Stating The Simple Solution / Fan Works

1 Following

Stating the Simple Solution in Fan Works.

• In the Worm × Dishonored crossover fanfic, A Change of Pace, Vicky's second-trigger stops her from getting close to people or she'll basically render them into brain-dead worshippers, so she hasn't talked to her sister or aunt. Taylor hands her a cell-phone, leaving her to lampshade this. Though in her defense she was grieving and didn't have time to really think about it.
• In The Broken Day, when Harry learns that his actions unintentionally caused a Time Crash that forced his two universes together, he openly questions why only Ginny and Natasha have so far regained their memories of the original reality even after he also met Ron and Neville. Natasha points out that the obvious difference is that he has a more intimate relationship with Ginny and her than he did with the others.
• The Chaotic Masters: When the Titans and Justice League are discussing how to get Aqualad out of legal trouble over his attempt to steal the Trident of Triton from Roulette, Beast Boy asks if they can just buy it off of her to settle the matter. Everyone else is dumbfounded that they didn't think of that.
• Constellations: The Protectorate ENE branch is trying to find out more about the (apparent) new Parahuman Brushstroke and her (supposed) projection Good Dog, after the latter went on a spree to dismantle the Empire 88. Investigation proves inconclusive, and surveillance is off the table. Then Piggot sardonically instructs the heroes to go to Brushstroke's shrine and employ the one tactic they haven't used yet: talking.
• In Copy Cat, several X-Men try to puzzle out how an unconscious newcomer could be the child of four different members of the team until one suggests they're his grandparents rather than the guy somehow having four parents. Granted, both ideas are wrong; Xander used pieces of each X-Man's costumes for Halloween and instinctively teleported to the Xavier Mansion when the spell ended.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: When leakage from Ami's senshi transformation causes a dangerous build-up of chaos magic in her Dungeon Heart chamber, her chief warlock wants to invent a new set of complex wards to safely drain the power off, with experimental equipment that he has designed, and a channel to vent the power to outside the dungeon. Then her alchemist strolls up to them, having already fixed it.
  Tasbaal: You? You are nothing but a glorified cook! You want me to believe that you safely set up the mystical wards to drain the heart chamber of dangerous mana? On your own, no less?
  Alchemist: Nah, tossed some chickens in. Pretty fireworks when the magic went after them, too. You might want to have someone clean the chamber, though, Keeper.
• Elements of Justice: A Hollow Diamond: After Filthy Rich learns the utter mess his daughter made to get some shiny fabric^note Stole Scootaloo's scooter and planted a blackmail letter for the Crusaders to meet at Everfree Forest for an exchange that would lead to one pony's death, three arrested (one even losing their law licence) and the murderer shipped to military school, Filthy Rich asks her why she didn't just bother to ask him to buy the stupid fabric in the first place.
• Enter the Dragon (Harry Potter): Owls tend to flee from Harry, so in order to contact Abigail over summer, he spends weeks mastering a charm to send messages via flying paper crane. Abigail wonders why he didn't just ask someone else to send a message.
• In Evolution, Cole MacGrath and Alex Mercer need to take down some drones. Alex proceeds to throw a literal man at one of the drones to get it down. Afterwards, Coles mentions that he could have shot it down with his powers. Alex's response? He missed throwing stuff at airborne targets.
• The Echo Ranger: Melissa and Nezu dismiss pressing her new Power Coin, due to not knowing a material that will survive as the press. Izuku reminds them that they have a piece of Zord armor, and that the government's best efforts couldn't scratch or melt it. He then goes on to suggest that he can cut out the three dies (one tails and two heads) with his Tiger Saber, causing the scientists to realize they've been treating the Coins as two dimensional, when they are three dimensional. Those two points allow Melissa and Nezu to complete the process to make the second Echo Coin.
• Fate/Parallel Fantasia:
  • When Rin finds out Homura can stop time, she asks why Homura doesn't just stop time and kill all the other Servants and Masters right now. Homura shoots the suggestion down. Keeping time frozen for even a few minutes costs a lot of prana, plus if she touches anything, they unfreeze, so she can't attack in this state.
  • Homura offers Rin a gun and suggests Rin shoot the opposing Masters while Homura keeps their Servants busy. Rin declines, saying battles between magi should be decided with only magic.
• In FILFY teacher Harry, Sona, Rias and Loup are discussing ways to quickly send a message to Yasaka. After Harry vetos apparation and the Patronus Charm and Sona and Rias state that neither of their familars could manage the trip to Kyoto, Asia asks why they can't just call her cell phone.
• In A Game of Cat and Cat, the main characters investigate disappearances that might be the work of a serial killer. In an extra for the chapter where Soma Cruz discovers that he can see ghosts, Kazuya realizes that if the missing people were murdered, then their ghosts would be happy to tell Soma who killed them. Unfortunately, the killer's accomplice got rid of the ghosts by hiring a criminal exorcist.
• In Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce, Arjuna, a Hindu girl in the Magic Chef competition at Hogwarts, cheats to avoid cooking beef as this would violate her religion, given the cow's sacred role in it; Ramsey is furious and asks why she didn't just tell him this as he would have been willing to rearrange the ingredients to accommodate her. She is disqualified and her reputation tanks badly.
• In A Hollow in Equestria Ulquiorra seems to be present solely for the purpose of exercising this trope. He's constantly objecting to Princess Celestia's various convoluted plans for dealing with various threats, opting instead for the simple approach. More often than not he's proven right.
• Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus:
  • Sara Diktaylis destroyed Chloe's self-worth by bullying her to the brink of suicide solely so that Chloe, daughter of a Professor, would do anything to stop the bullying and give everyone a Pokémon so they can become Trainers. This ends up getting an entire class expelled for bullying. An unexpected phone call to Yeardley has his little sister pick up the phone, and upon hearing Sara whining about not getting a Pokémon from Chloe, gives her the simplest answer — just go to Professor Cerise himself and ask for a Pokémon.
  • When hearing of the time Gengar was trolling Ash and Goh in the Institute, Gloria asks that they could've used their other Pokémon to fight them instead of just Pikachu and Scorbunny. Ash replies that he couldn't at the time — his only Pokémon was a Dragonite and he calmly points out a Dragonite attacking in the Institute would lead to a big mess — but Goh stammers out that it never came to mind to use someone other than Scorbunny (as Scorbunny only knew Quick Attack and Double Kick, moves that wouldn't work on a Poison/Ghost).
  • In the prequel "The Firefly Funhouse Car", upon learning how Patricia (one of Goh's classmates) mutters how unfair Goh gets the privileges to not go to school like she does, Goh points out that he just asked his parents to help him sign a permission slip that grants him extended leave of class so long as he returns for testing and he has good grades on homework. Patricia is horrified to learn this now, right after she and her classmates got expelled for bullying Chloe over the belief that she could give them a Pokémon if she was broken deep enough.
• In I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Harry has to find somewhere to ditch his highly distinctive ship due to the massive bounty on his head. Ahsoka suggests he just leave it where it is: in the middle of space far from any planets or hyperspace lanes. The odds of anyone finding it are functionally zero.
• In A Man of Iron, the royals and nobles want Iron Man arrested for being a vigilante and challenging their authority, but note that his armor seemingly can't be pierced, making defeating him seemingly impossible. Varys suggests figuring out where he lives and attacking him while he's not in the armor.
• The Many Dates of Danny Fenton: When Tuck complains about how he hasn't had any luck on the dating scene, Danny points out that his profile on the site he's using is deliberately misleading, and that he'd likely have a better chance of getting somewhere by being honest instead of lying. Tuck refuses to listen.
• The Owl House of Amphibia: When Anne Boonchuy's and Luz Noceda's phones die in chapter Energetic Critters, Luz and Eda point out they can just use Eda's door to travel to the Human Realm and buy some phone chargers for cheap. Eda also offers to just use her magic to recharge the phones. But the kids reject both these suggestions out of suspicion that Eda will just sabotage things to stop them from watching.
• When Jessica and Danny face off against Star Sapphire in A Phantom Hero in Metropolis, Jessica tries to solve the situation without violence while Danny repeatedly suggests that he just fight her, because chances are he's powerful enough to defeat her. While Jessica's solution got the villain off their backs for the time being, everyone else present agrees that Danny fighting her would have been faster and probably would have had a better outcome.
• In Three Badasses in Westeros, Lysa Arryn has kidnapped Catelyn Stark and Tyrion Lannister (who had been taken there by Catelyn like in the books) as revenge for Littlefinger's death. Tywin Lannister and Eddard Stark are all for sending their armies to the Eyrie. Robert Baratheon points out that it would be far easier and cheaper to send some of their men to sneak in and get the two out without calling undue attention.
• We Are Nothing: Harry Potter is trapped in the dream world by Freddy Krueger and has resorted to cutting himself with broken glass shards in an unsuccessful attempt to force himself awake. Harry's friends and allies see his sleeping body getting sliced up in the real world and struggle to come up with a way to save him... until Ron arrives and innocently asks why they don't just wake Harry up from the nightmare. This leaves everyone else momentarily dumbfounded as none of them had ever thought of that as an option. Sure enough, a simple Reviving Spell cast by Sirius and McGonagall succeeds in waking Harry up.
• Where the Sunlight Ends: Out of ideas and desperate for progress, Peter Three ends up breaking into Hank Pym's office to glean information about inter-dimensional travel. Marilyn catches him because she stayed late to finish up some work and points out that Peter could have just asked Pym for advice.
• Wizard Runemaster 2:
  • Anduin Wrynn suggests that his father simply pay the Stonemason's Guild their fee for rebuilding Stormwind as not only is it likely cheaper than hiring enough mercenaries to wipe out the Defias Brotherhood^note The Stonemason's Guild reformed itself into the bandit gang called the Defias Brotherhood when Stormwind's nobility refused to pay them for rebuilding Stormwind, but it would allow them to retain the guild's expertise as well. Varian brushes off the suggestion, claiming he "refused to look weak in front of those who rebel against him".
  • Bolvar Fordragon advises against trying to station a garrison at the base of the Dark Portal, citing that between Netherwind Keep on one side of the portal and Honor Hold on the other, such a garrison would be largely a waste and they should instead focus on reinforcing those two positions.

Animorphs

• In Eleutherophobia: How I Live Now, the boys need to get into the Yeerk Pool via an entrance in a TGI Friday's. Jake suggests spraying the kitchen as a skunk, and Marco suggests morphing the president and declaring an emergency... and Tom points out they're famous war heroes now, and could just ask.

Code Geass

• In Code Geass: The Prepared Rebellion, Lelouch asks xenophobic Nina why her parents don't simply send her to a prestigious school in the homeland away from Numbers.

Danganronpa

• In The Future of the Future, Shirogane is ordered to bring two of her fellow students to headquarters as soon as possible. When she shows up with them drugged and unconscious in the trunk of her car, her commanders are very upset.
  “Did you even ask them to go with you?” Kirigiri asked.
  “I didn’t want to give it away!”
  Togami sighed. “Again. No one said this was a secret. You have a car, access to HQ, and they do not. This was merely a means to an end.”

Death Note

• In the parody series Love Note, rather than her complicated canon plan, Misa says she found Kira by going door to door until she found someone with a Shinigami following them.

The DCU

• In A Bird in Morning, Superman advises Bruce Wayne to be truthful about Jason Todd's resurrection — he has no hand in it and doesn't know how it was possible. This limits the odds of contradiction since trying to pretend the kid never died would mean complications with the cover-up. Okay, people generally stay dead when they are killed, but this is Gotham, who's going to care?
• Justified in The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1, due to the backwards nature of Bizarro and his race. White Lightning points out that Blue Kryptonite only affects Bizarro Supermen, so the rest of them can take care of the Blue-Kryptonite Men. Bizarro notes that's their most efficient plan, hence it must be used as a last resort. Later, when Bizarro Lois points out her duplicates can fight the B-K Men with no risk, Bizarro states her idea is really smart so he’ll put it at the very bottom of the pile.

Disney Animated Canon

• Guiding Light (AuroraRose2081): When Luisa pours her heart out to Mirabel about the laborious tasks she partakes in every day, such as collecting donkeys and rerouting rivers, Mirabel states various solutions that would be much easier than simply relying on Luisa's Super-Strength (baiting the donkeys with food, fixing the flaws in the gate that let them escape in the first place and addressing the various reasons why a river needs rerouting). She also suggests that some problems aren't Luisa's to fix, it being much more efficient to teach others how to do certain tasks rather than dump all of their problems onto one person.
  Mirabel: My motto is this; work smarter, not harder.

Dragon Ball

• Dragon Ball Z Abridged
  • When the supporters ask the Eternal Dragon to bring Goku back to life so he can defend Earth from the Saiyans, Shenron offers to just deal with the Saiyans directly, but they insist on having Goku do it. Interestingly, the name of that episode was "Nobody Listens to the Magical Dragon".
  • In the Buu saga fragments, Mr. Satan tells Buu that he doesn't have to eat people; just use his magic on rocks and turn them into food! Buu agrees, and promises that he'll eat rocks from then on. As Buu happily plays with a puppy saved, Mr. Satan realized he just saved the world... until some jerkass shoots the puppy.

The Fairly OddParents!

• Timmy mentions in The Truth about Prince Charming that after Vicky started making out with him, he could have easily ended her reign of terror in the neighborhood by going to the cops. She was 18 and he was 12, so she'd be imprisoned for molesting a minor. He didn't because he fell in love with her as well, and instead just insisted she stop tormenting his friends.

Fairy Tail

• In the Alternate Tail Series, both Gajeel and Mira both point out that the map Clan Garten is after is useless without all four pieces, and that hiding the piece they currently possess would ultimately stop their plan. However, because the mission of awakening Brigid was passed to her by her Grandfather, Levy feels obligated to gathering the pieces and unite them.
• In The Scars That Make You Whole, Invel asks Zeref that if he needs Fairy Heart, why not simply steal it from the empty guild hall while Fairy Tail is disbanded, instead of going through the trouble of having the guild reunite to fight Alvarez. Zeref states that Fairy Heart is composed of two parts, the core (Mavis's body sealed in the lacrima) and the Soul (Mavis's spirit that appears only to members of Fairy Tail), and that Fairy Heart will only be complete when both are united. Zeref needs Fairy Tail united and fighting together for a common cause so their bond can allow Mavis's spirit to materialize.

The Familiar of Zero

• In Zero no Tsukaima: Saito the Onmyoji, Louise is beside herself with worry over the idea of entering a Master/Apprentice Contract with Saito as it would functionally allow him to punish her in any way he wanted for anything he wanted. She's utterly shocked when Saito suggests they simply alter the contract to limit what punishments he can give out and for what reasons.

Fate Series

• In a Fate/Grand Order fan comic, the female protagonist wants to use her grail to make Bedivere into her wife. She then realizes that the grail only has enough power to give Bedivere a human body, and needs another grail to make him a girl and third to make herself into a man so they can be married by Japanese customs. Bedivere, already terrified by her plan, points out that she can just use one grail to turn him human and become his wife instead, before realizing what he just said.

Golden Sun

• To visit Master Feh, Isaac must prove his mastery of Chi by knocking over a log without touching it. In the game proper, Isaac must cast the Force Psyenergy, which he learns by going on an optional detour to find the Force Orb. In this comic, Isaac uses the Move Psyenergy that he starts with. Even though it doesn't fall, the log moving at all impresses (or freaks out) the student enough to fetch her teacher anyways. ^note This doesn't work in the game because the log is out of Move's range.

Harry Potter

• After Harry performs a complex ritual to summon Satan in A Deal With..., Satan informs Harry that he has an 800 number now and Harry could have simply called him.
• In For Love of Magic, Harry notes that the Quidditch World Cup could have solved a lot of problems by either letting the muggle landowner in on magic then obliviating him later or finding one they could bribe to take an extended vacation.
• "Muggle Fairy Tales are Mad!" features Hermione telling Harry and Ron various Muggle fairy tales as they hunt for horcruxes, with Ron in particular often comparing them to real magic (for example, he speculates that the shape-shifting ogre in Puss in Boots was actually a boggart). When she tells the tale of The Princess and the Pea, Ron suggests that the titular princess was actually the maid in the palace where the test was taking place, taking advantage of how the upper classes never pay attention to the servants and using her knowledge to marry the prince herself.

Hetalia: Axis Powers

• Alfred F. Jones repeatedly lampshades that everything in American in America could have been avoided if he'd just lied to the TSA. Unfortunately, he's a bad liar and knows it, and his entirely truthful answers of meeting with the President, being an Air Force General with a classified service record, and owning two apartments makes no sense given that he's officially nineteen years old.

How to Train Your Dragon

• In The Boy Behind The Mask, Nina grows tired of Katja and Hiccup arguing on which of their dragons is faster, so she tells them to race to settle the argument. They both awkwardly admit that they didn't think of that.

The Hunger Games

• Danni California, the author of Thinking Tactically, explained that her story was a meta-version of this trope directed at Suzanne Collins. In Thinking Tactically, a much less emotionally conflicted Katniss Everdeen begins the games, gets to the bow, escapes pursuit, then doubles back and starts firing arrows from the treeline into the general melee at the Cornucopia. A mere five minutes into the Hunger Games, she's whittled the competition down to herself, Petta, Rue, and Foxface.

Infinity Train

• Lake's New Normal: When the rest of the Cosay family panics about what to do with Lake when the police show up in Chapter 5, with Lake herself ready to throw down some fisticuffs, Jesse's dad points out that this isn't actually a problem. No one else knows Lake even exists (they're only there to follow up on the recently-returned Jesse's missing person case), so all she has to do is not go into the living room until the officer leaves.

Invader Zim

• Invaders of Irk: It's pointed out several times that the Planet Jackers could just move their own planet to a sun that isn't dying, instead of making everyone else in the universe hate them by stealing planets to throw into their dying sun. However, they always respond with "critters burn good", indicating that they enjoy the process more than they care about the supposed benefits of it.
• The Smeet Series: When Ilk explains in Vindictive that one of her concerns about having children is worry that she wouldn't survive giving birth (considering how rare and dangerous natural Irken births are after centuries of not doing so), Gaz points out that she and Blue could just make use of cloning tubes.

Marvel Universe

• In The Amazing Spider-Man: True Purpose, after Gwen Stacy is resurrected to serve as the new host for the Enigma Force, Spider-Man initially just takes Gwen to the Baxter Building for tests without explaining who she is to the rest of the Avengers Unity Squad. When Rogue in particular is complaining about the lack of explanation, Silver Sable points out that Rogue and others can easily look up that information on the net without having to wait for Spider-Man to explain if she really wants to know.

Marvel Cinematic Universe

• In the post-Spider-Man: No Way Home fic Tergeminus, when Peter-One manages to make contact with his other selves, Mary Jane (Spider-Man Trilogy) helps him make contact with Michelle again by visiting the coffee shop claiming to be Peter-One's aunt from the other side of the family and ask MJ to give her "nephew" advice about future college applications, allowing Peter to form a new friendship with her.

Miraculous Ladybug

• Feralnette AU has this twice during the Enough Rope arc. When Chloé bundles an exhausted Marinette into her limo, Adrien panics over the thought of her 'kidnapping' Mari. Kagami points out that he could just text Chloé to find out what's going on. He then calls her, asking for her to put Marinette on the line; when she does so, Marinette points out that he could have called her instead.
• Hero Chat: After finding out Lila's true nature, Team Miraculous tries to figure out how to stop her and her lying without her turning the rest of the class against them. Kim suggests telling her mom about her actions, which the others consider. They still choose not to implement it, though — as Chloé points out, Lila was able to get away with months of truancy without being found out, implying that her mother is either completely taken in herself or actively on her side, so telling her won't do any good. Ultimately, after Lila gets a medical note for a "lying disease," the heroes find that the simplest solution is to just ignore her. Once everyone knows she's a liar (and slowly realize she's a malicious liar), there's not much she can actually do to hurt anyone.
• In A Hug a Day Keep the Akuma Away, a Sentimonster Ladybug is sent to get back the Butterfly Miraculous after Alya took it from Hawkmoth as Lady WiFi. While Chat Noir is holding off the copy, Alya uses the Miraculous to empower the real Ladybug by granting her flight to get to the fight faster. This leads Ladybug to ask why didn't she empower the currently fighting Chat. Alya replies that the Butterfly Miraculous will boost the power of an Akumatized Miraculous user, and doing so to Chat would make him a Person of Mass Destruction.
• Juleka vs. the Forces of the Universe: When Chat Noir vents to Purple Tigress about how it's soooo incredibly HARD for him to deal with Ladybug constantly rejecting his advances, she informs him that there's an easy way to avoid that: just stop asking. Naturally, Chat Noir was hoping for something more along the lines of forcing Ladybug to do what he wanted, so he misses the point.
  Purple Tigress: It'll be hard—
  Chat Noir: I'll do anything to get her to stop rejecting me—
  Purple Tigress: Stop asking her out.
  Chat Noir: (after staring at her blankly for a long moment) How will that—
  Purple Tigress: You're tired of her saying no? Then stop asking. She's already given you her answer—
  Chat Noir: But—
  Purple Tigress: And she's been way nicer about it than she needs to. And she's given way more reasons than she needs to. No is reason enough.
• In Miraculous Hive, when Lila starts spreading rumors in Molting that Marinette is Mayura due to her always being absent when an akuma attacks, Marinette complains that with her having to fight, it's not like she can be in two places at once. Cue Nathaniel pointing out that with him having the Fox Miraculous, he can arrange that exact thing. The other three are completely dumbfounded at not having thought of that.
• Scarlet Lady:
  • After learning that Alya suspects Marinette might be Scarlet Lady after spotting her with a ladybug-themed yoyo, Nino suggests that she should just call and ask her about it, or talk to her the next time they see each other. Sadly, Alya is too impatient to wait, and decides to get into Marinette's locker to see if there's any more evidence of her theory.
  • During the "Mr. Pigeon" arc, Chloé berates Sabrina for not sneaking up to snap a photo of Marinette's sketchbook. Sabrina repeatedly tries to interject, but Chloé won't let her get anything out, and finally goes to take the picture herself. While she's distracted, Sabrina notes that it would be much easier to just pick up one of her rival's discarded designs, as she's torn them out of her sketchbook and tossed them aside rather thoughtlessly, but Chloé just won't hear it.
    Sabrina: (poking at one of the wadded-up papers) You could just use one of these... Marinette should protect her ideas better.
  • In "La Befana", André points out to Gina that if she wanted to spend more time with her granddaughter, she could have just taken her to the party on her bike, which also would've given them a chance to discuss the matter and let Gina learn that she could attend said party if she wanted.
  • When Otis yells at Kim, accusing him of stressing out the zoo's panther by being present while she's eating, Marinette wonders why her caretaker isn't simply feeding her in the back of the exhibit, where there's no potential for an unwanted audience. Otis completely ignores her point and threatens to have her banned from the zoo for daring to question his methods.
  • In "Prime Queen", Nadja's interview with Scarlet Lady, Chat Noir and Marigold proves to be utterly disastrous when she badgers the heroes with invasive questions about their rumored love lives until they all call her out on being utterly unprofessional and storm out. As Nadja weeps, one of the techies notes that several of the programs on their channel have been running into issues lately, wondering if they might have better luck if they didn't insist on broadcasting everything live.
  • After accidentally deleting one of Alya's videos off her friend's cellphone, Marinette spirals into panicked catastrophizing about how this might ruin their friendship. Mylène helps pull her out of it by suggesting they go ask Alix if Max has taught her how to recover deleted videos.
  • After helping deal with Party Crasher, Kim laments that his impulsive idea to exploit Gabriel's absence by hanging out with Adrien at the Manor for a while has unintentionally gotten the guys in trouble with the girls, as they ditched their plans to meet up and plant trees together in the process. Xuppu promptly asks "Why can't you just say you're sorry and make it up to them?", suggesting that Kim is too chicken to do so.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• In The Demesne Of The Reluctant Twilight Sparkle, nobles with old claims to demesnes are dusting them off and taking full advantage of an unfair, outdated law that Celestia was trying to let slide into obscurity (although Luna torpedoed that by giving Twilight Sparkle the titular demesne). The omake Where Blackmail Might or Might Not Happen solves the problem by Celestia immediately abolishing the law, and when the nobles try to rebel, she points out that one of the rights they'll be waiving is the crown's protection. Like from Discord, who has just been given a week off to do whatever he wants. Notable because the author of the original fic acknowledged that the path the omake took was probably the most logical one, but if he were to use it, he'd be left without a story.
• A Diplomatic Visit: In chapter 8 of the third story, Diplomacy Through Schooling, Twilight, her mother, and Celestia are talking about the mystery behind Neighsay's disappearance. Twilight and Celestia both think there's something sinister behind it (and as readers already know, they're right), but Velvet suggests there's a simpler solution - that Neighsay skipped town and is using some trinket to mask himself. Celestia admits this is plausible, but she can't help but worry anyway.
• The Stairs Coup in RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse. Quick Fix, Luna's majordomo, felt that Luna needed some stairs leading up to her chambers, in case the Night Court needed to contact her in an emergency. So in order to prove his point, he staged a fake coup, complete with sending orders to Equestria's armies to muster on the borders of half a dozen neighboring nations. Though this does convince Luna to install some stairs, she does not fall to point out that Quick Fix could have just talked to her about it.

Naruto

• Androgyninja's A Drop of Poison: After Sasuke cruelly humiliates Sakura in front of their whole class, Ino is worried that they broke off their friendship and became rivals for nothing. Shikamaru suggests that she talk to Sakura and explain her feelings; sadly, Ino loudly denies any interest in rekindling their relationship, then gets jealous as she sees Sakura befriending Hinata and Shino. When the two girls finally do discuss things after their preliminary match at the Chuunin Exams, Sakura calls her out on this.
• Legacy of the Rasengan: Naruto: After the Sound/Sand invasion is stopped, the Hyuuga council are discussing what happened during Naruto's match with Neji and trying to discuss ways to deal with him (since his match was basically Naruto demonstrating how to exploit almost every weakness the Byakugan has with his personally created jutsu). The Main branch members are all for killing him. One branch member, however, suggests inducting Naruto into the Hyuuga, with some very good reasons like how it would give the orphan a family, they could order him to never teach anyone his jutsu without their permission and he would have strong children who would bolster the Hyuuga ranks. The poor guy gets Killed Mid-Sentence before he can explain.
• In Son of the Sannin, during a visit to Konoha's hotsprings, Kiba, Tamaki, and Shino discuss how they can get to see Kakashi's face under his mask. Fu of all people does it for them... by politely asking him to take his mask off so they can see his face. Kakashi then says many people have tried to set traps and ambushes just to see his face, but nobody bothered to just ask him.
• Several fanfics have someone offhandedly suggesting to The Hokage to just use a Bushin to help with the paper work. Cue The Hokage banging their head on the desk at for not thinking of it. In others it's actually an S Class secret that only a few know about.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

• In Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88), after Asuka complains about having to sleep on a futon for the umpteenth time, Shinji suggests she just buy herself a bed, since she now has more than enough money to do so.

One Piece

• This Bites!:
  • Commander Drake asks why Vice Admiral Jonathan hasn't simply shot Terry and Isaiah, a pair of highly irritating talking birds, to which Jonathan responds that he can't afford the two million beri fine, as their particular species (South Birds) are protected by governmental decree.
  • Drake later asks why the World Government simply doesn't just sic the Admirals, the most powerful fighting force they have, on the Straw Hats. Jonathan responds that it would hurt the World Government either way. If the Admiral wins, the act would be seen as overkill for having to resort to using an Admiral to beat what should be a weak rookie pirate crew and therefore implicates the World Government as incompetent. However, on the off-chance that the Straw Hats win, it would convince the Warlords to rebel, bringing both them and the Emperors down on the World Government simultaneously. Jonathan thus argues that it just isn't worth it either way.

The Owl House

• In this fancomic, Raine explains to Eda that in order for the Day of Unity to work, all heads of the Witches Covens need to be present. So they need to take out Darius and Eberwolf even at the cost of their own lives. Eda counters that they're head of the Bard Coven and as such they just don't need to show up for the Day of Unity. Raine realizes she's got a point and doesn't show.

Persona

• One flashback in Royalty-free Rerun has both Joker and Akechi call Maruki out for continuing to insist on his original plan of brainwashing Sumire into a perfect copy of Kasumi when he could have simply undone Kasumi's death outright, which would have been much healthier on all parties' ends. The reason Maruki didn't was because Sumire's desire to be Kasumi was greater.
• Shattered, Scattered mentions that most requests on the Phan-site don't require the intervention of the Phantom Thieves, and Mishima usually responds by giving advice or redirecting towards counseling. For example, when a student asked to change her principal's heart for vetoing a mental health club, he pointed out that she doesn't need to get the school involved at all, suggesting they meet up outside of school.

Pokémon

• A sidestory of Pokémon Reset Bloodlines has the Orange League Champion Drake worried because his challengers are growing dangerously close to beating him, and he promised his Dragonite that they would never be defeated. A couple of times he's suggested that he should just retire undefeated, but he's not interested in doing that.
• PokéSins did this while commenting on the Orange Islands arc of the anime. The GS Ball is a Poké Ball that cannot be opened, can't be broken into even with power tools and doesn't respond to the conventional PC storage system. Geran points out that for all we know, the GS Ball is a rock painted to look gold and silver.

Power Rangers

• In Power Rangers Mythos, Avanth may have conquered the world and killed the current Ranger team, but he has spent so long relying on his goblin minions that it never occurred to him that he could use his loyal human followers as soldiers until it was suggested to him by the brainwashed Adam Park.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

• In this fan comic, Madoka, who the author admits is reflecting more her thoughts than canon Madoka, asks Kyubey why no one has used the wish from making a contract with him to become a Magical Girl to wish the Witches to go away. Kyubey nervously tries to dissuade her by saying that she'd get nothing in return for wishing to rid of the Witches, but Madoka happily argues that she'll get magic powers and a pretty dress out of the contract anyway. ^note Hilariously in canon, Madoka does exactly that by making a wish for Magical Girls to never become Witches out of despair and die peacefully when they reach their limit.

Resident Evil

• Resident Evil Abridged: Wesker lures his team out to the Spencer Mansion so he can kill them off to cover up his involvement with Umbrella. Yet, when the group is being pursued by the pack of zombified Dobermans at the beginning, he saves Chris, who eventually becomes his nemesis. So when Wesker finally reveals himself to be a traitor to S.T.A.R.S. and his motive, Chris asks a simple question:
  Chris: Wait. THAT was your goal all along?
  Wesker: Correct.
  Chris: Then why didn't you just run inside the mansion and lock us out to get eaten by all those cerberuses??"

Rosario + Vampire

• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness Act VI: At one point, Felucia points out to Dark that he could solve a lot of problems if he simply stood up to Arial and told her how he feels instead of just sitting back and doing nothing while Mizore jumps through hoops and endures all manner of mistreatment to earn Arial's approval. Sadly, Dark can't bear going against Arial's wishes, even if it costs him a happy life with Mizore.

RWBY

• Coeur Al'Aran:
  • In several of his fics like Arc Royale and Knight of Salem, someone points out when addressing Cinder's team's canon attack on the Fall Maiden Amber that the team could have saved themselves a lot of hassle and avoided almost getting killed a few times over by what is essentially a living natural disaster if, instead of offering Amber an illusory apple before trying to bring her down in an open fight, they offered her a real apple laced with poison that would kill her or at least paralyze her to the point where she was helpless. Neither Mercury nor Emerald have a good retort for this, and Mercury in Knight is quite dismayed at the realization. It's treated as one of many examples of Cinder being a Smug Snake with Awesome, but Impractical tendencies.
  • Professor Arc: After hearing of Jaune's alleged prowess and cunning, Salem suggests she not even bother fighting him and simply wait a century or so until he's died of old age. Naturally, her minions are all horrified by the idea as none of them are immortal like her and they're all significantly older than Jaune.
  • White Sheep: Pyrrha angsts over being offered the power of the Fall Maiden, but she's not sure what to do, and she can't even ask anyone for advice because it's all a secret. She's able to tell Jaune the absolute bare-bones, which isn't enough for him to give her an answer. It is enough for him to point out that she should probably ask Ozpin for more details. She realizes she never thought of that; when she talks to Ozpin, he's happy to give her as much information as possible about the power, the dangers, and the responsibilities that will result.
• I Want One!: In this comedy Crack Fic, both Weiss and Yang go baby crazy and decide to get knocked up by Jaune — and nearly kill each other fighting over him. While Jaune is freaking out over the whole thing (even thinking they're under a Grimm's influence akin to the Apathy Team RWBY ran into before), Blake points out with some exasperation that if all they want is a baby, there's no need to force him to choose between them, since he can get them pregnant at the same time.
• The Tale of a Cat Most Curious: The Curious Cat points out to Team RWBY when addressing their actions in Solitas that they didn't have to use the Relic of Creation to teleport Atlas and Mantle's populations along with themselves into Vacuo; which the Cat notes sounds like it's environmentally one of the least favorable and most dangerous places on Remnant to send an entire country's worth of newly-displaced Atlesians to, and doesn't get the Atlesian civilians out of Salem's warpath to the remaining Relics in the slightest. They could have just commanded Ambrosius to design the portal network to teleport only those whom are actually needed in Vacuo to defend the Relic of Destruction there, and to teleport the millions of others including civilians to a much safer location for them than Vacuo. The realization of this hits Ruby hard.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

• In She-Ra: In The Wake, Micah recommends that Glimmer use a long-distance communication spell to contact him when she is in space. Her response:
  Glimmer: Or I can just ask Entrapta to call home.
  Micah: That too.

Star Wars

• Heretic Pride: Anakin is perplexed by how, if the planet Kamino was erased from the Jedi Archives, will they find out information on it. Shmi has to point out that the Jedi Archives are not the only database in the galaxy — which fires off a Chekhov's Gun as Anakin was previously given access to the Naboo Royal Archives, and is able to find some relevant information on the planet from that.

Sword Art Online

• Sword Art Online Abridged:
  • In Episode 4, Kirito and Silica are looking for the Pneuma Flower to revive Pina before its timer runs out, and Silica gets caught by a plant monster with tentacle-like vines. Rather than rush in hastily, Kirito informs Silica that she already has what she needs to get herself free.
    Silica: The power to believe in myself?
    Kirito: No — a knife! Stab it!!
  • In Episode 10, one half of Kirito's brain is smart enough to realize that Asuna's surprise adoption of Yui is an attempt to scare him into calling off their rather hasty marriage because she doesn't think it's a good idea either, and all they have to do to resolve the situation is talk things out like adults. It's slapped down by the other half of Kirito's brain, which resolves to play along until she blinks first.
  • At the end of the first season, when Kirito and Asuna learn why Kayaba imprisoned ten thousand people inside a lethal video game - he created a glitch that killed players when their avatars died and claimed I Meant to Do That because he hadn't slept in 500 hours, and that the reason he trapped players in the game for that long was because he was trying to come up with some excuse to keep the cops off his back - Asuna asks why he didn't try to blame hackers impersonating him instead of continuing the charade for two years, given he had no actual motive.
    Kayaba: (chuckles) Yeah, okay, see, Asuna? The problem with that is that it's... an excellent idea that I wish I had thought of two years ago. (long, painful pause) Anyhoo, on that sobering note, I think I'm gonna go scream into that uncaring void for a bit.
  • In Episode 16, Kazuto and Suguha both realize that the Salamanders are already upon the Sylphs and Cait Sith; Kazuto suggests that, since this is supposed to be a peace conference, they could just ask them to leave. Suguha agrees, except for one caveat...
    Leafa: So like, remember when I told you this was an RP server?
    xVx_k1r1t0_xVx_KillMe: Yeah? So what- (realization) ...oh no...

The Twilight Saga

• Luminosity:
  • Rosalie warns Bella that if she chooses to become a vampire, she'll never be able to have a child. After thinking about this for a moment, Bella points out that she could just freeze some eggs beforehand.
  • In Radiance, after the Denalis betray the Cullens, everyone is frantically trying to plan how to get to the airport in time to warn the remaining Cullens that they're about to walk right into a trap. Then Charlotte points out that they could just call the airport and leave a message.
    Everyone fell silent in awe of her sheer common sense, or at least that was what it looked like to me.
• Tough Love: While calling out his daughter on her extremely self-centered behavior, Charlie declares that Bella didn't have to fly all the way to Italy to prevent Edward's suicide attempt. Instead, she could have simply sent him a text or e-mail declaring that "Hey, asshole, I'm alive!" (Although per canon, this actually wouldn't have been a solution, since by the time Bella found out what Edward was going to do, he was no longer near a phone that she had the number to.)

Transformers

• At one point in Eugenesis someone is amazed to see Optimus Prime alive, and asks if someone "finally" went to Vs'Qs and retrieved his body, which has been there for the last twenty years.
• The Tournament: Starscream arranges for Swindle to manage the tournament's betting pool, allowing him to skim from the top (in exchange for a cut). When Overlord places a large bet and threatens to kill him if he steals from his earnings, Swindle panics. Starscream points out that the easiest way to avoid Overlord's wrath is to not steal from him in the first place.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

• In A Mother's Touch, Reiji wants Yuya's Pendulum cards for himself. So he went through two plans. 1) get Sylvio to steal them from Yuya and play them in an Action Duel. 2) Use Sylvio's excuse of Yuya "attacking" him in a warehouse as a reason to buy out You Show and thus gives him the right to take Yuya's cards for himself. Yoko gives him a solution that doesn't involve breaking many laws. Just ask Yuya if he can borrow the cards in exchange for royalties since they're technically cards by Leo Corp.
  • When Sylvio exclaims how he went along with Reiji's plan to steal the Pendulum Cards and take You Show away because he wants power and to be noticed by having a strong deck, Yuya bitterly remarks that he could just take advanced courses in Leo Duel School.
• Spoofed in the Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series video "Marik's Council of Doom": when Bakura suggests bypassing the whole "challenging Yugi to a children's card game" shtick and just killing him, Marik replies that wouldn't work since 4Kids would simply censor it. The abridged series just does this a lot.
  Joey: What do you people want from me?
  Bandit Keith: Your star chips, dweeb. I have a score to settle with Pegasus, so Zombie-Boy here is going to beat you in a card game!
  Joey: ... Why didn't you just take my star chips while I was unconscious?
  Bandit Keith: Shut the hell up!
• In YuyaVision, Yusei admits to Placido and Kiryu that he loves both of them and has has trouble choosing one over the other. Lucciano saves him the trouble by just having him love both of them and be a happy threesome. Yusei quickly agrees and hugs his boyfriends.

Other

• In Dark Heart High, a shojo-style parody of evil overlords that deliberately seeks out tropes to adopt and cherish, a class for aspiring supervillains is asked what they'd do when they had their nemesis at their mercy. After listening to the litany of death traps and tortures of her classmates' answers, protagonist Yuki fumbles for a moment, then shrugs and says, "I'd just shoot him." Her teacher is quite impressed.