Once you learn that term, you start noticing it everywhere in movies and shows. So many conflicts would disappear if just one character asked a simple question. 😅
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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I assume we can add “coming clean” to this?
Where a whole movies plot could be solved by the characters just listening to each other
Real Life.
Every episode of Frasier.
It's crazy to me how many gay and liberal folks worked on Frasier and Kelsey Grammer is a huge Trump supporter.
That's the entire "It's always sunny" plot!
There is also another similar trope, defined by "Any problem important to the plot that can be solved by 5min honest conversation between participating parties"
Oh look, the USA
You shouldn't attribute to idiocy what is committed in malice.
I'm wondering about examples of this sort of movie. Are they talking about obvious ones like Dumb and Dumber, Blazing Saddles, Airplane!, etc.?
Or do they mean movies that were supposed to be serious, but are accidentally bad because of bad writing?
I always go back to Prometheus when talking about the "Idiot Ball" because it’s the gold standard. You’ve got these world-class scientists sent on a trillion-dollar mission who don't even know what they’re doing there until they wake up from cryo, and then they immediately act like children playing in a backyard.
The second the sensors say the air is "breathable," they’re ripping their helmets off like they’ve never heard of a space-virus or a spore. It’s insane. Then you’ve got the biologist, a literal professional, seeing a hissing, alien "space-cobra" in a clear threater posture and his first instinct is to try and pet it like a stray cat.
And don't even get me started on the guy who literally mapped the cave with high-tech drones being the one who gets hopelessly lost in it. Or the "Prometheus School of Running Away from Things" where you run in a perfectly straight line under a falling, circular ship instead of just... stepping to the left? It’s like the script needed the plot to happen so badly that it just stripped every character of their survival instincts and professional training.
Compare that to competency porn shows, like the Martian, where they FEEL like the best of the best
I used to hate Prometheus but caught a second viewing years later and came around a bit. The running only straight thing is… yeah. But I’ll defend the inclusion of stupid scientists as a key part of the story because the movie goes out of its way to show that these are people only interested in getting paid, which suggests they might not be the best scientists. Yeah, it’s a “trillion dollar mission,” but I’d assume that in the future that trillion dollars isn’t as much as it might be for us. So these are, perhaps, the cheapest scientists that Wayland can buy, the sort of guys who’d give up years of their lives and careers to fuck off on a starship based solely on the premise of “we might find the aliens that made us.”
Romcoms are notorious for it as so many plots come down to a refusal to stop and communicate
Good one. Yeah, there's some misunderstanding, and she yells at him and stomps out, and he never bothers to say "I wasn't even there, I was at work." But then you wouldn't have 90 minutes of hijinx as he goes on some half-baked but romantic plan to win her back, involving a hot air balloon and dynamite.
Instead of just telling her what really happened.
I mean, if my experience is any indication, she won't listen... But then again, it turns out my wife was passive aggressively trying to get me to leave her for years but I was too oblivious to get her hints...
I mean a whole lot of horror movies would end in 5-15 minutes if the victims weren't idiots who decide to explore the obviously dangerous "thing".
Ah, valid, Horror is my least favorite genre. Probably a lot Idiot Plots there.
Or if they'd just break a window instead of freaking out because the door is locked.
Think Burn After Reading
Hahaha precisely the movie I’ve used to describe my feelings about the current illegal war going on right now.
Definitely the badly written movies. Where the whole plot would have changed if they just communicated.
Life comes to mind for me. Its a set of unfortunate and stupid events made worse entirely by the fact that these highly trained scientists abord a space station are too stupid to do proper quarantine.
Prometheus comes to mind as well. Aww look at this cute alien snake thing. I'm gonna take my helmet off and pet it.
I don't remember that movie. I first thought you meant that movie with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence where they go to jail for Life. Hilarious movie.
I like Jake Gyllenhall, so I think I'll watch your Life, even with your bad review.
Not a movie, but death note.
If the dude didn't take the obvious bait every episode there's no way of catching him.
I always call the trope "Steve" when I see it.
"Hey look, Steve left the door open so the dinosaurs got out."
"Oh no, Steve forgot to zip his hazmat suit now all the apes are smart."
"Steve took his helmet off on an alien planet because the air smelled fine."
"Steve went on a spacewalk without a tether cable!"
"Smoking indoors near flammable chemicals again, Steve?"
"Really Steve, no condom?"
The boy in the striped pajamas
It's always sunny does this brilliantly.
Also Arrested Development
Sons of Anarchy. There's a season ender where some Irish bloke kidnaps a child and sails away. They had to make an entire season in Ireland because these knobheads of criminal but also mechanics can't figure out to follow the kidnapper on water, even though they're standing on a pier with hundreds of boats.
They are motorcycle guys and were looking for jet skis, the motorcycle of the ocean.
I remember watching SoA, because people said it was good. It was alright i guess, from the three or so episodes i've seen. I read somewhere that the ending was mind-blowingly bad, so i peeped on YouTube and i had to laugh so god damn hard and i knew i could never again take this show seriously and stopped watching
I have no idea how I made it through that entire series. I don't even remember anything about the ending, other than relief. Right from the beginning I was constantly telling my wife "these are the stupidest criminals ever".
and this lead to a season full of atrocious irish accents
Makes me think of Gilligan's Island. The scientist could make a radio from a coconut, but couldn't fix a hole in the side of a boat, and no one questioned that.
Show should have been over in no more than 2 episodes.
I always wondered why they brought all those clothes on a "three hour tour."
Honestly, I think the skipper was a proto-Epstein, and had cooked up a scheme with that Sociopathic Oligarch Thurston Howell III to kidnap the hot Ginger, and the adorable MaryAnn, to be their sex slaves on his private island.
I suppose Gilligan was destined for the bamboo cuck-chair.
i usually dont have much of a problem with these, but i have seen one example where the protagonist had the super power of super intelligence
One can be an extremely intelligent idiot.
This is almost every horror movie or series.
Pretty sure most of the Walking Dead cast would never have survived an initial outbreak of gingivitis, let alone zombies...
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
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Every horror movie:
Reminds me a lot of Gears of War 4 and some of 5.
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