My Greatest Failure / Western Animation

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• Lao Shi, Jake's grandfather and trainer in American Dragon: Jake Long, became much more focused and wise when he nearly got killed by the Dark Dragon due to not taken the Dark Dragon seriously and he was more showboating than fighting him. The irony is that after the fight, Lao Shi learn the errors of his ways.
• King Andrias Leviathan from Amphibia blames himself for the current state of his kingdom; While Amphibia is currently peaceful and Andrias is considered a great king, it used to be a technologically advanced civilization that spread and conquered across many worlds. When he was still a prince, Andrias was trusted to lead the next invasion, but his genuine friendship with the frog Leif led to her stealing the music box that powered the empire after receiving a vision about how it would lead to their doom. Andrias has spent the last thousand years trying to atone for his mistake, not helped by the voices of his dead ancestors constantly whispering what a failure he is.
• Arcane: Vi is deeply regretful for her outburst at younger sister Powder and leaving her after the explosion, and even though Marcus had her imprisoned for years and prevented her from returning to her sister, Vi nonetheless feels as though she abandoned Powder and is at fault for their separation. When Caitlyn gets her released from prison, she immediately goes back to Zaun to look for Powder, and emphatically tells her sister she won't abandon her again when they finally reunite.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Aang's loss to Azula in the second season finale, resulting in not only the loss of the entire Earth Kingdom but Aang's death as well. Cue Aang stealing Zuko's "I must restore my honor" speech when he gets better. He expresses a similar regret over running away, feeling that he's responsible for the escalation of the war and the destruction of the Air Nomads.
  • Aang's predecessor, Avatar Roku, had several opportunities to stop his best friend Fire Lord Sozin from starting the hundred-year war in the first place. Sozin expresses to Roku that maybe he should Take Over the World to share the "greatness" of the Fire nation? Roku, without even, you know, explaining to Sozin just why this would be a terrible idea, just blows him off and says forget it. Sozin sets up colonies in the Earth Kingdom? Roku fights him off but doesn't kill him, incarcerate him, warn the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes of his leanings, or anything beyond telling Sozin "never try this again or else". Is there any surprise at Sozin's dick move in letting him die from the poisonous gases of that volcanic eruption so he can be out of the way and Sozin can start his invasion? Naturally, in Roku's afterlife and the twilight of Sozin's life, both regret what happened.
  • A side-story, shown as motion comics, gives Avatars Kyoshi and Kuruk one of these. Kyoshi formed the Dai Li, which went on to assist an Evil Chancellor from turning Ba Sing Se into a totalitarian city-state that carried after Azula conquered it. Kuruk wasn't a good Avatar, spending most of his time impressing people with his bending prowess. But when he found a wife and started shaping up, Koh the Face-Stealer snatched her, possibly to punish him.
  • For Uncle Iroh, it's his failed siege of Ba Sing Se during his time as a Fire Nation general. It's hinted many times that the failure isn't because of the military disgrace, but because he lost his son in the battle.
  • For the first two seasons, Zuko believes his greatest failure was talking out of turn and showing weakness to his father. After he makes a Heel–Face Turn, it shifts to his betrayal of his uncle.
• Ben 10:
  • Azmuth has two past actions that turned him into The Atoner he is today:
    • The first was when he created Ascalon, a powerful sword that could tap into the fundamental forces of the universe itself. When news of this sword broke out, an Incursean warrior stole it with hopes of using it to end the Civil War happening on his world. Unfortunately, Ascalon was too powerful, and the warrior destroyed the world he had been trying to protect (and as another consequence, Azmuth's girlfriend left him).
    • The second was when he unintentionally created Malware, an incomplete and corrupted Galvanic Mechamorph that was created when Azmuth turned off the Helix (the device that created the Galvanic Mechamorphs) while it was still working on Malware. While Azmuth did try to heal him, Malware's corrupt code turned him against his creator and made vengeance against Azmuth his defining purpose.
    • The third was that when he and Ben met the first time, he regretted not warning Ben about not over-reliant on one alien and it will caused a terrible affection on the Omnitrix and would have lead to Ben not be able to control his other alien forms.
  • Ben sees losing Feedback, his favorite transformation when he was 11 years old, as this. Gwen, Max, and even Azmuth told him he was becoming over-reliant of Feedback, but he refused to listen, which ultimately resulted in Feedback being ripped out of the Omnitrix and destroyed by Malware.
    Ben: (after telling Rook the whole story) That's what happened to Feedback. And it was all my fault. Happy now?
    Rook: I am sorry, Ben. I did not realize…
    Ben: Just forget it, alright? I wish I could…
• Bojack Horseman: BoJack himself considers this to be after he nearly strangled Gina to death on the Philbert set while strung out on painkillers.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: In "Operation: F.O.U.N.T.A.I.N.", we learn that Numbuh 5 blames herself for some Noodle Incident where the Delightful Children made Numbuh 1 permanently bald and sees an opportunity to save a random girl from the Delightful Children as My Greatest Second Chance.
• On Danger Rangers, Rusty Ringtail is this for Burble. He's a child skater who doesn't follow safety rules and Burble failed to stop his antics before.
• DuckTales (2017):
  • Della Duck and the Spear of Selene was this to Scrooge. He had a made a special surprise for his niece Della to celebrate the birth of her children; a rocket known as the Spear of Selene. No one knew about it because Scrooge told no one about this secret little project he had in the works. Unfortunately, Della had this knack for digging into things she wasn't supposed to be digging into, and to make matter worse, the rocket wasn't even properly tested. Della hijacked the rocket and took it for a ride in orbit, one which seemingly proved to be her last. Scrooge tried to guide Della through the cosmic storm, only for lightning to hit the Spear of Selene, causing the rocket to lose contact with Scrooge and ironically force Della to crash on the moon. Scrooge was willing to go as far as to bankrupt himself, trying to find her somewhere lost in outer space only for the same event to likely befall his crew. The search for Della wound up costing him millions, if not billions, of dollars and because it was proving fruitless, he was ultimately forced to cancel the search for Della by his staff. Until the events of Woo-oo!, Scrooge had more or less become a shut-in and had never spoken to his family after what happened to Della. However, it is later revealed that Bradford Buzzard was the one who told Della the Spear of Selene and set everything in motion and torn the McDuck family for 10 years due to Bradford's hatred of Scrooge and adventures.
  • It's eventually revealed that this is the reason for Gyro Gearloose's noticeably different personality as opposed to the kind, bumbling version from the 1987 series. As a teenaged intern for Dr. Akita, Gyro helped build a robot boy named 2-B0, who he seemed to treat as his own son, or at the very least a real child. When 2-B0 went haywire and destroyed the city, Gyro was led to believe it was his own fault, which he never recovered from. In his words, he spent his whole life trying to make up for what happened to 2-B0, but since all his sentient inventions become destructive, it would seem he didn't succeed. This led to the rude, closed-off personality he has during the events of the show.
• Stanford Pines has this in Gravity Falls when he made the deal with Bill Cipher. He explains to Dipper he was training him against Bill because he tricked him before, calling it the biggest mistake of his life when he realised that Bill was going to cause a world wide apocalypse of chaos.
• In the Mighty Max cartoon, Norman considers his father's death at the hands of Spike to be his greatest failure. As he says, if he had been just a little faster retrieving his father's axe, "he'd still be alive today."
• Princess Celestia from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic seems to feel this way about being forced to imprison her own little sister, Luna, in the moon when Luna became Nightmare Moon. Luna, after being redeemed, seems to feel this about becoming Nightmare Moon in the first place. At one point of "Luna Eclipsed", she's seen looking forlornly at the statue of her evil self and has become The Atoner. "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep" reveals that she created a nightmare-making entity to forever plague her dreams of the things she did as Nightmare Moon. Unfortunately, her guilt ended up making the entity grow strong enough to infiltrate the dreams of other ponies (i.e. all of Ponyville), with its intentions to escape into the waking realm and turn it into a dark reality. With the help of the Mane Six, Luna was finally able to let go of her guilt, enabling her to rest in peace, literally.
  • Celestia's also has Sunset Shimmer's eventual fall from grace...despite being a Physical Goddess, Celestia is as fallible as anyone. Upon Twilight's return to Equestria after encountering her, the first thing Celestia does is ask about Sunset's welfare, and it's clear she's deeply happy to finally reunite with the redeemed Sunset face-to-face in Forgotten Friendship.
• OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes: "Let's Take a Moment" finally reveals the whole story behind the "sandwich incident" that happened between Mr. Gar and K.O.'s mom Carol: Back when they were El Bow and Silver Spark, working for P.O.I.N.T., Gar had a crush on Carol, who unfortunately for him was dating fellow hero Laserblast at the time. While on a stake-out, Gar tried to confess his feelings using a sandwich as a metaphor, which distracted Carol from going to back-up Laserblast, leading to a disastrous explosion that led to his mysterious disappearance. Not only did Carol blame Gar in the heat of the moment for distracting her, but so did Gar and the higher-ups at P.O.I.N.T., who made him The Scapegoat and fired him. He has been haunted by that event ever since, especially since he never got over his crush on Carol. After the events of "Let's Take a Moment", however, Mr. Gar finally seems to be moving past it.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power:
  • Angella deeply regrets ordering the battle in which her husband died or, rather, was captured and sent to Beast Island. It causes her to be somewhat overprotective to her daughter, Glimmer, although they eventually work their way past it.
  • Adora has a tendency to blame herself for everything that goes wrong, no matter how tenuous the logical connection, but Angella's Heroic Sacrifice clearly weighs heavily on her for the fourth season. When Glimmer blames her for Angella's death during an argument, Adora's eyes fill with tears, and Glimmer definitely realises that she's crossed a line.
  • When Scorpia gets the chance to process the portal incident, she comes to view failing to act when Catra betrayed Entrapta as her worst action. It prompts her to pull a Heel–Face Turn, quit the Horde and defect to the Princess Alliance in the hope of getting them to rescue her best friend.
  • It looks like this is going to be how Glimmer views trying to tap the Heart of Etheria, and thereby nearly destroying the world, in the wake of the fourth season finale. Even while it's going on, she claws herself to her feet in a frantic attempt to fix it.
• In Steven Universe Steven considers his inability to talk down Jasper, Bismuth, and Eyeball and their subsequent fates to be his biggest failure, which he finally confronts his feelings towards in "Mindful Education".
• For Splinter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), it was the act of allowing his temper to get the better of him when Oroku Saki insulted him in front of Tang Shen. The resulting attack intensified the rivalry between Oroku Saki and Hamato Yoshi (as Splinter was previously known as), eventually leading to Tang Shen's death, and Yoshi/Splinter's daughter being kidnapped. This is why when it comes to Raphael's temper, Splinter treats it as Serious Business.
• In Teen Titans (2003), Robin considers Red X to be this, not only because the plan didn't work, but because it caused him to temporarily lose the trust of the rest of the team, which he was lucky to get back. This is made only worse when someone steals the equipment and becomes the villain again. Nothing can convince him that it isn't anyone's fault but his own (and he has a point).
• Transformers:
  • Transformers: Animated:
    • Optimus's greatest regret is the incident on Archa Seven that he thought cost Elita-1 her life. It only worsened when he found out what really happened to Elita.
    • Ratchet has two regrets from the Great War. He regrets erasing Arcee's memory, at her request, to prevent her intel from falling into Decepticon hands, especially since she became completely amnestic as a result. Second, he feels that he failed as a mentor to Omega Supreme.
    • Prowl blames himself for not being present when his master and dojo were destroyed by Decepticons during the war. This was made worse because he tried to use a protoform to revive his master who came back to life and immediately rebuffed him for using a new life to revive an old one before relinquishing his spark. This resulted in Prowl becoming even more of a loner and failing to fully grasp his master's teachings until years later when he met Optimus's crew and came to Earth.
  • Transformers: Prime:
    • Arcee takes the deaths of her partners Tailgate and Cliffjumper very personally. Whenever either of them comes up in conversation, her normally assertive confident personality slips into rage, and the possibility of it happening again turns her into a nervous self-doubting train wreck of a person.
    • Ratchet greatly regrets not being able to save Bumblebee's voicebox even though he saved his life during the Great War. His guilt was finally put to rest when Bumblebee regained his voice after falling into the Decepticons' cybermatter during the Final Battle. What made it better was that it was Rachet's synthetic energon formula that helped create the cybermatter.
    Optimus Prime: It would seem the old field medic made good after all.
  • In the third season of The Transformers, Optimus Prime's successor, Rodimus Prime (formerly Hot Rod) doubted his abilities to fill Optimus's shoes, in part because during Optimus's last stand, Hot Rod tried to join the battle and help, only to wind up being used as a hostage/shield by enemy leader Megatron — had Hot Rod not stepped in, Prime may have survived. Visiting Prime on his deathbed, Rodimus asked for forgiveness... But Prime slipped away before he could forgive Rodimus.^note Although he did promote Rodimus to Prime through the Matrix, so that probably implies forgiveness.
  • Transformers: Cyberverse gives Optimus Prime two. He feels that he didn't do enough to stop Megatron before he was too far gone. He also regrets his decision to send the Allspark away from Cybertron to keep it out of Decepticon hands. The plan works, but he did not realize that the relic's absence would cause the planet to sicken and die.
• Subverted in, of all places, Ultimate Spider-Man. A new villain Nightmare uses his powers to transport the team into dream worlds where he makes them confront their greatest fears. Spider-Man is forced to come face-to-face with his murdered Uncle Ben... and strikes up a pleasant conversation with him. Nightmare is shocked that Peter isn't grieving and Peter tells him why it's not working. Yes, Peter regrets what happened to Uncle Ben, but he turned that tragedy into something good by becoming Spider-Man, a hero. So if he expects a guilt trip to keep him from kicking his butt, he's got the wrong person.

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