In one episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the "Centipede" organisation is looking to experiment on a pyrokinetic in order to improve their Extremis formula so that their future soldiers won't explode. They start by kidnapping him which ends up getting S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention. Then they do convince him to work with them, but when they find out it's his platelets that makes him fireproof, they render him unconscious and take them by force leading to his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. This is more jarring as they had already paid a hacker a million dollars for a list of superhumans. Couldn't they just have told Chan the truth about the experiments and paid him for the trouble?
Best Friends Whenever: It's pretty obvious that Janet Smythe wants to get her hands on Shelby and Cyd, yet she should know better than to leave their arms free allowing them to jump. She did design the future lab, but it's poorly made.
In Beverly Hills, 90210 Jeremy catches Annie breaking into his house to steal a necklace he bought after she had had to pawn it (the necklace is a key part of the contested inheritance Jeremy's grandmother left to Annie in her will and she needs it to prove she deserves the money). Rather than simply call the cops and have Annie arrested there and then (he hadn't broken any laws while she definitely had) Jeremy locks her in his bedroom and indulges in Evil Gloating about how he hated his grandmother allowing Annie to record him on her Blackberry and send the message to her lawyers.
In "Beauty and the Beasts", Pete Clarner is beating up Buffy and has her at his mercy when a feral Angel shows up and attacks him. After a brief fight, Pete tosses Angel aside, but doesn't make sure he's actually down before turning back to Buffy; Angel takes advantage of his distraction to throttle Pete with the chains binding his wrists and snap his neck.
In "The Freshman", Sunday has the better of Buffy for most of the episode, even managing to sprain her arm. When she seemingly has Buffy at her mercy, she deliberately breaks Buffy's Class Protector Award under the belief that it would demoralize her further. Instead, Sunday only pisses Buffy off enough to get her to pull off a Heroic Second Wind and dust her.
Buffy: When you look back at this, in the three seconds it takes to turn to dust, I think you'll find the mistake was touching my stuff.
In every one of his appearances, Ethan Rayne shows up in Sunnydale and stirs up some trouble, and decides to stay and admire the result of his actions for kicks, which always gives Buffy and the Scoobies enough time to track him down, beat him up, and put a stop to it. In his last TV appearance, "A New Man", he even lampshades it:
Ethan: I've gotta learn to just do the damage and leave town. It's the "stay-and-gloat" that gets me every time.
Brennen is generally quite cunning, except that he can never quite figure out that leaving Michael unattended for any length of time is a bad idea.
Larry however seemed to have learned from this; in one episode he said he wasn't letting Michael out of his sight because he knew Mike would do something to sabotage his plan.
Peter Fleming (AKA Chess) hires a duo of assassins to kill The Cape. They fail but find out his Secret Identity. When one of them meets with Fleming, he is about to give him a flash-drive with their research, when Fleming loses his temper and fires them. Being a professional, the assassin is no longer obligated to help Fleming, so he gives the flash-drive to the Cape. All Fleming had to do was wait 2 seconds, and he would've had the Cape by the balls.
In Caprica, Diego is ordered by the Holy Mother to kill Lacey and Make It Look Like an Accident. Instead of killing her in a clean and deniable way as ordered, he can't resist the impulse to play a sadistic power game, and tries to force her lover Odin to kill her as a Deadly Graduation. This inevitably gets Diego killed instead, and Lacey is so upset that she sets a horde of killer robots on the entire Soldiers of the One leadership. Nice one, Diego.
The Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future episode "The Mirror in Darkness" has Dread using a fake Power to trick survivors into unwitting digitization. The first time we see him, it's convincing to us. But the second time, we know the plot, and the real Power is waiting for him. The fake then suddenly yells his head off, and generally acts like a dick, before the real Power shows up.
Chuck: After his Face–Heel Turn in "Chuck Versus the Other Guy", Daniel Shaw has Chuck at gunpoint when he's about to kill Chuck's partner/girlfriend Sarah, but decides to spare him and doesn't even disarm him, seemingly working on the same assumption as everyone else (both in-and-out-of-universe) that Chuck isn't able to shoot to kill. However, about a week earlier Shaw has issued a kill order on a traitor with Chuck as the trigger man. Knowing Chuck's squeamishness about killing, Shaw has Sarah relay the order, deducing that the only way Chuck would comply is if he thinks he's doing it for her. In the end it's Chuck's friend Casey who kills the traitor, but everyone else thinks Chuck did it, meaning Shaw has no reason to think he was wrong. So as far Shaw knows, he's not only threatening the only thing Chuck would kill for but already has, and yet he's somehow as surprised as everyone else when Chuck, out of other options, actually three-taps him in the chest.
Pick aDoctor Whovillain. AnyDoctor Whovillain. Special mention must go to the Master, however, who even originally had a Beard of Evil and is explicitly more interested in messing with the Doctor than actually ruling the world. Michelle Gomez's incarnation described the two of them trying to kill each other to be "sort of our texting."
The Doctor: You'd delay an execution to pull the wings off a fly.
Game of Thrones: While many events were beyond their control, there were more than a few times that the Lannisters and friends screwed themselves over. (MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Highlights include:
Lord Tywin Lannister's and Queen Regent Cersei Lannister's spiteful and, often, rather petty abuse they give to their very competent relative (son and brother, respectively) Tyrion Lannister for the crimes of "murder" and being a supposed Depraved Dwarf, the latter of which is slightly true, but nonetheless exaggerated by the pair (the effect of Tyrion constantly being ostracized and mocked while his often stunning successes are downplayed and dismissed leads to him striking out against the ungrateful bastards. This directly leads to the family's downfall.
Tywin revealing to Tyrion, for no other reason than to be an asshole, that Tyrion's first wife is actually a former whore who Tywin then gives to his men to be raped/paid for sex while Tyrion watches (leading to Tyrion's eventual cynicism and bitterness, his aforementioned outcast status, and to some very long-term bad blood).
Tywin giving Tyrion a Kangaroo Court trial after Cersei accuses him of killing Joffrey because he was at the scene of the crime, which was a blatantly obvious Frame-Up job by some unknown third party (leading to Tyrion's breakdown and setting him up for execution).
And finally, Tywin's actions when Tyrion goes to confront him after being set free by his brother, Ser Jaime Lannister, and his friend, Lord "Master of Whisperers" Varys: Upon stumbling across Tyrion's ex-girlfriend Shae (another prostitute), in his father's bed she freaks out and attacks him with a knife which forces him to kill her. Tywin (while taking a shit on the toilet) decides to mock Tyrion (after the aforementioned ex's death) even as Tyrion is pointing a crossbow at his chest. Yeah...
Season 7 finale spoilers: Littlefinger. Oh, Littlefinger. Throughout the series, he pulls strings from the shadows, manipulating a great many people for, essentially, his depraved "love" for Catelyn Stark, and later her daughter Sansa. This ultimately earns him Sansa's distrust, but in Season 6 she is forced to rely upon him for aid, to which he responds by saving the day. As a result, he is once again welcome in her presence, even if she can never fully trust him again, and he ends up becoming her main advisor for a brief time. Unfortunately, Chronic Backstabbing Disorder strikes and he attempts to manipulate her and the rest of her family in such a manner as to have her sister killed/imprisoned and her brother removed from power, to be replaced by Sansa. Sansa saw through it. Had he done nothing but continue to support the Starks' forces, or even acted to mend the rifts between the three siblings, he would have regained more of the trust he'd lost - but by trying to break the family, he united them against him, and lost dearly.
Gossip Girl: Bart Bass is shocked that his evil plan to have a plane with his son Chuck explode failed. So he ends up in a roof-top argument that eventually ends with Bart falling off the roof. Instead of just faking Chuck dying from an overdose of the many many drugs that he takes or just getting a minion to shoot him.
The very first episode of In the Heat of the Night has a white woman be murdered and a black man arrested as the only suspect because he and the victim allegedly had bad blood between them and spoke the night she was murdered. Because there's no actual evidence against him and he has an alibi, he's set to walk in 24 hours... so the henchmen of the father of the actual murderer go to his cell and murder him... because... racism or something, and then go on to beat the hell out of Tibbs because... racism or something. These two acts are solely what implicates them in the original murder owing to the slapdash way they try to frame the murder as a suicide note They left the cell door open and, as Gillespie points out, who would kill themselves to get out of a night stay in a jail cell? and the fact that they'd have needed keys to get into the police station. The same keys the janitor wore on his belt the next day, and the same keys he stupidly wore while they attacked Tibbs which, naturally, Tibbs recognized. These people being henchmen of the father of the murderer gave Gillespie and Tibbs enough probable cause to investigate the actual murderer and find hard evidence that implicated him. Had they just sat back and done nothing, said suspect would have been released, and the original murder would have gone cold with no leads.
Fletcher "The Ice-Pick" Nix from Justified is sent by Arnett to rob Delmar Coates, a very wealthy man. Instead of wearing a mask, which he doesn't like to as he's "too pretty", he forces him to play a rigged dueling game and kills the pizza guy he sent to ref the game. Worse still his MO is known by the police, making both murders entirely pointless. When Nix is prevented from meeting up with Arnett, Nix kidnaps protagonist Raylan Givens' ex-wife Winona, and makes Raylan play his game, despite that fact that he has reason to go after Raylan but he has heard of Raylan's reputation and can't resist testing himself against him, rather than flee with the several hundred thousand dollars worth of watches he now has on his person.
Kamen Rider Kabuto: After having successfully manipulated the Riders into eliminating all of their enemies, in the final two episodes the Native Worms decide for no particular reason that they want to engage in an Assimilation Plot rather than coexist with humanity like they have for years beforehand, which turns the Riders against them and swiftly leads to their annihilation.
Kamen Rider Wizard: The White Wizard's entire plan essentially consists of being evil for no reason after the reveal near the end of the show that he was once an ordinary human who turned himself into a wizard by recreating magic out of science. This makes his goal throughout the show, to find four other wizards by driving people with latent magical talent to the edge of despair so that he can sacrifice them to resurrect his daughter, absurdly more complicated than it has to be.
Kamen Rider Build: Deliberately invoked with Evolto, an alien Planet Eater who engages in seemingly pointless acts of villainy for much of the last third of the show after having regained the ability to simply eat the planet and leave, claiming that he finds humanity too amusing to kill quickly. All of his random acts of villainy eventually turn out to be part of a scheme to complete a device which would make him even more powerful, something which the heroes have been unknowingly assisting with by stopping him. Unfortunately for Evolto, he ends up indulging in this act for so long that he becomes a sadist for real, and when the device is complete, he still keeps playing with his food, allowing the Riders the time they need to break it.
In Lois & Clark: Kal-El became the ruler of New Krypton to prevent Lord Nor from doing so. Lord Nor charged Kal-El with treason and a Kangaroo Court held under Kryptonian Law sentenced him to death. Right after Kal-El is led off, a Kryptonian bursts in and tells Nor that Metropolis refuses to surrender. Nor responds by vaporizing him with heat vision and ordering his men to destroy Metropolis. All of that is done in front of the chief prosecutor, leading him to a a massive Heroic BSoD. Then, another person comes to the prosecutor and points out the Trial by Combat law is still technically in the books...
This crowning jewel from Merlin. Morgana and Morgause's plan in "The Eye of the Phoenix" is to give Arthur a bracelet that will suck out his life force. What's so stupid about this? Nothing, only that it needs Morgana to light an effigy of Arthur, which she chooses to do in her unlocked bedroom at the exact hour of the night her maid Guinevere would come in to tidy up. When said maid finds her, she acts very suspiciously, and the next day, tries to make up for it by giving her the night off and making her more suspicious, thus leading to Gwen hiding in her room and discovering her in the act.
Murdoch Mysteries season 9 opener "Nolo Contendre" has former-Chief Constable Giles and George Crabtree remarking on why people are in prison, and it boils down to this concept. When George first cites prisoners act in a form of "rashness" that resulted in their crimes, Giles asks, "Or is it the inability to imagine the series of events that led them to their present circumstance and correctly assess its probability? Stupidity, Crabtree. Thought-stunting, bat-blind stupidity is the sine qua non of incarceration." Crabtree understands and then notes since both of them are prisoners too, they too suffered the same stupidity. Giles can only agree with the comment.
Heroic Neutral Emma Swan was perfectly willing to leave her biological son Henry with his adoptive mother Regina (The Evil Queen) after he tracked Emma down, but Regina shows off her Genre Blindness, her inability to simply keep her mouth shut, and this trope to convince Emma to stay in Storybrooke by suddenly threatening to "destroy" her if she has designs on Henry, making Emma question whether Henry's in the best hands he could be after all. Emma ends up The Chosen One that can break the curse that gave Regina her power in the first place.
Regina holds the ball several times during the first season. She believes Rumplestiltskin won't remember the deal he made with her to enact the Dark Curse, despite the fact that he created the curse so could easily make a loophole (which turns out to be that he regained his memories upon hearing Emma's name). She also attempts to frame Mary Margaret with his help, after he suggests something "tragic" should happen to Kathryn Nolan, and he uses those Exact Words to simply have Kathryn disappear for a while (abduction is tragic) then reappear at the last minute, and all the evidence leads to Regina. She holds it again in the penultimate episode and season finale, when she attempts to put Emma under the same sleeping curse she used on Snow White and gloats about how she's won. However, this backfires when Henry eats the turnover meant for Emma in order to prove to her it's poisoned, forcing Regina to team up with Emma to save him since Regina does love Henry, and the chain of events results in the Dark Curse being broken and most of the town baying for Regina's blood now that they remember what she did to them. Bear in mind that at the point Regina gave Emma the poisoned turnover, Emma had just finished telling Regina that she was planning to leave town because she'd come to the conclusion that her presence and the constant fighting between her and Regina was doing Henry more harm than good. All Regina has to do is let Emma go instead of trying to clean up loose ends, and she wins. Say it with me.
Both of the Big Bads of the first two series are otherwise very clever, and (seemingly) nearly beat Sherlock, but each makes a stupid and critical mistake that directly leads to his death:
Moriarty (Big Bad of Series 1 & 2): It appears that Sherlock will have to kill himself to save his friends from assassination, since Moriarty states that this is the only way to call off the snipers. However, in his Evil Gloating, he gets carried away and adds "I'm certainly not going to do it." Sherlock then realizes that Moriarty himself can call off the snipers, and convinces him that he'll do whatever it takes to make him stop the executions. This leads to Moriarty killing himself to prevent Sherlock from doing so. Even though we find out later that Sherlock had a plan to fake his own death, Moriarty's mistake was what lead to his death.
Moriarty could be considered a form of Pyrrhic Victory as his suicide does actually force Sherlock to do what he wants even if Sherlock gets out of it and allows him to die on his own terms while knowing there's Eurus's plan on the back burner to boot. Magnussen, though, is a grade-A example of the writers staple-gunning the Villain Ball to a character's hand, as up to that point he's actually been winning by wits and the only way out for Sherlock is for him to abruptly switch alignments to Chaotic Stupid and giving away the fatal information.
Ba'al can't seem to make up his mind if he wants to have the Villain Ball or not. Half the time he's charging around like an idiot coming up with ridiculously complex and stupid plans to DESTROY THE UNIVERSE or somesuch nonsense, and then the other half of the time he's acting as the CEO for a major company and fully intends to just live on Earth peacefully. It then gets even more ridiculous when SG-1 force him to take action and the entire thing dissolves into a massive I-don't-know-what-the-fuck-is-happening with the end result revealing Baal actually really likes the Tau'ri and would probably quite happily be a fairly good ally, if we'd just stop shooting him. Then when the SGC realises this and attempts to join forces with Ba'al, he backstabs them. Scary thing is, compared to the other System Lords, Ba'al is the smart one.
The Goa'uld as a whole carry individual Villain Balls. It's a side-effect of the sarcophagus technology they use to achieve immortality, which compromises their capacity for rational thought. The existence of the Tok'Ra proves that without the sarcophagus, they still have arrogance in spades, but they're not evil as a whole.
In general, Goa'uld communication orbs double as villain balls. Since only the bad guys use them, they are an easy way to make distinctions. Once a spy in the Tok'ra was uncovered because Jack O'Neil had seen him with such an orb in his possession, which the Tok'ra don't use because the network isn't secure from the Goa'uld.
In Stargate: Continuum, Baal plans to alter the timeline and use his foreknowledge in order to conquer the rival System Lords and the rest of the galaxy. This plan works out wonderfully, but instead of conquering Earth like his underlings want, he decides to pull out a cell phone he brought with him from the other timeline and call the US President to arrange for lunch. His underlings don't take too kindly to him wearing a villain ball and kill him to deal with the humans the ol' fashioned way.
Suppose you've formed a cult using a brainwashing chemical, but any electrical shock will free someone and render them permanently immune. Do you A) take reasonable steps to keep your cultists from unnecessary exposure to electricity, or B) arm all your minions with electricity-shooting alien stun weapons, so that any idiot who shoots themselves in the foot will be free and armed with an easy way to free everyone else. If you chose B), congratulations, you must be Seth!
The Xindi Council spend most of the third season juggling this. The most obvious example however was their decision to prematurely deploy a prototype superweapon to attack Earth, instead of waiting just another year to get their full-scale Planet Destroyer ready, which becomes even more ridiculous since we later learn that they've been building this thing for decades already! Instead, their foolishness and impatience gives humanity enough time to learn of the Xindi's existence, track down their weapon and avert the disaster. Oops.
Where the prime universe Jonathan Archer is willing to learn and experiences significant character development as he leads Enterprise in making contact with other races, his Mirror Universe counterpart is an arrogant individual who is often motivated to gain the respect he feels he is 'entitled' to while constantly aware that he only inspires his followers out of fear. A particular example is when he stages a mutiny against his captain and then tries to ask the man for the identity of the spy the admiralty placed on Enterprise; as the captain points out to Archer, the admiralty would hardly tell him who the spy was in such circumstances.
In Stranger Things, Agent Connie Frazier murders Benny Hammond just because he met Eleven, even though he believed her cover story and was cooperating with her. While the intent was probably to prevent knowledge of Eleven's existence from spreading, it actually had the opposite effect, as the investigation into Benny's death is what led to Hopper finding out about her. For bonus points, later in the series when Hopper is threatening to expose Hawkins' Lab, it's mentioned that they can't just kill him too because a second death this soon would be too suspicious. Shame they wasted the first one, huh?
Every villain on Supernatural has underestimated the Winchester brothers, and every single one of them has ended up dead or otherwise incapacitated. Crowley is the only one so far who is smart enough not to succumb to hubris and takes them seriously as a threat.
Crowley: "Don't worry about them?" What, like Lucifer didn't worry? Or Michael, or Lilith, or Alastair, or Azazel didn't worry? Am I the only game piece on the board who DOESN'T underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?!
Of course, Crowley isn't totally immune to this. In Season 6, he decides to play Rules Lawyer with Bobby's contract, using the fine print to avoid giving him back his soul. Of course this gets the Winchesters on his case, with them going as far as learning his human identity, which gives them a way to perma-kill him. To make matters worse: 1) Crowley usually advises against swindling people during deals specifically to make himself seem more trustworthy, and 2) he pulled this all off at a time when he most wanted to be operating in secret and his silent partner, Castiel, has to bail his ass out.
In the third season of The Walking Dead, the Governor has already grabbed hold of the villain ball after Glenn and Maggie are captured by Merle, he's fully prepared to prepared to go into the prison and wipe out Rick's group because...? However, then Rick and co. break into Woodbury and rescue them with Michonne's help, who then goes off on her own, kills the Governor's zombified daughter and stabs out his eye, meaning It's Personal and he grabs the ball so hard.
