Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Forum administrators, Interface administrators, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
116,583
edits
m (categories and general cleanup) |
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (BSG link) |
||
(19 intermediate revisions by 7 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
Showing when someone is wrong can be a powerful tool for an author. It can characterize the villainous or misguided, it can lead to [[An Aesop]], and it is vital for [[The War On Straw|strawmen]] in [[Author Tract
Can be a center point in [[The War On Straw]]. See [[Straw Man Has a Point]] for this trope when used with the strawman archetype. See [[The Complainer Is Always Wrong]] for one situation where this often comes up.
Line 6:
Compare [[And That's Terrible]] in which characters are clearly shown to be villainous, but this detail is outright explained, anyway. Contrast [[Never My Fault]], when the character responsible completely deflects blame onto someone else.
If taken to the extreme, these characters can become the [[Designated Villain]] who will commit a [[Designated Evil]].
{{examples}}
* In the ''[[Pokémon (
▲== Anime & Manga ==
** As a more general example, Team Rocket is rightfully lambasted for trying to steal Pokemon that already belong to trainers... but they're also reacted to in exactly the same way when they attempt to catch wild Pokemon, the same thing the protagonists are (supposed to be) doing. The series seems to imply that their methods are somehow in the wrong when catching wild Pokemon, and that the only "fair" way to catch a wild Pokemon is to have one of your own beat it up first.
▲* In the ''[[Pokémon (Anime)|Pokémon]]'' anime episode "Challenge of the Samurai", Ash Ketchum spends much of the episode being berated by [[Unwitting Instigator of Doom|the titular character]] for not finishing what he started (not stopping a Weedle from escaping, thus letting it summon a swarm of Beedrill). However, the only reason the Weedle escaped was because the Samurai surprised him as he was about to capture it, because he didn't have the courtesy to wait until Ash was done catching it. Yet Ash is meant to accept responsibility for what went wrong, even though ''nothing'' was his fault, and even though he defeats the Samurai, he's still short one Weedle which would someday evolve into a Beedrill.
* This is inflicted, to an extent, upon Lelouch, late in ''[[
* In ''[[Working!!]]'', Souta is repeatedly made the bad guy for complaining when [[Does Not Like Men|Inami]] punches him. Except, you know, ''she's punching him'', with super-strength, and whenever she gets close, for no reason other than her illness. To be fair, he does get kinda rude sometimes, but it's hard not to sympathize with his plight.
== Comic Books ==
Line 21 ⟶ 20:
* The anti-reg side of Marvel's [[Crisis Crossover]] ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]''.
** This is lampshaded by a ''[[What If]]'' special where Nova (returning to Earth to rally the heroes against the Annihilation Wave) gives one big [[What the Hell, Hero?|"What the hell, everybody?"]] speech when he lands in the middle of what would've been the final battle.
** It's pretty much the general consensus that ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' was plot-driven rather than character-driven, especially in the cases of the [[Iron Man|two]] [[A House Divided|opposing]] [[Captain America (comics)|leaders]]. Because [[Heterosexual Life Partners|two best friends]] who have spent the last decade of their lives together consistently overcoming personal differences of far more gravity than ''opposing political opinions'' (up to and including, in one case, ''the execution of a sentient being'') [[Violence Is the Only Option|aren't going to be able]] to [[Poor Communication Kills|work out a compromise]] when the [[Idiot Ball|alternative is a civil war]]
{{quote|'''Tony:''' I realized that in [[In Harm's Way|this crazy business]] we're in, there's no one I'd miss more than you.|''Captain America v1 #401''}}
** ''Right''. Look, Marvel. When [[Marvel Ultimate Alliance|the video game]] plot resolution makes far more sense than actual canon events, then something has [[Gone Horribly Wrong]].
* Another Marvel example. Skarr, Son Of The Hulk, was hit with this really hard throughout his entire miniseries. The narration and tone constantly informed us that he was bordering on being a [[Complete Monster]] if he wasn't already one. And while he certainly did a few [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|morally dubious things in his quest to stop the slavers and slaughterers rampaging across the planet]], they were phrased in such overblown ways to make them seem worse than they were that it just seemed melodramatic (with one of his "worst" offenses being a ''bluff'' of [[Pay Evil Unto Evil]]). This culminated in Skarr being wrong for ''not wanting Galactus to eat his planet'' because, apparently, Galactus eating the planet was for the greater good... keep in mind, Earth superheroes regularly bluff Galactus with '''destroying the entire universe''' to make him leave Earth alone, which means he just goes off and eats someone else's planet.
== Fan Works ==
* Not surprisingly, this trope tends to find a lot of use in
▲* Not surprisingly, this trope tends to find a lot of use in fanfiction, especially when people invoke [[Draco in Leather Pants]] and [[Ron the Death Eater]] to change the social dynamics of a story's cast to fit their own story. This is [[Egregious]] when done in a series with a lot of [[Comedic Sociopathy]] (such as ''[[Ranma One Half|Ranma 1/2]]'') where the entire cast is playing a gigantic game of catch with a multitude of [[Idiot Ball|Idiot Balls]], [[Distress Ball|Distress Balls]], [[Hero Ball|Hero Balls]], and [[Villain Ball|Villain Balls]]. In such stories, it doesn't matter how much attempted murder and bastardry have happened in the past, the NEW instance is suddenly the breaking point for which everyone will view the perpetrator as a [[Complete Monster]].
* In ''[[My Immortal]]'', being a "prep" or a "poser", rather than a "goff", is bad because... the story says so!
== Film ==
* In ''[[Showgirls]]'' the main character [[Meaningful Name|Nomi]] works in a strip club and aspires to be a topless dancer in a Las Vegas show. At one point she gives a man a lapdance that basically amounts to sex with a denim condom, she was perfectly willing to do what came down to live, on-stage lesbian sex, screwing her boss to get a higher position, and pushing the lead dancer down the stairs to get her job, but when she's asked during an audition to use ice cubes to make herself more, ahem, perky, her angry refusal is treated as a display of strength of character. Why the line of moral compromise is drawn at that exact point is perhaps the only thing the movie leaves to the viewer's imagination.
* In ''[[Surrogates (
* In ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'', David is [[Genre Savvy|sensible]] if [[Jerkass|insensitive]] for most of the film and is treated as a (literal) punching bag by Shaun. Him trying to shoot the latter in retaliation for the punch was a bit much, but even his argument of staying in the apartment is proved right by the end. As it's a parody of [[Too Dumb to Live|typical zombie movies]] it may have been intentional, and additionally while he's perhaps ''more'' sensible than Shaun, he's still not ''that'' sensible; he makes several mistakes throughout (such as hefting a bin through the pub window to get in without checking to see if there were other entrances, leaving them with a gaping hole in their defences). Furthermore, his challenging of Shaun is often based less on what the right thing to do would be and more on just not liking Shaun personally, being jealous of his relationship with Liz and his desire to be difficult; as his own girlfriend points out, if he was that sure of what to do he'd take charge instead of just following Shaun and making snide comments from the sidelines. So while he might not necessarily be wrong, he's also just a pompous know-it-all.
** To a lesser extent, Shaun's other friend Pete is depicted as a bit of a prick for his obvious contempt for Shaun's best friend Ed, viewing him as a load who holds Shaun back. However, even before the events of the [[Zombie Apocalypse]] in which Ed increasingly becomes [[The Load]] for real, it's hard not to think that Pete has a point.
*** Pete's really not treated as being wrong; Shaun is clearly unable to come up with a good defense for Ed early on, and there's especially the scene in front of the Winchester. Shaun seems to genuinely acknowledge that Ed is [[The Load]] despite attempt after attempt on his part to fix that, and is angry at him for constantly proving Pete right.
* Ed Rooney in ''
* A movie called ''Women Obsessed'' shows a man physically beating his new wife and menacing his stepson. At one point he seemingly rapes the wife, (which is a case of [[What Happened to
* Mickey in ''She's The One'' falls out with his new wife Hope for assuming he would go to Paris with her without discussing it with him first, which seems like a reasonable point, yet he is blamed for it and even says himself that ''he'' ruined the relationship. The only reason given for him being to blame is that he "didn't fight for her" but Hope didn't fight for him either and was in the wrong in the first place.
* ''[[The Wizard (
* In the [[Ed Wood (
Line 48 ⟶ 45:
* The ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]'' is criticized for failing to actually ''show'' the informed [[Evil Empire]] doing anything much worse than collecting taxes and taking action against terrorists. Despite the existence of a long list of its evil actions they are all either part of the backstory or occurring far away from the action, while by comparison the heroes are (apparently unintentionally) depicted as shockingly open-minded on morals.
** Although hunting Eragon and {{spoiler|determining the name of the Ancient Language, which gives one power over magic}} can't leave a lot of time for personal atrocities, Galbatorix's subjects commit atrocities, and {{spoiler|Galbatorix's immense magical power is due to essentially enslaving the souls or hundreds, if not thousands, of physically-dead dragons.}}
* The [[Michael Crichton]] novel ''[[Timeline]]'' reveals that the [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] who owns the [[Time Machine]] at the center of the novel is planning to market it to the rich and powerful, to host tour groups to the past. [[And That's Terrible
== Live Action TV ==
* In an episode of ''[[Star Trek:
** However, later episodes also show that it wouldn't have worked anyway, so it would have been an immoral action to no real point.
* An episode of ''[[Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica]]'' contained a similar situation, but raised to the nth degree. The humans developed a virus capable of killing every Cylon that was linked to the collective, which was every Cylon in the universe except Athena. The writers obviously expect us to side with Helo and Athena against this genocide. The problem is that everything up to that point suggested that the genocide is ''justified''. The Cylons had already killed countless billions of people, leaving a remnant of about 50,000 that they were ''still'' trying to kill. There was no indication at the time of any dissent within the linked Cylons towards killing humans. And the odds of survival for the remaining humans without using the virus appeared infinitesimally low.
** As Picard pointed out in the above Star Trek example, and as Helo points out in this case, it's a matter of whether the ends justify the means. If humanity is willing to wipe out another entire race of sentient beings, would we deserve to be the race that survived the conflict? The dissenters argue that we should hold onto what makes humanity worth saving even if it means facing nearly impossible odds.
** Another possible counterargument is that the genocide is not ''advisable'' because it would not be guaranteed to be total (there is a nonzero, and maybe nontrivial, possibility that the Cylons can get a warning out in time for the furthest away resurrection ships out of range to disconnect themselves and avoid the plague spread), and doing it and failing to get a 100.00% kill would motivate the surviving Cylons to absolutely exterminate the human race without the slightest possibility of reconciliation or even just eventually giving up on the pursuit, thus locking humanity into total doom (as the only possibilities for humanity are Cylons exterminate humanity, humans exterminate Cylons, or some type of eventual peaceful resolution... and a failed genocide attempts means #2 is not achievable and #3 is no longer possible). Unfortunately for the episode quality that's not the argument Helo made, so he still looks like an idiot.
* Dustin suffers from this, once in ''[[Power Rangers Ninja Storm]]''. While working late at Kelly's store, some hardmen working for a [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]] that Kelly refused to sell her store to, break in, with the intention of trashing the store. Dustin morphs and scares them away. Next morning he gets a minor slap on the wrist for using his Ranger powers for "everyday problems". Although Dustin does have the good sense to point out that they fight bad guys all the time and there was nothing wrong with what he did. Later in the same episode, while Shane is skateboarding in front of a news crew, a monster attacks. Dustin goes to battle the monster alone. The camera men all forget Shane and go to film the fight. Afterwards Shane chews Dustin out for not calling him for help, which would have messed up his chance to get on TV anyway, and might have looked a bit suspicious. Later other Rangers join in lecturing him about doing the right thing. Apparently the right thing is not to steal Shane's limelight ([[Spotlight-Stealing Squad|which ironically, Red Rangers in the Disney seasons are really bad for]]).
* Erika in ''[[Nip
* In the TV series of ''[[Time Cop]]'', the [[Straw Loser|tech guy]] is portrayed this way. In one episode, he chronically suggests that they not time jump right away and let him tinker with the time machine to figure out why it's acting weird, and is always dismissed out of hand for not doing things "the police way". And then the time machine screws up ''again''. This happens several times.
* ''[[The Young and The Restless]]'' has had this with the larger Adam storyline. When Adam is confronted in the cabin he makes a point of noting the hypocrisy of the moral absoluteness the other characters are pulling on him. Part of the show's overarching plots, after all, are about the crimes the Newmans and Abbotts regularly pull against each other. While the tone is meant to be that the nature of Adam's crimes is such that the cabin event is justified, it's hard to escape the fact that everything he's saying about the Newmans and Abbotts is true. JT even calls Victoria out on this once she mentions this to him, angrily stating that regardless of what Adam did, the Newmans and Abbots have this disturbing habit of meting out their own brand of justice, usually without any regard to whether or not the target deserved it.
Line 62 ⟶ 61:
* The premise of ''[[Gilmore Girls]]'' is that Lorelai Gilmore, after getting pregnant and dropping out of school, distanced herself from her parents as she felt they were being over-controlling and not letting her make her own decisions. Later in the series, her own daughter, Rory, goes through a similar situation where she drops out of school and feels her mother is being over-controlling and not letting her make her own decisions. The writing seems to imply that it was right for Lorelai to trust in her decisions re: her mistakes and that it was bad for her parents to resent her for her actions, but goes out of its way to present Lorelai's abandonment of Rory to be justified.
* Most sitcom fathers are this, especially if their wife is a [[Jerk Sue]]. The most famous examples are probably Ray Barone from ''[[Everybody Loves Raymond]]'' and the infamous Sweetheart's Day episode of ''[[My Wife and Kids]]''.
* The episode of ''[[
** In addition to this, it completely ignores (even by [[Rule of Funny|RoF]] standards) the fact that Freddy's opinion ''isn't'' a minority opinion; in fact, it's a ''majority''. IRL, Fred is widely derided by both the general public, and (even moreso) critics. In fact, if anything, the ''[[Fan Girl|Fangirls]]'' are very much the [[Vocal Minority
* An episode of ''[[Family Matters]]'' had both Harriet and Richie passive aggressively mock and chastise Carl, essentially for liking the [[Three Stooges]]. They paint Carl as being a childish sadist for liking a show about people being physically hurt, seemingly forgetting that the Three Stooges is one of the most famous series ever made and arguably set the ground for the sitcom genre and especially physical comedy after it, ''including Family Matters.''
* ''[[Smallville]]'': Dr. Chisolm sounds like just another 'alien-conspiracy' nutcase killing off helpless Kandorians who just want to live peacefully among humans but whom he fears are part of an alien invasion. Good thing the cruel and horrific experiments the 'peaceful' Kandorians performed on him and other humans to regain their Kryptonian powers so they could [[Take Over the World]] [[Offstage Villainy|occurred offscreen]] or they'd seem more like [[Asshole Victim|asshole victims]].
Line 71 ⟶ 70:
* Happens more often than not in [[All in The Family]], in which the assumption that Archie is always wrong runs so strongly that the writers often don't even bother to ''try'' to justify Mike's positions. Norman Lear's [[Opinion Myopia]] was a large factor in the show's [[Misaimed Fandom]].
** It was less [[Opinion Myopia]] than [[Misaimed Fandom]]. Lear and star Carrol O'Connor meant for Archie and Mike to be dueling strawmen: Archie representing the conservative working class, who held on to outdated beliefs to their own detriment, because they were taught to value conformity. Mike represented this kind of "pointy-headed liberals" O'Connor despised; young people with no real life experience, who's solutions to society's problems would be laughably naive even to the target audience. They never justified either case, because they thought it was self-evident both men had it wrong.
* Happens sometimes on ''[[Hoarders]]'' and similar shows, when the subject is merely an annoyance to friends and family, rather than at risk for illness or injury or legal action,<ref>and sometimes even then, when the legal action comes across as a community criminalizing non-conformity</ref>
* In one episode of ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'', Stevie is considered "evil" because she leads a revolution against the law that says all children must battle their siblings and end up with only one having their powers. This isn't even argued about, no one mentions that Alex agreeing with Stevie might be because she just has a different opinion, and in the end Alex agrees that it's 100% evil. Besides that, [[Comedic Sociopathy]] is taken to new levels in that episode {{spoiler|when they [[Dropped a Bridge
* Ted in ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' is portrayed as a jerk for still seeing his little sister Heather as an irresponsible teenager. However, Heather does have a long history of being irresponsible and the way she proved to Ted she was responsible was {{spoiler|to have her and Barney undress in his office and pretend they had sex, get caught by Lily and then accuse Ted of being a jerk for making the obvious assumption that they had sex.}} [[Sarcasm Mode|What a great way to prove she was a smart and mature adult.]]
* In ''[[Glee]]'', Brittany dumps Artie after he calls her stupid. Keep in mind that he calls her stupid because she was cheating on him with another girl in Santana. Note that this was also done [[Derailing Love Interests|to make way for]] the [[Fan
* When Prime Minister Harriet Jones orders the destruction of a retreating Sycorax warship in the Doctor Who episode "The Christmas Invasion", the following scene manages the intricate feat of having ''both sides'' show Informed Wrongness, with the Doctor immediately using it as evidence that she isn't fit to govern Britain. The Prime Minister is entirely correct that she lives in a universe where such extraterrestrial threats are a regular occurrence, the entire population of Earth had almost died, and humanity has every right to build and stockpile whatever weapons for their own defense that they can. On the other hand, the Doctor is also entirely correct that holding a parley with an enemy, negotiating a cease-fire, and then shooting them in the back as they leave is an epically bad idea, because once you get a reputation for killing people under a parley flag the results are entirely predictable and well-known in historical precedent; effective diplomacy becomes ''impossible'' for you because no one will remotely trust you in negotiations any longer, and a near-total inability to engage in interstellar diplomatic relations would have dire and crippling effects on humanity's eventual expansion into the stars. However, in the show '''neither side makes either of these arguments'''. The Doctor chooses instead to go off on a heavy-handed "man is the real monster" message and PM Jones retaliates with a plea towards 'well, what do we do if you're not here?'... as a justification for doing something at a time when the Doctor not only was there, but had just finished solving the problem. The argument is resolved by the Doctor sabotaging her political career, which changes Earth's history and averts a future Golden Age. And so, clumsy writing turns a situation where both sides could have had an entirely valid point and faced a genuine ethical dilemna into one where both sides end up looking like idiots, for reasons neither side bothers to coherently articulate.
== Newspaper Comics ==
Line 83 ⟶ 82:
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Dungeons
** Of course, this just pushes it back a bit - what's so inherently evil about calling upon this particular source of unearthly power?
** Explored in depth [http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19527634/Tome_of_Necromancy?pg=1 here]
== Video Games ==
* Exactly why was Shinra's plan to destroy Meteor in ''[[
** It may have been the logic that Sephiroth's entire plan was to damage the planet's lifestream. Huge materia are huge collections of the same energy. Throwing them out into SPACE is perhaps playing into his hands a little? Basically I saw it not as the game saying 'it's wrong' but more 'if it fails we're screwed, so lets not risk it.'
** My interpretation was that in the best case scenario, Shinra gathers all the world's Huge Materia and fires them off to destroy the meteor. Sephiroth then takes some time to recharge, then summons a second meteor and now that there is no more Huge Materia, nothing would stop him. However if the party steals the Materia and uses it to empower themselves (in the plot it is incredibly powerful even if the player doesn't find any use in it), they are proceeding with the original plan of going after Sephiroth himself and stopping the meteor with Holy. It's a case of stopping the source not the symptom.
Line 99 ⟶ 97:
* In ''[[Treading Ground]]'', protagonist Nate was cast as a repressed asshole by his and Rose's circle of friends for not giving in to Rose's advances, up to and including Rose stripping in front of him. Somehow lost in all of this is that [[Jail Bait|Rose was 17]] and Nate was in his 20s. And the fact that Rose agreed to [[Jail Bait Wait|wait until she was 18]] before they pursued anything more than [[Just Friends]] (an agreement they came to when she was 16). It was heavily implied early on that Nate came up with that pact hoping Rose would get tired of waiting and move on to someone closer to her age, but that line of thought seemed to have been dropped by the end. Possible intentional [[Moral Dissonance]] at work.
** It was brought up in-story that the age of consent in their state (South Carolina) is 16, and that neither Rose nor Nate - [[Selective Obliviousness|possibly intentionally on his part]] - were aware of this. Which still leaves the ridiculous idea that Nate was a jerk for not wanting to sleep with a teenager (even one as willing as Rose).
*** Or the ridiculous idea that any person is a jerk purely because they don't want to have sex with another person that, among other things, they're not even in a relationship with.
* ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' refers to Alterism as unnatural and Alterists as creepy. We don't actually see any Alterists save for one student doing some amateur work on himself and one hairdresser who only used the magic to style hair and we are never shown how Alterism is any more unnatural than pumping your head full of "ecomancy", the "natural" equivalent, beyond some bad hairdos. This was eventually addressed in one arc where Dominic and Luna admitted their dislikes stem from [[Freudian Excuse
== Western Animation ==
* Parodied in a ''[[Robot Chicken]]'' sketch entitled ''[[
* Done rather frustratingly in ''[[Captain Planet and
** The episode "The Numbers Game" takes this to bizarre levels---at the beginning of the episode he opines that people shouldn't have children they can't afford to support, and the others call him out for being unsympathetic to poor people. Then he goes to sleep and has a dream where he and Linka are married with a whole bunch of kids, which leads to a horribly wasteful world since [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|having more than two kids is bad for the environment]], and his dream-friends chew him out ''again'' for being so irresponsible. He then wakes up and tells Linka that if they get married one day, he only wants two kids at most. The episode sets it up as if he learned a lesson... but by the show's own standards, ''he'' was right the whole time!
*** At one point, they did the same debate, except in this episode Wheeler was on the exact opposite side of the argument, and was still considered wrong.
* Also a major trait of Eric from the ''[[Dungeons and Dragons (
** Eric ''is'' usually right, though, and the show doesn't mind pointing this out at all.
* In ''[[
** Though it [[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|didn't get explored on the episode]], this could be a case of [[Fridge Brilliance]] if one considers how the two different races would logically see the issue. 1,001 years seems like a lot to a human or a gargoyle, but since the [[The Fair Folk|Third Race]] is immortal, Oberon probably doesn't think of his absence as much more than a very long vacation. To him, it was probably about how Elisa would feel if she got back to her apartment to find some homeless guy living there, arguing that he had a right to stay since she hadn't been there in six months. (And of course, the issue gets even ''more'' muddled since [[Year Outside, Hour Inside|1,001 "normal" years would have been less than fifty on Avalon...]])
* In ''[[Skunk Fu!]]'', the [[Big Bad]], Dragon, is mentioned to have been "punished for his arrogance". In his full backstory, it's said that the valley the characters live in was under an intense drought. When Dragon asked the Heavens if he could use his water powers to stop the drought, the Heavens didn't respond at all. So Dragon went ahead and ended the drought with rainfall. The Heavens then punished him by stripping him of his water powers and trapping him in a mountain prison. So... he arrogantly saved the valley, apparently.
** This is most likely based on a Chinese legend on how the four rivers were made. Four dragons of water went much the same way as Dragon did and gave the people water after being refused permission, and were punished by the gods by being turned into rivers. Seeing as China presents the afterlife as a [[Celestial Bureaucracy]] and deference to authority is taken ''very'' seriously, apparently the way Dragon was "arrogant" is that he thought himself above those that told him when he was able to use his powers.
*** But in this case, they didn't tell him one way or the other; he didn't defy the heavens because they didn't respond.
Line 118 ⟶ 116:
[[Category:Otherness Tropes]]
[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]
[[Category:Home Page/YMMV]]▼
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
[[Category:
|