Follow TV Tropes

Following

Never My Fault / Comic Books

Go To

The following have their own pages:


Other Comic Books

  • In Astro City, after the Point Man used a Lost Superweapon against an alien menace — destroying a dozen city blocks and killing several hundred people in the process — he proceeds to blame the other superheroes for not telling him that it was a destructive world-ending superweapon (even though they did do exactly that).
  • Da Chief Susan Rayner in The Boys is a bigoted, entitled narcissist who cannot stop having sex with Butcher despite being married with children. At the end of the series, Hughie screws over her political aspirations by playing a recording of one of these encounters. In the epilogue series Dear Becky, it's revealed that she was the one who mailed Hughie Butcher's diary in an attempt to mess with his head. When Hughie confronts her, she begins ranting about how she's the real victim of "patriarchal men" and that she's deserved a comeback like Monica Lewinsky. She then implies that she'll try to run for President... only for Hughie to blackmail her with a recording of her giving the order to bomb a village of civilians, prompting her to have another Villainous Breakdown.
  • Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
    • Countless European "Scrooge McDuck" stories have Scrooge engaging in this. A common story template goes like this: Scrooge starts worrying that he's losing money (or in most cases not making as many billions as he used to). Scrooge whines about it to Donald Duck, who either gives him a well-meaning suggestion or simply makes a random remark that gives Scrooge an idea. Scrooge immediately implements said idea, spending a ton of money. Said idea fails due to a reason that could have been anticipated with a market test or simple common sense. Scrooge laments the loss of the money... and immediately blames Donald, with the story ending with Scrooge chasing him with the intent of causing bodily harm.
    • Here's a concrete example of the above: in one story, Scrooge notices that his business is slowing down... because Scrooge already produces everything and there are no markets to expand into. Scrooge goes to Donald's house in the middle of the night to whine about it, prompting him to snidely remark "You'd even sell dreams if you could, wouldn't you?". This gives Scrooge the idea to do just that. He enlists Gyro Gearloose to create a dream-selling business via a machine that accesses your greatest desires and turns them into a dream stored in a tape that you can "replay" while you sleep. The business is a success... then Scrooge finds out that all his other businesses are going under thanks to people gradually replacing their non-essential possessions with dreams (why have anything else when you can relive your innermost desires every night?). Guess who Scrooge blames?
    • In another comic, "Cry Duck!", Scrooge stages several crises, such as a robbery and a fire just to keep employees on their toes. Naturally, nobody believes him when he is genuinely robbed, but instead of acknowledging that he is at fault, he gets angry at Donald for not helping him.
    • Donald Duck himself is not immune to this trope, Depending on the Writer. It's not like he doesn't want to work... it's just that no job is available in a two-meters range from his sofa. Not his fault, really.
    • Daisy is probably cosmically endowed with this trope: if you find her admitting any fault, you get a prize. Donald drops all her precious shopping? It's his fault for being clumsy, not hers for overloading him to the point where Gizmoduck would have problems.
  • Drain: Freya, Chinatsu's former lover, blames Chinatsu for turning her into a vampire despite Chinatsu's earlier warnings that being a vampire sucks since they have uncontrollable bloodlust and Freya choose to become a vampire out of love and desire to be with Chinatsu forever.
  • The Flintstones: In the first issue, a Neanderthal who would join the quarry's work force dies because Mr. Slate goads him into trying to kill a mammoth and the other two Neanderthals who were about to join decide to leave because of this. Mr. Slate blames Fred for this and punishes the latter by denying him the promotion he promised in return for Fred convincing the Neanderthals to join in the first place.
  • The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire:
    • Kuvira has this attitude towards her previous actions and comic series, though by the end, she loses his attitude and takes responsibility for her actions, which allows her to be forgiven and gives her her first step to redemption.
      • Suyin accuses Kuvira of this when Kuvira refuses to take responsibility for crimes out of the belief they're downplaying her achievements just so they'll have someone to blame. Kuvira's flashback seems to hint she's had a problem with this since a young age.
      • Part 2 has this as well. Guan's reveal that his intent to brainwash people into subservience is Not So Different from Kuvira's means of brute force subjugation. While Kuvira claims it was a means for her strength and leadership to inspire her people, she leaves out the re-education camps and various deaths that would follow those who were rather... less than impressed with her leadership, so to speak.
      • Kuvira finally learns to subvert this trope on her own in Part 3 when she admits to the tribunal and everyone present at her trial that she DID get power hungry and HAS to own up to the consequences of her actions. This gets everyone to believe Kuvira's sincerity at long last and begin the path to forgiveness.
  • Marshal Law features a Captain Ersatz of The Punisher, named the Persecutor. After years in Vietnam as a brutal Torture Technician, he returned home to his family, only to be attacked by revolutionaries seeking revenge, who shot his family while he jumped out of the way. Rather than realizing that they'd attacked him out of revenge and his family's death was his fault, he concluded that it was because the dirty foreigners and lower classes and hippies were ruining America and trying to hurt him for no reason, and devoted himself to gunning them down. He's explicitly noted to suffer from a persecution complex (hence the name), and seems completely baffled that anyone would do the things to him that he does to other people daily.
  • My Little Pony Generations: Grackle and Dyre think the ponies "overreacted" over their mothers and grandmother releasing the Smooze across Ponyland and that the whole thing was a "little prank". This prank nearly resulted in Dream Valley's destruction, and the witches' original counterattack before their final banishment was also intended to turn Dream Valley into a barren waste.
  • The Pink Panther once suffered an accident while skiing and blamed it on a tree.
  • Issue #67 of The Powerpuff Girls (DC run), "Monkey Business", tops off with everybody at Mojo Jojo's restaurant (except Blossom) having chili, which in turn makes everybody in the restaurant break wind. At the conclusion, Bubbles denies she did.
  • The Smurfs:
    • The debut of The Smurfette features her having a lot of trouble with this concept, as she causes chaos throughout the village, but blames everyone else for what happens, refusing to own up to her own mistakes. By the end, she decides to leave after realizing just how much everyone has been fighting over her.
    • The Betrayal of Smurfblossom is driven by Smurfstorm being a Prideful Sore Loser, not wanting to acknowledge the idea that Hefty might have matched her during the Smurfic Games or that she can't handle everything on her own. While she reluctantly acknowledges that she 'might have gotten a little carried away' at the end, she's quick to pin the blame for this on Hefty instead.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) has Geoffrey St. John. When he was put on trial for committing treason to put Ixis Naugus on the throne, he blames the Republic of Acorn's problems on the royal familynote  ignoring that fact that his own manipulations screwed things up for the heroes as well. It wasn't until he discovered Naugus's plan to mind control the Council of Acorn that he realized how badly he screwed up.
  • Sullivan's Sluggers: Casey Sullivan maintains that the reason he failed to catch that baseball in 1976 was because, before the game, someone put Vaseline on his glove as a prank.
  • Transformers:
    • The Transformers (Marvel):
      • Nautilator is a bungling nincompoop who somehow manages to have No Sense of Direction and Super Drowning Skills while transforming into a lobster monster. He's a member of an underwater strike team who can't swim worth a damn and isn't even a good limb for the team's combined form. He constantly blames everyone else for his own failings, such as trying to deflect responsibility onto the Seacons for not supporting him more or to Decepticon Command for posting him to an aquatic team without checking for any competence in the area of basic seaworthiness (he has a point there). So far, he's been smart enough to not try to shift blame onto Megatron, which is probably why he hasn't been fusion cannoned for his whining and shirking.
      • Tarn of the Decepticon Justice Division is a far more serious example. He believes in the Decepticon cause and it's noble end goal of galactic peace, but is aware of the evil war crimes the Decepticons have committed, as well as his division's part in them. He desperately tries to reconcile this in his own mind by insisting that he's actually disgusted by his underlings and only helps them because the dirty work needs to happen to make long term peace happen. When a signal that gives people an attack of conscience hits Tarn's army, many of his henchmen are affected but Tarn himself is not; in his mind it's not his fault he does bad things, it's Megatron's or his teammates' or the Autobots'.
    • The Transformers: Unicron:
      • After she gets Carcer shot to hell with her failed plan, Elita One begins cursing the Autobots and Torchbearers, as if it’s their fault she’s gotten herself and her crew killed.
      • Joe Colton takes the whole situation with Unicron as a vindication of his anti-Transformer crusade... conveniently ignoring that his attack on Cybertron is what directly led to Unicron waking up to eat everything.
    • In The Transformers: Windblade, Starscream blames Windblade and her tardiness for why their negotiations with the Velocitronian delegates were a failure, even though she did way more work in trying to convince them that an alliance was a good thing. Though in this case the failure wasn't his fault either, the Velocitronians just weren't interested.


Top