Plot-Induced Stupidity

Description

Plot-Induced Stupidity (short for PIS) is a scene that contradicts an established narrative for the sake of the plot. For example, when a generally competent villain has a chance to kill a hero and watch it unfold but they decide to leave them to a trap that the hero will eventually escape, or a villain putting an abort button/a countdown sequence on a doomsday device. Another example in a versus debating mindset would be a villain gaining an ancient artifact making them an extremely powerful being far above the hero, yet the hero is able to just defeat them without any real explanation on how or why he was able to do it. Moments like these happen as the writers need a reason for the hero to win rather then keeping statistics consistent. The average reader will generally not care about something like inconsistent statistics of a character and rather then the quality of the story itself and thus writers will do moments like these in order to keep the quality of the story in check and have a happy ending.

Examples of PIS

• James Bond villains leaving Bond in a room to a trap that he can open.
• Superman simply not flying up from a sunken ship.

See Also

• Outlier
• Inconsistency
• Game Mechanics

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