What An Idiot / Sonic X

Sonic's anime isn't immune from its characters making stupid decisions. In some cases, these characters go full on Galaxy Brain.

Main page for the series here.

Season 1

• Episode 1
  • Late one night, Sonic the Hedgehog, along with his pals Tails, Amy and Knuckles blast into the evil Doctor Eggman's base to save the seven Chaos Emeralds before Eggman uses them for his Energy Amplifier and rescue his friends Cream & Cheese. Though when he gets into the room, with the help of a Power Ring, Eggman sends one of his robots to take care him.
    You'd Expect: Considering that Cream and Cheese are in the area, Sonic would not get too reckless.
    Instead: Sonic decides to get flashy and dupes the robot into shooting the machine.
    The Result: The machine malfunctions and creates a massive Chaos Control that whisks Sonic and gang to Earth. No wonder Knuckles has a huge hate-bone for Sonic...
• Episode 5
  • While on the streets, Knuckles runs into Eggman. Who immediately goes on his knees asking and begging for Knuckles' help, telling him that Sonic intended to use the Chaos Emeralds to travel through time and space. He also adds that he simply wants to live his life quietly and peacefully on his homeworld, but Sonic won't believe him and that he doesn't wish to go back; Sonic also snatched the Chaos Emerald from the doctor so that he couldn't use them to reverse Chaos Control's effects.
    You'd Expect: Considering that he's been tricked before by this guy in the past, Knuckles would either shrug what he says off as nonsense, or not listen to him.
    Instead: He falls for it completely.
  • Later, Chris, Tails and Amy see a TV report about a located Chaos Emerald around Silver Valley as there's been confirmation of energy spikes similar to the ones that happened the day before. So they go to check it out.
    You'd Expect: Tails to bring the Chaos Emerald as it can work as a Tracking Device to find it and to possibly make sure it's actually there.
    Instead: He doesn't. And that causes them to get surprised by Eggman due to getting caught off-guard by his E-47 Pumpty.
    You'd Then Expect: They run away immediately.
    Instead: They wait a second, then run.
    The Result: The E-47 catches them with no problem and traps them inside of itself. Fortunately, Tails is able to reprogram it so that their holding cell would be lifted and they would be freed, and was just about to be finished when Amy gets impatient.
    You’d Then Expect: Amy to wait just a few more minutes and let Tails do his work so they could be freed.
    Instead: Despite his warnings not to do so, she smashes it in with a hammer, causing it to explode while everyone is inside. This causes Sonic to find out his friends are trapped in E-47 during his clash with Knuckles and he goes to save them, but Eggman threatens to off them unless Sonic hands over his Chaos Emerald, and to make sure Sonic can't save them, he plans to use Sonic's weakness of water to his advantage.
    You'd THEN Expect: Eggman to move the robot towards the middle of the lake and have it hover over it.
    Instead: He launches it over to the other side of the lake they're next to.
    The Result: Sonic immediately exploits the obvious flaw in this plan by running around the lake and freeing his friends in about ten seconds. (Never mind the fact that Sonic has been shown multiple times to be fast enough to run across water...)
• Episode 10
  • Tails has two Chaos Emeralds in his possession and Eggman takes one of them. When he gets surrounded by Sonic and friends, Eggman proposes a game of baseball to see who gets the emerald.
    You'd Expect: Considering that it's incredibly likely that Eggman will have an advantage in said baseball game because of the kinds of things he's done in the past, Sonic and his friends would instead decide to easily take the emerald by force so they can be one step closer to getting home faster.
    Instead: They take Eggman's offer and play baseball.
    The Result: They lose the Chaos Emerald.
    Even Worse: Knuckles explained to everyone that playing baseball with Eggman is not a good idea, especially when a powerful gem is on the line, but they refuse to listen and instead mock him into going in with the plan.
• Episode 24
  • During a battle with Eggman's giant robot ostrich on a ranch, a small microchip is lodged in Sonic’s ear. This immediately begins to effect the hedgehog’s behavior in odd ways, as he constantly picks at his ear. Soon, the chip causes Sonic to uncontrollably run.
    You'd Expect: Eggman would take advantage of Sonic being in such a compromised state. That he’d send a robot to attack his friends while Sonic is in unable to help, place increasingly dangerous obstacle in the hedgehog’s path, do something to try and kill him.
    Instead: He sits back and watches everything from a distance. In fact, all the villain really does in this episode is eat, grabbing noodles with chopsticks and munching on a rice cake.
    

Season 2

• Shadow Saga
  • After the above incident in the aforementioned Sonic Adventure 2, Chris, Chuck, and Tanaka arrive on the scene in time to witness the fight between Sonic and Shadow during their first encounter. Shortly afterwards, the police come in to apprehend Sonic, still mistaking him for Shadow.
    You'd Expect: At least one of them steps up and says something about the black hedgehog that Sonic was just fighting; after all, with new information, Sonic could be seen as merely a suspect instead of the primary one.
    Instead: Nobody says anything, and Sonic gets arrested.
  • Later, Chris and Tanaka go to Prison Island to save Sonic and learn more about Shadow. Tanaka goes to check out the place and tells Chris to stay put.
    You'd Expect: Chris to listen and stay put. He should know his friends enough (especially Tails, Amy, and Tanaka) to figure they'd get Sonic out of prison and escape, right?
    Instead: He climbs Prison Island because he's going through a "Sonic is my best friend ever" phase and goes to look for him. Granted, he doesn't know there's a bomb, but still.
    Shortly After: Chris eventually manages to find Shadow, and desperately wants to prove Sonic's innocence.
    You'd Expect: Chris stay right where he is at the time, let Shadow use Chaos Control (which by the way, he bore witness to), and let everyone know what he saw. After all, now that he's seen Shadow twice now, he has a bit more visual evidence to back everything up.
    Instead: Chris runs up and grabs Shadow as he performs Chaos Control, and gets teleported along with him and Rouge to the Space Colony ARK.
    The Result: Chris is kidnapped, Tanaka is beyond distressed, and Sonic is still in hiding with no progress being made towards his innocence by the next episode.
• Egg Moon Saga
  • After Eggman blows up half the moon during the show's retelling of Sonic Adventure 2, he replaces the destroyed half of the moon with robotics and artificial terrain he developed, seemingly to make amends. Shortly after this, the new Egg Moon gets stuck right in front of the sun, causing a permanent solar eclipse. Eggman claims that the Egg Moon has shut down and become incapable of moving itself, and builds a series of artificial light sources for the planet.
    You'd Expect: Anyone with a basic knowledge of astronomy to become suspicious. After all, objects don't necessarily need the ability to move under their own power to remain in orbit, and the Egg Moon wouldn't be able to remain in one position without some form of propulsion, lest it get pulled into the Earth by the planet's gravity, a fact that completely contradicts Eggman's claims. Hell, Sonic realizes all of the above and doesn't bother telling anyone because he assumes that they'd be able to figure it out themselves.
    You'd Also Expect: The humans to not trust what Eggman says, consider he's done NOTHING good on his time on Earth and was the whole reason the moon got blew up in the first place. And him having a sudden change of heart after not being arrested for at least a good while, and so quickly (he repaired it less than a week after the Shadow Saga) is nothing but suspicious
    Instead: With the exception of Sonic, everyone sees Eggman's actions as benign, and they treat Sonic as a villain when he starts going round and destroying the light sources.
    As a Result: Eggman continues on his campaign to take over the world virtually unopposed as people allow mild hypnotic devices into their homes.
    You'd Then Expect: When no one sees a problem, Sonic speak up on the matter. The explanation is pretty straightforward.
    Instead: Sonic doesn't say anything, assuming that everyone knew the science.
    The Result: Sonic gets a bad reputation for going rogue to destroy the sunshine balls.
    Overall: Even if you concede that the town was mildly hypnotized by the sunshine balls and that Sonic's friends trusted he was acting out for a reason, the whole saga would have ended much sooner had someone bothered to get a straight answer out of Sonic. Poor Communication Kills.
• Emerl Saga
  • Following the events of the Egg Moon Saga, Eggman and his henchbots are in prison for all the terrorist level crimes they committed. Then in episode 43, due to Sonics popularity a lot of new household machinery is breaking down thanks to factory workers leaving their jobs to follow Sonics lifestyle, prompting heavy demand for repairs.
    You'd Expect: That although he has an IQ of 300, nobody would even dare think of letting Eggman work on repairing the broken devices. By this point in the series, he's made it clear to the world that he can craft deadly weapons and machinery that could give even the military a real challenge to take down.
  • Instead: For some reason, the prison allows Dr. Eggman to work on fixing the broken household objects unsupervised, allowing him to secretly build an army of sentient killer machines. Station Square is left in chaos and everyone ends up in harms way as a consequence.
    

Season 3

• Episode 53:
  • In space, Sonic is fighting an unknown new enemy named Dark Oak, someone who's so strong that not even SUPER SONIC can defeat.
    You'd Expect: Sonic to at all least keep fighting until he has no strength.
    Or: Sonic to make a retreat with the Chaos Emeralds with him to warn the others.
    Instead: Sonic decides to make a retreat but releases all the Chaos Emeralds across the galaxy WHILE STILL IN HIS SUPER FORM.
    The Result: Sonic ends up falling down to the planet defeated, which, if Eggman didn't save him, could've killed him. Putting him in more danger than necessary AND lowering everyone's chances at defeating Dark Oak. Smooth move, Sonic. For added insult to injury, even Knuckles calls him out on it later on.
• Episode 63:
  • Sonic and Eggman decided to team up in order to infiltrate a heavily guarded Metarex fortress because the last two Chaos Emeralds are inside (at this point, Sonic's group have 3 Chaos Emeralds and Eggman's group has 2 Chaos Emeralds). So, they call it a truce and go off with this plan: Shadow, Rouge and Chris are to destroy the defenses from the inside with Chaos Control, and the rest will do a free-for-all to get the last two Emeralds.
    Because: This is Eggman they're teaming up with, who is a backstabbing bitch, Sonic and the gang should be very on guard with their Emeralds, to make sure that Eggman doesn't get his grubby gloves on them.
    You'd Expect: The gang to bring only one Chaos Emerald with them, as the show has shown that a Chaos Emerald can work as a Tracking Device to find the other Emeralds. So if Eggman was to backstab them (which he does), he wouldn't have all of them.
    Instead: They decide instead to bring ALL OF THEIR EMERALDS, the only difference is that Sonic and Knuckles hold 2 Emeralds, and Amy and Cosmo hold 1.
    Then: Eggman orders his henchbots to put hacker chips on their ships that can cause their engines to stop.
    You'd Expect: Someone to notice and call them out.
    Instead: They don't.
    The Result: They ended up making Eggman's backstabbing job even easier.
• Episode 73:
  • Shadow breaks into the Blue Typhoon at night to try to kill Cosmo. Chris and Sonic try to help but end up getting knocked out in the former's case and in the latter, pretty beaten up. Sonic then askes Shadow: "You mind tellin' me what this is all about?"
    You'd Expect: Shadow to explain to Sonic why he wants to kill Cosmo.
    Instead: Shadow says, "I have a reason, but I'm not going to tell you!".
    The Result: Shadow ends up making his job harder than it should have been, leading him to go to long measures (even to the point of removing his Limiters) to just to try kill Cosmo. He ends up failing in the end.