Never My Fault / Other Media

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Meta example: Mark Rosewater, the lead designer, is on record as saying that using "input randomness"^note i.e., you don't control what you start with; compare "output randomness", where you control what you start with but don't control what it does to build a "Never My Fault" safety valve into games is a smart idea. (In the case of Magic, it's how the Random Number God controls what you draw — particularly, whether you get the quantity and color of Lands you need for your deck to actually function.) Why? Because if it's not your fault you lost, then you feel more enthusiastic about ignoring your loss and playing again. And that's a good thing in a high-skill game where new players are probably going to lose — where new players should lose — most of the time. People on the competitive side of the Casual-Competitive Conflict fiercely argue against this philosophy because it undermines the role of skill, but the success of Magic itself — and of other games that have this kind of safety valve, like Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas, Hearthstone and Battle Royale Games, — suggests that the casual side appreciates it.
  • In-universe: the planeswalker Azor the Lawbringer travels between worlds "gifting" them with what he considers to be perfect systems of governance. If his meddling results in immense suffering for the people of these worlds, that's not a flaw in his systems, it's the fault of the people living there for failing to live up to them.

Jokes

• During his last day in office, a president sits down at his desk and writes two letters, putting them in envelopes marked 1 and 2. As he welcomes the new president, he tells him that in case he runs out of options in a major crisis, he needs to open the first envelope. Sometime later, a crisis looms, and the new president opens the first letter, reading "Blame me for everything." The new president does so, and everything works out fine. Sometime later, another crisis comes along, and the president opens the second envelope. It begins "Sit down at your desk and write two letters..."

Manhua

• The titular character of Old Master Q have his moments. For instance, losing a tennis match? Whack the referee then.

Music

• An early Straylight Run demo includes a track called "It's Everyone's Fault But Mine". Which, given its subject matter (the singer's estrangement from his old band, Taking Back Sunday), might be a fairly accurate title.
• The song "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It" by Ice Cube addresses this in its subject matter, which is about people blaming the bad things they do in life on rap music rather than out of personal choice.
• The Eagles' song "Get Over It" begins with this:
  I turn on the tube, and what do I see?
  A whole lot of people crying "don't blame me."
  They point their crooked fingers at everybody else,
  Spend all their time feeling sorry for themselves.
• Macabre's "The Ted Bundy Song" reveals that Ted never took responsibility for the murders he committed, even when he was about to fried on the electric chair.
• Melanie Martinez's song "Crybaby" features the lyrics:
  You're all on your own and you lost all your friends
  You told yourself that it's not you, it's them.
• The Brothers Osborne song "Ain't My Fault" plays it straight with a heavy dose of Circular Reasoning
  Blame the heart for the hurtin'
  Blame the hurtin' on the heart
  Blame the dark on the devil
  Blame the devil on the dark
  Blame the ex for the drinkin'
  Blame the drinkin' for the ex
  Blame the two-for-one tequilas for whatever happens next
  But it ain't my fault
• Disturbed:
  • The point of "Never Wrong" is calling out people who are unable to accept being wrong.
    I'm not willing to deal with someone, who insists that they can never be wrong. So just keep on talking to the wall because I'm walking away!
  • In "Tyrant", both the narrator and his parent used to have this mindset ("Why did both of us have to believe that we were right?"); the narrator has grown out of it and asks the parent to own up as well, with little success.
    And it's like pulling teeth 'cause you'll never confess
• "Bad Boys", best known as the theme song of COPS, has the person getting arrested refuse to take responsibility for their actions.
  You chuck it on that one
  You chuck it on this one
  You chuck it on your mother
  And you chuck it on your father
  You chuck it on your brother
  And you chuck it on your sister
  You chuck it on that one
  And you chuck it on me!
• Samantha Fish's "Blame It on the Moon" is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek example which says, yeah, I've done some bad things, but I've decided to blame it on the moon.
• Milli Vanilli's "Blame It on the Rain" is about regretting his decision to break up with his girlfriend, and trying to deflect blame from himself.
• GHOST's Vocaloid original, The Distortionist, is about the titular character controlling mirrors to show an altered image of him to hide his true nature, breaking them when they reflect his true face and then refusing to accept it's his fault.
  And sure, I'm the one who swung the metal bat
  But hey, I can't control the urge!
  Nobody's gonna blame me for that

  This isn't what it looks to be
  I'm not as cruel as you see me
  Take the time to realize
  Despite what you may see
  The mirrors cracked themselves
  And I was cut on the broken shards
  And how I bled
• The subject of Three Days Grace's "Villain I'm Not" habitually blames everything on the narrator:
  You want me to be guilty, to be the one who's wrong
  So easy to blame me, it's been that way for so long
• "Primadonna" by Marina Diamandis.
  You say that I'm kinda difficult
  But it's always someone else's fault
• The song "Everyone Else" by Tony Goldmark^note Now most known for his shows Some Jerk with a Camera and Escape from Vault Disney!. mainly consists of this. The narrator steals a police car, leaves it in a no-parking zone to rob a church, and blames everyone else upon finding it gone.
• Reel Big Fish also has a song blaming everyone else for being an asshole.
• A good chunk of the lyrics of "Weird Al" Yankovic's "I'll Sue Ya" describe the narrator suing various manufacturers and retailers for the ways he harmed himself with their products — suing Taco Bell after he got fat from eating half a million chalupas, PetCo after he got bad breath from eating kitty litter, Duracell after he shoved a battery up his nose, etc.
• MILGRAM: Mu Kusunoki insists that she's completely in the right for the murder she committed. She was terribly bullied in school and truly believed it was the only way out. After she is deemed innocent in the first trial, she fully embraces her verdict in her second video, "It's Not My Fault". It's revealed that she was an Alpha Bitch before her fall from grace, and she believes that even then she was in the right.
• In response to the allegations of inappropriate conduct made against her, Colleen Ballinger's song, "Hi (Toxic Gossip Train) denies the accusations. [1]
  "The only thing I've ever groomed is my two Persian cats. I'm not a groomer, I'm just a loser."

Podcasts

• In the Black Jack Justice episode "The Reunion", the lack of this trope is the key clue. Jack and Trixie's client, Edie, is a woman trying to reunite with her estranged twin sister Jane after she stole the man her sister loved from her. Among the little things that tip the detectives off is that their client took full responsibility for her actions with no attempt to justify them, something they see all too often. They eventually realize Jane killed Edie and was impersonating her. She hired Jack and Trixie to use them to make it look like they'd reunited amicably so she wouldn't be suspected when Edie was missed.
• In Interstitial: Actual Play, Merlin considers the data replicas of Organization XIII getting released into the Hundred Acre Wood book as a crazy coincidence, even though he blatantly messed up the pages of the book and his notes due to his own clumsiness.

Radio

• In one episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, Jeremy Hardy makes a joke which could be seen as offensive. Tim Brooke-Taylor immediately follows it with the comment "That was Jeremy Hardy who said that..." Moments later, Tim makes a joke which is groaned by the audience and follows it, again, with "That was Jeremy Hardy who said that..." And in another episode, Tim makes a joke which gets a mixed reaction, before saying "Oh, you shouldn't say that. Shush, Jeremy." ^note  Part of the joke is that Jeremy is both younger and more 'alternative' than the regular cast, so he's more expected to make offensive jokes.
  • There is a regular game on the show called "Pick-up Song", where each panellist sings along to a song, continuing to sing as the music is faded out, with the object being to be as close as possible to the original recording when the music comes back on. If the sound is turned up to reveal the panellist is significantly out of time with the original, they will almost invariably make some comment about how the original artist has "lost it".
  Jeremy Hardy [after the music came up on "With a Little Help From My Friends" to reveal he was a verse and a half ahead of the original]: Who's been fiddling with the stereo?!
• In Old Harry's Game:
  • This trope is one of the main reasons why Satan hates humanity. However, he's not immune to this behaviour himself, continually evading any responsibility for rebelling against Heaven.
  • Thomas also fits this. In life, when he was married to Edith's niece, he tortured her and slept with other women in her bed while she was in it. He eventually accepts that he might bear 3% of the responsibility for the divorce. Scumspawn then notes that it's 3% up from last time. In another episode, he complains to God that it isn't fair to place him in Hell when his actions were predetermined by God. God then informs him that he didn't predestine anything and Thomas' actions were of his own free will. Thomas insists that it's still God's fault for being stupid enough to give people like him free will.
  • Adolf Hitler apparently still insists that the Holocaust was merely an overreaction to being filmed in the shower. Also, he blames his failed campaign in Russia on Jesse Owens.
  • One episode has Satan point out that whenever someone says "I take full responsibility" for something, they're just spouting bollocks. Later on in the episode, God says it when called out for mankind's behaviour...
• When something goes wrong in The Men from the Ministry, One will sometimes blame Two for what has happened, even when he is just as (or even solely) responsible.

Recorded Comedy

• Bill Dana's Jose Jimenez: First Man in Space features Jimenez being interviewed about his pending space flight. When he's told how much the government is popping for the flight, Jimenez replies "It's not my fault. I told them I was willing to go tourist!"

Tabletop Games

• Paranoia: Mission debriefing is fully expected to devolve into everyone doing this at once. The official Mission Report form (included in the rulebook) has a series of yes/no checkboxes. One of them is "Did you accuse a fellow team member of being a traitor? If no, explain:_______."
• BattleTech:
  • Part of the history of Wilson's Hussars Their second commander is panicky, selfish, cowardly, and horribly incompetent; in other words, everything that a mercenary 'Mech commander shouldn't be. When he panicked in the middle of a bad situation and called for their Drop Ship to pull him out, it was shot down and crashed on his lance's position. Miraculously he survived, blaming everyone but himself for the string of bad choices that led to the losses. It earns him a double PPC shot in the back from the man who would be the unit's much more reasonable and much better liked but long-suffering third commander.
  • When Clan Steel Viper joins the invasion of the Inner Sphere they try to "enlighten" the people of the IS of their Clan ways, initially no one buys it. They mostly blame Clan Jade Falcon on why the IS don't like them, but in truth, it's because of the Steel Vipers low view of freebirths.
  • This is one of Caleb Davion's many failings as a human being. He simply can't take responsibility for his own problems and mistakes. It's such an issue that he ends up a paranoid schizophrenic with an invisible friend who serves as both a split personality and an outlet for his amoral impulses.
• Ravenloft: The one thing that all darklords have in common. All of them committed Acts of Ultimate Darkness, deeds so horrific and evil that they drew the attention of the Dark Powers, and refuse to acknowledge that they did anything wrong. Acknowledging their crimes and their responsibility for their own misfortune is actually the first step towards escaping their realms. Then again, anyone who had the strength of character to actually do this would never have become a darklord in the first place.
• Exalted: Excessively Righteous Blossom has a fairly simple flowchart. Did something he was involved with go well? Clearly, it was due to his brilliance at everything. Did it go poorly? It was clearly all the fault of his underlings, or jealous rivals, or something.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Some members of Clan Tremere (a clan with a strict, pyramidal hierarchy) suffer from a derangement called Hierarchical Sociology Disorder that leads them to use the Tremere pyramid as a surrogate for personal responsibility. They essentially use the orders of their superiors and the strictures of the clan code in place of their own moral judgements, allowing them to shunt responsibility for their choices away from themselves.
  "[S]uch victims cannot handle their own moral responsibility, so they delineate their world by the bounds of the Tremere code. What their superiors order, they obey; what the code prohibits, they fanatically shun. By making the Tremere clan the repository of their consciences, these poor souls are 'only following orders.' The degradation of Humanity and the toll of frenzy, hunger and fear still drive the Kindred into a downward spiral, but it's one that he can almost sociopathically ignore. After all, it's neither his fault nor his problem."
• Pathfinder: Duergar rarely accept personal responsibility for failures, preferring instead to blame their misfortune on others. This extends to a cultural level; they do not enjoy their servitude to Droskar, but would rather blame everyone else, especially other Darklands residents and the rest of the dwarven race, for their lot rather than admit their own faulty choice in choosing to serve the god of toil rather than following the rest of the dwarves in climbing to the surface of the world or choosing to die fighting.
• Warhammer: This is the standard way of thinking for the Skaven. Nothing is ever a Skaven's fault: either his superiors are working behind the scenes to sabotage his progress, or his inferiors are banding together to take him down. This means said Skaven has to double down and sabotage everyone else twice as hard to make up for all the unfair disadvantage they suffer from others' sabotage. Skaven society is about as stable as a barrel of hungry rats rolling downhill.
• This, alongside Kill All Humans, is the major trademark of the Red Talons in Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Every single wrong choice they've made over their existence — and there are a lot of them — is blamed on, in decreasing order of likelihood, humanity, other tribes, or the Wyrm. In one of the Time of Judgment scenarios, the Red Talons take to devouring human flesh, which causes them to contract a prion disease that then is passed on to their wolf Kinfolk, resulting in the death of 90% of the world's wolves and essentially condemning the Red Talons to extinction. Somehow, despite this being entirely and inescapably their fault, they still find a way to blame humanity for it and set out to destroy the world as "revenge".

Theater

• Into the Woods has the song "Your Fault", which involves all the 'heroes' placing the blame for the Darker and Edgier second act on each other. (See here). The witch proceeds to call all of them out on their behavior The Reason You Suck Song, particularly after they all settle on blaming her for everything.
• In Notre-Dame de Paris, Phoebus's song Je Reviens Vers Toi (To get back to you) where he tells his fiance that a gypsy bewitched him into cheating on her, that she only wanted his money.
• Joe Keller from All My Sons. Yeah, people might have been shipping faulty parts to the military in World War II for the contract money, but Joe not only did it knowingly (getting twenty-one pilots killed because of his greed), he then pinned the crime on Steve Deever, his best friend and business partner, by pretending he had been sick the day the parts were shipped out. Steve gets life in prison, while Joe keeps the parts business for himself. Joe has no problem with letting everyone believe he was both a hero who uncovered Steve's incompetence and an innocent, unknowing victim for years, while Steve's family turns against and abandons him. When the truth comes out, he's not very remorseful about it and tries to claim it was "for the family" and that lots of others were doing it at the time, so if his son Chris was going to turn him to the police he might as well turn over everyone else who did it. Finally, when Chris confronts him with the suicide note his other son wrote because he couldn't bear the shame of what his father did, Joe promptly shoots himself in the head just so he wouldn't have to go to jail and be exposed for what he did, or have to deal with the fact his son's death was his fault
• Noah Smith's stage version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:
  • After Hyde exposes Enfield's hypocritical behavior to Enfield's fiancee, Enfield tells Jekyll, "My beloved Helen doesn't trust me any longer. Whoever is responsible for this will be made to pay." He never acknowledges that he shares some of the responsibility himself for being untrustworthy in the first place.
  • During his confrontation with Lanyon at the end of the first act, Jekyll attempts to draw a line between Hyde's actions and his own. "I didn't do it! Hyde did!" By the end of the play, however, he's accepted his responsibility, and uses "I" throughout his confession to Utterson in the final scene.

Visual Novels

• Ace Attorney — both humorously and seriously:
  • In the third case of the first game, Gumshoe blames Phoenix for Edgeworth's state of depression. Maya aggressively counters "If he's depressed it's all your fault for doing sloppy detective work!" this leaves an embarrassed and humbled Gumshoe lost for words.
  • Justice for All:
    • Edgeworth puts Franziska down for "Still blaming others when things go wrong".
    • Matt Engarde displays no Psyche-Locks when questioned about the death of his rival. Though Exact Words probably played a small part in it — he hired an assassin rather than doing the deed himself — it's still heavily implied that he actually thinks this absolves him of any guilt, at least legally speaking. On top of that, his motive for doing so was that his rival was going to 'ruin his reputation' over the fact that he'd deliberately driven his ex-girlfriend to suicide (not that the rival, who'd dumped her after learning of her past relationship, was completely blameless either, but Matt treats the affair like it was just another way of one-upping the guy).
  • Trials and Tribulations:
    • Played seriously in the final case of the game. Godot blames Phoenix for Mia's death, despite the fact that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Godot then blames Phoenix for Maya currently being in danger, when it was actually his plan (that he didn't tell Phoenix or Maya about) to save Maya that put her in that situation in the first place, also resulting in the death of her mother. At the end of the game, he admits that it wasn't Phoenix's fault and that he just needed someone to blame. He also admits that if he had come to Phoenix in the first place, Misty Fey would still be alive.
    • Dahlia Hawthorne blames everyone but herself for everything that was screwed up with her life. The fake kidnapping plot is apparently Valerie's fault for revealing it and Terry's fault for not getting hanged for it rather than Dahlia's for starting it in the first place. She also blames Mia for getting her to prison because she did her job and defended an innocent man, rather than the fact that Dahlia murdered someone.
  • Every time the prosecutors lose, they cut Detective Gumshoe's salary.
  • Mr. Reus from Spirit of Justice blamed Magnifi Gramarye for throwing him out of Troupe Gramarye, which he did because Reus went to perform after being specifically told not to after he screwed up and burned himself during practice.
• Monokuma from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc traps 15 students in a school, explains that the only way for them to escape is to start killing each other, and then if they don't, starts providing incentives for them to do so and generally psychologically tortures them until the body count rises. If he's ever called out on this, though, he'll act offended that anyone would even think to make such an accusation. After all, they're the ones doing all the killing. This escalates in the sequel, where his "incentives" include infecting a good chunk of the cast with a personality-altering disease and withholding food until somebody dies.
• Fate/stay night: Admittedly, it's not Shinji's fault that he's not a capable mage, but it is his fault that he jumped into the Holy Grail War in spite of that, which means he's now in way over his head. He can never admit this, so he blames everyone else when he's in a spot of trouble. Most notably, he blames Rider for being a weak Servant when they're losing even though that's because, as a non-mage, he can't provide her the necessary magic energy to be a strong fighter—when Shirou uses Rider during the Heaven's Feel route, she is vastly more competent, to the point of holding her own against Saber Alter, who earlier kicked ass all over Berserker using the infinite mana provided by Dark Sakura and the corrupted Grail.

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: In the Strong Bad Email "long pants," Strong Bad edits down a lengthy email into nothing like what it was originally (by drawing on his laptop's screen with white-out fluid), then blames the sender when Homestar appears wearing Daisy Dukes and later freaks out over a remark regarding his apparent lack of pants (and The Cheat for covering his screen in white-out fluid).
  Original email: Why doesn't homestar ever wear pants? It's kind of creepy how he walks around with no pants on all the time. Anyway, I think you should get him some pants...
  Edited email: Why wear pants? Creepy pants all the time get some...
  (later)
  Strong Bad: Noice work, Clanky. You made Homestar go nuts, and you've seriously creeped me out. And how am I supposed to get this crap offa here? Stupid... made-up technology... that I made up... paint pen... The Cheat! Call tech support and tell 'em you broke the Lappy again!
• Red vs. Blue:
  • Caboose will often quip "Tucker did it" whenever something bad happens — regardless of who is actually to blame.
  • He later fumbled a grenade toss, leading to this immortal exchange:
    Washington: That, was the worst throw. Ever. Of all time.
    Caboose: Not my fault. Someone put a wall in my way.
  • Caboose once switches from gloating to this mid-sentence when things suddenly go south after he stops Tex from curb stomping the Reds and Tucker:
    Caboose: I did it! I beat up the girl! I — Not my fault! Not my fault! The computer made suggestions! And the default option was yes!
• In If the Emperor Had a Text-to-Speech Device, the Emperor manages to deal with everything he's accused of by shifting the blame for it on the Chaos Gods, fucking Horus, xenos, or something else. Sometimes it works and he has a point about other causes, but other times it just rubs everyone else the wrong way and makes them more pissed off. Even his very own Custodes aren't afraid to loudly tell him off when the hypocrisy gets to the extreme.
• RWBY:
  • In the fourth volume, Raven Branwen doesn't acknowledge that it's her own actions that led to the Grimm's attack on Shion. One volume later, she never acknowledges the danger she's put her tribe in by harbouring a Maiden, and dismisses her decision to lure Qrow Branwen and Yang Xiao Long into an ambush as it being a sign of faith in their skill and strength to survive.
  • Even though he privately knows Adam Taurus' orders were unwise and ill-fated, Corsac blames the Belladonna family for ruining everything he and Fennec had planned. Fennec's death triggers a Villainous Breakdown, where Corsac blames the family for everything even though the reason Fennec died was because the family was trying to defend themselves against an assassination attempt orchestrated by the two brothers on Adam's orders. And, even though the two brothers knew Adam was making bad decisions and issuing bad orders, the only reason Adam became the High Leader of the White Fang was because Corsac and Fennec had orchestrated his rise to the top in the first place.
  • Hazel blames Ozpin for his sister's death, refusing to believe Gretchen chose to become a Huntress and instead accusing Ozpin of manipulating her to death. He is therefore willing to murder Oscar simply for being Ozpin's heir, claiming that Oscar's death will be Ozpin's fault for dragging the boy into the war against Salem. Ozpin's Resurrective Immortality was bestowed upon him by the gods, giving him no control over who becomes his next host when the previous one dies. Hazel is willing to kill the teenage heroes by blaming Ozpin for putting them in harm's way; he's willing to torture Oscar on Salem's command by blaming Ozpin for the boy's suffering; and he believes Ozpin is more evil than Salem because Ozpin encourages people to fight against an Invincible Villain who just wants a Huntsman-free world. Only when he finds out that Salem's really seeking the planet's destruction does he turn against her; even then, he never accepts fault for the things he's done to Ozpin.
  • The gods cursed Salem in the hope that she would learn why her demands of them were selfish and arrogant. Unfortunately for the world of Remnant, that first requires her to admit she did something wrong in the first place. When her lover Ozma died from a fatal sickness, she manipulated the gods into restoring him to life. When the gods realized, they took Ozma's life to correct the mistake and punished Salem with Complete Immortality to prevent her from reuniting with Ozma in the afterlife. They instructed her to learn the importance of life and death, but she only learned how to manipulate both gods and men. She raised an army to fight the gods; in retaliation, the gods destroyed humanity and abandoned the world, leaving Salem to walk the world alone, unable to die. The God of Light later restored a weakened version of humanity and reincarnated Ozma to guide humanity towards their only chance for redemption. As a result, Salem's anger with the gods extended to encompass Ozma; she now seeks to destroy everything Oz is trying to achieve and is even further away from taking responsibility for her actions than ever.
  • One of James Ironwood's biggest character failings is that he refuses to see any failing in his own actions or chosen methods. While he acknowledges the harm his actions can cause, he won't see them as wrong and instead expects people to just accept and suffer the consequences as a necessary evil. He also has a bad habit of assigning blame to others while stubbornly insisting he's the only one who is capable of making the right decisions; this means he will continuing using methods that don't work or keep failing long after it ceases to make sense, while expressing bafflement that no-one is grateful for his efforts. He becomes so unreasonable and extreme that even his staunchest allies eventually turn their backs on him, leaving him to a lonely, broken fate.
• DSBT InsaniT: Since she views herself as perfect, Julie will blame anyone or anything else besides herself when she messes up or does something wrong, no matter how much Insane Troll Logic it takes.
• In various GoAnimate "Grounded" videos, many of the grounded tend to claim themselves faultless when they perform their actions. This is taken up to an extreme Cycle of Revenge in samster5677's videos involving Dora the Explorer. In these videos, both Dora and her mother "Elena" believe themselves blameless and find themselves in a cycle of death, destruction and punishments as "Elena" will gleefully make sure Dora is miserable as possible, Dora acts out in revenge, "Elena" is shocked at her actions and grounds her further.
• The Most Epic Story Ever Told in All of Human History: Ridiculously Epic blames Little Miss Epic for his broken TV, even though he’s the one who threw his remote through it. She wasn’t even in the room.
• Revenge Films: In this story, a new wedding planner messed up a wedding by forgetting to get a bus for the guests and didn't hire a caterer. Despite the bride's family getting upset at her, she refused to take responsibility and apologize until the bride's friend (another wedding planner) snapped at her and tore her a new one.
• Shishihara: A housewife blames Sota and Yurika for causing her son to cry after eating one of the meat loafs she stole from the former, while also ignoring Sota's reason why he couldn't give her son any of them.
• Epithet Erased: One of Lorelai's many bad habits is that when something goes wrong for her, especially as a result of her selfishness and irresponsibility, she immediately passes the responsibility to someone - usually Molly. One noticeable pattern has her blow off her chores, leaving them to Molly, then get pissy and resentful that Molly doesn't have time to play with her, never putting together, even when told directly to her face, that maybe Molly would have time to play with her if she didn't constantly have to do the chores Lori blew off. Then, during a pivotal chapter in Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic, she has the gall to demand that Molly apologise to her for a string of imagined transgressions.
  Naven: You know, Miss Blyndeff, it really is quite remarkable how nothing ever seems to be your fault, isn't it?

Webcomics

• In Motherly Scootaloo and its spin-off, although Rain Catcher does admit that he made a few mistakes, he blames Scootaloo for it overall, even though he was the one who gave her the idea, saying it would make her "cool", and pressured her into continuing when she had second thoughts at the last minute.
• Girl Genius:
  • Silas Merlot is sentenced to work on Castle Heterodyne, a punishment reserved for particularly nasty criminals, after an incredibly lengthy situation involving indirectly killing someone important to Baron Wulfenbach's plans for running his empire, and later deliberately killing many, many people to hide the evidence of what they worked on. Since Agatha (who Merlot has despised as long as he's known her) was either at the center of, or even the specific subject of, every stage of the situation, Merlot decides that it's all her fault for being born in the first place.
  • Gil Wulfenbach has a bit of trouble with this too; his part in the above situation was to defend himself. Unfortunately, "defending himself" meant swatting a bomb away, and more unfortunately, "away" meant "back at the guy who threw it, who was the one who was important to the Baron's plans". For the rest of the scene, everyone shouts at Gil for killing Dr. Beetle, and Gil eventually gives up on impotently crying that Dr. Beetle threw a bomb at him. It occasionally comes up afterward, because a lot of people seem to have heard the "Gil killed Beetle" part but not the rest:
    Random Person: You killed Beetle?
    Gil: He threw a bomb at me!!
  • Othar Tryggvassen, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER! is this for his relentless conviction that he's the hero, and should, therefore, have Protagonist-Centered Morality. In the Revenge of the Weasel Queen "radio drama", the Queen pours out her Tragic Villain backstory to him and as good as says she wants to reform and he can help. Othar, only half-listening, assumes this is an evil subterfuge and declares he will "do whatever it takes to destroy you!" When the Weasel Queen responds "Fine! Just ... fine!" and Othar is surrounded by killer rabbits, he criticises her for "resorting to violence instead of peaceful discussion".
• In Strays, in Meela's dreams, after a Stalker with a Crush kills the mother, he sees the child and — blames him.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • This is Miko Miyazaki's downfall; when the gods strip her of her powers for killing Lord Shojo, she refuses to believe it was her own fault and places the blame on a conspiracy by the Order. When she dies, the spirit of the paladin Soon tells her that her inability to admit responsibility for her deeds is one of the reasons she will die unredeemed.
  • Start of Darkness posits that this is Redcloak's major flaw. If he admits that allying with Xykon — let alone making him a lich — was a mistake, then the deaths of all the goblins who aided him in executing "the Plan" will be on his shoulders. During "The Reason You Suck" Speech that Xykon delivers to Redcloak, Xykon bluntly states that Redcloak will never betray him because Xykon is Redcloak's excuse for his inexcusable deeds. When he's informed, in no uncertain terms, that "the Plan" can't work, never could have worked, and isn't even necessary, Redcloak utterly refuses to believe it because believing it would require admitting he was wrong, and he's pathologically incapable of doing that.
  • When Sabine's buffs start wearing off because she was given them by a low-level caster, she asks herself whose dumb idea it was to hire an apprentice wizard. Just over a hundred strips earlier, guess whose idea it was?
  • A comedic example is Mr. Jones and Mr. Rodriguez. Whenever they lose a case, Mr. Jones declares that the trial transcript clearly shows that Mr. Rodriguez was representing their client. Mr. Jones proudly noted his 5-0 record, while lambasting Mr. Rodriguez's 0-147... even though the two always work together and it's the same record.
• Vriska from Homestuck. She initiates a Cycle of Revenge that leaves three of her companions paralyzed from the waist down, blind, and dead, respectively, then she says the other trolls are jerks and weaklings for not wishing to associate with her anymore. She amasses large numbers of pointy dice which she scatters across her floor and never cleans up, and then she says it's just bad luck that she keeps stepping on them. It's only in the last hours of her life that she admits to anyone else that there might be something wrong with her. At one point, she demands that Tavros (one of the aforementioned companions) apologize to her for being paralyzed — and she was the one who paralyzed him.
• Lark in Mike: Bookseller will blame anyone or anything to get out of trouble: "Lark, that's a cardboard display of Henry Winkler".
• In Jack, this is a consistent trait among the damned. None of them will ever admit full guilt in their actions; doing so is actually the first step in getting out of hell, which most of them simply can't take. This is one of the reasons why the damned can't stand angels; easier to blame and hate an authority figure who sent you to hell (even if they didn't) than admit you might actually deserve being where you are.
• In Dominic Deegan, Siegfried's inability to admit guilt for his misdeeds is ultimately what keeps him trapped in hell.
• Ollie from Something*Positive considers Davan to be his Arch-Enemy, much to Davan's confusion. Ollie claims that Davan is the reason his theater career never took off, despite the fact that Ollie's big attempt was to put on a play that he hadn't paid the rights to. Davan was involved in the production, but didn't realize that Ollie was breaking copyright law; Ollie's apparently just mad that Davan managed to bounce back from the experience (being hired by the play's would-be sponsor) while he actually had to face the consequences of his actions.
• Dean & Nala + Vinny: Nala is very quick about pointing away from herself when Dean is trying to find out who caused the latest disaster, such as leaving a bunch of Easter eggs (made with raw eggs, not hard-boiled or voided) in his chair.
• Bittersweet Candy Bowl: Abbey's father tore his family apart with his Domestic Abuse, but when the consequences caught up to him? He blamed Abbey.
• In True Believers Joe Quesadilla tells Spider-Man and Mary Jane that he is breaking up their marriage because he thinks she is the reason people are losing interest in the comics. When Spider-Man points out the problem might be Quesadilla's own writing, he quickly defends himself and says that could not be the case.
• Reggie from Between Failures has a great deal of difficulty taking responsibility for his own actions, although on at least one occasion, it really wasn't his fault.
• Goblins:
  • Psionic Minmax feels no guilt over the fact that he regularly tortures and kills others in order to advance his plans, because he has convinced himself that the universe itself is to blame if the fundamental rules that govern it allow things like pain and death to occur.
  • Kore is even more so: while Psion Minmax is at least somewhat accepting of the fact that he's contributing to the sum of pain in the universe, Kore is quite convinced that anything which is against him is evil, solely for being against him — or even being a small child who's tangentially in his way. This includes all the Lawful Good invoked souls he's ensnared, which grant him the ability to take on whatever alignment he wants at any given time.
• Sluggy Freelance
  • When Gwynn starts using dark magic, Zoe, concerned about her, tries to talk with their boss Dr. Lorna about it, but Dr. Lorna mocks and blows off Zoe's concerns. After Gwynn becomes possessed by the demon K'Z'K and dangles Dr. Lorna off the Empire State Building, Dr. Lorna fires Zoe, blaming her for what happened just because Zoe was friends with Gwynn.
  • Zoe has an unusually self-aware example when, after Riff incinerates her laundry, she goes to Gwynn and borrows a low-cut shirt that shows the curse tattoo on her upper chest. When Zoe's fellow students stare at her during a test, Zoe wants to "kill" Gwynn, but then remembers that she chose the shirt herself. Since she knows she can't "kill" herself, she decides she "can always kill Riff."
  • This becomes something of a mantra for Dr. Schlock late in the strip. He sees his entanglement and rise in Hereti Corp as the only options left to him due to other people's choices. He ignores that there are other choices he could have made, and that he himself initiated the events by experimenting with Aylee. His last line before he's destroyed by his own fail-safe is that Riff brought this on himself.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: Emil has been shown to be prone to this. For instance, he blames the teachers for his failure in the public school system after being taught by a Private Tutor that is implied to have coddled him. When he falls in a hole from ninety-year-old construction work, he blames the hole's location rather than the attention he was paying to where he was going. The only good news is that when Sigrun tells him he's not working fast enough while actually taking her frustration out on him, Emil sees right through it and rebuffs Sigrun's statement that she will finish the job faster than he will.
• In xkcd strip "Think Logically", an amateur Chess player who believes the only sensible strategy is always moving pieces towards the other player's king is beaten by a more experienced player, and decides the loss was caused by Chess being a badly-designed game.
• I'm the Grim Reaper: A common theme among sinners is that they blame society for being rotten to the core. It's left ambiguous as to whether or not they're right to blame society, although it is acknowledged they live in a Crapsack World.
• Unordinary: Something of a running theme with John following The Reveal. John either refuses or is psychologically incapable of owning up to his actions and how they affect everyone around him. He blames high-tiers for setting a horrible example for everyone beneath them and allowing mid-tiers to mercilessly bully low-tiers, but as Remi points out, John is secretly the strongest high-tier around, yet does nothing as well, a fact he refuses to acknowledge. The biggest example of his tendency towards this though is after Seraphina starts getting targeted by Joker copycats. Cecille tells him that students wouldn't be able to get away with this if John hadn't created the joker persona in the first place. John responds by angrily refusing to accept any responsibility in the matter, and instead places the blame on the students for being "trash" and on Sera for not having an ability to defend herself.
  • John somewhat has a point, however, in that the Royals seem to be focusing on moving on instead of actually apologizing for their contributions towards the school's violence, and John's descent and subsequent revenge spree on them.
• Weak Hero:
  • Jeongmu blames Gerard for him having to drop out of school, which is why his bullying escalates to such a deadly level (he sets the practise room for Gerard's band on fire, which leads to Gerard being scarred and hospitalised). The thing is, all Gerard did to Jeongmu was give him a single beating — and that was only in retaliation to Jeongmu picking on him. There was no reason that Jeongmu needed to drop out of school, he just did so because his fragile pride couldn't handle a little embarrassment.
  • Wesley blames all his problems on Gray humiliating him, ignoring that some of those problems (like his dropping grades) are obviously not Gray's fault, and also that Gray only humiliated him because he was complicit in Gray's friend getting bullied and hospitalised.
• When Principal Ashton of Selkie is forced to resign over his mishandling of a bullying incident, he takes no responsibility for his actions and instead blames the bullying victim to her face.
• Three out of the four Light Warriors in 8-Bit Theater:
  • Black Mage is a Card-Carrying Villain, but it's never his fault when things go bad for him personally. When White Mage tells him one of the many things wrong with him is that he thinks "a highly disfunctional relationship based exclusively on abuse" is friendship, he concludes "Dammit, Fighter, White Mage doesn't like me because you're a rotten friend."
  • Thief cannot be held responsible for anything, because it's written in everyone else's contract.
  • Red Mage is incapable of ever believing that his Insane Troll Logic plans could ever go wrong, and when they do it's clearly the fault of someone or something else. He's the second-most moral of the team (after Fighter, who just doesn't understand what's going on most of the time), but this largely means he's better at justifying his actions.
  • But the biggest example is Sarda, who blames the Light Warriors for mostly-inadvertently making his younger self suffer on a quest he sent them on, and gets round the issue by claiming it's a Stable Time Loop.
• Marry My Husband: Sumin never owns up to her mistakes ever. When the bullies confront her after realizing their tormenting of Jiwon was unwarranted, Sumin blames them even though she set them up. When Sumin's carelessness leads a customer to suffer from a peanut allergy, she throws Minhwan under the bus. After she's arrested for murdering her mother-in-law and attempting vehicular manslaughter on Jiwon (hitting Jihyeok/Huiyeon instead), she insists it's all Jiwon's fault.

Web Original

• A_J of AJCO is quick to place blame on those around her when she makes mistakes, and it's always Played for Drama. After Doctor Pi dies in the re-education suite she instantly turns to Egg, who was forced to make the final decision, and places the blame on her despite the fact that she didn't want to let it happen, and despite the fact that Kaja, Crez, and Req played an almost equal part in the affair. Egg immediately calls her out on it.
• DarkSydePhil! 97% of the time he plays a game and screws up or loses, he will blame the game on lag, a non-existent bug, or any number of other factors that don't involve him. If he's playing multiplayer, he almost always declares the one who beat to be a terrible player who must have cheated.
• Dimension 20 has Norman "Skipper" Takamori from the Starstruck Oddesey campaign. Captain of the Red Hot and the one employing the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that the rest of the cast plays, Norman is an objectively terrible captain, to the point that his body beng taken over by a parasitic Brain Slug is universally seen as an improvement by the rest of the crew, and constantly shiftsd the blame for problems caused by his incompetence onto his crew. In just the first couple of episodes, it's revealed that the Red Hot is in such a state of disrepair becasue he had a standing order to not perform even critically important maintinence and repairs on the ship because he didn't have the funds to pay for it, and also that the reaon he didn't have the funds was because he was such an abrasive Jerkass that absolutely no one who would pay even a halfway-decent amount of money wanted to hire him. In spite of this, he constantly blamed his crew whenever things went wrong.
• Friendship is Witchcraft deliberately parodies this with Twilight Sparkle. In this universe, she's a psychotic narcissist who only cares about becoming a princess; as such, she refuses to believe that anything she does is wrong, often blaming Spike for things she clearly messed up. One episode even goes into her memory and shows that she willfully misremembers things just to make Spike look bad.
• GameChap is a web series that, at the time of this update, has over twenty-two hundred videos. And in almost every single one of them, Bertie has set fire, crashed, obliterated, or blown up something. And after every incident, over twenty-two thousand incidents, he says one or both of the following:
  "It wasn't me!" "It has nothing to do with me at all!"
• On Game Grumps, if Arin screws up a puzzle or game he'll inevitably blame the game for being poorly designed, even if the game is designed well. Naturally he takes a fair amount of ribbing from his fans for it, some lighthearted and some a lot more caustic. Let it not be said though that he's not wholly self-aware of this, as they've discussed a fair bit in the past and poke fun at it themselves, such as when Arin is getting his ass whupped by Sullivan on their stream of Dead Rising 2:
  Arin: This sucks! This is like the worst game in the world!
  Danny: (laughs) Oh boy, here we go...
  Arin: No, no, like just this fight.
• Tsunomaki Watame and Hoshinova Moona of hololive have this as running gags:
  • Watame has her catch phrase (悪くないよね？/Warukunai yo ne?/Not my fault, right?) that she first used when she (didn't) apologize for having a weak internet connection. She has since used it in other situations that call for it.
  • In her channel's second video, Moona "apologized" and said that it's not her fault. She then followed it up by giving two rules: (1) Moona is never wrong, and (2) If Moona is wrong, go back to rule one. Funnily enough, this one was also due to internet issues.
• LowTierGod: To hear him say it, he never actually loses. His opponents use "meta" characters, or their "sloppy" playing throws him off. He once broke his controller out of rage, and blamed his opponent for making him throw it.
• MTG Remy: In "Lucky", one of the players admits that he never practices much, but still blames his losses on his opponent getting lucky.
• Both Gaea and Omega Zell from Noob are good at putting blame on other people, especially each other. Sparadrap, actually responsible for part of the things that go wrong, is the most frequent recipient of the blame early in the series. The trope comes into play when Gaea complains about the guild fund being empty despite generally taking more out of it than she contributes, or Omega Zell simply screws up and won't admit it.
• Origins SMP: Fundy will usually try to deny if he's stolen anything, even when it's incredibly obvious he's done just that. On one occasion, Fundy was killed as mentioned above running away from Philza, which lead to some of his dropped items entering Philza's inventory, causing Fundy to immediately shift the blame onto Philza and immediately assume he's trying to start a competing scamming business of his own, even though Philza is usually called in to fight crime on the server, which Fundy was doing.
• SuperMarioLogan:
  • Shrek blames Mario for his own faults, such as clogging up the toilet and using all the toilet paper.
  • In "Bowser's Goldfish!", after Toad flushes Bowser's pet goldfish, Charleyyy Jr. down the toilet and CJ doesn't come back up, Toad blames Bowser Junior for not having a toilet with a fish-catching mechanism.
  • In "Jeffy's Bedtime!", Jeffy blames his pooping his pants on the (nonexistent) monster who lives under his bed.
  • In "Bowser Junior's Nintendo 3DS", Junior blames his broken 2DS on Brooklyn T. Guy, despite Junior breaking it in the first place.
  • In "Jeffy Sleepwalks!", Jeffy is completely convinced that he did not sleepwalk and make a mess.
• Title Pending:
  • In the first episode whenever there's an issue, Bayden blames Cameron for doing everything wrong despite causing it in the first place.
  • In the third episode Bayden puts all responsibility for decisions in the show on Cameron, instead of Alyssa or himself. Later he tell the auditions were Alyssa's idea, and he was against it (he wasn't), and the cameraman (apparently Alyssa) outright gives him a middle finger.
• Plenty of villains in the Whateley Universe, but the Troll Bride may be the leading contender. Her son Nephandus even warns her repeatedly, but she never listens to him (or anyone else) and then blames everyone else (including Chaka, whom she attacked with superpowers) for failing in her plan, losing a cherished keepsake, and getting banished from Whateley Academy her son's school. Her son does this too. Wonder where he picked up the habit?
  • Hekate does this at every conceivable turn, her issues redoubled by the folks who're playing her all along — Don Sebastiano and the Bastard in particular. To be fair to her, she couldn't possibly have guessed that Generator was a Regen 5 or 6 with a very nasty streak. But her loss against Diamondback in the combat sims could have been avoided had she just managed to reel in that Chronic Backstabbing Disorder of hers for a moment or two, yet she still plots revenge immediately.
• During the Yogscast Minecraft Series playthrough of Voltz, Sjin gets all of the blame from Sips for spawning in a Red Matter Bomb for the purposes of mining copper and nearly destroying the world. While Sjin was responsible for spawning the bomb in and setting it off, Sips had also been spawning stuff in and actively encouraged Sjin to use it, equally ignorant as to its effects.

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