Failure Is The Only Option / Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball has Anais' attempts at making friends. Usually anyone she attempts to befriend is either driven away by her lack of social skills or if they actually get along with her it turns out there's something wrong with them. The one exception being "The Friend", where Anais does manage to make a friend, though he has to leave at the end. In "The Buddy", she does finally manage to make friends with Jamie.
• American Dad!: All of Steve's attempts to lose his virginity will fail. One particular instance has Steve meet a girl who's attracted to him immediately and her father is perfectly okay with Steve having sex with her, as long as he uses protection. Should have been a sure thing, right? Well, the father asked to meet Steve's parents first and Stan just happens to be battling a crack addiction. Stan screws the whole thing up by trying to have oral sex with the father in exchange for crack money. Once Stan checks out of rehab, Steve swears eternal hatred for Stan.
  • Subverted in Season 13 where he finally gets some as Stan gives him The Talk while sword-fighting the girl's father. Additionally, Steve is shown to have a Ridiculously Successful Future Self who has no problem finding a date.
• Ballmastrz: 9009: The Leptons are bar none the worst players of The Game, and most of the first season is them either getting curb-stomped by another team or nearly winning and throwing it away at the last second. They avert it at the end of the season when Gaz unintentionally gives them a boost in confidence needed to defeat her former team.
• Beavis and Butt-Head will never ever "score" with the ladies. Not without reason, as the two are cartoonishly repulsive, moronic, and lecherous.
• Blaze and the Monster Machines: Crusher will never win first place in a race, and Blaze will always get past his cheats thanks to his quick-thinking and teamwork.
• Challenge of the Super Friends - Goal: Catch the Legion of Doom. They always escape via some ridiculous method, sometimes not even really escaping, just turning invisible in front of them or slooowly pushing a button to teleport away.
• Class of the Titans- Goal: Defeat Cronus. As it is, the heroes tend to just defeat the monsters he sends their way.
• In Crash Canyon it takes place at the bottom of a massive canyon where an entire community of people have well, crashed and survived and constantly try to find ways to escape. (Though oddly no-one seems to have investigated this location where at least 30 people have mysteriously gone missing, but then again one of the survivors is a cop) But seeing as this show is essentially a spiritual successor to Gilligan's Island, all the ingenious or wacky attempts at escape are foiled in the most goofy or horrendously inconvenient manners.
• Dastardly & Muttley in Their Flying Machines: - Goal: Catch That Pigeon!
  • Subverted in the episode "Stop Which Pigeon?", in which Dastardly uses a Yankee Doodle Pigeon doppelganger to fool the General into thinking they caught him. Lampshaded and then averted in the same episode when Dastardly catches the pigeon diving into a flying pool of water (what Iwao Takamoto wouldn't think of) but then letting him go when Dastardly learns he can't swim.
  • Subverted in two comic book stories where they do catch Yankee Doodle Pigeon, but there were twists to them. One story had Dick and Muttley tasked with obtaining Yankee Doodle's satchel while the other had them luring him over to their side during a truce, hypnotizing him and making him pose for pictures making him look like a traitor. Naturally, neither instance worked.
• Dave the Barbarian - The parents are out fighting random evil around the world, and they never call it a day. Apparently, they consider this to be much more important than raising their three children and running their kingdom.
  • In one episode, the parents actually DID achieve the goal of stomping out all evil everywhere in the world...except that MORE evil had popped up back in the place where they started, so they had to do it all over again!
• Zordrak and the Urpneys capturing The Dreamstone, or at least holding onto it long enough to do much constructive with it.
• Without this, Dungeons & Dragons (1983) wouldn't have been the same. Also, this is the source for a bunch of rumours about the Missing Last Episode, with fans claiming that the heroes had died and gone to Hell, and Uni, the Team Pet, is a demon whose only task is to prevent them from going away. Again, these are rumors.
  • The writer of the lost final episode did release the script onto the web — revealing quite a different set of Epileptic Trees. The D&D realm is a kind of Cosmic Zoo and all of its mythical creatures were stolen from their homeworlds and forced to coexist, including the kids - and Venger wasn't such a bad guy after all. Failure wasn't the only option in the end after all.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy. Usually the goal is a variation on getting jawbreakers/money/respect. Never works out due to wacky hijinks, and the few times they manage to get one of the three they lose it in the end of the episode.
  • Driven Up to Eleven in the episode "Don't Rain on My Ed", where the candy store is giving away free jawbreakers, and the Eds have ten minutes to get there before the place closes. Everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong: Sarah blocks them, Eddy accidentally runs into Kevin, who drops a piano on him later, the Kankers attack, they lose the Bamboo Technology vehicle that Edd makes, and when they finally reach the store, the sky opens up and they get pelted with a sudden storm of rain and driving winds. At this point, Edd laments that "Fate has conspired against us!" When Ed uses his brute strength to get past the storm, a completely random "chicken drive" overrides Ed's priorities and he dives into the crowd of chickens. Eddy gets out and has to make a Friend-or-Idol Decision: get a jawbreaker, or save Edd. He chooses the jawbreakers, but in the time it takes him to jump at the door, the place suddenly closes and he just ends up smacking against the door. Oh, and the storm then immediately ends. Just wow.
  • The Eds finally win their peers' respect in Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, and Kevin will give them jawbreakers, which is lampshaded.
• In The Fairly OddParents!: No matter how many times Timmy Turner tries to impress Trixie Tang with the target to get her affection, eventually, the episode ends with Trixie rejecting him. If anything, it's heavily implied he's not supposed to end up with her.
• The goal of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang was to get back to 1957, except when there was a Friend-or-Idol Decision, in which case some of them would reach 1957 but have to leave to save their friends.
• Grizzy and the Lemmings is built entirely around this, as the two parties are doomed to fail at everything they fight over (usually jars of Yummy chocolate spread) because of their squabbles. Bonus points for any case where Grizzy tries to win over the she-bear's affection, only for her to either blow him off or not remotely notice his efforts in the slightest.
• In Hey Arnold!, Arnold never ends up finding his parents (he simply just wasn't proactive about it at the time). Furthermore, Helga's secret infatuation with him is a pivotal theme in the show and in several episodes her secret is almost revealed... but of course, Arnold never does end up finding out. Even when Helga eventually confesses in the movie, the two later decide to blame it on the "heat of the moment" and forget all about it. Thankfully, production was revived for The Jungle Movie, which finally concluded the former part of Arnold's journey.
• Inspector Gadget - Does it three times: Doctor Claw's goal: Conquer the Earth (or at least a little bit of it, maybe buy a small country). Doctor Claw's secondary goal: Kill Gadget. Gadget's goal: Arrest Doctor Claw. None of these goals are ever achieved.
  • Gadget almost never actually solved a case himself either. Even in his rare bouts of competence it was Penny that stopped MAD ultimately, Gadget at his best assisted or rescued her while doing so (at his usual worst he just spent the majority of the episode on a wild goose chase). Of course, for all he and the majority of the population except Penny and Brain know, Success Is The Only Option for him.
• Invader ZIM has this in spades. The titular character's goal is to take over the Earth and be rid of Dib. But as Dib's sister Gaz aptly points out when asked why she never helps fight Zim: "He's so bad at it." Meanwhile, Dib wants to expose Zim as an alien, but pretty much every other human outside himself and Gaz are Too Dumb to Live or just find the notion absurd. Though considering the type of world they live in, the latter group is somewhat justified in assuming that the obvious alien is just a green-skinned child without ears. Somewhat.
• Johnny Bravo - Johnny will never succeed when it comes to women. This goes to the point that a few examples borderline on Diabolus ex Machina. Though one episode strongly implied, if not outright confirmed, that he isn't a virgin^note An Amazon tribe tried to use him as a virgin sacrifice to a volcano, but it exploded in implied disgust; he's even noticably offended at being called a virgin.; so maybe it's more accurate to say that Failure is the Only Option onscreen, because its funnier to watch him get shot down.
• Subverted in a Justice League episode where Superman must stop Lex Luthor from pressing the red button, but the only way to stop him then is to kill him. Luthor states that Superman needs him to be a hero, and that they will continue playing hero and villain forever, as this allows them to have a purpose. The subversion comes when Superman takes a third option and kills Lex Luthor. Then Batman says he's okay with it. Then we pull back to realize the whole thing just took place in The White House. Cue Alternate Dimension reveal!
• Kaeloo:
  • Poor Stumpy almost never wins anything, except in the pilot and a handful of other episodes. Even his suicide attempts fail.
  • Mr. Cat's attempts to confess to Kaeloo that he is in love with her usually end on a very bad note, either due to Kaeloo's obliviousness or poor execution on Mr. Cat's part.
• Kidd Video - Goal: Escape the sinister music executive and return to their own world. The fact that the band actually enjoyed the Flip Side made it certain that they wouldn't be trying too hard to get home.
• Mack & Moxy has Shelfish Sheldon, who despite his Catchphrase "Next time, Shelfish Sheldon shall succeed!" never actually does succeed in his goal of stealing the Great Helpee and taking its happiness. Only once does he even come remotely close by managing swipe the Helpee egg and trap the heroes in a very deep pit, only to end up losing it and get trapped in the pit himself.
• Lampshaded somewhat in Ruby-Spears' Mega Man, "2,000 Leaks Under the Sea": Wily's plan seems to be succeeding wonderfully, and Proto Man remarks that it's about time something went right for once. Then Mega Man shows up...
• The Owl House: Any attempt to cure Eda of her curse will either be a scam or unreachable.
• Phineas and Ferb - Neither Candace nor Doofenshmirtz will ever succeed in their goals, or at least not any kind of success that will affect the status quo. For example, in "Phineas and Ferb Get Busted" she finally busts the boys but then it turns out to be All Just a Dream. She succeeds again in "She's The Mayor", where she busts the boys, but then Doofenshmirtz's latest invention makes time go back to the beginning of the episode. Doofenshmirtz also succeeded in taking over the Tri-State Area in "Quantum Boogaloo". Said episode also featured Candace (a future version) busting the boys, but then she has to stop it from happening as it creates a dystopian future. The present version of Candace does it in the future, but then decides to simply keep on trying anyway.
  • The creators have stated that, if "Quantum Boogaloo" is taken as the canonical future of the characters (barring the various ways futures can be messed up, of course) she will never succeed in busting her brothers, but eventually learns to accept it.
  • The episode "The Doof Side Of The Moon" featured the boys making the tallest building ever that stretched to the Moon. It was literally said by one character that no force on Earth could make it disappear and it disappears anyway when Doof's Lunar-Rotate-inator causes the moon to rotate and drag the building away.
  • In "A Real Boy", Candace manages to get Linda to see the giant spring-loaded toy the boys have built... and then Linda gets zapped by Dr. Doofenshmirtz's "Forget-About-It-Inator". After this happens several times in a row, Candace ends up leaving when Linda blurts out the hypnotic code phrase that makes Candace want to stop busting the boys, and after getting hit by the Forget-About-It-Inator one last time, Linda wanders off before she can see the project again.
  • On the Doofenshmirtz front, the movie reveals that in Another Dimension, he actually has taken over the Tri-State Area.
  • Exploited by Candace in the movie, where she attempts to get her mom to see outside where robots from the alternate dimension are invading. She reasons that getting her mom to see them should make the robots disappear since her mom never sees what Phineas and Ferb have done. Ironically enough, in that scenario, it wouldn't have made any difference if she HAD seen them, because she would just have her memory erased with everyone else at the end.
  • In the episode "Backyard Hodge-Podge," Linda is able to well and truly see what the boys have made. Candace doesn't. Linda decides she is hallucinating from lack of sleep, as she has hallucinated twice already, and goes to bed.
• Pinky and the Brain - Goal: To Take Over the World, despite only being lab mice (with a ton of resources to go by, however...).
  • Success: They managed to bait the entire living populace to a duplicate Earth. Day 2 with Brain as leader they find that the original Earth is in the path of an asteroid, he and Pinky escape to the duplicate whilst the original is destroyed. New goal: Take over the duplicate Earth.
• Ready Jet Go!: No matter how many times Mitchell tries, he just can't successfully expose Jet, because in this universe, the identity of the Propulsions is apparently the Cassandra Truth.
• In Samurai Jack, Jack's attempts to return home always fail either due to Aku's interference or simply Jack's Chronic Hero Syndrome and refusal to let others sacrifice themselves for his goal. Likewise, Jack and Aku's attempts to kill each other always end in failure and this was even lampshaded by Aku in "Jack vs Aku". Jack finally succeeds in the end, but he loses the girl he loves, which would've otherwise prevented him from taking the opportunity had he known.
  • Of course, another thing Jack can never succeed at is getting a girl, because they always end up trying to harm or kill him.
• The Secret Saturdays. No matter how hard they try that can't seem to keep up with Argost, except for the handful of episodes where they come ahead. They finally succeeded in the last episode, obviously.
• Silver Surfer: The Animated Series - Goal: Find and return to Zenn-La. Would have been achieved in the first season finale if the producers hadn't decided to bank on a cliffhanger.
• The Smurfs - Goal: Kill the Smurfs. Sadly, Gargamel never got that chance. In the last season, the Smurfs were sucked into a time warp and spent the remainder of the series desperately trying to make their way back to Smurf Village. So it's two Sisyphean goals in one!
• Sonic Underground revolved around Sonic, Sonia, and Manic attempting to reunite with their mother at the proper time to defeat Robotnik, but the show never had a proper ending so it didn't happen.
• For most of SpacePOP the girls aren't even close to finding their parents, and when they do get opportunities to save them they don't succeed.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • To this day, he still can't pass his driving test. However, in some episodes and notably, the movie, he will settle on driving without a license.
    Mrs. Puff: Not even in your dreams, Mr. SquarePants!
  • Squidward unfortunately has yet to successfully move away and/or receive recognition for his artistic and musical talents, let alone earn any portion of happiness as long as he remains affiliated with SpongeBob and Patrick.
  • The amount of times that Plankton has attempted to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula is nearly endless, yet, no matter how many times he tries, and no matter how close he gets to succeeding, the formula will eventually fall out of his hands one way or another.
• Street Sharks - Goal: Find their dad, get the Mad Scientist arrested, get turned human again. None of that happens. One episode has them temporarily turn human, but they decide that they like being sharks better, since they can fight off the evil mutants. There are rumors of an episode in which they nearly meet their dad and he leaves them a note saying that he'll see them soon, but they never actually find him in the series. The last few episodes actually do have Dr. Paradigm exposed and arrested, but he escapes.
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - Goal: For Mario and Luigi to get back home to Brooklyn. While this was mentioned as the reason the four heroes were traveling all over the vast multiverse, it's not a frequent topic of discussion in most episodes.
  • There was one episode where Mario and Luigi did get back to Brooklyn once, only for Bowser to follow them and invade, which causes the Princess and Toad to go to Brooklyn and attempt to help the Mario Bros. Mario and Luigi returned to the Mushroom World after that. Another episode also showed Mario and Luigi having one chance of returning home, only for them to pass it up since they couldn't simply leave the Princess behind, even though she wanted them to go after she got captured by Bowser.
  • In a piece of irony, in the show's sequel, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, the characters were frequently able to visit "the Real World". By then, though, Mario and Luigi had apparently given up their old goal of returning to Brooklyn and were comfortable living in Toad's house.
• TaleSpin Goal: For Baloo to buy his beloved plane, the Sea Duck, back from Becky. This actually happens more than once, but in every case he's forced to give it back by the end of the episode. In fact, in more than one episode Baloo acquires a huge amount of money, more than enough to buy back the Sea Duck, but is later forced to pay the EXACT same amount to someone else to settle a bill. Another he actually buys back the Sea Duck but gives it back out of guilt after Rebecca's business falls apart without him, implying he is doomed to failure willingly or not.
  • Also the Sky Pirates getting past Cape Suzette's security to plunder the city. They actually succeeded in the pilot thanks to the Lightning Gun however.
• In almost every original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles season, Shredder and Krang's goal is to free the Technodrome from wherever in the universe it's trapped. It's always in the season finale or next season opener that they succeed, only to get it trapped somewhere else.
  • The Turtles are essentially victims of this trope as well, as Shredder and his minions always escape through the dimensional portal or transport module, thus avoiding being brought to justice. (Just how many episodes climaxed with "they got away again?")
  • There was also the goal of Master Splinter to return to human form. Happened once, but he was back by the end of the episode.
• The Venture Bros. makes a living off this trope with nearly everyone. Not only are the villains meant to fail, but the main protagonists are basically failures themselves, except Brock (and he's got some failures himself). There is a whole section on Wikipedia about how according to Word of God, the theme of failure is very key.
• In Wacky Races Dick Dastardly will never win, because he always cheats, since one episode was shown to have him win only to have the trophy taken away from him because he cheated. Yet he continues to cheat anyway. Funny thing is, that when he sets the traps up for the other racers, he is always far ahead of everyone else, so if he just raced legit, chances are he would win every time. In the unsold pilot Wacky Races Forever, Dastardly even states that his being a villain qualifies him to cheat, even when victory is within his grasp (read: three feet away from the finish line).
• Most Warner Bros. Cartoons, with the goal of eating/shooting/defeating Roadrunner/Bugs Bunny/Speedy Gonzales.
  • There was a roadrunner short that ended with the roadrunner being "caught", after a fashion. Wile. E. Coyote chases the Roadrunner through a series of pipes, which get progressively smaller. Upon emerging, both the Roadrunner and Coyote have been shrunk to only a few inches in height. The coyote whistles to the roadrunner to turn around, and they go back through the pipes in reverse. The Roadrunner comes out restored to his normal size but the Coyote remains small, and grabs onto the Roadrunner's ankle before realizing what has happened. In the last shot he turns to the camera and holds up a sign that reads "Okay, wise guys, you always wanted me to catch him. Now What? do I do?"
    • Interestingly, while Bugs, Tweety and Speedy tend to actively outsmart their foes, the roadrunner does little to nothing against the coyote. Wile's mostly Hoist by His Own Petard, either due to his own ineptitude or malfunction of the Acme Products he uses. Gravity doesn't help, either.
  • Sylvester always lost in Looney Tunes even when he's being heckled without provocation. Almost like he was the Designated Villain by default simply for being a cat in an old cartoon.
  • In the case of eating Tweety, when Sylvester finally did that in the final episode of The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries, it resulted in the show being cancelled.
  • There have also been occasions where Sylvester DID eat Tweety, but he was then forced to spit him out.
  • And delightfully inverted and subverted in "Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation." Beep beep! SPLAT!
  • Elmer Fudd did manage to kill Bugs in "What's Opera, Doc?" using his "Maaagiiicc Helllmeettt's" weather control powers. But as he was carrying off Bugs's body Bugs looked back at the audience and said "What did you expect in an opera, a happy ending?"
    • There were two other shorts where Elmer won, too. "Hare Brush" sees him wind up getting Bugs sent to jail, while "Rabbit Rampage", the sequel to "Duck Amuck", has him torment Bugs with an animator’s brush.
• Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? Obviously, if they catch her, she has to escape. Depressingly lampshaded in one episode, when Zack moans to Ivy that they never seem to catch her. Another time they let her escape because Carmen's wanna-be replacement Sara Bellum was even worse. ^note And Zack felt they owed Carmen a favor since it was only with all three of them working together they escaped Bellum's trap/prison.
  • Played with when reversed around with the Nightmare Stone. In both situations the heroes succeeded in capturing it, rather handily, however they could never truly dispose of it.
• Wunschpunsch: The spells of the week Bubonic and Tyrannia cast never last long enough to become permanent, as their pets make certain to thwart their schemes.
• In-universe example in Young Justice (2010): in "Depths" Black Manta admits to Kaldur that he would have continued setting up missions with a high chance of failure on Kaldur's part until he did fail, since he wanted to see if Kaldur would take credit for something he didn't actually accomplish. As Black Manta said, "true character is revealed not by success, but by failure."
• As for actual exceptions in animation: Conan the Adventurer and Jumanji: The Animated Series. Conan eventually did defeat his arch-enemy and save his family while the final episode of Jumanji had the trio find the final clue and escape the game for good.

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