The Monkey Suit" falls flat on its face by its sheer premise. Teaching the Bible in schools violates the separation of Church and State. Secondly, we've already had the 'Monkey Trial', in 1925 and not only THAT, Creationism/Intelligent Design were already brought before court and shown that they weren't admissible for education. Look up the case of Kent Hovind, you stupid writers.
    • Is there a trope for failing Constitutional law? This troper is an atheist, who nevertheless has actually READ the Constitution and noticed that the words "Separation of Church and State" exist NOWHERE in that document. In fact, they weren't even penned until 1789. Forbidding Congress from establishing a federal religion has ZERO connection to preventing a school from teaching Biblical studies. You Fail.
      • Actually what it would violate is the establishment clause of the first amendment. The thing that creates "separation of church and state." You Fail at reading comprehension.
      • What the hell does being an atheist have to do with having read the Constitution?
      • There's a difference between Biblical Studies, which is the study of the Bible from a scholarly perspective, and teaching the Bible from a religious perspective like they were doing in the episode. The former is allowed in public schools, the latter is not.
    • This troper suspects the writers knew all that, and figured hey, Rule of Funny (as far as the Constitution goes, this is the show where one town never repealed the Eighteenth Amendment). In fact rather than being unaware of the Scopes trial, the episode was an intentional homage to the case and Inherit the Wind; Lisa's lawyer is even named Clarice Drummond, a play on Clarence Darrow and his fictional counterpart Henry Drummond.
    • Also, the precedent of the Monkey Trial does not in any way preclude a law like this being made. There is no Supreme Court Police that would lay the smack down on a town for passing this law, although it wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell once it were eventually brought before the Supreme Court.
    • For both this and the following "Bart the Murderer" posts, it's important to remember that this is Springfield, where they sacrifice goats to scare off eclipses and have rioting as an official hobby.
      • There's also a scene in season six's "A Star is Burns" (the infamous Simpsons-The Critic crossover that Matt Groening wanted no part of [hence, the removal of his name in the credits]) where the town tries to have Skinner burned at the stake for saying the Earth revolves around the Sun.

Grandpa: [to Cameraman] YOU'VE STOLEN MY SOUL!

  • The ending of "Bart the Murderer." Long story short, Bart ends up becoming a bartender for the Springfield Mob. When Principal Skinner goes missing after punishing Bart in school, Bart is immediately accused of murdering him, resulting in his standing trial in court. Luckily, Skinner shows up and explains that he was accidentally trapped in his garage all week, clearing Bart of all the charges. Nothing wrong with that, right? WRONGO. During the trial, Fat Tony and the other gangsters claim that Bart is the leader of the Springfield Mob...and everyone in court believes them, completely ignoring the fact that Bart is a 10-year-old boy! I know the people of Springfield aren't exactly Einsteins, but come on! We're supposed to accept that they honestly believe a 10-year-old is capable of leading a group of thugs, robbers, blackmailers, and murderers?!
    • To be fair to the writers, this was actually lampshaded by Mr. Burns, of all people. When Smithers notes that Bart is looking at 180 years in jail, Burns replies that he's thankful to live in a country so hysterical about crime that a ten year old child could be tried as an adult.
    • The ending-ending is even worse! After Principal Skinner appears in the courtroom, telling everyone what actually happened that day and where he's been (when Fat Tony and his men came to him at school, they simply wanted to talk with him, and left when Skinner told them to leave. Later, while he was at home, in the basement, he fell and knocked over a huge stack of newspapers, which pinned him down. The police searched his house for him for days, and never thought to check the basement, nor could they hear Skinner yelling "I'M DOWN HERE!" Despite the fact that apparently Skinner could hear them perfectly fine when they were talking at normal audio levels). After it's clear that Bart is innocent, however...the family goes home and sees a made-for-TV movie which paints Bart as a cold-blooded murderer of his principal, and the mob as a terrified group of adults who let a ten-year-old smack them around. Granted, Bart thought the movie was cool, but still! What the hell?!
      • Then again, this is Chief Wiggum and his men we're talking about. They're not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box.
      • What about the idea that they could arrest, try, and convict anyone of a bodiless murder, commonly seen as one of the most difficult prosecution possible, within one week?
    • They also continued this child mob boss idea with Fat Tony's son taking over the business, somewhat, while he was incapacitated. Taking out the family's enemies and doing a spoof of the ending from Godfather to boot.
  • Another bad ending is the one of "Regarding Margie." Homer goes out of his way to restore Marge's memories of him, but only toward the end when he mentions beer that Marge's memory is fully restored. That ending left me feeling sorry for Homer. Imagine all the trouble he could have saved himself if he had just mentioned beer in the first place.
    • Well, she only remembered Bart and Lisa because of a certain word each of them said. So logically her memory of Homer would have to be restored in the same way. Plus toward the end he was trying to hide his alcoholism.
  • "You Kent Always Say What You Want" - the episode where Kent Brockman gets fired for blurting out a swear after Homer spills hot coffee in his lap. Instead of an f-bomb, s-bomb, etc? It's circumcision that's TREATED as a swear instead of what it really is! And this is also the episode where Ned Flanders' Flanderization hits full circle so badly, it becomes Character Derailment.
    • Granted, Ned Flanders being... well, Ned Flanders was annoying, but I've seen that episode a half-dozen times, and the word is never mentioned.
    • They bleep it out whenever it's said. Well not 'bleep' but still, you can tell by what Kent starts with and what he ends with.
    • I always thought the word in question was "Motherf***er", though the "circumcision" theory could work, considering that there was a time in TV and movie history where certain words like "pregnant" and "toilet" were considered too taboo because of what they implied (sex for "pregnant" and gross, yet necessary bodily functions for "toilet"), and with the such censorship making a comeback after the whole "Janet Jackson Wardrobe Malfunction fiasco, it does sorta make sense that The Simpsons would call TV out on this -- never mind that they did a better job of bashing TV censorship and Moral Guardians before. Anyone remember "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge" from season two?).
    • The whole episode was a waste of space. Kent Brockman, free of Executive Meddling, becomes an Edward R. Murrow-esque Internet figure exposing the evils of the mainstream media. This comes to an end when he's rehired with a huge pay raise. The episode ends with Homer about to reveal something Kent said about the Fox News Channel, only to be cut off by the Fox logo. All in all just another excuse to bash conservatives and glorify liberals. And this troper is a liberal... who's sick of watching crap like this.
    • The episode also suffers from the real-life, very public mess involving Don Imus. For those that forget, Imus got into trouble for referring to the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos." So like with Brockman, the backlash against Imus was severe, but real-life was flipped from what the episode portrayed. After Imus publicly apologized, FOX News commentators felt the issue was settled, but a sizable chorus of liberals still called for Imus to be fired regardless because of his initial comments. (To be fair, these attitudes weren't universal for either side, but they did bear out in the majority.) Production even outright stated that the Imus situation created an Analogy Backfire on them.
  • Marge's behavior during "Two Cars In Every Garage, Three Eyes On Every Fish" has always bugged the hell out of me. Granted, Monty Burns IS a terrible man and would have made an even worse governor, but her anger at Homer seems petty considering that Burns is his BOSS and thus Homer had no choice but to support his campaign (Homer even says as much during the episode). Particularly annoying was her refusal to snuggle because Homer wasn't letting her "express herself"...WTF does that even mean? And Homer didn't exactly volunteer his home for the photo-op (although that probably wouldn't have been the case in later seasons), and his refusal (assuming he was even given the option) would undoubtedly have resulted in his immediate dismissal...or WORSE. And the ending, with Marge's condescending attempts to "comfort" Homer (after Burns threatens to make his dreams go unfulfilled) by basically implying that he's a fat loser and thus has no dreams to crush, irritates me even more. I understand what the writers were aiming for, but they only succeeded making Marge an annoying pain-in-the-ass (and a bit hypocritical, considering her actions in "Blood Feud" later that season).
  • I know Lisa is supposed to be a "freaking" Buddhist, but in the new Christmas episode, she TAPED A CHRISTMAS TREE WITH THE CRIME SCENE TYPE OF TAPE. I know, she is not Christian, she doesn't really celebrate Christmas, BUT AREN'T BUDDHISTS SUPPOSED TO TOLERATE OTHER RELIGION'S BELIEFS? Instead, she claims its pagan. I had some respect for her with the Black History month episode (not much because she didn't know Eliza didn't save Virgil, but Mabel did), but this removed that respect immediately.
  • "The Fat and the Furriest". Homer is attacked by a grizzly bear and, like any sane human being would do, he runs and hides and comes back alive. The incident is videotaped and aired on the news, where Kent Brockman, and subsequently the entire town, proceed to ridicule him as a coward for not attempting to fight the ursid with his bare hands. What the hell, Springfield?
    • You think that's bad? It's NOTHING compared to how horribly the town treated Bart in the "The Boy Of Bummer" (or as CBG says, "Worst episode ever!") they relentlessly and cruelly tortured him JUST BECAUSE HE MISSED HITTING A HOME RUN IN A GODDAMN BASEBALL GAME!!!!!! They even yell at Bart when he ends up in the hospital after he JUMPS OFF A BUILDING!!! (though Chief Wiggum told him to jump off in the first place) That episode is without a doubt the absolute lowest point in the entire series.
      • True, but soon every person in the entire town apologizes after Marge scolds them for being so inhuman, and they actually decide to restage the game until Bart wins to make him feel better. They truly were jerks, but at least they tried to make up for being so uncaring.
  • The "ending" to "Missionary Impossible". Was it REALLY that difficult for the writers to come up with an actual ending instead of a No Ending cop-out with a dig against Family Guy disappearing from the airwaves (it did, but it got Uncanceled just as quick), and a lame fourth-wall joke about The Simpsons "saving" FOX?
  • "Homer's Night Out": Marge throws Homer out of the house because he danced with Princess Kashmir (the stripper) was seen as a bad influence to Bart. Homer didn't rape her or sexually harass her (like he mistakenly did to that babysitter on "Homer Badman") -- he danced with her. And Bart didn't begin treating the girls at school (or even his own sisters) like sex objects, so why would Marge cite that as her reason why she's angry with Homer over dancing with a stripper (unless she's one of those people who believes that a mere cheesecake photograph of a sexy woman is considered objectification—and there are people like that who exist)? If she had just said that she was embarrassed by his antics and she felt insecure that Homer would find another woman more attractive than his own wife, then it would have been more believable. What's worse is that the next episode shows Marge nearly cheating on her husband with a French bowler, all because he gave her a bowling ball as a birthday present. Seriously, what the hell was wrong with The Simpsons in its early days?
    • To be fair, there's probably not many wives or mothers who would be particularly impressed with their husband getting caught and photographed dancing with a stripper by their ten-year-old son. Even with rape and overt sexual harassment out of the picture (and one would hope Marge would be more upset than she was with these involved), you don't have to be a hyper-repressed prude terrified of sexuality to wonder whether that's setting the best possible example you can for the boy with regards to the whole 'women-as-objects' thing. As for the bowling ball example, that's clearly established as being the tip of an iceberg of selfish behaviour on Homer's part, not least an ongoing tendency to both forget her birthday and then selfishly buy something for himself under the pretext of getting her something. She not contemplating cheating on Homer in that episode just because he bought her a bowling ball (although let's face it, that's still an incredibly selfish thing for him to do), she's doing so because she feels taken-for-granted and ignored by him—perhaps not the best reasons for adultery, but not quite as trivial as made out above either.
  • "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show" pretty much is a display of what a Jerkass Homer is (and this was a season four episode, well before the Mike Scully-run episodes of seasons 9, 10, 11, 12, and some leftover episodes that aired in season 13). He pulls tons of cruel April Fool's pranks on Bart (such as making him drink six-month old milk and putting duct tape over his eyes while he slept) and Bart tries to get back at him by giving him a can of beer that was shaken up by a paint shaker from a hardware store. When Homer went to open it, it caused an explosion and landed Homer in a coma (though Bart was blown back and he should have suffered some injuries from that as well). Bart, having not expected this to happen, sadly apologizes to Homer. Homer then proceeds to wake up....and begin strangling Bart. Pretty much all of this episode is one big Kick the Dog for Bart (and a Clip Show to pad out the running time as the writers at the time decided to do a clip show episode due to creative exhaustion).
  • It seems that Patch Adams isn't the only one who forgot to watch the Discovery Channel. In the episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story", Lisa, of all people, tries a Friend to All Living Things routine on a bighorn sheep that's about to attack her; that is, she says "I didn't think you'd go after a fellow herbivore!" Lisa doesn't know much about the very animals she loves so much, does she? Contrary to their popular portrayal, plenty of herbivorous animals can be just as fearsome and aggressive as their carnivorous adversaries (notable examples being the elephant and the rhinoceros, as well as some surprising ones like the white-tailed deer. They don't just grow those antlers for fun, you know.). Lisa has shown lapses in judgment before, but this one seems a little reckless even for a little kid.
    • In addition, Lisa, of all people, should know that contrary to popular usage, "vegetarian" and "herbivore" are not synonymous/interchangeable. Being a vegetarian is a personal choice (and in some cases a cultural one), whereas being a herbivore is a preset design by nature.
  • "The Haw-Hawed Couple" (the one with Bart and Nelson being friends) really bugs me with Marge. Bart says he's not going to Nelson's birthday party, but then Marge whips right around in anger and tells him to go. Even worse, when he figures out the flaw in her logic, she doesn't back off and smacks him on the head with a wooden spoon. She even threatens to do it a second time. Why the hell is Marge forcing him to go when she's already told him in a previous episode (Bart the Mother) never to hang around with him again (especially since he's going to be walking into a death trap)?!
    • Not only that, she's put him in a similar situation when he told him to give a group of people—turning out to be Dolph, Jimbo, and Kearney—his lunch money. Granted she didn't know they were the schoolyard bullies, but still... WHY?!
  • This Troper got serious pissed during "On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister" and "Oh Brother, Where Bart Thou?" both of which essentially show that even when Lisa isn't being a Soapbox Sadie Mary Sue, she's perfectly capable of being a Jerkass to Bart in ways that he would never be to her. The end of "The Great Wife Hope" is an even more blatant example of fraternal Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male; even if they were having a fight, the fact is the writers assumed "girl punching out boy" would be hilarious, even though the last we saw of Bart was him heroically defending Marge from a larger, adult opponent.
  • Speaking of "On A Clear Day I Can't See My Sister", it's outrageous that Lisa gets away with a restraining order on Bart, after he only made a fart prank and teased her a little bit when she was being an annoying Soapbox Sadie anyway. Then no, she doesn't stop there as she gets a stick with a philips head screw-driver and pokes it at him and forces him into horrible conditions. After that when Marge finally somewhat calls her out, Lisa responds by saying that she can't remember anything nice Bart has done, because clearly hugging her on the hockey field never happened. Then after Bart makes a huge idol,...everything is suddenly just better, without any consequences.
  • The ending to "The Old Man And Lisa" comes across as a big-time Wall Banger to this troper. Burns takes Lisa on a tour of the new recycling plant that he built based partly on her advice. She likes everything she sees until they get to the part where giant improvised fishing nets made of 6-pack holders are used to gather up large amounts of sea life for a slurry that is used as animal feed and engine coolant. Okay, so using sea life might be morally ambiguous, at least if endangered species are involved, (they do not say) but she is absolutely outraged at this, treating it as unambiguously evil, and apparently the writers expect us to agree with her. Never mind that feed made of sea life is arguably better than some of the feed on farms today (hint: some kinds of feed for some species involves making them eat their own kind) or that if this form of engine coolant was not used something else would probably have been used in its place. Also, Burns' response to this is "I don't understand. Pigs need food. Engines need coolant. Dynamiters need dynamite. I'm supplying it to them at a tiny profit, and not a single sea creature was wasted." It is clearly a reasonable response, yet if the BGM is anything to go by, it is portrayed as if it were some kind of Hannibal Lecture. Lisa storms out of the recycling plant, and later on when Burns shows up to offer her 10 percent of the profit, she says "knowing where it came from..." and rips the check in half. Really? When you liked everything else about the plant, that one aspect of it is enough reason to make you refuse to accept money from it, despite the explanations offered for why it is there? Despite that Burns would probably have kept the money anyway, whereas if you had some of it you could use that money to undo what you perceived as damage? Simpsons writers, thank you for foreshadowing my disillusionment with mainstream environmentalism that would take until college (and my involvement with the environmental groups I met there) to solidify. (On a sidenote, it is POSSIBLE that this was a Stealth Parody of environmentalism, but given the exceedingly one-sided nature of that the aesops on that show, I doubt that is likely.)
    • Take a closer look at all the creatures caught. There were not only fishes of all kinds and sizes but also crustaceans and even a freking whale. That net is not "morally ambiguous" it's a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
      • ... but even weapons of mass destruction are morally ambiguous, depending on how one intends to use them. (See also the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.) Oh, and if you have to look closely at it to notice the whale, then, well, they probably could have been clearer about it than that. The point is, he used sea life, but it was going to be put to practical use. Lisa automatically treating this as indefensible comes across as closed-minded at best, especially when Burns calmly explains what it's being used for.
        • Okay, let's put all those arguments aside for a second and focus on something else. Burns didn't know he was doing something that could be (and is) seen as something evil. He genuinely believed it to be the next step in recycling. He didn't even think it was an "ends justify the means" situation, but rather, he wholeheartedly thought that the means were an act of good. Even if it is an evil act, that didn't make Burns himself evil in that situation. It made him misguided at worst. But no, the writers have to make it so that Lisa is a Soapbox Sadie Canon Sue.
  • In the first segment of Treehouse of Horror XI, Homer has 24 hours to do one good deed. He does manage to do one where he saves a baby from getting run over by cars, but SAINT PETER DIDN'T SEE THAT? They're supposed to see everything, including that! To add insult, he then tells Homer that it was really Santa Claus who saw everything, but not them too? Then he sends Homer to hell just because he did not see that good deed, making it not count by default.
  • "That 90's Show" quickly became infamous for utterly shattering decades of continuity just for the sake of a Whole-Episode Flashback.
  • Ok, so I think we all can agree that the writers love to make Homer always in the wrong even when it makes no sense, like in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?". Homer just met his half-brother Herbert, and after knowing him for less than a day Herbert decides to let Homer design a car that is supposed to save his company that is in his own words "everyday losing ground to the Japanese". Of course when this fails and his company goes bankrupt Herbert blames Homer and even in the episode he returns Lisa comments on how Homer "ruined him". He is totally right too, it's Homer's fault Herb decided to put the future of his struggling company on the back of a man whom he actually admitted was nothing special (even after Homer told him about feeling doubtful about being the man for the job), it's Homer's fault Herb ignored his employee's warnings and fears and it's also Homer's fault that Herb decided that looking at the product his own company was making and what was supposed to turn it around BEFORE the debut to the general public was not worth his time. Seriously, Homer didn't sell himself as something he isn't, and he did the best he could at a task that frankly most normal people would fail at, but clearly to the writers not being able to produce a product designed to make millions and/or billions with zero prior experience makes you a moron.
  • The Thanksgiving episode. Ok, I'm not denying that Bart did a bad thing by destroying Lisa's centrepiece (even if it was an accident) and I accept that his parents have every right to be mad at him, but Marge telling him he's ruined Thanksgiving?! No Just No! Children may need discipline, but you do not, under ANY circumstances, tell them they've ruined a special occasion! And it gets worse - instead of explaining to Bart why what he did was a bad thing and trying to make it better, Marge orders him to apologise, not even considering that, y'know, maybe he doesn't understand WHY he's being punished! Granted, she regrets her actions when she learns that he ran away, but even so!


Star Wars: The Clone Wars

  • In Season 2 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Obi-wan, Anakin, and Mace Windu are trying to get information from Cad Bane, who's not cooperating. After ruling out torture for not being "the Jedi way", the "heroes" combine their Jedi Mind Trick powers and essentially Mind Rape the victim into cooperation. The victim cooperates, not because the trick worked, but because he didn't want them to do it again. Looks like someone's definition of "torture" is incomplete...
    • This isn't entirely bad when Anakin at least has the decency to point out that the Jedi are acting like a military and as a result should report to Chancellor Palpatine.....who, of course, is Darth Sidious, so it serves to bite them in the ass even if they don't realize it at all at that point. But torturing...yeah.
      • Well considering that the lives of two babies were on the line I'd say that in this case desperate times call for desperate measures.
      • It was out of concern for children's lives, yes, but it's also blatantly hypocritical to decide torturing someone would be wrong and then turn around and do it anyway. This is part of the Moral Myopia mentioned below.
    • Don't forget that Jedi tend to contradict themselves a lot, act on Moral Myopia and just be outright hypocrites at times, especially on Expanded Universe and Knights of the Old Republic. Or has everyone forgotten the brainwashing Revan in the first game?
  • Another Clone Wars example: "Lightsaber Lost." The whole episode. She used the Force in multiple instances, including some, ah, enhanced interrogation on the thief, but never once thinks to just grab the actual lightsaber. Despite having several perfect opportunities to do so, including when she first noticed it had been stolen.
  • The episode where Anakin and Obi-Wan try to capture Count Dooku when he gets away. Ahsoka proceeds to chew them out, despite not knowing the circumstances that led to their failure. Rather that just pulling rank on her and telling her to shut up, like Obi-Wan would do to Anakin in Attack of the Clones, they just sheepishly stand there and take it.
    • Would YOU tell a lightsaber prodigy teenage girl to "shut up"? 20-1 in favor of her kicking your ass over it.
      • Agreed. Maybe if they were older, more experienced; regarded as the greatest practitioner of one of the seven lightsaber forms and the "chosen one" respectively, and each one of the most powerful Jedi ever to live...oh wait, THEY ARE.
      • To be completely fair, they probably realized that Ahsoka had a point. They had been arguing like children, not a Jedi Master and the Chosen One they were supposed to be (and why they were doing so is yet another wall banger, at least in Obi-Wan's case). And Anakin wasn't "just taking it," but arguing back. Obi-Wan is not "just taking it," he's thinking "now Anakin has a Padawan who talks back to him just like he did to me, MY LIFE IS NOW COMPLETE."
  • In the next episode, Obi-Wan and Anakin are kidnapped by Weequays and tortured repeatedly while being held for ransom. When they finally break out, they have the leader at sabre point, yet Obi-Wan tells Anakin to let him go, despite the fact that the Weequay was willing to come to jail quietly. So either Obi-Wan is being just a little too forgiving of the guy who tortured him, or he's letting the guy live so Count Dooku can come and kill him, which is so dark for a character like Obi-Wan, it's too far in the other direction.
    • And just to make it worse, said leader becomes a reoccurring villain later on. And we next see him extorting a bunch of defenseless farmers. Great job Obi-Wan!
  • In the movie, Yoda had enough time to save Anakin and Obi-Wan repeatedly, but was apparently too busy to rescue Jabba's son.
  • In "Dooku Captured", when Count Dooku is paraded in front of a holocam to prove that he has been captured, Palpatine admonishes that holograms can be faked. As further proof, the pirate leader holds up Dooku's lightsaber... in the hologram. Yoda then accepts that as trustworthy proof. Not thirty seconds ago they were saying that holograms can not be trusted, but now they accept a hologram as proof that another hologram was real. It is not just the innate logical problems here, but they did not even wait for a new scene or different characters, just had the two lines uttered one line after the other.
    • My guess is a fake Dooku hologram would be easy to make, what with how well-known he is in-series. His lightsaber would likely be harder to fake, considering Yoda knows what it looks like, and just about any other non-Jedi who's seen it before that point probably died to it.
    • Plus, they didn't immediately jump to the point of paying a lot of money in ransom over a possibly fake hologram. Instead, they sent a couple of Jedi to make sure Hondo was telling the truth. Said Jedi were the geniuses who lost him in the first place, but still...
  • There are multiple occasions in this series where a major problem can be solved by a Jedi using the Force, but for some inexplicable reason, they choose not to. Such as the episode where Cad Bane has Ahsoka trapped in an airlock and will vent her into space unless Anakin opens a holocron for him. Gosh, if only Anakin had the telekinetic ability to throw Bane into a wall before he had a chance to press the button.
      • Clincher is, Cad Bane sends her out the Airlock anyways! Apparently Anakin was fully capable of rescuing her from said airlock.
  • One thing that sticks out, is that the series seems to constantly pass up opportunities to showcase Anakin's dark side. Now while it's great that we finally get to see more of Anakin behaving like the hero and friend that Obi-Wan described him to be in the original films, at this point in the series, it wouldn't hurt to have him flip out on some bad guys or acknowledge his mechanical arm at least once. It would also be good so that when kids who have been introduced to Star Wars via the series finally see the films, they wont be shocked as much when their hero suddenly goes on a killing spree.
  • In season 3 Cad Bane manages to successfully fight off both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Quinlan Vos by using one of their own lightsabers and directly engaging them with it. There's Badass then there's Villain Sue. Even Jango Fett was only able to stay alive against Obi Wan and Mace Windu as long as he kept them away from their lightsabers.
    • To be fair, Bane got in a total of like three swings before Obi-Wan disarmed him, and Bane's true shining moment is in hand to hand. This itself is a wallbanger, though; see above with force powers. Even if Jedi don't do the neck choke, there are at least five ways that battle could have been ended quickly and Bane captured. As always, the Jedi have to hold the Idiot Ball so they're not strong enough to beat Bane.
  • In the Mortis arc of Star Wars the Clone Wars, Anakin meets the Son, a being who is basically the living embodiment of the Dark Side, complete with glowing red eyes, visible lack of hair, and entirely black clothing. Son shows Anakin the future (which naturally includes all of the evil he will inflict on the galaxy) and asks Anakin to join him in conquering the galaxy to prevent those evil things from happening. So, basically, he says "Turn to the Dark Side, so that you can prevent yourself from...turning to the Dark Side." And how does our hero, the almighty Chosen One, choose to counter such a compelling argument of such flawless logic? He bites down on the Shmuck Bait, hard, and goes completely over to the Dark Side. Good really is dumb, isn't it?
    • And then, the Father, living embodiment of the Force As A Whole, brings him right straight back to the Light Side again, with no memory of what happened. My God that plot twist was pointless...
    • From the same episode, only this time, the Idiot Ball has been handed to the Daughter, living embodiment of the Light Side. Get this; her brother is about to stab her father, and instead of, y'know, using the Force to pull the knife away from her brother, she Takes the Bullet. And dies. Thus leaving the Force in the care of her father, who is dying, and her brother, who is as dumb as she is and evil on top of that. ...If these are the people who are basically running the universe at large, is it any wonder that the Chosen One is an idiot? I mean, come on...

Super Mario Cartoons

  • Super Mario Bros Super Show episode "Do You Princess Toadstool Take This Koopa...?" has Bowser agree to change the Mushroom people back from identical green stones (which was the game's justification for power-ups in blocks) if Princess Toadstool agrees to marry him (hence the title). Behind her back, he breaks his promise and changes the Mushroom folks to stones again. Somehow, Mario and Luigi are able to figure out just which of those stones is Toad, despite the stones all looking alike. Then they use Bowser's magic wand to restore Toad and transform into their Super forms, after which the wand overheats and disintegrates. They did not use it to save the other Mushroom people, which would have made sense because they would then have a whole army with which to crash the wedding. Are those poor Mushrooms stuck as rocks forever?
  • There is also the episode "The Great Gladiator Gig", where Mario and Luigi are fighting Triclyde from Super Mario Bros. 2, and Luigi gets caught in a net. Mario takes Triclyde's sword and cuts Luigi free and throws away the sword after doing so. Only in Saturday morning cartoons can you get away with throwing away swords in the middle of a fight...
    • A Triclyde had a sword? How? Triclyde doesn't have arms!
      • Triclyde was holding it in one of his mouths.
  • The Super Mario World cartoon had one too, in "A Little Learning", where Iggy and Lemmy Koopa become students at Princess Toadstool's kindergarten. They build a volcano for their science project and connect it to some pipes filled with lava to come flowing out of the volcano for realism. Due to interference from Bowser (who didn't want them going to school), though, the volcano lets out too much lava, which threatens to overflow Dome City. Now when I was young, I thought that was what Iggy and Lemmy intended to do, but looking back on it, I notice that they never actually say anything in the episode about planning to send lava out on Dome City, and this is further evidenced because even Lemmy is shocked when the volcano erupts. But in the end, Toadstool expels the Koopa twins from her school, despite the fact that the incident was Bowser's fault and not theirs! Of course, it might have been because they also sabotaged Yoshi and Oogtar's project (which led to an even worse wallbanger of its own), but no one even knew they did that!
  • For those of you wondering about the other wallbanger mentioned in the previous example, it's when the Piranha Plant used to sabotage the project ran out of the school during the eruption and proceeded to eat Bowser and the twins. Yoshi then steps in and eats the Piranha Plant. Then... he complains about not feeling good and spits out, not the Piranha Plant, but the Koopas - a feat which would defy the laws of physics if they applied to cartoons and which serves primarily to preserve the Status Quo Is God. Okay, so our heroes would probably still have to deal with the other Koopalings even if Yoshi didn't spit them out, but still, it would have gotten three villains out of their hair for good...
    • Wait, really? You want to have Yoshi eat/kill two kindergarten-aged children? Related to Bowser or not?
      • For those who know the games, that makes perfect sense. Yoshi, in the games, cannot digest certain enemies. Yoshi might be able to digest a piranha plant, but he cannot digest Koopas. So it makes sense that he instantly digested the plant but spat the Koopas out -- if you know the games... which is not an absolute given for the Saturday Morning Cartoon demographic.
        • Actually, Yoshi can digest Koopas just fine, but only if they're not wearing their shell. It's the shells that give him problems. However, this would still give him a perfectly valid reason to be unable to digest Bowser and his kids.
        • Yoshi also cannot digest heavy weight enemies. Even the smallest Koopalings has a much heavier frame than an ordinary Koopa despite being of a similar size.


Transformers

  • Transformers Beast Machines: After treating him like The Load; insulting him; calling him useless to his face and behind his back, even after he relearns to transform; and, in general, being more or less completely hostile to their old friend - the Maximals are surprised when Rattrap goes to desperate measures - namely, cutting a deal with Megatron - to get some firepower and be of some use to the team.
    • And then you get a bigger Wall Banger when Megatron, who until then hadn't exactly been trustworthy, keeps his end of the bargain. He could have defeated all the Maximals and won the final battle if he'd refused or if he'd double-crossed Rattrap. Made worse because, in Beast Wars, Megatron goes on a rant about how the concept of honor is for fools.
      • Megatron isn't the only one who suffered from this as Rattrap, the same guy who prided himself on fighting dirty, actually proceeded to fulfill his end of the deal despite knowing that attacking Megatron at the time could win the Maximals the war. Worse, he was the one who realized that Megatron was weak in the first place. The Transformers Wiki stated it best: "...either side could have potentially won the war right there, but the two characters with the least scruples suddenly became interested in fair play for no reason (other than to keep the series from ending, obviously)."
    • The biggest Wallbanger of all was that not only are the Maximals surprised, but they also attack Rattrap, an ally, for protecting Megatron, even though it was the most tactically stupid thing they could possibly do. If they had left well enough alone or given him five seconds to explain, then come sunrise, Rattrap would have walked back to the team with a mech-suit arsenal of super-weapons with which to pulverize Megatron's forces. Did they do that? No. They attacked Rattrap. Then they delivered An Aesop to him about not attacking your friends or defenseless people because he responded.
    • Commentaries explained Megatron's behavior. As the supposed savior of Cybertron has placed himself in position where he would have to keep his word as part of his new beliefs. As for Rattrap, he admits he originally intended to double-cross Megatron, but thanks to Megatron's playing to Rattrap's bruised ego, kept him from killing him
  • Speaking of Beast Machines, the entire premise of the show is a sham; supposedly, the entire "technological perfection" vs "nature and free will" argument that the show's premise is based on was meant as a philosophical look into whether one can "live" in an increasingly technological society, and whether there can be a balance between industry and nature. Sweet, Anvilicious tripe, but here's the problem: by the time of Beast Wars continuity, Cybertron was already pursuing that balance, having developed technology to incorporate organic beast modes into their systems for leisurely exploration into other planets, and as Nightscream explains in his intro, had all internalized, in an off-screen upgrade. Rumor has it that Executive Meddling demanded continuity not be followed for the show, but Nightscream's statement remains in this show's own canon. So, to give An Aesop about technorganic balance, the show had to ignore the same technorganic balance the Transformers were already working toward? Or was the Oracle just too impatient to wait for the planet's evolution to technorganics on its own, and decided to force the evolution to happen on its own timeclock?
    • What'e even worse, is that, when you think about it, this story could've been told far more competently and logically by keeping continuity with Beast Wars instead of disregarding it. Think about it; by the end of Beast Wars, the survivors have been altered anatomically to the point where it's unknown how or even if they could be reverted back to their original forms (btw, just how did the virus in Beast Machines override the Vok enhancements in the Maximals, but let Megatron keep his Dragon form?), and they are now privy to forbidden knowledge, not just of the Great War (that, as established below, was meant to be classified), but of the dirty little secrets of both the Maximal and Predacon ruling councils. So, if the executives wanted a "Rage Against the Machine, nature vs. technology" story, they could've used that as a basis, with the Maximals being hunted down by the general populace for their mutations (which, if the "Vok are the evolved Swarm" theory is used, could be contagious, fulfilling the "technorganic Cybertron" ending they were going for), and the government in order to shut them up and keep their knowledge from sparking a revolution. Just another example of how these Wall Bangers could've been avoided by good ol' Let's See You Do Better.
    • One more on Beast Machines: The End of BW had Megatron's ass kicked in a major way, and him badly humiliated by being a hood ornament on their entire ride home. He was damaged in the fight. The transit through space couldn't have been kind. But lo and behold, all this is ignored with some vague time-dilation talk so that he can now become supreme ruler and nineteen kinds of invincible. That's right, total and utter defeat ensures your supreme victory.
  • Beast Wars has a huge Wall Banger with its continuity—specifically, its continuity relative to G1. To avoid fan backlash, the writers strove to put G1 in the light of "Arthurian lore", building the implication of the series over time that general knowledge about the events of G1 was fuzzy and ill-defined, and any records of those events (especially regarding their connection to Earth) were tightly controlled by the government, preventing the public from clarifying the facts. Okay, all well and good, and they would've succeeded...had they not decided to use Ravage in the second season finale. Ravage, one of the original Decepticons on the Nemesis and possibly one of the oldest Transformers in existence. Once he showed up and confirmed that there were others from G1 alive and well during the series' timeline, the question of what they were doing all this time and why they didn't educate their descendants about their history overrode any attempt by the writers to maintain The Masquerade. Or should have.
    • Perhaps many or all of the remaining G1 Transformers were, like Ravage, working for the same government(s) that were tightly controlling the records of the events of the events of G1?
    • In ANOTHER comic series, three Generation One characters (Prowl, Ironhide, and Silverbolt [2]) are seen running the entire Maximal GOVERNMENT.
      • That takes place after the cartoons. And it's not like they did anything to stop any of the other Autobots or the Decepticons/Predacons from delving into the past aside from classifying federal records. When you consider both Dinobot and Blackarachnia knew far more about G1 history than most of the other Transformers did, it becomes apparent that the classification of information in the Beast Wars universe isn't equal, raising the question of why G1 history is considered mythical.
      • It's worse than that. Prowl and Ironhide died in the movie. They can't be online to run the Maximal government.
      • Beast Wars wasn't fully based on either the cartoon or comic, but a blend of both. It was deliberately left vague with elements from both.
        • Hey, Optimus Prime came back to life (twice), so why can't Prowl and Ironhide?
    • The biggest Wall Banger in Beast Wars is in the first episode and the later seasons. Megatron's most publicized goal is that he wants to make it to Earth and change history. But before that, in the very first episode, he tells his computer that he doesn't CARE what planet he's on and that he only wants to exploit all of the planet's Energon. But in season two, he says he knew they were on Earth the whole time. So, what, he vocally lied to himself and his own equipment? Man, that is major denial!
      • There are two explanations for that, one In-Universe and one meta. The in-story explanation is that, while this is what Megatron originally set out to do, he had second thoughts about messing with history and tried to avoid it for the first season. The meta explanation is that the staff (who made stuff up as they went along in the early stages) had yet to decide if the setting was Earth.
        • They had them all take on the characteristics of Earth fauna and yet weren't sure this was Earth?
          • Speaking of, how were they able to get a hold of modern Earth fauna forms at a point in Earth's history that includes pre-hominids? Shouldn't they have gotten stuff like Giant Sloths, smilodons and mammoths?
        • Though the In-Universe brings up another Wall Banger, again related to Ravage; according to supplementary media, Megatron's plan to change history would've resulted in the destruction of all Transformers, as it required killing Optimus Prime, the holder of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, which in turn was the only thing that could kill Unicron. No Prime, no Matrix, no way to stop Unicron from omnomnoming on Cybertron. Megatron likely knew this, and thus put it off as a last resort plan, only implemented when he had no other choice. However, Ravage was also present during the Unicron incident, and would also know the inherent dangers to the history-changing plan. So why would he be so easily convinced by Megatron to do it? Yeah, it took seeing a recording from the original (G1) Megatron detailing the plan to make him join up, but why? If anything, he should've pointed out that the plan was made before the threat of Unicron was even known (because Megatron would've been transformed into Galvatron, during that time, meaning the message would've been made before then) and continued to haul him in. Or is Ravage's devotion to the Decepticon cause just so great that he'll ignore his own experiences with the group to slag up history on orders from his dead commander made centuries ago? And before you answer, please keep in mind that, in his Beast Wars origins, Ravage left his fellow Decepticons for the Tripredacus council after his reformatting out of some disillusionment on his part, so he does have at least some history of abandoning the Decepticons if he feels it prudent to.
          • Megatron seems to fall further and further into megalomania as the series progresses. Initially, all he seems to care about is getting Energon. It's only one failure after the next that his ambitions start growing. Seems like every defeat, he comes back with a greater and stronger ego. It's entirely possible that he did have the message from the original Megatron but didn't rightly care about it initially, and it's only after his growing psychosis that "KILL OPTIMUS PRIME, KILL THE UNIVERSE" started to sound like a good idea.
  • The episode "Heavy Metal War" of the original series. Basically, Megatron challenges Optimus Prime to a one-on-one battle to end the war. Naturally, being the Big Bad, he cheats by transferring the powers of the other Decepticons to himself, and uses them to win the battle. Where's the Wall Banger, you ask? Prime acknowledges defeat and prepares to leave Earth, which wouldn't be so bad except that the Autobots have been fighting the Decepticons for centuries—long enough for the Autobots to know which Decepticon has which power—and that during the battle, Megatron was using powers he had NEVER used before! Hello, Prime? Are the lights burned out upstairs or something?
    • Speaking of "Heavy Metal War," note that it was the first appearance of the Constructicons, who are said to have just been built by Megatron. But in Season 2's "The Secret of Omega Supreme," the Constructicons are said to be old friends of Omega that were forcibly reprogrammed by Megatron. (The time of these events is before the Ark crashed on Earth.) And then a flashback in Season 3's "The Five Faces of Darkness" five-parter shows the Constructicons... building Megatron. *beat* The term "continuity nightmare" is often used to describe this.
  • Also from the original series is "Megatron's Master Plan" which involves the most idiotic of all deceptions. It should have been blatantly obvious to someone of average intelligence that the "Autobots" in the tapes were impostors that were acting REALLY badly. Also add in that the humans have witnessed repeated Decepticon attacks and that the human going along with this is already known to be untrustworthy.
  • Those aren't wall-bangers compared to this one from G1: B.O.T. The WORST. EPISODE. EVER. IN. THE. HISTORY. OF. TRANSFORMERS. The episode that made T Fwiki itself "Good god, I need a stiff drink."
    • For one thing, they make a robot with the ability to outsmart all the Autobots and Decepticons... USING BRAWL'S BRAIN. [3] For another, they have absolutely NO idea who the Autobots are. This is the last episode of the SECOND season, and it was established that there are frickin' holidays dedicated to the 'bots in a previous episode!
  • Transformers: The Movie has two of them certainly. Ones that aren't even 'debatable'. Both are from the attack on Autobot City:
    • During the city transform, they showed oodles of BFGs being moved into place, to battle the Decepticons. A lot were set up against an air attack, since essentially all the 'Cons can fly in robot mode... Then in the wide view of the city battle, they were indeed flying, but NONE of the guns were firing. They only showed two of the smaller ones firing, at two different points in small angle. During the big angle, all the defense guns were silent.
    • Second one, during the main of the attack. Their catapult/launcher to fire out one spot is a tracked vehicle. Presumably this is so it can turn to fire through three different firing slats. A tracked vehicle can be turned easily by running one track forward and the other backward, after all. During the movie, they PUSH IT SIDEWAYS AGAINST ITS TRACKS to put it into position, causing two people to strain, and only being done so two others could get there and they could poke a line in. GAH.
  • Transformers Animated doesn't get off scott-free either. The episode where they introduce the Constructicons flat out transcends stupidity. The Constructicons are a simple pair of recently animated construction worker robots who only want to drink oil and build things. They're not the most responsible pair, and when Bulkhead brings them home, they nearly decapitate Sari by accident. Optimus is understandably outraged, but apparently forgets that they're in the middle of a bloody war and kicks the two out of his base, completely apathetic about what happens to them. Naturally the constructicons eventually run into the Decepticons - who the Autobots mentioned, but never went into detail about. When they see Megatron's plans, being construction workers, they offer him some construction tips, and their own services, on the grounds that Megatron can pay them in oil. When the constructicons next run into the Autobots, they're simply gathering materials to build the device, and greet their old friend Bulkhead, who's positively furious about them helping the Decepticons, despite the constructicons knowing exactly nothing about the war, or who they're helping, and rather than try to solve things diplomatically, turns violent. To top this off, when some bad oil winds up erasing the Constructicons' memories of the whole thing, Bulkhead still angrily attacks them and chases them off for crimes they can't even remember. So, rather than try to get on good terms with a pair of ultimately good natured newborns, the autobots unanimously turn violent and contemptful towards the two for having the audacity to try and be neighborly to a group of robots who've yet to do anything wrong to the two, and making NO real effort to get them to understand that there's a war going on.


Other

  • Sabrina the Animated Series has a hell of a Wall Banger in the episode "Generation Hex." For those who've never seen the episode, the gist of it is that Sabrina raises money to save the Greendale Library. She meets her goal ($3500), plus makes an extra $300. While at the comic book store, Sabrina overhears that her rival, Gem Stone, is going to buy a rare collectible doll from an early 1990s cartoon for $250. Sabrina outbids her and spends the extra $300 of her fundraising money on the collectible doll, but her friends, Harvey and Pi, reprimand her for spending the extra money on the doll instead of giving it to the library, despite Sabrina's claim that the extra $300 is just that—extra money that won't be missed. But, fair troper, It Gets Worse: the doll comes to life and tells Sabrina that she shouldn't have spent the extra money on him, then sends Sabrina on a forty-year flash-forward into the future to show the teenage witch what fresh Hell her impulse buying hath wrought on her family, friends, and herself. Get this: because Sabrina didn't give the extra $300 to the Greendale Library, her Uncle Quigley burned down the house she currently lived in because he couldn't find a home improvement book and caused an electrical fire (never mind that in 40 years' time, Quigley would have been dead—he already looked old in the present day and he's the only mortal in the Spellman family, so his dying in 40 years' time is believable), her friend Pi (who's interested in inventing new forms of transportation) is in charge of a monorail company using the hideously outdated power of bicycle-pedaling because the library had no updated reading material on alternative transportation, her friend-cum-crush Harvey (who dreams of landing an "awesome, challenging, high-paying job") is now working as a farmer who curls pig's tails after failing his entrance exam to a medical school/law school because the library didn't have any books on how to pass the exam, Salem (the Spellmans' pet cat who used to be a warlock) is homeless and taking a job as a dog walker because Sabrina stole money from his kitty litter jar and cost him his chance at becoming human again because Salem used the Witches' Council's favorite golf course as a public toilet, and Sabrina (who is now a dumpy, plain mortal woman who has become so materialistic that she sold her magic to Gem as part of a classified merger) is now the second-in-command to her rival's (Gem Stone's) business. Okay, have I got everyone up to speed? Good. Now let's pick apart all the Wall Banger moments from this mess:
    • The first, and main one, is the fact that Pi and Harvey were too stupid to realize that if the Greendale Library didn't have the books they wanted, they could have either asked the librarian if she could borrow the books from another library so Harvey and Pi could have them, used the school's library to get the books they needed (Pi even said his future of transportation project was for science class at Greendale Junior High), buy the books at a bookstore or through an online retailer, go to another library in another town, or forgo books and use the Internet for all their research needs.
    • Secondly, Harvey's life going to hell because he flunked the entrance exam to his dream school and stupidly took his best friend's advice to go after something that falls into his lap is his own damn fault, not because of what Sabrina did. And even if Harvey did have the book he needed to get into Lawyer's Hospital University, there's no guarantee that he'll pass, as past episodes reveal that Harvey isn't exactly one of the brainy students (he's more of the jock/video game nerd/skater boy types).
    • Thirdly, why couldn't Hilda and Zelda (who weren't even in the episode in question) have taken in Salem after he got in trouble for using the Witches' Council's golf course as a litter pan? For that matter, why didn't Zelda, Hilda, Uncle Quigley, or Salem himself stop Sabrina from skimming cash from the kitty litter jar to prevent this from happening?
    • Lastly, why would Sabrina be shocked that her Future Loser self sold off her magic? Considering that some episodes depict Sabrina as hating herself for being a witch, being a rich mortal seems to be the best thing that can happen to Sabrina. It would mean being a complete and utter kiss-ass to her rival, Gem, who now has her magic, but, hey, Sabrina knew what she was getting into when she sold off her magic, so who really cares? And, much like Harvey's future, there's really no guarantee that this future (of Sabrina selling out to Gem) will happen to Sabrina, whether she earns back the $300 to give to the library or not.
  • Doug's in the Money. Doug finds an envelope filled with almost $15,000 that an old lady carelessly dropped in a gutter. He turns it in to the police in spite of the criticism and mocking of his friends, his family, and even the police officers. That's fine. But after 30 days, no one claims it and the money legally becomes Doug's. A Coincidental Broadcast a MONTH after the money was first lost reveals the identity of the lady to Doug, motivating him out of nothing but the goodness of his heart to return the money to the old lady. For his troubles, he receives nothing but a pack of gum. The writers railroaded Doug into doing the "right thing" under the shittiest conditions possible.
    • Doug on First. Really, parents? Are you really so concerned about your kids having a chance at pitching for their baseball team that you'd have them switch pitchers for every batter on the biggest game of their year? Even though it's their team? Even though they didn't even care about that to begin with? Even though they know they would lose their game if they went with such a dumb idea?
  • Winx Club: An S3 ep has Tecna sacrifice herself to save Layla's realm. Just one problem with that: In doing so, she gets her Enchantix powers. It was firmly established earlier in the season that each girl is supposed to save someone from her own world through a great sacrifice to get hers. At no point did the episode, or even the series, feature (or even mention) anyone else from Tecna's world.
    • As of the end of S4, we still haven't been to Tecna's home-realm, and she's moved on from Enchantix to Believix.
    • This is far from the only complaint made about the third season. From that same season, we have this scene, in which Icy doesn't fight Bloom with fire even though she was shown getting that power two minutes ago, while Darcy (whose first action in the series was to detect Bloom hiding behind a trashcan) gets tangled with Stormy after Layla sneaks up behind them. The "best" part? These lapses in logic were the result of editing.
    • Regarding Tecna's Enchantix, some people have argued that Tecna still did save an entire realm and so she does deserve her Enchantix. I've heard some fans even suggest that someone simply may have been visiting Layla's realm during that time to justify it.
  • On an episode of Monster Buster Club (an otherwise quite enjoyable show), one B-plot revolved around team tomboy Sam. She is angry because there are "no female characters in comics" and has to make her own 'girl comics'. Now ok, you can argue that women are treated differently in comics or objectified; but to say that there are no women in comics at all... is simply ridiculous. Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey, Lady Death, Photon was for a time Captain Marvel for crying out loud, Storm used to lead the X-Men. The claim is impossible to back up. It doesn't make Sam look 'strong' or 'passionate'; it makes her sound like she seriously Did Not Do the Research... which is exactly what the writers did(n't) do.
    • The Powerpuff Girls, "Equal Fights" did something similar: That eppy's baddie, Femme Fatale, goes on a rant about the lack of female superheroes. To their credit, the PPG do come up with a few in response, but FF points out that they're mostly female counterparts to male superheroes, and the only counterexample the girls can come up with is Wonder Woman (points above). (She also points out the lack of female villains, but at least remembers to (dis)count Princess and Sedusa.) This still doesn't detract from the awesomeness of the episode.
  • The Batman episode "A Dark Knight To Remember", where Bruce gets Easy Amnesia and forgets he's Batman—but not Bruce Wayne. Alfred never once just tried to get him to remember why he became Batman with one simple line:

"Master Bruce, do you remember your parents?"

    • The first season of The Batman is full of Wall Bangers. In "Topsy Turvy," experienced police detectives Bennett and Yin follow up on a Joker card they were sent with no return address telling them to come alone to an abandoned theater. Once they become trapped in gooey Joker gum, it's revealed that the Joker is behind this. They're surprised!
    • "The Man Who Would Be Bat". Detectives Bennett and Yin are pursuing The Batman and decide they can find him by following actual bats. These bats lead them to Wayne Enterprises, where the creepy Dr. Langstrom is using them to research a cure for deafness for his pink-clad little niece. Bruce decides to help by giving the little girl a hearing aid. Hearing aids do not work that way.... It turns out the girl can hear—which Bruce should have figured out, since she answered the door after he knocked. Finally, he learns that Langstrom has been researching bats so he can turn into a giant bat that drains blood from the living. Offscreen Moment of Awesome. And he shoots globs of sticky spit. Bennett has to say, loudly, "What is this stuff?!" in true cliche fashion. Get Langstrom to drink the insta-cure. The End.
      • Not to mention if Langstorm knew his employer (Which he should, he works for the guy) - he wouldn't have said it's for his deaf niece. Bruce Wayne is a famous philanthropist, of course he's going to help a little girl out.
    • The biggest Wall Banger in the entire series is, immediately after a season finale that establishes her as a member of Batman's crew, even getting inside the Batmobile, Detective Yin drops off the face of the earth and is never heard from again on the show.
  • The episode "Tasumi Unmasked" of The Replacements. In what is quite possibly the worst excuse for changing a character design ever, Tasumi suddenly goes from being a real-life Sentai hero complete with armor with working weapons... to being a Japanese pop star who moved to America while cosplaying as a '90s Anime character to disguise herself. It's impossible to believe, even in a setting as weird as The Replacements; and their attempts to Lampshade it don't make it go away.
    • She was kicked out of her band by orangutans for having thumbs. Orangutans also have thumbs.
    • Actually it's a case of Fridge Brilliance as there were hints in season one, such as the fact in the flashback the armor could be fixed by duct tape which and one of the buttons popping out a flower, all of which implies the armor is fake and she's lying. Not to mention we never seen any signs to the contrary, such as her parents.
      • But she also had working rocket boots and other gadgets that would seem to indicate the armor was real—even the flower, as silly as it is, is a bit odd to include in a mere costume.
  • Possibly one of the most infamous episodes from The Powerpuff Girls, "Mime For A Change" involves a clown named Rainbow the Clown accidentally getting doused with bleach and becoming the evil Mr. Mime (no relation to Pokémon), who has the ability to drain out the color of anybody and anything (including Blossom and Buttercup). After Bubbles cures her sisters, Townsville, and Rainbow himself using The Power of Music, Rainbow goes to thank the girls for curing him of his unintentional dark side, only for the Powerpuff Girls to beat the ever-loving tar out of him and throw his butt in jail. Even The Narrator makes a snarky remark while poor Rainbow is lying in jail, beaten and bruised to a bloody pulp.
    • Doesn't this makes the girls a lot scarier? If you do evil because you are sick or possessed, the girls will still hold you responsible and come to beat the crap outta you...that's something to traumatize a little kid with.
    • It seems that the writers themselves noticed the discrepancy with Rainbow the Clown. In a later episode, as a possible Author's Saving Throw, he shows up as a healthy-and-free background character at the Girls' birthday party.
      • The original ending was happy, but they insisted on having them beat him down to give the episode a more PPG-like ending.
  • Something happened on an episode of the (otherwise awesome) Wolverine and the X-Men that made hardcore Marvel Comics fans furious. A young mutant character is kidnapped by the Brotherhood; his awesome, devastating energy powers harnessed for their evil deeds. Is it Havok? Vulcan? Gambit? Franklin Richards? Nope...Nitro! In the comic continuity, Nitro gave Captain Marvel cancer, killed scores of people, and is a ruthless sociopathic mercenary and drug addict. The whole episode is based around how nice, sweet, and innocent its Nitro is and how he just wants to be normal. Never mind that Nitro is not a mutant but a MUTATE—a normal human with powers created from exposure to radiation or whatever. Never mind that Nitro was categorically a villain in every single issue of the comics he's appeared in. Comics!Nitro is directly responsible for the death of hundreds of people and is a Complete Monster by any objective measure. To the casual viewer, this will mean nothing; to a longtime Marvel fan-whore...it's like a Transformers comic book where Megatron adopts a puppy and then cries when the dog dies and has to be comforted by Starscream. Simply using, for example, Havok (who IS a mutant and more powerful) or a different character with similarly uncontrollable powers, say Wither, would have avoided this Alternate Continuity dissonance. The writers must have decided "Nitro is the guy who blows up" and stopped there.
    • This version was based on Ultimate Marvel's Nitro, not 616. Ultimate Nitro is a mutate who just wants to be normal, and that is probably the one used.
    • The episode "Backlash" has the X-Men going off to battle Sentinels in an attempt to destroy Master Mold. Wolverine decides to leave someone behind to look after Tildie Soames, whom they had rescued in an earlier episode. He chooses to leave Shadowcat behind. Wouldn't you want someone on the team who can disrupt electrical systems when you're going to fight giant robots? The others failed to destroy Master Mold; that battle would probably have gone better if the rest of the X-Men had stayed behind and sent Shadowcat out alone.
    • Another example is in the episode "eXcessive Force." During his quest to find Jean, Cyclops pulls Wolverine's loner shtick and delivers a Roaring Rampage of Revenge-style beatdown to Mr. Sinister's Marauders. At the end, when he's overcome by sheer force of numbers and saved by the team, Logan delivers a speech about how Scott screwed up by going off on his own...conveniently forgetting that he has canonically done the same thing more than once (having done exactly that in the previous episode). He even threatens to kick him off the team...again forgetting that, if such a threat had been made to himself, then he would have been out the door for "good."
  • Ty Lee joining the Kyoshi warriors in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not only does this contradict her entire character's motivation (wasn't the point that she wanted to be individual and NOT be part of a matching set?), but it comes out of nowhere and goes by quickly. We don't ever even see her interact with Zuko, Azula, or Mai, whom she was supposedly closer to, opting instead to be "best friends forever" with the Kyoshi warriors, which makes her seem extremely shallow as well. Ty Lee may be a fandom Ensemble Darkhorse, but it's obvious the writers didn't really care about her story at all.
  • Danny Phantom: the Laser-Guided Amnesia Danny induces at the end of "Reality Trip". All right, the use of the Reset Button was excusable, as was Danny destroying the reality Gauntlet; but mindwiping his parents was not. They had just made it clear that they love him regardless of his ghostly nature; Danny knew it would be this way if they ever found out; and they've tried to kill him once or twice without knowing he was their son. In short, there was no point in keeping his identity a secret from his family, and he knew it. But Status Quo Is God...
  • The Skunk Fu! episode "The Art of Art." Panda makes Skunk sculpt statues as one of his many Wax On, Wax Off training regimens. Skunk manages to build them, but only by allowing the Ninja Monkeys to ambush him while he's near the marble, which somehow results in a flawless sculpture every time. The other animals are so impressed by Skunk's apparent skills that they ask him to make more sculptures, which he does in the same fashion. But the repeated battles and the injuries suffered therein soon take their toll on Skunk, nearly driving him insane. The clincher? Panda reveals at the end that he knew about the attacks all along. Way to go, Panda. Let your young student risk his life by allowing your mortal enemies to maul him on a regular basis.
  • The ending of Titanic: The Legend Goes On being Happily Ever After. A movie about the Titanic. Dude, Not Funny doesn't even begin to describe how offensive this is.
  • In one episode of Ozzy and Drix, Ozzy goes through mitosis. The result is a mutated clone (he has 4 arms), and after getting Ozzy out of the way, he steals the iodine that will allow Hector to grow. What's wrong with that? Well, remember I said the clone had 4 arms? During the hold-up, all 4 of his arms are visible (he previously had the 2 extras hidden)...and yet NOBODY-not the police, not Maria, not even Drix-notices that 'Ozzy' has 2 extra arms! They all automatically assume that Ozzy (the real one) is guilty! Hey, morons! Are you stupid or something?! YOU CAN SEE THAT IT'S NOT THE REAL OZZY!
    • In their defense, Ozzy is a fairly accomplished shape shifter. The extra-arms may be strange but not completely impossible for Ozzy to do.
  • In Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos, the plot of "Menace from Space". If you're in the process of launching a space shuttle, and you know that terrorists have already infiltrated the airbase and are trying to board the shuttle at that very moment, you stop the countdown and abort the launch. You do not allow the shuttle to take off with the terrorists aboard so they can use it as a platform for their Wave Motion Gun.
  • In Shriek's second appearance in Batman Beyond, he terrorizes the whole city because he blames Batman for his hearing loss (it was an accident) and for his ending up in jail. In the news segment, every single person interviewed supports Shriek. Not once is it mentioned that he was sent to jail because he tried to murder Bruce Wayne by dropping a building on him. The subsequent attempt to drive Bruce insane could have been covered up, but it's hard to cover up an entire building collapsing. Also, how does this justify Shriek holding an entire city hostage? It's no wonder Bruce gets disgusted and threatens to leave Gotham to Shriek.
    • YMMV: this could be a Fridge Brilliance moment. You're the average Joe, there's this superhero you've probably never met who allegedly does some crime-fighting. There's this supervillain who can cause you a LOT of trouble, unless you get rid of the hero. What do you do? Say "hey, let's sacrifice our hero to the villain! Better him than us, amirite?"? Or rather try to convince yourself that you're not a bastard, and come up with a lame "um... Batman sucks! It's all his fault!" scapegoating? Additionally, Batman not being treated as a hero, but with a lot of suspicion has been used in various media before (including both live-action movies featuring the Joker, interestingly). The thing is, what the people of Gotham say is SUPPOSED to make no sense, they're just terrified for their lives. Plus, it makes Batman more of a hero. Not necessarily a Wall Banger.
  • An episode of Thomas the Tank Engine has Toby having to inspect a dam for damage by crossing it on a railway track. Guess what was wrong with that last statement.
    • James Works it Out has James pushing a train in a snowstorm without a brakevan, acting like a complete Jerkass towards everyone who offers him help, and then finally using an industrial coal hopper as a snowplow to dislodge his uncoupled trucks from a snowdrift. Find the problems, fellow trainspotters!
    • Most of the HIT episodes have at least one per episode, even if it's just the post-season seven "trains can switch tracks whenever the hell they feel like," rule.
    • Rheneas and the Roller Coaster features the titular narrow gauge engine taking some children for a ride. He gets switched accidentally onto an old track that has not been maintained in years and somehow manages not to derail. Rather than do the sane thing and brake, he just keeps going. It gets worse. The track tilts (yes, tilts) at angles, and despite this Rheneas is still able to stay on the rails at high speeds. And everyone survives. I think I'm going to need to lie down for a few hours.
    • In the movie Hero of the Rails, Thomas races (and beats) Spencer. Spencer is an A4, also known as THE ENGINE CLASS THAT IS CAPABLE OF GOING 126 MILES PER HOUR AND SETTING A WORLD STEAM RECORD IN THE PROCESS.
      • Smaller engines outdoing larger engines is a somewhat common theme for the show, and enough of a wallbanger alone. Problem is, the writers simply don't care about realism anymore.
    • Arry & Bert pulling a Karma Houdini in "Stepney Gets Lost". So what's the episode supposed to teach us then? That attempted murder is okay? And then there's the Fat Controller just happening to be wandering around the smelters at midnight...
    • The special Misty Island Rescue has a tonne of these, but the most Egregious one would have to be the Shake Shake Bridge, a ramshackle, decaying bridge that the three logging engines happily cross, despite it obviously creaking under their weight, losing planks, etc. Thomas says that the bridge is unsafe, and shouldn't be used, but is eventually coaxed into crossing to the other side, and then says that the bridge is perfectly safe. Words cannot describe the insanity. See for yourself.
    • Many steam locomotive enthusiasts who grew up watching the show could not resist connecting their heads to the metal cab walls when they found out in one episode, "Thomas' firebox was on fire." No. Really?! For a brief steam locomotive lesson, a firebox is where coal/oil burns to heat the boiler up and create steam, so it's SUPPOSED to be on fire. As stated above, even though it's made for children, the amount of reality is draining faster than a drip tank.
  • The existence of the Quarrymen, a KKK-knockoff from Gargoyles, is a wallbanger in of itself. You can't even blame the canonically false Goliath Chronicles for them; they're canon as well. A great thing about the human prejudice toward gargoyles through most of the series is that it's parallel to real-life racism was subtle; it didn't hammer it into the audience's heads, the audience was allowed to grasp the message on their own. But now we have these villains who hate gargoyles, so they throw sheets over their heads and go out hunting them with hi-tech hammers. Thus, they quite literally HAMMER the "gargoyle prejudice = racism" message into the audience's heads when it isn't needed.
    • It wouldn't have been so bad except for one incident where the Quarrymen set a trap for the Gargoyles by having one of their members pretend to be mugged in a dark alley-because they know the Gargoyles help and protect the people of New York. Bear in mind that a recruiting drive shown earlier in the series emphasized that gargoyles were evil creatures that attacked people and couldn't be trusted. The Quarrymen must recruit people for their swinging arms and not their brains.
  • The Batman the Brave And The Bold episode "The Eyes of Despero" introduces the rather inept Green Lantern G'Nort. Throughout the episode, G'Nort is constantly shown as being very incompetent, and apparently he is only in the Green Lantern Corps because "an influential uncle pulled a few strings". Since he, Guy Gardner, and Sinestro are apparently all that remain of the Corps, he tags along in their quest to defeat Despero. At the episode's climax, G'nort is given a simple but important task: drain Mogo's power battery into his ring so that Despero can't use Mogo as a weapon. All G'Nort needs to do to accomplish this is say the Green Lantern oath, which of course, he can't remember. As a result, Batman and Gardner almost get killed until G'Nort remembers that he's carrying a note with the oath written on it. What makes this a Wall Banger is that at the end of the episode, Batman insists that G'Nort is the one who deserves the credit for Despero's defeat. Why? Any remotely competent Green Lantern could've accomplished what G'Nort did without using a cheat sheet. If anything, the episode proves G'Nort is completely unfit to be a Lantern. Made even worse because G'Nort doesn't even seem to like being one.
    • Also, about mind controlling Mogo... how the hell can you mind-control A PLANET?! Mogo's core (read "mind") is a central power battery which draws from ALL THE WILLPOWER OF THE UNIVERSE! Control that mind, and you are controlling every mind in the universe!
      • "Influential Uncle?" Who the hell is this guy that can make the Guardians of Oa babysit his nephew, when they don't even break a sweat standing up to Sinestro, Darkseid, and Parallax itself?
        • It was eventually revealed in the comics that G'Nort and his uncle were part of a fake GLC of morons designed to discredit the real Corps during a period when the Guardians were in another dimension. G'nort helps Guy stop the fake Lanterns, and is rewarded by being made a real GL...for a sector with no life in it that he can't endanger through his stupidity.
  • For The Amazing Spiez it's the Sunrise Tan episode when Jerry was chibi'd. Words can't describe how improbable and ridiculous it is.
  • Captain N the Game Master, Kevin chooses to stay in the video-game world in the pilot as opposed to going home, NOT because they still need him, but because he hears his mother reminding him to get his homework done and take the trash out.
  • Exo Squad has one in the episode "Blitzkrieg." JT attempts to belay an order given by his superior that calls for the fastest ships in the Exo fleet to leave behind the slower ones to get to Earth as fast as possible. This plan cuts the fleet's strength in half and dooms the entire fleet AND, in their inevitable defeat, humanity as a whole. At JT's trial, despite the fact that it's clear that the order given would doom homo sapiens to enslavement, JT is sentenced to death. Why? Simply because he admitted to disobeying the order. Once he admits to disobeying it, no further debate is held.
    • To be fair the guy behind the trial was a General Ripper clearly out to get JT (and everyone calls him out on it) and gets chewed out by the Admiral when he finds out, for both his stupid plan (which does almost gets everyone killed) and trying to kill one of the best pilots in the fleet.
  • In this children's show Caillou, the main protagonist Caillou is excited about going to the circus with his friends. When his little sister wants to come he tells her no. She starts crying and his father reprimands him saying his friends might not even take him to the circus and he's all like "BUT THEY PROMISED!" The episode then starts giving out An Aesop about keeping promises. WHAT. THE. HELL. His friends' parents DIDN'T EVEN CALL THE FUCKING HOUSE TO TELL THEM THAT THEY CHANGED PLANS! The main point is that Caillou was being disrespectful (as usual) to his sister and not that his friends blew him off (which they never did)!
    • Oh, there's an even bigger Wall Banger than that. In another episode, Caillou tells his Mom that he thinks some strange man (who he doesn't even know, obviously) is scary. So, what does the Mom do? Does she talk to the man and show Caillou that you can't judge people by how they look? Nope, she has Caillou spend some time at the man's house All. By. Himself. Let me remind everyone that this is a complete and utter stranger that neither Caillou or his Mom have ever met before. Great parenting there, Caillou's Mom!
      • This was probably intended to be a more rational, less scare 'em straight alternative to the equally WallBanger-ish Too Smart for Strangers school of shows about strangers that were prevalent in the 80s, yet it apparently didn't occur to the writers that there might be a happy medium between the two approaches...
  • What happened to Baxter Stockman in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon in "Revenge of the Fly". In the episode, he's turned half the town into bug mutants and the only way to change them back is by using Shredder's Retromutagen Ray on them. All fine and dandy, but why didn't the turtles think to use it on Baxter Stockman, whose entire motivation for revenge on the turtles is the fact that he's a giant mutant fly and that he wants to be human again? Instead they kick Baxter into a dimension portal (that he's conveniently standing next to), wrestle the gun away from him, shut off the machine and strand him in another dimension, and then destroy the gun. What the Hell, Hero??
    • It's simple, in the episode where Baxter gets turned into his current form, the transformation is a Shout-Out to The Fly and as such he can't be undone by the gun. Secondly even before his transformation he was shown as a crazy enemy, probably if given the chance the Turtles would've probably sent Shredder, Bebop, Rocksteady, and Krang in after him.
    • Actually, if I remember correctly, Baxter took the gun specifically to use it on himself and jumped into the portal voluntarily to get away from the Turtles; they jumped in after him and only had enough time to get the gun from him and escape before the portal closed. The banging doesn't end there, though. They destroy the gun after restoring the city to normal, which makes you wonder why they wouldn't use it on Splinter beforehand - until you remember that Splinter had long ago accepted and preferred his fate. So how in the world was the gun back in perfect working condition when they use it on the mutant rats in "Wrath of the Rat King?"
  • Gaia from Captain Planet and the Planeteers and her obvious The Gods Must Be Lazy way of doing things. She sends five teenagers with magic rings out to deal with the villains with little more than a "I will be with you in spirit," and at no point do they adequately explore just what she is doing all the while that is more important than taking an active role in the missions. Yes, a couple of the badguys, specifically Greedly and Sludge, are total losers who the average 8-year-old child could easily thwart, but at least one of them was near-godlike in power and indeed was supposed to be Gaia's opposite number. Instead of getting off her divine ass and deal with this dude personally like any good goddess should, she pretty much leaves it to the kids as usual. Seriously?!
    • Pretty much every episode of Captain Planet contains at least one Wall Banger, but "The Numbers Game" takes the cake for taking The Complainer Is Always Wrong Up to Eleven. First, it's an episode teaching ten-year-old viewers about proper reproductive choices. Not exactly friendly for any large families watching, but let's move on. At the beginning, Wheeler is the one who believes this, and gets called out at the others for arguing that people shouldn't have more kids than they can afford, telling him children shouldn't "just be for the rich" or something. Then Wheeler falls asleep and dreams that he and Linka are married with seven or eight kids and another on the way. This decision apparently caused the world to become a polluted dystopia, because of course one large family is enough to use all of Hope Island's resources. In the dream the other Planeteers are still calling him out, this time for having so many kids (but not Linka, because obviously she had no say in this). Wheeler gets one throwaway line pointing out that dream!Kwame is also acting irresponsible (he has two kids but is very wasteful), and then is ignored. When Wheeler wakes up he tells Linka that he doesn't ever want to have more than two kids, having evidently learned a lesson...except it was a lesson he already knew beforehand! Meanwhile, the other Planeteers presumably still think he's a jerk for not liking kids.
  • Silverhawks had a hideous one with "The Fanta-Screen." The Mob comes up with a device that purports to enthrall its victim by showing them their greatest fantasy. One by one, the Hawks are taken down and strapped into the machine until the only team member to escape busts them out. When they're comparing notes in the coda? They all dreamed the same thing; turning into a big bird and swooping up the Big Bad in their claws. A golden opportunity for Character Development and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot. Even G.I. Joe and Thundercats handled the concept better!
  • Loonatics Unleashed had one in "The Black Cloak of Velvet". In the beginning, Duck and Tech make a bet that Duck can't go one week without using technology. Duck manages to keep his end until the climax, when he uses his cell phone to free Tech from his brainwashing. Tech response is to collect his reward for winning and mock him. Even though Duck saved the day, everyone still treats him like a Butt Monkey. What the hell?
  • In the classic Wartime Cartoon The Ducktators, one gag focuses on apologizing to "the nice ducks and geese who may be in the audience" for their depiction in the film. Then they make one into a blackface stereotype. Made even worse by the fact that they were fighting an enemy based almost entirely in racial prejudice.
    • There is a blackface gag; in the lineup of white Nazi ducks going "Sieg heil!", one black duck yells in a very stereotypical blackface voice, "Sieg heil, boys, I'm from South Germany!" Though the joke can easily be less about blackface than making the gag that Nazi Germany sucks by lampshading that non-whites were not among Hitler's desired soldiers.
  • BattleTech. Towards the end of the show, Adam Steiner breaks into the Jade Falcon compound where his brother is being held. How do you ask? By walking up to the chainlink fence, grabbing it at the bottom and lifting a portion up so he can crawl underneath. Wait... what?! Why didn't the prisoners escape that way in the first place?
  • Tale Spin, while usually a rather enjoyable and heartwarming show, wasn't void of these moments either. Episodes like "Save The Tiger" and "Your Baloo's In The Mail" are notable for evolving the Baloo (yeah, THAT Baloo) into almost the same idiotic Jerkass territory as Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson had as of recently. Rebecca, while hardly void of abusive moments to Baloo herself at times, came off as a borderline Woobie for the hell she put with on these occasions. "Baloo's In The Mail" especially enters Dude, Not Funny territory for many fans.
  • Men in Black The Series: Much of the early seasons revolved around The Men in Black ditching their overall mission to protect Earth from dangerous aliens in favor of humiliating Agent J every chance they got. One of K's favored tactics was purposefully withholding vital facts about the Bizarre Alien Biology of the aliens they were about to encounter until J screwed everything up and it was too late (that J was a newbie and it was his partner's responsibility to educate him about such things never figured into it). One of the many Wall Bangers came when they were protecting an alien diplomat from an assassination. J brought coffee into the room, accidentally dousing the alien's bodyguard and causing him to explode. K calmly announces the aliens in question explode when they come into contact with liquids. The Men in Black basically allowed J to put their entire mission at risk, considering he could have accidentally doused the diplomat herself (the diplomat was signing a treaty that next day and exploding takes a week to recover from).
    • It's even worse than that. As the bodyguard will take too long to regenerate, the Men in Black decide to have an agent go undercover in an alien bodysuit to protect the diplomat. Fair enough, but you should already know who they give the assignment to. What follows is a J getting a cram session about the alien species' culture (habits, language, etc.) and then "comedic" pratfalls endured by the disguised agent while on the job. The Wallbanger becomes evident because K and virtually every other agent seen knew all about this species. Why waste valuable time getting the newest agent up to speed and go through all of this when anyone else could've done the job?
    • Following Zed's retirement, a weakened Alpha crashes an alien ship and steals the body parts of the alien criminals inside. With his new powers and body made of Badass Incarnate, he captures Agent J and uses a Mind Probe on him to learn Zed's location. After he leaves, Agent L rescues J and reveals Zed's not retired: every last one of J's fellow agents was pulling a Massive Multiplayer Batman Gambit on J to trick Alpha into reading J's mind, with armed agents lying in wait at the "retirement" spot. In other words; the Men in Black knew Alpha would attack the alien ship and, rather than spring a trap at the ship against a weakened Alpha, they let him upgrade himself with the alien goodies that made him Nigh Invulnerable and planned to take him down afterwards. The plan falls apart spectacularly, as Alpha picked up on J not being entirely fooled by Zed's phony retirement.
      • Not too mention that their entire plan to actually take Alpha down apparently consisted of surrounding him with no contingencies in case that didn't work or even a plan to evacuate Zed. They don't even think to use the clones or holograms they clearly have access to.
    • While the third season was subject to quite a bit of Seasonal Rot, one episode in particular stands out: They need J to go undercover at a high school to protect the son of an alien ruler. So, considering that Jay is an adult in his late 20s at least, do they send him in as a substitute teacher? Or maybe the janitor? No, they send him in as a student. Even in the show, no one buys it for a minute.
    • You don't even have to look further than the pilot episode "The Long Goodbye Syndrome". To elaborate, K and J are sent to stop a Skraaldian multiplication in a sewer. Before going in, K hands J a special weapon without explaining him how to use it. They find the Skraaldian (a bear-sized, bipedal, crab-like monster) which quickly overpowers K, and J, incapable of figuring how to use said weapon, decides to shoot the alien with his Noisy Cricket, killing it. Then, K nonchalantly explains that he really wasn’t in danger and now, J’s a wanted target for every other Skraaldian on their home planet Skraal. And since the Skraaldians have a hive mentality and are locked on to his DNA, it won't be easy for him to escape. From here, absolutely everybody treats J like a dead man walking until the end, where K pulls a Batman Gambit to save J and end up like a hero, never mind the fact it was technically his fault this happened.
  • Johnny Test: In the episode about the monster truck being an actual monster, the Test girls had hamsters that always beat each other up. The girls didn't have any idea on what to do with the two, Johnny comes up with the solution to put a female hamster into their box. This was because the two males were trying to show dominance, and a female hamster ended it. The wall banger here is that the girls honestly didn't know about the female hamster, and that the male hamsters would fight with each other. I mean, aren't they geniuses?
  • The Cleveland Show: The episode "Terry Unmarried". Seth MacFarlane and his crew showed that not all gay guys act like the stereotype. Ok, cool. Cleveland realizes he's in a gay bar because of the presence of fat chicks. Sure, why not? Problem 1: Terry has never shown signs of being gay. In one episode he's a stripper for a female audience (and even has sex with a few of them). Problem 2: He says that he had sex with a lot of women and a few guys. They just say he's gay and not say... Oh what's it called, being attracted to both men and women.. BISEXUAL. So in every show you make, a man (not women by the way) has to be either gay or straight, never bi, right Seth and crew?!
  • Even South Park is not immune to Wall-Banger moments. There's the fact an entire episode is dedicated to Wendy breaking up with Stan when the episode itself could have triggered after Wendy kissed Cartman (to Stan's dismay). Neither Negative Continuity, Rule of Drama, nor Rule of Funny even begin to justify this chronological discrepancy of when both episodes aired.
    • In the episode "Crack Baby Athletic Association" they juxtapose college athletes with slaves explaining that other people make money off them and in return they get nothing. Seriously? I'd say that a full scholarship, a free ride through college, and a gateway to the professional leagues is a little more than nothing!
    • The ending to "Ass Burgers", which tosses away any hope of a new start with an Ass Pull of a reunion of Stan's parents.
  • The Looney Tunes episode called "Canned Feud" is a prime example. Sylvester's family goes on vacation but forgets to put him out. Fortunately he finds a cupboard full of canned tuna and cat food, but discovers that he also needs a can opener. Predictably a mean mouse has the only can opener, and the rest of the cartoon is the poor cat trying either to get it or find a way to open the cans without it. Then when he finally gets it he finds out that the cupboard has been locked and the mouse has the key. I have to wonder why did they make this episode?
  • In the Futurama episode where everyone's switching bodies Leela decides to switch bodies to see if Fry is shallow. Does she try to put herself in the body of a fat or homely girl? No - she swapped bodies with the Professor! Leela, of course Fry would be freaked out and disgusted, but because his girlfriend is now in the body of an OLD MAN', not because he's shallow! And more importantly an OLD MAN HE'S RELATED TO, MORON! And anyway, Leela's thinking Fry is shallow is ridiculous, because she's a cyclops who's been turned down multiple times. Hey, Leela, if Fry thinks you're the most beautiful woman in the world, he's saying it from the heart, ya dumbass!
    • Additionally, it seems that just because Fry and Leela are now in a relationship, Leela now has to act like a stereotypical Sitcom wife who worries about her butt looking fat. The writers could easily have related her worries about her looks to her cyclopism and the ensuing bullying she's had to endure, but no, they went for the "does my butt look big in this?" joke.
    • How about the episode "That Darn Katz", where Nibbler is defeated by a bunch of housecats, despite previous episodes establishing that he can just eat a roomful of far bigger and fiercer creatures? Sure, they were sapient cats, but no bigger or stronger than ordinary ones.
    • In the episode "Amazon Women in the Mood", nobody ever acknowledges the fact that the only reason Fry was on the planet in the first place was because he had come to rescue Leela. OK, so on a planet which runs on the idea that women who don't need men, this idea may seem a bit condescending, he did act like a pig once he was captured, and he wanted the punishment... but still, there should have been at least one line from Leela and/or Amy acknowledging that he had put himself at risk to help them. I just feel Fry was treated really unfairly in this episode.
  • In the Jimmy Two Shoes episode "Something About Herman" Heloise disguises herself as a boy to hang out with Jimmy and Beezy, but at the end spoiler:it turns out it really was Heloise's identical cousin Herman, even though we clearly saw Heloise putting on the disguise earlier, not her identical cousin Herman!
  • X-Men Evolution had a jarring one in the episode "Joyride". In short, Avalanche, a villain who lost all negative traits and personality for the sake of an unneeded romance plot with Kitty, joins the X-Men. He refuses to put any effort into learning and instead flirts with Kitty, causing Scott to mistrust him more than he did originally and (justifyibly) give him a hard time. Then some of the newer students start to take Joyrides with the X-Vehicles. Lance is accused after he purposely starts to act suspicious for the sake of screwing with Scott. No one thinks to check, like say, HAVE THE TWO TELEPATHS READ HIS MIND OR THE ADVANCED SENSE-POSSESSING TEACHER JUST SNIFF THE CARS. In the end, Lance saves the kids from acting too stupid, they confess, Scott apologizes, Lance then quits because he's too lazy, and the fans take this as a sign that Scott is a douche who drove Lance away. Sigh.
    • The entire Girls' Night Out Episode makes this troper smash his head into brick. Basically, Scot interferes in a training exercise being done by Amara, who's being watched over by Jean. When disaster strikes, and Scott saves them, Jean flies off the handle when Scott makes a bad joke. Scott obviously feels bad about this and tries to apologize, and Jean herself even says she know Scott meant nothing off color about it! But when Jerk Jock Duncan comes around and makes Jean mad, again, she flips out and out of nowhere turns into Straw Feminist. Later in the episode, Jean, Amara, Tabitha, Rogue, and Kitty form an all female vigilante group to prove they just as capable as the guys. What? Since when was it in question that the girls weren't as good as the boys? Has Rogue not repeatedly been a major point in saving the day at least twice in each season? Is Jean not destined to become a cosmic horror? Basically, the entire thing starts because Jean is just PMSing at every male she sees.
  • An episode of Babar: The Adventures Of Badou has Badou and Monroe(?) saving Sleek (A wild black panther) from a poacher that wants to capture and sell her. Badou's reasoning is that nobody should be locked in a cage, not even Sleek. Um, Badou? I'm sure your heart was in the right place, but, aren't you forgetting something? Like maybe the fact that Sleek has been known to try to attack and kill anyone who enters her territory including you? Locking her up would be a good thing because then she wouldn't be able to go around attacking any innocent people that head into the jungle.
  • The first episode of Avengers Earths Mightiest Heroes ("Breakout") contains one. The 4 top-security prisons for supervillains are located in a Desert (good), in a mountain range (good) shrunk and being transported in a hoverplane (why? Why not 'shrunk and in a top security facility?) and at the bottom of New York Harbour! Even worse, all it takes is a power cut to cause total failure of the security systems! And the Hoverplane was on a course that also took it past New York! Did the Authorities want to cause a major crisis for the civilian population as soon as anything went wrong?
  • In Tom and Jerry, the infamous episodes with a Shout-Out plot to Baby's Day Out. The Dumb Blonde who was supposed to be babysitting Tom's owner's baby instead spends all night taking on the phone, completely unaware of the trouble Tom and Jerry are going through to keep the infant from suffering a very messy, very early end. For all their trouble, what do they get? Arrested, when the babysitter finally decides to be a babysitter and immediately assumes the cat and mouse kidnapped the child. The fact there is absolutely no tangible comeuppance for her drives many older fans up the wall.
  • One of the episodes from the 80s Alvin and The Chipmunks involved an It's a Wonderful Plot for Dave. (Basically, after feeling he's ruined the boys' day by dealing with a lemony car, flubbing a soccer game play, and having to break the news to Alvin that they can't go to summer camp, Dave feels depressed and feels that they'd be better off without him) The Wallbanger is in Simon's story. (Long story short, it's about a spelling bee he had in kindergarten, and Dave helped him when he felt he couldn't spell anything.) In the Daveless future, Simon can't spell anything, but here's the Wallbanger: At the spelling bee Simon is given the word: "Mississippi" (hard word for a five-year-old), but when Simon misspells it, EVERYONE STARTS LAUGHING AT POOR SIMON! Yes, you read right, the entire audience full of supposedly mature adults bursts out laughing at a kindergartner who just tried to spell a word that he shouldn't be able to until he's eight, and traumatizes the poor guy. That's just cruel.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • The episode "Secret Of My Excess" has one. Ok, so first Spike gets greedy from people giving him so many gifts (something he's not used to...despite that you'd think that Celestia, Twilight Sparkle's parents, and other people who knew Spike before the series began would give him gifts as well). Odd, but fine. Then, Spike starts growing larger and more powerful as he hoards more things. That's stretching the Willing Suspension of Disbelief a bit...But, it's a cartoon, so we'll let that pass. It's then explained that Spike's growth is a result of his greed and that the more he wants/obtains, the bigger he gets and they must stop him from being greedy to return him to normal. An interesting metaphor, if a bit overused. But, fine. But, then...then it's explained that this is a normal aspect of a dragon's growth. (beat) WHAT!?! Not only has this never been established before with the other dragon characters shown in the series (Yes, they did hoard treasure, but they didn't mindlessly grab at any random object they could reach. And they certainly weren't reduced to Hulk Speak like Spike was), but it doesn't make sense at all regarding the lesson that the episode is trying to convey. Spike's greed is normal, but it's bad so we have to remind him to be generous with others by having him remember how good he felt when he gave Rarity that gem? Wouldn't a better lesson be "It's okay to want things, but you should learn to be patient and not expect to get everything you want right away"?
    • If you thought Pinkie got off easy for destroying Cranky's book, that's nothing compared to what her "friends" got away with in "Mmmystery on the Friendship Express." The former can at least be written off as an accident, the latter was completely selfish and slimy. Does it mean nothing to them that the Cakes poured their blood sweat and tears into the Mmm, while simultaneously taking care of two newborns? It doesn't matter how tasty it looked, it wasn't theirs to eat! The deus ex machina that took the heat off of them was such an Ass Pull. What really burns me up, is that we had episodes like Suited for Success where both sides of the conflict learn a lesson. Here however we see one of the most incredible Houdinis of the karma and lesson variety. Rather than "Dear Princess Celestia, today we learned that that we need to have better self-restraint, and that we should confess to our mistakes," the lesson is some half-baked yarn about how Pinkie was in the wrong despite being practically the only person doing anything productive!
  • Unfortunately, Phineas and Ferb had a small one at the end of "Lights, Camera, Candace". Phineas and Ferb's movie is finished and according to the director type, it's being shown to a crowd of teens in a theater. The teens love it...until Doof's Age Accelerator[4] zaps them causing them to turn old and flee the theater complaining about the noise. The director dude is like "Oh they didn't like it, tough break, boys." even though he specifically said that there were TEENAGERS in the theater and not senior citizens!
    • There's also a bigger one in Run Candace Run, which revolves around Candace having to do three things-one for Jeremy, one for Mom, and one for Stacy(though Stacy's was never shown later on). However, it later on switches to the Johnsons' long lost family member, Annabelle, even though that had absolutely nothing to do with what was going on earlier. Later on, Candace accidentally reunites their long lost family member. Sure, that was nice and all, but what about the rest of the plot? Couldn't everyone who Candace had to help have just talked it over and come up with a solution?
  • The Dexter's Laboratory episode "Chicken Scratch". A genius who is frequently seen toying with an atom and messing with the genetics of human beings and the common cold is clueless about chicken pox and buys into his sister's story about turning into a chicken if he scratches - and then it actually happens! Not even Rule of Funny can excuse the massive inconsistency of a kid who can play with the DNA of viruses having no knowledge at all of something as common as chicken pox.
  • Archer usually avoids this, since its nonsensical elements and the idiotic actions of its characters are usually played for laughs, but it unfortunately runs headlong into this at the end of "Skin Game." Archer's dead fiancee Katya is resurrected as a cyborg, and when she feels she can no longer find acceptance among humans, she runs off with the only other cyborg on the show: Barry. The same Barry who caused her death and forced her to become a cyborg in the first place. All this despite the two trying to kill each other less than a minute earlier, Archer protesting that he still loves her even though she's a cyborg, and the fact that she had spent her entire career fawning over Archer.


Back to Wall Banger
  1. ↑ thanks to Velma noticing a handful of glitches in the matrix
  2. ↑ the acrophobic leader of the Arielbots, not the Maximal
  3. ↑ In case you were wondering, Brawl's an idiot.
  4. ↑ -Inator
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