• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: Mai’s clumsiness is often the result of her daydreaming about Mei while she’s working. On more than one occasion, this has led to her making mistakes when filling out paperwork, such as posting events for the wrong dates or signing up for the wrong event.
• Asteroid in Love:
  • In Chapter 7/Episode 3, both Mira and Ao have to study for their make-up exams. While it's not too unexpected for Mira to retake English and physics, Suzu is surprised that Ao, who comes off as Book Smart as the local astronomy geek, has failed her math finals. As it turns out, Ao was too carried away from the stargazing the night before the exam, and accidentally wrote her name as "Manaka Antares" on her test and got a zero for that. In the anime, parts of her test are shown to have near-perfect scores.
  • Mira is on the way back from school after sunset, and she starts an improvised Stargazing Scene by walking while looking up at the night sky... the next moment, her foot gets trapped in the part of a storm sewer whose grate is conveniently gone.
    Mari: Look forward properly when you're walking...
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders: Telence T. D'Arby, like his older brother Daniel J. D'Arby, is a gambler with a Stand that lets him claim the soul of anyone who wagers it in a game and loses. His Stand, Atum, can also read a person’s soul to truthfully answer any yes-or-no question. However, using it requires him to focus entirely on his opponent, which causes him to become fixated on Jotaro when he discovers through Atum that Jotaro is cheating. Unable to figure out how, he fails to realize until it’s too late that Jotaro was getting outside help from Joseph.
• Handyman Saitou in Another World: Played for Drama in the backstory of Morlock, the forgetful archwizard. He was once a powerful and renowned wizard, and dedicated much of his time and whatever money he earned to have himself acknowledged and accredited as such, believing the recognition would come with wealth and success. However, he was so laser-focused on this goal that he not only ignored his wife's pleading to tend to their increasingly ill daughter, but used up all the money that could have been used for her care for his research. As such, his wife leaves him after their daughter dies and she's unable to pay the church to revive her. After he is unable to convince a time mage to help him turn back the clock and revive his daughter, said mage leaves him with an addled mind and no memories of his past, making him the forgetful goof he is at the beginning of the series; Morlock isn't even his real name, but him misreading a homemade necklace, the only memento he still has from his old family.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Deliberately invoked by the Earth Federation, specifically General Revil, when the White Base is christened the 13th Autonomous Corps. Thanks to the White Base now being infamous among the forces of the Principality of Zeon (they had not only repeatedly repelled the famed Red Comet Char Aznable, they also defeated and killed Zeon Earth Attack Force commander Garma Zabi) as well as the Gundam's reputation as The Dreaded, Revil knew that Zeon would become fixated on bringing it down. True enough, the White Base and the Gundam became priority targets for Zeon, which sent numerous ace pilots and prototype machines to try to sink the ship. All this accomplished (besides the loss of those pilots and machines) was to draw attention away from the Federation's much more Boring, but Practical preparations, such as Operation Odessa (mostly fought with conventional weapons like tanks and fighters.
• Read or Die: Paper Masters in this work are such bibliomaniacs that borders on a disability; they're so Obsessively Hyperfixated in reading in the expense of anything else, from holding a job to basic bodily needs and hygiene, to the extent that they require dedicated handlers.
• Transformers:
  • Transformers: The★Headmasters:
    • Upon learning that Vector Sigma was developing a powerful new alloy called cybertonuron (an alloy many times more durable than the cybertonium that was used to construct the Transformers themselves), Decepticon leader Galvatron orders a full-scale assault to secure the new metal. Headmaster leader Scorponok fears that with cybertonuron, Galvatron would be impossible to ever dislodge and so arranges for his Headmaster troops to plant bombs in the Vector Sigma chamber powerful enough to destroy the planet. During the battle, the Autobot Headmasters notice their opposite numbers acting odd and report to Rodimus Prime, but Rodimus brushes the report off and focuses on the main battle, thinking at worst the Decepticon Headmasters were trying to secure a sample of cybertonuron. When the frantic Autobot Headmasters report the bombs, Rodimus barely has time to order a planet-wide evacuation before the resulting explosion reduces Cybertron into a burned-out husk. Feeling responsible for Cybertron's destruction due to his short-sightedness, Rodimus appoints Fortress Maximus new Autobot leader and departs to seek a new world for the Autobots to call home.
    • When the Decepticons set up shop on planet Master, homeworld of the Headmasters and Targetmasters, Chromedome quietly meets with several of his friends who have been training and named themselves Headmaster Warriors. Together, they've come up with a plan to ambush and destroy the Decepticons, by luring them into a foggy, cloudy area that will interfere with their sensors and leave them vulnerable. They initiate this plan without the knowledge or approval of the main Autobot army, and successfully lure the Decepticons into the cloudy area. Unfortunately, no one had thought of the obvious problem: while the Decepticons' sensors were malfunctioning, their eyes were working just fine and they simply used the clouds and fog as cover, shooting down many of the Headmaster Warriors.
  • Transformers: Super-God Masterforce: This trope is weaponised by both sides on several occasions during the Masterforce War.
    • During the second episode, the Autobots are drawn to the Karin Islands to prevent the Decepticons from carrying out human experiments. Unbeknownst to them, a secondary objective was to identify who was working with the Autobots, and while the majority of the Autobots were focused on the operation in the Karin Islands, the Space Astronomy Research Center was attacked and destroyed, with Autobot ally Professor Go killed during the attack.
    • Upon learning of the Bomber Project (a power-up unit for Autobot leader Ginrai), the Decepticons focus on destroying the Godbomber before it is complete. They launch an assault on the British Motors facility where the Godbomber is being built, and when a truck bursts out of the building and barrels past them the Decepticon Godmasters Buster and Hydra come to the logical conclusion the Autobots are attempting to flee with the Godbomber. They're so focused on the fleeing truck that they fail to notice that the other Autobots are suspiciously not following to defend the truck. As it turns out, Road King used himself as a decoy to lure Buster and Hydra away, allowing the remaining Autobot Godmasters to rout the other Decepticons and then arrive to gang up on Buster and Hydra.
    • In episodes 32-33, the Decepticons have discovered the location of the secret Autobot base and plan to destroy it so as to cripple their ability to wage war. Clouder is dispatched to infiltrate the Autobots, successfully winning his way into their confidence. Next, Buster and Hydra attack a nearby city and so the Autobot Godmasters led by God Ginrai deploy to engage them. They're kept busy fighting the brothers and assisting with rescue, to the point they're completely unaware that the base has come under attack and don't notice that their communications suddenly cut off. It's only when Overlord directly challenges God Ginrai to come and see what they've done to the base that the Autobot Godmasters realise what has happened.
• Umamusume: Pretty Derby (2018): In Season 1, during the build-up to the Takarazuka Kinen, Special Week is too fixated on helping Silence Suzuka recover from her near-fatal accident at the Fall Tenno Sho to train for it properly, which greatly upsets her Friendly Rival Grass Wonder. Even during the race itself, Spe is too preoccupied with how Silence Suzuka is watching her to perform at her best. Grass Wonder beats her, and both she and Team Spica's trainer call her out on paying more attention to Suzuka than her actual opponents.
  Grass Wonder: I was able to give it my all because I was up against you. Did you give it your all against me?

• The Transformers (Marvel):
  • In the UK-exclusive epic Target: 2006, Ultra Magnus is introduced as the Autobots' "greatest warrior", having been painstakingly constructed over years in secret after Cybertron falls under Decepticon rule and the Autobots are reduced to scattered resistance cells. He is given life by the Matrix Flame, which is mystically linked to the Creation Matrix carried by Autobot leader Optimus Prime. When the Flame mysteriously goes out, the Cybertronian Autobots are horrified and decide to send Ultra Magnus to Earth to find out what has happened to Optimus. However, Magnus is also meant to participate in "Operation: Volcano" (a major operation meant to assassinate 10 of the Decepticons' most dangerous warriors and heralding a general uprising) and so is given a strict time limit. When he arrives on Earth, the Earthbound Autobots are desperately battling against a mysterious new Decepticon named Galvatron. When they ask for his help, Magnus brushes them off and states his primary concern is to find Optimus Prime. Much later, Hot Rod, Kup and Blurr arrive and explain they're from the future, and then further add that their method of time travel means that a being of similar mass must be shunted into limbo to account for their arrival. It's only then that Magnus comes to the horrified realisation that Galvatron, being from the future as well, is the reason Optimus has vanished and that by refusing to help the other Autobots against him, Magnus was the biggest obstacle to his own mission.
  • Following the death of Optimus Prime, the remaining Autobots vote Grimlock as their new leader due to thinking he has a good mix of strength, charisma and compassion (due to witnessing him risk himself to repel the powerful Decepticon Trypticon when the latter was summoned from Cybertron to destroy the Autobots and their crashed starship base). Unfortunately, despite some initial successes (he successfully has Wheeljack create a thermal power plant that gives them unlimited energy thanks to the volcano their ship was stuck in, and that energy allows them to repair their ship and make it spaceborne again) Grimlock becomes fixated on showing that his leadership is unquestioned. He becomes so fixated on stamping out any dissent that he spends more time sending out Autobots to hunt down deserters than fighting the Decepticons. When Fortress Maximus arrives with his contingent of Autobots, Grimlock demands they fight a duel for leadership of the combined army, unable to accept anything less than total control. This duel, for which the entire Autobot army is present, almost leads to disaster when the Decepticons lead a massive assault that nearly wipes them out. The fact that the duel happens on the moon means that Grimlock and Fort Max are initially even unaware that their troops are desperately fighting for their lives!
• Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Rodimus captains the Lost Light and recruits a crew of roughly 100 Transformers (mostly Autobots) to seek out the legendary Knights of Cybertron and Cyberutopia. Following the rebranding to Transformers: Lost Light, Megatron becomes co-captain and joins the quest. Rodimus, Megatron and the main cast take part in numerous wacky adventures. Unfortunately, Rodimus completely fails to notice that the other Autobots on the crew signed up because they genuinely wanted to find the Knights. While they don't mind helping out the innocent every so often, they most certainly didn't join the crew so Rodimus could fly around playing captain. Ironically, part of the reason Rodimus fails to notice the crew's diminishing loyalty is that he's trying to show he's just as capable of leadership as Megatron, and so tries to be a larger-than-life figure. This eventually leads to the rest of the crew becoming so resentful that when Rodimus, Megatron and the rest of the main cast are off-ship, the crew launches a mutiny and abandons them.

• Calvin and Hobbes: In the strips for the week of 24 September 1990, the question "6+5=?" on a math quiz sends Calvin into an Imagine Spot of Spaceman Spiff smashing the fifth and sixth planets of a star system together, which leads to him taking the entire quiz period for him to incorrectly answer "5". He then frantically spams incorrect answers for the rest of the test until Ms. Wormwood retrieves it before he can finish.
• FoxTrot:
  • One strip involves Peter having been told by his girlfriend Denise to come make out with her after school, which causes him to be completely unable to focus on any of his schoolwork, to the point that all the answers on a multiple-choice question in a history test just read "Denise" to him. When he finally meets up with her, he asks her to tell him after the school day is over next time.
  • "Nothing Artificial"👁 Image
    has Peter worry that his assignment will be mistaken as having been written by AI, which is an automatic fail. His mother reassures him, but sardonically reminds him that there are other ways to fail an assignment:
    Peter's Report: George Orwell's Animal Farm is a book about a farm with animals. It was pretty good. The end.

• Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus : Goh's fixation on Pokémon and desire to be with Ash means he procrastinates and constantly breaks promises with Chloe because "It's not about Mew, not my problem". He tries his best to repair them by apologizing and promising to never do this again...only to do just that. This is part of the reason why Chloe leaves him. She can never pull him far away to stop him from pursuing his goal and being with the friend who he cares for more than her.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man: Lost in Gotham: Exploited by Orphan during testing day. Spoiler and Bluebird, while on patrol, take a break for a rooftop dinner date. They're so absorbed by their burgers that they don't see Orphan pulling a Stealth Hi/Bye on them until she's literally on top of them. Cue both women screaming and losing their burgers (to their chagrin).
• Spider-Ninja: During his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Shredder, the Green Goblin tells him that he had the potential to be the most feared warlord in Japan, possibly in all of Asia. Yet instead of that, Saki wasted a decade and a half of his life (not to mention a fair chunk of his resources) chasing after an old enemy who only wanted to be left alone. The Goblin outright calls him stupid for this.
• Strange Potter: Strange tears into Dumbledore for a lot of things over the course of the fic. Overall, though, he's mostly disgusted by the fact that Dumbledore sees Harry as more of a campaign tool than a person, and that he intends to manipulate Harry and everyone around him just so what he thinks is best can happen.
• Tangled Up With Turtles: During the mutated Ruddiger's attack on the courtyard, the King hears Rapunzel leading the fighting in the chaos and orders his men to focus on getting her to safety instead of containing the creature. This is not only pointless (as Rapunzel is holding her own), but it also fails spectacularly, as the King's order leads to far more soldiers being injured than they otherwise would have been.

Harry Potter

• Harry's New Home: In Chapter 5, a third-year Hufflepuff girl in Snape's Potions class is so distracted by a Ravenclaw boy that she adds the wrong ingredients to her Blood-Replenishing Potion and ends up with a poisonous cloud of gas that sends three students to Madam Pomfrey, the nurse.

My Hero Academia

• The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic": The story deconstructs Mei's obsession with making her inventions and related character flaws in "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger". She may be a prodigy, but she gets so into making her inventions that she neglects safety standards, to the point that other students in her class got hurt. Power Loader let it slide at first, but a full investigation by the Ministry of Education into U.A. forced him to confront the fact that he had been neglectful of his other students and had started enforcing safety standards more strictly, even suspending Mei several times for not improving.

Sonic the Hedgehog

• This is G.U.N.'s downfall in the Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) fanfic Family Loading... Please Wait. While Tom and Maddie have the means to somewhat easily get Sonic and Tails officially adopted (as G.U.N. tased and caged two innocent kids on the belief that they were trying to cause a disaster) due to having the ability to sue them, Knuckles knowingly worked with Robotnik for a while, which G.U.N. can use as grounds to legally take him from the Wachowski house whenever they want (which, of course, means that their making Tom and Maddie's attempts to legally adopt Knuckles impossible). However, they forgot that Rachel also has grounds to sue G.U.N., as they used her to get to the Wachowskis (by having an agent pretend to fall in love with her, no less). And after she Took a Level in Kindness, she's more than ready to help her family. G.U.N. is forced to give up (as they completely forgot about Rachel) and end up having to awkwardly ask the Wachowski kids if they want to work for the government. They say no.

• Pops in April and the Extraordinary World gets so caught up in his excitement in working out the flying machine, and the energy it runs on, that he fails to notice that the prison is flooding.
• The Lion King (1994): Pumbaa is so busy chasing after a beetle that he doesn't notice a lioness hunting him until it's almost too late.
• Plankton: The Movie: Plankton's primary goal is to take over the world. However, he believes he needs to steal the Krabby Patty formula to do so. When his wife, Karen, shows him a different way to take over the world without stealing the formula, Plankton dismisses it since it won't help him get the formula.
• Soul (2020): Near the beginning, Joe is so busy talking on the phone to brag about how he just got a gig that he narrowly avoids all kinds of dangers. Eventually, he falls into a manhole due to this distraction and dies upon impact with the ground.

• The unnamed archaeologist in the first scene of The Fifth Element is so absorbed in the symbols on the ancient wall he's studying that he does not notice the arrival of an alien spaceship. He even assumes that the blast of bright light from the ship is courtesy of the young boy he's hired to hold a mirror to provide illumination for him as he works.
• Red Dragon: When Hannibal Lecter stabs Will Graham, he is so focused on guiding Will through the shock and going to cut his throat that he fails to realize that Will had grabbed a bunch of arrows from his quiver. Because of this shortsightedness, Graham is able to use Melee Archery to save his own life, then shoot him with his pistol to subdue him.
• Invoked in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows twice by Holmes:
  • First, Holmes theorizes Moriarty's assassin will either A) be incredibly nervous about the murder he's about to perform, or B) be so wrapped up in his disguise, he'll be incapable of spontaneous reaction to a sudden shock. Watson independently deduces the same thing and causes a loud clatter by knocking over a platter of drinks, identifying the one man who doesn't react as the assassin.
  • Holmes later explains to Moriarty how he was able to take apart the latter's criminal empire: for as meticulous a man as the Professor is, it seems odd and out of character for him to own a book about domestic horticulture and yet not take care of his own office plants. This is because the book is actually a cipher Moriarty uses to send missives to his underlings; it's meant to be innocuous, but it never occurred to Moriarty how obviously out of place it'd be to Holmes because Moriarty clearly didn't consult it for its actual content.
• Spider-Man: Peter becomes so fixated on watching Mary Jane while having a fantasy conversation with her in his head, that he ends up missing his bus. Having to chase it down leads him to discover his ability to adhere to any surface, prompting him to skip school to practice wall-crawling.

• Aesop's Fables: In "The Astrologer", an astrologer is fixated on reading the stars that he doesn't notice, and falls into a hole full of mud and water.
• The Apothecary Diaries: In the second novel, Jinshi promises Maomao a reward of an ox bezoar (a valuable item in traditional East Asian medicine) for her to investigate a conspiracy, because otherwise she might not be very motivated when nothing medical or toxicological is involved. Eventually, the investigation leads to an incident where Maomao gets hurt trying to save Jinshi, and she was more upset that she didn't get the ox bezoar she was promised (yet) than the fact that her leg wound opens up again.
• Bookbound Bunny: Arakil, the god of magic, became fixated on creating a grand tome to store and protect his vast library of magical knowledge. He succeeded, creating an indestructible grimoire with many magical properties, but his hyper-focus on the task led to him unconsciously ignoring the various cries of other gods who were outraged at the destruction Arakil wreaked in the process, including the death of a cosmic dragon and the sacrifice of a small universe (which may or may not have had the potential for life). This led the gods to seal Arakil away in his own tome as punishment.
• George's Marvellous Medicine: Over breakfast, when Mr Kranky excitedly outlines his plan to make vast quantities of the medicine, he becomes so worked up that he puts butter in his coffee and milk on his toast.
• Harry Potter:
  • Through the series, there are many scenes where the pupils have a whispered conversation during a lesson, at the expense of the magic they are supposed to be concentrating on, and usually, they make a mess of the task.
  • In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: When Snape's potions lesson is being inspected by Umbridge, Harry is so interested in listening to her question Snape that he becomes careless with his potion and keeps adding the wrong ingredients.
• Plato's Theaetetus contains an anecdote, allegedly from Socrates, which mentions the Thales👁 Image
  , a Greek philosopher about a hundred years before him, fell into a well while stargazing. This anecdote is generally considered the Ur-Example.
  Socrates: I will illustrate my meaning, Theodorus, by the jest which the clever witty Thracian handmaid is said to have made about Thales, when he fell into a well as he was looking up at the stars. She said, that he was so eager to know what was going on in heaven, that he could not see what was before his feet.
• Struwwelpeter: In the story of "Johnny Head-in-air", Johnny is so fixated on looking up at the clouds on his way to school, he falls into a deep river.
• The Wheel of Time: In the Final Battle, Demandred the Forsaken is so obsessed with his hatred of The Chosen One Rand al'Thor that, despite appearing on the battlefield like an Outside-Context Problem with an overwhelming force of Military Mages and the world's strongest sa'angreal, he squanders his advantage to grandstand and demand that Rand come out and fight. Rand is dealing with more important problems outside the country, so he doesn't even hear about it until well after Demandred dies to a total stranger.

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: In "Nothing Personal", Coulson tears into Hill over S.H.I.E.L.D.'s decision to isolate and handle him, obsessing over the possibility that he Came Back Wrong, instead of noticing little things like Hydra operating under their nose.
  Hill: Look, it was for your own good.
  Coulson: For my own good, I know. I get it. You should have been straight with me. I would have kept your secrets like a good soldier. I always have. But instead, you were worried about me when you should have been worried about anyone else!
  Hill: You're right. We should have seen Hydra coming.
• An episode of Burn Notice sees Michael slip a stack of incriminating documents into a criminal's car by exploiting this. Michael forces his car into a crash and picks a fight so the guy is so enraged and focused on Michael that he doesn't notice Sam casually walking up and dropping the files in his car.
• The Call of Warr: Gravesite starts as a dedicated and reliable leader to the soldiers, before he befriends Prisoner Sarah and becomes absolutely obsessed with making a film (despite only just learning about the genre). He becomes so absorbed in his brainstorming and script writing that he neglects his duties, ignoring the situation to the point where Prince throws a legal coup and becomes the new leader. Gravesite is only snapped out of it when he's reminded that "being a soldier is the most important thing".
• Leverage: Exploited to make a Kansas City Shuffle in "The Boiler Room Job", when the mark they're up against is a descendant of legendary con men who originated many of the cons that the team themselves use, and thus will see any con or attempt at deception coming a mile away. Knowing this, Nate sends Hardison to pull a straight-up cyber-heist, while making the mark, Greg Sherman, think they're running a game on him so that he focuses entirely on them and ignores Hardison. Nate refers to it as Inattentional Blindness👁 Image
  and cites it as "The Moonwalking Bear", giving an example where a group was tasked with keeping track of something during a sporting event, and thus completely failed to notice a person in a bear costume moonwalking across the court.
• Malcolm in the Middle: In "Forwards Backwards", after a series of pranks between Malcolm and Reese result in them being brought home from the hospital, Hal tells Malcolm to cancel his birthday plans because he's grounded, again. When Malcolm blames Reese for being grounded on his birthday, Reese shows no sympathy since he was also grounded on his birthday. Hearing this, Lois asks them what they remember doing on their previous birthdays, and they both sadly remember being grounded those days, and tells them that it's their obsession with getting even over some petty slight that resulted in never having a birthday party because they were dealing with the consequences of their actions, instead of trying to to make themselves happy for one day.
• Mayday:
  • In "Fatal Distraction", the pilots are so focused on changing the light bulb for the landing gear indicator that they don't notice that the autopilot had been disengaged until it was too late, resulting in the plane crashing in an Everglades swamp.
  • In "Focused on Failure", the pilots were so focused on diagnosing a problem with the landing gear for over an hour, not noticing that they were low on fuel. The plane crashed, killing 10 people.
  • "Deadly Discussions": The pilots were so distracted by the titular discussions that they didn't extend the flaps (a step necessary for safe takeoff) or notice the loud alarm when they started to try to take off, explicitly designed to warn them that they can't take off safely.
  • "Deadly Display": The pilots, in the middle of doing a circle, were so focused on the titular display that they forgot to complete the circle. They crashed into a nearby mountain.
• Scorpion: Discussed in "Father's Day", when the team track some escaped convicts, they believe that one, a Hollywood Hacker and borderline genius, has been manipulated by the others due to his intellect. Cabe can't see how that's possible, but Walter explains that not only is it possible, it's common. In fact, it turns out that the hacker was manipulating the team, and almost succeeded, because they were fixated on the idea that he was a victim.
  Walter: He's mentally enabled, and I think he may have been taken advantage of because of it.
  Cabe: I'm amazed that geniuses can even get duped.
  Walter: Easily. We become so focused, we lose peripheral vision, and it's on the outskirts where ulterior motives lie.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In "Singularly", a Negative Space Wedgie had this effect on the crew, causing them to ignore the danger the anomaly is causing. It becomes a case of Nice Job Fixing It, Villain! (to the extent a non-sentient anomaly can be considered a villain) since Reed's fixation was on improving the ship's automatic alert system, and Phlox's obsession was on scanning Travis's brain, inadvertently collecting the information necessary to counteract the effect.

• On of the possible Complications a player can take for their character in Draw Steel is "Consuming Interest". This gives them the option to read up on it during Respite (giving you permanent stat bonuses to roll on it), with the caveat that the GM rolls for Lore checks secretly, so the player can never be certain if the information they recall is accurate (representing the character being a little too certain about their special interest).

• Hadestown: Orpheus is so fixated on writing the song that will set the world back to the way it's supposed to be that he ignores the world as it is now. He completely misses Eurydice begging him to look up and see the dire situation they're in, with no food or firewood as winter closes in. Orpheus doesn't notice anything is wrong until Eurydice gets desperate enough to take Hades's offer and leaves for Hadestown, forcing him to follow her to try to get her back.

• Transformers:
  • The original toy bios of Shockwave and Prowl note that both are highly logical beings, and so generally view actions and motives through that lens. As a result, they are often taken aback by more emotional reactions, as their fixation on logic means they completely miss that other beings, like humans, aren't driven by the same reasoning.
  • Onslaught of the Combaticons is described as being an intelligent and capable strategist and tactician, and generally creates plans that exclude his direct involvement because he'd rather hang back and make adjustments to his plans on the fly. His primary weakness is his tendency to spend so much time adjusting those plans; he often fails to realise he needs to get personally involved in the fighting until the situation is more critical than it needs to be.
  • Barrage and Ransack are Insecticons. Barrage is described as a completely merciless killing machine that will not take prisoners, even if directly ordered to. He will keep firing on a location long after everything present is dead and the battle has moved on, purely out of a psychological need to ensure his enemies are completely destroyed. Ransack, meanwhile, is described as a model soldier, a straight-talking "say it like it is" kind of Decepticon. Unlike Barrage, Ransack is actually well-liked by his fellow Decepticons for his ruthlessness, competence and Brutal Honesty. However, they are also painfully aware that he's so focused on coming to grips with the enemy that he's prone to forget to at least not shoot through them. Their solution is simple: let Ransack go first.
  • Hun-grr is the leader of the Terrorcons, all of whom transform into savage monsters and can combine into the all but mindless Abominus. Hun-grr himself is intelligent, physically powerful and well-armoured, and theoretically would be an ideal Decepticon warrior. Unfortunately, he's much more interested in stuffing the mouths of his two-headed dragon alternate mode and is sometimes prone to stopping to eat during combat, especially if he finds something he thinks will be especially tasty. Megatron generally lets this foible slide because quite often the "thing he thinks will be tasty" will be an Autobot.
  • Nosecone of the Technobots is a meticulous, methodical scientist who strongly believes in the maxim "slow and steady wins the race". He is so dedicated to his methodology he has been known to forget that in war, speed is often of the essence. As a result, he's generally deployed to help with siege operations where his quirks will not be as significant a liability as they would on a fast-paced battlefield. This extends to when he combines with the other Technobots to form Computron. Nosecone's need to meticulously analyze actions before taking them slows Computron's reactions considerably on the battlefield, making him far less capable than his armor and firepower would otherwise indicate.
  • In Optimus Prime's original G1 toy bio, he only had two listed weaknesses: damage to any of this three components (his main robot mode, his Combat Deck and Roller his combat drone) would affect all three, and his compassionate nature. Some later bios and versions of him play with this, noting that he's less successful as a military commander than he can be because of his reluctance to be ruthless. In Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Grimlock calls him a coward for not wanting to fight the Decepticons to the bitter end and instead opts to abandon Cybertron. In the 2023 Energon Universe, that version of Optimus is hyperfixated on protecting Earth and minimising the damage the Transformers Forever War does to it, to the point he even betrays and abandons the Autobots still trapped on Cybertron to prevent them from bringing more combatants to Earth, and earns their enmity (though a strong argument can be made that Optimus was justifiably worried about winning the war by letting the Autobots become as bad as the Decepticons). However, this is also played with: in both the Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy and IDW Publishing's original continuity, those versions of Optimus were fixated on winning the war against to the Decepticons... to the point that they were willing to sacrifice worlds and every single Autobot to do it.

• Spider-Man (PS4): After the defeat and arrest of the Kingpin, Peter Parker is able to focus on helping Doctor Otto Octavius with his research into developing advanced prosthetic limbs that are directly linked to the patient's nervous system. However, a new gang known as the Demons starts making waves in the New York underworld, and Peter begins focusing his attention on them despite Otto's work reaching a critical stage. On several occasions, he even decides to swing around preventing muggings and the like and has to be reminded of his responsibilities to Otto. All this comes back to bite Peter when Otto is so desperate to complete his project that he uses the new tech on himself, despite Peter not being around to check to ensure it's safe, becoming the murderous, insane Doctor Octopus. Peter bitterly regrets not bothering to keep an eye on Otto despite knowing Otto was under stress and Peter's help was desperately needed. Worse, Doctor Octopus kills thousands of people during his reign of terror, including Aunt May. And to further twist the knife, it's implied that Otto's ground-breaking technology (which could have helped countless people) will be deliberately buried because no one wants to utilise something developed by such a monster.
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters: This is the fatal flaw of Ectar, and the reason why he's no longer trusted with actually leading. He had previously been tasked with investigating daemonic activity on a certain world, and decided to simply destroy the planet via Exterminatus. However, he'd arrogantly brushed off the fact that said planet was a Forge World, considering that information to be irrelevant to a Grey Knight. Thanks to his bullheadedness and stupidity, several Imperial Worlds ran low on armaments and ammunition, eventually falling to Chaos. He still refuses to admit he'd been mistaken, arguing that as a Grey Knight his duty was to destroy Chaos wherever he found it, and if other Imperials couldn't hold Chaos off they were simply wanting. The leaders of the Grey Knights disagreed, since he hadn't even bothered to try preserving the Forge World or even try to realise the repercussions of his actions. As a result, he was demoted and no longer allowed to issue commands.

• A comic👁 Image
  by a tumblr user with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder discusses this trope; in that she is resisting the temptation of drawing more comics due to the looming consequences over her head (depicted as a series of red boxes hanging over over her head), including losing her job, being flunked out of school, missing deadlines, losing friends etc.

• POWCreations:
  • Pirates SMP:
    • According to Sausage's recounting of Scar's backstory, he cared more about saving his hat collection (and his pet cat Jellie) than his crew when it came down to fitting one or the other into the lifeboat.
    • The live-action clip of Tubbo's duel against Owen before the events of the SMP shows him clutching onto his hat while he just got shot.
    • On Day 36, several people get distracted trying to scavenge for treasure and unique decorations from the underground city in the Whirlpool… in the middle of an earthquake, where the entire cavern is collapsing around them, and they should be running for their lives like everyone else. To everyone else's credit, a few people yell at them that it's not the time to care about shiny trinkets.
      Sausage: I didn't get paid enough for this!
      Acho: You're really caring about money now?!
      Sausage: I'm a Kestrel!
    • On Day 53, when Red finds out that his name is on the bounty board, instead of worrying about his own life and gearing up to defend himself, he tries to defend his ego by manually editing the sign there to up his own bounty from 400 gold to 1,000. Subverted shortly afterwards when he figures out the bounty was already taken and he's already being hunted.
  • Vampires SMP: At the end of Episode 2, Scott and Shelby begin debating over whether or not they can truly be called housemates when Scott used to live in the now-ruined castle… while all the beacons have been consecrated and the vampires only have three hearts of health left. Scott jumps into action once Owen reminds him of this.

• Amphibia: In "The First Temple", while telling Sprig about Marcy, Anne admits that her friend has almost gotten herself severely injured or even killed several times because of how fixated she becomes on her hobbies. In a later flashback, Anne reminds Marcy of the times she got yogurt all over the floor of a frozen yogurt shop because she was playing a handheld video game, got Anne seriously hurt during the school play for the same reason, and once wandered into a street full of snakes while reading a book (which Anne does not elaborate on, but claims was "the worst Saturday of [her] life").
• Darkwing Duck: Darkwing analyzes a speck of dirt to find his enemy's headquarters, completely missing the giant flag being erected with Negaduck's face on it right outside the window behind Darkwing. Negaduck later says he planted the dirt speck because he figured Darkwing would miss the flag.
• Hazbin Hotel: Charlie Morningstar, the Princess of Hell, tends to fall into this trope, especially when desperate and overly excited (which is...often). Seeking to prove that redemption is possible for Hell's Sinner population and thereby create better relations between Heaven and Hell, Charlie tends to go full throttle in whatever idea that holds her, even to her own detriment. It gets bad enough that her friends or even her girlfriend Vaggie can't dissuade her. This becomes very prevalent in Season 2 when the Overlord trio, The Vees, begin slandering her Hotel and reputation, which leads Charlie to make numerous attempts to prove them wrong, though they simply become more ammunition for the Vees. Vaggie lampshades that Charlie is hyperfixated on telling the truth regarding her hotel when doing so is merely playing right into the Vees' hands, all the while ignoring the people around her.
• Miraculous Ladybug:
  • In season 4, Su-Han repeatedly tries to bring Cat Noir to heel because he's the only member of Team Miraculous whose identity is unknown to him, meanwhile missing actual problems in the rest of the team (like Alya revealing her Second Super-Identity to her boyfriend, or Luka accidentally learning Ladybug and Cat Noir's identities and deciding not to warn either of them so that he won't be retired from the team, or the growing rift between Ladybug and Cat Noir at a time where they really need to be on the same page.) When those serious problems cause the team to fracture at the end of the season, he is genuinely contrite, conceding that he should have focused on providing guidance rather than trying to order them around.
  • In "Daddycop", Sabrina seeks to make amends to Marinette for all the things she did to her as a Beta Bitch, ignoring that there are other classmates she's harmed through her behavior and others she is continuing to harm (like her father, whom she's been lying to). Unfortunately for her, she picks a day where Marinette is also fixated on the wrong thing — attempting to arrange a date with Adrien despite having already made plans for a sleepover with the other girls — and so their respective fixations put them at cross-purposes with one another, culminating in Sabrina mistakenly believing that Marinette invited her to the sleepover, showing up at Marinette's door, and Marinette rambling about how everything is ruined and Sabrina can't fix it, not realizing how this sounds to Sabrina.
    Marinette: This. Is. A disaster!
    Sabrina: Surely something can be done.
    Marinette: Do you know how to make the Hoa Tinh star return to Jupiter another day?
    Sabrina: ... No.
    Marinette: [sadly] Then, no. Nothing can be done.
• Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In "The Purple Game", Donatello spends an entire night playing a new video game, making in-game purchases so he can continue playing. He's so hooked that he doesn't realize until it's almost too late that the game was a scheme by the Purple Dragons.
• Tangled: The Series: In "The Quest for Varian", Rapunzel finds out that the King has been keeping secrets from her. The black rocks (indestructible razor-sharp rocks that appear out of nowhere with no warning) are posing a far worse risk to Corona than he's been telling her or the people, and he's been dedicating more time and resources to protecting Rapunzel (even sending out squadrons of guards to stalk her or hunt her down) than actually solving the rock problem. When she learns about this, Rapunzel is furious and tears into him for not only lying to her and doubting her ability to protect herself, but for ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away. He has no counterargument and ends up pulling rank to get her to stop.
• Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner: If Wile E. Coyote's device fails to work, he will often become more fixated on getting it to work than on the Roadrunner or his own safety. Naturally, it will finally work at the worst possible time.

• The XY Problem👁 Image
  is a frequent communication issue where someone has a problem to solve (Y), comes up with a theory about how to solve it (X), then asks for help with their theory instead of the actual problem, even if it isn't actually the right thing to do. A commonly cited example is a beginning programmer who needs to know how to pull a file extension (.txt, .png, etc.), so they ask how to draw the last three letters of a filename—a solution which seems reasonable, but would fail with file extensions that aren't three letters (.html, .jpeg, .webp, etc.).
• Tunnel vision is a medical condition where someone basically has greatly reduced peripheral vision and so can only really see in a narrow "tunnel" directly ahead of them. In psychology, tunnel vision refers to the condition where someone becomes so hyper-focused on one thing that all others become secondary. A tragic example of this is Eastern Air Lines Flight 401👁 Image
  , where the flight crew became so preoccupied with a malfunctioning indicator light that they failed to notice one of the pilots had accidentally bumped the yoke and disabled the autopilot. By the time they realised there was a much more pressing issue, it was much too late.
• In aviation, the Sterile Cockpit rule and Crew Resource Management (CRM) are meant to at least reduce the chance of this happening.
  • The Sterile Cockpit rule means that during the most critical parts of a flight (generally take-off and landing), there should be no conversation save anything related to the current task. This is meant to remove the possibility of distraction (e.g. so busy gossiping the flight crew misses an important step on their checklist).
  • The idea behind CRM is that the crew will collaborate rather than the captain being in complete control. This is because of situations where the captains had made mistakes but their subordinates were so unwilling to challenge them that it became impossible to recover from said mistakes. It is also meant to ensure that one crew member is focused on flying the aircraft at all times.
  • Sadly, these rules can only reduce the odds of hyperfixation errors, not eliminate them, and Get There Syndrome, where pilots become fixated on landing the plane in the face of all evidence that it might be a bad idea, or just generally trying to make their destination despite dangerous conditions, is still a leading cause of plane crashes.
  • Personal electronic devices (PEDs) are banned from use in the cockpit for precisely this trope. In 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 188's two pilots were both so fixated on their laptops that they failed to notice they'd overflown their destination by over 100 miles until a flight attendant stuck her head in to ask what on earth was going on. During that time, NORAD had been scrambled, the White House Situation Room had been alerted, and both air traffic controllers and other nearby pilots were trying frantically to raise the plane on a radio that was being ignored. Needless to say, both pilots were stripped of their licenses.

• This is described as one of the major reasons for the failure of the Xin Dynasty, which helpfully divided Chinese history into Western Han and Eastern Han. Wang Mang usurped the imperial throne, ending the Han Dynasty. However, one of his major failures was his fixation on interpreting how ancient, semi-legendary empires ran things, believing that once he unlocked that secret, his empire would be secure. He spent so much time and so many resources focused on that goal that he neglected actually running the empire, not helped by his insistence that all important decisions must get his approval. Eventually, rebellions broke out, Wang Mang was killed, and a descendant of the Han Dynasty restored the Han Empire.
• Three Kingdoms – Shu, Wei, Wu: The state of Shu was defended from invasion by the much larger and more powerful state of Wei by defenses set up by Wei Yan. These defenses were brilliantly placed and constructed, making use of the difficult terrain to basically negate Wei's advantage in manpower thanks to only allowing a few troops at a time to actually engage. This meant that Shu's border could be secured with only a few troops. Jiang Wei, however, believed that while Shu was impregnable thanks to those defenses, they wouldn't be able to expand either. He became fixated on the idea of deliberately abandoning the forward defenses and retreating to strongholds, allowing Wei's forces to begin attacking the last line of defense. When that happened, the defense troops from the strongholds could sally forth, trap Wei's forces between them and the last line, and then destroy them. This would leave Wei vulnerable to a counter-invasion. His superiors Jiang Wan and Fei Yi forbade him from trying, but once he was in a position of power he put his ideas into effect. Unfortunately, he had forgotten some key details: Shu's strongest defenses were on the front line as Wei Yan's idea was to keep the enemy from advancing in the first place, the strongholds could be bottled up, and if the enemy broke through the defenses there was basically no military force between the border and the capital of Chengdu. Jiang Wei's idiotic blunder led to the fall of Shu as the last line of defense collapsed with ease, his soldiers were pinned down in their strongholds, and Wei's army swept aside what feeble opposition Shu's available troops (including the personal guards of various noble families) could put up.
• The American Civil War:
  • Abraham Lincoln was not a military man and was generally willing to let his generals handle the warfare side, but he was one of the first to recognise that taking Richmond, the capital city of the Confederate States of America, wouldn't be enough to end the war. Instead he believed that destroying the CSA army ought to be priority, since with the army gone nothing would be able to stop the Union from occupying Richmond. At one point he went so far as to write a letter to a general, stating, "Lee's army, not Richmond, ought to be your goal". However, most of the generals who led the Army of the Potomac, the main eastern Union army, were fixated on taking Richmond. There was some justification for this: the fall of the Confederate capital would be a tremendous blow to Confederate morale and military operations.
  • During the Battle of Antietam, Union general Ambrose Burnside became fixated on a bridge that spanned Antietam Creek. He ordered numerous attacks on the 500 Confederate defenders, despite it being possible to ford the creek at other points. While his troops eventually took the bridge and this was a factor in forcing the Confederate withdrawal, his fixation caused the bridge to be renamed "Burnside Bridge".
• World War II:
  • During the planning for the war, Nazi leadership was focused on fighting short, sharp wars that made full use of their blitzkrieg battle tactics. They were so focused on this type of war that suggestions to develop long-range aircraft were ignored because such aircraft were unnecessary for blitzkrieg (which involved aircraft working in tandem with ground forces). This decision would haunt them later in the war, first with their aircraft barely able to make the round trip to the UK during the Battle of Britain, and then when the Soviet Union's main factories proved well beyond their aircraft's range.
  • Japan's military leadership dismissed Western capabilities, specifically that of the United States, due to a fixation on "culture". At the time, all of Japanese society was bent to the needs of the state to the point that any dissent, no matter how benign, was practically treason. It was their belief that thanks to their "fighting spirit" and militaristic government, they would be able to at least intimidate the Americans into accepting their conquest of Asia. Admiral Yamamoto, who had actually spent time in the US, had a better idea of how the American people would react to Japan's aggression. As a result, the military leadership were never able to come to grips with just how much production capability the US had, going so far as to dismiss intelligence on the amount of military hardware encountered in combat as inflated or false.
• The crash of United Airlines Flight 173👁 Image
  in 1978 was reportedly caused by this. The pilot, Malburn McBroom, was fixated on an issue with the landing gear while the plane was running out of fuel. As he was known to have a bad temper, the crew was so afraid of pissing him off they didn't say anything until it was too late, leading to a crash that killed 10 people.